The Lieutenant’s Lover (33 page)

Misha took another cigarette from Hollinger’s pack before answering. His hands shook as he lit up. ‘That’s the question. For me, that’s the whole question.’

Hollinger examined his cigarette with scrupulous care, then finished smoking it with as much careful attention as a philosophy don might devote to constructing an argument in logic. When he was done, he stubbed the butt out and said, ‘Antonina was never convicted of anything serious. I’d swear to it. Marta, her handler, has been left in peace. And we know – I can’t tell you how – that the Soviets are short of translators. I can’t believe they’d have sent her back to Russia for anything minor. She’s here. In Germany. I’m almost certain.’

Misha nodded. ‘I believe you. I think you’re right. I feel it.’

‘And?’

‘The camp must have translators. Must have. It’s too big, too complex for it to manage without. You see, I
know
the Soviet way of thinking. In Russia, we’ve always exiled our people. We did it under the tsars. We do it under Stalin. If the Soviet administration here lost confidence in Tonya, what would they do? In Russia, she’d have been sent off in internal exile. Somewhere a thousand, two thousand kilometres from Moscow. Here in Germany, the country’s too small. It’s no distance from anywhere to anywhere. But what’s the nearest thing you can get to internal exile here? What’s the most out of the way, hidden, forgotten place that exists? It’s these special camps. Buchenwald is number two. How many others are there? Not hundreds, or you’d already have known about them. Not even dozens.’

Hollinger nodded. ‘I agree.’

‘And then again, I’ve been to all the big Soviet-German cities by now. I’ve asked around for translators. They haven’t been hard to find, in fact. Lots of people, eager to help for the money. But that’s always been my worry. It feels wrong. The translators I’ve found are the wrong sort. If Tonya had been convicted of some foolish offence, they’d have made it hard for her to stay in touch with the world outside. Not because they suspect that I’m looking for her or anything like that, but because that’s how these people –
my
people – think.’

Hollinger finished another cigarette. It was the fourth one he’d smoked since Misha had been with him. He stared at the butt as though suddenly disgusted by the whole idea of tobacco, and threw the pack onto the table behind him.

‘So let’s take that as an assumption,’ he said. ‘Antonina is attached to one of these blasted camps. We need to find the camps, then find her. After that…’ He blew out. ‘After that, we’ll just have to find a way to get her out.’

Tonya sat on her bunk: a wooden frame knocked together from rough sawn wood, a mattress of cotton ticking stuffed with straw, an old cotton sheet now grey with age, two army-issue blankets. It was a sunny day outside, but fresh, and the sharpening autumn air brought out the smell of resin and pine oil from the wooden-walled hut.

Tomorrow was a Tuesday. Tonya had persuaded Rokossovsky to make a trip down to the market that day. Her plan was an uncomplicated one. She would give him the slip during the street market and run down to the little warehouse. If Herr Kirsten and his canal-boat were there, she’d hide away on the barge then and there. If not, she’d simply go back into town, relocate Rokossovsky and try again as soon as she could. The plan relied on the fact that Rokossovsky would be too nervous of having lost Tonya to give the alarm. Since he wasn’t, strictly speaking, meant to allow Tonya to accompany him into town, she was pretty certain that he’d just scurry back to camp like a frightened rabbit, denying all knowledge of having seen her.

She felt surprisingly calm. On the one hand, the next two or three days might well determine whether she was safe in Misha’s arms or bound for a convict-train to Siberia. And yet, though she didn’t deceive herself about the risks, she felt calm. If the attempt worked, it would work. If not … well, she didn’t spend much time thinking about the alternative.

The air outside was still. The ordinary noises of the camp drifted in through an open window. The prisoners themselves created almost no noise. It was one of the saddest things. The Soviets had imprisoned them and then, in effect, forgotten them. There were few interrogations now. There were no charges or trials. No sentences. No letters or visits. As well as physical illness and infection, the prisoners, almost to a man, suffered from depression, lassitude and despair.

Tonya had come into the hut to pack.

