Elvira Baryakina - The Prince of the Soviets

Galina looked stricken. “Is that really what you think of me?”

“Well, isn’t every word of it true?”

Galina’s lips trembled. “It’s easy enough to have scruples when you have plenty of everything and can be your own master. But my nerves are at their breaking point!”

“Why do you think that is? Tata’s your only child, yet you spend days over here at my house. She doesn’t have any idea how to get your attention.”

Galina looked at Klim in horror. “But she… but I…”

Klim realized he had gone too far. What was the point in reminding Galina that she was a terrible mother? She knew already after all. And now Tata would be punished for her silly Christmas “gift.”

Good god, thought Klim, and that woman still holds out hope that something will happen between us!

As he left the kitchen, his gaze fell on a parcel beside the door. It contained books that Klim had ordered for Elkin from a Swedish catalogue. It was much easier for foreigners to order things from abroad.

Klim did not want to go back into the living room. He knew that Galina would start apologizing and vowing never to lay a finger on Tata again.

He took the box of books and set off downstairs.

Elkin had once been a garage owner, but after the West had imposed a trade boycott on Soviet Russia, it was no longer possible to get spare parts. Forced to change profession, he had become a bookseller.

His bookstore, Moscow Savannah, had become popular with readers for its wonderful selection of prerevolutionary books. Visitors would rummage through dusty tomes, discussing the new finds unearthed in abandoned warehouses. Subversive conversations could be heard in the store about how the only worthwhile books were printed in the prerevolutionary script.

Elkin’s shop, like Klim’s apartment, was lavishly adorned with giraffes. Herds of painted giraffes paraded around the walls, and small wooden and bronze figurines stood on top of the bookcases. There was even a miniature giraffe with a parasol perched on the cashier’s desk.

Until recently, business had been lively at the Moscow Savannah, but in the summer of 1927, the authorities had raised the taxes on private trade so that it was no longer profitable to run a store. Elkin was afraid he would have to close it.

Klim found him in a small room piled high with reference books, sketches, and all sorts of equipment. Elkin was listening to the radio with a pair of improvised headphones.

“It’s a devilish business!” he exclaimed, removing his headphones when he caught sight of Klim. “Have you listened to the Comintern Radio lately? They’re deliberately trying to give the whole country the jitters, scaring us with talk of saboteurs who want to sell the population into slavery to imperialists.”

“Don’t let it upset you,” Klim said. “Intelligent people know that it’s all propaganda.”

“But that’s the point!” Elkin exclaimed. “These good-for-nothings are turning the rabble against educated people. That’s the Bolsheviks’ state policy—to declare the workers the ‘vanguard’ and the ‘hegemony’ and make them believe their superior to all the ‘bourgeois specialists.’ Just read the papers! I tell you, it’s civil war all over again—only this time not between the Reds and the Whites but between the schooled and the unschooled.”

Elkin grabbed a magazine from the table and thrust it toward Klim. “Take a look at this! ‘Machine Operator Exposes the Lies of a Technical Specialist.’ Or here’s another one: ‘The Dirty Tricks of a State Fisheries Engineer.’ They’re throwing mud at anyone with higher education now. After all, we all studied under the Tsarist regime, so now we are ‘alien class elements.’ These social Darwinists have decided that the son of an alcoholic and uneducated peasant is made of better stuff than the son of a family of scholars.”

With his hair standing up on end, Elkin resembled a large, disheveled bird.

“Do you have a parcel for me?” he said, finally noticing the box in Klim’s arms. “Well, that’s one bright spot in the gloom.”

He began to dig around in the box, and soon all his woes were forgotten. “Well, just look at this!” he exclaimed delightedly as he leafed through a large textbook on the corrosion of metals. “This is excellent stuff!”

“Do you know Swedish?” asked Klim in surprise.

“It’s not difficult. If you know three or four European languages, you can get the hang of the rest, especially when it comes to scientific material.”

Elkin told Klim that these books would be sent to the Gosizdat, the state publishing house. They would be translated and printed there unofficially on paper earmarked for Party literature.

“The publishers are sent orders from those at the top to print a certain number of trade union anthologies or textbooks on ‘Scientific Marxism.’ But of course, there’s no demand for that stuff. On the other hand, the authorities want publishers to make a profit, so the solution is to let them publish useful technical literature on the quiet. Officially, we’re doing one thing, but in reality, it’s a different picture.”

“Do the Swedes know their books are going to be translated into Russian?” asked Klim.

Elkin regarded him with a wry smile. “My dear fellow, have you no idea of where you are living? The country of the Soviets is a kingdom of deception. The Bolsheviks have deceived themselves with their theory, but they stubbornly keep trying to make it real because they don’t want to lose power. They can explain to the fools that ‘everything has to be this way,’ and meanwhile, they declare all intelligent people who doubt their propaganda as enemies and saboteurs. Everything here is lies and fakery, and no matter what scruples you may have, you can’t get by here unless you lie and bend the rules. Have a look at me! If I didn’t cheat, my business would go up in smoke tomorrow.”

Just at that moment, they heard the piercing cry of a child from outside the building. “Daddy! Help!”

Klim rushed out into the corridor, flung open the door, and ran into the dark, snowy yard. There was nobody there, but he could hear bloodcurdling howls from the porter’s lodge where Snapper was locked up.

“Daddy!” squealed the voice again.

A shadow flitted past the woodshed—a small man in a long greatcoat was trying to drag off Kitty, who was struggling with all her might. Klim caught up with them and knocked Kitty’s kidnapper into the snow with a blow to the jaw before snatching up Kitty in his arms.

“Are you all right?” he asked her.

She was wearing nothing but her indoor dress—she was even without shoes.

Kapitolina ran up to them. “This man tried to steal our little girl!” she shrieked and began to kick the kidnapper, who was still spread-eagle in the snowdrift. The man’s Red Army cap had fallen off his close shaved head, and blood was pouring from his split lip.

“Why are you attacking me?” the man wailed in a high pitched voice like a woman. “I’m just looking for a foreigner who asked about the Chinese coat with the dragons.”

Klim’s heart skipped a beat. He handed Kitty to Kapitolina. “Take her home,” he said.

Klim took the kidnapper under the elbow and dragged him inside the house. The lobby was lit only by a dim bulb.

“What do you know about the Chinese coat?” he asked hotly. “Do you know the woman it belonged to? I’ll let you go if you tell me the truth.”

The man stared at Klim warily and sniffed. “They told me at the market that you’d give a reward for information about a Chinese coat. That was Nina’s coat!”

“And where is she now?”

“How the devil should I know? She was taken away by those bourgeois opposite the Korsh Theater.”

“What do you mean by ‘taken away’? Where?”

The man did not seem to have heard Klim’s question. “Your girl has a pretty dress,” he said. “I had one like that when I was little.”

He’s completely insane, thought Klim, looking into the man’s crazed eyes.

At that moment, Elkin ran out onto the landing, brandishing an ax. “Freeze! I’ll call the police!”

“I’ll kill you, you bastard!” roared the kidnapper, whipping a homemade blade out of his pocket and making a lunge at Klim, who leaped to one side.

The man ran headlong out into the street, and Klim and Elkin were unable to catch him.

Klim went back to his apartment, his heart hammering in his chest. Could it be that he had stumbled upon a clue to Nina’s whereabouts? All the foreigners in Moscow knew who lived in the house opposite the Korsh Theater. It was Oscar Reich, an American who earned millions from business concessions in Soviet Russia. Klim had met him several times at official banquets.

Kitty’s voice came from her room. “Daddy, where are you?”

“I’m coming,” he said.

What if I hadn’t heard Kitty cry out? thought Klim. That madman would have carried her off, taken her dress, and left her somewhere in the snow.

Galina, her eyes swollen with crying, came out of the living room and, catching sight of the bloodstains on Klim’s shirt, stared at him, horrified.

“Were you in a fight? Who was it?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “How could a stranger have just walked into our apartment?”

Galina gave a plaintive sob. “Kitty took a postcard with a picture of Comrade Stalin on it. She punched a hole through his forehead with a pencil to hang the picture on the tree, so I told her to go and sit outside in the corridor and think about what she had done. She was on her own out there—Kapitolina and I were laying the table. I think the door may have been open—you didn’t slam it shut. And that character must have walked in—”