A Simple Scale Page 6

  He’d expected some of the NKVD men, perhaps even a sleepily ill-tempered Maltsev in his overcoat and pyjamas. Instead, three Urkas enter the barrack, two armed with knives, the third a crowbar.

  He’s seen them before, these men. There aren’t many Urkas in this camp, so they stand out. Impossible not to notice them, strutting around as if they were camp bosses. Bare-chested as soon as the temperature creeps above freezing. The two carrying knives look like brothers; tall and muscular but with narrow, vulpine faces. The one with the crowbar is short and fat, his arms and chest covered in tattoos.

  They say nothing, the Urkas. They don’t shout or yell, they simply walk across the barrack to where the Pole – Sergey sees that it was Bajek – is cowering beneath his blanket; trying, and failing, to make it look as if he has been there the whole time.

  Charkov is out of his bed, a grey blanket over his shoulders. He shuffles across the room.

  “Listen, here,” he says. “What’s going on? What’s happening?”

  The short, fat Urka with the crowbar turns and punches Charkov in the face, and Charkov hits the ground and doesn’t move.

  The taller pair drag Bajek from his bed and begin beating him, and Bajek takes the beating silently, with not so much as a whimper. Perhaps this is it. Perhaps this is all the punishment he’ll get tonight. The Urkas know he tried to escape, but it’s pointless going to town on him when a simple beating would suffice. Isn’t it?

  No such luck. When the boy is broken and bleeding they drag him out from the barrack; the short, fat Urka kicking Charkov in the stomach as they leave. Charkov grunts and retches but says nothing. Then it’s lights out again.

  It’s an age before Sergey gets back to sleep. Not the first time he’s seen someone dragged away, knowing he wouldn’t see them again. This is how the world is now.

  The reveille sounds. A quick wash with cold water. Dress and walk over to the canteen. Charkov isn’t there. He was gone from his bed when everyone woke up and no-one has seen him since. No-one mentions the two Poles. The belongings they left behind – a pack of Belomor cigarettes and a box of tea – have already been divided between the two others sharing their bunk.

  Sergey meets his bandmates at the stockroom, as they collect their instruments. The old Jew from Minsk asks if it was his barrack the two Polish lads escaped from. They file out to the gates. The rest of his barrack are marching out with a new brigadier. Still no sign of Charkov.

  It’s a moment before he notices the bodies either side of the gates, propped up against the fence and facing outwards, like stone lions guarding a tomb. Lubinski’s skull has been bashed in. Bajek is naked and covered in too much black, congealed blood for them to know exactly how he died.

  Sergey and the band play within yards of their corpses. O Field, My Field and Farewell of Slavianka. The workers file out past them, stopping only occasionally to glance down at the bodies beside the gates.

  “Stop gawping!” a brigadier barks. “Nothing to see but a couple of dead Polaks.”

  Maltsev appears. He watches the brigades march out for a moment, absently smoking a cigarette, before addressing Sergey.

  “I don’t like this tune so much,” he says. “Play the other one. The one you wrote.”

  The rest of the band look to Sergey and not Maltsev for their cue. After taking in a deep breath Sergey nods, and they begin playing the Pechorin March.

  Hearing it this morning is like the experience of seeing, but not quite recognising, his reflection in a mirror. That momentary disconnect. That can’t be me. This can’t be it. He hears a melody, played as clumsily as ever, hears the same notes he remembers writing, but something has changed. Not its melody, but its intent. Gone are the knowing irony, the mock heroics. All that remains is bombast, and an ugly, empty void between the notes.

  Later that afternoon, once the barrack chores are complete, he goes to Maltsev’s office. The Camp Boss’s secretary greets him with his customary peevishness.

  “He’s a busy man,” he says. “And I’m sure you have work to do.”

  Sergey tells him that his work is done, and that he would very much like to speak with Maltsev.

  The secretary sighs, drumming his pencil on the pages of an open ledger.

  “He won’t be pleased.”

  A minute later, and with simmering petulance, he shows Sergey through to Maltsev’s office. Not his first time here, but he often forgets how out-of-place it feels; the walls decorated with framed photographs and watercolour paintings, the floor between the door and the desk covered almost entirely by an oriental rug. The shelves are crammed with books; encyclopaedias, a complete set of Tolstoy, a number of volumes about the German War.

  Maltsev is smoking a cigarette, and as Sergey takes a seat he nudges the open pack of Prima across the desk.

  “Please,” he says. “Help yourself. Now, 237. How can I help you?”

  Sergey bites his lower lip.

  “I want to work in the mines, comrade,” he says. “Starting tomorrow. When the others from my barrack go to the mines, I want to go with them.”

  Maltsev laughs until he starts coughing. “Are you mad?”

  Sergey shakes his head.

  “You know,” says Maltsev, “I have men cutting off their own fingers and toes so they won’t have to work in the mines, and you’re asking to go there? When every day the toughest thing you do is pick up a violin?”

  “I know,” says Sergey. “But I don’t want to do it anymore. I don’t want to play music.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because music is all I have, and playing it out here is killing it for me.”

  A mistake. One must never let them know what you think or how you feel, about anything.

  Maltsev takes a long and final drag on his cigarette and stubs it out in the ashtray with a forceful twist.

  “Is that so?” he says. “You say this as if, I don’t know, as if you were still working at the Kirov. As if you had much of a choice.”

  “I know. But I think I’d be better placed in the mines.”

  “Listen, 237. I have thousands of men here, in this camp, at my disposal, and it’s up to me and the troika to decide where you can be made useful. I want you playing violin on those gates, same time tomorrow.”

  “I would rather go down the mines.”

  Leaning back in his chair, Maltsev takes another cigarette from the pack and lights it.

  “You know,” he says, “I’m not an unreasonable man. Really, I’m not. Is this because of the Polish boys?”

  Sergey says nothing.

  “They were from your barrack, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I understand. I’m not inhuman. It must have been upsetting, seeing them there this morning. But you understand why they had to be made an example of, yes? If we didn’t set an example there would be chaos. Now, chaos is all well and good in the city, with all the hustle and bustle that entails, but here? Out here, chaos endangers lives, and I can’t let that happen. Please. Do one thing for me. Go back to your barrack and think long and hard about this. I won’t tell your new brigadier about the conversation we’ve had. Is that fair?”

  He hadn’t expected Maltsev to be quite so reasonable. Not much ground gained, but little point in pleading his case, and so he leaves and returns to his barrack.

  It’s maybe twenty minutes before the Urkas arrive, the same three who took Bajek away last night. Their leader – the shorter one – tells the others to get out, and when they hesitate he says it again, but with greater force. The old men shuffle out of the barrack. The door closes behind them. A silence that seems to drain all colour from the room.

  “What is this?” Sergey asks. He hates the Urkas, not just these three men, but all of them, and has done since the day he arrived. He hates their sadism and their swagger, but more than that he hates their warped code of conduct, the strict set of rules they live by, and will happily kill for. He’s known them to cut a man’s throat over a game of cards befo
re now; the authorities more than happy to ignore it, to simply strike the man’s name from the roster. One less mouth to feed. In the Urkas, there’s something more terrifying than simple brute force. They are the distilled essence of man’s worst traits, given free rein. They rarely speak at times like this. They never have to.

  Two of them – the shorter one and one of the taller pair – rush across the room. Sergey swings at one of them, but they’ve got him by the arms. He tries to wriggle free, but they are so much stronger than he ever was. The third man hits him in the face. Sergey tastes blood. He hits Sergey again, this time in the stomach, and when he’s limp in their arms the Urkas carry Sergey to a table and pin him, face down, on its surface.

  Someone lowers Sergey’s trousers and his underwear and tears off his shirt. The metal buttons scatter across the floor. One of the men, Sergey can’t tell which, grabs him by the hair and slams his head against the table. Something hard is pressed against the cleft between his buttocks.

  The pain of being violated is immediate. Like something hot tearing at his insides. He feels skin against his skin, a man’s knees against his thighs. Almost a relief. If they had used a crowbar or a broom handle to do this, he’d be as good as dead. Not that this is much more dignified. One of them spits, and he feels something warm and wet land between his shoulder blades. One of them punches him in the back of the head and the room kaleidoscopes around him. He hopes no-one is outside, watching. He hopes all memory of this goes away. He hopes that no-one will ever speak of it.

  The Urkas take turns, each one cheered on by his friends, and when they’re finished they throw him to the ground, delivering a final volley of kicks before leaving the barrack.

  The old timers file back in, but keep their distance. Sergey cleans himself up, washing the blood off his face and out of his mouth, washing the phlegm from his shoulders and the semen from his backside and from between his legs. When the brigade returns, no-one says anything to him, but it’s obvious they all know. He’s different now.

  The following morning Sergey and the camp band are back at the gates. Wolves must have come here in the night, because the bodies of both Lubinski and Bajek have had large, ragged chunks taken out of them. In the mild warmth of the morning they’re beginning to rot, and the stench of rancid meat hangs heavily in the air.

  The band plays We Are the Red Cavalry and There Marched the Soldiers and Farewell of Slavianka and Sergey hears Maltsev before he can see him.

  “Good morning, men.”

  The band carries on playing, and Maltsev smiles at each of them in turn, ending with Sergey.

  “Say, 237,” he says. “Why don’t you play the one I like? The one you wrote. I’d like to hear that now, I think. It is so very stirring.”

  Chapter 6:

  LOS ANGELES, JUNE 1950

  An unfamiliar beach. The tide going out, each step you take blanching the damp sand around your feet. The ocean heaves back, towards the setting sun, leaving pebbles and ribbons of seaweed in its wake. The smell of smoke; a bonfire. The flames and the smell intensify, black clouds drifting towards you across the sand.

  You’re awake and something is burning. You slip into pyjama pants and hurry to the stairs. No signs of smoke, but you can still smell it. An electrical fault. A spark. A curtain on fire. A room. This house. You lose your footing, sliding down three steps before steadying yourself. No signs of fire in the hallway, the lounge, the kitchen. You step out onto the terrace and the smell of smoke gets stronger still. A continuous black cloud rolling across your yard and out over the mountain. In Mary’s garden, a bonfire. Stacks of papers and photographs burning, the letters blackening and vanishing in seconds, the photographs blistering and twisting into knots.

  “Mary?”

  She comes out in a nightgown, barefooted and with her hair in curlers. She’s carrying an armful of papers and photographs and she tips them into the flames before noticing you.

  “Oh, hi, Sol,” she says, as if you’d caught her in the act of mowing her lawn. “Beautiful morning, ain’t it?”

  A telephone rings and she runs back indoors, her pink satin nightgown billowing behind her. She answers the phone. There’s a moment’s pause before she starts talking to whoever’s on the other end of the line.

  “They’re following me,” she says. “I am fucking calm. And I’m not making this up. Don’t you tell me not to panic, you son-of-a-bitch. You’re not the one with agents outside his goddamn house.”

  She appears at the window, the phone’s receiver cradled between her shoulder and cheek. She scowls at you and draws the curtain shut.

  **

  “You’re late,” says Angela.

  “What time is it?”

  “Half nine.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  Like you’d stood her up on a date.

  You sit behind your desk and begin arranging things for the day ahead. You’ve got your staff paper, all you need now is a pencil. Where the hell is that pencil?

  “Weirdest thing,” you tell her. “I think my neighbour, you know, the actress I was telling you about? I think she’s gone crazy.”

  The pencil is precisely where you left it on Friday, in the old olive tin you use as a pen caddy.

  “How so?”

  “I’m sorry…?”

  “I said how is she crazy?”

  “Oh. Right. She was in her garden, burning stuff. Letters and photographs. Talking to someone on the phone. Sounded crazy. Paranoid. Something about being followed.”

  “Maybe someone’s following her.”

  “She’s an actress. Why would anyone follow her?”

  Angela tilts her head to one side: Don’t you get it? The penny drops.

  “Mary? No way.”

  “All that happened this morning?”

  “The smell of burning woke me up. Maybe 7am?”

  “I take it you haven’t seen the latest Counterattack.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Sol. Do you pay any attention to what’s going on in the world?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “It’s a right-wing rag. Real John Birch stuff.”

  “Funnier than Charley Jones?”

  “Hilarious. Latest issue has a list of ‘suspected communists’ working in the entertainment industry.”

  “This again?”

  “What do you mean, ‘again’?” says Angela. “It never went away.”

  **

  You can’t recall ever seeing him before. A small guy, early forties. Grey-black hair slicked sideways, heavy eyebrows and a neatly groomed moustached. Taupe suit, single breasted. Straight point collared shirt. Black tie.

  He approaches you in the shaded gully of Avenue L, near the corner of Stage 7, and stands in your way so that you have no choice but to stop walking.

  “Mr Conrad?” he says with a broad smile.

  “Yes?”

  “Roy Carmichael.” You shake hands with him. “I’m head of security. You done for the day?”

  “I am.”

  “Then maybe I could trouble you for a little of your time?”

  “Sure.”

  “Where you parked?”

  “Near Melrose Gate.”

  “Good. We’ll walk and talk.”

  What could security want with you? You’ve never so much as stolen paperclips from this place, let alone anything valuable. Unless. But how could they know about Mary? No, this is something else. They couldn’t know everything, could they? Nobody knows everything.

  Together you cross the lot, out from the sunless trenches between soundstages and into the bleaching light of a June afternoon. He walks at a brisk pace, and even though you’re a few inches taller than him you struggle to keep up.

  “You from New York?” he asks.

  “That’s right.”

  Carmichael prods his chest with his thumb.

  “Chicago, born and bred. I was wondering, Mr Conrad, if you’d seen this.”

 
; He reaches inside his jacket and produces a pamphlet. The cover features the drawing of a bright red hand clutching a microphone. Red Channels The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television

  “Heard of it,” you tell him. “Hadn’t seen it.”

  “But you know what it contains.”

  “A list of Reds.”

  “And you know who’s on that list?”

  “John Wayne?”

  Carmichael smiles again but doesn’t laugh.

  “That’s a good joke, Mr Conrad,” he says. “Ronald Bernard is on that list.”

  “Ron?” you say. “But that’s… listen… Ronald Bernard has been dead for over a year. And even when he was alive…”

  “I was aware of Mr Bernard’s passing,” says Carmichael. “You were friends with him, were you not?”

  You think you know where this is going.

  “I studied under him at Juilliard. But yes. I was also his friend.”

  “And were you aware of any political beliefs he may have held?”

  You’re out in the parking lot now, black cars lined up like shellfish clinging to a rock. You’re fumbling for your car keys long before you’ll need them.

  “Political beliefs?” you ask. “Not really, no. I know he didn’t vote for Dewey, if that’s what you mean. But other than that, I was not aware of his ‘political beliefs’. When we spoke to one another it was about music.”

  You’re at the Oldsmobile, the keys held tightly in your fist, the metal digging painfully into your skin.

  “This is my car,” you tell him. “Was there anything else I could help you with?”

  “Mr Conrad,” says Carmichael, still smiling. “With all due respect, if there is anything, and I mean anything you’re keeping from me, because you think it’ll protect Mr Bernard’s reputation, or your own, now is the time to tell me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, Mr Conrad. You do.”

  How much could he know? If he knew everything, he’d just tell you, wouldn’t he? He wouldn’t play games with you like this.

  “Ronald Bernard was not a communist,” you tell him. “And neither am I. If he’s on that list, it’s bullshit.”