Martin Smith: Stalin’s Ghost

He kicked his way through snow down a flight of stairs and knocked on a basement door. There was no answer but the door was unlocked and he pushed his way into a black space with no more than a seam of street light along the top of the basement windows, about as hospitable as an Ice Age cave. He found a light switch and an overhead rack of fluorescent tubes flickered to life.

Grandmaster Ilya Platonov sat sprawled face down on a table, asleep between chessboards. Arkady thought the fact that Platonov had found that much room was remarkable since chess sets and game clocks covered every surface: antique, inlaid and computerized boards, men lined up like armies summoned and forgotten. Books and magazines on chess crammed the bookcases. Photographs of the Russian greats-Alekhine, Kasparov, Karpov, Tal-hung on the walls along with signs that said, “Members Are Requested Not to Take Boards to the W.C.” and “No Video Games!” The air reeked of cigarettes, genius and musty clothes.

Arkady stomped the snow from his shoes and Platonov’s arm compulsively shot out and hit the game clock.

“In your sleep. That’s impressive,” Arkady said.

Platonov opened his eyes as he sat up. Arkady guessed his age at about eighty. He still had a commanding nose and a pugnacious gaze once he rubbed the sand from his eyes.

“In my sleep, I would still beat you.” Platonov felt his pockets for a wake-up cigarette. Arkady gave him one. “If you played your best game, maybe a draw.”

“I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m looking for Zhenya.”

“Zhenya, that little shit. I say that most affectionately. A frustrating boy.” Platonov hobbled to a desk and began searching loose papers. “I want to show you the results of the last junior tournament, in which he was a complete mediocrity. Then, the same day, he defeats the adult champion, but for money. For money your little Zhenya is a different player altogether. This is a club for people who love chess, not a casino.”

“I understand.” Arkady noticed a “contributions” jar half full of coins.

Platonov abandoned his search. “The main thing is, Zhenya is ruining his game. No patience. He surprises opponents now because he’s just a boy and then he swoops in for the kill. When he encounters the next level of players they will wear him down.”

“Have you seen Zhenya in the last twenty-four hours?”

“No. The day before, yes. I threw him out for gambling once again. He’s welcome back if it’s to play and learn. Have you ever played him?”

“There’s no point. I’m no competition.”

Platonov scratched his chin. “You’re in the prosecutor’s office, aren’t you? Well, intelligence isn’t everything.”

“Thank God,” Arkady said.

“Chess demands discipline and analysis to reach the top. And in chess if you aren’t at the top, where are you?” Platonov spread his arms. “Teaching idiots basic openings. Left, right, left, right! That’s why Zhenya is such a waste.” In his passion the grandmaster backed into the wall and knocked a framed photograph to the floor. Arkady picked the photograph up. Although the glass was a whirl of shards he saw a young Platonov with a vigorous head of hair accepting a bouquet and congratulations from a round man in a bad suit. Khrushchev, the Party Secretary from years ago. Behind the two men stood children in costume as chess pieces: knights, rooks, kings and queens. Khrushchev’s eyes sank into his grin. Platonov gently took the picture away. “Ancient history. Leningrad, nineteen sixty-two. I swept the field. That was when world chess was Soviet chess and this club, this undersea wreck was the center of the chess world.”

“Soon to be apartments.”

“Ah, you saw the banner outside? Apartments with all the modern conveniences. We will be demolished and replaced by a marble palace for thieves and whores, the social parasites we used to put in jail. Does the state care?” Platonov rehung the photo, cracks and all. “The state used to believe in culture, not real estate. The state-”

“You’re still a Party member?”

“I am a Communist and proud of it. I remember when millionaires were shot on principle. Maybe a millionaire can be an honest man, maybe pigs can whistle. If not for me, they’d already have their apartment house, but I have petitioned the city, the state senate and the president himself to bring this architectural obscenity to a halt. I am costing them millions of dollars. That’s why they want me out of the way.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why they want to kill me.” Platonov smiled. “I outfoxed them. I stayed here. I never would have made it home safely.”

“Who did you outfox?”

“Them.”

It struck Arkady that the conversation was taking a strange turn. He spied an electric samovar on a side table. “Would you like some tea?”

“You mean, has the old man been drinking? Does he need to sober up? Is he crazy? No.” Platonov dismissed the cup. “I’m ten moves ahead of you, ten moves.”

“Like leaving the front door unlocked and falling asleep?”

Platonov forgave himself with a shrug. “You agree then that I should take precautions?”

Arkady glanced at his watch. Zurin had called him half an hour ago. “For a start, have you informed the militia that you feel your life is in danger?”

“A hundred times. They send an idiot along, he steals what he can and then goes.”

“Have you been attacked? Been threatened by mail or over the phone?”

“No. That’s what all the idiots ask.”

Arkady took that as his cue. “I have to go.”

“Wait.” For his age, Platonov maneuvered around the game tables with surprising speed. “Any other suggestions?”

“My professional advice?”

“Yes.”

“If millionaires want to raze this building to erect a palace for lowlifes and whores, do what they say. Take their money and move.”

Platonov sucked up his chest. “As a boy, I fought on the Kalinin Front. I do not retreat.”

“A wonderful sentiment for a headstone.”

“Get out! Out! Out!” Platonov opened the door and pushed Arkady through. “Enough defeatism. Your whole generation. No wonder this country is in the shit can.”

Arkady climbed the stairs to his car. Although he didn’t think Platonov was in any real danger, he drove only a block before returning on foot. Staying away from streetlamps, he slipped from doorway to doorway until he was satisfied they were clear of anything but shadows and then lingered another minute just in case, perhaps because the wind had dropped and he liked the way the snow had gone weightless, floating like light on water.

No militia guarded the Chistye Prudy Metro station. Arkady tapped at the door and was let in by a cleaning lady who led him across a half-lit hall of somber granite and around turnstiles to a set of three ancient escalators that clacked as they descended. Maybe they weren’t so old, only used; the Moscow underground was the busiest in the world and to be virtually the only one in it made him aware how large the station was and how deep the hole.

His mind returned to the excavation outside the Supreme Court. There they were, eminent judges with the modest ambition of upgrading their basement cafeteria, adding perhaps an espresso bar, and, instead, they had unearthed the horror of the past. Stick your shovel into the ground in Moscow and you took your chances.

“The people on the train must be crazy. He’s been dead for fifty years. It’s a disgrace,” the cleaning woman said with the firmness of a palace guard. She wore an orange vest she smoothed and straightened. The outside world might be scribbled with graffiti and reek of piss, but it was generally agreed that the last bastion of decency in Moscow was the underground, discounting the gropers, drunks and thieves among your fellow passengers. “More than fifty years.”