A door slammed above. The weighty smell of yesterday’s potatoes swept down the hallway. This had once been a fashionable part of the city. Now, for so many of its tenants, the bitter years since Gorbachev’s glasnost had blown away the old certainties. The familiar communal routine of bygone years was a fond memory for the older generation, but complete bullshit to the young. Spray-paint and dog excrement smeared landings. Ekaterina led him through flickering lights, electric wiring hanging loose like cat entrails. The sparks tangoing on the ceiling were reflected in the putrid pools at their feet as they moved like a modern-day Theseus and Ariadne ever deeper into the Minotaur’s lair.
Eventually, halting in front of a dented door, she knocked hard twice. Then waited, rapping twice again, in some pre-arranged code. A moment later, Tom heard the grating grind of bolts being thrown and the rattle of a chain. Backlit by a naked bulb, a small, thin man came stooping over the doorstep. She hugged him tightly, speaking in familiar Russian. Then, gesturing to Tom, they were formally introduced. ‘Herman’, he said, handshakes exchanged before the Englishman stepped over the threshold.
Inquisitorial eyes set in rheumy crinkles scanned the Professor surreptitiously. Herman’s protective instincts caused him to check out the man his grand-daughter had brought to him.
‘You were caught in the troubles?’ he asked.
‘Only a little’, she said soothingly. ‘We got off Nevsky in time.’ Herman pointed towards the television with an arthritic finger.
‘Rossia One coverage has been interesting.’
• International news media report that the Russian Army is mounting a coup;
• A spokesman for the Utro Rossii movement is quoted as saying, ‘We are working with the armed forces in order to stabilise the situation after President Babel’s death’;
• Konstantin Poltoranin, former spokesman for the Federal Migratory Service, dismissed for stating ‘the survival of the White race is at stake’, is reinstated and his views become federal policy;
• Members of the 45th Special Reconnaissance Regiment storm Building 14 in Moscow’s Kremlin, where the new President, Viktor Akulov, was holding an emergency meeting to discuss the crisis with high-profile representatives from Brussels, New York, and Tel Aviv;
• Later, the attendees at the meeting are shown being frog-marched out into Ivanovskaya Square, where Tos-1A MRL missile launchers are seen aiming at the ionic columned neo-classical façade.
‘I see events are moving in our favour’, Tom said smugly.
‘Don’t be too sure’, Herman advised. ‘I saw how the last coup d’etat under Aleksandr Rutskoy ended after Yeltsin awarded himself Extraordinary Executive Powers. Tanks from the Taman Division shelled Moscow’s White House, the mayoral office closed, and the Ostankino TV centre was stormed. Tens of thousands of Russians took to the streets of Moscow, including members of the National Salvation Front and militants of Russian National Unity. But when General Grachev went over to Yeltsin, it was all over for the short-lived Rutskoy-Khasbulatov regime and all those who tried to preserve the Supreme Soviet and the Constitution. The White House was assaulted by Vympel and Alpha units. Within hours, Yeltsin declared “the fascistic-Communist armed rebellion in Moscow shall be suppressed within the shortest period”. Afterwards, legislation was enacted by presidential decree, applying heavy sanctions against fascism, chauvinism, and racial hatred. The rise of Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party scared Yeltsin, though. Newspapers like Den, Sovietskaya Rosiya, and Pravda were banned.’
Inside Herman’s apartment, the rooms were cold. It seemed the heating was constantly failing. ‘It’s freezing, Pappa!’ Ekaterina admonished him, fussing around the place. He waved her concerns away with a ‘Ba, soon I’ll be dead anyway’, type of reply. Then, turning to Tom, she said, ‘It loses energy through bad windows.’ From what the newcomer could see, the flat comprised two bedrooms and a lounge with a good, high ceiling and a chair placed so as to give a view back over the road they had just crossed. Tom realised her grandfather had probably been watching them walk hand-in-hand from the underground station. The bathroom was small and the kitchen even smaller. A St Andrew’s cross hung on the wall. Heavy curtains had been selected not so much for their aesthetic quality as their capacity to insulate. Nineteenth-century furniture was crammed full of books by Schwartz-Bostunich and Nilus. There were texts of all descriptions: technical, political, and historical. Tom read the spines of novels like Bryusov’s Pale Horse, Rozanov’s Apocalypse of Our Time, Solovyov’s A Story of the Anti-Christ, and Andrei Bely’s Vision of the Coming Kingdom of the Beast. There was a chess set on a coffee table.
‘My ancestors are part German’, her grandfather said in halting English. Then, noticing where Tom’s eyes had settled, he continued in Russian, with Ekaterina translating. ‘You admire the game?’
‘I play a little’, Tom replied.
‘Kasparov is a genius, but he should have stayed out of politics.’
‘And Karpov?’
‘A KGB mechanist.’ In that moment they understood each other. There was mutual recognition of kindred spirits across continents and generations.
‘Chess is not everything, but it is nearly everything’, he speculated. ‘I can remember when I came here with my first wife, Sveta, in 1956. It was just after Khrushchev had denounced Comrade Stalin at the Twentieth Party Congress. “Comrades”, he said, “we must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all”.’ The old man’s eyes meandered for a moment. ‘We never achieved that!’
‘Putin followed in that tradition.’
The old man’s eyes flared. ‘Different tradition’, he wheezed. ‘It is true we have always had strong autocrats, but this did not start with the Bolsheviks. First there was five centuries of Tsarist absolutism, beginning from the time we drove the Mongol hordes from our land. Then there were people like Metropolitan Macarius and Iury Krizhanich, author of Politika, who believed in enlightened absolutism. Krizhanich died fighting with the Polish army defending Vienna from the Turks. Patriarch Nikon, Khomiakov, Feofan Prokopovich, and Tatishchev were also conservative Orthodox patriots of the pravoslavnyi variety. The Church was moving back then towards a national self-consciousness, nationalnoe samosoznanie. Even Pushkin himself regarded “inequality as a law of nature”.’ Herman draped an arm around Ekaterina to steady himself. ‘Then there was Shcherbatov, Speransky, and Karamzin. They were followed by Chaadaev, Gogol, and the Slavophile school.’
‘Very many thinkers!’
‘And many more, too! After 1855 there were Katkov, Samarin, Aksakov, Leontiev and Witte. Later, Kavelin, Chicherin, Gradovsky, Soloviev, Nesterov, Sergei Bulgakov, the Szemstvo movement, Struve, Shipov, and of course Stolypin, assassinated by Dimitri Bogrov at the Kiev Opera before he could save the Imperial dynasty.’
‘And Bogrov’s real name was Mordekhai Gershkovich, a Jewish provocateur.’
‘Yes!’
‘But anyway, I’m sure you would agree with me that the Paschal Edict was the beginning of the end. It killed the notion of the apostolic role of the Tsar. That perception was only partially corrected by the symbolic canonisation of the patriotic Patriarch Germogen in 1913.’