The Wolves of Leninsky Prospekt

by Sarah Armstrong

  I looked at Leila.

  She said, ‘I looked it up. Volk is Russian for wolf.’

  ‘So that explains the initials in the booklet. Eva Wolf Mann.’ I looked back at the sheets. ‘It all seems sad, somehow.’

  ‘Only if you believe she really wants to go back to Britain.’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘It’s not what I get from the stories, no. She could have made contact in a dozen different ways without involving you. She probably took papers with her, some kind of information, which would mean she’s in terrible trouble if she does ever go back. There’s something specific about you that means she wants you to be interested in her.’

  ‘Maybe. But you’re interested too.’

  ‘I’m all about the story.’

  That made me tense up. I wanted to say that she couldn’t let Seb write about me, that I wasn’t part of the story. But that might make her more interested in my part, whatever that was.

  I said, ‘Do you think Wolfgang was Russian?’

  ‘I think he was a German-speaking Russian spy, Andrei or Vlad, sent over from the Soviet sector to collect information. The Communists were regarded as allies then. They believe they won the war, we believe we won it, and the Americans believe they won it. I don’t think anyone believed that, nearly thirty years later, Berlin would still be split down the middle.’

  ‘Why would she come to Moscow? Wouldn’t he have dumped her there when she wasn’t useful anymore?’

  ‘She must have made herself really useful. Once she slips from the British side, it’s only Eva that could tell you.’ She stood up and yawned. ‘I’d better go to my lesson. I won’t be in later. My absence is becoming a problem so I need to eat and sleep at the university tonight. Meet me on Thursday after classes and we can look for some of your missing forests. Unless you’re meeting up with lovely Ivan again?’

  ‘No, I’m not seeing Ivan. I only saw him once.’ That hadn’t stopped me going back to where we’d met, again and again, in the hope that I would.

  30

  It took a few days for my feet to recover but, as soon as I could, I got the Metro. I wanted to visit Eva, to see if she still wanted my help. I felt that if she told me about Wolfgang, anything to verify the pages, then she was telling the truth about all of it. I didn’t want to have to help her, but I needed to feel all right about it. I’d decided that, if she was convincing, I was going to ask her to tell her story to Leila’s boyfriend. As a journalist, it would be easier for him than anyone else to get the story out. However, she didn’t keep provocateur hours on a Thursday, so finding her would be tricky. I got on the Metro and changed lines to come up Arbatskaya. The Khudozhestvenny cinema looked to be open again.

  I wandered down to the building I’d seen Eva go into, but there seemed little point in going in as I had no idea where her flat was. I went back to Eva’s fake flat, checking for jackets behind me and not being disappointed. I tried to open the door which had always been open, but it was locked. I knocked and an old woman answered.

  She spoke in Russian. ‘What do you want?’

  My spoken Russian was still poor, and I could understand more than I could say. I tried pointing.

  ‘Friend.’ I indicated the stairs. ‘I come.’

  The old woman shook her head and closed the door.

  I walked back to the small garden that I’d waited in before and looked up at the windows. I couldn’t see anything behind them, no lights or movement. I walked over to the Alexander Gardens, to see if she was on her bench, but two old ladies sat there, not speaking to each other. I walked around the Kremlin walls, expecting to catch sight of her, but she didn’t appear.

  The jackets knew I was here, and she hadn’t been summoned. Maybe I wasn’t allowed to see Eva again. She wouldn’t have told them what we talked about. The British didn’t believe what we’d talked about. My stomach clenched. Maybe she’d been taken away, exiled, sent back to the Siberia of her stories. I would never know what happened to her, even if Kit did.

  My eyes filled with tears, though I didn’t understand why I was so upset. I walked around to Red Square, along the line for Lenin’s tomb, which never seemed to get shorter, and looked at St Basil’s in the distance. There she was, waiting, with her dog.

  I walked towards her, smiling, but two armed soldiers got in my way.

  ‘Dokumenty,’ one said.

  I said, ‘Britanskaya,’ and searched in my bag for my passport. I couldn’t find it. I looked up, but I couldn’t see Eva any more.

  ‘Dokumenty.’

  ‘Hold on.’ I started to take things out of my bag and saw it at the bottom. ‘Here.’

  I held it out and tried to look around for Eva. There was no sign, not anywhere. I looked up at the soldiers. One was looking at the photo, then me, then passing it to the other. I held my hand out to take it back, but he started to flick through it. I tried not to show I was in a hurry as it was clearly slowing them down. It was passed over again, and then handed back to me.

  ‘Spasibo,’ I said, and I started to run towards the cathedral.

  One of the soldiers shouted, ‘Ne zapuskat!’

  I slowed down to a fast walk, but I knew she’d gone. At least she wasn’t in Siberia. Yet.

  When I arrived back in the apartment, Kit was home early, and listening to the Bolero. Both bad signs. He came out to the hall while I was still taking my coat off.

  ‘Martha.’

  I waited, but he guided me into the room before he said anything else. There was a half-empty bottle of red on the table and another, already open to breathe, by the record player. This was really bad.

  ‘Kit, what’s going on?’

