The Betrayal

by Helen Dunmore

‘My God.’ Anna’s quiet for a moment, then she says, ‘I should be thinking of the child but I’m only thinking of you.’

  ‘I was the same. As soon as Russov told me all I could think about was you and Kolya.’

  Slowly, Anna stands up, pressing her palms down on the table as if she needs to support herself. ‘Let’s go out. There’s no air here. Let’s go down by the water.’

  ‘But we won’t be back in time for Kolya,’ says Andrei, surprised to find that he’s the one who remembers this.

  ‘He can let himself in for once, he’s got his key. I’ll write a note for him.’

  *

  They walk in silence, arm in arm, through streets that are washed with evening light. The sun is hidden by a thin fleece of cloud. It will scarcely grow dark tonight. The main streets are busy, but Anna and Andrei keep to the back ways, along potholed roads, past damaged buildings.

  ‘Let’s go down to the Neva.’

  The whole city seems to be out of doors, moving slowly, as if heading to a destination that everybody has agreed on. But there’s no destination, only the summer night itself. That’s enough for everyone. You stroll like this, relaxed, expectant, swinging hands, when you’ve got a whole summer night ahead of you. Girls’ cotton dresses billow against their bodies as they lick their ice-creams. Young men in naval uniform link arms. An old woman in rusty black with a kerchief on her head hobbles very slowly along the centre of the pavement in front of Anna and Andrei, leaning on her stick. Anna hops off the kerb to pass her, followed by Andrei, and followed by the old granny’s voice, grumbling, ‘It’s all very well when you’re young, just wait until you’re old like me.’

  But she and Andrei are not so young any more, thinks Anna. That girl who’s crossing the road, in her white dress splashed with red flowers: she’s really young. She looks back, laughing, at the rest of the gaggle of high-school girls who are running to catch up with her. Her hair flies up and her silver necklace jumps against her collarbone. She’s very pretty. Anna slides a look at Andrei to see if he’s watching, too.

  No. Andrei’s staring ahead, frowning. Anna’s stomach lurches as the fear she’d almost left behind catches up with her. My God, what’s she doing, worrying about such a thing when –? But all the same she can’t help being glad Andrei wasn’t watching the girl.

  ‘Let’s get away from all these people,’ says Andrei. At the next corner he turns left, into an even narrower, dustier and more potholed street.

  ‘This isn’t the way to the river.’

  ‘It’ll be quiet along here.’

  They wander on, more slowly now. Maybe it’s better to avoid the water, Anna thinks. She and Andrei would be like a couple of black crows among the summer faces.

  A memory rises up in Anna’s mind. Her mother kneels at her feet, tying the sash of Anna’s best dress. She glances up at her little girl. Maybe Anna is frowning, or tear-stained, because her mother says, ‘You don’t go to parties with a long face.’

  A thin, scabby cat hurtles out of an entrance, ears back, yowling. Anna stops, and peers into the courtyard. In the shadows a circle of children bunches. They stare at the couple defiantly. This is our world. You can’t come in. Anna and Andrei walk on. Suddenly she stops and leans against a pock-marked stone wall. Shell splinters, probably.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘What are we going to do? What are we going to do, Andrei?’

  Even the stone might be listening. She’d been desperate to get out of the apartment. Some nights she can almost hear the Maleviches breathing through the walls. She’d thought they would be freer out here in the summer night, but they are more exposed. His face is close to hers, anxious, drawn. He mustn’t be worried about her, on top of everything.

  ‘I’m sorry, I was being stupid,’ she says. ‘Of course we will be all right.’

  ‘Of course we will,’ he says, and pulls her close. She feels his heart beating like hers, too fast. She says nothing.

  In bed that night, they talk quietly, because they know that Kolya will be awake.

  ‘He never seems to sleep.’

  ‘No wonder he’s so pale.’

  ‘And he’s like death warmed up in the mornings.’

  ‘When you think how he used to get us up at five in summer.’

  ‘ “It’s not time to sleep! The sun’s shining!” ’

  ‘And you had to have the curtains relined.’

  They grumble quietly, holding each other, avoiding the subject that burns in both their minds.

