Good People by Nir Baram Page A

wasn’t referring necessarily to your dad, but to people like him, for example those who admired Pyatakov and worked with him.’ Podolsky laughed. ‘Really, dear Sasha, I’m a little insulted by your question. You don’t understand that I only want what’s good for you. And you don’t understand that I’m talking to you with the sincerity that you can only show to marked people, the ones no one will believe. So it’s possible that Pyatakov didn’t sabotage the ventilation in the mines so the workers would die and hatred would be aroused against the government. But Pyatakov had a lot of complaints, and it’s quite likely that some criminal thought crossed his mind, and Moralov also talked too much. I have studied history well. Ideologies and fashions come and go, people believe in one thing and then its opposite, and all that stays the same is the startling elasticity of our souls. Sasha, people are contemptible. They always want to change things, to betray others. They dream of a better world, and then recklessly try to make their dreams come true. We’re not interested in actions or consequences: people ought to fear their every criminal thought, to suspect everyone, to be secretive and to remember that no place is so dark that we won’t find them.’
    She leaned wearily against a car. He looked in another rear window, and cursed. When something happened that Podolsky had anticipated he cursed. Then he was inside the car, and when he emerged beside her he was holding a beer bottle. Sasha automatically snatched it away. It was their ritual. Not to perform it would mean the betrayal of everything that was between them.
    ‘All this is too familiar and not our old story,’ she grumbled. Shedrank some of the beer. How many nights like this had they spent together? Climbing garden fences, hiding behind the walls on the banks of the city’s canals, wandering the streets, assembling dreams about countries beyond the Baltic Sea. In high school, it was clear to them that nothing would separate them.
    Podolsky leaned on the car opposite her. He lit one match after another and watched the flame as it died. His face was illuminated by each little spurt of light. It had become leaner, so the delicate lines of his cheekbones were emphasised. She knew that all his speeches about power and fear were for show. Maxim Podolsky wasn’t a man thrilled by power. He had inhaled more than enough of it when his father had been one of the heads of the Cheka in Leningrad and was ferried about in a chauffeur-driven limousine: invitations to a dacha on the coast, the best seats at the theatre, expensive presents for the new year, a spacious four-room apartment. In the Podolsky home the children ate delicacies that others could not even dream about. Drunk on his father’s power, little Maxim behaved as if he controlled the fate of everyone he knew, including his friends’ parents and his teachers. Then the party was over. Veteran members of the Cheka were discharged and accused of all sorts of crimes. Some were exiled, while others were purged.
    Maxim’s father lost his job; they were lenient with him. For years he sat at home and waited to be prosecuted or restored to the service, writing letters of complaint to all the institutions. He was not the only one. Millions of letters flooded the country: from the accused, their relatives, the relatives of their relatives, from citizens of good will, and informers. Later they evicted the Podolskys from their apartment. They moved into a shared flat. Maxim’s father would sometimes pick his son up from school. He would stand next to the gate in a fine woollen coat, his hair combed elegantly. He kept his head up, but every girl who ran into him immediately noticed that he trembled, his eyes were red, his face lined and his hair flecked with grey.
    All that year, the last year of high school, Sasha was trapped in her web of sadness. She couldn’t remember a single moment of grace. Sheand Maxim