The Amber Room_ The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure - Cathy Scott-Clark [49]
We explain the purpose of our visit to the urbane palace director and he summons a sullen librarian, his frame long and thin, hanging beneath a hand-knitted yellow jumper. 'There is not much,' the librarian blurts out, loitering in the doorway but refusing to make eye contact. He produces four books from behind his back and tosses them on to the desk. 'There is nothing else here belonging to Kuchumov. That will interest you,' he says, turning his back and vanishing. Forty-five years employed at the Leningrad palaces, a multitude of postings and offices, a leading role played in the cultural life of the Soviet Union's second city and four second-hand books to his name?
We leave, depressed, and a diminutive curator calls us over and leads us up the back stairs to her office, bursting with furniture that has just returned from an overseas exhibition. 'You are my guests, please.' She points shyly to two chairs labelled 'Tsar Paul I'. We sit and flick through Kuchumov's four books while she scrabbles around on her haunches, searching for the smallest fissure in the patina of a walnut writing desk. 'Put them away,' the curator advises. She stands and we at last recognize her from the meeting at the House of Scientists. She introduces herself as Malinki Albina (Small Albina, not to be confused with Bolshoi, her larger namesake, who also works here).
'There's nothing in those books. I've read them.' She scrapes back her silken grey hair to reveal eyes brimming with stories. 'You know the librarian is writing a book - on Kuchumov. I bet he didn't tell you. But of course it will never see the light of day. No money for books in Russia.' We think of Telemakov. To return his generosity, we have passed his manuscript on to Our Friend the Professor's publisher, but even he doesn't hold out much hope that he can raise the cash to get it into print.
'And because the librarian knows in his heart that his book is a pipe dream,' Malinki Albina continues, 'he will ensure that you don't get his information. He is young, he can wait.' As we gather our coats, Malinki Albina catches us by surprise, embracing us warmly. 'We are old. Not so beautiful as we were.' She stubs out a cigarette in an onyx Romanov ashtray. 'But we will help you to find Kuchumov's Amber Room files.'
We make our way back into the city. The carbon-thin air smells of bonfires even though we can see none. The source is probably the hiccuping incinerators on the Neva, where the wide waters of the river are pearles-cent in the moonlight. A tall ship driven into a low bridge by a sozzled captain has spilt 875,000 gallons of fuel. The entrance to every metro is choked with citizens rushing to get out of the chill. A quick shot of Russki Standard and an ice cream (even in the coldest winter) and then away. The takeaway bottle shops, glazed in armoured Plexiglass, are mobbed by commuters and list under the weight of their security precautions. We are back in Sovetskaya 7.
Midnight. The phone rings halfway down the hall. We sprint to reach it. A clicking and whirring. Then a voice. 'Try the Central State Archive of Literature and Arts.' It is Malinki Albina. 'Make for the Bolshoi Dom. I hear they might have Kuchumov's papers, though I can't get you in.'
The landmark that locates the literature archive today is the nearby Bolshoi Dom, a huge white edifice whose stone walls are not its own. The masonry originates from a cathedral dedicated to sailors who died in the Russo-Japanese war of 1905. The story goes that Stalin had the cathedral demolished and gave the bronze plaque with the