  ‘Sit down.’ He poured me a glass and his face was so serious that I quickly drank half of the wine in one go.

  ‘Is it my parents? Has something happened?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘David?’

  ‘No, there’s no news from home. It’s nothing like that. It’s work.’

  ‘I’ve only just come in. I wasn’t hiding anything. I didn’t even speak to Eva.’

  ‘Martha.’ He put his hand on mine. ‘Darling, we know about Sandra.’

  ‘How she died?’

  ‘Yes, but also about the letter she gave you. We’ve been told about the letter you passed on and that makes your position—’ He sighed. ‘The Ambassador thinks you should go home for a break.’

  I pulled my hand away. ‘No.’

  ‘It’s just a holiday.’

  ‘No, I don’t want to leave. It’s going to be winter and I have been looking forward to it so much.’

  ‘The embassy is worried that you will be compromised. I mean, even more than you have been.’

  I finished my wine and looked out past the balcony. ‘But when can I come back?’

  ‘Soon,’ he said. ‘You’ll probably be back before Christmas. Not that they have Christmas here, of course.’

  He filled both our glasses, and fetched a plate of rye bread, sausage and cheese from the kitchen. We picked from it for a while.

  ‘What exactly am I being punished for?’

  ‘You’re not being punished, darling. You thought you were helping out a friend, I expect, and it turned into something quite, quite different. I would never have put you in this position if I’d known.’

  ‘But if I leave, what will change?’

  ‘We are going to force a couple of points with the authorities, ruffle some feathers. They wouldn’t like their wives in London being approached like Sandra was.’

  I was confused, until I remembered I was just a wife. A dependant.

  ‘Do you know why Sandra died? Was it them?’

  Kit nodded.

  ‘Was it connected to the letter?’

  ‘Not directly, darling. Not directly.’ Kit shook his head. ‘I’ve loved having you here.’

  He smiled grimly. I turned my jasmine plant around on its saucer. It was looking rather droopy.

  ‘It doesn’t sound as if
I will be coming back, Kit.’

  ‘You are coming back. We will have Christmas dinner at the embassy and frolic in the snow.’

  ‘Do you promise?’

  ‘I promise. Cross my heart.’

  He did mean it. I knew he did.

  ‘How long have I got?’

  His face fell. ‘The flight is booked for tomorrow morning. I think it’s been booked for a few days. I swear I didn’t know until a couple of hours ago. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘So, it has nothing to do with Eva?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Why aren’t you asking what happened with Sandra?’

  ‘Do you want to tell me?’

  ‘No.’ I finished my wine, and he refilled the glass. ‘I won’t be able to let Leila know what’s happening, will I? Will you explain things to her?’

  ‘Of course. Is there anyone else?’

  Eva. Of course, Eva, wherever she was. ‘No.’

  He nodded, and then pointed to a large black case next to the sofa. ‘Do you know what that is?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘A Geiger counter. I was given it to test on your clothes and shoes. Sometimes our peace-loving friends use radioactive dust to track people’s movements. See where they go, who they see. Our scientists have no idea about the medical implications long term.’

  I shuddered. ‘And?’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t find anything. I just wanted you to know what they are capable of.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘For when you come back. I know you’re a nice person, and you can forget when you talk to people that they are capable of things like that without thinking twice. That’s what the poster was for.’

  He pointed back to the poster of the cosmonauts, man and dog, destined for the stars. I remembered my arrival, when I had the whole of Moscow to discover.

  I was feeling very drunk by now. I picked at the bread. ‘I do love Moscow. I could stay if I wanted. I don’t think they can make me go.’

  ‘Pyotr will be here at eight.’ Kit tilted his head. ‘Play the game, Martha. Go for a holiday, come back when things are settled. Moscow will still be here.’

  ‘I know. Like Lenin.’

  ‘Like Lenin.’

  "Metro"

  by

  E.V. MANN

  I keep my eyes on the darkness of the windows so that I don’t miss anyone waiting on the platform at each Metro station. I don’t recognise my reflection in the glass. It could be either day or night in this underground cosmos as I criss-cross under the city, wander from one line to the next. Sometimes I catch the scent of a wolf and run for the next train.

  The faces of women blur together, but I know she’ll stand out. I know her better than my own face. I’m scared she won’t recognise me anymore. I have been transformed by arctic journeys.

  The train doors open and I can smell the wolves which hunt me. I look outside to the rectangular panels of grey marble which cover the platform walls. The matching slender pillars are gently arched, but they’ve ruined the curve with large electric lights. I mustn’t think ‘they’, I remind myself. We.

  The carriage feels too warm, so I loosen my scarf. I think I’m speaking to myself, but I can’t hear the words. I have so many words to use up that they wake me at night, eating their way out from inside my brain like maggots. I catch the eye of a woman sitting opposite. She is staring at me. She isn’t who I am looking for, and my eyes slide away.

  I make an effort to unclench my fists and focus on what I will ask for, if they get me. Just one last word. One word – home. Maybe this time they won’t catch me. Maybe this time I’ll find her first.

