One Night in Winter

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  The boy in front of Andrei was shaking his head as he listened to this performance. ‘Mother of God, you’d have thought Papa was the Second Coming!’ he said aloud. Andrei wasn’t sure whom he was addressing. ‘Are we going to have this bowing and scraping every time he drops us off at school?’ It was one of Satinov’s sons, who had half turned towards Andrei. ‘It’s bad enough having a mother who’s a teacher but now . . . oh my God. Nauseating.’

  Andrei was shocked at this irreverence, but the dapper boy, with polished shoes, creased trousers and pomade in his bouncy hair, seemed delighted at the effect he was having on the new boy. He gave Andrei an urbane smile. ‘I’m Georgi Satinov but everyone calls me George. English-style.’ The English were still allies, after all. George offered his hand.

  ‘Andrei Kurbsky,’ said Andrei.

  ‘Ah yes. Just back in the city? You’re the new boy?’ asked George briskly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought so.’ And the smile vanished. Without it, George Satinov’s face looked smug and bored. The audience was over – and Andrei felt himself falling back to earth.

  ‘Minka!’ George was embracing a curvaceous girl with dark skin. ‘What’s news?’ he was asking.

  Andrei paled a little and felt his mother beside him again. They both knew what George had meant by ‘Just back in the city?’ He was tainted by exile, the child of a Former Person.

  ‘Don’t expect too much. They’ll all want to be your friend in the end,’ whispered Inessa, squeezing his arm sweetly. He was grateful for it. The girl called Minka was so pretty. Would Andrei ever be able to talk to her with George Satinov’s confident, carefree style? Her parents stood behind her with a little boy. ‘That must be her mother over there. I recognize her too. It’s Dr Dashka Dorova, Health Minister.’ Minka’s mother, brown-skinned and dark-eyed, wore a cream suit with pleated skirt more suited for tennis than surgery. The most elegant woman Andrei had seen in Moscow stared momentarily at Inessa’s darned stockings, scuffed shoes and the aubergine-coloured circles under her eyes. Her husband was also in uniform but tiny with prematurely white hair and the pasty skin of the Soviet bureaucrat: the Kremlin Tan.

  Andrei was just trying to regain his natural optimism when his mother pulled him forward.

  ‘Thank you, comrade director.’ Satinov had assumed a winding-up tone. ‘We appreciate your work too.’ Director Medvedeva almost bowed as the Satinovs processed inside, and then she turned to Andrei, her face a mask of solemn rectitude once again.

  ‘Yes?’ she asked.

  As he looked beneath the lank hair and beetly brows into her severe eyes, he feared that she would not know his name or, worse, would know it in order to send him away. Inessa too shook her hand with an expression that said, ‘Hit me. I’m used to it, I expect it.’

  ‘Mama, how will we pay for this school?’ he had asked Inessa only that morning, and she had answered, ‘Let’s live that long first.’ Would he be unmasked as the son of an Enemy of the People and expelled before he had even started?

  Director Medvedeva grudgingly offered a hand so bony the fingers seemed to grind: ‘The new boy? Yes. Come see me in my office after assembly. Without fail!’ She turned to the Dorovs: ‘Welcome, comrades!’

  Red heat spread through Andrei’s body. Director Medvedeva was going to ask how he would afford the fees. He recalled how often the tiniest signs of hope – his mother finding a new job, a move into a larger room in a shared apartment, permission to live in a town nearer Moscow – had been offered and then taken away from them at the last moment. He felt his composure disintegrating.

  The vestibule led to a long corridor.

  ‘Shall I come in with you?’ Inessa asked him. There was nothing so daunting as the first day at a new school, yet one moment he needed her warmth beside him, the next she metamorphosed into steel shackles around his ankles. ‘Do you need me, darling?’

  ‘Yes. No. I mean—’

  ‘I’ll leave you then.’ She kissed him, turned and the crowd swallowed her up.

  Andrei was on his own. Now he could remake himself: reforging was a principle of Bolshevism. Stalin himself had promised that the sins of the father would never be visited on the son but Andrei knew they were – and with a vengeance.

