20
‘Prisoner Alekseyev, A. M., has been transferred to the Lubyanka Prison, Moscow.’ The official does not look up. He makes a mark on a form, his face blank.
‘But –’
‘Next!’
The woman behind her in the queue pokes Anna in the small of her back. Anna turns and sees the muffled face, the shadowed eyes. The woman’s expression is not impatient, but warning.
Anna stands aside, still clutching her parcel. The queue shuffles forward. Everyone watches the little opening where the official’s face is framed, and the shutter above it, which can be opened or closed only from the inside. At any moment, the official might slam down the shutter. It often happens. And then you wait an hour, two hours, hoping against hope that your turn will come. The snow is trampled flat, and has the thick blue glisten of ice. Cold strikes up through your boots as you wait and wait and wait. Sometimes the inquiry window opens again and the official begins to ‘deal with’ the queue. Sometimes it doesn’t. You come back the next day. You come back again the day after, and if you have to you’ll keep on coming day after day, with the same parcel. You shift from foot to foot. Sometimes you have to stamp your feet to keep the circulation going, but you try not to draw attention to yourself.
The first time, you can’t believe that so many people would wait for so long, and yet the window would fly shut, spitefully, while a long line still snakes across the snow. It seems as if the official has calculated exactly the amount of despair that each person in the queue needs to feel, each day. Soon you get used to it. You know the ropes and you just shrug wearily when someone new tries to question the officials. All questions achieve is to make trouble for everyone else. If an official gets into a bad mood, the window will soon slam down.
That woman standing over there with her parcel in her hands, looking lost, you can tell she’s new. She hasn’t learned her lesson yet. Those officials are all the same, even though the faces change. None of them has the slightest interest in pleas or tears. They have a job to do, and that’s that. What do you want? Special treatment?
Anna stares down at the parcel. In it are two sets of clean underwear, cigarettes, a bar of chocolate, a warm sweater and a pillowcase. She packed them in so carefully. She knew she couldn’t risk enclosing a letter, or even a note. Julia had told her what to do.
Transferred! She never imagined that. Oh God, to the Lubyanka. She never thought of them taking him away from Leningrad. Why have they done it? What does it mean?
She stands still, irresolute. The cold sinks into her mind, paralysing it. Should she join the queue again, and beg the official to tell her more? But she’s had to wait for over two hours to get to the front, and there are many more people waiting now than there were when she first arrived. She couldn’t possibly reach the window again before closing time. Why should they care? It’s a job. They have to take their lunch breaks and go home dead on time. Why should they put themselves out for the families of prisoners? Especially prisoners of Andrei’s type. Common criminals are one thing. Even if you don’t steal or rape or murder yourself, you can understand such crimes, and you know what to do with them. Prisons have been dealing with those types since time began. But these wreckers and spies, saboteurs and socially dangerous elements are a completely different matter. No matter how many you deal with, they keep on coming, like bedbugs.
Anna could come back tomorrow. On the other hand she daren’t take another day off work without a certificate. Morozova is rigid about such things. If Anna can’t produce one …
There mustn’t be any inquiries. If Morozova hears even a whisper about Andrei’s arrest, she’ll soon find a way of getting rid of Anna. Her pioneering model nursery can’t be contaminated by association. It’ll be obvious that Anna can’t have been ‘sufficiently vigilant’ herself, otherwise she would have denounced her husband. The authorities would support Morozova in sacking Anna, given that she’s in charge of impressionable young minds.
If you don’t have a job, you’re scarcely a person any more.
Andrei won’t know that she came here with the parcel. They took him away with nothing, just the things he had when he was arrested. What if he thinks she didn’t come because she was afraid? Like a fool, she’d thought he was still close.
She’ll go to Moscow. She’ll have to arrange it somehow – but how? She’d have to show her passport to buy the railway ticket. Anna clutches her parcel tighter as her thoughts fly one way and then another like a flock of sparrows. She doesn’t know anyone who can help them in Moscow. The Lubyanka …
No, she tells herself. It’s a name, that’s all. It’s probably no worse there than the Kresty. Except that in Moscow, there’s the Kremlin, which is the centre of it all –
Anna stands stock-still, her lips moving. She’s making herself conspicuous. One or two people glance at her uneasily. The next thing she’ll be down on her knees in the snow, howling like a dog. They’ve seen it all before, and what happens next, too.
