Edge of Eternity (12 page)

That was the punishment Daniil had mentioned a moment ago.

Opotkin nodded thoughtfully, as if considering this idea; though Dimka was sure he would eagerly comply with any ‘suggestion’ from General Peshkov.

Daniil said: ‘Perhaps a foreign posting. She speaks German and English.’

This was an exaggeration, Dimka knew. Tania had studied both languages in school, but that was not the same as speaking them. Daniil was trying to save her from banishment to some remote Soviet region.

Daniil added: ‘And she could still write features for my department. I’d rather not lose her to news – she’s too good.’

Opotkin looked dubious. ‘We can’t send her to London or Bonn. That would seem like a reward.’

It was true. Assignments in the capitalist countries were prized. The living allowances were colossal and, even though they did not buy as much as in the USSR, Soviet citizens still lived much better in the West than at home.

Volodya said: ‘East Berlin, perhaps, or Warsaw.’

Opotkin nodded. A move to another Communist country was more like a punishment.

Volodya said: ‘I’m glad we’ve been able to resolve this.’

Opotkin said to Dimka: ‘I’m having a party on Saturday evening. Perhaps you would like to come?’

Dimka guessed this would seal the deal. He nodded. ‘Tania told me about it,’ he said with false enthusiasm. ‘We’ll both be there. Thank you.’

Opotkin beamed.

Daniil said: ‘I happen to know of a post in a Communist country that’s vacant right now. We need someone there urgently. She could go tomorrow.’

‘Where’s that?’ said Dimka.

‘Cuba.’

Opotkin, now in a sunny frame of mind, said: ‘That might be acceptable.’

It was certainly better than Kazakhstan, Dimka thought.

Mets reappeared in the lobby with Tania beside him. Dimka’s heart lurched: she looked pale and scared, but unharmed. Mets spoke with a mixture of deference and defiance, like a dog that barks because it is frightened. ‘Allow me to suggest that young Tania stays away from poetry readings in future,’ he said.

Uncle Volodya looked as if he could strangle the fool, but he put on a smile. ‘Very sound advice, I’m sure.’

They all went out. Darkness had fallen. Dimka said to Tania: ‘I’ve got my bike – I’ll take you home.’

‘Yes, please,’ she said. She obviously wanted to talk to Dimka.

Uncle Volodya could not read her mind as Dimka could, and he said: ‘Let me take you in my car – you look too shaken for a motorcycle ride.’

To Volodya’s surprise, Tania said: ‘Thank you, Uncle, but I’ll go with Dimka.’

Volodya shrugged and got into a waiting Zil limousine. Daniil and Opotkin said goodbye.

As soon as they were all out of earshot, Tania turned to Dimka with a frantic look. ‘Did they say anything about Vasili Yenkov?’

‘Yes. They said you were with him. Is that true?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, shit. But he’s not your boyfriend, is he?’

‘No. Do you know what happened to him?’

‘He had five copies of
Dissidence
in his pocket, so he’s not getting out of the Lubyanka soon, even if he has friends in high places.’

‘Hell! Do you think they will investigate him?’

‘I’m sure of it. They’ll want to know whether he merely hands out
Dissidence
, or actually produces it, which would be much more serious.’

‘Will they search his flat?’

‘They would be remiss if they didn’t. Why – what will they find there?’

She looked around, but no one was near. All the same she lowered her voice. ‘The typewriter on which
Dissidence
is written.’

‘Then I’m glad that Vasili isn’t your boyfriend, because he’s going to spend the next twenty-five years in Siberia.’

‘Don’t say that!’

Dimka frowned. ‘You’re not in love with him, I can tell . . . but you’re not wholly indifferent to him, either.’

‘Look, he’s a brave man, and a wonderful poet, but our relationship is not a romance. I’ve never even kissed him. He’s one of those men who has to have lots of different women.’

‘Like my friend Valentin.’ Dimka’s room-mate at university, Valentin Lebedev, had been a real Lothario.

‘Exactly like Valentin, yes.’

‘So . . . how much do you care if they search Vasili’s apartment and find this typewriter?’

‘A lot. We produced
Dissidence
together. I wrote today’s edition.’

