The Geographer's Library

The Geographer’ s Library
The old man grimaced, shook his head with disbelief but no surprise,
and said nothing.
“May I see the room behind this one now, please? I can easily verify
whether this claim is valid or false.”
“It isn’t a church,” said the old man, not moving.
Voskresenyov stood up and looked around the room. The house could
have been more than two hundred years old; it could have been twenty. The
woodwork was too skillful to be Soviet, and what few decorations there
were—a vibrant hanging rug, a painting of the sun rising over the Baltic
coast, a row of carved wooden ships on a rough ledge above a potbellied
stove—looked simple and rustic, more in keeping with the nineteenth than
the twentieth century. Voskresenyov’s thighs and the tips of his fingers were
tingling, as they always did whenever he was near something he wanted. If he
was wrong, of course, he could simply apologize and disappear, but he was
not wrong: even in the Soviet Union, the right combination of money and
privilege conjured up accurate information. “I will determine, Mr. Tiima,
in keeping with national principles and the welfare of the Soviet people,
whether it is or is not a church. Just take me to the room.”
Item 12: A rope, rotten in spots and indistinct in color, 35 centimeters
long, with eight small knots running along the length. One end of the rope
ends in a knot; the other is tied to a playing-card-size copper-plated board
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