The woman who was behind Anna in the queue turns away from the window. She’s empty-handed now; they’ve allowed her to hand in her parcel. As she passes Anna, she brushes against her, as if accidentally. ‘It’s not good to stand about,’ she murmurs, and then she’s gone and Anna’s not even sure if she heard the words or imagined them. But they have their effect. Anna comes to herself as the queue shuffles forward a couple of paces. Heavy, huddled figures that look neither to right nor left, but only ahead, or down at the crushed snow beneath their feet. It is so cold. The wind is rising again. That icy wind that sweeps off the Neva and funnels up the streets, twisting and turning, fingering its way into every stone crevice. Later on it will snow, Anna thinks. The marks of the shuffling queue will be wiped out.
She turns away, and begins to walk briskly, head lowered into the wind. She must be careful. If she falls, it might hurt the baby. She walks faster, feeling as if a thousand eyes are watching her back.
She’s walked only a couple of blocks when she knows she must stop. Cold sweat covers her body, and she can hardly breathe. She stumbles into an entrance, out of the wind. Anna leans against the stone. Just to be out of that bitter wind feels like a reprieve. It’s an entrance like any other, deep-set, with a closed double door. It smells of damp stone. Rubbish has blown into the corner, and no one has swept it away. People hurry past along the street, taking no notice of Anna. They want to get home before the snow thickens into a blizzard.
She’s always wanted to get home, too. It didn’t matter how many chores there were, or how heavy the bags of shopping she had to lug up the stairs. She could cope, never mind if Kolya was being difficult, or Andrei was late home for the third time that week. Of course she’d grumbled sometimes. Sometimes she greeted Andrei with a dry, cold complaint about the spoiled food. When Kolya pushed her too far she would shout at him, ‘You think studying means staring out of the window for an hour with the book in front of you? It won’t go in by magic, you know! What’s going to become of you if you don’t work and pass your exams?’
‘So how many exams did you pass?’ Kolya retorted once, and she replied furiously, ‘Not as many as I’d have liked!’ and then swallowed the bitter words that were rushing into her mouth. If she hadn’t had to care for him, ever since her mother’s death, she might have studied art. She used to cherish the idea of being a student, free to do nothing but think, work, develop. Kolya had no idea how fortunate he was.
‘I just want to live my life!’ shouted Kolya, and she stared at him helplessly, not knowing where to begin to explain to him how wrong he was.
But perhaps it’s Kolya who is right. He’s taken a close look at the life she and Andrei lead, and decided that he doesn’t want any of it, thank you very much. She and Andrei have done everything they were supposed to do. They both believed in work, duty, commitment, self-discipline. Andrei has passed countless exams. Sometimes Anna thinks she’s never stopped working. At home as well as at the nursery, there is always one more thing to be done than she can manage.
She tried to keep her father from despair with endless glasses of tea and home-grown vegetables. She made sure that Kolya gave him peace, and protected the time he needed for his writing. She lay awake at night, listening to her father pace sleeplessly from one side of the room to the other, and wondered if she should go to him or leave him alone. All the while she was doing her best to bring up Kolya as she believed she would bring up her own child.
At nursery the work was endless, but she didn’t mind that. What was difficult was meeting all the targets set for the children while also giving them a life that was worth living. She almost has to laugh when she looks back on herself, so endlessly busy, cleaning, cooking, preserving, ‘getting hold of’ whatever she could, running here and there, studying child psychology even though she found most of it incomprehensibly dull, poring over Kolya’s school-book Latin. The statistics course; battling with the Maleviches; trying to cope with Morozova; saving seeds from year to year in carefully labelled packets; cleaning out the drains with washing soda …
Much good had it all done. It’s comic, really, how naive she’s been. Always looking on the bright side! Even the siege didn’t teach her a lesson. She came out of those terrible years still confident that there was such a thing as normal life to return to, and cherish.
But now she has nothing to go home to. No one would know if she stayed here all night, huddled against this wall.
They’ve taken Andrei to Moscow. How do prisoners travel? By ordinary train? Do other passengers see them?
No, the authorities won’t take that risk. They’ll be in sealed cars, so that it looks to the casual eye as though goods are being transported, not human beings. People who are arrested have to drop out of life and disappear without trace. You might know a bit of detail about one or two arrests, if these are people close to you. Suddenly a colleague isn’t there. Husbands and wives go about looking dazed and pitiful. Even the authorities can’t make a wife fail to notice that her husband hasn’t come home, but each tiny circle of awareness is isolated.
Sometimes, though, you are supposed to talk about a notorious arrest, loudly and dramatically, in order to prove that you haven’t got the slightest sympathy with the person who’s been picked up. Anna is old enough to remember Kirov’s murder, in 1934. She was only sixteen but she remembers the loud public declarations as well as the guarded whispers. She even remembers a joke that went the rounds for years: If all the people who murdered Kirov were laid end to end, the line would stretch from here to the Kremlin. What is said aloud, of course, is very different. ‘Have you heard? Filipov has been arrested.’ And then a careful glance. ‘He turned out to be a Trotskyist sympathizer. It just goes to show. I was completely taken in by him!’