‘Shit. I was afraid of that.’ Now Dimka knew the secret she had been keeping from him for the past year.

Tania said: ‘We have to go to the apartment, now, and take that typewriter and get rid of it.’

Dimka took a step back from her. ‘Absolutely not. Forget it.’

‘We must!’

‘No. I’d risk anything for you, and I might risk a lot for someone you loved, but I’m not going to stick my neck out for this guy. We could all end up in fucking Siberia.’

‘I’ll do it on my own, then.’

Dimka frowned, trying to evaluate the risks of different actions. ‘Who else knows about you and Vasili?’

‘No one. We were careful. I made sure I wasn’t followed when I went to his place. We never met in public.’

‘So the KGB investigation will not link you to him.’

She hesitated, and at that point he knew they were in deep trouble.

‘What?’ he said.

‘It depends how thorough the KGB are.’

‘Why?’

‘This morning, when I went to Vasili’s flat, there was a girl there – Varvara.’

‘Oh, fuck.’

‘She was just going out. She doesn’t know my name.’

‘But, if the KGB show her photographs of people arrested at Mayakovsky Square today, will she pick you out?’

Tania looked distraught. ‘She gave me a real up-and-down look, assuming I might be a rival. Yes, she would know my face again.’

‘Oh, God, then we have to get the typewriter. Without that, they’ll think Vasili is no more than a distributor of
Dissidence
, so they probably won’t track down his every casual girlfriend, especially as there seem to be a lot. You may get away with it. But if they find the typewriter, you’re finished.’

‘I’ll do it alone. You’re right, I can’t put you in this much danger.’

‘But I can’t leave you in this much danger,’ he said. ‘What’s the address?’

She told him.

‘Not too far,’ he said. ‘Get on the bike.’ He climbed on and kicked the engine into life.

Tania hesitated, then got on behind him.

Dimka switched on the headlight and they pulled away.

As he drove, he wondered if the KGB might already be at Vasili’s place, searching the apartment. It was a possibility, he decided, but unlikely. Assuming they had arrested forty or fifty people, it would take them most of the night to do initial interviews, get names and addresses, and decide whom to prioritize. All the same, it would be wise to be cautious.

When he reached the address Tania had given him he drove past it without slowing down. The street lights showed a grand nineteenth-century house. All such buildings were now either converted to government offices or divided into apartments. There were no cars parked outside and no leather-coated KGB men lurking at the entrance. He drove all around the block without seeing anything suspicious. Then he parked a couple of hundred yards from the door.

They got off the bike. A woman walking a dog said: ‘Good evening,’ and passed on. They went into the building.

Its lobby had once been an imposing hall. Now a lone electric bulb revealed a marble floor that was chipped and scratched, and a grand staircase with several balusters missing from the banister.

They went up the stairs. Tania took out a key and opened the apartment door. They stepped inside and closed the door.

Tania led the way into the living room. A grey cat observed them warily. Tania took a large box from a cupboard. It was half full of cat-food pellets. She rummaged inside and pulled out a typewriter in a cover. Then she withdrew some sheets of stencil paper.

She ripped up the sheets of paper, threw them in the fireplace, and put a match to them. Watching them burn, Dimka said angrily: ‘Why the hell do you risk everything for the sake of an empty protest?’

‘We live in a brutal tyranny,’ she said. ‘We have to do something to keep hope alive.’

‘We live in a society that is developing Communism,’ Dimka rejoined. ‘It’s difficult and we have problems. But you should help solve those problems instead of inflaming discontent.’

‘How can you have solutions if no one is allowed to talk about the problems?’

‘In the Kremlin we talk about the problems all the time.’

‘And the same few narrow-minded men always decide not to make any major changes.’

‘They’re not all narrow-minded. Some are working hard to change things. Give us time.’

‘The revolution was forty years ago. How much time do you need before you finally admit that Communism is a failure?’

The sheets in the fireplace had quickly burned to black ashes. Dimka turned away in frustration. ‘We’ve had this argument so many times. We need to get out of here.’ He picked up the typewriter.

Tania scooped up the cat and they went out.

As they were leaving, a man with a briefcase came into the lobby. He nodded as he passed them on the stairs. Dimka hoped the light was too dim for him to have seen their faces properly.

Outside the door, Tania put the cat down on the pavement. ‘You’re on your own now, Mademoiselle,’ she said.

The cat walked off disdainfully.

They hurried along the street to the corner, Dimka trying ineffectually to conceal the typewriter under his jacket. The moon had risen, to his dismay, and they were clearly visible. They reached the motorcycle.

Dimka handed her the typewriter. ‘How are we going to get rid of it?’ he whispered.

‘The river?’

He racked his brains, then recalled a spot on the river bank where he and some fellow students had gone, a couple of times, to stay up all night drinking vodka. ‘I know somewhere.’

They got on the bike and Dimka drove out of the city centre towards the south. The place he had in mind was on the outskirts of the city, but that was all to the good: they were less likely to be noticed.

He drove fast for twenty minutes and pulled up outside the Nikolo-Perervinsky Monastery.

The ancient institution, with its magnificent cathedral, was now a ruin, disused for decades and stripped of its treasures. It was located on a neck of land between the main southbound railway line and the Moskva river. The fields around it were being turned into building sites for new high-rise apartment buildings, but at night the neighbourhood was deserted. There was no one in sight.

Dimka wheeled the bike off the road into a clump of trees and parked it on its stand. Then he led Tania through the copse to the ruined monastery. The derelict buildings were eerily white in the moonlight. The onion domes of the cathedral were falling in, but the green tiled roofs of the monastery buildings were mostly intact. Dimka could not shake the feeling that the ghosts of generations of monks were watching him through the smashed windows.

He headed west across a swampy field to the river.

Tania said: ‘How do you know about this place?’

‘We came here when we were students. We used to get drunk and watch the sun rise over the water.’

They reached the edge of the river. This was a sluggish channel in a wide bend, and the water was placid in the moonlight. But Dimka knew it was deep enough for the purpose.

Tania hesitated. ‘What a waste,’ she said.

Dimka shrugged. ‘Typewriters are expensive.’

‘It’s not just money. It’s a dissident voice, an alternative view of the world, a different way of thinking. A typewriter is freedom of speech.’

‘Then you’re better off without it.’

She handed it to him.

He moved the roller rightwards to its maximum extension, giving himself a handle by which to hold the machine. ‘Here goes,’ he said. He swung his arm back, then with all his might he flung the typewriter out over the river. It did not go far, but it landed with a satisfying splash and immediately disappeared from sight.

They both stood and watched the ripples in the moonlight.

‘Thank you,’ said Tania. ‘Especially as you don’t believe in what I’m doing.’

He put his arm around her shoulders, and together they walked away.

7

George Jakes was in a sour mood. His arm still hurt like hell although it was encased in plaster and supported by a sling around his neck. He had lost his coveted job before starting it: just as Greg had predicted, the law firm of Fawcett Renshaw had withdrawn its offer after he appeared in the newspapers as an injured Freedom Rider. Now he did not know what he was going to do with the rest of his life.

The graduation ceremony, called Commencement, was held in Harvard University’s Old Yard, a grassy plaza surrounded by gracious red-brick university buildings. Members of the Board of Overseers wore top hats and cutaway tailcoats. Honorary degrees were presented to the British Foreign Secretary, a chinless aristocrat called Lord Home, and to the oddly named McGeorge Bundy, one of President Kennedy’s White House team. Despite his mood, George felt a mild sadness at leaving Harvard. He had been here seven years, first as an undergraduate then as a law student. He had met some extraordinary people, and made a few good friends. He had passed every exam he took. He had dated many women and slept with three. He had got drunk once, and hated the feeling of being out of control.

But today he was too angry to indulge in nostalgia. After the mob violence in Anniston, he had expected a strong response from the Kennedy administration. Jack Kennedy had presented himself to the American people as a liberal, and had won the black vote. Bobby Kennedy was Attorney General, the highest law enforcement officer in the land. George had expected Bobby to say, loud and clear, that the constitution of the United States was in force in Alabama the same as everywhere else.

He had not.

No one had been arrested for attacking the Freedom Riders. Neither the local police nor the FBI had investigated any of the many violent crimes that had been committed. In America in 1961, while the police looked on, white racists could attack civil rights protestors, break their bones, try to burn them to death – and get away with it.