There are No Ghosts in the Soviet Union

The positive side of the interview was that it gave him a chance to get to know Natasha Lovchev rather better. He’d checked her records in the State Employees computer, of course, and found nothing against her. It had been necessary to mention in his report that she had had no official authority for inviting her mother to see her new office, but he pointed to this as evidence of the extremely lax security at the Gorodok Building rather than dereliction of duty on Natasha’s part. After all, pride in one’s work and love of one’s mother were both figured in the official list of virtues published by the Committee on Internal Morale and Propaganda each year.

Natasha was present during his interview of Mrs Lovchev. From time to time she interrupted, but Chislenko didn’t mind, especially as her interruptions, which were at first defensive of her mother, became increasingly more embarrassed and irritated as that good lady rambled on and on, till finally she rescued the Inspector from the little bedroom and led him out in to the equally small living-room, closing the door firmly behind her.

She didn’t apologize for her mother and Chislenko admired her for that. Children should never apologize for their parents. But her offer of a cup of tea was clearly compensatory and conciliatory. And as they drank and talked, Chislenko found himself aware with his male receptors of what he had already noted with his policeman’s eye, that Natasha was very pretty indeed. Not only pretty, but pleasant, interesting and bright. Chislenko felt able to relax a little, and enjoy the tea and her company and a brief moment off duty.

‘What do you really make of all this?’ he asked her. ‘Now you’ve had time to think about it. Off the record.’

‘Off the record?’ She regarded him with an open scepticism and then shrugged and wiped it off with a stunning smile. ‘Well, off the record, it has to be a ghost, don’t you think?’

‘A ghost?’ he echoed. He must have sounded disappointed.

‘All right, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I know that’s what my mother’s been going on about for the past half-hour and you hoped for something more original from me. Perhaps I could dress it up for you. A para-psychological phenomenon, how would that sound in your report? Or perhaps you prefer a delusive projection produced by localized mass-hysteria, perhaps relatable to repressed claustrophobia triggered by the lift.’

‘Now I like the sound of that,’ he said, only half joking. So far, until his reports were complete, he had avoided anything like a conclusion, opinion or recommendation. This kind of phraseology sounded just the ticket.

Natasha snorted derisively.

‘Use any jargon you like,’ she said firmly. ‘In my book, any human figure which passes clean through a material barrier is a ghost. Go back in records and look for an accident happening in that lift-shaft. The past is where your investigation should be, if you’ve got the nerve.’

She was mocking him, but the gibe struck home. The idea had actually occurred to him, but he had dismissed it at once, and not merely because it was absurd. No; an ambitious thirty-year-old inspector of police knew that his every move was scrutinized with great care, and he had no desire to find himself explaining that he was examining old records in order to test a ghost hypothesis!

He covered his discomfiture with a smile, and returning mockery for mockery, he said, ‘Why the past? What’s wrong with precognition? If you believe in ghosts, surely, you believe in visions too? Perhaps this was an event which has yet to happen.’

‘Oh no,’ she said sombrely. ‘It’s happened.’

‘How so sure?’

‘The clothes,’ she said.

‘The clothes?’ He cast his mind back to the witness statements. ‘Yes, I recall, there was something about an old-fashioned suit. But, good lord, Moscow’s full of old-fashioned suits! Who can afford a new-fashioned suit these days?’

The question was rhetorical since any attempt to answer it would almost certainly have involved a slander of the State.

She said, ‘It was more than that. It was, well, a new old-fashioned suit, if you follow me. And he was wearing a celluloid collar too. Now, old-fashioned suits may be plentiful still, but you don’t see many celluloid collars about, do you? And he had button-up shoes!’

‘Now there’s a thing!’ said Chislenko. ‘So what kind of dating would you put on this outfit?’

She pursed her lips thoughtfully. It would have been very easy to lean forward and kiss them but Chislenko was not letting himself relax that far. Not yet anyway; the thought popped up unexpectedly, surprisingly, but not unwelcomely.

‘’Thirties, late ’twenties, somewhere around then, I’d say,’ she said.

He laughed out loud and said, ‘Now that is interesting. When you go to work in the morning do you ever look up?’

‘Look up?’ She was puzzled.