Sometimes they talk about ‘ripping away the masks’, an expression that makes Anna think of a sinister fancy-dress party. Now they’ll use such expressions of Andrei. Of course people who appear to be perfectly ordinary colleagues can suddenly turn out to be spies, saboteurs and wreckers! If you haven’t learned that by now, where have you been?
‘Haven’t you heard? Dr Alekseyev has been arrested. Thankfully, he didn’t succeed in pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes.’
Anna leans her cheek against the stone entrance pillar. Its coldness and roughness are comforting. ‘I’m stone, aren’t I? What else do you expect – sympathy? I’m here to hold the house up, that’s all.’
Inside her, the baby moves. Poor little one, you don’t know anything. Just keep on blindly and confidently growing. Don’t give up, not for a second, and I promise you that I won’t give up either. Wait just a minute. I’ll soon feel better and then we’ll go home. It’s only that your father –
She’ll get money to him. There are things she can sell. You are allowed to send money.
Suddenly the face of a former cook’s assistant at the nursery comes into Anna’s mind. A long, hardened face, utterly devoid of beauty. Skin that looked like bark. She had strong forearms and her muscles bulged as she lifted the heavy soup pots. One day Anna asked if she had children at home. Musya laughed, a short bark of a laugh, slapped down a loaf of bread and began to carve it. ‘I know better than that,’ she said. ‘What’s the point? It only makes you soft, see, and then you can’t carry on.’
Anna hasn’t seen her for years. Not since before the war. She disappeared one day, just didn’t come into work, and the space where she had been closed over. Anna remembers another thing. If anyone shivered or complained, Musya would say, ‘Cold! You call this cold?’
If Musya were here now she’d say, ‘Bad! You call this bad? Look at you, you’ve got enough to eat and a warm bed to go home to. What’s the point of complaining? It only makes you soft, and then you can’t carry on.’
If only they don’t hurt him. If only he can keep his strength up.
It’s Andrei’s second day on the conveyor belt. He’s standing in a pool of light which is so harsh and dazzling that behind it his interrogator becomes a dark stain on the opposite wall. If Andrei closes his eyes the interrogator shouts and one of the guards slaps Andrei across the face. The wound on his head has opened again and is oozing blood.
There are three interrogators, working in shifts. Dmitriev has just come on duty. He has a soft voice and a sympathetic manner. He tuts whenever a guard hits Andrei, but of course makes no move to prevent it. It’s just one of those unfortunate but necessary things which a civilized man has to deplore. If only he could do something about it!
Dmitriev needs Andrei’s help if he’s to help him in return. Surely he can understand that? Andrei moves his head sideways. He can’t see the pile of papers on Dmitriev’s desk, but he knows that they are there and what is in them. The chief document is Andrei’s statement. It is all ready, typed out, waiting only for Andrei’s signature. There are also witness statements, but Andrei hasn’t been allowed to see these. At the start of his first full interrogation, he was given his own statement to read. Dmitriev was on duty then, too. He sat behind his desk and watched Andrei with his arms folded and an expectant look on his face. The lamp wasn’t even switched on. Andrei could see the whole room clearly: the desk, the shiny dark brown floor, the oily green paint on the walls, which looked as if it was still wet. There were no windows. He read the document slowly, examining each paragraph. A flush of rage went through him but he kept his eyes moving, and turned the page calmly. Take your time, he thought to himself. No need to rush, given that every second you are reading this is a second when they are not interrogating you.
They’d made a mistake when he was first brought in; at least, he’s now certain that it was a mistake, from the care they’ve taken ever since to keep him away from other prisoners. Andrei understands that the plan is for each man to feel utterly alone. When he arrived in Moscow late at night, they’d put him into a van with ‘Bread’ written on the side, and driven him straight to the Lubyanka. He’d been pretty sure where they were going. This time, he knew what to expect. They processed him, and then pushed him straight into a cell which was full of sleeping bodies.
Full indeed. There wasn’t an inch to lie down. A dim greenish light shone from a bulb in a cage of wire on the ceiling. Sleepers were hunched on the two narrow benches let down from the walls, but the rest of the men were on the floor. There must have been eight or ten at least, crammed into a two-man cell. The room stank of sweat, urine and faeces. There was a large uncovered toilet bucket within inches of the sleepers’ heads. The air was full of sighs, groans and muttering.
