Tom Smith - The Secret Speech

It was the first congress since Stalin’s death. Raisa reminded her class that the Communist revolution was worldwide and that at these gatherings were emissaries from international workers’ parties as well as Soviet leaders. Braced for an hour of platitudes and self-congratulatory declarations, her thoughts focused on the unlikely hope that Zoya would make it through the day without getting into a fight.

Very quickly her attention was brought back to the material she was reading. This was no ordinary speech. It opened with none of the normal descriptions of startling Soviet successes. Midway through the fourth paragraph, her hands tight around the paper, she stopped, unable to believe the sentences set out before her. The class was silent. In an uncertain voice she read:

— … The cult of the person of Stalin has been gradually growing, the cult which became the source of a whole series of exceedingly serious and grave perversions of Party principles, of Party democracy, of revolutionary legality .

Amazed, she flicked forward, wondering if there was more, reading silently:

— The negative characteristics of Stalin, which, in Lenin’s time, were only incipient, transformed themselves during the last years into a grave abuse of power …

She’d spent her entire career propagandizing the State, teaching these children that the State was always right, good, and just. If Stalin had been guilty of fostering a cult, Raisa had been instrumental in that. She’d justified teaching such falsehoods since it was necessary that her students learn the language of adulation, the vocabulary of State worship without which they’d be vulnerable to suspicion. The relationship between a student and teacher depended upon trust. She believed she’d upheld that premise, not in the orthodox sense that she’d told the truth, but she’d told them the truths they needed to hear. These words made her a cheat. She looked up. The students were too confused to understand the implications immediately. But they would eventually. They would understand that she was not an enlightened role model but a slave to whoever happened to be in charge.

The door was flung open. Iulia Peshkova, a teacher, was standing in the doorway, her face bright red — her mouth open, startled, unable to speak. Raisa stood up:

— What is it?

— Come quickly.

Iulia was Zoya’s teacher. Fear struck Raisa. She put down the pages, telling her class to remain in their seats and following Iulia down the corridor, down the stairs, unable to get a sensible answer:

— What happened?

— It’s Zoya. It’s the speech. I was reading and she… you must see for yourself.

They reached the classroom. Iulia stood back, allowing Raisa to go in first. She opened the door. Zoya was standing on the teacher’s desk. The desk had been pushed up against the wall. All the other students were at the opposite end of the room, bunched up, as far away as possible, as if Zoya had some contagious disease. Around her feet were the pages of the speech and shards of glass. Zoya was standing proud, triumphant. Her hands were bloody. They clasped the remains of a poster taken down from the wall, an image of Stalin with the words printed underneath:

FATHER TO ALL CHILDREN

Zoya had climbed onto the table to take the picture off the wall: she’d smashed the frame, cutting her hand before ripping the poster in two, decapitating the image of Stalin. Her eyes were ablaze with victory. She raised the halves of the poster, streaked with her blood, as if brandishing the body of a vanquished foe:

— He’s not my father.

IN THE COMMUNAL CORRIDOR outside Nikolai’s apartment were the remains of the speech. Seeing the ripped pages, glancing at the words, Leo drew his gun. Behind him, Timur did the same. Paper scrunching underfoot, Leo reached out, taking hold of the door handle. The apartment was unlocked. He nudged open the door, the two of them stepping into the empty living area. There was no sign of a disturbance. The doors to the other rooms were closed except for one — the bathroom door.

The bath was full to the rim, the bloody water’s surface broken only by the emergence of Nikolai’s head and the island of his plump, hairy stomach. His eyes and mouth were open, as if amazed that an angel and not a demon had welcomed him to death. Leo crouched beside his former mentor, a man whose every lesson he had spent the past three years trying to unlearn. Timur called out:

— Leo…

Noting his deputy’s tone, Leo stood up, following him to the adjacent bedroom.

The two girls appeared to be sleeping, the blankets pulled over their bodies up to their necks. Had it been night, the stillness of the room would’ve felt natural. But it was midday and sunlight was pushing through the gaps in the curtains. Both girls were facing the walls, their backs turned to each other. The eldest daughter’s long glossy hair was spread over the pillow. Leo swept it back, touching her neck. The faintest trace of warmth remained, preserved under the thick comforter that she’d been lovingly tucked under. There was no sign of any injury on her body. The younger daughter, no more than four years old, was positioned identically. She was cold. Her small body had lost its warmth quicker than that of her sister’s. Leo closed his eyes. He could’ve saved these girls.

Next door, Nikolai’s wife, Ariadna, was arranged, as her daughters had been, in a semblance of sleep. Leo had known her a little. Seven years ago, after an arrest, Nikolai used to insist that Leo eat with him. No matter how late, Ariadna had always made dinner, offering hospitality and civility after Leo and Nikolai’s mutual savagery. The dinners had been intended as demonstration of the value of domestic space where the details of their bloody employment did not exist, where they could maintain the illusion of being nothing more than an ordinary loving husband. Sitting at her dressing table, Leo regarded the ivory bone hairbrush, perfumes and powders — luxuries that Ariadna had accepted as payment for her unquestioning devotion. She hadn’t realized that ignorance wasn’t a choice: it was a condition of her existence. Nikolai wouldn’t tolerate his family in any other form.

Never tell your wife anything.

As a young officer Leo had interpreted that warning, whispered to him after he’d made his first arrest, as referring to the need for caution and secrecy, a lesson in not trusting even those closest to him. But that was not what Nikolai had meant at all.

Unable to stay in the apartment any longer, Leo stood up, unsteady on his feet. Leaving the bodies behind, he hurried to the communal hallway, leaning against the wall, breathing deeply and staring down at the remains of Khrushchev’s speech, delivered and positioned outside Nikolai’s front door with lethal intent. Returning home last night, Nikolai had read a small fraction; most of it was still untouched in the box. One page had been shredded. Had Nikolai believed he could destroy these words? If that thought had crossed his mind, the accompanying letter would’ve ended that hope. The speech was to be copied and distributed. The inclusion of the official letter was a message to Nikolai that the secrets of his past were no longer his to control.

Leo glanced at Timur. Before joining the homicide department he’d been a militia officer, arresting drunks and thieves and rapists. The militia had not been excluded from making politicized arrests. However, Timur had been fortunate, no such demands had been placed on him, at least not that he’d ever admitted to Leo.

A man who rarely lost control of his emotions, Timur was visibly angry:

— Nikolai was a coward.