  ‘Andrei?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Move your arm a bit … Listen, you can’t get involved. Why should you do this for Russov? He wouldn’t do it for you. Lena’s right, you’ll have to call in sick.’

  ‘For how many days?’

  She’s silent, calculating.

  ‘Russov will have given Volkov my name already,’ goes on Andrei. ‘I know him.’

  ‘Then let’s go away.’

  ‘ “Go away”? What do you mean?’

  ‘Just … not be here.’

  ‘I can’t leave the hospital. You can’t leave the nursery. Besides, Kolya’s got exams coming up.’

  ‘I know all that, Andrei. But why not? We could go to the dacha. It’s safe there. No one would know we were there –’

  ‘Someone always knows.’

  ‘Not if we’re careful.’

  ‘People would see us coming and going. There’d be smoke from the chimney.’

  They are talking as if they really might do it, he thinks in amazement. Go away, lie low, let the storm pass. Lose their careers and their livelihoods, but keep their lives. No. It’s absurd. Anna is overreacting. Things are not so bad as they used to be. The Terror is over; Yezhov is dead, after causing so many deaths. People aren’t vanishing in their hundreds of thousands, as they were in Yezhov’s time.

  ‘It’s impossible,’ says Andrei flatly.

  ‘No, don’t you see, it’s the only thing to do? The only thing, Andryusha! Once they get hold of you they never let go. They go on and on, and then they go on some more. Once they’ve got your name on a list they never forget it. They can make up whatever they like. But you can be ill, my darling. You work so hard, you need rest. It’s perfectly legitimate. We do nothing but work and work. I want to cultivate more ground at the dacha, anyway. Kolya won’t like it, but he’ll have to understand. It’s for his sake too, Andrei! We can’t let his life be wrecked before it’s even started.’

  Thank God that Kolya is older now. She thinks of them often, those ranks of bewildered children parted from parents and then from grandparents, sent off to children’s homes where they got TB and faded away from sheer lack of the will to live. But on the other hand Kolya is almost old enough to be sent to the camps himself. Once the contamination gets into a family, it spreads to every member of it.

  ‘His life won’t be wrecked,’ says Andrei. His voice sounds cold but she knows he isn’t cold, not really. It’s just that he’s been forced into a corner. ‘Nothing’s even happened yet. For God’s sake, I’m a doctor. Russov’s asked me to make an examination, that’s all. They can’t make much out of that. If the boy’s got arthritis, they can hardly blame the doctor.’

  ‘But that’s exactly what they will do. It wouldn’t be any trouble to them to make a criminal out of you, simply because you’ve been involved with the treatment. If anything goes wrong, there you are: they’ve got a scapegoat. You’ll have ordered the wrong tests, or they won’t have been carried out properly, or something. Russov knows that. Lena knows it. She’s trying to help you, only you won’t listen. You won’t see what’s going to happen, because you’re too pure and you want to think that everyone’s like you.’

  ‘I do see it,’ says Andrei quietly. ‘Only there isn’t an alternative. So we go to the dacha … but everyone knows where that is, so it’s no solution.’

  ‘We could go to Irkutsk.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Anna! What on earth would we do there?’

/>   ‘We could stay with your uncle. You told me he’s got two rooms, and the boys have left home, haven’t they? They’re family. They’d help us until we could find work.’

  ‘That’s just crazy, Anna. You’re panicking. We haven’t got the right papers, we’d never get a residence permit just like that. We live here in Leningrad and our work is here. These are our lives. Are you suggesting that we run away from everything – destroy everything we’ve built up – just because there might – might – be trouble?’

  Anna sighs deeply. She knows he understands her, and yet he’s pretending not to.

  ‘We should panic,’ she says. ‘People are destroyed because they don’t panic in time. They think it won’t happen to them.’

  He feels her sigh become a shudder, shaking her body.

  ‘Anna. Anna!’

  He clasps her tighter, wrapping her in his arms. Her warmth and her softness surround him. He could vanish into her, be hidden as she longs to be hidden. He could stop the world from dragging them away from where they want to be.

  ‘Anna!’

