The Secret Speech (44 page)

Leo paused:

– Is Malysh…?

Raisa lowered her voice even further:

– Fraera was right. There was a typhus epidemic. Many children had died. But when I went back my son was still there. He was dying. He didn’t recognize me. He didn’t know who I was. But I stayed with him until he died. I buried him. Leo, Malysh is not my son.

Raisa crossed her arms, lost in her thoughts. Working through the events, she speculated:

– Fraera must have gone back, looking for my son in 1953 or 1954, after she was released. The records would have been shambolic. There was no way she could have found the truth about my son. She wouldn’t have known I was there when he died. She found someone close in age to him: maybe she planned to use him against me. Maybe she didn’t because she did love Malysh. Maybe she didn’t because she couldn’t be sure I’d believe her lie.

– It might be nothing more than a desperate attempt to hurt us?

– And him.

Leo considered:

– Why not tell Malysh the truth? Fraera is playing with him too.

– What will the truth sound like? He might not take it as a matter of fact. He might feel that I’m rejecting him, devising reasons why he couldn’t be my son. Leo, if he wants me to love him, if he’s looking for a mother…

With her characteristic knack for manipulation, Fraera brought a single, oversized plate of hot stew. There was no option but to sit around, cross-legged, eating together. Zoya refused, at first, to join in, remaining apart. However, the food was turning cold, and heat being its sole redeeming quality, reluctantly she joined in, eating with them side by side, metal forks clattering as they spiked chunks of vegetable and meat. Malysh asked:

– Zoya told me that you’re a teacher.

Raisa nodded:

– Yes.

– I can’t read or write. I’d like to, though.

– I’ll help you learn, if you want.

Zoya shook her head, ignoring Raisa and addressing Malysh:

– I can teach you. You don’t need her.

The plate of food was nearly finished. Soon they’d split off and return to their separate corners of the room. Exploiting the moment, Leo said to Zoya:

– Elena wants you to come home.

Zoya stopped eating. She said nothing. Leo continued:

– I don’t want to upset you. Elena loves you. She wants you to come home.

Leo added no more details, softening the truth.

Zoya stood up, dropping her fork, walking away. She remained standing, facing the wall, before lying down on the bedding, in the corner, her back to the room. Malysh followed, sitting beside her, resting his arm on her back.

LEO AWOKE, SHIVERING. It was early in the morning. He and Raisa were huddled on one side of the room, Malysh and Zoya on the other side. Yesterday Fraera had been absent: food had been brought by a Hungarian freedom fighter. Leo had noticed a change. A solemnity had fallen across the apartment. There were no more drunk cheers and no more celebrations.

Standing up, he approached the small window. He rubbed a patch of condensation from the glass. Outside, snow was falling. What should have sealed the impression of a city at peace, clean white and tranquil, only compounded Leo’s sense of unease. He could see no children playing, no snowball fights. The year’s first snowfall, in a liberated city, but there was no excitement and no delight. There was no one on the streets at all.

Somewhere in the sky above the apartment a faint whining noise climaxed in a high-pitched boom. A jet plane had flown overhead. Leo sat bolt upright. The room was dark. He stood, walking to the window. Raisa woke immediately, asking:

– What is it?

Before Leo could answer, explosions sounded out across the city, several in rapid sequence, in many locations. In an instant Raisa, Malysh, and Zoya were up, by his side, peering out the window. Addressing them, Leo said:

– They’re back.

There was panic in the adjacent rooms, footsteps on the roof, insurgents caught off guard, scrambling into position. Leo could see a tank on the street. Its turret pointed this way and that, before aiming directly at the rooftop snipers.

– Move away!

Shooing the others to the far side of the room, there was a split second of stillness, then an explosion. They were knocked off their feet, the roof collapsed, and the back wall fell away, beams tumbling down. Only a small portion of the room remained, closed by the sloping wreckage. Leo covered his face with the bottom of his shirt, struggling to breathe, checking on the others.

