One Night in Winter (44 page)

‘You recognize this man, Comrade Satinov?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who is it?’

‘Colonel Losha Babanava.’

‘Would you accept, Comrade Satinov, that Babanava knows
everything
about you?’

‘No, not everything,’ replied Satinov. Babanava did not know about Dashka. Or did he? ‘But yes, he knows a lot.’

‘Babanava resisted us a little. He’s strong man. But now you must tell what you know, Losha.’

‘I’ve told them everything. Everything. I’m sorry, boss.’ Losha raised his eyes, and Satinov looked into them searchingly. Had Losha really betrayed their friendship? He wouldn’t blame him if he had, but he had to consider what his former bodyguard knew. Could Losha know his only secret: Dashka?

‘You see?’ said Colonel Osipov. ‘So save yourself much pain, Comrade Satinov, and tell us what Losha has already confirmed. Losha?’

A lull. One of the guards tapped Losha’s arm, pointing at a typed paper before him. He seemed to awaken.

‘I heard you say often that our planes were flying coffins for our pilots and that this was Stalin’s fault.’

‘Not true. I never said that. Not once.’

Losha seemed to doze off and was again tapped. This time he had difficulty finding his place on the paper so Colonel Osipov whispered to him. He nodded.

‘You were recruited as a spy for the Americans and Zionists.’

‘Never,’ retorted Satinov. ‘I’ve been a devoted Leninist since I was sixteen.’

‘One more thing, Losha,’ said Colonel Osipov.

‘Yes,’ said Losha, ‘you corruptly . . .’

Satinov held his breath.

‘. . . at the front, when you were at Rokossovsky’s headquarters and Berlin, you corruptly sold medical supplies from the Ministry of Health for personal profit.’

Satinov gazed into Losha’s soul, aware suddenly that they were close to dismantling his entire life. Just a step from Dashka herself. Prussia. Berlin.

‘I know everything,’ said Losha, tears running down his face. ‘You didn’t think I knew of your immoral actions. But I’ve told them – kerboosh – everything!’

Afterwards, Satinov had been taken straight to the station and put in a reserved compartment with two Chekist guards. Now, two weeks later, he had not yet fallen off the precipice, but he was teetering on the edge of an abyss into which he would inevitably draw Tamriko and the children, and perhaps Dashka and hers. The children of Trotsky had all been liquidated; the lovely daughter of Tukhachevsky sent to the Arctic Circle. So far, he was in limbo, neither alive, nor in heaven, nor hell. He was still so enchanted by Dashka that he was utterly numb.

Satinov’s absorption of his own downfall, Genrikh’s role in it and Losha’s betrayals, was constantly interrupted by a replay of his last meeting with Dashka in the Aragvi private room, a memory so vivid that he could smell, feel, taste her pleasure in a rainstorm of images and sensations. Even now, he could see the flash of her white teeth as they came together, panting and laughing, their kisses that tasted of white wine, the smile on her gorgeously crooked mouth, the satin of her bare amber-skinned thighs, and her sitting on him, over him, in the vain hope that a waiter barging into the alcove would never guess that he was deep inside her, demurely covered by her pleated white skirt.

‘You know this just can’t go on,’ she had said afterwards, seemingly as amazed by their behaviour as he was, her pupils dilated with excitement. ‘But don’t look so solemn. Kiss me one more time.’

Now, as these memories fragmented and spun away, he realized that if he didn’t extricate himself from his current predicament, he was well on his way to receiving the nine grams in the back of the neck, and sooner rather than later.

‘
THIS IS FROM
me to wish you a long and happy married life,’ said Senka, handing over a book entitled
Western Philosophy Since 1900.

‘Darling Senka,’ cried Serafima. ‘I’ll treasure this forever.’

She was standing on the platform of the Belorussian Station in a flowery summer dress holding a little cream leather case as jets of steam blew white and feathery out of the train. All along the grimy platform, people were saying goodbyes in a myriad of permutations. Anyone seeing Serafima and her party would have presumed that they were schoolfriends and family despatching her on a holiday – but she feared that she would never see them or Russia again. And however much she was in love with Frank (who was waiting for her at his new posting in Paris) and looking forward to a new life in the West, she realized that the cliché was true: her soul was Russian and that meant she already missed Moscow, the diamond crystals of ice on her windows, the verses on the poet’s plinth in Pushkin Square, the silver birches in the forests, the hidden rushing of water beneath the snows as the thaw came, the ochre and duck-egg blue of old palaces – and that was before she had even looked into the eyes of her friends. The Dorov and Satinov children were all there to see her go. They had shared not just school but the Children’s Case too and so far she had only started to say goodbye to Senka. She was so moved that she could scarcely speak.

