The Geographer's Library

Jon Fasman
clandestine government-to-government contacts had met through the Soviet
years. Because citizens feared being denounced for entering churches, they
became safe places for government officials to meet secretly; any ordinary citizen
who reported anything would immediately be under suspicion because
of his undue interest in a place of worship. As for officials’ meeting each
other, the very illicitness of the act made it safe for everyone. And this particular
church had an out-of-the-way beauty, an incense-cured and ramshackle
peace that made it one of the more popular assignation spots.
“See?” asked Lubin, gesturing toward the church.
“Ah.” A weak but steady stream of worshippers—men and women, old
and young, poor and less poor—entered and exited the church, some crossing
themselves fervidly, others awkwardly, as though the gesture was not yet
familiar to them. “In Estonia, too. Latvia. Lithuania and Ukraine even more.”
“Yes. I don’t doubt it. So why don’t we walk for a bit instead.”
“Of course.”
“Vsekhsvyatsky, since you didn’t ask,” said Lubin after a few minutes of
silent walking. “And this street, Metrostroyevskaya, will be Ostozhenka.” He
grinned thinly. He had the opaque, ophidian manner of someone who has
spent a lifetime manipulating and studying other people’s reactions.
“Sorry?”
“This street. Ostozhenka it was, and Ostozhenka it will be again. The passage
where we met will be Vsekhsvyatsky, not Soimonovsky. All still secret, of
course, but the prerevolutionary names are coming back into use. Sverdlovsk
went first, of course, because of that drunken buffoon. Leningrad’s probably
next. The street names, though, that’s what really brings it home. Ah, well.
You know, I never knew you had a brother.”
“Nor did I know you had a son.”
“Oh, yes,” said Lubin, smoothing his tie with paternal pride. “Three, in
fact. One a doctor—he’s studying in Berlin at the moment—one a prosecutor
here in Moscow, and then Sasha, the one after your own heart.”
“After my job, Lubin. I’ve never met the boy. And besides, how would the
son of a KGB man know anything about a heart?”
“All right, all right. Steady on,” said Lubin, his voice tightening but not
rising with irritation. “I see no saints in present company.”
352