  She sighs again, differently. Her body moves against his, yielding to his touch so that the melt and flow of sex can begin. He smells her hair and the skin of her neck. She twists round and licks his face, then dives to kiss his belly, following down the dark line of hair that leads to his penis. She rubs her face against it until he groans aloud.

  ‘Shh, Kolya’ll hear,’ she mutters automatically from the depths of the bed, but it’s too late for him to care. They are moving out together, far from their creaking bed and the listening walls, to the place where they are always together and always safe.

  4

  In the light of the next morning, Andrei is confident that he and Anna have let themselves get worked up over nothing. For heaven’s sake, all Russov has asked him to do is to see the boy. He and Anna have given way to paranoia. Easy enough to do, but not very creditable, he tells himself, as he walks to work through the calm grey morning. This mist will lift later on, and it’ll be a fine day. Not too hot. He doesn’t mind that. Humid, stifling days are bad for his patients. The whole hospital simmers with suppressed irritation once the mercury reaches the high twenties.

  His heels strike firmly on the pavement. Anna has had his shoes resoled and the cobbler put metal tips on, as if he were a kid. But he likes the sound.

  In bad weather he might take the tram, but on a morning like this half an hour of brisk walking is just what it takes to clear his mind. Everything will be all right. That hollow feeling in his stomach is because he’s eaten nothing. They overslept. Anna was rushing around the apartment and there was barely time to gulp a glass of tea.

  The boy is a patient who requires diagnosis and treatment: not only requires it, but has a right to it. This has got nothing to do with Russov now.

  The figure sitting outside the private room is a Ministry of State Security policeman; one of Volkov’s men. Andrei barely glances at him. He’s heard of this happening, although high-ups often go to private clinics or have medical treatment in their own homes. But with children it’s another matter. Andrei’s mouth tightens in anger. The boy’s ill, and they prop a goon outside his door.

  In the door’s name-slot there is one typewritten word: VOLKOV. Information, threat or warning? It could be, and probably is, all three.

  ‘Your papers,’ says the policeman, holding out a hand.

  ‘I am Doctor Alekseyev, a paediatrician here. I’ve been asked to examine this patient.’

  ‘Your papers.’

  *

  The door of the private room closes behind Andrei with a soft, firm click. The boy is propped up on a heap of pillows. He has a miniature screwdriver in one hand, and an engine on a wooden tray in front of him. He does not look up at Andrei, but the woman sitting at the bedside gets to her feet with convulsive suddenness. She is expensively dressed and her face is thick with make-up, but her body is strong and square. The body of a peasant.

  ‘Good morning,’ says Andrei.

  Still the boy doesn’t look up, but the mother says hastily, ‘Say good morning to the doctor, Gorya.’

  The boy’s fingers tighten on the screwdriver. Andrei measures the outline of his body under the bedclothes. He’s tall for ten, and slender for his age. They have fixed a cage over his right leg. Andrei advances slowly and casually towards the bed, as a horseman might approach a nervous foal. The child keeps his head down, but Andrei catches the glint of his eye as he steals a look upwards, towards the doctor.

  He’s afraid. Arrogant too, maybe, but that’s scarcely his fault.

  Andrei takes a chair on the opposite side of the bed to the mother.

  ‘That’s a fine engine,’ he says.

  The boy doesn’t answer. His face is pale and pinched. Andrei judges that he is in moderately severe pain.

  ‘He’s got dozens of them at home, a real collection,’ breaks in the mother. ‘There’s nothing he likes better than putting them to rights when they go wrong. Wherever the fault is, he’ll always find it …’

  ‘That’s good,’ says Andrei, and then to the boy, ‘I’m Doctor Alekseyev. My father was an engineer; he worked on the design of railway bridges.’ Still the boy won’t look up, but Andrei knows that he’s listening. ‘He worked in Siberia. There are a lot of special problems when you’re building on permafrost, as you can imagine. He was like you: he could repair anything –’

  ‘He’s been in such pain, doctor, you can’t imagine,’ the mother interrupts again. ‘All night, he’s been waking up every hour.’

