17

Andrei lies awake, listening for cars. There are few at this time, because it’s almost two in the morning. He hasn’t been able to sleep. No wonder, given that he’s had no exercise. He thinks of getting up, but it would wake Anna. She is deeply asleep, turned away from him, breathing softly and evenly.

He lies on his back, stretched, rigid. He thinks of the letter. He has written draft after draft, and destroyed each of them. Anna thinks it would be madness to send a letter. He thinks she’s probably right, and yet he can’t stop planning the paragraphs in his head. In part of his mind he can’t get rid of the picture of Volkov reading his letter.

And then what, you fool? He reaches for the telephone and calls you to say that he understands you were only trying to do what was best for his boy?

Anna murmurs in her sleep. She doesn’t sound upset, or anxious. Just as if she’s talking to someone about something perfectly ordinary.

Anna had insisted that he burn the drafts, just as they’d burned Lena’s letter. She said he could commit to memory everything that he wanted to say. It would be safer. He thought she was mistaken, but he went along with it. He didn’t want to distress her now.

Another car, going fast down the empty street. He listens, as if the walls of the building are a skin through which he’s trying to catch a pulse. It’s coming closer. It must have turned into their street. Suddenly, there is a sound of brakes. Not a screech, but brakes being applied firmly. It sounds too big to be just a car.

Andrei slides out of bed and puts on his dressing-gown in the dark. He feels under the bed for the slippers Anna made for him last winter. They haven’t drawn the curtains round the bed, with Kolya away.

He hears doors slam. They don’t care who they wake. The caretaker will have to open up for them.

He takes a deep breath. His heart is pounding and his thoughts race. The caretaker will open up and then they’ll all climb the stairs to the apartment. That’s how it happens, everybody knows. The caretaker is witness to the arrest.

Is there anything he should hide? No. They’ve got rid of everything hat could possibly be compromising. Anna is still asleep. Should he wake her? No. He should get dressed. No, there isn’t time. He doesn’t want them to find him half naked, struggling into his clothes. Fortunately he went to the toilet only an hour ago.

He listens for sound from the depths of the building. Yes. The caretaker has opened up for them. It’s happening, now. Andrei reaches for the switch of the bedside lamp. In its dim light he sees Anna motionless, curled in on herself. He must wake her before they do.

‘Anna,’ he says, and shakes her gently by the shoulder. ‘Anna, my darling.’

She stirs, and mutters a protest.

‘Anna!’

He feels her go rigid under his hand. She is awake instantly. Just as instantly, she knows what’s happening. She twists round and the pupils of her eyes contract as her face fills with horror.

‘I think it’s them,’ he says.

‘Oh my God.’

Yes, the caretaker has let them in. They’re coming up the stairs. Several pairs of boots, heavy, tramping. They don’t care who they wake. They’re on the first floor now, he thinks.

‘I can’t hear anything,’ says Anna.

‘Here’s your dressing-gown. Cover yourself up.’

Seconds pass. He finds he’s staring at the alarm clock. It’s just after ten past two.

‘What can we do? Andrei, they’re coming!’

He leans forward, cups her face in his hand. The footsteps are growing louder and he knows from her face that she can hear them too. They aren’t hurrying. They know they don’t have to.

‘Remember what we agreed,’ he says. ‘Go straight to the dacha. You must keep out of sight. Tell the nursery you have a threatened miscarriage and you’ve been told to stay in bed.’

The boots stop. They are still on the stairs, not at the apartment door. For a second Anna’s mind floods with hope. They are not coming here. They are after someone else.

‘It will only be an investigation,’ he tells her. ‘Don’t be frightened.’

‘You must put on your warmest clothes,’ she answers.

They hear a shouted order, and the boots come to their door. Anna is already out of bed, and as if by instinct she pulls the covers over and straightens them, so that the men won’t see into their bed. She hasn’t time to pull the curtains round.

It’s not so much knocking as thumping on the door. Probably with the side of a clenched fist, thinks Andrei, as he goes to the entrance.

‘Just a moment,’ he calls, as if it’s any ordinary neighbour in the middle of the night.

‘Open up!’ shouts a voice, as if they can’t hear him unlocking the door. Andrei braces himself, and opens up.

There are four men in uniform. Blue caps. An officer and three soldiers. At the side of the door stand the caretaker and his wife in their nightclothes.

