A Very Private Plot by William F. Buckley

pettifoggery. From time to time he would descend on one of the dozen professors who served under him and catechize him on historical rectitude, as defined the day before by the official press of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. He was drawn to do this by random reading in the papers of the graduate students, whom he would also chastise.
    And yes, it transpired that Viktor was today’s aberrant. Chairman Shalamov had asked to see papers done for the history class devoted to the events of 1917, beginning with the abdication of the Czar and going to the arrival of Lenin at the Finland Station in what was then Petrograd. Shalamov was clutching Pletnev’s paper, and his disfavor was choleric. Pletnev had written that Trotsky’s surreptitious help had been indispensable in arranging safe passage for Lenin through Germany. Now Shalamov was screaming that Trotsky had only pretended to be cooperative, that in fact he had all along been secretly scheming to take power from Lenin for himself, resulting—as of course everybody now knew—in his exposure and subsequent exile, and, ultimately, in his assassination, in Mexico, by a valiant Bolshevik who, to be sure, was operating on his own initiative.
    When Shalamov engaged in such exorcisms there was nothing for the errant student to do except to wait, standing, until dismissed. Shalamov did not pause to ask where Pletnev had got his historical misimpression. He disdained to acknowledge that a perverted version of history, contradicting the correct version, was anywhere extant. It was manifestly a parthenogenic creation of the diseased imagination of the delinquent student.
    After a half hour or so, it was over. Pletnev was told to go back to work.
    He walked across the campus listlessly, moving inertially in the direction of the library, where he might use an hour or two before dinner. He seethed with contempt for Shalamov, in fact for the whole wretched university. He’d have loved to rise from his chair and tell the chairman that he, Shalamov, was a disgrace to the historical discipline, a contemptible courtier to the whims of Kremlin intrigue—Viktor stopped in mid-campus and added aloud to his platonic tirade, “ And on top of everything else, Shalamov, you are a corpulent visual mess and I would be ever so grateful, as would everyone you encounter, if from now on you would wear a face mask .” Viktor broke out in the special laughter of retributive satisfaction, and suddenly felt much better.
    Needless to say, he would suppress his feelings, as he had so many times done against the entire communist fraternity, of which Shalamov was only one, noisome example. What mattered most, he knew, was to get his advanced degree. And then.
    And then! Perhaps and then, one glorious day, to travel. If ever he found himself outside the borders of the Soviet Union, Viktor knew he would never come back.
    He passed through the main entrance to the library, intending to spend an hour in the periodical room, when suddenly he thought to pause to see whether the Chambers book Trimov had called for had been returned by the faculty member who had taken it out. He went to the card catalogue in the foreign books section and presented the request card to the clerk at the desk.
    In a few minutes he was handed the volume. He took it to a desk and opened it at the back to trace its recent movements. The card attached to the back cover listed the dates on which the book had been consulted by a student and the dates on which faculty had withdrawn the book from the library. To his surprise there was no notation of the book’s recent withdrawal by faculty from the premises. And it had been called down for examination in the library only once during the month of September. He read the librarian’s notation: “Sept 21 ’85, N. Trimov.”
    Pletnev was perplexed. Nikolai had told him the book had been absent from the library and for that reason he hadn’t