Raisa grabbed the remains of a smashed timber beam, battering at the door. Leo joined her, trying to break out. Malysh called out:

– This way!

There was a gap ripped through the base of the wall into the adjoining room. Flat on their stomachs, with the danger of the roof collapsing completely, they crawled through, tunneling out of the debris, reaching the corridor. There were no guards, no vory. The apartment was empty. Opening the door to the courtyard balcony, they saw occupants fleeing their homes, many huddled, unable to decide whether to brave the streets or whether they were safer staying where they were.

Malysh bolted back inside. Leo shouted:

– Malysh!

He returned, holding a belt of ammunition, grenades, and a gun. Raisa tried to disarm him, shaking her head:

– They’ll kill you.

– They’ll kill us anyway.

– I don’t want you to take them.

– If we’re going to get out of the city, we need them.

Raisa looked to Leo. He said:

– Give me the gun.

Malysh reluctantly handed it to him. A nearby explosion ended the debate:

– We don’t have much time.

Leo looked up at the dark sky. Hearing the drone of jet engines, he hurried them toward the stairs. There was no sign of any vory: he reasoned they must be fighting or they’d fled. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, moving through the terrified crowd, toward the passageway:

– Maxim!

Leo turned, looking up. Fraera was standing on the roof, machine gun in her arms. Trapped in the middle of the courtyard, they had no chance of reaching the passageway before she gunned them down. He called out:

– It’s over, Fraera! This was never a fight you could win!

– Maxim, I’ve already won!

– Look around you!

– I didn’t win it with a gun. I won it with this.

Around her neck was a camera.

– Panin was always going to use the full force of his army. I wanted him to. I want him to smash this city to rubble and fill it with dead citizens! I want the world to see the true nature of our country. No more secrets! No one is ever going to believe in the benevolence of our motherland again! That’s my revenge.

– Let us go.

– Maxim, you still don’t understand. I could’ve killed you a hundred times. Your life is more of a punishment than death. Go back to Moscow, the four of you, with a son wanted for murder, in love with a hate-filled daughter. Just try and be a family.

Leo separated from the group:

– Fraera, I am sorry for what I did to you.

– The truth is, Maxim… I was nothing until I hated you.

Leo turned around, facing the passageway, expecting a bullet in the back. No bullets were fired. At the exit onto the street he paused, looking back. Fraera was gone.

Inside the remains of an abandoned cafe with tablecloths wrapped around his hands to protect himself from the glass, Leo lay flat, waiting for the tanks to pass. He lifted his head, peering out of the broken window. There were three tanks, their turrets swiveling from side to side, examining the buildings-searching out targets. The Red Army was no longer deploying isolated units of clumsy, vulnerable T-34s. These were the larger, heavily armored T-54s. From what Leo had seen so far, the Soviet strategy had changed. Deployed in columns, they responded with disproportionate force-a single bullet would be answered with the destruction of the entire building. The tanks moved on only after the devastation was complete.

It had taken two hours to travel less than one kilometer, forced to seek refuge at almost every junction. Now, at dawn, they were no longer sheltered by darkness and their progress had slowed yet further, trapped in a city being systematically destroyed. Staying indoors was no longer any guarantee of safety. The tanks were equipped with armor-piercing shells that traveled three rooms deep before detonating in the very center of the house, causing the structure to collapse.

Witnessing the display of military might, Leo could only speculate as to whether the initial failure to regain control had been deliberate. Not only did it undercut the moderate position of restraint, it illustrated the ineffectiveness of the older armor, defeated by a mere mob. Now the latest hardware strutted on the streets of Budapest like a military propaganda reel. A Moscow audience could draw only one conclusion: plans to scale back the conventional army were flawed. More money was needed, not less, more weapons development-the strength of the Union depended upon it.

Out of the corner of his eye Leo saw a flicker of bright orange, startling among the gray stone rubble and gray morning light. Three young men across the street were readying Molotov cocktails. Leo tried to get their attention, waving at them. The homemade bombs wouldn’t work since the cooling units on the T-54s didn’t suffer from the same weakness as the T-34s. They were fighting an entirely different generation of weapons. Their crude devices were useless. One of the men saw him and, misunderstanding his wave, made a defiant fist.

The three men stood up, running at the rear tank-they threw the bombs, perfect shots, all three hitting their target, covering the rear of the T-54 with burning fuel. Flames soared. They fled, glancing over their shoulders, expecting an explosion that would never come. The fire roaring on the tank’s armor was irrelevant. The men increased their pace, running to shelter. Leo ducked. The tank turned and fired. The cafe shook, the remaining glass shards in the window fell to the ground, smashing all around. Dust and smoke rolled in through the window. Shielded by the cloud, Leo pulled back, coughing, crawling through the smashed crockery to the kitchen where Raisa, Zoya, and Malysh were crouched behind the steel units:

– The streets are impassable.

Pointing to the roof, Malysh remarked:

– What about the roofs? We can crawl across them.

Leo considered:

– If they see us, or hear us, they will still fire. Up there it will be much harder to escape. We’d be trapped.

Raisa remarked:

– We’re trapped down here.

On the top-floor landing there were two windows: one onto the main boulevard, the other onto a narrow back street, not large enough for a T-54. Leo opened the back window, studying the climb. There was no drainpipe, no foothold, no easy way of reaching the roof. Malysh tapped his leg:

– Let me look.

Leo allowed Malysh onto the ledge. Briefly assessing the gap, he jumped up, his legs dangling as he hung from the edge. Leo moved to support him, but he said:

– I’m okay.

He pulled himself up, swinging a foot onto the edge, then the other foot. He said:

– Zoya next.

Raisa glanced down at the drop, some fifteen meters:

– Wait.

Raisa picked up the tablecloths that Leo had tied around his hands, knotting them together. She wrapped them round Zoya’s waist. Zoya was annoyed:

– I survived for months without you.

Raisa kissed her on the cheek, commenting:

– Which is why it would be particularly embarrassing if you died now.

Zoya suppressed a smile, squashing it into a frown.

Standing on the window ledge, Leo lifted her up. She took hold of the roof:

– You have to let go so I can swing my legs!

Reluctantly Leo let go, watching as she swung her leg up onto the roof. Malysh caught her, pulling her up. The tablecloth safety cord was at full stretch.

– I’m up.

Raisa released the cloths, allowing Zoya to pull up her improvised safety line. Raisa was next. Leo was the last to make the climb.

The roof rose to a narrow ridge, on which Malysh and Zoya were straddled. Raisa was behind, forming a single file. Clambering up, Leo’s feet slipped on the tiles, dislodging one-it rattled down the roof before falling off the edge. There was a pause before the tile could be heard smashing on the back street. The four of them froze, remaining flat against the roof. If a tile fell on the other side, onto the boulevard, their position would be given away to the patrolling tanks.

Leo took in the view. Across the city, smoke rose in thick lines. Rooftops were smashed. There were gaps where buildings had once stood. Fighter jets-MIGs-cut low over the city, dropping into attack position, strafing targets. Even on the roof they were exposed. Leo commented:

– We need to hurry.

Crawling on all fours, bypassing the dangers below, they were, at last, able to make progress.

Up ahead the houses came to an end: they’d reached the end of the block. Malysh commented:

– We have to climb down, cross the street, and then climb back up on the other side.

The tiles began to rattle. Leo moved to the edge of the roof, peering down at the main boulevard. Four tanks were passing directly underneath. One by one they turned off the boulevard. To Leo’s dismay the fourth tank stopped. It seemed to be guarding the crossroads. They were going to have to sneak around it.

About to return with the bad news, Leo caught sight of movement in the apartment window directly below him. He craned his neck over the edge, watching as two women hung the modified Hungarian flag, the flag with the hammer and sickle cut out, from the top-floor window. The tank had seen the protestors. Leo bolted up the roof, gesturing to the others: