One Night in Winter (8 page)

George pushed open the door on the first floor. Inside, a dazzling corridor of parquet and crystal chandeliers beckoned. So this is how the grandees live, thought Andrei as the maid, a swarthy but cheerful girl in a white and black uniform, hugged each of the children, kissing them several times on the face and shepherding them down the corridor.

‘Go on,’ she called after them. ‘I’m cooking up a Georgian feast. Oh and your big brother’s here. Hurry!’

The smell of spicy vegetables, melting cheese and roasted chicken curled through the airy spaces of the apartment. They passed through a reception room with a grand piano, Persian rugs, photographs of the children, a display case of turquoise china, an oil painting of Stalin – larger than life – at the front holding binoculars (could it be an original by Gerasimov, Andrei wondered?). Then they were in a small wood-panelled room filled with books and papers.

‘This is Papa’s study. We never look over there.’ George pointed at the heap of beige files on the desk marked ‘Central Committee. Top Secret.’ Andrei glanced at them: were they signed by Stalin himself? George opened a wooden case, took out four discs and, placing them carefully on the turntable mounted in a laminated wooden cabinet, he turned a knob. The turntable started to whirl, a long arm with a needle jolted into place, and the jazz songs of Utesov started to play.

‘It’s a gramophone from RCA, America,’ said George. ‘It can play the discs one by one – and isn’t the sound beautiful?’

‘It’s not bad,’ Andrei said, absolutely dazzled by what he was seeing.

‘And this has just arrived.’ George was pointing at a bizarre glassy tube set in another elegant wooden cabinet.

‘What a weird contraption. What is it?’

‘That’, said George, ‘is a machine called an iconoscope – or a television – and it shows a picture . . .’

‘Really? But how—’

‘Come on.’ Andrei could hear the sound of laughter, sizzling food and clinking cutlery as they ran through into a huge kitchen, where the Satinov family sat at a mahogany table while Leka, the maid, was juggling at least three steaming pans on the stove.

‘Andrei Kurbsky!’ His English teacher, Tamara Satinova, George’s fine-boned stepmother, was shaking his hand. ‘You’re the new boy in my English class. Come on in and have some
khachapuri
.’

Andrei’s eyes widened at the steaming Georgian dish, somewhere between a pizza and a cheesecake, and the sheer quantity of other food on the table in front of him.

‘We eat a lot of Georgian food here. Here’s
lobio –
bean soup – and this is chicken
satsivi
. . .’ Andrei did not want to admit he had never tried such things but Tamara seemed to understand this, and made him feel so at home that he started to help himself.

A young man in air force uniform with the gold star of the Order of the Red Banner on his chest sat at the head of the table. ‘Aha, George’s new friend,’ he said, shaking his hand. Andrei knew this was Major David Satinov, newly returned from the war. He almost bowed before this heroic pilot who had been shot down and wounded.

Mariko, the six-year-old, was sitting on her mother’s knee, holding a toy dog.

‘Leka, would you make Mariko a hot chocolate?’ asked Tamara.

Mariko was tiny and dark with her hair in braids woven over the top of her head. ‘Meet my dog,’ she said to Andrei, holding up the shaggy toy, a black Labrador. ‘Stroke her fur. Isn’t she silky? I run a school for female dogs called the Moscow School for Bitches. Today they’re studying Pushkin like all of you.’

‘Ah, Andrei,’ said Tamara. ‘You should know that if you enter this home, you have to embrace Mariko’s School for Bitches! But now, quiet, darling, I’m listening to your big brother.’

‘Well, these new planes turn well,’ said David, ‘but there’s a problem with them . . .’

‘Don’t say another word about that,’ said Tamara with uncharacteristic sharpness.

There was silence. They were all aware that men had been arrested and shot for criticizing Soviet technology.

‘But everyone in the air force is talking about it,’ David protested.

Tamara glanced at Andrei, the outsider, as Losha Babanava strode into the kitchen. ‘The big man’s home!’ he said.

The gaiety vanished, and the air changed, as it does when snow is imminent. All the boys stood up sharply: the power of the Soviet State had entered the room in tunic and boots, with a spareness of emotion and economy of movement. Taut as a bowstring, his hair razor-cut and greying at the temples, Comrade Hercules Satinov greeted the children as if he was reviewing a regiment.

Each of the boys kissed their father thrice: ‘Hello, Father,’ they said formally. Satinov took Mariko into his arms, lifted her high and kissed her forehead.

Andrei was captivated by his presence, and terrified. He imagined the deeds of Satinov’s long years with Stalin: the struggle with Trotsky, the war against the peasants, the spy hunt of the Terror, the war. What secrets he must know; what things he must have seen. He personified
tverdost
,
hardness: the ultimate Bolshevik virtue. Only when he kissed Tamara and rested his hands on her hips did Andrei glimpse the sort of warmth that he remembered seeing between his own parents.

‘How was school, Tamriko?’ Satinov asked her.

She sighed. ‘As always, too many papers to mark,’ she said. ‘Do you need anything? Coffee?’

Satinov’s grey eyes examined Andrei. ‘And who’s this?’ he asked George, who took Andrei’s arm and pushed him forward.

‘Father, this is my new friend Andrei Kurbsky from school. He’s just arrived.’

‘Just arrived?’ said Satinov sharply.

‘From Stalinabad. For the last term.’

Satinov took Andrei’s hand. The grip was tight and dry as a saddle. ‘Stalinabad? What’s the name again?’

‘Kurbsky.’ Andrei could almost hear Satinov’s bureau of a mind flicking through an index of files marked ‘Central Committee. Top Secret.’ What if he asked questions about his father?

‘You’re always welcome here, Andrei,’ said Satinov at last.

‘Thank you, Comrade Satinov.’

Satinov looked him up and down. ‘What do you want to do for your motherland?’ he asked.

Everyone went silent.

‘He’s going to be a professor. He really knows his Pushkin,’ George broke in. ‘He’s going to the top of the class.’

Satinov frowned. ‘So he’s another of your cloud-dwellers, George? At your age, I had no time for literature. I was a revolutionary. Pushkin’s a symbol of our national greatness, of course, but why study him?’

‘Because Pushkin teaches us about love,’ insisted George. ‘We need food and light scientifically – but none of it matters without love.’

‘For God’s sake, George! What nonsense. We created the first socialistic state. We fought our enemies in a battle of survival – and we’ve won. But the Motherland is ruined. Starving. We need to rebuild. We don’t need poetasters but engineers, pilots, scientists.’

‘Yes of course,’ agreed Andrei.

Satinov took out a cigarette – and Losha jumped forward to light it; he then saluted and withdrew. ‘David, how’s the new plane?’

‘Flying well, Father.’

‘Good. Well, I’ll leave you to your poems, boys.’ He nodded at Andrei, then he said curtly to his wife: ‘Tamriko?’

She followed him out of the room, and the barometer in the room rose again.

‘Father has something to tell her,’ explained George as he led Andrei back to his father’s little study with the gramophone. He closed the doors, restarted the jazz records and lay down on the sofa with his legs crossed. ‘They whisper in the bathroom. He never tells us of course. The less we know the better. Now he’ll have a nap for a few hours, and then probably he’ll be summoned very late for dinner.’

‘You mean—’

‘Don’t say the name, you fool,’ said George, pointing heavenwards. Then he whispered, ‘If you work for Stalin, you call him the Master but never to his face. In documents, he’s Gensec for General Secretary. The generals call him “Supremo”; in the Organs, it’s “the Instantsiya”. And when anyone says “the Central Committee”, they mean
him
.’

‘So he’ll be having dinner in the Kremlin?’

George sat up. ‘Don’t you know anything?
He
works at the Little Corner in the Kremlin but he really lives in the Nearby Dacha outside Moscow where my father and the Politburo meet late into the night over dinner. Then my father has to change and shave and be back in his office first thing in the morning. We hardly see him.’

‘He was at the fall of Berlin, wasn’t he?’

‘Oh yes, and at Stalingrad,’ said George proudly. ‘Now the war’s over, Father says he wants to see more of us – which means taking us to school, with all the bowing and genuflecting that entails. Pure hell! But no one tells my father what to do. No one except . . .’ And he pointed towards heaven again: Stalin.

‘I’d better be getting home,’ said Andrei. ‘My mother worries.’

George put his hand on Andrei’s arm with all the warmth that was lacking in his father. ‘Listen, Andrei, I know you want to get into the Komsomols and I’ve been singing your praises to Marlen. But it would be fun to have you join us in the Fatal Romantics’ Club. We’re planning to play the Game.’

Andrei felt a stab of excitement. This was what he really wanted – wasn’t it?

‘But there’s a problem,’ George continued. ‘It’s Nikolasha’s club and he wants to make it harder to join than the College of Cardinals or the Politburo. And Nikolasha says he’s not sure about you.’

Andrei swallowed. ‘What do you mean?’

‘He doesn’t know you as well as I do,’ George said. ‘Anyway, he says Serafima has the casting vote.’

‘Serafima? But Serafima doesn’t know me either. And I’m not sure sure she cares about anything, especially not the Fatal Romantics’ Club.’

‘But Nikolasha cares about her, and that’s the important thing.’

‘But isn’t he with Rosa? She adores him.’

George nodded. ‘She does, but Nikolasha lives for Serafima. In fact, sometimes I think the entire Fatal Romantics’ Club is really for her.’

Andrei stood up. He cared about this more than he meant to – and he had shown it all too clearly.

‘You helped me out,’ George said, standing too, ‘and I know you’re one of us. They’re planning to play the Game right after the Victory Parade so you have to join before then. It’s a special ritual.’

George led Andrei out of the study, across the corridor to his bedroom where he pulled from under his bed an olive-green leather case, which he flicked open. There, lying in red velvet, were two nineteenth-century duelling pistols.

‘Beautiful,’ said Andrei. He closed his eyes, remembering his
Onegin.

Andrei admired the pistols: the bevelled barrels, polished wood, burnished steel. ‘Are they real?’ he asked.

‘I doubt it. We borrow them from the Little Theatre. They use them in plays,’ George said, laughing. ‘And we’re going to use them in the Game – you’ll see.’

A few streets away, School 801 was not quite empty. The janitor mopped the floors of the empty corridors with the disinfectant that gives schools their characteristic pungency, and the director, Kapitolina Medvedeva, was alone in her office planning how the school would celebrate the Victory Parade on 24 June. It was getting closer. A few Komsomols and Pioneers would be chosen to serve in honour guards. And when she thought about this, she wished she could include Andrei Kurbsky because she knew how much it would mean to a boy of tainted biography.

The report on her desk showed that Andrei was thriving in the school and she was proud that she had overruled Rimm to let him in.

‘I wish to register my disapproval of the acceptance of a child of an Enemy of the People,’ Rimm had said. He believed Medvedeva was not Party-minded enough, and he wanted her job. She knew that every school, every institution had a Rimm. They were usually cowards so she’d stood her ground.

‘Fine,’ Rimm had surrendered. ‘Let him in if you must, but a family like his won’t be able to pay the fees.’

‘Actually, comrade, they
can
afford the fees,’ she’d responded, and smiled as she thought about the opportunity she was giving Andrei. He was her special project and she approved of his neat, reserved appearance, his parted brown hair and dark-framed spectacles. And he was already friends with George Satinov, Minka Dorova and Rosa Shako.

Kapitolina Medvedeva was a devout Communist, who believed that loving children too much made them egotistical. She was proud to be the director of a school with pupils from such eminent Party families. She was not impressed by the clammy and rather menacing pallor of Comrade Dorov, but his wife Dashka managed to be both chic
and
a doctor. Marshal Shako, the commander-in-chief of the air force, was the very model of a Soviet commander. And as for Comrade Satinov, he was so impressive that, when she spoke to him, she stammered and over-egged her compliments. There was something about Comrade Satinov. Perhaps it was because he was the real thing: he had done time in the Tsar’s jails, helped storm the Winter Palace in 1917, known Lenin, spent the winter of ’42 in Stalingrad. And no one was closer to Stalin himself.

Kapitolina Medvedeva had taught Stalin’s own children just before the war. Svetlana loved history – and came almost top of her class. But Kapitolina had failed to teach anything to his son, Vasily. The boy had been a delinquent scoundrel. Still, it must be hard to have the greatest titan in world history as your father.

She looked down at her desk to read Benya Golden’s report on Andrei. The hiring of Golden was another decision she had made over Rimm’s head, and he had turned out to be the best teacher she had ever known. Besides, how could any headmistress pass up the chance to employ the author of
Spanish Stories
?

She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. When she put them on again, she noticed that she could see herself in the reflection on her polished inkwell. Was it the distortion of the reflection or did she really look that frayed? What a sight she was! She had grey streaks in her hair, and her nose was more like a beak! There’s not much one can do with a face like mine, she thought.