‘Yes, up.’ He raised his head and his eyes till he was looking at the angle where the yellowing paper on the walls met the flaking whitewash on the ceiling. ‘Or is it head down, eyes half closed, drift along till you reach your desk?’

‘I’m very alert in the mornings,’ she retorted spiritedly.

‘I’m glad to hear it. Then you must have noticed that huge concrete slab above the main door. The one inscribed. The Gorodok Building. Dedicated to the Greater Glory of the USSR and opened by Georgiy Malenkov in June 1949.

‘Nineteen forty-nine,’ she echoed. ‘Oh. I see. Nineteen forty-nine.’

‘Yes. Part of our great post-war reconstruction programme,’ he said, rising. ‘A little late for celluloid collars and button-up shoes, don’t you think? Thank you for the tea, Comrade Natasha. I’m sure we’ll meet again, I’ll need to keep in touch with you till this strange business is settled.’

He offered his hand formally. She shook it and said, ‘And I’ll be very interested to learn how you manage to settle it, Comrade Inspector.’

He smiled and squeezed her hand. She returned neither squeeze nor smile. He didn’t blame her. Only a fool would allow a couple of minutes’ friendly chat to break down the barriers of caution and suspicion which always exist between public and police.

And Natasha, he guessed, was no fool.

Checking Josif Muntjan, the liftman, wasn’t half as pleasant but just as easy. The State makes no social distinction in its records. Menial or master, once you come into its employ, you get the womb-to-tomb X-ray treatment.

Muntjan came out pretty clear. There was a record of minor offences, all involving drunkenness, but none recent, and nothing while on duty.

Indeed, the supervisor, who didn’t look like a man in whom the milk of compassion flowed very freely, spoke surprisingly well of him. He expressed surprise rather than outrage at the mention of the hip-flask.

‘It’s not an offence to own one, is it?’ he said. ‘No need to report it, though, is there? I’ll see he doesn’t bring it to work with him again. He’ll take notice of what I say. Jobs aren’t easy to come by when you’re old and unqualified.’

Chislenko nodded; the man’s sympathetic understanding touched him. He clearly knew that if Muntjan were tossed out of his job, he probably wouldn’t stop falling till he landed in one of those shacks on the outer ring road where the Moscow down-and-outs eked out their perilous existence. Or rather, non-existence, for of course in the perfect socialist state, such degraded beings were impossible.

Crime too was impossible. Or would be eventually. The statistics showed progress. Chislenko defended the statistics as fervently as the next man, knowing that if he didn’t, the next man would probably report the deficiency. But falling though the crime rate might be, there was still a lot of it about and Chislenko resented the amount of time he had to spend on this unrewarding and absurd business at the Gorodok Building. The only profit in it was that it had brought him into contact with Natasha Lovchev, but that relationship was still as uncertain in its outcome as a new Five-Year-Plan.

He turned his attention from Muntjan to Alexei Rudakov. Here the computer confirmed his own first estimate. Rudakov was a man to be treated with respect. Only his initial foolishness in leaving the scene of the incident made him vulnerable to hard questioning. The trouble was, the harder the questioning, the firmer his story.

Finally Rudakov said, ‘Comrade Inspector, clearly you want to hear this story as little as I want to tell it. In a few days I shall be returning to the Dnieper Dam. Rest assured, I shall not be making a fool of myself by repeating this anecdote there. In other words, if you stop asking questions, I’ll stop giving answers!’

It made good sense to Chislenko. The best way to deal with this absurd business was to ignore it. He only hoped his superiors would agree, and he gave them their cue by writing a final dismissive report, this time risking a conclusion couched in the kind of quasi-psychological jargon Natasha had mockingly used.

Then he crossed his fingers, and waited, and even said a little prayer.

The authorities were right to ban religion.

The following day he was summoned to Procurator Kozlov’s office.

3

Of all the deputy procurators working in the Procurator General’s office, Kozlov was the one most feared. Unambiguously ambitious, he took lack of progress in any case under his charge as an act of personal sabotage by the Inspector involved, and his own advancement was littered with the wrecks of others’ careers. His legal career had begun in the attorney’s department of the Red Army, and on formal official occasions Kozlov always wore the uniform of colonel to which his military service entitled him.