The instinct to prepare for a journey was an old one, as old as Russia perhaps. But here and now, there was nothing more ridiculous. It wasn’t just that Tonya wasn’t sure how much space she’d have in her hidey hole on the barge. It was more that she owned nothing. The Red Army provided her with her uniform: the clothes she wore now and one change of clothes for when those were being washed. She had some basic underwear and some comfortable boots. She had an embroidered handkerchief that Valentina had given her. She had a comb, a tin mug, a bar of soap, a leather hair-tie, a picture torn from an American magazine that showed a pine forest under snow, a pot of petroleum jelly that she used to protect her lips in winter, a pair of jealously guarded sheepskin insoles that made all the difference when walking in heavy snow. And that was it. She had lost everything when she’d been sent to Siberia. She hadn’t even been able to take a picture of Rodyon or of her two daughters. She was forty-seven years old. She had no family, no possessions, no home, no status, no prospects. And she had come in here to pack! She laughed quietly at herself. Tomorrow she would put the hair-tie, soap and comb in her pocket, so that she had some chance of making herself look neat when she emerged from the barge and went in search of Misha. And that was it. That was all she had and all she needed.

Would Misha be rich? She was vaguely aware that he might be. Not only had he escaped Russia with his father’s money but, more than that, she knew that he was naturally and prolifically gifted. If he had chosen to go into business, she simply couldn’t imagine that he might have failed. Of course, though, Germany was a devastated country and there weren’t many rich men left anywhere. But then again, rich was a relative matter. Little though Tonya cared about Misha’s financial status, she felt fairly sure that he’d have managed to accumulate more than a hair-tie, a comb and a bar of soap.

She laughed again, feeling joyous.

In the yard outside, she heard a car zoom in through the gates and brake sharply. It was a foolish, showy way to drive, but the fashion for such driving had spread through NKVD ranks, as though such arrogance at the wheel reflected well on the splendour of the state that they served. Tonya listened vaguely to the goings on outside. Normally, they sank into a familiar pattern. The cars, voices, boots, doors, all had their own rhythms, their own customary patterns.

But right now, there was something different going on. Alerted, Tonya sat up and listened. There was a new voice. She couldn’t make it out, but it had a brisk, snapping quality to it. It was a voice accustomed to giving out orders and reprimands, a far cry from the camp’s usual absence of stiff discipline. Tonya stood up and straightened her uniform. Her boots weren’t properly polished. Recently that hadn’t mattered, but there had been rumours that the camp was to have a new commandant and if a martinet had arrived among them, then grubby boots might become an issue.

Tonya hesitated. She had no polish of her own, but one of her roommates, the quartermaster’s wife, had a tin that she sometimes let Tonya use. But curiosity won the day over boots. Tonya checked her uniform one more time, then stepped out into the yard.

The car that had drawn up was a black ZiS limousine, a car that always denoted seniority. The officer who had emerged from it stood with his back to Tonya. She thought she could glimpse the royal blue of the NKVD insignia, but she wasn’t quite sure.

She advanced closer.

The man’s uniform was perfectly pressed, including even the backs of his trousers. Rodyon had had that ability once: the ability to work like a Trojan all day and still to look crisp and fresh at the end of it – not that this new man was Rodyon, of course. He was too short and too young. The man hadn’t advanced more than six or seven yards beyond his car. He had his thumbs hooked into the side of his belt and he stood with his shoulders back and his chest puffed out. His voice had a nasty, carrying tone. The soldiers he was speaking to were plainly being reprimanded, perhaps even being told off for punishment. There were certainly privates included in his audience, but there were officers too, a captain even. Tonya suddenly wished she had taken the time to polish her boots. She realised that her plan for getting down to the canal in Bad Freienwalde tomorrow might have to be called off. There was something frightening, even disastrous in the mild September air.

She came closer.