‘No offence, but your make-up’s all running,’ said Senka, but he too had started to cry and she took him in her arms, tiny in his Little Professor’s suit, and hugged him.

‘I know, darling Little Professor,’ she said. ‘Do I look awful?’

‘I’m afraid you do look scary, but I don’t care. I will always miss you and think of you as long as I live because you’ve always been my favourite grown-up, Serafimochka. And I will come and see you,’ he said. ‘Please reserve me my usual presidential-imperial suite at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel!’

‘Do you promise?’ she asked.

‘Come on, Senka, you’re upsetting her,’ said Minka, pulling her brother away. ‘Serafimochka, good luck, my dearest friend. Promise to write soon and we’ll all have to visit you.’ She put her arms around Serafima and held her close. ‘To think it all started that day at the Bolshoi and you managed to keep it secret.’

‘The big boys always said you were a mystery,’ Senka laughed. ‘And they were right! I think it’s the biggest romance I’ve ever heard of, greater than all the romances of the medieval troubadours.’

‘Quiet, Senka, or you’ll make me cry again,’ said Serafima.

Her father climbed down from the carriage where he had been stowing her trunk. ‘God, that was heavy,’ said Romashkin, wiping his brow.

‘It’s got all her books in it,’ said Sophia Zeitlin. She was wearing a purple suit with a white mink collar and a wide-brimmed hat veiled in white chiffon. ‘Good luck, my darling.’

‘I’m missing you already,’ said her father. ‘Send us a telegram as soon as you arrive in Paris. Come back and see us soon or we’ll visit you too often!’ He wiped his eyes and Sophia hugged him as she had not done for years. ‘You’d better get in. You leave in five minutes,’ he added.

George took Serafima’s hand and helped her into her carriage where the best seat had been reserved. A uniformed steward asked if she had any cases to be put above the seat.

Senka jumped into the carriage and put his hand in hers.

‘As long as I live,’ he said, ‘I’ll always wish it had been me instead of that American. Am I really too young for you?’

‘Oh Senka,’ Serafima said, laughing through her tears, ‘out you get!’

The train groaned, doors slammed and the carriages creaked and shunted as if they were waking up. Senka and George jumped off the train. A whistle blew. Serafima heard someone calling her name, and looked through the Dorovs and Satinovs to see Andrei Kurbsky running up the platform. She leaned out of the window to say goodbye to him just as the train jerked into movement.

A puff of steam whooshed out as if the train had coughed. And then it was too late for any more farewells as the train moved away, leaving George and the Dorovs and Andrei Kurbsky waving and blowing kisses until she could no longer see them.

Dear Comrade Stalin, honoured father,

I committed grievous errors in my conduct of the aircraft industry. I am sorry that my mistakes and arrogance led to the loss of aircraft and brave pilots. I apologize. As a Bolshevik, I place myself humbly at the feet of the Party and of the Great Leader whose trust I have disappointed and whose wisdom I so need to succeed as a responsible Party worker. On my knees before you, esteemed Josef Vissarionovich, I admit my sins. Please punish me as you will. I am ready to perform any task high or low to help you lead the country and the Communist movement to more victories under your brilliant genius and visionary leadership.

I look to you as a beloved father to teach me. Without this paternal instruction, I am, like all of your assistants, lost and in need of guidance.

Hercules Satinov

It was long after midnight in Samarkand, and the cockroaches in Satinov’s red-walled house were manoeuvring as confidently across the floor as tanks in a Red Square parade.

Satinov put down his pen and called the guards. The letter would be despatched at once to wherever Stalin was.

He just hoped it wasn’t too late.

AS THE TRAIN
raced through the rolling emerald meadows and ravaged battlefields of Belorussia, Serafima sat in her luxury compartment watching birches rising slim on silvery parade, ruined villages, blackened tanks and row upon row of skeletal trucks. Sometimes, starving wild-eyed women, more like scarecrows than people, ran alongside the train, their yellow fingers outstretched for a crumb of food.