  Andrei stands up, and holds out his hand across the bed. ‘Excuse me, I should have introduced myself to you. Andrei Mikhailovich Alekseyev. As you probably know, Dr Russov has requested me to do an examination.’

  The mother nods, slowly. Her wide brown eyes may look bovine, but they are shrewd too, sharp even. She’s not happy with the way things have gone so far. This hospital has let her boy suffer, that’s what she thinks. Such things shouldn’t happen, not to people in their position. And yet her peasant self, deep within her, is telling her not to cross Andrei, because he is ‘the doctor’ and his powers have a touch of magic in them.

  Suddenly she remembers her manners. ‘Polina Vasilievna Volkova,’ she says. She doesn’t want to cross him, but at the same time she knows who she is, and what her entitlements are.

  ‘I wonder if you’d be good enough to leave me with Gorya for a little while?’ he asks.

  She stares at him. ‘But I’m his mother. He needs me here.’

  ‘Of course. But in this case I consider it the best approach,’ he says firmly, deciding neither to apologize nor to explain. ‘And I can see that you’re exhausted. You’ve been up all night with him, I expect?’

  ‘Not just last night,’ says the mother with grim pride. ‘It’s more than a week since I’ve lain in my bed. Before he got taken in here, I was up with him night after night. Never had my clothes off. You can’t leave a child to the servants.’

  The effrontery of it makes him smile in spite of himself. Quickly, he recomposes his face. ‘I thought as much. It’s what any mother would want to do,’ he says. ‘I understand that you won’t feel able to take a nap, even though that’s what you need, but some tea and a breath of fresh air would do you good. There’s a courtyard where you can go. Any of the staff will show you.’

  Her face eases. She nods again, this time in acquiescence. She wants to be looked after too. ‘It’s true. It’s stuffy in here, even with the fan.’

  Yes, they’ve got a fan. And a bunch of grapes in a bowl on the bedside table. And a handsome bar of chocolate with a wrapper he doesn’t even recognize. But he doesn’t want to think about all that.

  The mother pauses, holding the door handle, and looks back at Andrei. ‘He’s my only one,’ she says, and he can’t tell from her tone if it’s a plea, a threat or a warning.

  The door closes behind the mother. He has lost Gorya again, who is twiddling his screwdriver in a minute screw. Andr
ei sits down. The screwdriver slips out of the groove, because the boy’s hand is so tense. As if there’s been no interruption to their conversation, Andrei says, ‘I used to love watching my father repair our radio. If he couldn’t get hold of the correct part then he was always able to improvise.’

  ‘That’s stupid,’ says Gorya in a low voice. ‘You should always use the correct part, or you’ll damage the mechanism. Or, if the radio is no good, then you should replace it.’

  Andrei looks at the boy with something close to pity. How has this boy been brought up? He’s like the citizen of a foreign country. ‘But sometimes that’s not possible,’ he says. ‘You have to make use of what you can get hold of. Who put that cage over your leg?’

  ‘One of the nurses.’

  ‘Don’t you know her name?’

  The boy shrugs. ‘I can’t know all of their names.’

  ‘So, does it keep the weight off your leg satisfactorily? Does it ease the pain?’

  ‘My leg doesn’t hurt,’ says the boy savagely. ‘I only feel ill because I’m stuck in this stupid hospital. I’d be all right if I could go home. It’s just swollen because an idiot called Vanka whacked me with his racket when we were playing doubles.’

  ‘Oh – you play tennis?’

  ‘I don’t like it. I like football.’

  ‘I see. So the important thing is to try to get you fit for next season.’

  For the first time, Gorya’s face relaxes. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Right. That means we’re going to have to do some tests. They won’t be particularly comfortable, but they’re essential. You understand? Blood tests, X-rays and so on. But first of all I need to take a close look at your leg and ask you some questions, which will probably sound very boring, but are all quite important. If you like, your mother can come in and help you with the answers; but you’re ten, aren’t you?’

  ‘Nearly eleven.’

  ‘Then I expect you can tell me everything I need to know.’

  ‘She gets things wrong, anyway.’

  There’s a knock on the door, a light tap. It’s Lyuba.

  ‘Russov said you’d want me to take the bloods.’