  2

  ANDREI STOOD ALONE for a moment in the doorway that led into School 801’s main corridor and took a deep breath that smelled of his new life: the bitter disinfectant of the washrooms, the sweet floor polish of the parquet floors, the scent of the glamorous mothers, the acrid whiff of vodka on some teachers’ breath, and, stronger than anything, he inhaled the oxygen of hope. Then he plunged into the crowd, looking at the walls, which were decorated with framed posters of Young Pioneers on camping trips, cartoons of Timur and his Team on their wartime adventures, and lists of otlichniki, the ‘excellent ones’, the highest-achieving children.

  Yes, he was inside – and he felt his resilient cheerfulness vanquishing George Satinov’s disdain and the director’s sinister summons. There right in front of him was the film star Sophia Zeitlin, talking to Comrade Satinov. He could not help but stare. He had never seen two such famous beings making ordinary conversation. It was like a newsreel in real colour. He could hear their voices. Do they breathe like us mortals, he wondered; then he caught himself with a laugh. Of course they did.

  Satinov’s plain-clothed bodyguards were peering at him contemptuously, and he turned, almost knocking into Sophia Zeitlin’s daughter – and stopped, not sure what it was about her that caught his attention. Of course, the fact that she rode to school in a film star’s Rolls-Royce explained some of it.

  She moved heedlessly with the long-legged, unregimented spirit of a much younger girl. Her curly fair hair was unbrushed, her face and skin clear of make-up, yet Andrei sensed a natural authority of the most elementally basic kind, the power of someone who expected admiration and whose expectation was self-fulfilling. Her green eyes met his for a second, and Andrei noticed that her long black eyelashes and wide sensuous mouth were so striking that they entirely overshadowed her laddered stockings and the old-fashioned white pinafore buttoned up to the neck that she was wearing.

  As Sophia Zeitlin and Comrade Satinov advanced down the corridor, greeting everyone, Zeitlin’s daughter, noticing perhaps that Andrei was watching her, raised her eyes towards the heavens, a complicit gesture that seemed to say her mother embarrassed her too.

  ‘Serafima!’ It was Satinov’s son again. ‘Good holidays? What’s news?’ It seemed to be George’s catchphrase, Andrei thought.

  Andrei was following Serafima and George down the corridor when the bell rang. The parents started to retreat and the children headed for assembly. Serafima and George watched Dr Dashka Dorova and her desiccated husband pass.

  ‘What an affinity of opposites Minka’s parents are,’ said George.

  ‘He’s just like . . . yes, an uncooked chicken cutlet!’ said Serafima.

  ‘That’s exactly what he’s like!’ chuckled George. And Andrei smiled too. Serafima’s wicked comment was spot on.

  The children flowed one way and the parents the other. When Comrade Satinov passed, he nodded brusquely at Andrei, who had no idea how to react (salute? No!) but was borne on down the corridor by the crowd.

  In the school gymnasium, ranks of wooden seats had been placed beneath thick ropes that hung like giant nooses from the rafters of a high wooden ceiling. Exercise ladders ran up the walls and a wooden horse was stored near the back beside the Lenin Corner’s white bust of Lenin. Seats for the teachers were arranged in two rows on the wooden stage. Director Medvedeva’s stood in the middle: the only one with arms and a cushion. The school was a mini-Russia, thought Andrei. Every institution had its hierarchy just like the Party. Giant portraits of Stalin and the leaders hung from the walls behind (yes, there, fourth in order, was Satinov).

  For a moment, Andrei panicked as the five hundred pupils found their friends. They were all greeting each other after the holidays – what if h
e couldn’t find a seat? He caught George’s eye for a moment but George looked away. ‘Minka, I’ve saved you a seat,’ he called out. ‘Serafima, here!’ Sitting between Minka Dorova (daughter of the Uncooked Chicken) and Serafima (daughter of the film star), George radiated the pinked-cheeked satisfaction of the boy who believes he is in his rightful place. A tall red-haired boy rushed to get the seat next to Serafima.

  Andrei looked for a seat for what seemed like a horribly long time before sitting down with relief on one of the empty chairs opposite George and Serafima. A slim pale girl with fair hair sat down beside him. She looked at George and his friends, and then turned to Andrei as if she had just awoken from a dream.

  ‘Oh, hello. You’re new?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Andrei.

  ‘Mmm,’ she murmured. ‘I’m Rosa Shako.’

  She must be Marshal Shako’s daughter, thought Andrei, who’d seen the air force commander just outside the school. When they’d shaken hands, she gazed over at George’s row as if she’d forgotten him again.

