While they were waiting for their order, Kitty’s father performed tricks for her with a sugar lump, hiding it in his fist and then producing it from out of his cuff or behind his ear.

Kitty let out peal after peal of laughter. “Again! Again!”

Seibert could not resist. “Excuse me,” he asked, leaning toward them. “I’m curious. Are you by any chance with a theater?”

The man turned around. “No,” he answered. “I’m a journalist.” He handed Seibert a card on which was written “Klim Rogov.”

“Oh, you’re Russian, are you?” asked Seibert, still more surprised.

“By birth, yes. But I have American citizenship, and Kitty and I live in Shanghai. I work at an English-language radio station there.”

“And I work at the Wolffs Telegrafische Bureau news agency,” said Seibert. “So, how do you find Moscow?”

Klim gave a shrug. “I came here to find people who took part in the civil war in China, but everywhere I’m told that the Soviet Union sent no agents out there.”

Seibert gave a knowing smile. “What do you expect? Politics is nothing but a collection of myths and legends we are told we must believe.”

“Somehow I’m not convinced,” said Klim. “A friend of mine left for the USSR together with a group of political advisers who had been working in China, and they all seem to have vanished into thin air. I’ve been trying to find them for a month but with no luck.”

“You should come to my house tomorrow,” said Seibert. “I’m having a bit of a gathering at five o’clock, and there will be an English lady there, Magda Thomson. She knows some people who used to work in China.”

“Thank you! You’ve been a great help!” Klim turned to his daughter. “You see, Kitty? Didn’t I tell you everything would be all right?”

Seibert felt like some kind of magician who could grant the wishes of ordinary mortals with one click of his fingers.

3 KLIM ROGOV’S NOTEBOOK

Keeping a secret diary is like putting a notice on your door saying, “Keep out!” and then deliberately leaving it slightly open.

It’s a bad habit, and I’ve tried to give it up many times, but what can I do? I’m a scribbler by nature, one of that writerly tribe whose chief pleasure in life lies in hunting out words and collecting meanings. Without this pleasure, I don’t think I could survive. Anyway, I’ve promised to give a detailed account of my adventures in Soviet Russia to Fernando, so let that be my excuse.

I caught sight of this notebook in a kiosk in Vladivostok. It was only after I’d bought it that I noticed it included a note of “memorable events” for every date: executions of revolutionaries, forcible dispersal of demonstrations, assassination attempts on the Tsars, etc. This diary could quite easily be called the “Book of the Dead,” but I hope for me it will tell a story of survival, not of disaster.

My wife has disappeared without a trace. The only clue I have to her whereabouts is an article in Pravda newspaper announcing that the “Chinese group” with which she was traveling has arrived in Moscow.

When my friends in Shanghai heard I was coming to Russia, they thought I had lost my mind. As the Bolsheviks see it, any foreigner with a Russian name is a White émigré, and a White émigré is, by definition, an enemy.

But nobody stopped me at the border. My American passport and respectable coat were enough to mark me out as a VIP. Clearly, the petty Soviet officials were afraid to stick their necks out. Who knows who I might be—a famous engineer or a foreign scientist invited to attend the tenth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution?

It took Kitty and me sixteen days to reach Moscow, and what sights we saw on the way! The train was accompanied as far as Khabarovsk by a convoy of Red Army soldiers who stood on duty on the platforms between the railcars and on the locomotive. They were there to protect us from the gangs of armed bandits that often attack passenger trains in the Far East just like the Indians in films about the Wild West.

There were still several rusty, derailed trains lying about from the time of the civil war. A number of bridges had been blown up, and the Bolsheviks had replaced them with temporary wooden structures. It is quite terrifying crossing these makeshift bridges; the train inches across, the beams groaning and cracking from the weight, and all the passengers hold their breath, praying it will hold out till they reach the other side. Once, the bridge did actually start to break up under us, and the locomotive only just succeeded in dragging the last car across to the opposite bank. It was the strangest feeling as if we had crossed the Rubicon.

I don’t know how long my search will last and how long my money will hold out. I never had access to Nina’s bank account, so Kitty and I are living off my own modest savings.

My friends are right, of course. It is madness to stake everything you own on one card and to set off of your own accord to this bogeyman of a country, which émigré mommies use to frighten their naughty children. Even if I do find Nina, the chances are that we’ll only break up again. Even before she left, we both realized that our life together wasn’t working out, and we were only heading for some inevitable catastrophe.

So, why am I chasing after the ghost of this long-lost love?

I have always admired Nina’s energy, her dignity, and her ability to rise up out of the ashes like a phoenix, but there’s more to it than that. She has her own distinctive feminine charm, which I find quite irresistible. And I’m not the only one by any means. I’ve seen how other men look at her. Where will I find another woman like her? If I hadn’t come to Moscow, I’d be doomed to loneliness or a pointless search for someone exactly like her, and I don’t even want to think about that.

I am like a passenger on the Titanic after the shipwreck, freezing in the icy water, refusing to believe that the ship is doomed, convinced that the whole thing was just some emergency drill. Any minute now, the ship will rise up from the depths, the holes in its hull will close up, and the captain will steer it off on its original course.

4

Klim could not wait for the meeting with Magda.

He hailed a cab at the hotel and helped Kitty into an old-fashioned sleigh.