Serafima lay back in her seat, imagining Frank waiting for her on the platform at the Gare de l’Est in Paris, executing that rakish two-fingered salute that always melted her heart. Would he bring flowers? What do two people about to embark on a new life say to each other? None of it mattered because they loved each other.

She could not imagine what New York would be like. She knew that, after some months at the Foreign Ministers’ Conference in Paris, Frank would be taking her back to his townhouse in Manhattan. She closed her eyes and tried to replay images from American movies in her mind, but then she stopped. All that mattered was to see her darling Frank, to kiss him, to hold him, to be his wife. She thought back to the moment they had met at the Bolshoi, the first time they made love, the way he traced the snakeskin on her side and made her feel it was the most beautiful talisman of love the world had ever known. She remembered the shots on the bridge that she had thought marked the end of her romance; her arrest by Abakumov; the prison cell in Lubianka; her mother’s insistence that she delay her departure so she could win that part and her own unease as she agreed; the terrible moment her visa was refused; the miracle of how Stalin had looked at Frank and made it all possible.

‘Just fifteen minutes to Minsk,’ said her steward. ‘Would you like
chai
? Lemonade? Juice? Wine?
Champagnski
?’

‘Yes. Tea, please.’

The train was already braking for Minsk as he brought in the tea in a china teapot and served it with a napkin on his arm. He gave her the teacup on a saucer as if, Serafima thought, they were in an English duke’s drawing room.

She glanced out of the window. She saw the wrecked suburbs of Minsk as she drank the tea and noticed a house missing every one of its walls but still containing all the beds and tables, toys and books of its vanished family. Where is that family now? It was her last thought before the world started to whirl in giddily quickening circles, stealing the strength from her muscles. Dimly, she heard her teacup smashing into smithereens as her head dropped forward, and oblivion descended softly over her like a black velvet hood.

Satinov was sleeping when the telephone started to ring. It was a few hours after midnight, but he picked it up anyway.

‘Comrade Satinov?’

‘Yes?’

‘I have Comrade Stalin for you.’

Vibrations on the line twanged and looped along the wires that crossed steppes and deserts.

‘
Bicho!
Boy! Are you busy there?’ It was
him
.

‘Comrade Stalin, Bolshevik greetings.’

‘If I’m not interrupting your work on the sugar harvest, do you have time to talk?’

‘Yes, Comrade Stalin.’

‘Hercules, you’ve been re-elected as a Party Secretary and First Deputy Premier.’

A breath of relief. ‘Thank you, Comrade Stalin.’

‘The Party is always just, Hercules. Comrade Stalin is always fair. Come visit an old man who knows how to grow the best tomatoes in Georgia and we can sing “Suliko”
on the verandah at night. Do you remember?’

‘Yes, yes, of course.’

‘No hard feelings eh?’

‘None.’

‘Too many informers in this country. Too many yesmen! But everything has to be checked out.’

‘Vigilance is our first duty.’

Satinov realized that, although Losha had been tortured, he had not betrayed him. But he
had
known about the affair with Dashka, which was why he had mentioned Prussia and Berlin: to let Satinov know that he knew and would die rather than tell. Satinov swallowed the sudden lump in his throat. He had never had a better friend than Losha. But he knew Losha would never come out alive.

‘So to business,’ said Stalin. ‘Molotov has displayed arrogant insubordination. Go to Moscow. Deliver a harsh reprimand. And one other thing. You curate Health?’

‘If you wish it, Comrade Stalin.’

‘We need a new minister. That woman doctor didn’t work out – they’re checking her out. And that husband of hers, what a bungler. There’s a plane on its way.’

The phone went dead and Satinov remained half sitting, half crouching on the edge of the bed, staring into the darkness, absorbing this news. ‘That woman doctor . . . checking her out.’ The spell cast by Stalin’s favour was disturbed by his confused anxiety for Dashka. What had he done?

Skidding tyres and slamming doors; the driveway was illuminated and men in uniforms were turning on the lights in the house. Colonel Osipov, who had informed him of his downfall a few weeks earlier, came into the bedroom.