  ‘Those are my friends,’ she said. ‘Didn’t you meet George outside school?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘It must be hard arriving for the last term of the year,’ she said. Andrei thought that with her blue eyes and flaxen ringlets she looked just like an angel in a children’s book. ‘You see the red-haired boy?’

  ‘The one who’s sitting next to Serafima?’

  A cloud crossed her face. ‘That’s Nikolasha Blagov. My friend.’ She’d opened her mouth to say something else when – hush – everyone’s voices sank to a whisper. The teachers entered, filing in order of importance down the aisle and up the steps to the stage in exactly the same way Stalin and the Politburo entered at Congresses.

  ‘Do you know who they all are?’ asked Rosa kindly.

  ‘I only know her,’ said Andrei as Director Medvedeva herself marched forward on to the stage, followed – presumably – by her deputy, a man whose greasy straggle of auburn hair, brushed over his baldness, had the texture of a woven basket.

  ‘That’s Dr Rimm,’ whispered Rosa as he passed them. ‘Serafima, who thinks up all the nicknames, calls him the Hummer. Listen.’ Comrade Rimm was loudly humming a tune that was unmistakably ‘May Comrade Stalin Live Many, Many Long Years’.

  ‘Quiet, George,’ said Dr Rimm in a high voice. ‘Eyes straight ahead, Serafima. Sit up straight. Discipline!’

  Then came the rest of the teachers. ‘That’s Comrade Satinov’s wife, Tamara,’ said Rosa. ‘She teaches us English.’

  A strapping old gentleman, whose wrinkly knees the colour of tanned leather were framed between flappy blue shorts and scarlet socks, entered next. ‘That’s Apostollon Shuba, our physical instructor. Do you think he looks like a sergeant major in the Tsarist army? Well, he was!’

  ‘Really?’ How on earth had this relic with the pitchfork-shaped moustaches survived the Terror? Andrei thought. But he was one of a generation of children brought up to believe that discretion was the essence of life, so he said nothing.

  One seat was still empty. And then a teacher in a baggy sand-coloured suit and striped socks jumped nimbly on to the back of the stage. A murmur buzzed through the children.

  ‘Always last,’ said Rosa softly. ‘Let’s see! Look at that new canary-yellow tie! That’s Benya Golden, our Pushkin teacher.’ Andrei saw an agile, balding man with receding fair hair and a playful smile slip into his seat. ‘Serafima calls him the Romantic. If you’re lucky you’ll be in his class; if you’re unlucky, you’ll get Rimm the Hummer.’

  Another bell heralded a rigorous silence. Director Medvedeva tapped her baton on her lectern. ‘Welcome back to the school in our era of the historic victory won by the genius of our Leader, Comrade Stalin.’ She turned to Dr Rimm, who stepped forward.

  ‘One question, Komsomolniki!’ he piped in a voice that might, on the telephone, be mistaken for that of a soprano. ‘If you had to lose all your possessions or your Komsomol badge, which would you choose?’

  A boy with his hair brushed back in a slick wave like the Soviet leaders stood and led the reply: ‘All our possessions!’ he cried.

  Andrei recognized him as the other Satinov boy.

  ‘It’s George’s brother Marlen,’ confirmed Rosa in his ear. She smelled of rosewater. ‘Are you a Komsomol, Andrei?’

  Andrei wished he was – but there was no place for tainted children in the Young Communists.

  ‘Young Pioneers! Rise! Young Pioneers, are you prepared?’ shouted Dr Rimm. The red-scarfed Pioneers replied as one.

  ‘Always prepared!’

  ‘Bravo, Pioneers.’ Dr Rimm scanned the gym. Andrei was too old to be a Pioneer now, but he would have given anything to wear the red scarf.

  Director Medvedeva tapped her baton. ‘Would Mariko Satinova come up to the rostrum,’ she said. That family are everywhere, thought Andrei as a little girl with plaits and a red scarf appeared on the side of the stage.

  Tap, tap from the director’s baton: the sign to a young blonde teacher at the piano, who started to bang out the opening bars that Andrei knew so well.

  ‘And who’s the pianist?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s Agrippina Begbulatova, the assistant music teacher,’ answered Rosa as the little girl started to sing the first lines of the schoolchild’s anthem, ‘Thank you, Comrade Stalin, For Our Happy Childhood’. Andrei could sing it in his sleep; in fact, sometimes he did.

