pressed creases of his pants. His gaze focused on the words typed on the page. He read through them several times, murmuring under his breath, tasting them, approving them. The narrative still felt fresh, and his collar started to feel a little looser. Cheered, he seized the first page of the manuscript, walked to the middle of the room, imagined an audience, and quietly read the first paragraph:
“What unbelievable acts the Estonian evildoers are capable of, what horrifying crimes! The pages of this investigation will reveal fascist conspiracies and chilling acts of murder. You will read evidence of bestial forms of torture that the Hitlerists gleefully seized upon, with pleasure, and without shame. This investigation will cry out for justice and leave no stone unturned in exposing crimes intended to exterminate the Soviet people.”
When he got to the end of the paragraph, he was as breathless as the text itself. He thought this was a good sign. The beginning was always the most important; it had to be expressive, to cast a spell on the reader. This paragraph did, and it was also written according to Office guidelines. The text had to distinguish itself from previous books dealing with the Hitlerist occupation. He had three years—that was how long the Office had given him to research and write the book. It was an unusual gesture of confidence. He had even been given the new Optima to take home, to his own desk, but this time he wasn’t writing a small piece of counterpropaganda or a reader for young people about the friendship of nations or a didactic fairy tale for children, but a work that would changethe world—a work about the greater fatherland and the West. The beginning ought to take your breath away.
It was Comrade Porkov’s idea, and Comrade Porkov was a practical man. He liked books. He liked making use of them. And book buyers paid the costs of operations. He liked films for the same reasons. And his words still warmed Parts in his moments of doubt, although Parts knew that Porkov had just been flattering him. He had said that he’d recommended Parts because he knew of no greater magician with words.
The revelation of the project had been a great moment. They’d been sitting in the safe house that they used for their weekly meetings, going over the situation with Parts’s network of correspondents, and Parts had had no idea that Porkov had any other plans up his sleeve, that in a single moment Parts’s priority would no longer be his wide correspondence with the West, but something completely different. In the middle of the meeting Porkov simply said that now was the time. When Parts confusedly asked what he was talking about, Porkov answered:
“You, Comrade Parts, are going to be an author.”
HE WAS OFFERED a large advance—three thousand rubles. Half the money would belong to Porkov because of the work he’d done on Parts’s behalf, and because he’d chosen the materials the work would be based on. The documents were now locked in Parts’s cabinet—two briefcases filled with books about the Hitlerist occupation, as well as publications from Western countries that had never been seen by Soviet eyes. Parts had gone through the material quickly and deduced what general direction he should take. The book would have to show that the Soviet Union was exceedingly interested in solving the crimes of the Hitlerists, in fact more interested than the Western countries were. It was clear that a different idea had been propagated in the West. The instructions to use adjectives like “just” and “democratic” to describe the Soviet Union as often as possible made it evident that this was not how the West saw them.
It was also clear that another main target would be Estonians abroad. A great deal of the material he’d been given was from the impressively productive pens of refugees. The Politburo was obviously alarmed by their stridence and their opinions about the Soviet Union. They paintedthe
“What unbelievable acts the Estonian evildoers are capable of, what horrifying crimes! The pages of this investigation will reveal fascist conspiracies and chilling acts of murder. You will read evidence of bestial forms of torture that the Hitlerists gleefully seized upon, with pleasure, and without shame. This investigation will cry out for justice and leave no stone unturned in exposing crimes intended to exterminate the Soviet people.”
When he got to the end of the paragraph, he was as breathless as the text itself. He thought this was a good sign. The beginning was always the most important; it had to be expressive, to cast a spell on the reader. This paragraph did, and it was also written according to Office guidelines. The text had to distinguish itself from previous books dealing with the Hitlerist occupation. He had three years—that was how long the Office had given him to research and write the book. It was an unusual gesture of confidence. He had even been given the new Optima to take home, to his own desk, but this time he wasn’t writing a small piece of counterpropaganda or a reader for young people about the friendship of nations or a didactic fairy tale for children, but a work that would changethe world—a work about the greater fatherland and the West. The beginning ought to take your breath away.
It was Comrade Porkov’s idea, and Comrade Porkov was a practical man. He liked books. He liked making use of them. And book buyers paid the costs of operations. He liked films for the same reasons. And his words still warmed Parts in his moments of doubt, although Parts knew that Porkov had just been flattering him. He had said that he’d recommended Parts because he knew of no greater magician with words.
The revelation of the project had been a great moment. They’d been sitting in the safe house that they used for their weekly meetings, going over the situation with Parts’s network of correspondents, and Parts had had no idea that Porkov had any other plans up his sleeve, that in a single moment Parts’s priority would no longer be his wide correspondence with the West, but something completely different. In the middle of the meeting Porkov simply said that now was the time. When Parts confusedly asked what he was talking about, Porkov answered:
“You, Comrade Parts, are going to be an author.”
HE WAS OFFERED a large advance—three thousand rubles. Half the money would belong to Porkov because of the work he’d done on Parts’s behalf, and because he’d chosen the materials the work would be based on. The documents were now locked in Parts’s cabinet—two briefcases filled with books about the Hitlerist occupation, as well as publications from Western countries that had never been seen by Soviet eyes. Parts had gone through the material quickly and deduced what general direction he should take. The book would have to show that the Soviet Union was exceedingly interested in solving the crimes of the Hitlerists, in fact more interested than the Western countries were. It was clear that a different idea had been propagated in the West. The instructions to use adjectives like “just” and “democratic” to describe the Soviet Union as often as possible made it evident that this was not how the West saw them.
It was also clear that another main target would be Estonians abroad. A great deal of the material he’d been given was from the impressively productive pens of refugees. The Politburo was obviously alarmed by their stridence and their opinions about the Soviet Union. They paintedthe
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