There was no chance of lying down, but it didn’t matter. He could stand against the cell door. But suddenly there was a stir from one of the benches, and a figure sat up. ‘They just brought you in?’ he murmured. His hair hung long and matted around his face. His eyes were set so deep in their hollows that Andrei could not read them.
‘Yes.’
‘Did they transfer you from another cell?’
‘No. From Leningrad.’
‘Right.’
Andrei didn’t understand why the man’s voice changed on hearing he was from Leningrad rather than another cell in the Lubyanka. Later he would learn that there were certain prisoners – spies – who were constantly moved from cell to cell to pick up whatever information they could.
‘Where are your things?’
Andrei indicated his overcoat. ‘This is it.’
‘Nice and warm, anyway. You’d better lie down over there,’ said the man, pointing, but Andrei couldn’t see a space.
‘It’s all right, I’ll stand.’
‘Don’t be a fool, you’ll have the guards in again. Lie down there, by the bucket. What’s your name?’
Andrei told him, and the man nodded. ‘I’m Kostya Rabinovich. Cell foreman. We’ll get you sorted out in the morning. What’s your profession?’
‘Doctor, eh? Could be useful. I’m an engineer myself.’
Andrei picked his way carefully across the sleeping bodies. He eased himself down, and the men gave way for him, grumbling and sighing. He lay as still as he could, wedged in by male flesh. He had never slept so close to anyone but Anna since he was a child. The air was fetid but cold, because the small high window was open behind its bars. He didn’t mind the cold. The room would be unbearable otherwise, with the smell and the heat of all these bodies. He huddled down. Tomorrow night he would take off his pullover and roll it up for a pillow, but he couldn’t do that now, because there wasn’t room to move.
An engineer! Perhaps the entire cell was packed with surgeons and architects and marine biologists. Andrei shrugged his head down between his shoulders. The man behind him groaned, heaved his weight over, and then was still again.
Andrei could not sleep. He lay quite still, listening to the sounds around him. In the far corner of the cell, a man sobbed in his sleep. It went on for a while until there was a commotion as another man heaved himself up with a thick curse and pummelled the sleeper’s back. ‘Give it a rest, can’t you?’
From time to time a figure rose and went to the bucket. The splash of urine seemed to go on and on. Andrei’s stomach hurt, but it was only nerves. He could wait until morning.
Suddenly, from outside the cells, there was an explosion of voices. A man screamed, on and on. How could he scream like that, without taking breath? The hair crisped on the back of Andrei’s neck. At last the scream broke into a howl. There came a clatter and a thud as if something had been thrown on the floor. Guards yelled and cursed. There was the sound of blows raining on flesh. The man yelped like a dog with a choke chain around his neck. At last the noise guttered, and died. Inside the cell there was silence too. Most of the men must have woken up, but no one spoke.
Deliberately, Andrei sought out the tension in his shoulders and arms. He clenched his muscles even tighter, and then let them go. As he did so he named the muscles to himself: anterior deltoid, lateral deltoid, posterior deltoid, rotators, biceps, triceps … Over and over again he tensed and then relaxed, taking care not to nudge his neighbours. Little by little, the sounds of the cell flowed back, like peace. A man farted, another muttered in a quick, panicky voice as if he were explaining himself to somebody.
He’d expected solitary confinement. This was better, surely. They were all in the same boat and to some extent it must be organized. Kostya had said he was the foreman. He’d been in here for a while, to judge by the length of his hair.
Suddenly keys grated in the cell door, and it was opened wide. Two guards flung a man through the entrance, and then immediately stepped back and slammed the door shut. The prisoner had fallen forward, on top of the sleeping bodies. Men roused up, swearing, but Kostya was already on his feet. ‘Lie down, can’t you? Where’s that doctor? Over here! Make way for him.’
Andrei got up. This time it was easier to get across the cell. The other men shuffled up so he could kneel by the collapsed prisoner. The pulse was rapid, but weak. He put his head to the prisoner’s chest and listened to his heart. ‘He’s fainted. Call the guards and ask them for ammonia.’
‘Call the guards! Can’t you bring him round? He’s been on the conveyor belt, that’s all.’
Before long, the man came round. His legs and feet were horribly swollen. In the dim light his face was distorted, with blackened eyes, cracked lips and a swollen tongue. Andrei wondered if this was the man he had heard screaming.
‘He’s been on the conveyor belt for five days, no wonder,’ said Kostya. All the time they talked in the same almost noiseless murmur.
‘What’s that?’
‘The interrogators work you over in teams. You can’t sleep and you have to stand up. Sometimes they move you from room to room so you get disorientated. This is Mitya’s third time on the belt, but they’ve had no luck with him yet. He’s tough, this one. They won’t be very happy. He just says no to everything. It’s hard but it’s the way to survive. Start signing things and that’s the end of you.’
They gave Mitya water, and he sank into sleep.
‘He’ll be all right in the morning,’ said Kostya, somewhat optimistically in Andrei’s view. ‘Leave him now, get your sleep.’
But Andrei had barely settled back on the floor when a voice behind him began to murmur: ‘ “Neither hast thou destroyed me in my transgressions, but in thy compassion raised me up when I lay in despair …” ’
So they were still jailing believers. Odd, thought Andrei, that you have to be in prison before you know what’s really going on. ‘Raised me up …’ Can he possibly believe it? The voice of the praying man was like a trickle of water. Surely I’ll be able to sleep soon, thought Andrei. ‘The interrogators work you over in teams.’ Probably it was best to know these things, or Kostya wouldn’t have said them. He seemed a decent man –
All at once there was another racket at the door. Bodies stiffened. Heads poked out of blankets. This time it was his name they were calling.
‘Alekseyev, A.M.!’
‘I’m over here.’
‘Get going, with your things!’
But unlike most of these prisoners, he had no bundle of personal possessions. ‘That won’t be necessary,’ they’d said when they came to take him away. Maybe that’s what they always say. Anna will find a way to get a parcel to him. He thought it might be possible for prisoners to receive money, but he hoped she wouldn’t send any. Without his pay, she would have little enough to keep herself and Kolya.
Eyes watched as he was bundled away. The guards seemed angry and agitated, as if this wasn’t part of their routine. Something must have gone wrong.
The guards marched him down the corridor and through a door which led to a set of stone stairs. They were back stairs, not like the big staircase he’d climbed earlier.
They went down flight after flight. Lights in wire cages were set into the walls, but there were no windows. Andrei counted the stairs, trying to remember how many he’d climbed before. Surely not as many as this. Now they were at the bottom. The guards opened a heavy door, and there was another corridor, with a low roof and dim lighting. They stopped at a cell door which had three steel panels set across it. One of the guards unlocked the door, and once again he was shoved inside.
The cell was very small, but clean, and filled with the same wan glow as the two-man cell. There was no window. The bed was a wooden bench, let down from the wall but even narrower than the one in the last cell. There was a thin straw mattress, and a pillow, which Andrei examined closely and then put down on the floor. At least the bucket on the floor had a cover.
He lay down on his back. The peephole cover rattled, and an eye examined him, unblinking. His heart began to race, but a few seconds later boots tramped away along the corridor.
He was alone now. It had been comforting to lie down with other men who were in the same boat, torn out of their lives just as Andrei had been. Andrei had spoken only a few words to Kostya, but the exchange seemed even more precious in retrospect than it had done at the time. ‘Where’s that doctor? Over here! Make way for him, can’t you?’
Those words held the breath of normal life. If a man was sick or in pain, he needed a doctor, and other people would move aside to make sure that the doctor reached him. A doctor was there, not to demean and humiliate, but to heal.
It was good that Kostya was the foreman, willing to organize things and make sure that people behaved as they should. Andrei wondered if the men in the cell had elected him. Again, that was comforting. You need someone to speak up for you.
Andrei realized now what the guards’ mistake had been, and why they were so jumpy. He wasn’t supposed to have been slung into that shared cell. Someone would probably pay for letting it happen. He was meant to be in solitary, in the bowels of the prison, not knowing what was happening, and above all not knowing that he wasn’t alone.
What was Kostya here for, he wondered. And all the rest of them? It made his own arrest seem more ordinary, rather than the extraordinary and terrible blow of fate which it had seemed since that very first telephone call telling him not to come into work. He hadn’t been singled out, as he’d thought. Plenty of others must have thought that they were decent, professional men, doing a good job, until that long ring on the doorbell, or the loud knocking that didn’t care if it roused the whole building. There were ten men in that cell which was meant only for two. They must be hauling in hundreds.
Footsteps came again. This time the guard tramped past without checking on him.
He would learn every footstep. He would find out who else was on this corridor. He was in solitary but he knew he wasn’t alone. There were many others, and even if he couldn’t see them he still knew they were there. Andrei closed his eyes. He thought he heard tapping, but it was so faint he was probably imagining it. He strained his ears, but the tapping faded into the beat of his pulse. Sleep rushed up to meet him as the ground rushes up to meet a man who jumps out of an aeroplane.
It’s Andrei’s third day on the conveyor belt. His legs and feet are so swollen that when the order comes to move, they will not obey him. Two guards take hold of him, one on each side, with their hands under his elbows. They run him out of the interrogation room and down a corridor. His head falls forward and his knees sag to the ground. He knows he must keep on his feet but although he makes a superhuman effort he can no longer do so. The guards drag him into another room, which also contains a desk, a shadowy man and a strong pool of light in which he must stand.
‘On your feet! On your feet, you filthy cock-sucking cunt!’
They swear at him, and hit him, but he still cannot remain upright. The interrogator gets to his feet, walks around the desk and picks up a heavy jug full of water. He comes over and hurls the water into Andrei’s face.
Andrei opens his mouth. A stream of water, mixed with blood, runs down his face. He puts out his dry, cracked tongue and licks the water. A guard punches him in the back.
‘Stand up! Stand up!’
They are all melting into one, the guards and the interrogators. Only the jug isn’t melting but doubling. Now there are two jugs, and now four, sharp-cut and glittering in the downward dazzle of light.
*
He is on the floor of his cell. He stretches out his fingers, and they move. They are fat, like sausages. His clothes are wet, with water, with blood and perhaps with urine. There is a bad smell. He has been asleep.
‘For goodness’ sake,’ says a voice mildly, ‘surely you realize, an intelligent man like you, that all this is completely unnecessary? You can stop it any time you like. You only have to say the word. All this fuss over something as petty as a signature. It’s really not all that important. The trouble is that my colleagues are not as understanding as I am. I’ve been doing my best to make them see reason, as I’m sure you appreciate, but I’m not going to be able to do so for much longer. Now, let’s have a look at this wretched document again. I simply don’t see what you’ve got to object to. Brodskaya’s already admitted the whole thing. She couldn’t spill the beans fast enough. Russov’s corroborated everything. We’ll be bringing you face to face with him later on. Pretty upsetting for a decent chap like Russov. But the fact is – and why not admit it? – you were putty in Brodskaya’s hands. She thought the whole thing up, didn’t she? We’re only asking you to admit your own share in it, which isn’t that significant, let’s face it. Once it’s all down on paper, with your signature on it, things will get a lot easier for you.
‘We’ve got most of it already, as you know, since you’ve read this. But there are just a few details which need tidying up. That Brodskaya! Well, I won’t say what I think of her, because it wouldn’t be very complimentary. It’s not your fault you fell for it. All you have to do is admit your own role, which, let’s face it, is only a very minor one, and then we can start to clear up this whole nasty business. And I can go home, and you can get a good night’s sleep, and then things will start to look better.’
The words patter around Andrei like rain. He thought he was still lying on the floor of his cell, but it seems that he is here, standing in front of Dmitriev’s desk. The guards have placed him much closer to Dmitriev this time. The light glares in his face and hurts his eyes.
Dmitriev takes a cigarette from the packet in front of him, lights it and breathes in the smoke luxuriously. ‘I’m sorry, how rude of me – do you smoke?’
Andrei stares ahead. He knows this man now. If he starts talking, Dmitriev will trip him up. At first Andrei tried to give his own account of Gorya Volkov’s treatment, but he soon realized that none of his interrogators was interested in that. The facts were an irritation that led to more blows. Kostya was right. Say nothing, and sign nothing. Spit out every word they try to put into your mouth.
Andrei sways. The guard shoves him upright. There is a rushing sound in his ears, but he isn’t going to faint. He lost his balance, that was all. A blow to his left ear has affected the inner-ear fluid. It will only be temporary.
‘Come along. Have a cigarette. I know you want one. I’ll order some food to be sent up. How does chicken salad sound?’
It sounds like a lie, thinks Andrei. Chicken salad, in winter! He might at least have come up with something more convincing. Andrei licks his thick, dry lips.
‘A glass of wine, perhaps?’
Or perhaps Dmitriev himself has gone completely crazy, after years of this. The period of unconsciousness on his cell floor has done Andrei good. He can join things up in his mind again. He was beginning not to know what was real and what was not.
Dmitriev must have moved the light. It is pointing down, and without the glare Andrei can see Dmitriev’s face clearly. He is smiling. He looks clean, mannered, urbane. Perhaps he showers, when he takes a break from interrogation. No matter how wide his smile stretches across his face, his teeth never show.
‘All right, all right,’ he says to Andrei, with weary, tolerant humour, as if Andrei were a schoolboy in trouble with the authorities. ‘You don’t want any chicken salad. You don’t want a cigarette. Be off with you, then. You’ve got a visitor coming along later. A very important visitor. You’ll want to be at your best for him.’
The guards kick Andrei along the corridor. He knows this is all part of it. Dmitriev must be civilized and smell of cologne and excellent tobacco. The bald one, Bashkirtsev, must scream abuse in a high-pitched voice and end every session with the words, ‘I’ll have you, do you understand? I’ll wring your guts until you’re shitting blood.’ The third interrogator, Fokin, has to be as tenacious as a rat. He plants his finger on the statement, picks out a different sentence each time, and goes over and over it in a voice that drips through Andrei’s head like acid.