He was wearing the uniform today. It was not a good sign.

So preoccupied was Chislenko by this sartorial ill-omen that at first he did not notice the other person in the room. It was only when he came to attention and focused his eyes over the seated Procurator’s head that he took in the unexpected presence. Standing by the window looking down into Petrovka Street was an old gentleman (the term rose unbidden into Chislenko’s mind), with a crown of snow white hair, a goatee beard of the same hue, cheeks of fresh rose, eyes of bright blue, and an expression of almost saintly benevolence.

Procurator Kozlov did not look benevolent.

‘Inspector Chislenko,’ he rasped. ‘This business of the Gorodok Building. These are your final reports?’

He stabbed at the file on his desk.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Chislenko.

‘And you recommend that no further inquiry is needed?’

‘I can see no line of further inquiry that might be useful,’ said Chislenko carefully.

The Procurator sneered.

‘No line which might be fruitful if pursued in the indolent, incompetent and altogether deplorable manner in which you’ve managed this business so far, you mean!’

The unexpected violence of the attack provoked Chislenko to the indiscretion of a protest.

‘Sir!’ he cried. ‘I resent your implications …’

‘You resent!’ bellowed Kozlov, his smart uniform stretching to the utmost tolerance of its stitching.

‘Comrades,’ said the old man gently.

The speed with which the Procurator deflated made Chislenko look at the old gentleman with new eyes. Wasn’t there something familiar about those features?

‘Let us not be unfair to the Inspector,’ he continued with a friendly smile. ‘He has done almost as much as could be expected, and his desire to let this matter die quietly is altogether laudable. However …’

He paused, came to the desk, picked up the file and sifted apparently aimlessly through its sheets.

‘Do you know who I am, Inspector?’ he said finally.

Desperately Chislenko searched his memory while the old man smiled at him. Honesty at last seemed the best policy.

‘My apologies, Comrade,’ he said. ‘There is something familiar about you but I cannot quite find the name to go with it.’

To his surprise the old man looked pleased.

‘Good, good,’ he said, beaming. ‘In my work, as in yours, not to be known is the best reputation a man can look for. I am Y.S.J. Serebrianikov.’

It was with difficulty that Chislenko concealed the shocked dismay of recognition. Of course! This was the legendary Yuri the Survivor, that shadowy figure who had started his career under Beria and survived his passing and that of Semichastny, Shelepin, and Andropov, in the process making that most dangerous of transitions from being a man who knows too much to live to being a man who knows too much to destroy. Now nearly eighty, he was officially designated Secretary to the Committee on Internal Morale and Propaganda, which sounded harmless enough, but this was not a harmless man. Either through flattery or blackmail, he always picked his protectors well and for many years now he had been under the ægis of the powerful Minister of Internal Affairs, Boris Bunin, which explained his presence but not his purpose in the MVD Headquarters. Bunin at 65 was young enough to have very large ambitions. Serebrianikov with his vast store of knowledge and his still strong KGB connections must have been, and might be again, a tremendous help to him.

Chislenko bowed in his direction.

‘It is an honour and privilege to meet you, Comrade Secretary,’ he intoned.

‘Thank you, Comrade Inspector,’ replied the old man. ‘Now in the matter of this trivial and absurd incident at the Gorodok Building, you are perhaps wondering what my interest is? Let me tell you. I am old now, and should (you are perhaps thinking) be spending my time in my dacha at Odessa, watching the seagulls. But some old horses miss their harness, as perhaps one day you will find, and the Praesidium – in their kindness and to satisfy an old man’s whim – permit me to preserve the illusion at least of still serving the State.’

This was dreadful, thought Chislenko. No man could be so humourously self-deprecating except from a base of absolute power.

‘What I do is sometimes watch and sometimes listen and sometimes read, but mainly just sniff the air to test the mood of the people. Internal morale is the fancy name they give it. I watch for straws in the wind, silly rumours, atavistic superstitions, anything which may if unchecked develop into a let or hindrance to the smooth and inevitable progress of the State.’

‘But surely this silly business at the Gorodok Building could hardly do that!’ burst out Chislenko, winning an angry glare from the Procurator, but an approving smile from Serebrianikov.

