The Commissariat of Enlightenment by Ken Kalfus Page B

attributed to her mother’s native eccentricity the way in which she had stormed into the house and then as abruptly stormed out. Years later Sasha would at last see the news-reel; in Paris a followerof the Count, in the careless assumption that she would be pleased, would arrange a private midday screening in a cinema near Montparnasse. By that time so much would have happened to her, to her family, and to her country that her only observable response would be a slow, rueful shake of her head.
    Gribshin also would have occasion to revisit this scene in later years, also in a private showing, in a Kremlin ballroom designated for his use. His expression would turn contemplative: this was the moment that had firmly set his life’s trajectory. As the Countess passed out of the film frame and new images from Astapovo filled the screen, he would gaze above his head at the trail of cigar smoke rising through the projector’s beam of light. In this light, the smoke would appear as substantial as concrete.
    In this room, you wouldn’t hear the machinery of government at work: telephones sang, orders were rasped, girl secretaries tattooed the marble floors of the corridors, typewriters rattled, pens scraped against documents, papers ruffled, vaults slammed, men laughed with dead seriousness, soldiers goosestepped in the courtyard, the engines of military vehicles chuffed, and here was only the click-click-click of the film projector, which in Gribshin’s ears (but the ears would no longer belong to a man known as Gribshin) was the true sound of power. Click-click-click: light was molded to human purpose. In the screening room, you wouldn’t hear the gunshots in the basement.
    “You’re a hoodlum, that’s all, another circus carny.” The drunk, Khaitover, had returned just as the circle around the cinematography camera was breaking up.
    Gribshin smiled thinly. “Sir?”
    “This is a fraud. It’s clear now. You intend to put out that the Count said farewell to his wife; perhaps even that he gave her hisblessing or control of his copyright. Something like that. It’s a sham.”
    “So write an article,” Gribshin said, not smiling at all now. He seemed to be entirely serious. Without a word to either Gribshin or Meyer, the Countess had returned to her coach. “Expose Pathé Frères. Make a scandal.”
    “I will,” Khaitover promised. And then he soberly considered the confidence displayed on the Russian’s face. “But the cinema audience will watch it happen. They’ll see the satisfied expression on her ugly mug. They’ll make an investment in your illusion.”
    At that moment Meyer doused the stage lights. As the two men were plunged into darkness they were joined by the Caucasian stranger. Gribshin at first believed that the Caucasian was coming to his rescue, in the event the reporter struck him. Then he realized that he was simply listening in on their argument. A smile played across the stranger’s features. Khaitover didn’t notice him.
    Gribshin said, “You’ll set history right.”
    Khaitover squinted, as if trying to see history itself. There was no jeer running beneath Gribshin’s declaration; one might even detect in it the earnest hope that Khaitover would succeed.
    “I understand what you’re doing,” Khaitover said. “I don’t understand why. What does Pathé have to gain by this deception? Future access to the Countess? Exclusive rights to cinema shows of the Count’s works? Has she bribed you?”
    All of these were reasonable hypotheses. The last was not true, of course. Nor had the boons predicted by Khaitover been contemplated beforehand, but, Gribshin reflected, they were indeed possible outcomes of his cinematographic sleight-of-hand. Khaitover’s accusations convinced him that he had performed anadvantageous service on Pathé’s behalf. Gribshin was and always would be intensely loyal to whomever employed him.
    He was moved now by an impulse to speak without guile before the