“I expect they’ve signed yet another report on the unbreakable alliance between the USSR and Afghanistan,” replied Klim. He was sure they had all been brought here for nothing, for some story that presented no interest whatsoever to the world’s news agencies.
Still, the journalists allowed themselves to dream of larger-than-life heroes and dangerous villains.
“We really are a bunch of vultures,” said Seibert, looking around at his colleagues. “We feed off battles, plagues, and disasters. The more dead bodies, the happier we are.”
At last, Weinstein came into the room. “Are you ready? This is the front page of tomorrow’s Pravda.” He began handing out mimeographed sheets to the journalists. “Familiarize yourselves with the facts and wire the story to your agencies as quickly as you can. All the censors are in situ, so you can start right away.”
Klim scanned the text quickly. It was a report from the prosecutor of the Supreme Court about the discovery of a large clandestine counter-revolutionary organization in the Shakhty region in the south-east of Russia. The counter-revolutionaries, most of them engineers and technical specialists, had deliberately caused fires and explosions in mines. They had embezzled money allocated for construction, driven up costs, and spoiled production. Their objective was to reduce the USSR’s defense capabilities in the event of a military attack. The coordinators of the plot were White émigrés from Russia who had close ties with German industrialists and Polish intelligence.
The journalists were dumbstruck. They had joked for years over the Bolsheviks’ fears of some foreign power invading the Soviet Union. A poverty-stricken rural economy with almost no transport to speak of and no easily navigable waterways—what a prize! But if there really had been a plot, did that mean that the journalists had missed a trick?
Klim looked at the figures again. Of course, it was possible to fabricate some sensational crime and make a worldwide scandal out of it—it was just the sort of thing that could be expected from the Soviet secret police. But how could you fake the collapse of coal mining in an entire region?
The journalists all began to ask questions at once.
“How many people have been arrested?”
“A few hundred,” said Weinstein. “The case is seen as one of national importance, and the most dangerous of the saboteurs will go on trial in Moscow.”
Seibert was more agitated than anyone else. “Which German firms are suspected of financing the plot?”
“That’s a state secret for now,” Weinstein said. “There will be an open session of the panel of the Supreme Court, and we’ll find out the facts then.”
Seibert, stunned, turned to Klim. “It looks as if there’ll be no shortage of dead meat.”
The room filled up with the clatter of typewriters and the ringing of carriage bells.
Weinstein walked up to Klim and bent down to speak into his ear.
“This is your chance to improve your record,” he said. “Just make sure you get everything down honestly and objectively.”
Klim nodded without looking at him. The world seemed to have been turned upside down. A few minutes ago, everything had seemed clear: the Bolsheviks were ham-fisted cynics who blamed all their own ills on nonexistent foreign enemies. They used propaganda, lies, and the abuse of power as weapons and fed on ignorance and superstition of the majority of their countrymen. But now, everything seemed more complicated and more terrible. There was no rational explanation for what had happened in the Shakhty region. Why had the conspirators acted as they had? What was their objective?
Klim was the first to finish writing his dispatch. He rushed off to the censors’ office.
Kogan, a censor notorious for his tireless harassment of journalists, beckoned Klim over and asked for the dispatch.
“Now let’s see. What have we got here?” Kogan asked. “‘Unconfirmed information about foreign links’…. Let me tell you that all our information is confirmed—backed up by evidence.”
Rather than erasing the offending words, Kogan cut them out neatly with nail scissors, which took some time.
Seibert came rushing up to the next table, but he too did not get permission straight away.
“This has to be rewritten,” ordered his censor. “The tone is completely unacceptable.”
Kogan handed Klim his stamped dispatch, which now resembled a paper doily, and Klim rushed outside.
As luck would have it, there were no cabs to be seen, but a truck bearing the slogan “Live Poultry” was just coming around the corner.
Klim flagged down the truck. “Take me to the central telegraph office on Tverskaya Street, and I’ll give you three rubles.”
The driver opened the door of his cabin. “Jump in!”
They set off at top speed to the deafening sound of clattering cages and clucking chickens. A few minutes later, Klim, now covered in white feathers, had arrived at his destination.
Luckily, there was nobody at the window for Overseas Telegrams. But the next moment, a long line of journalists all panting for breath had formed there, Seibert right behind Klim.
“I should be the first in the queue!” Seibert grumbled. “But my car wouldn’t start.”
“Put your dispatches here, comrade foreigners,” ordered the telegraph operator. “We’ll send them right away.”
She gathered together the stamped forms and picked up the one at the top of the pile.
“That’s not fair!” the line exploded in indignant protests. “It’s a form of the last one who came!”
To Klim’s relief, the telegraph operator turned over the pile and took up his own form, which was now on top.
“Why do you have three addresses written here?” she asked in a stern voice.
Klim moved closer to the window. “The text has to be sent to London, New York, and Tokyo.”
“That’s not allowed.” She handed him back his form. “You’ll have to write it out three times.”
“Didn’t you know the rules had changed?” asked Seibert with feigned sympathy. “I was wondering how you managed to get here before me?”
The telegraph operator picked up Seibert’s form.
“Listen,” Klim pleaded with her, “yesterday, my courier brought you a form signed by the censor, and I called you and dictated seven addresses it had to be sent to. And there was no problem!”
“For the telephone, the rules are still the same,” the telegraph operator cut him off. “Go back to the censor’s office and write out your forms out again.”
The journalists patted Klim’s shoulder compassionately. “That’s a shame, really.”
Klim headed toward a nearby payphone on the wall, put a coin into the slot, and asked to speak to the operator at the window for Overseas Telegrams. He watched the woman picking up the phone.
“Hello,” she said. “It’s you, is it? Very well. Dictate the addresses to me.”
“They’re written on the form in front of you.”
“Dictate them anyway. That’s the rule.”
The journalists laughed at Seibert who had turned green with envy. “Sometimes you have to lose, man!”
“Just you wait,” he said, enraged. “I’ll show the lot of you!”
Klim got home after seven. As he opened the door to the stair, he stopped short in amazement. Tata and Kitty were coming backward down the stairs, dragging a heap of objects wrapped in a tablecloth.
“Now, look here, young ladies—” Klim stopped them. “What on earth is going on?”
Kitty pushed up her cap, which had fallen over her eyes. “Tata and I are trying to put a stop to your bourgeois lifestyle!”
A crystal glass slipped out of the bundle, hit the stairs, and smashed to pieces.
“Private property degrades and corrupts!” lectured Tata. “You need to throw out all this useless junk, or soon, you’ll be completely degenerate.”