One Night in Winter

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  ‘Let’s talk about your life, Prisoner Golden.’

  Benya observed his interrogator under the light of the naked bulb that swung low over the table like a censer in an Orthodox church, and noticed how the swollen red pores of his face were evenly spaced, as if by design.

  ‘I honestly can’t understand how you ever got a job at that school. In fact I can’t understand how you’re even amongst the living. Let’s see . . .’ He consulted his file. ‘Born Lvov. In 1939, you were found guilty of terroristic conspiracy. Death sentence commuted to twenty-five years in the camps but in June 1941, you were allowed to join one of the shtraf battalions . . .’ Likhachev looked at him searchingly with something approaching respect. ‘You don’t look like a tough guy.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Benya admitted.

  Likhachev lit a cigarette. ‘How on earth did you get to join them?’

  Benya shrugged: ‘I just don’t know.’ In the catastrophic retreats of June 1941, when Hitler’s panzers were racing towards Moscow and millions of soldiers were being encircled and captured, some desperado criminals in the Gulag camps were allowed, as a special favour, to join the penal battalions – the shtraf.

  Benya Golden was a political prisoner and ‘politicals’ were not allowed to join even the shtrafniki. But there were a few exceptions: Benya applied because he wanted to defend Russia against the Nazis and because he knew he would perish in the camps anyway. His request was permitted.

  ‘So,’ Likhachev said, ‘you owe your life to a bureaucratic mistake. We’ll look into that.’

  The shtrafniki were given impossible tasks – do-or-die missions: clearing minefields, defending doomed positions. They were fed one-tenth of the usual rations of a Red Army soldier and, guarded by the secret police, could be shot without explanation or trial for the slightest infraction. If they served well, they could, in the rarest cases of heroic bravery, earn their freedom. But that was almost unheard of. The shtrafniki did not live that long.

  ‘How did a puny Yid like you survive?’ Likhachev asked.

  To his own surprise, Benya had been a savage warrior. His officers recommended him for the star of Hero of the Soviet Union but as an ex-political, he could not receive it. Wounded and discharged in 1943, he applied for a teaching job at School 801 and, surprisingly, got the position.

  But whatever horrors he had been through, he knew he was still himself, or at least a damaged, cynical, heartbroken version of what he had once been. And a half-man, Benya Golden thought now, is harder to hurt than a whole one. Only his body could be destroyed. That was why he sat calmly in one of the rooms he remembered from six years earlier, and waited for the session to begin.

  ‘From the moment you arrived at School 801, you set out to undermine Marxist-Leninist ideology,’ Likhachev was saying.

  ‘No,’ Benya replied. ‘I wanted to teach literature as I thought it should be taught.’

  ‘What other way is there but the Party’s way?’

  ‘I’m not political.’

  ‘You poisoned the minds of the children with romantic philistinism, manifested by the Fatal Romantics’ Club.’

  ‘Not at all. I love Pushkin. I had one chance to create a love of literature in young people. In the thirties, I loved a woman. Pushkin was our poet. Our poem, the poem of our true love, was “The Talisman”, so when I was close to Pushkin, I was close to her.’

  ‘You disgust me, Yid,’ snarled Likhachev. ‘You wormed your way into that school to corrupt the leaders’ children and launch a conspiracy to assassinate Comrade Stalin.’

  This answered one of Benya’s big questions. When they started to arrest more children, he’d realized that this was no longer just about the deaths of two teenagers. Somehow this had become ‘a conspiracy’.

  ‘I was never part of any plot,’ he replied, ‘unless it was a conspiracy to love Eugene Onegin.’

  ‘Was the conspiracy led by “NV”?’

  ‘There was no conspiracy. As for “NV”, did that stand for Blagov’s name? Nikolai Vadimovich?’

  ‘Do you take us for fools? It’s not Blagov.’

  ‘Then I don’t know an NV.’

  ‘What does NV mean in Onegin?’

  ‘Ah. In Onegin, it would be Nina Voronskaya,’ Benya said thoughtfully. ‘She’s the only NV in the poem. I’ll recite it for you. Onegin sees Tatiana next to this lovely society hostess:

  ‘She took a seat beside the chair

  Of brilliant Nina Voronskaya,

  That Cleopatra of the North.’

  Benya shut his eyes, taking consolation from the lines.

  ‘Is there a page number for this reference?’ Likhachev asked.

  ‘Page? Chapter eight, stanza sixteen, I think.’

  Likhachev wrote this down in his childish handwriting. ‘And this NV has to stand for a girl, right?’

  Benya Golden was tempted to laugh, so simplistic was the implication of Likhachev’s question. A conspiracy; an unknown person named after an Onegin character? Could the person they were looking for be a girl after all?

  ‘I know my Pushkin,’ he said guardedly. ‘But I don’t know if NV was animal, vegetable, or mineral.’

  42

  ‘GOOD MORNING, LITTLE Professor. Rise and shine!’ said the buxom prison warder whom Senka had nicknamed Blancmange. ‘Have you got any new words to teach us?’

