University of Irkutsk
New Student Inquiry for Truth and Justice,
Anthology Number 5, Secret Indoctrination Camp Films,
1935–1950.
It was one in the morning, and as the grainy old films played, the living room filled with ghosts.
A woman in a long black dress stood smiling on the prow of a yacht, mist shrouding the lake behind her. Mrs. Golokhova? She gave the photographer a somber little wave, then turned left, squinting into the sun.
Next came a wedding in an industrial-looking shed surrounded by hundreds of men in uniform. Mr. Golokhov (I presumed) and his new bride stood under crossed rifles with mounted bayonets and were toasted by a small, dapper man drinking champagne from a lab beaker. Quick shot of Joe Stalin, his smile frozen, turning this way, then that, as if looking for escape from the jolly crowds.
The flesh on my neck started to crawl.
A lean, handsome man with aristocratic features, a short sharp nose, and thin but very black hair, stood over a bathtub and smiled awkwardly into the lens. Swift cut to an emaciated, naked little man walking in circles around a small cell, then jumping up and down, genitals flopping, shaking out his hands and smiling broadly. The aristocratic man watched and directed the naked man, taking notes in a little black book with that serious and awkward expression people wore in the 1930s when they knew they were being put on film.
The film had not been well preserved. There were scratches and blotches, and in the hiss of the vacant sound track could easily be heard the aching whispers of the dead.
I watched Mrs. Golokhova and her husband relaxing at play, or hard at work, studying the details of architectural drawings, preparing their empire in the deadly and unlikely world of prewar Soviet Russia. Then, there were no more scenes of Mrs. Golokhova. Just Maxim, looking older and more serious. Supervising workmen on a brick blockhouse, standing by a steaming hot spring, surveying pools filled with milky-looking fluid stirred with long paddles held by hollow-eyed women in nondescript uniforms. Golokhov’s clothes changed little with the years, but his eyes became more vague, his features more drawn.
Long lines of haggard prisoners in shabby street clothes, some carrying tattered bags filled with their worldly goods, stood in a train yard, being examined by dour guards in cinematic quick time.
Sudden cut to mounds of heads in big tin basins outside a wooden lab building, jaws slack, tongues protruding, hair matted with blood, waiting to be processed.
That was not the worst of it.
The next title card read,
CITY OF DOG MOTHERS
1938–1939
I could not turn away. I watched dozens of whistling men, marching about, lips puckered and cheeks puffing in cheerful, silent tunes. Their methodic executioners walked down the streets like marionettes, clutching pistols at the end of stiff, straight arms. The arms jerked up with each methodical shot.
I watched starving women clasping fat, squirming puppies to their shriveled bosoms, smiling for the photographer.
The last few seconds of film showed Lavrenti Beria strutting up and down the cobbled streets. He waved at the lifeless buildings, grinned proudly at the camera, nudged a woman’s headless corpse with his boot, then lifted a hand in a victorious thumbs-up.
Happy, happy man.
As I shut off the tape, I wondered about the photographers. How long had these horrors stuck in their minds like dirty pins and needles. I vowed I would never read a history book again.
I fell asleep on the couch wrapped in Janie’s last afghan.
And woke less than two hours later. Rolled off the couch and made a sound I had not heard come from my mouth in over sixty years, the frightened whine of a child. I could not stand being human. My skin was too filthy to wear. I moaned as I pissed, handling myself, thinking that these organs of generation had given rise to children not so different from the shadows on the old films. I washed my hands and face over and over, then took a shower. The hot water did a little trick for a few minutes, lulling me into warm blankness, but when I toweled myself dry, standing on the thin, ragged bathroom rug, the sense of oppression rushed back like a cloud shadow.
I walked around the house with my privates hidden by the towel and my hair sticking up like a grizzled Kewpie doll. I couldn’t get the pictures out of my head. I cursed Rob Cousins.
Then I asked myself, what if it was all a ripe, royal fake? Assembled from old files, altered copies of documents, forgeries, sure, that was it, wasn’t it?
Much easier to accept than a world controlled by monsters.
Rob Cousins had pulled a fast one on old, gullible Ben Bridger, setting me up for another crazy Rudy Banning book, this one guaranteed to be a huge best-seller—and all of it a lie.
But I knew better.
The sun was coming up over the hills. It was going to be a bright, pretty day.
Using some of my old mental tricks, learned back in Vietnam and Laos, I had “photographed” a couple of the documents Cousins had shown me, and I wanted advice on names and dates. I got on the Internet and sent a coded inquiry to five of my friends. They had all served, some in the CIA, some, like me, in Naval Intelligence. We were all retired and we had set up a kind of Old Boy’s Internet Tom-Tom club to alert each other to stuff, mostly new history books and Web sites with good photos of naked ladies.
Some of the guys on the Tom-Tom were pretty old—they had trained and run the rest of us—and they had been around back in 1953.
I had responses in a couple of hours. Two drew blanks. Two said they couldn’t tell me anything and their messages winkled away before my eyes. Clever trick. One didn’t reply.
I can never leave a wasp nest well enough alone. What Cousins had shown me was ugly beyond measure, and frightening; it was also the most important historical revelation of my life.
I was just a stupid, lonely old man who wanted to be important again.
I dressed, poured my fourth cup of coffee and stood in the kitchen, trying to think what would be the best course to follow, when I heard trucks and cars turn up the long concrete driveway. I opened the front door to the sun and heat, and saw three white Tahoes and two San Diego County Sheriff Crown Victorias. Guys in black, dressed in bulletproofs and combat helmets, poured out of the trucks with assault weapons and automatic pistols in plain view, safeties off and fingers resting on the trigger guards.
The deputies stayed in their cars, heads bobbing, mikes pressed close to their mouths. They seemed confused.
I pushed open the screen door and the guys in black assumed the necessary positions to turn me into hamburger. I had to admire the choreography, but thought it a tad ironic that just as I had a reason to live, this was going down.
