One Night in Winter

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  ‘There’s lot to think about.’ Abakumov was still mulling over Stalin’s riddles that were becoming ever more obscure and gnomic. He had not been allowed to arrest Satinov – whom Stalin respected – so he had devised a way to ‘get the attention of Comrade Satinov’, as Stalin put it: he’d arrested Mariko.

  Stalin had also said the children ‘have to be punished’. What did he mean? They were already in prison. Extra homework? A good thrashing? Nine grams in the back of the neck? I’ll be damned if I guess wrong! But Abakumov was sure of one thing: Stalin’s real targets were arrogant generals and smug bosses.

  Serafima touched her lip and looked at her finger: still bleeding.

  ‘We’re all struggling with the truth here, Serafima, Colonel Likhachev most of all. I’m sorry about your lip. It’s nothing serious, I hope?’

  ‘No. Thank you,’ she said softly.

  ‘Did you get any sleep? You look tired, dear girl.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  Silence. Abakumov thought about the Children’s Case once again. A play-acting club, which was a front to conceal passions of adolescence, had led to the death of two kids. The investigation had uncovered a puerile game. If they hadn’t been élite brats, Stalin would never have heard about it. But now that he had, he would use the children in any way that suited his manoeuvres of the moment. He, Abakumov, had applied pressure to the children to discover the mastermind behind the conspiracy but it was clear that none of them knew who it was. He could torture Serafima, but it was possible even she didn’t know. While the other children awaited Stalin’s judgement, he decided, right there and then, to play a special game with her. And the only way it would work was if he freed her.

  ‘Now, you will tell your mother how kind I was, won’t you? You’ll say, “Abakumov really looked after me!” eh?’

  ‘I will, general.’ Hope rose in her face and he saw how she suppressed it. But when she put her head on one side, that charming mannerism of hers, he couldn’t help but smile.

  ‘Go and get your things,’ he said. ‘There’s a bath ready for you. Stand up, come on . . .’ and he took her hands and helped her up.

  The door of the room opened and two warders stood ready to escort her to a meal and, yes, that bath.

  Serafima stood and he saw her relief, her exhaustion; her skin flushed from her neck upwards and she set her jerking lips, as if she was trying not to lose control. But she was hesitating.

  ‘But what about the others? My friends – Minka, George, Andrei – are they coming home too?’

  Abakumov was suddenly angry with the arrogance of these children when he had so much on his mind. He banged the table with his hands and saw her flinch. ‘That’s none of your business, girl. Get out before I change my mind.’

  Tears running down her cheeks, she walked out of the room, and Abakumov sat listening to her footsteps disappearing down the long corridor.

  Now it’s my turn, he thought. Now we play my game.

  Still suspecting that it might be a trick, Serafima walked down the prison corridors. The warders no longer held her but touched her elbow to guide her into a new section of the prison and into a room where there was a meal laid out. Pirozhki. Hot shchi vegetable soup. A sturgeon steak, newly grilled and served with potatoes. She sat and feasted on this, eating too fast, washing it down with Borzhomi mineral water. Next they gave her a bath, letting her lie in it for a time, and then told her to hurry up and dry herself. She was to be collected.

  As soon as she was dressed, she waited in a wood-panelled waiting room, alone, until the door opened and her mother came in. Sophia was caked in make-up and dressed in an army uniform, having come straight off the set of her latest movie. Speechless with relief, Sophia held her in her arms; then she walked her to the waiting car. It was time to go home. Time to sleep.

  When Serafima awoke the next day, she thought she was still in prison. Then she remembered that she was at home, that all was how it should be once more. She got up, to find that she had slept away almost the entire day. Her mother was out at Mosfilm Studios but the maid cooked a meal, which she ate thinking of him. She had a bath and then put on a yellow dress with a Peter Pan collar – and she went out. Down the steps of the Granovsky building and, looking behind her to check that no one was following her, out into the streets, towards the House of Books.

  ‘You look even more lovely amongst all these old books,’ said Benya Golden to Agrippina Begbulatova.

  It was the lunch hour, and Benya stood naked in his tiny, one-room apartment just off Ostozhenka. He was showing her a new book. Vellum binding, antique. Agrippina lay on her back with her stockinged legs crossed, beautifully setting off the collage of book covers: some of pale kid leather, some of expensive black lacquer, many of greasy, torn, modern paper.

  ‘All your favourite things in one place!’ she laughed. ‘Books, food and girls. I know you so well, Benochka. You’re a Rabelaisan and Epicurean. It must be confusing trying to work out which to consume first. But choose me while I’m here. We can eat together, and make love; then you can read after I’m gone.’

  In just a couple of years, Benya had managed to amass quite a collection of first editions and prints from the early nineteenth century. Wartime meant that a poor man with a good eye had many opportunities to buy refined rarities for next to nothing. The books closer to the sink and oven doubled as kitchen tables for black Borodinsky bread, goat’s cheese, a half-empty bottle of wine. He looked around him. The picture – books, food, lingerie, the pale curves, tousled curls and fair pubic hair of the young teacher – would have worked well as absurdist art.

  ‘I can take a hint,’ said Benya. He started to kiss her feet. ‘But how long are you here for?’ His laugh was exuberant and frequent: there was much that amused him and nothing delighted him as profoundly as Agrippina’s sweetness. She was so cultured, so intelligent, and had such a promising future ahead of her, while he had been to hell and back, and it showed.

  He worked his way up her body, kissing her. She gradually brought her knees up and around him until her ankles were on his shoulders. He kissed her there very slowly, absolutely delighted by her pleasure, by the taste of her, the heat; the sinews in her thighs were the most lovely he had ever seen in his life.

  ‘I love being fucked by you,’ she said.

  ‘I love fucking you.’

  Afterwards, they lay silently, until she cleared her throat. ‘Benochka,’ she started in a tone he had never heard before, but knew immediately what it meant. His heart pounded in bursts and a sliver of ice chilled him from the inside. ‘Benochka? I have a bad feeling.’

  ‘Agrippina, let’s not spoil this.’

  ‘Benochka, are you listening?’

  ‘I’m trying not to.’

  ‘Benochka, if something happens . . . I want to tell you that I . . .’

  ‘I know. You don’t have to say anything. Remember where I’ve been . . .’

  ‘You never told me.’

  ‘In our world, what you don’t know can’t hurt you.’

  ‘I think you’re the best teacher I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘Teacher?’ He laughed. ‘Fuck my teaching! What about my lovemaking?’

  They were laughing and he was kissing her again as the knock came at the door.

  She turned away from him. ‘They lied to me. They promised not to come now . . .’

  He heard the fear in her voice. But he was eerily serene as he grabbed his underwear and trousers and pulled them on. ‘I’m just opening the door,’ he called out.

  As a drowning man reviews his entire life compressed into an instant, Benya relived the happiness of the two years he called his Second Coming: his Pushkin classes – the best job of his life, the sharing of his love of literature with young people; his wanderings through bookshops and flea markets; the pleasure in finding a volume, and being able to afford it. Even Genghis Khan as he plundered another rich city filled with gold and jewels could not have enjoyed a prize as much as Benya be
aring home a new book in triumph. And then the hours of lovemaking with Agrippina.

  He opened the door. Agrippina, quite forgetting she was naked, had covered her face with her hands as the Chekists in blue uniforms poured into the apartment. Benya gathered his few possessions in the carpet bag he already had packed. He could see that the plain-clothed chief investigator was fascinated by Agrippina and, quite honestly, who could blame him?

  ‘Get dressed, girl!’ said the bald-headed Chekist. ‘Where’s your Bolshevik modesty? You’ve done your bit. Now scram!’

  ‘Benya, I had to—’ But Benya, now fully dressed and ready to go, waved her away. He could imagine the pressure the Organs had brought to bear on her. The threats they’d made.

  ‘Agrippina, I wish you luck. Never let this hold you back. Promise me that.’

  Her eyes lowered, she dressed quickly, and was gone.

  Golden stood alone in the cage in the back of the black crow van (on which was written ‘Eggs Milk Groceries’), freefalling into the abyss, normal life ending. Something occurred to him: Agrippina had managed to come twice even though she must have been anxious. Even Judas hadn’t managed that! In the rumbling half-light of the van, he smiled admiringly as he remembered her brazen hunger for pleasure even under stress. What nerve! Then he shook his head with a maudlin fatalism. He knew what lay ahead, and how a man who has risen from the dead once could not count on pulling it off again.

  29

  EARLY MORNING IN the Lubianka. A delicate, fair woman sitting stiffly, alone and silent in a room of plain wooden chairs, a glass wall, damp patches on the yellow wallpaper, paint peeling stiffly like oversized flakes of dry skin. She looks at her watch. She has been here for forty minutes already but she will happily wait here all day.

  She has a bag on the seat beside her and she opens it several times, checking and rechecking obsessively that everything is there. With every creak, echo, footstep, she turns to look at the door, tenses, twitches, listens, and then subsides again, face in her hands.

  The door opens. A plump female warder enters in a brown coat.

  Tamara Satinova stands up, terrified that they’ve changed the plan. But then, after a moment, there’s Mariko, dazed, pale, and still in her school uniform.

  ‘Mariko!’ cries Tamara, rushing towards her.

  ‘Mama!’ Mariko runs into her mother’s arms.

  Don’t cry, don’t cry, Tamara tells herself. Don’t make things worse.

  Tamara sits down. Mariko is on her knee; two warders stand watching, arms crossed; a guard in blue tabs at the door. Tamara kisses Mariko on her face, her forehead, her temple, her hair. Her hands are shaking.

  ‘Mama, when can I come home?’

  ‘Soon, Mariko. Soon. But I can come and see you twice a day.’

  ‘But, Mama, what am I doing here?’

  ‘We cannot know about the investigations of the Organs but they know what they are doing and as soon as they have finished, they will send you home.’

  One of the warders blows her nose.

  ‘I want to come home now. I’m frightened.’

  ‘Papa sends his love. He says you must treat it like an adventure, like Timur and his Team – but answer the questions truthfully, won’t you?’

  ‘I don’t want to stay here. It’s horrible.’

  ‘I know,’ said Tamara. ‘I know – but you must be brave. Now . . .’ She is trembling with the effort of not weeping. She sets her jaw to stop the spasm of tears.

  ‘Mama, you look funny. You’re shaking.’

  Tamara nods as she turns to her string bag. Just concentrate on practicalities, she tells herself. ‘Are you warm enough?’ she asks.

  ‘No, I’m cold in my room. And the bed is horrible.’

  ‘Right, so first here is a dressing gown, pyjamas and a sweater for you to wear and stay warm. Do you want to put on the sweater now?’ She helps Mariko put it on. ‘You must be hungry, darling.’

  ‘The food was vile. I couldn’t eat it.’

  ‘Here’s bread, your favourite cheese and biscuits, and yogurt. And fruitcake. All from Gastronom One.’ They shop there often. Mariko opens the cake and starts to eat a piece.

  ‘I won’t be able to sleep, Mama.’

  ‘You must try, darling.’

  ‘I’m missing my dogs and my School for Bitches.’

  ‘Well, look who I’ve got for you! Hello, Crumpet!’ She pulls out a black-and-white dog.

  Mariko smiles for the first time and grabs the toy.

  ‘And who’s this?’

  Mariko takes the next dog and hugs it with the first.

  ‘And hello!’ Tamara pulls out another

  ‘Oh Mama, they’re all here!’ Mariko says their names: Crumpet, Bumble, Pirate.

  Tamara packs the food and the clothes into the string bag.

  ‘Time’s up,’ says one of the warders. ‘Prisoner to be returned to her cell.’

  Prisoner! The word hits Tamara hard and a fit of sobs well up again. Stop! You mustn’t cry!

  But Mariko, trying to hold on to her toy dogs, throws her arms around her mother. ‘Mama, don’t go!’

  ‘I have to,’ Tamara whispers. ‘But I’ll be back tonight with all your favourite things, and more dogs.’

  ‘You can’t go. I won’t let you go,’ cries Mariko. She drops the dogs and Tamara puts them in her bag which she gives to one of the warders.

  ‘It’s time,’ says the warder. She and another guard approach them, and as they come nearer, Tamriko feels their shadows, smells the cheap Red Square perfume and detergent, sweat, perhaps vodka.

  She hugs Mariko and then she, herself, starts to pull back. ‘Now I have to go. Be good. Don’t worry. I love you so much and soon you’ll be home. I’ll see you very soon. What would you like me to bring?’

  But Mariko throws herself against her mama, as if trying to burrow into her, and Tamara clutches her.

  ‘Mariko!’ Tamara is fighting for control, but she is not sure she can manage it. Her entire body is telling her to hold on to her little girl.

  ‘Mariko, you must let go of your mother,’ the warder says, sternly.

  ‘I won’t!’

  ‘You must or we’ll separate you.’

  Tamara loosens her grip on her child, but Mariko holds on. Feeling as if she is in the midst of a whirling tornado of debris and dust that darkens the world, Tamara buries her nose in Mariko’s vanilla-milk-and-hay hair and inhales as if it is oxygen.

  ‘Mariko, let go or they’ll force you and it will be horrid. I’ll . . . I’ll be back so soon!’

  ‘I won’t let go. Don’t go, Mama!’ Mariko is sobbing, shaking, struggling to breathe, winded by her own desperation. Tamara closes her eyes as the guards prise open the child’s fingers and lift her and take her away. She hears the door close and Mariko’s screams as they carry her down the corridors. Tamara finds herself on the floor of the empty room, on her hands and knees like an animal, howling with anger and heartbreak. She thinks for a moment that she might just die right here. The walls of her heart feel paper-thin, her lungs shallow, her stomach is lined with gravel and she wants to die.

  There is something beside her. One of the dogs has fallen out of the bag, and she picks it up. It smells of Mariko. She hugs the toy, and rocks herself, amazed that she, wife of a leader, respected teacher, proud mother, is lying on a floor, holding a toy, weeping.

  She lies there for a long time. Finally, holding the dog to her like a baby, she staggers out, so broken that she isn’t sure she will ever be able to put herself back together again.

  The rays of a sinking sun – gold and purple and white – soothe Serafima. How gorgeous the light is after her prison cell. She raises her face like a flower following the sun, noticing as if for the first time the blizzard of gossamer seeds that dance in the beams. She is free, she has preserved her secret, and now she is overwhelmed by the beauty of this evening.

  Up Gorky Street to the House of Books she goes. Upstairs to the Foreign Literature section.
Hemingway? Galsworthy? There it is. Edith Wharton. She opens the book hungrily, reads what is inside; then she runs downstairs and out into the streets again.

  It is 7 p.m. and crowds of smartly dressed Muscovites and some foreigners are waiting to go into the Bolshoi to see Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Serafima goes inside to the ticket office. There’s a queue. When she reaches the front, her ticket is there in an envelope.

  Serafima is one of the last to take her seat in the stalls and when she’s sitting, with an old grey man on one side of her and a young girl like her on the other, she feels her face is flushing. She is happier than she’s ever been in her life – but it is more than this. His eyes are on her and she can sense the love in them. She looks up at his box and there he is. Waiting for her, loving her, as he has been since the days before the shooting and her imprisonment in Lubianka.

  Later that night, Satinov is in his study at his apartment, which, with just one child at home, is much quieter than it should be. Tamara is in his arms as she tells him about Mariko.

  Satinov closes his eyes. His little Mariko with her brown eyes and braided hair, hay-sweet. A spasm flutters from his stomach to his throat and spreads to his eyes and mouth, to his whole being for, in spite of his being the Iron Commissar, in spite of his being Comrade Satinov, he is out of control.

  He blinks. In the mirror on the far wall, he sees himself, holding Tamara, her hair in a bun, her long neck, her jerking shoulders. And he looks deep into his own eyes and sees they are full of a terrible betrayal. Shocked, he looks away, at the photographs lined up on the desk. But instead of his children and Tamara, he sees only one woman’s face.

  Yes, he is weeping for Mariko, for George, for Tamriko, but he is also weeping selfishly. For himself. And for the woman with whom he has fallen desperately in love.

  PART THREE

  Four Lovers

  A loving enchantress

  Gave me her talisman.

  She told me with tenderness: