The Amber Room_ The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure - Cathy Scott-Clark [50]
The looming Bolshoi Dom is today the headquarters of St Petersburg's FSB (the successor to the KGB). But even after we find it, the literature archive is still difficult to locate. Concealed in an alleyway that runs off the broad Ulitsa Shpalernaia, its double front doors are obscured by a burnt-out Lada and the poorly laid tarmac path is sticky, trapping wouldbe researchers like flies. Although we have applied for a meeting with the director, we are a long way off from seeing any files. An assistant has refused to confirm whether any of Anatoly Kuchumov's papers are actually here. Even if they are, access to them might be restricted. We have been told that archivists require ten years to catalogue every new bequest before its contents can be made available to selected researchers. The director herself may be at her dacha and if so a deputy who has no executive powers will take her place.
Many former Soviet institutions are caught between their desire to profit from the future while being wary of revealing their past. We have been in Russia for several frustrating months now and we need this meeting to work. So we have taken a precaution, bringing with us a letter of recommendation that we have been advised to use if we encounter any obfuscation. We present ourselves to a frothy blonde guard who spurts up from her desk like a bottle of warm Soviet champagne. She leads us up a broad staircase lined with heavily barred windows. In the stairwell, an ancient document lift rises, its file-filled car attached to a steel cable with a reef knot. The steps are bowed, worn down by legions of clerks employed to keep researchers out and their applications in limbo. We are following a vapour trail of raw alcohol that emanates from somewhere up above us, wafting past photographs of a city caught singing, writing and dreaming (despite the regular firestorms): dancer Natalia Makarova thrown bouquets for her performance in Giselle, author Daniil Granin lauded after publishing his recollections of the siege of Leningrad; painter Alexander Vokraniv in his studio.
We are shown into an office. On the desk are half a dozen calendars and as many diaries. Another three calendars hang from the walls. Two clocks, three watches and a bedside alarm. A small, elderly woman with sculpted hair enters. Her nails, cardigan and blouse are all ribbons and rose pink, her tiny feet bunched into imposing heels. 'Dobroye Utro,' she demurs, slipping into her high-backed captain's chair, spinning it around in a ghostly hush. 'Alexandra Vasilevna Istomina, director of the Central State Archive of Literature and Art. Can I be of assistance?'
We plunge into Anatoly Mikhailovich Kuchumov. The director shakes her head, we slip our letter of reference across her desk. Alexandra Vasilevna's painted nail follows every word. It is from Our Friend the Professor's publisher, head of an important St Petersburg house. His company subsidizes the printing of Russian archive catalogues and he strongly recommends that we be allowed entry. A passionate man who had bowed deeply in his long coat when we had met, the publisher recalled Anatoly Kuchumov fondly and is also keen to know if the great curator's private files have survived.
The archive director smiles broadly. She produces three cups of black tea and a box. Out of it tumbles glittering foil wrappers embossed with a Soviet pantheon: red stars, saluting heroes, fairy-tale cottages in the Karelian woods, fiery rockets scorching the firmament, chocolates produced by a company founded by Nadezda Krupskaya, the wife of Lenin.
Alexandra Vasilevna sucks noisily on a Soyuz 10, making it soft and malleable. I joined the Leningrad archives in 1950,' she says. I have had no other job. I know it is not fashionable to talk about the Stalin