‘Alekseyev, Andrei Mikhailovich?’

‘Yes.’

‘We have here a warrant for your arrest.’

There’s a pause, and then the officer says impatiently, ‘Stand aside,’ and in a moment they are all pushing into the apartment, thrusting Andrei in front of them. One of the soldiers takes Andrei by the arm, in a grip that Andrei hasn’t felt since he was a boy in trouble at school. Another snaps on all the lights.

Anna stands at the side of the bed. One hand is at her mouth, the other at her breast. He sees her with terrifying clarity, as if he will never see her again. Under the old flannel dressing-gown her body is rounding out with pregnancy. Her eyes are stretched wide with terror.

‘Move away from the bed,’ the officer tells her sharply, and Anna moves to one side, stumbling slightly but recovering herself quickly, even before Andrei has started forward and then been pulled back by the soldier closest to him.

The men fan out and begin to pull out drawers, rummaging through the contents and then emptying them on to the floor. They go along the bookshelves, picking out some books for examination and dropping others to the floor. They open Marina’s trunk and upend it. Marina’s red satin slippers skid across the floor. A soldier picks one up, looks inside it, and then drops it with an expression of disgust. They pull clothes out of the cupboards, and throw shoes on top of them. There goes the green dress. One soldier pulls back the bedclothes and then the bottom sheet and the old blanket that covers the mattress.

Of course the mattress is stained, thinks Anna. Everybody’s mattress is stained. But she feels a deep blush rise into her face.

‘Turn the mattress over,’ says the officer, and two of the soldiers heave the mattress, sweating.

‘Get your shoulders under it.’

The mattress flops over. The men beat it perfunctorily, as if they know they will find nothing inside it, but are bound to go through the motions. Once the mattress has been searched they throw it back on to the base. The youngest soldier, forgetting himself, punches the surface flat as he must once have seen his mother do. The caretaker and his wife watch from the door. How sharp their noses look in their pale faces. Neither of them will meet her eyes. What have they said? Have they denounced us? No, they are just frightened. Perhaps they have to sign the warrant as witnesses.

‘Sit in that chair,’ the officer orders Andrei, ‘and you’ – gesturing at Anna – ‘sit on the bed, there.’

‘I need to go the bathroom,’ says Anna.

‘It is not permitted for anyone to leave the apartment during the search.’

‘My wife is pregnant,’ says Andrei.

The officer doesn’t reply. He looks down at the papers in his hand, frowns, shrugs, then in a loud, dramatic voice he orders, ‘Search the other room!’

They leave the door between the rooms wide open. They throw Kolya’s mattress on the floor. Books are tossed from the shelves with hardly a glance. Two of them tip out the chest of Kolya’s old toys, which Anna put away years ago ‘in case’, and the sheets and towels she stores in the cupboard above his bed. Meanwhile the third soldier is in the food cupboard, sweeping packets off the shelves, emptying out flour and rice. He’s reaching right into the back of the cupboard. He has got hold of her jars. As he pulls it out, Anna sees it’s one of the jars of honey. He rips off the top, breaks the wax seal and stabs the honey with a short knife. She gives a cry of protest but Andrei says, ‘Anna.’ The soldier glances at them before digging his knife deep into the honey and emptying it into the sink. He returns to the cupboard and takes out all the jars. One by one, he tips them into the sink. The jams, the other jar of honey, and now the pickled cucumbers and mushrooms. He works fast, frowning. Another soldier has picked up a few books from Kolya’s floor and is slitting their spines and then shaking out the pages. A piece of paper falls out of one and the youngest soldier picks it up.

‘What’s that?’ asks the officer sharply, striding towards him.

‘It’s a shopping list,’ says the boy naively.

‘Bring it here.’ The soldier tramps into the living room, holding the paper. The officer studies it at length, frowning and shooting a glance at Anna and Andrei as if to say, You can’t fool me. Shopping list, indeed! ‘Put it aside for full examination with the other articles,’ he raps out at last, and the soldier obeys and puts the paper into a box that they must have brought with them, because Anna doesn’t recognize it.