‘Possibly not, in certain circumstances,’ he said. ‘Had, for instance, the initial response not been so attention-drawing. I do not hold you altogether responsible for the other services, but is it not true that your policemen surrounded the building and arrested everyone trying to leave?’

To explain that this had not been his idea at all was pointless; only results counted in socialist police work.

Instead Chislenko countered boldly, ‘Had we not done that, Comrade Secretary, we should not have apprehended the witness, Rudakov.’

‘True,’ said the old man. ‘But with hindsight, Comrade Inspector, do you not think it might have been better if you hadn’t caught Comrade Rudakov?’

This precise echo of his own feelings was perhaps the most frightening thing Chislenko had heard so far.

‘At least the Comrade Engineer appears a man of discretion,’ continued Serebrianikov. ‘Unlike Muntjan who is a drunken babbler, and the woman, Lovchev, who is a garrulous hysteric. Yet there might have been means to restrain these, too, if you had avoided conducting the initial interrogation in public!’

‘In public! No!’ protested Chislenko.

The old man took out a small notebook and held it before him, like a Bible aimed at a vampire.

‘Would you like me to recite a list of those who admit to overhearing the whole of your initial interviews, Inspector.’

Chislenko remembered the firemen and the medics, the corridor draughty with open doors, the stairways crowded with curious ears.

I wish I were dead! he thought.

‘I apologize most sincerely, Comrade,’ he said formally. ‘My only excuse is that I was misled into thinking a serious incident had taken place in a government building.’

‘I should have thought that those circumstances would have urged greater discretion, not less,’ murmured the old man.

‘No, Comrade, what I meant was that, realizing I had been misled, perhaps even hoaxed, I momentarily lost sight of the need for discretion. Indeed, Comrade Serebrianikov, with permission, I would like to say that even now I am at a difficulty in understanding what all the fuss is about. I mean, if there had been an incident and there had been any need to hush things up, well, not to put too fine a point on it, I’d have made damn sure that everyone in the entire building, in hearing distance or not, knew that if they didn’t keep mum, they’d have their balls twisted till they really had something to make a noise about!’

The transition from formal explanation to demotic indignation took Chislenko himself completely by surprise, and made the Procurator close his eyes in a spasm of mental pain.

Serebrianikov only smiled.

‘You are young and impetuous and see your job in terms of fighting the perils of visible crime,’ he said. ‘That is good. But when you are as experienced and contemplative as age has made me – and the Procurator here –’ this came as an afterthought – ‘you begin to appreciate the perils of the invisible. Let me give you a few facts, Inspector. It is now a week since this alleged incident. What will you find if you visit the Gorodok Building? I will tell you. So many of the personnel working there refuse to use the lift in question, which is the south lift, that long queues form outside the north lift. When a directive was issued ordering those in offices on the south side of the building to use the south lift, many of them started walking up the stairs in preference. Furthermore, this incident is still a popular topic of conversation not only in the Gorodok Building but in government offices throughout the city, and presumably in the homes and recreational centres of those concerned.’

Chislenko started to speak, but Serebrianikov held up his hand.

‘You are, I imagine, going to dismiss this as mere gossip, trivial and short-lived. I cannot agree. Firstly, it panders to a particularly virulent strain of superstition in certain sections of our people who, despite all that education can do, still adhere to the religious delusions of the Tsarist tyranny. But there is worse. All families have their troubles and these can be dealt with if kept within the family. Our sage and serious Soviet press naturally do not concern themselves with such trivia, but several Western lie-sheets have somehow got wind of the story and have run frivolous and slanderous so-called news items. And only last night at a reception to celebrate the successful launching of our Uranus probe, I myself was asked by the French ambassador if it were true that ghosts were being allowed back into the Soviet Union. The man, of course, was drunk. Nevertheless …’

The pale blue eyes fixed on Chislenko. He felt accused and said helplessly, ‘I’m sorry, Comrade Secretary …’

‘Yes,’ said Serebrianikov. ‘By the way, Comrade Inspector, you’re not related to Igor Chislenko who used to play on the wing for Dynamo, are you?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ said Chislenko.

