Despite the large class sizes, which would have been larger still had it not been for the war playing havoc with demographics, she’d originally set out with the objective of remembering every student’s name. Her intention had been to show that she cared about each student individually. Yet very quickly she’d noticed her ability to recall names struck a peculiar note of unease. It was as though there were some implied menace.
If I can remember your name I can denounce you.
These children had already grasped the value of anonymity and Raisa had realized they’d prefer it if she paid them as little individual attention as possible. After less than two months she’d stopped calling them by their names and reverted to pointing.
Yet, comparatively, she had little reason to complain. The school she taught in, Secondary School 7–a rectangular building raised on stubby concrete legs — happened to be one of the gems of the State education policy. Much photographed and publicized, it was opened by none other than Nikita Khrushchev, who’d made a speech in the new gymnasium, the floor of which had been waxed to such an extent that his bodyguards struggled not to slip. He’d claimed that education must be tailored to the country’s needs. And what the country needed were highly productive, healthy young scientists, engineers and Olympic gold-medal-winning athletes. The cathedral-sized gymnasium, adjacent to the main building, was wider and deeper then the school itself, equipped with an indoor running track, an array of mats, hoops, rope ladders and springboards, all of which were put to good use by an extracurricular timetable that included an hour of training every day for every student regardless of age or ability. The implication of both his speech and the design of the school itself had been always very clear to Raisa: the country didn’t need poets, philosophers and priests. It needed productivity that could be measured and quantified, success that could be timed with a stopwatch.
Raisa counted only one friend amongst her colleagues — Ivan Kuzmitch Zhukov, a language and literature teacher. She didn’t know his exact age, he wouldn’t say, but he was around about forty. Their friendship had occurred by chance. He’d casually lamented the size of the school library — a cupboardlike room in the basement next to the boiler stocked with pamphlets, back issues of Pravda, approved texts and not a single foreign author. Hearing him, Raisa had whispered that he should be more careful. That whisper had been the beginning of an unlikely friendship which, from her point of view, might have been strategically unwise considering Ivan’s tendency to speak his mind. He was in many people’s eyes already a marked man. Other teachers were convinced that he hoarded forbidden texts under his floorboards or, far worse, he was writing a book of his own and smuggling the no doubt subversive pages out to the West. It was true that he’d loaned her an illegal translation of For Whom the Bell Tolls, which she’d been forced to read in parks over the summer and which she’d never dared take back to her apartment. Raisa could afford the association only because her own loyalty had never been too closely scrutinized. She was, after all, the wife of a State Security officer, a fact known by almost everyone, including some of the students. Logically, Ivan should have kept his distance. No doubt he reassured himself with the deduction that if Raisa had wanted to denounce him she would have done so already, considering how many imprudent things she’d heard him say and how easy it would for her to whisper his name across the pillow into the ear of her husband. So it came to be that the only person she trusted amongst the staff was the man most mistrusted and the only person he trusted was the woman he should trust least of all. He was married, with three children. All the same she suspected he was in love with her. It was not something she dwelt on and she hoped for both their sakes that it was not something he dwelt on either.
Outside the main entrance to the school, across the road, in the foyer of a low-rise apartment block, stood Leo. He’d changed out of his uniform and was wearing civilian clothing, clothing he’d borrowed from work. In the Lubyanka there were cupboards full of odds and ends: coats, jackets, trousers — all of various sizes and differing in quality, kept for exactly this purpose. Leo hadn’t thought about where these clothes had come from until he’d found a spot of blood on the cuff of a cotton shirt. They were the clothes of those executed in the building on Varsonofyevsky Lane. They’d been washed, of course, but some stains were stubborn. Dressed in an ankle-length grey woollen coat and a thick fur hat pulled down over his forehead, Leo was convinced his wife wouldn’t recognize him if by chance she glanced in his direction. He stamped his feet to keep warm, checking his watch, a stainless-steel Poljot Aviator — a birthday present from his wife. There wasn’t long until her classes were finished for the day. He glanced at the light above him. Using an abandoned mop he reached up and smashed the bulb, plunging the foyer into shadow.
This wasn’t the first time his wife had been followed. Three years ago Leo had arranged surveillance for reasons that had nothing to do with whether or not she was a security risk. They’d been married less than a year. She’d become increasingly distant. They were living together yet living apart, working long hours, glimpsing each other briefly in the morning and evening with as little interaction as two fishing boats which set sail each day from the same port. He didn’t believe that he’d changed as a husband and so couldn’t understand why she’d changed as a wife. Whenever he broached the subject she’d claimed she felt unwell yet she refused to see a doctor and anyway who was unwell month after month after month? The only explanation he could come up with was that she was in love with another man.
Duly suspicious he’d dispatched a newly recruited, promising young agent to follow his wife. This agent had done so every day for a week. Leo had justified this course of action because although unpleasant it was motivated by love. However, it had been a risk, not merely in the sense that Raisa might find out. If his colleagues had found out they might have interpreted this matter differently. If Leo couldn’t trust his wife sexually how could they trust her politically? Unfaithful or not, subversive or not, it would be better for everyone if she was sent to the Gulags. Just to be sure. But Raisa hadn’t been having an affair and no one ever found out about the surveillance. Relieved, he had accepted that he simply needed to be patient, attentive and help her with whatever difficulty she was going through. Over the months their relationship had gradually improved. Leo had transferred the young agent to a post in Leningrad, a move which he’d packaged as a promotion.
This mission, however, was something entirely different. The order to investigate had come from above. This was official State business; a matter of national security. At stake was not their marriage but their lives. There was no doubt in Leo’s mind that Raisa’s name had been inserted into Anatoly Brodsky’s confession by Vasili. The fact that another agent corroborated the details of the confession meant nothing: either it was a conspiracy, a bare-faced lie, or Vasili had planted the name in Brodsky’s head at some point during his interrogation, an easy enough thing to do. Leo blamed himself. Taking time off work had given Vasili an opportunity which he’d exploited with perfect ruthlessness. Leo was trapped. He couldn’t claim the confession itself was a lie — it was an official document as valid and true as every other confession. The only course of action had been to register his profound disbelief, suggesting that the traitor Brodsky was trying to incriminate Raisa as an act of revenge. Upon hearing this explanation Kuzmin had asked how the traitor knew that he was married. Desperate, Leo had been forced to lie, claiming that he’d mentioned his wife’s name in the course of their conversations. Leo was not a skilful liar. By defending his wife he was incriminating himself. To stand up for someone was to stitch your fate into the lining of theirs. Kuzmin had concluded that such a potential breach of security would have to be thoroughly investigated. Either Leo could do it himself or allow another operative to take over. Hearing this ultimatum, he’d accepted the case on the basis that he was simply trying to clear his wife’s name. In much the same way that three years ago he’d put to bed his doubts about her faithfulness, now he had to put to bed doubts about her faithfulness to the State.