“Pray that everything works out for us,” he whispered in Kitty’s ear. “God will hear your prayers, I’m sure.”

“Please let everything work out for us!” shouted Kitty at the top of her voice. Then she turned to Klim. “Do you think he heard that? Or should I say it louder?”

The cab driver laughed into his frost-covered beard and took up the reins. “Giddy up now, girl, as fast as a motorcar!”

The evening sky over Moscow blazed with a crimson sunset. The sleigh rushed on, its runners squeaking in the snow. Wind blew in their faces and clumps of dirty snow flew up from under the horse’s hooves.

As they came out onto Lubyanka Square, the cab driver turned to his passengers and pointed at a high building with a clock on its facade. “Have a look at that, comrade foreigner. That building used to be the central office for the Rossia Insurance Company, but now it’s the headquarters of the OGPU, the political police.”

The clock face reflected the scarlet of the setting sun, and Klim found himself wincing. He felt as if he were being closely watched by some fiery eye, all-seeing and dispassionate.

Kitty fell asleep on the way to the party.

The driver stopped at a single-story house with high windows. On the walls of the house was a frieze showing blue sea, rose bushes, and dancing girls with tambourines. Meanwhile, a palisade of enormous Moscow icicles hung from the roof.

Klim lifted Kitty in his arms and walked up the porch steps. He knocked at the door, which bore an inscription in Gothic script: “Aufgang nur für Herrschaften”—“Only the noble may enter here.”

“Look who’s here!” cried Seibert as he threw open the door, and lowering his voice to a whisper, added quickly, “Come with me into my bedroom. You can put your daughter down there.”

Klim looked around. The hall was hung from the floor to the ceiling with gilt-framed paintings. Seibert collected them, apparently.

A coat-stand groaned under the weight of a mountain of furs and coats, and a whole flotilla of galoshes was arrayed on the floor. From the living room came the sounds of music and bursts of laughter. Somebody was playing the piano.

Klim felt awkward coming to this party where he knew no one, bringing his daughter, creating bother for strangers. But what could he do?

His host led him deep into the dimly lit apartment with high arched ceilings and narrow winding corridors. Any noble guests who reached Seibert’s bedroom would find themselves in cramped quarters hung with dark blue wallpaper. In the middle of the room was a colossal bed with a carved headstand and orange pillows. A mirror gleamed on the ceiling, and on the chest of drawers beside the bed was a china figurine of the devil with an enormous phallus.

Seibert gave an embarrassed chuckle and turned the figurine to the wall. “Just a bit of fun, you know.”

Klim laid Kitty on the bed and pulled off her felt boots, hat, and coat.

There was a crash from the kitchen behind the wall as if somebody had dropped a metal tray.

“Your little girl’s lucky to be able to sleep through that noise,” said Seibert in an indulgent tone. “As for me, I wake up at the sound of a broom on the pavement outside.

“Let me take you to meet my guests. Magda should be here any minute.”

5

Magda was half an hour late. The windows of her tram had been white with hoarfrost, and she had missed her stop.

“Owen is here already,” said Seibert when Magda stumbled into the hall, frozen through, her nose streaming from the cold. “Have you got everything prepared?”

Magda sniffed. “I think so, yes.”

Glancing in the mirror, she straightened her dress—dark blue with a pink collar and square buttons on the sleeves. She should have hung her camera case around her neck so that it would be clear straight away that she was a professional journalist and photographer.

“Come on then. I’ll introduce you,” said Seibert, and Magda followed him into the living room.

The room was already full of people all talking at once in a mixture of German, English, and Russian. A pair of Frenchmen, already mellow with drink, were playing a duet on a grand piano and singing “Valentina,” and a few couples were dancing. Wreaths of tobacco smoke spread out in the orange light of the lamps.

“Not long ago, we were at war with one another,” Seibert told Magda, “and now, here we are in the heart of snowy Moscow, drinking wine, and none of us bearing a grudge against the others.”

“Where’s Owen?” asked Magda in a trembling voice.

Seibert pointed out a stout gentleman in a circle of guests.

Magda went a little closer and listened to the conversation.

“When I crossed the border, the customs officials made me declare my fur coat and galoshes,” Owen said. “Can anyone explain why the Soviets do this?”

“It’s their way of fighting unemployment,” answered a dark-haired gentleman in an elegant three-piece suit. “If there aren’t enough jobs, they make some up on the spot. Just imagine how many people you can employ counting all the galoshes that come in and go out of the country.”

“Who’s that?” Magda asked Seibert.

“His name is Klim Rogov. He wanted to talk to you, actually.”

“Why? I don’t know him. Or perhaps I do—”

Magda was interrupted by another loud crash from the kitchen.

“Is that you again, Lieschen?” barked Seibert. “What an infernal nuisance that girl is! Always breaking things!”

He ran from the room.

Magda glanced again at Klim Rogov. She had just remembered that was the name of Nina Kupina’s husband. Could it really be him?

“Soviet power is like a pyramid,” Klim said, turning to Owen. “You have all these leaders at the very top, and each of them picks his vassals—not the best men but the most loyal; those who will always do their bidding. As a reward for their loyalty, the vassals are given profitable official positions, and they are allowed to live off them. All these people have their own vassals, a rung lower down, and the ones lower down have others beneath them, and so on. Everybody’s welfare depends on the strength of the pyramid, so they do their best to reinforce it.”