The Vanishing Futurist (18 page)

‘You’re giving up!’ I stopped in the middle of the road and turned to face him. ‘You’re surrendering! I can’t believe it!’ I was so enraged that I took him by the arms and shook him, shouting in his face. ‘Pasha, you can’t give up!’

‘I’m not.’ He spoke very quietly. ‘But this isn’t your quarrel. It isn’t your fate. Why sacrifice yourself for no reason? You have a baby to think of now. You should go back to England and raise your child in peace.’

I gazed at him. How he had changed. I remembered him in the garden at Gagarinsky Lane reading Khlebnikov – ‘O laugh it out, you laughsters!’ So light, he was then, like a beacon, warming us all.

‘And what about you?’

‘I’ll carry on. I’ll work for the Revolution. I suppose I’ll –’ he gave me a twisted smile – ‘I’ll find someone else to love.’

‘What?’

I was aware suddenly that he was trembling. We stopped in the cart-tracks and the warm, wet snow fell on us both. It highlighted every fold in Pasha’s coat, his hat, his eyebrows.

‘What . . . what do you mean?’

‘
Milaya moya
, don’t tell me you didn’t know . . . I love you. I’ve always loved you. I fell in love with you from the moment you arrived in our house – you gave me a look, a sort of considering look, and you laughed, and I’d never heard a woman laugh like that before. I’ve been trying to make you laugh ever since.’

I felt rather than heard him say it – a physical jolt, as though all the cells in my body were realigning themselves. I opened my mouth and only a stammer emerged.

‘I know what you feel for Slavkin,’ he went on. ‘I’m not a fool. When we returned from the south and I saw how you glanced at him, I could have slit my throat. How many times have I wished I didn’t go with my parents? I’ve seen you suffer from his treatment of you. I’ve suffered with you. When I heard about the child, I felt so angry – so furious with him. Then I tried to put my ego aside and think only of you and the child. I’ve done my best to look after you both – but now I beg you, go back to England. There’s been so much unnecessary death already. You’re a foreigner here, and these people hate foreigners. Please, Gerty, do it for me.’

‘Pasha—’ I reached forward, unthinking, and touched his cheek. He caught my hand and suddenly we were kissing in the middle of the street, and I was crying, and so was he. All alone in the darkness, with a curtain of huge dirty snowflakes to shield us, we kissed each other. And it was as though a great river had overflowed inside me and I was carried along on the surge and suddenly all the struggle, all the hard, dry slog of life dissolved and it was easy, and warm, and irresistible.

I woke in the night, as though someone had tapped me on the shoulder. Pasha lay on his pallet beside me. A sentence was running through my mind. ‘He’s not being held by the Cheka.’ I knew what to do. I thought it through again, trying to fix it in my mind. Then I slept.

At six in the morning I got up and packed a small bundle. I took the last few coins from underneath the floorboard in the corner – the remains of the valuables that in the summer of 1918 Sonya and I had sewn into the hem of her coat. I removed a stone from the back of the fireplace and took out the Mauser that Monsieur Kobelev had left in my care. Dubiously, I blew the dust off it. I had no idea how to fire it, or even if it was loaded, but it hardly mattered.

‘Busy?’

I jumped. ‘Lord, Pasha, don’t frighten me like that! Not when I’m holding this thing!’

‘Yes, what the hell are you doing with it, may I ask?’

‘I’ve thought of something. I mean, I’ve remembered something that I think might help Nikita. Meet me in a couple of hours in front of the National—’

But Pasha grabbed my arm. ‘No. I’m coming with you now.’ He was already pulling on his coat and boots. ‘How dare you try to leave me here, you bloody . . . Galliffet.’

Despite myself I laughed and he smiled slightly. ‘What is your plan then?’

‘You don’t have to come in the building with me – there’s no need for both of us to be implicated. Wait outside, I’ll need you when I get out. I’m going to see Pelyagin. Just show me how to use this thing, would you?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous! What good will a gun do you? If you fire it, they’ll arrest you immediately. And even if you don’t, you’ll be searched at the door of the National and that’s the end of you as well as any chance of saving Nikita.’

I grimaced at him and put it back. ‘I suppose you’re right. It was just to give me courage. I’ll tell you the plan as we walk, shall I? On one condition – you promise not to try to stop me.’

I explained as we trudged through the deep snow towards the centre. Every few moments I had to stop and catch my breath. The moment I stopped, the baby began to turn inside me. Be calm, I willed it. This is for you.

The first pinkish tinge of dawn was in the sky by the time we reached the National. Pasha took both my hands and gave me a serious look. I knew what it meant. We could still turn around and go on with our lives. ‘Are you sure?’ he whispered.

I leant my forehead against his for a long moment. ‘I’m sure.’

‘So – I’ll wait for you here. I’ll do what I can about transport. If you don’t appear within an hour, I’m coming in to find you.’

Sweat was running down the back of my neck as I approached the main entrance. I had no pass to get me into the building. The baby kicked me sharply, so hard I saw the bulge through my coat.

‘Pass,’ said the guard. ‘Oh, it’s you.’

I smiled at him. ‘Yes, just me – here to see Pelyagin as usual. I brought you something to thank you for clearing up after me that other time.’ I pushed a lump of barley sugar that I had miraculously discovered at the back of the cupboard into his hands. The boy’s eyes lit up.

‘Wait.’ He stopped me suddenly. ‘He told me you weren’t giving him lessons any more.’

‘Oh – er, yes. But unfortunately he still has to pay me. These high-ups, you know, they forget we all have to live.’ I took a step past him.

He grinned. ‘Too right.’

I was across the hall before he could change his mind. Out of his sight, I climbed the stairs slowly to the third floor. What if my supposition was wrong, and Pelyagin simply didn’t know? There was no turning back now. I stopped for a moment to regain my breath, and slipped into his office. Rosa Gershtein, just arrived at work, was unwinding her scarf.

‘Rosa,’ I said hurriedly and in an undertone. ‘Please forgive me, but you must leave us alone now. Go, and do not come back until this afternoon. I don’t want to put you in any danger. And I must warn you, if you alert the guards I shall have to tell Pelyagin your real identity.’

‘Wha—’ She looked at me in horror.

‘Go now, don’t make a sound. I’ll tell Pelyagin you’ll be back at four o’clock. Not before, do you understand?’

She nodded, then took her hat and left. I glimpsed Pelyagin’s black shiny head bent over his desk in the next room.

‘Rosa!’ he called without looking up.

‘Rosa has been called away,’ I said as I entered. ‘Good morning, Comrade Pelyagin.’

 He half rose from his chair as if to bar me from the room. ‘I’ve nothing to say to you.’

‘But if you don’t mind, I have something to say to you.’ I took a deep breath and tried to speak calmly. ‘You should know that I am a spy for the British government and you have been passing information to me about the activities of the Bolsheviks for six months.’

His expression was almost comical. ‘You’re a spy?’

‘Am I or not? I know what I would believe if I was the guard in the entrance hall downstairs. Please sit down.’

He fell into his chair, staring fixedly at me. ‘What do you want?’

‘Where is Nikita Slavkin?’

Pelyagin’s face worked. ‘I don’t know, I swear to you – I don’t know.’

‘But you did know where he was taken, didn’t you? Last time I saw you, you told me as much. “The Cheka aren’t holding him,” you said. It took me all this time to realise you meant “They aren’t holding him
now
.”’

He said nothing, looking at me coldly. Was I right? Or was he weighing up what I might do, what his best option was? Backing away from him, I opened the door into the corridor and called, ‘Comrade?’

Pelyagin jumped up. ‘What are you doing?’

‘You seem unconvinced. So I’m calling the guard up from the hall to tell him about our lessons. All the information I’ve gathered from your office. All right?’

‘No!’ He was ashen. ‘Wait—’

The young guard was coming up the stairs. ‘Did you need me?’

I raised my eyebrows at Pelyagin. ‘Do we?’

‘No, no – I’ll tell you what I know. For God’s sake—’

‘Oh, I’m sorry to bother you, comrade. We don’t need you after all. Thank you so much.’

‘Oh,’ said the guard, a little disconcerted. ‘All right then.’ His footsteps turned and receded down the stairs again.

‘You’d better be quick,’ I said to Pelyagin. ‘If I have to keep calling him up and down the stairs he’ll be in an even worse mood to hear what I’ve got to say.’

He swallowed. ‘All right. I don’t know much – only that our boys arrested him that night. He knew they were coming. They’d been questioning him that day, then they let him go, idiots. They were sent more or less straight back to pick him up. He was taken first to the Lubyanka. But after a few days they transferred him. He went to a special place, a laboratory . . .’

‘Lab 37.’

Pelyagin looked amazed. ‘You knew?’

‘Where is it?’

‘It’s . . .’ He gulped. ‘It’s in the Church of the Ascension at Kolomenskoye.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘I – I—’

‘You put together a case against him, didn’t you?’ I said slowly. Hatred boiled in me. ‘You said – let me think – that his experiments were counter-Revolutionary? That he was plotting against the State? Why?’
With my huge belly, standing before him, I suddenly felt my rage was invincible. ‘
Why
?
Was it because he humiliated you, that time at the Futurist performance? Or was it because you were offended I didn’t want to go out for a drive with you?’

Pelyagin frowned. ‘No,’ he said.

‘Yes, it was, it was some little pettiness like that, wasn’t it?’

He looked at me oddly. ‘No, that wasn’t it,’ he said quietly. He sat up. ‘Of course his line about “Communism can’t exist in this version of the universe” was enough to get him thrown into jail alone. But have you forgotten that you denounced him yourself?’

Ice down my spine. ‘I told you – I said I was mistaken, don’t take it seriously, I said.’

‘It was too late by then. Why did you think I came to the house that day? I had the warrant in my pocket.’ He had recovered his
sangfroid
. ‘By then you’d all denounced him, one after the other. We could have arrested him ten times over. Marina Getler spoke to an agent of ours at the hospital; Volodya Yakov shopped him to the Cheka; Fyodor Kuzmin came to us not long afterwards to tell us that Slavkin was making anti-Soviet statements; it seems as though it was one of the few things that commune of yours managed to agree on—’

‘
Stop
.
’

Pelyagin stopped with his mouth still open.

I began to improvise. ‘How many hours have I spent here, in this room? You’ve left me here on my own several times, do you remember? When I fell asleep, for example? A spy doesn’t fall asleep like that. I’ve got so much good information from you, Pelyagin. The British Foreign Office are very happy with you.’

‘What information?’

‘Numbers in Cheka prisons, methods of interrogation, conditions in prisons, arbitrary arrests . . . It’ll cause quite a scandal, you know.’

He sat down. ‘What do you want?’

‘I just . . . I just want you to leave me alone. All right? I’ll leave now, and you won’t send anyone after me. You won’t mention this conversation to anyone, you’ll forget it entirely. Otherwise you’ll soon be at the mercy of those Cheka officers of yours.’

He stared at me for a moment, and then he nodded. ‘All right.’

‘I’ll need your ID card, and those spectacles, too.’

He gave them to me reluctantly.

‘Just one last thing. When you first asked me to come and give you lessons, was Slavkin already under investigation?’

He smirked. ‘You were a useful source from our first lesson.’

I slipped out of his office and down the back staircase. I could barely feel my feet on the floor. With shaking hands I pulled my shawl over my head and walked the long way around the building to the Aleksandrovsky Gardens.

‘Here,
dyevushka
–
girl, over here!’

From the other side of the gardens a gnomish figure was gesturing to me. Behind him stood a cart pulled by an ancient donkey. As I drew closer I saw Pasha in the back.

‘Where to, then?’ sang out the old fellow.

‘Where to? My God, Pasha, what on earth are you doing?’ I hissed. ‘We need to get to Kolomenskoye! Dobbins here won’t get there before nightfall!’

I calculated that Kolomenskoye was eight or nine miles from the centre of Moscow. At a walk that would take us three hours . . .

‘Kolomenskoye?
Chort vosmi
, I thought we wouldn’t be going so far . . . but this is all there is, and the old man tells me she trots. She might do it in a couple of hours.’ Pasha pulled me in. ‘
Poekhali
,
golubchik
!
Let’s go, whip her up, as fast as she can go!’

‘We might not have a couple of hours!’ I snapped at him, but he fastened up the back of the cart and we set off, the old man whispering a commentary to the donkey. ‘Yes-s-s, that’s a good leg, and the other one’s good, and that back one, pick it up nice and smart, yes, my beauty! Oh, you’re a fine old lady, twenty years and you trot like a schoolgirl . . .’

The tension twisted my insides as I watched the National slowly, slowly dwindling behind us.

‘Perhaps we’ll be able to catch a lift on a lorry if we see one,’ murmured Pasha. ‘And we’re resting here. If we have to get out and run, we’ll be faster than if we’d already walked five miles.’

We were at least inconspicuous on the cart. Huddled down and covered with a blanket, it looked as though the old fellow was simply returning home with an empty load.

In whispers under the blanket I told Pasha all of it – almost all of it, all that I could bear. At the end he was silent for a moment.

‘Don’t think you are going into the church alone,’ he remarked.

‘No, I need you with me. You’re going to use Pelyagin’s papers.’

‘What, me, impersonate that evil slug?’

‘Don’t be so vain.’

Pasha laughed and fell quiet again. ‘So Nikita had spent a day being interrogated when we saw him.’

‘Yes.’

‘He wanted us all to go to the hospital with Sonya, didn’t he?’

‘I think he did. He wanted to be alone when they came. That’s why he shouted at Anna Vladimirovna, and maybe why he didn’t want me to stay behind.’

‘They would have arrested all of us, I presume. Why didn’t they come back for us?’

‘Perhaps we’ll find out now.’

The last time we had seen him was over two months ago – when Sonya was still alive, when the IRT still existed. I had thought about him every hour, every minute since, obsessively going over the possible reasons for his disappearance. Every other feeling, I realised, had been pushed aside in order to concentrate on my hunt for Slavkin. With a grimace I remembered poor Sonya crying helplessly in the hospital, her thin, pale hands plucking at the blanket. ‘Where is he, where is he?’ Even while she was dying I burned with jealousy. Pasha was sobbing, trying to make her drink water, until Marina stopped him gently. ‘It’s no use, Pasha, the little bird has flown away.’

I had watched it all as if from a distance, and slipped away to find him. I had been determined to be the one to tell him she was so ill. I had wanted to see his pain, and then, no doubt, to comfort him myself, the loyal Gerty who can always be counted on, strong, capable – so different from the flighty little bird. Who needs a little bird in a Revolution!

And yet Nikita had loved her, despite himself – despite our ridiculous insistence that love was no longer relevant. What fools we had been. At least he and Sonya had found a few moments of happiness together – the night they walked together, the days and nights they spent in his workshop, while Pasha had watched me twisting and torturing myself with Revolutionary ideals.

And now, what of Pasha and me? Last night we had comforted each other. I had felt something astonishing, a sense of basking in another’s warmth that I had no memory of ever feeling before. Yet what did it really mean? Slavkin had carved himself into my heart so powerfully. The habit of placing him first in all my thoughts was deeply engrained. But I couldn’t tell whether it was love – or some kind of bitter longing for suffering, a poisonous egotism masquerading as devotion.

I tried to eat after writing this last chapter, but I couldn’t keep it down; every mouthful seems to smell like
blondinka
. Even a whole slice of bread is too much for me now. I’ve been welcoming in my hunger for so long that now I seem to have forgotten how to swallow. I’m a little dizzy when I stand, but if I sit and keep writing, I feel fine. Sophy rang, but I couldn’t speak to her. She’ll read this soon enough, and then . . . then we’ll see what she wants. Whether she’s willing to talk to me then.

At midday we finally trotted up to the Gate of the Saviour at Kolomenskoye. Pasha and I clambered out of the cart, aching and chilled, and blinked in astonishment. Since the morning the sky had cleared. The Church of the Ascension stood out, white as a swan against a cobalt-blue sky, on a high bank of the Moscow river. Behind it the snowy Russian countryside glittered and perfectly still columns of feathery smoke rose here and there.

The old man seemed agitated, and took our payment without demur. ‘Got to get my girl home,’ he muttered. ‘No good waiting around here.’ And he whipped up the old donkey and disappeared.

Neither of us particularly looked the part, but Pelyagin’s photograph was over-exposed and printed on poor paper – all that could really be made out was a man with a moustache and spectacles. Pasha put on Pelyagin’s glasses and grinned at me.

‘You see, the moustache turns out to be necessary after all.’

I laughed shakily.

‘
Nu shto
. Are you ready?’

I took a breath of the sharp, clean air, leant forward and kissed him. ‘Ready.’

We made our way to the main door of the church.

‘Open up, comrades!’ called Pasha.

A long pause. In the distance we could hear footsteps.

‘Open up!’

A young man, dishevelled and pale, looked out. ‘Forgive me, comrades, I was just . . . Oh,’ he looked at us in surprise, ‘I thought you were . . .’

‘You’ve kept us waiting,’ snapped Pasha, stepping inside. ‘Commissar Emil Pelyagin, from the Moscow Special Commission. Where is your commander?’

‘Oh, yes, well – he’s out, Comrade Commissar, he’s on a mission. They went during the night and they’re not back yet—’

‘Didn’t you get my telegram?’

‘T-telegram?’

‘I sent a telegram to say I would be coming this morning to inspect your set-up. I have heard poor reports of this outfit.’

‘Yes, no, comrade . . . They won’t be long. Perhaps the Comrade Commissar would like to drink a cup of tea?’ The poor fellow was shaking with fear.

‘Drink a cup of tea!’ bellowed Pasha. ‘I don’t have time to sit about and drink tea like a debutante! You’d better show us around. Come on.’

‘Yes, certainly.’ He led us into the aisle of the church, which was being used as a barracks. Shafts of red, blue and golden light, spinning with dust, fell on filthy piles of rags, broken bottles and ground-out
papirosy
. A girl was sleeping in a corner, bare feet sticking out from a blanket. ‘We use this as the mess room—’

‘Express yourself properly!’ barked Pasha. ‘Who’s “we”?’

‘First patrol, fifth division, South-East Moscow Region, Comrade Commissar!’ he shot back sharply, drawing himself up.

‘That’s better. You live like pigs, comrade. We need discipline to win this war.’

This was not what we were expecting. It was an ordinary Red Army post. I noticed the door to the vestry and moved towards it.

‘What’s through that door?’

‘Right away, Comrade Commissar . . . we have an office here . . . and a storeroom.’ He showed us through the empty rooms. ‘We keep ammunition in here—’

‘We were informed that there was a laboratory on the premises,’ said Pasha.

‘A laboratory? Well—’

A thin, high sound echoed suddenly through the walls. Pasha turned silently to the young man, his eyebrows raised.

‘Yes, sir, comrade, I was just going to take you,’ he stammered. ‘Through here, in the back courtyard – I have no authority, but of course you do—’

He unlocked a small door at the back of the vestry and led us out into the courtyard and a huddle of wooden sheds. We heard it again, more animal than mechanical. My stomach turned over. We crossed the snowy courtyard while the young soldier said over his shoulder. ‘They can’t control them, that’s the problem, Comrade Commissar.’ He pushed open the door and yelled, ‘Serafima! The Special Commission are here!’ He turned to us again and said, bizarrely I thought, ‘They should really just settle their accounts, there’s no place for them in our Revolution.’

He fell quiet when a tall figure appeared, dressed in black. Her face gave me a jolt – the ancient shrunken look of a woman decades older than her upright posture suggested. After a moment she nodded slightly. ‘Yes, comrades? How may I assist you?’

I had the uneasy feeling that she had seen straight through us.

‘Lieutenant Emil Pelyagin, Special Commission. I believe you have a scientific establishment here,’ Pasha shot back at her.

She studied him for a moment. ‘This is a closed facility. I am required to inspect all documents before admitting visitors.’

‘Good, comrade. I am glad to see you take security measures seriously.’ Pasha handed her Pelyagin’s documents. ‘What are you researching here? Are you a physicist?’

She looked at him a little strangely. ‘A physicist? No.’

‘Introduce yourself, comrade. Name and rank.’

‘My name is Sister Serafima. As to rank, I have none.’

‘Sister?’ repeated Pasha.

‘Nuns, aren’t they,’ interrupted the young soldier. ‘They moved in here from some convent or other.’

‘But what on earth are you doing running a research laboratory?’

Sister Serafima handed the papers back. ‘Follow me.’

On the door of the first shed was a scribbled notice: ‘
Laboratoria
36’. My heart was pounding. Sister Serafima pushed open the door and we were hit by the stench. It was dark inside, and for a moment I read the smell as something chemical.

I stepped inside the shed and saw – people. Half-naked, gaunt bodies jostled together, and eyes staring out at us, huge blank dirty eyes. Bile rose in my mouth. Some were sitting or lying on the earth floor – ageless and sexless, barely animate. Some shrank back at the sight of us. A few pressed forward, murmuring.

 ‘I don’t understand,’ Pasha stammered.

‘They call it a laboratory,’ Sister Serafima said impassively. ‘Perhaps in the future they plan some sort of research.’ She paused. ‘For now, these people and those in the two rooms beyond are my charges, a total of eighty-five souls. They are lunatics.’

 A murmuring started up. An old man stumbled towards us; his face was horribly swollen and bruised. ‘
Barishnya
,’ he said, and giggled. ‘I haven’t seen you before, miss.’ He reached out and took my hand, and everything in me wanted to shrink away from him. With an effort I controlled myself, but Pasha pushed him away, snapping, ‘Don’t touch her!’

Sister Serafima watched. ‘In this hut they are on the whole peaceable. In the neighbouring hut we keep the difficult ones. You heard them earlier.’

‘How did this man get so bruised, then?’ I asked.

‘Sometimes there are problems in this hut too. Have you seen everything you wanted?’

‘No – no. We were looking for a scientific establishment, a workshop,’ burst out Pasha in fury.

‘What?’

‘Lab 37. We believe that a certain prisoner was brought here – Nikita Slavkin was his name.’

For the first time Sister Serafima’s expressionless mask slipped. ‘Slavkin?’ she repeated.

‘Yes. We believe he was brought to Laboratory 37 in January of this year, from the Lubyanka. Do you know anything about this?’

She turned to the young soldier. ‘You may leave us now, Kurotov. I think I hear your comrades returning. You’d better let them in.’

When he’d gone she turned back to us and her face was suddenly animated. ‘Now – you answer some questions for me. You’re not Chekists, for a start. The Cheka visited me last week, a very different kettle of fish. What do you know about Lab 37, or Slavkin? Tell me the truth or Kurotov’s comrades will get their hands on you, and they are not as meek as he is, I’ll tell you that.’

The inmates seemed to pick up on her tone and they began to talk excitedly, gathering around us. A woman touched my arm and someone pressed themselves against my back. I took a deep breath and spoke.

‘Sister Serafima, we are not from the Cheka, you are right. Please understand. We are friends of Slavkin’s. We have been hunting for him all over Moscow since he disappeared in January. We were told he was working in a laboratory here, in the Church of the Ascension.’

Sister Serafima looked at us and I was amazed to see tears in her eyes. She turned swiftly to the people around us. ‘Go to your places!’ she barked. They fell back. ‘They don’t understand, they could hurt you without realising. So . . . you are Slavkin’s friends. The IRT, wasn’t it?’

I nodded. ‘He told you?’

‘Yes.’

Her charges had taken up their places on wooden bunks around the walls, four or five to each bunk. Those that did not fit sat on the earthen floor. They were silent and watchful. I gazed at them, trying to take this in. ‘So is
this
where they brought Slavkin after the Lubyanka?’

She nodded.

The baby suddenly began to twist violently inside me, the nausea in me was so strong I felt myself stumble. Pasha caught my arm and held me. I saw he was crying. ‘But’ – it came out in a wail – ‘
w
hy
?
’

Sister Serafima took a deep breath. ‘When he came here, he was . . . I thought he might not survive the night. As they dragged him out of the van he was having a fit. He lay frothing at the mouth and convulsing for almost half an hour. He didn’t speak for days.’ She put her hands on my shoulders. ‘I fed him like a baby, spoon by spoon. Those brutes at the church there, they make sport of my poor charges. Oh my God, the suffering! But I didn’t let them near Slavkin. He was so weak . . .