The officer was a
podpolkovnik
, a lieutenant colonel in the NKVD. Tonya sidled round to join the group of soldiers he was addressing. As he heard her approach, his head changed direction slightly to indicate that he’d noticed her. She sprang to attention. She was no parade-ground soldier – never had been – but she could pull off a smart salute, when called for. She stood stiffly, her chin up, her eyes with that unseeing middle-distance focus beloved of inspecting officers. She saw the man only as a shape, an impression of a head balding from the front, mid-brown hair and that impeccable uniform.

A second or two passed.

The man wasn’t instantly acknowledging her salute. She held her pose, waiting. The man had stopped talking. He was coming over towards her. He was smiling, but Tonya knew that smiles didn’t always betoken warmth. The man was standing in front of her now, but for some reason she still didn’t look at him properly. She kept her eyes blank, her gaze unfocused. He stopped.

‘Well, well, well, Antonina Kirylovna Kornikova.’

She almost jumped in surprise. Her blank look suddenly concentrated itself on the man’s face. She saw the puckered skin, the blue eyes, the loose, full-lipped mouth. It was her brother, Pavel. She hadn’t seen him for ten years.

‘Pavel!’ she exclaimed in shock. Her brother’s smile broadened and his eyebrows lifted. She realised he was waiting for her to acknowledge his rank. ‘Sir!’ she corrected herself.

He acknowledged her salute with a brief gesture of his hand and he allowed her to stand at ease. He looked her up and down. His gaze lingered on her boots, but he said nothing. Then he gave a short nod. He turned back to the men he had been addressing. He had been reprimanding them for a slackness in saluting him on arrival. It should have been a short matter, but he went on haranguing the men, privates and officers alike, for a full eight or ten minutes.

Tonya remembered those first revolutionary years. Pavel had been so eager to copy Rodyon. He had so much admired the older man’s force, purpose and energy. But he’d understood nothing; nothing that had mattered. Rodyon’s drive had always come straight from his sense of injustice, his determination to do things better. Pavel hadn’t cared for any of that. He’d liked the power, the power to command and the authority to punish.

And Tonya suddenly realised something else. She’d never known who had denounced her to the authorities that time in 1936. In that paranoiac decade, suspicion had crept in everywhere. Friends denounced friends. Family denounced family. The kind old lady who helped you with your washing turned out to be a paid informant for the NKVD. So Tonya had never spent much time wondering who had denounced her or why … and yet now that she saw Pavel again, like this, she remembered that in the weeks before her arrest, he had made a rare trip from Leningrad to Moscow where he had spent a few days staying in Tonya’s apartment. On one evening, Pavel had produced a bottle of lemon vodka and the two of them had got a little drunk together. Tonya now remembered that she had grumbled about the kind of communist party that could send a good man like Rodyon to Siberia for imagined crimes. She’d remembered Pavel grinning, nodding, egging her on. But seeing his face now, in its NKVD uniform, with so much delight in its own rank, such willingness to inflict hurt, she realised that she had been drinking vodka that night with her own betrayer. Her brother, the traitor.

Pavel finished his harangue. The camp staff went about their duties, Tonya included. Pavel showed no desire to talk to her. Apart from that first use of her full name, he had shown no indication that he acknowledged a connection with her.

Tonya went back to her hut that night. She knew she wouldn’t be going to Bad Freienwalde in the morning. She knew that the world had changed again, changed very much for the worse.

Weeks passed.

Autumn drew in and with it, the promise of winter. The last winter, the one of 1945–46, had been bad, but people had somehow expected that. It was the first winter of peacetime. The country was occupied. Things were hard. What no one then had expected was that nothing would have changed a year later. Berlin was still a ruin. Yes, rubble was being cleared, but even so it was estimated that, at current rates of progress, it would take thirty years to finish the job. There was virtually no new construction. There were no tools to do it, no machinery, no materials, no cash. People were still hungry, and now they had a whole year’s worth of extra hunger to contend with. No one had enough fuel, or enough cash to buy it. For the black-marketeers and the prostitutes, business was still strong. For everyone else, things were shifting from bad to desperate. Patience was running out. Grumbles against the occupiers had become a constant background noise, like the rumble of summer thunder.