Free Kolia by Perrine Leblanc Page B

rarely featured luxury items, and even the availability of most staples was hit and miss. But Pavel had access to the closed stores , a privilege only extended to those who held foreign currency. In Pavel’s case, it was money acquired while touring, which required authorization and a visa. Kolia was denied both, but through Pavel, he gained access to the bounty of these stores, whenever the opportunity presented itself.
    When his idle but potentially lucrative pastime eventually slipped into full criminality, he began helping out with the grocery shopping by paying with rubles he had received in exchange for his stolen loot. But Kolia had yet to reach that point.

A PROMISE KEPT
    Comrade,
    I first met Ilya Alexandrovich in the army, a little after ’17. We spent a lot of time drinking together, and we drank only the best. Even back then, Ilya had the gift that has brought him so much success — he could make people laugh. We wrote a lot of bad poems together, and some of them were even read by Mayakovsky. He thought they were awful, as you can well imagine. Ilya almost came to blows with him. What a time we had! I have followed his career with the circus all these years, and I have a great admiration for him. My wife simply adores Ilya, and soon I will have the honour of introducing him to my grandchild who will be born in the spring. But I’m getting away from the matter at hand. Ilya spoke of you several years ago, but I can’t recall the exact date. The delay is entirely my fault. I have been slow to respond and, for that, I offer my apologies. I have not been well and I was instructed to rest. But I did not forget you — Ilya is my friend. I know that you have been searching for this book since you left your native Siberia. You stated that it was printed in 1953 and belonged to a government official posted to Kamchatka. You will be glad to know that I was able to identify the owner of the book, and I can tell you that it accompanied him into the army, as you may know, but I’m afraid that the last record of the book shows it was somewhere near Kiev in 1954. There is nothing more recent than that.
    However, the government official in question now resides in Zagorsk. You are free to contact him. As you will appreciate, I cannot arrange an introduction. His situation has changed. He now lives on the ground floor, which, I’m sure you’ll agree, provides a view that is much less advantageous than the one he had from the top floor.
    He now works as a janitor at a library somewhere in Zagorsk. His name is Igor Pavlovich Orlov.
    Please tell Ilya Alexandrovich that he’ll be seeing me very soon!
    My warmest regards, comrade,
Anton Pavlovich Joulev
    *
    In Zagorsk, Kolia finally found the man he had been looking for. Orlov was old and very thin. His face was blotted with liver spots, and he took little time to disclose that he had been diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Here was the man who had helped Iosif — the “book” that Joulev had referred to in his letter — the same man who had handed him Iosif’s few belongings. Kolia didn’t recognize him. The passage of so many years and the natural urge to forget anything that could be forgotten had effectively erased his memory of the man. But Orlov recognized him right away.
    Kolia had waited for him at the entrance to the library where the discredited apparatchik eked out a living while he waited to die. He repeated his full name for the man, but it didn’t register. It was Kolia’s face — which had remained in Orlov’s memory, bolstered by Iosif’s vivid descriptions of the boy — that was unmistakable. Yes, he remembered the boy, but not so much the teenager — there were so many in the camp. Kolia walked with him back to his room. Orlov looked down at his shoes the whole way.
    â€œYou used the word ‘disappeared,’” Kolia said. “I know he didn’t just