‘A very important visitor.’ Deliberately, Andrei shuts his mind. Here is the cell door. The guards push him through it and the floor comes up to meet him. He is off the conveyor belt. He falls down and down as the stone floor rocks under him.
Anna has scoured the apartment clean. She has tidied away everything that was tipped out on to the floor. She has folded the linen, rearranged the books, and put drawers and cupboards back in order. She has wiped every surface clean. All the smears and fingermarks are gone. Her feet tap, echoing.
Those men looked so sure of themselves as they emptied the drawers and swept books off the shelves to the floor, as if they were performing to an invisible, approving audience. This is still my home, she thinks. She looks around the room where she and Andrei have lived and worked and slept. She stares through the doorway at Kolya’s bed, and the piano. It has been badly out of tune since the men took it apart.
She feels nothing for the apartment or for what it contains. It’s finished as far as she’s concerned. One day she and Andrei will remake it, but until then she’ll eat and sleep here, and go through their possessions to make a list of what can be sold. She needs money to send to Andrei.
By the time Anna gets into bed she is so tired that she falls asleep almost at once, huddled on her own side of the bed.
She dreams that it’s summer, and she and Kolya are at the dacha. He’s sitting on a low wall, and she’s standing beside him so that his face is level with her own. He is barefoot, tanned, dusty. He leans against her and she smells his sun-warmed skin. He chatters about a story he remembers from kindergarten, and she praises him for remembering it so well. He is slightly offended by her praise.
‘After all, Mama, I am six,’ he says. She looks at his face in surprise, because Kolya never calls her by that name. But as she does so she realizes that this child is fairer than Kolya. There are sun-bleached streaks in his hair, and a scattering of freckles on his nose. His eyes are the colour of Andrei’s.
‘But, K-K-olya,’ she stammers, ‘what’s happened? Why have you changed like this?’
The boy doesn’t answer. Instead he gives her a quick, sweet smile before looking down as if the question embarrasses him. Suddenly she hears Andrei’s voice through the trees. It is strong, almost imperative.
‘Anna!’ he calls. ‘Hurry! There’s no time to lose. You must go now!’
The child looks up, with Andrei’s eyes. Anna stares through the trees but she can’t see Andrei anywhere. Again his voice comes, even stronger this time: ‘Go now, Anna! Go now.’
She wakes, gasping, and switches on the bedside light. It is ten past two. Her nightdress is stuck to her body with sweat. But it wasn’t a nightmare, it was just –
She sits bolt upright, listening. Down in the street a car slows. She hears its engine pulse, and then it accelerates again, driving away, turning the corner. She listens until the sound of the car’s engine has completely disappeared, then gets up and wraps her dressing-gown around her. She must calm herself. This is bad for the baby. She’ll make some camomile tea and then read until she is sleepy again.
‘Remember, there’s nothing easier than for them to arrest you as well. Don’t think it can’t happen.’
She feels the baby move in the cage of her pelvis. Not so much a fluttering any more. It’s imperative, like Andrei’s voice in the dream. Here I am. You can’t forget about me.
‘Anna! Hurry! There’s no time to lose. You must go now!’
It’s Andrei’s voice, coming from wherever he is through the dark of dreams. She won’t go back to bed. The dream has woken her for a reason, she knows that now. These hours have been given to her to get things ready. She will collect everything of value: her tablecloths and napkins, the photographs, the little gold chain Andrei gave her to replace her mother’s gold necklace, which they sold in the siege. Almost everything went then; books were burned and furniture chopped up for fuel. Her mother’s set of porcelain spoons fetched two candles, while her parents’ wedding rings and the little gold necklace went for a jar of lard.
It was worth it. You can’t eat gold.
It’s the same now. Time to get rid of everything in order to survive. If she had time she would even sell Kolya’s piano.
Anna fetches her bicycle panniers, and begins to pack them. She mustn’t make them too heavy, or she won’t be able to carry them downstairs.
She crosses to the window, lifts the blind, and peeps out. The moon is high and sharp. Snow has fallen, but not too heavily. They’ll clear the streets, and she’ll be able to push her bike even if she can’t ride it.
The baby kicks again, warningly.
No, you fool, you won’t be able to take the bike. In this weather you’ll be exhausted by the time you’ve gone a couple of kilometres. It’s no good loading up those panniers. You’ll have to take the train, and then walk at the other end. It’s a long walk, but you’ll manage it if you pace yourself. It’ll be quiet enough on the train on a weekday, but don’t make yourself conspicuous by trying to carry a big bundle. Everyone in the building knows Andrei’s been arrested. If they see you going off laden down with half your possessions, they might contact the police.