  Director Medvedeva made announcements about the term: about the Pioneers camping at Artek in the Crimea; the second eleven football team would play the VM Molotov Commune School 54. Benya Golden seemed to regard many of these bulletins as faintly amusing, noticed Andrei as the teachers filed out, and the school term began.

  Director Medvedeva was writing at her desk when Andrei was ushered in to see her. Her office was furnished with a single Bakelite phone, a small photograph of Stalin, and a tiny safe. (Andrei knew that the number of phones, and the size and quality of Stalin portraits and safes were all measures of power.) A banner across one entire wall declared: ‘Thank you, dear marshal, for our freedom, our children’s joy, our life.’

  She gestured towards a wooden chair. ‘Welcome to the school. We forge new Soviet citizens, understand?’

  Andrei waited miserably for the ‘but’ which he knew from bitter experience would not be long in coming.

  ‘But you have a tainted biography. Most of my colleagues here don’t approve of your admission. I doubt it will work out, but it’s only for a term. I shall watch you for the slightest sign of deviationism. That will be all, Kurbsky.’

  He walked with heavy steps to the door as she too stood up briskly. ‘You must go to your first class. Follow me!’

  Andrei’s mind whirred: should he ask about the fees? What was the point? It sounded as if she would get rid of him soon enough. Their footsteps echoed along the wooden corridor, which was by now deserted. Trying to keep up with her, Andrei thought her flaky skin and lank hair had never enjoyed the kiss of sunlight in all her life. At last, she stopped outside a closed door and gestured to him to come closer.

  ‘You won’t be paying school fees.’

  Andrei opened his mouth to ask how, why? But she silenced him with a glance.

  ‘Do not discuss this, Kurbsky. Understood? Here’s your class.’ She turned like a sentry and the march of her metal-heeled boots receded down the long corridor.

  Andrei wanted to scream with relief, but knew he must not. Tell no one. Reveal nothing. Analyse its meaning later. Struggling to control his breathing, he steadied his shaking hands and knocked on the door.

  His first lesson was Russian literature but he did not know if he would get Dr Rimm or Teacher Golden. Which would be more helpful? As he opened the door, twenty-five sets of eyes swivelled towards him – and Andrei immediately noticed with a mixture of thrill and anxiety that Serafima, the Satinov brothers and the severe red-haired boy named Nikolasha were in his class. Only Rosa nodded at him.

  ‘Ah –
a stranger!’ said Benya Golden, who was sitting languidly in his chair with his feet on the desk. ‘Come on in! We’re just starting.’

  ‘Am I in the right class? Is this Russian literature?’

  ‘Some of it is, some of it isn’t.’ The class laughed at Benya Golden’s insouciance. ‘You wish to join our fraternity of dear friends, beloved romantics, wistful dreamers?’

  ‘Um, I think so.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Kurbsky, Andrei.’

  ‘Take a seat. Nikolasha Blagov, move up and make space.’ The red-haired boy was again sitting next to Serafima, and, with much sighing, sulkily moved his books. Serafima in turn had to move up too. Nikolasha muttered to himself as Andrei sat next to him.

  ‘Now, Kurbsky,’ said Benya Golden. ‘Where are you from?’

  Andrei hesitated. ‘Well, I was in Stalinabad but I’ve just come back to Moscow—’

  ‘Stalinabad! The Paris of Central Asia!’ Nikolasha exclaimed in a deep voice that seemed to crack at the wrong moments. A boy with long black hair sitting right behind them sneered: ‘The Athens of Turkestan!’ They all knew why someone like Andrei had ended up living in a Central Asian backwater. It was his tainted biography all over again.

  ‘Who asked you, Nikolasha?’ Benya Golden snapped. Jumping to his feet, he walked across to the boy with the long black hair: ‘Or you, Vlad? There’s nothing less attractive than Muscovite snobbery. Your presence in this class by no means a fait accompli. I hear Dr Rimm’s classes are much more fun than mine!’

  Nikolasha glanced back at Vlad and both seemed to shrink at Benya Golden’s threat. Andrei noted that Nikolasha was the leader and Vlad the henchman in a group of youths who seemed to take their long hair and intellectual tastes very seriously indeed.

  ‘Let’s welcome Andrei, you inhospitable bastards. If Director Medvedeva’s put him in our class, there’s a reason. This term we’re doing Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin.’

  Benya Golden stepped back on to the platform where his desk stood and picked up a book.