‘A pity. Still, no matter,’ said the old man with sudden briskness. ‘Procurator Kozlov, I think we understand each other, and I have every confidence this young officer can establish the truth of this matter, explode the lies, and bring the culprits to book. I shall expect his report by the end of the week, shall we say? Good day to you.’

With a benevolent nod, Serebrianikov left the room, his step remarkably light and spry for a man of his age.

The Procurator remained at his desk, his head bent, his eyes hooded. Chislenko remained in the posture of attention to which he had belatedly snapped as he realized the old man was leaving. After perhaps a minute, he said cautiously, ‘Sir?’

Kozlov grunted.

‘Sir, what is it precisely that the Comrade Secretary wishes us to do?’

The Procurator’s head rose, the eyes opened. The voice when it came was almost gentle.

‘He wishes you to scotch all those wild stories about what happened in the Gorodok Building,’ said Kozlov. ‘He wishes you to show that not only was there no supernatural manifestation, but also that the whole affair has been stage-managed by subversive elements, encouraged and supported by Western imperialist espionage machines operating out of certain embassies, with the ultimate aim of bringing the Soviet state into disrepute.’

‘But that’s absurd!’ protested Chislenko. ‘I don’t mean the bit about Western imperialist espionage, of course. I’m sure the Comrade Secretary is quite right about that. But what’s absurd is expecting me to set about disproving a ghost!’

Kozlov smiled.

‘Do you wish me to inform Comrade Serebrianikov that his confidence has been misplaced?’ he asked, almost genial at the prospect.

‘No! No indeed, sir!’

‘Then I suggest you get to work! And you would do well to remember one thing, Chislenko.’

‘What’s that, sir?’

‘There are no ghosts in the Soviet Union!’

4

When a Soviet official is given what he regards as an absurd and impossible task, he knows there is only one way to perform it: thoroughly! Whatever conclusions he reaches, he must be certain at least that no matter how finely his researches are combed, there will be no nits for his superiors to pick at.

Chislenko saw his task as dividing into two clear areas. First: disprove the ghost. Second: find a culprit.

It might have seemed to a non-Soviet police mind that success in the latter would automatically accomplish the former. Chislenko knew better than this, because he knew what every Russian knows: that when it comes to finding culprits, the authorities have free choice out of about one hundred and thirty million candidates.

In this case, of course, there was a short-list of four. And here was another reason for delaying the hunt for the culprit.

Rudakov looked pretty invulnerable. Even his attempt to leave the scene of the incident pointed to his innocence. Unless he’d managed to get up someone important’s nose, he looked safe.

Mrs Lovchev was even safer. Who the hell could accept a fat old widow from Yaroslavl as a subversive? In any case it would be impossible to implicate her without dragging in her daughter also.

Natasha was a pretty good bet, regarded objectively. Young upwardly mobile professionals were just the group that tended to throw up the dissenters, the dissidents, the moaners and groaners about human rights. Serebrianikov would probably be delighted to be given one to squeeze publicly to encourage the others.

Chislenko shuddered at the thought. It mustn’t happen. The KGB mustn’t be allowed even a sniff of Natasha. If there had to be a culprit, he would do all he could to make it that poor bastard, Josif Muntjan.

Meanwhile, he had to accomplish task one and scotch the ghost. It was of course absurd that the State should need to disprove physically what it denied metaphysically, but there was no doubt that the best way of convincing that great mélange of logic and superstition which was the Russian mind that there’d been no ghost in the Gorodok Building was to prove that there was nothing for there to be a ghost of!

The strength and the weakness of Soviet bureaucracy is a reluctance to throw away even the smallest scrap of paper. The whole life of the Gorodok Building was there to be read in the archives of the Department of Public Works.

There were two ways of gaining access. One was to write an official request which would be dispatched to the office of Mikhail Osjanin, the National Controller of Public Works. The request, of course, would never get anywhere near the Controller himself, who had far more important things to do (mainly, according to rumour, brown-nosing top Praesidium people, in pursuit of his own high political ambitions). But one of his minions would doubtless consider it, ask for clarification, consider again, and finally accede. It might, if Kozlov countersigned the request, go through in only a week.