  The doors close and, as the station is whipped away, I see something large running alongside the train and then slipping back. Large and quick, like austere fire, and then darkness. I close my eyes. I know that shape. The smell is overwhelming now. I hold my scarf over my mouth and nose. Gradually, the smell fades and I think, maybe we’ve left it behind.

  Maybe, I think, when I get off at Kolomenskaya I can just admire the yellow ceiling and white plasterwork and trail my fingers over the amber treacle of the octagonal marble columns. Maybe I won’t think, it’s all too much, as I slide underneath the gilt cartwheel chandeliers. Maybe I don’t have to fall when they capture me, like before, hands smashing and mouth bleeding on the cold brown tiles. I lay there, wishing I’d fallen on the tracks instead.

  The train pulls into the station, and the thick marble columns slow their passing. I stand up and cross the threshold between metal train and cool ceramic and think, oh, there’s nothing here. I look around. I can leave, I’m free to leave, I think, and my heart lifts even while the stench is so thick I can taste it at the back of my mouth.

  I remember the posters on the walls of my life: ‘Lenin is always with us!’ My shout echoes from the marble and makes the chandeliers tremble.

  Everyone keeps walking. No one turns around.

  I walk out of the station and feel the cold air keenly like death in my lungs. My wolf is waiting for me at the entrance, ready to take my arm, and I go with him, as quietly as snow.

  31

  I tried to enjoy being at home. I had been away for less than a year and I should have missed it, but it was like coming home from Cambridge. A temporary stop-gap. Something to get through.

  I missed Kit and spent hours staring out of the window, wishing he had a phone. I wrote letters to him but found their generalities frustrating. I wanted to be back in Moscow before they arrived. I couldn’t write about anyone or anything without wondering what the censors would make of it all. I certainly couldn’t mention my family. My father, his position and his secrets, loomed behind everything. He could barely look at me when we passed in the hallway.

  I tore up the letters, and annoyed Cook by trying to pick up her recipes to take back to Moscow. And I was back by myself while Ma was out selling jam and Pa was ‘at work’.

  Kit had convinced me to take back all my clothes to give them a proper wash in the machine, instead of half-rinsed in the bath. I liked how much softer they were, but I walked around the town centre looking for seamless rubber boots and warm underwear.

  My parents had acknowledged my twenty-first birthday by getting David over for the weekend. I forced him to go to the pub.

  ‘I’ve got to get out of this house. I just wish I knew when I can get back there. You haven’t heard from Kit either?’

  David shook his head. But he didn’t look at me, and I knew he was hiding something.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I just don’t think it’s very likely that you’ll be going back.’

  ‘Why? What have you heard?’

  ‘Nothing specific. It’s just, people who are sent home like you were don’t tend to go back.’

  I held my head in my hands.

  ‘It’s all right, Martha. You’ll find where you’re supposed to be.’

  I spoke into my hands. ‘I’m supposed to be in Moscow. I love it there and there’s so much I didn’t see. I was waiting for the snow.’ I felt David’s hand on my shoulder and whipped my head back. ‘It’s Pa, isn’t it? He’s put a stop to it to punish me.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  I groaned. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘He doesn’t have a say about what happens at foreign embassies.’

  ‘He could do. Do you know, I have no idea what he does and what he has a say in. But they all did.’ I gestured vaguely towards Russia. ‘They knew.’

  David lowered his voice. ‘They told you who he was?’

  ‘They let me know that they knew who he was. They probably know him better than me.’

  ‘You know him as well as anyone else.’ David exhaled and placed his fingers on the table. ‘You need to do something other than waiting. Something you can continue with whether you stay here or go back to Moscow. Read all of Shakespeare’s plays, or go back to Classics and remind yourself why you liked them so much. Listen to music, take up knitting, I don’t know. Kit said you were doi
ng a lot of walking.’

  ‘So, you have heard from him?’

  David slid his fingers from the table and rested them in his lap. He sat back and chewed his lip. ‘The world we live in, the three of us, isn’t one where we can answer everything. You’re not like us. You like to tell people what you know, and that’s not a bad thing. You’re an open person, but too open sometimes. You’re not happy to sit in the background and not ask what’s happening. And that can make things tricky, dangerous.’ He frowned. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  ‘Yeah. I shouldn’t ever have gone.’

  ‘Maybe.’ He finished his pint. ‘We’d better get back.’

  I followed him up Church Street, a little way behind, and thought, he was right. Up ahead was the school and, beyond that, the church. If I didn’t watch out, my life would be restricted to this section of road, backwards and forwards. I needed to stop waiting around for Kit to change things for me.

  No one would actually say that I couldn’t go back. I tried to speak to Ma about shopping for my return, and she turned away. Pa was grim over the dinner table. If I looked at him unexpectedly, I’d see that he looked sad. I was a disappointment. I went through my books, my papers, never knew what day it was.

  I started to go back to the library, requesting books on Russia and flicking through the atlas to marvel at its size. I found travel books with pictures of palaces in the middle of parks I’d walked right past, churches I’d missed by not turning a corner, and snow on everything. I sat at the library table and cried at the thought that I couldn’t go back. I learned the name of the librarian, Rosalind, and she started to research other books I might like and arranged inter-library loans. She never asked why I was back, and I was glad.