09INTERLUDE TWO

Maxim. Moscow, 1937

Maxim is forty-four, a railroad engineer, and for eleven nights now he has slept in his clothes.

They haven’t come for him yet. But they took Steinberg from the fourth floor on Tuesday, and Kovalyov from the planning department on Friday. The courtyard falls asleep early: no one wants to see the cars pulling up to the building.

Maxim picks through his life like an investigator reviewing someone else’s case. Here, in ’29, he praised a report by a man later declared a saboteur. Here, his brother married the daughter of a former shopkeeper. Here, at a meeting, his own applause wasn’t loud enough.

He committed no crime. But in a system where anyone can be declared guilty, innocence is no defense. Worse—it’s suspect. “If you feel no guilt, you haven’t disarmed before the Party.” Admit guilt—you’re an enemy. Deny it—you’re a stubborn enemy. A door without a handle on either side.

And here’s what happens to Maxim on the twelfth night—what happened to thousands then: he begins searching for guilt on his own. Meticulously, like an engineer. Because if guilt exists, then the world has logic. Then those taken were taken for something, and you might calculate the formula to avoid repeating the mistake. Admitting “I am somehow to blame” is terrifying—but admitting “this can happen to anyone, for no reason at all” is unbearable.

Guilt offers the illusion of control. Maxim’s psyche strikes this bargain without a second thought.

He will live to old age—the black car never comes for him after all. But the formula “if I feel anxious, I must be to blame for something; I just have to figure out what” stays with him forever. He passes it on to his son—not in words, but in tone of voice. His son passes it to his grandson.

The grandson will also be named Maxim. We will meet him in a therapist’s office—eighty years and one chapter from now.