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He works in a document archive in Rie, the capital of Kurzeme. It's methodical work; it requires patience and precision. He's well-suited to it. Cataloguing the bureaucratic minutiae of the past is not unlike learning a piano piece - going over the same notes again and again until they form an intuitive pattern.
Rie, with its Gothic cathedrals and the tiny lanterns of goldenberry covering the shores of its rivers, is dissimilar enough from Kronstadt and from Reval that it gives Iakov a measure of peace. He's a stranger in a country that is indifferent to him. These days, the fledgling democracy of Kurzeme has its own concerns; a lone Jewish archivist who betrayed someone a lifetime ago is of little interest to her new generation of artists and politicians.
He learns the Kure language, rents a little cramped apartment on the top floor of a crooked grey stone building in the Old Town, and goes on long walks along the river Vēna. He keeps largely to himself. At times he is lonely, but he figures that he deserves no better.
Instead of happiness, he has habit. It is more than many others got.
Today is a day like any other. He comes to work when it's still dark, making his way along the tracks of a railroad that runs through thousands of miles of snow-covered wormwood meadows all the way to the Venlish border. Just on the outskirts of Rie, there's a rectangular concrete building that houses some 11,000 files, letters, and other memorabilia of the era of the Venlish occupation.
He kicks the front steps a little to get the snow off his boots. Then, smoothing his curly hair with one of his yellow mittens, he enters the foyer.
"Kungs Rubinstein," someone greets him. He raises his head and comes face to face with Uve Medne, his colleague from the research department. She's a slight girl with sharp features and a red headscarf covering a heap of prematurely greying hair. One of her eyes is missing - there's only a slight fissure in her skin and a smattering of eyelashes. A congenital anomaly, she told him on their first meeting, in the studied tone of someone who's had to repeat the same thing a thousand times. It used to startle him a little; now, after a year of working side by side in the same room, he barely even notices the difference.
It has not escaped his notice that Uve wears a simple star of David bracelet on her left wrist. It makes him feel a kind of kinship, but he's never sure how to talk to her about it. So, Uve, you know what halakha says on the subject of lashon hara? About that...
"Kungs Rubinstein," she repeats, and he suddenly notices how serious she sounds. "I need to talk to you."
"Of course," he says, a little bemused by her tone. "Let me just make myself some tea."
Uve follows him as he goes into the kitchen and puts on a kettle. But she doesn't wait for him to pour himself a glass.
"For some time now I've been in correspondence with an archivist from Reval, in Yoldia," she says slowly. Iakov can feel his own back muscles tense uncomfortably. Even the name of the place brings back memories.
There's a rustle of paper behind him, as if Uve is taking something out of her purse. "I mentioned you a few times, merely as a well-qualified colleague, you understand."
"Liels paldies, Uve," he says, even as something in him suddenly realises with a sinking clarity exactly where this is going.
"He said he had something to show me, and today I got this from him in the post. It's from the files of the Venlish Third Section branch in Reval. I... would like you to look at it, Iakov."
He doesn't really need to look. But to oblige her, he sets his glass back on the counter and turns around.
It's a good thing he's put the glass down. He knew what this would be, but somehow his hands are still shaking violently. Tiny beads of sweat trickle through the whorls and loops on his finger pads.
Uve's eye looks at him questioningly - not quite an accusation, but not an absolution, either. When he carefully takes the yellowed sheet of paper from her hands and turns it over, familiar words burn into him like the blow of a whip. "The Third Section of the People’s Komissariat thanks you for the valuable information you have provided regarding the so-called 'Parlevo group'," it reads. "Your services will not be forgotten."
And they haven't been forgotten, Iakov thinks, almost smiling at the irony. Sergeant Zyablikov of the 6th Kronstadt department told him the truth.
He looks at Uve and then back at the page. He feels shame. Sadness.
Relief.