The Amber Room_ The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure - Cathy Scott-Clark [34]
We tell her about our meeting with Kedrinsky and our falling out with Director Sautov. She nods, her eyes lifted to the heavens. We tell her that although Kuchumov's friends and colleagues have obtained extracts from his diaries and correspondence, the bulk of her grandfather's papers are proving impossible to locate.
I too have virtually nothing to remind me of him,' Vica Plauda says. 'When he died, in 1993, there were boxes and boxes of material. But I live in a communal apartment, one room only. I loaned the papers to the library at Pavlovsk Palace. He was the director there for years. I haven't seen them since.' We make a note of a name and number in the library at Pavlovsk. I kept only a couple of things, including a painting. It hangs here,' she says, pointing to an oil of roses in a vase, a gift to Kuchumov from Anatoly Treskin, one of the most prolific palace restorers: a bouquet from the artist to his patron.
Vica Plauda is silent, thinking. And then, 'Maybe these will interest you.' She produces some papers. In the soft light of the snow-covered window we can now see her likeness to Kuchumov. 'They are copies of letters to and from my grandfather. I had never seen them until I was sent them from New York last year. I have no idea how they got there. Or who has the top copies.'
Is there anything else? Vica Plauda leaves the room. She returns with a tattered folder and slides out a postcard-sized glass plate that she holds with care between thumb and index finger up to the window. The light transforms the dark rectangle into a golden glowing portal. Here is the heart of the Catherine Palace, lit with 565 candles, their flames glancing off prehistoric air bubbles and fish scales trapped in the viscous resin, illuminating the faces of carved cherubs that balance on cornices and flocks of amber parrots and eagles that fly across antique friezes. In our hands is the only surviving colour record of the 'Eighth Wonder of the World', a photographic colour positive of the original Amber Room, made in 1917 by a Russian officer who fled with it to Paris. Vica says, 'The Catherine Palace had bought it back from his relatives two decades ago and now it must be priceless.' We photograph it.
Vica Plauda, granddaughter of Anatoly Kuchumov, holding the only surviving colour plate of the original Amber Room
The Amber Room
The telephone in the next room rings. Vica comes back shaking her head. 'It's for you,' she says. Dr Sautov's assistant is on the line. He has enjoyed watching our covert operation, dressed in black coats and hats, stalking like ravens across the snow-whitened courtyard, the assistant says sternly. And Director Sautov has charted our progress into the staff quarters. Security has been called. We are advised to wait.
We run. Down the back staircase with the documents Vica has given us, out of the palace and to the bus stop where we throw ourselves to the head of the queue, pushing our way into seats.
That evening, behind our locked doors, we pore over the paperwork.
On 24 January 1944 the museum workers in Novosibirsk, enduring one of the harshest winters in living memory, gathered around the radio to listen to an announcement. The Red Army had launched a counter-attack on the German forces besieging Leningrad and was now approaching Pushkin and Pavlovsk. Three days later, 872 days after the siege began, Leningrad was liberated. It was, according to the recollections of siege survivors, as if an enormous boulder had been lifted from