There’s a crash from Kolya’s room. They are pulling the front off the piano. Keys jangle as the men delve into the body of the instrument. The officer goes to look, leaving the young soldier to guard Anna and Andrei. Anna glances up at his face, taking care not to meet his eyes. He’s just a boy, she thinks, not much older than Kolya. His face is round and smooth, but he wants to be a man. He won’t have been out on many night-fishing expeditions like this yet. He’ll want to prove that he’s tough, in front of the others. No use asking him for anything. Her bladder hurts, but she can hold on. If she could go to the bathroom she would have a moment to think.

‘I expect you feel tired, getting up in the middle of the night like this,’ she says to the caretaker’s wife.

The young soldier frowns and says gruffly, ‘No talking there.’

The officer comes back, but the cacophony inside the piano continues.

‘Please ask your men to be careful,’ says Anna. ‘I can’t afford to have the piano repaired.’

He stares at her. She sits upright and looks him in the eye. She’s been afraid for so long and now here they are: only people, after all, like the man who stole her sackful of wood during the siege. He thought of killing her; she saw it in his eyes. But she outfaced him and she survived.

They’ve destroyed all that food for no reason. How could they do it? They even stabbed through a loaf of bread with a knife. But there are four of them and so they look sideways at one another and they carry on. Behind them they know there are hundreds and thousands more, all in their blue caps, all ready.

‘If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear,’ says the officer, and then he shouts to the caretaker and his wife, as if they are a hundred metres away instead of standing against the opposite wall, ‘You two can clear off now! Be off with you!’

They scuttle off without a backward look. Their part is played. I suppose they were needed as witnesses to Andrei’s arrest, thinks Anna. Does that mean I’m not going to be arrested? No, because if they needed they could easily order the caretaker back upstairs again. In a corner of her mind she sees the caretaker and his wife going up and down, up and down, as person after person is arrested. Each time they would open up the doors, each time they would watch, each time they would scuttle away.

Through the open door Anna sees that the piano stool has been upended. All the music has spilled out on to the floor, but there was nothing else to find. Now a soldier is pulling pictures and photographs off the walls, one by one. He lifts each one high as he scans the back of the frame, and then dumps it down by the skirting board. She hears glass crack.

It seems as if she can’t think of anything but what is actually happening in front of her. As if it’s the jar of jam she ought to think about, and the mattress.

Andrei looks straight ahead, refusing to watch what they are doing. He is pale and his lips are pressed together. How long will the search go on? They must let him get dressed. She’s heard of people being taken away in their nightclothes, or in a thin dance dress like the one she made. Sometimes they search for hours, she knows that. She will have to go to the bathroom. Andrei must take a bundle of things.

I burned the letter, thinks Andrei. Was that good, or bad? They are only taking me. They have no reason to touch Anna. If she does as I tell her and goes to the dacha then she has a chance. She’s young enough, she’s strong, the baby can be born there as safely as anywhere. Galya’s a doctor, after all.

‘Officer,’ he asks, ‘have I your permission to get dressed?’

Anna thinks the man is going to refuse, but after a few moments he says, ‘Very well.’

‘Your warmest clothes, Andrei,’ says Anna quietly. ‘Let me help you.’

‘Sit there!’ barks the officer, as if she might hide a knife in the sleeve of Andrei’s jacket. Anna’s eyes fill with tears as she watches Andrei bend down under the gaze of the officer and the soldiers, and pick out underwear, shirt and tie, jacket and trousers from the heaps of their clothes on the floor. He wants to look right for the interview, she can tell. She wants to tell him not to worry about that. The first and only important thing is to be warm. Who knows how long he might have to wear those clothes?

‘Wear a jumper over your shirt,’ she murmurs, and he looks at her, sees the anguish in her face and picks up a dark blue lambswool jumper she knitted for him down at the dacha the summer before last. She smiles at him. Her fingers know every stitch of that jumper. It fits him so well, and the yarn is triple-ply. Her fingers remember the touch of the wool that will keep him warm. And two pairs of socks, she wants to say, who knows what you will need? But she must be careful. If she says too much they will put her in the other room and then she won’t be able to be with Andrei.

One of the soldiers stands close to Andrei as he dresses. Anna looks away. What do they think he’s going to do? Make a run for it? Swallow poison?

Perhaps people do those things. But it won’t happen here. She and Andrei are prepared. Everything seems not only unreal but also absolutely familiar, as if she’s been waiting for this all her life. All the stories she’s heard, all the whispered, shattered phrases, are suddenly alive in the front of her mind, like a set of instructions. People go off, taking nothing with them because they think they won’t be away for long.