The thought of leaving the bike behind is agonizing. Without it, how will she get around? There’s Kolya’s bike, of course, which is already at the dacha. They’ll just have to manage, sharing it.
She looks around the room, frowning. Kolya’s music. He’ll never be able to replace it all. She must take the photographs, and her parents’ letters, and –
The things she has knitted for the baby fit into a small bag. She must take some linen at least, and as many clothes as she can carry. It’s so lucky that Kolya’s already got his stuff down at Galya’s.
Or no! – she has a better idea. She’ll put on layers so she doesn’t have to carry too many clothes. She can wear two or three jumpers and a couple of skirts at least. All her skirts are too tight now but she has stitched elastic into the plackets so she should be able to wear them for another month at least. She’ll put on a jacket under her coat. If she waits until the last moment to get dressed, she won’t get too hot before she goes out into the freezing streets. She’ll just have to sweat it out on the train.
Darya Alexandrovna might want to buy these embroidered napkins – or, at any rate, exchange them for food. She loves pretty things. Andrei’s photograph of his parents has a silver frame; she’ll take that too. And the tea. There must be two hundred grams in the jar.
Anna treads lightly, opening drawers and cupboards without sound. She doesn’t want the neighbours to know she’s awake. Perhaps it’s just as well that the Blue-caps wrecked her food stores. The jars would have been too heavy to carry and it would have been agony to leave them. If only she could say to Julia: ‘Come round, help yourself, take anything you want. I know you’ll pay me back one day.’ But it’s not safe. If Julia were seen in this apartment, the wheels would begin to grind for her, too.
She will leave everything behind, as if she’s gone to work as usual. She’d be easy enough to trace if they tried to find her, but perhaps, if she’s not here, they’ll leave her alone. Surely things have changed a little since Yezhov’s time, when processions of wives and brothers and husbands and sisters followed every ‘political’ to prison.
Here are her lecture notes from the statistics course. She’ll leave those behind with pleasure. The cardboard folder with Kolya’s drawings and the first little stories he wrote, when he was little. That won’t take up much room.
She unties the ribbon and opens the folder. A portrait of herself stares up with manic smile and huge hands spread in welcome. He has even got the number of fingers right. ANNA, he’s printed underneath in careful capitals.
She will start drawing again, out at the dacha. There will be no excuse there. She’s spent too long filling up every moment of her day so as not to have to look at anything too closely.
Another car slows. Her heart accelerates, then eases as the car drives on.
‘Go now, Anna! Go now.’
The bag is full. All their money is in her purse. Now she must eat something, and then get dressed in all her layers, because it’s past five o’clock.
Everything is ready. Anna wears her brown woollen skirt and cream blouse with her loose blue dress over it, and a long thick jumper of Andrei’s on top. Her black jacket, and now her overcoat, boots, a big woollen scarf tied over her head, a shawl across her chest. She picks up her two bags, and weighs them. She can manage them easily. She’s only got to walk to the tram stop, and the tram will take her to the station. She can rest on the short train journey, and at the other end it doesn’t matter how often she stops on her walk to the dacha. Once she’s out of the city she can take her time.
She sits down on the chair by the living-room door. She is really leaving now. Perhaps she will never come back. She’ll probably lose her right of residence in Leningrad, anyway.
The room, which has seen so much, regards her calmly. This is the room to which she rushed home from school when she was little, always hoping her mother would be there, even though she knew that nine days out of ten Vera would be at the hospital. Here, in this apartment, she first met Andrei, when he knocked on their door very early one morning to tell her that her father had been wounded. She was afraid of the knock on the door, even then. In this living room she slept with Kolya in her arms and Andrei beside her, blankets and coats heaped over them, while the windows filled with frost and the metronome on the radio ticked and ticked as the hours of the siege slowly passed. This is where she heated the milk to give newborn Kolya his first feed at home, her fingers still shaking from the shock of her mother’s death; through the door, in Kolya’s room, is where her father died. In this bed, her baby was conceived.
But the room says nothing. For the first time she really understands how old it is. It was here long before she was born or the Levins came to live here, and it will be here long after she’s dead. She’s part of this apartment’s life, but never the whole of it; perhaps, really, not a very large part at all. If the Maleviches moved in tomorrow – and they’ve always had their eye on all this space – the apartment would make room for them.
Our city is like that, too, thinks Anna. We love it, but it doesn’t love us. We’re like children who cling to the skirts of a beautiful, preoccupied mother.
I must get going now.