The Conductor (19 page)
Nikolai approached the nearest official. ‘Where do the unaccompanied children leave from?’
The woman glanced at her list. ‘Second platform.’ She wiped a drip off her nose with her sleeve.
Sonya looked at her with distaste and followed Nikolai to the inner side of the platform, sticking closely to the railings, touching every second bar with her left hand.
‘There’s the meeting point,’ he said. ‘I can see it. Hold onto my jacket, now.’ He began forging through the crowd of children; it was like wading through waist-deep water.
Sonya dragged behind him. ‘You mustn’t —’ she began, but her voice was lost in the blast of a train whistle.
‘What did you say, Mouse?’ Nikolai tried not to look at a group of mothers fighting over a dropped packet of food.
‘You mustn’t let anyone else touch the cello.’ Although the heat was growing, she looked frozen, her mouth like a small crack across ice.
‘Of course I won’t!’ He tried to concentrate on what she was saying, but already he could see children being hoisted onto the train.
At the end of the last carriage, another woman was ticking her way down a list. ‘Name?’ she rapped out.
‘Sonya Nikolayevska,’ said Nikolai, peering at the clipboard, pointing. The woman moved the clipboard away. ‘Yes, Number 78. Is she wearing her number?’
‘A number! She doesn’t need to wear a number. She’s perfectly capable of speaking for herself.’
‘I’m nine years and five weeks old.’ Sonya’s voice rang out over the shrieking and crying. ‘I’ve been able to write my name since I was three.’
The woman ignored her. ‘They all need numbers or they can’t get on.’
Sonya’s face flared with hope. ‘I don’t have one! Can we go home?’
Nikolai’s stomach lurched; part of him wanted nothing more. ‘I wasn’t informed about the need to label my child,’ he said, looking directly into the woman’s eyes. ‘In any case, it’s irrelevant. She’s going to be met by her cousins in Pskov.’
Don’t argue with me
, he thought,
or I’ll snatch that clipboard out of your fat bureaucratic hands and smash it over your head
.
Angrily, the woman crossed off Sonya’s name. ‘It’s up to you. If anything happens to Number 78, it won’t be my fault.’
‘What will happen to me?’ Sonya grabbed Nikolai’s hand. ‘Will I be bombed? Will I be … killed?’ Her palm was slippery with fear.
Nikolai was no longer shocked at the anger he felt; it was touch and go whether he’d punch the woman in her officious mouth. Instead, he bent down and smoothed Sonya’s hair off her hot face. ‘Nothing bad will happen to you,’ he assured her. ‘You can take off your coat as soon as you’re on the train. It won’t be long now.’
Sonya leaned into him for a few seconds, breathing in, breathing out. ‘The Germans will be sent packing,’ she recited, as she and Nikolai had practised, ‘and Leningrad will be peaceful again, and I can come home.’
‘Exactly,’ he said, but his stomach was churning with guilt and terror.
A whistle blew as if signalling the start of a race. Sonya looked nervously over her shoulder. ‘Does that mean I have to get on?’
‘I’m afraid so.’ Nikolai’s heart was beating so hard he felt sick. ‘Got your … got your bag?’
The clipboard woman tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Get her on at once! The train will leave in one minute.’
Suddenly, Sonya was gripping Nikolai’s arm and tears were streaming down her face. ‘Please, Papa, don’t make me go! I’ll help more around the house, I’ll dig in the fields with Aunt Tanya. Please don’t make me go!’
‘My darling. My Mouse.’ Nikolai could hardly speak. ‘But I might be leaving Leningrad myself, you know that. It’s better for us both to be safe, so we can meet up later on.’
‘When?’ Sonya was crying so hard that her face and hands were wet, and she clung to Nikolai’s arm as if it were a life-buoy. ‘When?’
‘Get her on!’ The woman seized Sonya’s left arm and shook it. ‘Stop crying! Do you want to be left behind?’
Nikolai tried to free himself from Sonya’s grip, while the woman grasped her around the waist. For a moment the three of them were
caught in a bizarre tug-of-war: the woman pulling Sonya backwards, Nikolai pulling away, and Sonya held tight between them.
With the final blast of the whistle, she gave up. Her arms and legs went limp, and the official was left holding a bundle of red coat and jumbled limbs. ‘About time!’ She heaved Sonya up the steps, and handed her and her suitcase to an open-faced woman who drew her back into the crowded corridor. The door slammed, the train screeched.
Nikolai was shaking all over. Moving to one side, he tried to catch a glimpse of Sonya’s red coat through the slatted windows. A mass of tousled heads and flushed faces — but none of them belonged to Sonya. The train had swallowed her whole.
He couldn’t wait for the final moment, the grinding, roaring, smoking departure. He turned, trampling on feet. ‘Sorry. Sorry.’ Pushing through the crying women, he made for the exit. Once in the street, he stood with his hands on his knees, gasping for breath.
On the walk home, it felt as if gashes were opening in the soles of his feet and his strength and endurance were pouring away through them. By the time he reached the apartment, he could hardly stand. He sank down on the living-room floor, then crawled along the wall to Sonya’s door. Turning his head carefully, as if the movement might shake his eyes from their sockets, he looked into the room, and the hairs on his arms stood on end.
All her possessions had been taken off their shelves and out of their cupboards, and were lying in precise rows on the floor. Overshoes and slippers stood with their toes pointed towards the door, as if awaiting marching orders. Pens, pencils and rulers were arranged in lines like surgical instruments. Dresses and pinafores had been folded and stacked in piles of exactly the same height.
Nikolai pulled himself up and stumbled into the room. He trod on something soft: the body of a cloth doll, which had fallen forwards out of its line. The hair on its china head had been cut short — so short that patches of naked white porcelain were visible. He turned to the toys ranged against the wall. Every one of Sonya’s treasured dolls had had its hair hacked off. Beside the last shorn doll there was a paper bag with a neatly taped top. In small block letters were the words, ‘HAIR. PLEASE DISPOSE OF.’
Holding the bag close, as if it contained some last explanatory note, he blundered to the window. The sun struck the bronze weathercock across the street and ricocheted back through the glass. Shielding his
eyes, he pulled down the blind so the room was plunged into semi-darkness. He lay down on Sonya’s bed, pulling his knees up to his chest like a dying man.
How could he not have seen what was happening? He remembered incidents from the past weeks. Sonya turning a key several times in the lock, then running back up the stairs to check once more that she’d locked the door. Sonya walking in a crab-like way along a street, touching a fence or a railing every ten yards with one hand. Sonya insisting on crossing the canal at every second bridge, even if it was partially blocked with wood and twisted wire. ‘We can’t get over that,’ Nikolai had objected, looking at the fortifications on the bridge over the Griboydov Canal. ‘We must,’ she’d insisted. ‘We must walk on the other side of the canal for the next two bridges, and then cross back again.’
He clenched his fist under the pillow, thinking of the large, chaotic Ustvolskaya household in Pskov. Four cousins under the age of ten, rampaging through life, breaking china, bouncing on chairs, throwing belongings in untidy heaps. What would happen to Sonya, with her obsessive rituals and painstaking systems built up to control an uncontrollable world?
‘Sonya, forgive me,’ he whispered. ‘Forgive me.’
Out in the living room, the clock ratcheted on. With every passing minute the pistons of a train hammered out unending circles, carrying her further away from Leningrad, further from her home and her self-made safety. From the street came the frenzied sounds of a city preparing for war; beside the bedroom door lay the long silent body of the cello. Nikolai closed his eyes, but tears slid under his eyelids and ran, hot and heavy, into Sonya’s pillow.
E
lias walked the length of Nevsky Prospect without stopping. Heavy tanks rumbled over the patched streets, instructions blared from speakers on the corners of buildings, defence troops poured through the centre of the city. But Elias felt both untouched and untouchable, protected by a brand-new confidence.
Was this how other people felt? If so, it was wonderful! To see the sun glance off the burnished dome of Kazan Cathedral and not wince; to pass a group of men and not look for derision in their eyes.
I’m normal
, he thought, with a lurch of his heart. Although he tried not to whistle, occasional snatches from the
Eroica
Symphony escaped from his lips.
After all, it wasn’t as if anyone had
died
. No one had been snatched from their homes by midnight henchmen or bayoneted in their beds by German soldiers. They were simply being sent to Siberia, which many would see as a lucky escape —
Yet, if he were strictly truthful, he felt like the lucky one. Leningrad seemed to belong to him in a way it never had before. If only his father were alive to see him now, striding the greatest street of Russia’s most cultural city, marching like a man, walking on air all the way to the entrance of the Radio Hall.
