A Present Past: Titan and Other Chronicles

PREFACE

I REMEMBER the final years of the Soviet empire.

Even though I was a child, I remember the phenomenon of mystical feelings, elemental and ubiquitous, as sudden as a volcanic eruption.

The sense of the approaching end of an era also elicits mysticism. However, the Soviet Union was an atheist state, built on the doctrine of materialism. Soviet ideology—at least on paper—called for a rational view of the world and the only ghost allowed was the specter of Communism that Marx and Engels had prophesied in the nineteenth century.

That made it all the more astonishing how quickly the other world appeared, the reverse side of Soviet consciousness; a dark storeroom filled with everything that had been tossed, hidden, crossed out of life and memory during the seventy years of communist rule.

A new mystical folklore arose before our eyes, seemingly out of the air of the epoch.

It spoke of evil places, anomalous zones where the laws of physics did not hold.

About strange creatures, poltergeists who lived in houses and apartments and persecuted residents they did not like, with knocks and noises and moving objects.

About children born with characteristic birthmarks on their bodies if their ancestors had been executed by firearms.

People’s minds sought images, sought a language to describe the tragedy, and they turned to mystical allusions to make the evil past real and at the same time managed to become estranged from it, turning it into the subject of another world and another reality.

Well, ghosts are not born by themselves. They are born of a silent conscience. Dual moral optics. They are as real as the ignored knowledge of crimes and the refusal to accept real responsibility.

They are the distorted voice of the dead turned into mystical images. The voice of unwanted witnesses.

Throughout its existence, the Soviet state destroyed people and destroyed any memory of the destruction.

However, the archives of state security still retained millions of files. Millions of invented accusations. Millions of false interrogations built on a single artistic scenario: from denial to confession of nonexistent guilt.

These cases, this metatext with its standardized subjects and genres, may in fact comprise the most important and terrible Russian work of the twentieth century. The evidence of evil which remains unread.

JUDGE STOMAKOV

Judge Stomakov arrived at the dacha on Friday night, right after a protracted session.

Traffic jams in the city, traffic jams getting on the road, traffic jams on the highway. A red haze of traffic lights. Horizontal drizzle that poured into the vehicle’s small ventilation window when you smoked. The road he traveled as a child, next to his father on the front seat, familiar with every turn, every foggy lowland. Now there were two lanes in each direction, sometimes even three, instead of traffic lights there were concrete loops of interchanges, instead of the woods— angular high-rise buildings and new neighborhoods. But it was his road, well-traveled, well-worn. How many thoughts had been contemplated at this speed, how many schemes and plots hatched. But now, when his most important plan, years in the making, was about to come to fruition, the road threw him an unpleasant curve: his car with its judicial plates and pass in the windscreen was stopped by a highway policeman.

The rookie didn’t understand. His partner scolded the kid, groveled apologetically, and wished him a good journey. But it left a bad taste. The judge was angry and thought how in a month or so he would have a service BMW with a flashing light and then no bastard would dare . . . He should write down the name and call his bosses tomorrow, thought Stomakov. How had he introduced himself? Muzin? Kuzin? Zuzin? The name wouldn’t come to him, as if the sergeant sensed the judge’s attempts and was fighting to get away with it. Stomakov never did remember it and so he was in a bad mood when he arrived.

It was early and chilly. He wanted to go to the banya for a steam on the hot maple benches. Stomakov thought for a few seconds and regretfully denied himself that. There would be guests tomorrow. Special guests. Andrei Porfiryevich did not like the banya to be damp from the day before.

Of course, he could do as he liked now. His candidacy had been approved. He had completed his part of the bargain today, ruling as required, refusing to consider the case on its merits. Yet Stomakov always hedged his bets and never hurried.

The trunk was filled with food and drink. He had learned the tastes of all four guests and remembered nuances; for instance, Andrei Porfiryevich liked only Spanish olives, green and stuffed with pimento. He knew that all four men, higher up the ladder, would not consider his attentiveness fawning or extreme. They valued him because he did not miss a thing.

Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Court, said Stomakov aloud, relishing the sound. Here at the dacha no one would witness his self-admiration. The decision was made. Tomorrow they would drink to his appointment, confirming it with clinking glasses, and celebrate it interdepartmentally. Matitsyn was from the Procurator General’s office, Voronov from the Federal Security Service, Golovko from the Military Collegium, and Lappo the first deputy of the Chairman of the Supreme Court, the heir, the successor. They had all been at law school together. Lappo was three years senior. They were friends who then went their separate ways. They met again three years ago, over the case that Stomakov concluded today.

Stomakov had taken note of the case long before it reached the Supreme Court, as it wended its way on appeal in the lower courts. He had his people on the ground in some regional and municipal courts who reported on promising trials. He read newspapers closely, watching and taking aim.

He had accumulated judicial influence this way, by knowing how to avoid unpromising cases and maneuvering to intercept those on which you could advance. The cases did not necessarily involve money, actually quite the contrary: You didn’t make money or accept bribes from either side. But if you did everything correctly, you would not be forgotten. Only such cases led to the very top.

Stomakov picked up on this case after reading an article in a federal newspaper. It merely concerned a regional court refusing exhumation and DNA analysis. Way out in the sticks, a local story. But he noticed who was asking for the exhumation. Who was killed and when. He understood the forces in play: security services, diplomats, the presidential administration. He guessed the case would certainly reach the Supreme Court, the plaintiffs would not cease. The judge’s candidacy would certainly be discussed with the FSB.

He weighed the case. He ran all the scenarios through his head. He realized: if the case came to him, given his previous achievements, it would propel him to the post of Deputy Chairman.

While the case was still floundering in lower courts, Stomakov started preparing. He talked to the right people to gauge which way the political winds were blowing. He greased some palms. Gave a few thoughts and suggestions. Told others that he would never want that case, it was too dangerous, a career breaker. Yet others were politely reminded of old debts. As a result, the case floated into his hands, dozens of volumes plopped onto his desk. The deputy chairmanship was guaranteed, both Voronov and Lappo hinted; it was essential to do everything neatly.

The neatness meant going to a lot of trouble. Over three years policies changed three times. Stomakov was forced to entirely reorient his judicial line three times.

First he leaned toward compromise, a partial admission of the responsibility of the Soviet Union, toward qualifying it as a murder by prior conspiracy and then referring to an expired statute of limitations. That is, to brush it off— but gently.

Then, after the anniversary speech of the foreign president, more discipline was required: a complete disclaimer, but still diplomatically expressed.

And the third directive, after the deployment of American missiles, was to respond asymmetrically, spit in their face, as Lappo said. And it was Stomakov who came up with how to observe at least a minimum semblance of legal procedure— and inflict the heaviest insult.

In three years Stomakov got used to the thousands of victims in his case. And all of them had been dead for years. Executed by the NKVD over three days in a suburban pine forest. Sometimes he even felt an unofficial, superfluous interest in them, in the dead strangers, foreign officers, stuck together in the ground, turned by death into one whole, a human layer; they had left behind archival traces: orders to relocate the camps, train schedules, execution lists . . .

Stomakov knew that a judge has to protect himself. Both from the accused and the victims. Not for the sake of justice and the triumph of law, no. That was too stupid. For his own sake.

The judicial realm was a narrow caste. A closed circle with its own concepts, history, folklore, and knowledge that did not go beyond the initiates and was not shared with others. Prosecutors, police, state security, the presidential administration all knew a lot and gave tacit orders to judges, agreed on sentences, and naively thought that they all were stewing in the same juices.

But it was the judges who meted out sentences! And judges had their own means of perception, a secret art that cannot be found in any book. It was the same for the correct verdict and the incorrect one. A judge wrote someone else’s fate. And a judge had to protect himself from any backlash. They didn’t teach that in law school. It didn’t even come with experience, but with wisdom.

Stomakov knew how to pass judgment without exerting any mental effort. To impose a sentence, seemingly without personal involvement. Rather than from him, the sentence came from the judge’s table, the volumes of legislation on the shelves, the black Kasli cast-iron statuette used as a paperweight—a soldier in a fur hat, overcoat over his shoulder, taking aim from his knee—the graphite pencil he used to correct his drafts, the huge court building itself, its chandeliers, stairs, corridors, the cloudy crystal ashtray, and, most important, the robe.

Other judges, young and foolish, changed robes almost every year, having new ones made of better fabric, took them home, hanging them in the closet with ordinary, amicable everyday garments—ignoramuses, what could you expect! Stomakov’s robe hung in a special closet in his office, separate from his street clothes. When he left for home, he locked the closet and quietly said, Good night, Your Honor.

Until this strange case, he never, ever allowed the victims to get inside his head. But these still managed to get through, even though he was on the alert. They pushed inside his skull like passengers into a metro car at rush hour.

He could have held off a few dozen. Maybe a hundred. But thousands . . . He was defeated by huge numbers. He was a fool not to have realized that quantity mattered even in posthumous cases—and how!

In a sense they did not exist, the officers of a foreign country imprisoned in 1939 during a brief, long-ago war and executed on the orders of the Leader. What did it matter how many: one or many thousands? They were gone, no more. No was a harsh word, final. But it turned out that they did exist: in Stomakov’s thoughts.

He had glanced at their camp files only once. He needed to clear up one point that had procedural significance. He looked into a dozen cases, read their personnel data. He was curious and studied their photographs, ordinary faces, some of them you would never think were Polish, foreigners.

He started having dreams about entering the courtroom to pronounce his sentence on their case, sitting down in his familiar armchair, looking up at the public, journalists, diplomats, relatives, decoy agents, and seeing the dead men in their rotting uniforms and crumpled caps sitting on the chairs. In silence. Waiting for the judge to speak.

It did not scare him. He didn’t waver. He didn’t go to see a doctor: they would report to Lappo or Voronov, he would be taken off the case and forced to retire for medical reasons. He learned to sleep without dreams by taking pills. He turned in the final refusal to hear the case.

The descendants of the executed officers wanted the dead to be officially rehabilitated.

There were different ways to refuse. And he, having been instructed by Lappo to spit, made the dead men pay for his troubled dreams. He found fault with procedural details, the status of the citizens of a prewar state that no longer existed, and the lack of authority of foreign representatives. And he made a deliberately convoluted, confusing decision, from which, in the end, it followed that only the victims themselves could apply for rehabilitation.

And how the dead men will come after you, Lappo joked, laughing, when Stomakov read him the draft before the session. Aren’t you afraid?

They won’t be able to write a statement, said Stomakov admonishingly. They are dead.

Lappo chuckled again and wrote his approval on the draft.

The faces of the family members when the embassy interpreters explained the court decision! Knocked the breath out of them! They couldn’t squeal or groan. They reached into pockets and purses for pills, covered their faces with their hands.

So, their sobs were Stomakov’s revenge for the stupid dreams.

Only one gray-haired woman, a mummy who sat in a wheelchair throughout the hearing, looking around with the wary grace of a bird, jumped up, shook her dry fists, and shouted in their language.

Stomakov allowed her to rant. He couldn’t call in the guards; that would have been worse. He looked at her, not hiding his gaze, showing that he was not afraid, that he could distinguish the strictness of the law and the vulnerability of feelings and was capable of respecting feelings. He thought he recognized her. Time, which deadened flesh, projected onto her face the features of her father, a cavalry officer who was the only prisoner in that camp to attack the executioners.

She has to be a hundred, thought Stomakov. He had a subconscious fear of the long-lived. Why had she lived so long? To do what?

Stomakov listened more closely. He felt a vibrating, multivoiced female force, as if all the women that this old one had been were yelling at him.

Stomakov understood.

The old woman, the lousy bitch, had known she would come to the courtroom to die. She thought she would die happy, after hearing that the rehabilitation would come. Now she was turning the power of her death into a curse.

Cold sweat poured down his back under the robe. Stomakov took detached note that he was sweating profusely during this trial. His robe began to come apart, to decay, as if it had been infected by the rotting clothes of the executed, by their underpants and shirts. And the old woman sat and leaned back, slid out of her wheelchair, and let out a final howl that sounded like a wounded animal.

Stomakov told his aide to call an ambulance. With somber dignity he asked the journalists and visitors to leave the scene of an unexpected tragedy. He promised that the court would make a special announcement the following week. The photographers had time for only a few shots.