Andrei is dressed now. The officer asks the soldier who was guarding him to help with the search of Kolya’s room.

‘Is it permitted to take a bundle of personal belongings?’ she asks the officer, quietly.

‘That won’t be necessary,’ he answers.

She seizes on the words. It won’t be necessary, because Andrei is only being arrested temporarily, as part of the investigation? Or it won’t be necessary, because she will be able to visit him and bring him whatever he needs? The thoughts fly through her mind, full of hope, but her heart doesn’t listen. It knows that the officer is saying ‘That won’t be necessary’ merely because it is something he’s been trained to say. It has no meaning, except to keep her quiet.

The red leather photo album is splayed out on the floor. Some photos have fallen out and the soldiers have walked over them. Anna sees a photograph of herself. It’s not very flattering – she’s smiling and squinting into the sun – but Andrei has always liked it.

‘With your permission,’ she says to the officer boldly, ‘I should like my husband to take with him that photograph of me,’ and she points to the floor.

The officer looks surprised by her boldness, but his gaze follows hers. Something stirs in his face. Maybe he too has a red leather photo album. They are common. At this moment all the soldiers are in Kolya’s room. He gives a sharp jerk of the head, which she takes as permission. The next moment she is on the floor, picking up the photograph. She holds it out to Andrei and he tucks it into his jacket pocket. She hopes that he will hide it better than that, as soon as he gets a chance.

The tallest soldier comes to the doorway, holding a box that contains the shopping list, two medical textbooks, a small notebook in which Anna keeps accounts, and her father’s English dictionary. He salutes and says, ‘Search completed!’

‘Are the articles fully itemized?’

‘Itemized in full!’

The officer plants his finger on the list, runs it slowly down, checking.

‘All correct. You are required to sign the list for the items,’ he says to Anna.

She takes the list and reads it quickly. ‘It says “Financial documents”, but this is only a small book that we use for domestic accounts.’

‘Precisely. Financial documents.’

She doesn’t know what to do. What if they try to make out Andrei has been receiving money from somewhere? Why should they try to say that Andrei has financial documents, when all he’s ever had is his pay from the hospital?

‘Sign the list, Anna,’ says Andrei.

The English dictionary. Why did you have an English dictionary, given that no one in the household is a student of English? What is the purpose of that?

She mustn’t antagonize this man. Andrei will be in his hands. She takes the officer’s pen, and signs. She writes her name slowly, clearly. Every second now is a second that Andrei remains with her.

‘Time to get going.’

‘Where are you taking him?’ asks Anna, but this time the man simply gives her a look of contempt, as if her question is final proof of her stupidity. He doesn’t reply. He takes out another paper and shows it to Andrei. The warrant for his arrest, all filled out with words in the correct places. The witnesses have already signed it. It’s happening now, this minute. Andrei is being taken away.

‘Your overcoat!’ cries Anna, and for the first time Andrei hears panic in her voice. ‘I must get it for you.’

No one stops her this time, so she goes to the entrance hall, takes Andrei’s coat off the hook, with his hat, his gloves and his muffler. Her heart is pounding. In less than a minute he will be gone. There must be something she can do. There they are, standing in the centre of the room. Four men in uniform, and Andrei. The rusty band around their caps is the same colour as dried blood. It is happening now, the thing for which her father stayed awake night after night.

She comes towards Andrei, holding his coat.

‘Search everything,’ orders the officer, and the youngest soldier takes the coat from her, turns it inside out, empties the pockets, feels along the lining. There are a few kopecks and a white handkerchief. The soldier shakes out his hat.

‘You can put them on.’

Andrei puts on his muffler, coat, gloves, hat.

Her heart is stifling her. Her bladder hurts. They will be gone. Andrei will be gone.

‘Andrei,’ she says. Her mouth is numb, as if she’s stayed out too long in the cold. He is very pale but his face is calm. She devours his face with her eyes. His lips, his skin. Thank God he shaved. He looks at her and no one else. The soldier behind him gives him a push in the back. Not hard but not gentle either. It says, You are ours now.

They are going. There is a soldier on either side of Andrei and one behind. The officer is peering into the box and frowning. Then he jerks his head and the tallest soldier picks it up. They all have guns. Their uniforms are full of detail and her eyes blur. All she sees is how strong they are, because of the uniform, all of them together. It makes them sure of what they are doing. It is their work.

She can feel the baby. She looks at Andrei now, only him.

‘The baby is moving,’ she says. He nods. Now he is going past her. She reaches out her hand. His hand brushes it, grasps her fingers, then lets go. ‘I’ll look after everything,’ she says.

‘You’ll have some clearing up to do,’ he says, speaking only to her and as if no one else is present. ‘I’m sorry I can’t help you, my darling.’

‘Everything will be all right,’ she says, but already he has been swept away.

One of the men takes her by the shoulders and pushes her back, not hard but as if he means it. They’re all crammed into the little entrance hall and she is still in the living room, their room. The soldiers’ backs hide Andrei from her. She starts forward as they open the door to the landing. Now they are through it and already letting the door swing back. She stops the door, holds it while she jams the wedge under it to stop it closing on her, and moves out on to the landing, after them. Already they are on the stairs. The noise of their boots rings through the stairwell, bouncing around the walls. She sees the tops of their heads, almost at the turn of the stairs. Andrei, in his fur hat.

‘Andrei,’ she says. She can’t speak loudly but she knows he’s heard her. The boots are going down. They have passed the turn of the stairs. Suddenly they are all swallowed by the dimness of the stairwell with its weak lights screwed into the walls. She can still hear the boots, going down. She strains her ears to pick out the sound of Andrei’s feet, but there is nothing now but the sound of men tramping downstairs, not caring how much noise they make.

She waits, holding her breath and listening. She knows exactly how long it takes to get down all the flights. They are at the bottom now. They will be opening the heavy outer door.

Yes. She hears it. For a second there are still voices and footsteps and then there is a bang, and the door closes. The echo always goes on for half a second, like an overtone. There. It’s finished. She listens to the empty stairwell.

Behind her there is the sound of a door being unbolted, unlocked, and very slowly and cautiously opened. She looks round. A line of light appears and fattens around the Maleviches’ door. Yes, she thinks, they would be listening. She moves quickly back across the landing to her own door, but not quickly enough. The Malevich door opens more widely and a face peers around it. Old Ma Malevich, her face greasy and her hair in rags. She stares at Anna without expression, drinking in the look on Anna’s face. Anna turns away, removes the wedge from her door and goes inside. In a moment, when that bitch is back inside her apartment, she will go to the bathroom. She leans her back against the door, and closes her eyes.

She finds Andrei’s alarm clock under the bedding that has been pulled on to the floor. It is twenty-five to five. She looks at the chaos of the two rooms. She will sort it out. She will clean the place until not a trace of them remains. Her jar of face cream has smashed, and cream has spread on the green dress. It’s difficult to remove such stains.

She stands still, in the middle of the room, her arms hanging by her sides, her face vacant. Several minutes pass. The clock is still ticking. They haven’t broken it.

At last she moves slowly and stiffly to the edge of the room, stretches out her hand and places it flat on the wall. The wall feels solid, but she knows it is not. It’s just a membrane, the thinnest possible covering that shields them from the street outside, or from the eyes of their neighbours.

It has happened. Andrei is with them now. They are driving him through the streets where there’s just a little early traffic. People are going to their shifts, wrapped to the eyes against the cold morning. Andrei will hear the trams.

She wonders if they came for Andrei in a car or in a van. If it’s one of their vans, people will look away and hunch deeper into their clothes. You feel afraid of those vans, swerving and swooping across the city. She remembers the Black Crows before the war, how thick they were on the city streets. She would think of the people inside, men or women, ripped away from their lives, still warm with the warmth of their beds. But like everyone else, she looked at those vans sideways, and never for too long.

She’ll find out where they are taking him. She must think. You have got to think of every single contact, everyone you know who might have a little bit of ‘pull’. Even someone you haven’t seen for years might be able to do something. You have to fight.

They will find out that it’s all a mistake and they will release him.

They might be there by now. The doors clanging, the locks turning one by one. Will they take him to the Kresty? No, not at first. They will have a procedure. She must find out everything. As soon as it’s light, she’ll begin.

With intolerable sharpness, she sees Andrei being shoved down a flight of stairs into the cellars. She sees a cell which is so small that a man can’t sit or lie down but can only stand up. She hears the clang as the door shuts on him.

No. Don’t allow yourself to think of anything but what you must do next. And while you are waiting, there is this mess to be cleaned up.