Inside, he found a few orchestra members already in the rehearsal room, their instruments leaning against chairs. They nodded when he entered — but no one seemed to notice the glow that hung about his head, nor to realise that, since they’d last seen him, he’d been transformed into a braver and more engaged human being. Slapping his briefcase
down on the desk, flinging his jacket over a chair, he couldn’t wait for a decorous entry into the conversation.
‘Have you heard the news?’ he blurted.
‘What news might that be? Seems as if something important is happening every minute of the day at present.’ Andrei Kholodov was a quiet man whose drooping moustache gave him a permanent air of melancholy, even when smiling. Today, however, he wasn’t smiling. Holding his clarinet close, he related his own news: that his Jewish neighbours had been arrested that morning. ‘Even the children were taken. Do you know what the supposed crime was?’
Elias bit his lip. This was not the pleasant scene he’d been imagining. ‘What was their crime?’ he asked nervously.
‘They’d asked for evacuation permits, fearing what the Nazis might do to them. And now they’ve got it from our own side. Accused of spreading rumours that the Germans will defeat us, so thrown into a cell.’
Elias’s sense of well-being was leaking out of him. ‘The children as well? I thought all Leningrad children were meant to be removed to safety.’
‘The Jews are convenient scapegoats for everyone. Guilty as charged, from the cradle to the grave.’ Kholodov picked up his clarinet and removed the reed, placing it on his tongue as if he no longer wished to talk about the fate of eight-year-old Irene whom he’d recently taught to play the C major scale without squeaking.
The room was filling up, but the atmosphere was subdued. For a moment Elias considered holding off with his own news. He opened his briefcase, shuffled a few papers about and cleared his throat. But his excitement got the better of him. ‘I also have some news,’ he said loudly. ‘But not about unfortunate Jews or official errors of judgement. My news is about our friend Mravinsky and his Philharmonic Orchestra.’
Blank faces turned towards him. The only sound was a fly buzzing against the windowpane. ‘The entire Philharmonia is being evacuated to Siberia.’ He tried for a flourishing delivery. ‘Which means that the Radio Orchestra will now be the cultural backbone of Leningrad. We alone will carry the autumn season!’
The only sound was a scornful laugh from the doorway. Elias stiffened; he didn’t need to look around.
‘You consider that a
privilege
?’ Alexander swayed into the room. It was not yet midday but the vodka fumes were unmistakable. ‘We’ll be cornered like rats! Left behind in Leningrad to play morale-raising
music while Mravinsky and his band twiddle their thumbs elsewhere, ready to replace us when we’ve been slaughtered in the streets. What a wonderful privilege!’
Elias tried to remain calm. ‘We’ve been understudies for ten years. Do you really wish to remain that way? To remain a second-rate, unknown windbag for the rest of your miserable life?’ A titter ran around the room, and Elias flushed with gratification. Normally, such laughter was at his expense. ‘Siberia would once have been just the place for you,’ he added. ‘At least you’d have learned about hard work, had you been in a labour camp.’
There was more laughter at this.
Alexander sneered. ‘You don’t care what will happen to us. You care only about your career. Achieving fame because of a German invasion? You’re no better than a Nazi collaborator!’
‘A labour camp would be too good for you.’ Elias spoke through clenched teeth. ‘For now, whether or not it’s pleasant, you’re condemned to work for me.’
The ensuing silence was broken only by the persistent buzzing against glass. Elias strode to the window and flung it open. A cacophony of hammering and clattering rose up and poured into the room. ‘Listen to that!’ He turned to face the orchestra. ‘We’re at war with the Germans; we shouldn’t be waging war among ourselves. Until we’re called on to fight, we’ll do the job for which we’re trained. We’re not children in a playground, nor animals scrapping in a cage. We’re professional musicians, and we will play like professionals until we no longer have lips, lungs or arms with which to do so.’ Glancing out the window again, he saw the roof of the Alexandrinsky Theatre bristling with guns that pointed to the sky like accusing fingers. He slammed the window shut and spoke into the newly sealed silence. ‘Do you understand?’
In a corner of the room, a small patter began, spreading and growing like rain. The back-desk violinists were tapping their bows on their music stands, and Ilya Fomenko joined in with his drumsticks. The woodwind section began stamping their feet. Soon the whole room was applauding. Only Alexander stood, mute and red-faced, by the wall.