He did what was necessary. With anyone else, things would have gotten out of hand, there would have been a huge scandal, press and TV, gossip, a real fest. But he outmaneuvered them: The decoy agents acted in time, surrounding and blocking access to the dead woman. There was a reason for their training, the instructions they had been given for emergencies, their rehearsals.

Stomakov saw Voronov, dressed in civvies, nodding at him approvingly from a far corner, as if to say: good job. Yet Stomakov suddenly felt terrible, as if the old woman had not just ruined the session but had pressed a secret spot on his body, one of the unremarkable points where eastern practitioners stuck their needles. Lappo had one, a master, a miracle worker, and Lappo promised to give him the number after his appointment, the clients were special, elite. She pressed the spot and started the countdown. The countdown to his death.

Reluctantly, Stomakov carried the groceries into the house and stuffed them into the fridge. He was hungry. But he didn’t want to chew, swallow, wield knife and fork, have taste in his mouth. He stood by the open door, looking desultorily at the food, the logs of sausages, the multifaceted cheeses, illuminated by the butter yellow cave light of the refrigerator bulb.

It was a reflection of Stomakov’s adolescence, when his father had finally managed to wheedle and manipulate himself a job as a legal consultant in the international division of the Central Committee. Compared to his managerial position at the Juridical Literature publishing house, it looked like a demotion. But in fact, it was a promotion in the nomenklatura ranks.

His father, lean, chipper, and not a great eater, no connoisseur of bounteous cuisine, began to fill their refrigerator to the brim with varnished sausages, gold bars of bullion-like butter, jars of caviar, cured meats, halves and quarters of cheese heads. These were his trophies, his overdue fortune. And he wanted his son to devour it, to fill himself up to the brim, charged with success, goodness, and stultifying mental health.

Stomakov could not eat his father’s food. When he was a guest at other tables, he shamelessly gobbled all the delicacies. His father’s food seemed to have the wrong taste. Not caviar, not cervelat, but some kind of cellophane, as if they were waxworks and not elite grub from special stores.

So Stomakov stood one evening by the refrigerator looking for something proletarian, like crumbly, slimy farmer cheese from an ordinary store. The house phone rang, and his mother, certain that it was his father calling to say he would be late, answered. He barely remembered her screams and weeping. He did remember perfectly how he picked up a plump link sausage with a piglet tail and popped it in his mouth along with the string and then took a bite out of the wedge of cheese with oval holes. He swallowed, belatedly accepting his father’s communion, but could detect no flavor at all. Not even cellophane.

His mother never accepted the story of suicide that the police offered. She made up an accident, prompted by a widow’s defense mechanism. A terrible combination of circumstances: the low balcony railing in someone’s apartment, they never knew whose, and his father’s poor vision. Yurochka forgot to put on his glasses, she said. You know what he’s like without his glasses. As blind as a bat.

She easily disregarded external circumstances: army tanks on the capital’s streets, the failed coup, the gray faces of the conspirators on television, the jubilant crowds in the squares.

But Stomakov understood. And he was astonished at his own impassivity, at his forced respect for the rules of the great game, in which his father was one of many figures who suddenly, in one day, became unnecessary, knowing too much.

He, it turned out, had brought about his own demise by getting a transfer to legal counsel. The sausage, the caviar, the balyk, the basturma—they had fed him his death in parts, in long installments, and now the time had come to repay the debt in one go.

Yes, he had thought of revenge. He brushed it aside easily, telling himself that he needed to wait until things settled down. Maybe there would be a follow-up investigation, justice takes a long time.

Later, at the institute, the head of the first department, the dry and usually unpleasant old man Mitradze, came up to him and expressed condolences. He wondered if Stomakov wanted to take an academic leave of absence: the rectors, given the circumstances, would meet him halfway. Stomakov understood that the system was still alive even though the state was collapsing. It would remain, it was even apologizing, and his father had bought him a future. Stomakov could rebel, give in to his anger, but then his father’s unwilling sacrifice would be in vain.

Thank you, he said to Mitradze, but I will stay on. My studies will distract me. And my father . . . He really wanted me to go into law. To be a judge. The quick