  Senka noticed her new tone. He was still in the silk striped pyjamas he had been wearing when he was taken; it was past time he changed them. His mother would never let him wear the same pyjamas for so long!

  ‘Did you sleep at all?’ asked Blancmange.

  ‘I slept better.’

  ‘Good. You need to rest for what’s ahead!’

  An hour later, Blancmange brought his breakfast. She smiled at him, ruffled his hair and even presented him with an extra two pieces of Borodinsky bread and a huge triangle of goat’s cheese. ‘You’ve lost weight, young man. We need to feed you up. They’ll be back in a minute to take you down for your daily chat.’

  Chat? Cheese? Senka wondered what was going on. He wondered again when the guards joked as they escorted him, one even swinging his keys like a lantern. Could they have solved the murder case? If these lumpy men were really members of the famous Cheka, Knights of the Revolution, founded by the heroic Comrade Dzerzhinsky, they should have solved it by now. Senka himself could have solved it much faster. Probably there was no ten-year-old in the world who had to consider such serious matters as he did.

  He was shown into a different interrogation room where he found a new interrogator named Colonel Komarov. Where was the Lobster? Tormenting someone else or lying drunk somewhere in a fecal heap, he hoped. Even better, perhaps someone was punching him!

  The curly-haired new man didn’t look like a Chekist at all. He actually smiled at him. Senka dropped his chin and raised his brown eyes in what his mama called his matinée-idol look. Surely someone in here actually thought children were worth bothering with? When the interrogator lit a cigarette, Senka noticed that he was missing half a finger on his right hand.

  ‘When can I see my mama?’ he asked, encouraged by Komarov’s apparent friendliness. Mama often said that she needed to cuddle him as much as possible and certainly ten times a day. Poor Mama hadn’t cuddled him for weeks. ‘Is my mama all right? I fear that she might be missing me? I’m missing her profoundly.’

  ‘You’ll see her soon if you’re helpful to us,’ Komarov replied, crossing his legs so that his boots creaked.

  ‘I’ve been helpful so far, haven’t I?’

  ‘You certainly have.’

  Not too helpful, thought Senka. Only a simpleton would be too helpful.

  ‘So,’ Komarov said, leaning forward, frowning solicitously on his low furrowed brow, pretending to be very interested in Senka, ‘I went to a football match yesterday to see Spartak.’

  Oh no, thought Senka, this one’s going to speak to me as if I’m like all the other little boys. Big mistake, Colonel Komarov.

 
‘I bet you like football, eh? I bet you’re a real footballing man.’

  ‘Well . . .’ Senka considered whether to humour him or whether to tell him the truth about his attitude to sports. If the Lobster had asked him, he might have lied, but this one seemed kinder. ‘Actually, I don’t like football.’

  ‘I thought all boys like football?’

  ‘Not all,’ replied Senka proudly.

  ‘So I bet you like basketball then? Are you a bit of a basketball kid?’

  ‘No,’ said Senka.

  ‘Camping?’

  ‘Are you joking? I hate cold and discomfort.’

  ‘So what do you like?’

  ‘Opera. Ballet. Fiction. Poetry.’

  Komarov shook his head, so Senka added, ‘I’m serious. I hate all sports.’

  ‘You’re very grown up for your age,’ Komarov said.

  Where was this going? What were they after now? Senka thought. Play along until you find out. ‘Not really, but I do prefer to wear a suit at all times.’

  Komarov suddenly put out his cigarette. ‘Tell me about your papa.’

  Prepare all defences, Senka told himself. Man the fortifications. Load the cannons. Sharpen your cutlasses. Something’s not right.

  ‘He works very hard on the Central Committee. He doesn’t laugh at my jokes like Mama does and he doesn’t cuddle me. He’s very strict, but Mama says that’s because his job is very important.’

  ‘Does he ever talk about politics?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘What stories does he tell about work?’

  ‘None. He says his work is secret and if I asked him about it, he might smack me. Very hard.’

  ‘Quite right. Does he ever mention Comrade Stalin, for example?’

  Senka concentrated hard in order to say the right thing. ‘No, except to say, “Today we’ll celebrate the Great Stalin’s birthday,” and, every night, before we eat at dinner, he thanks “the Great Stalin”.’

  ‘Do your parents like your apartment?’

  ‘Yes, they love the apartment.’

  ‘How many dachas do you have?’

  ‘Two. Like everyone else.’

  ‘Most people have no dacha at all,’ Komarov replied. ‘Is two excessive? Does your mother want more dachas?’

  ‘No.’ Where was this going? ‘She’s not interested in material things.’ Which is a lie, of course, Senka told himself. Mama loves dachas and luxuries from the West.

  ‘Your mother’s very well dressed, isn’t she?’

  ‘She’s the most beautiful mama in the world.’ Your love for mama is your weakness. Think carefully!

  ‘Does she talk about where she gets her perfumes and clothes?’

  ‘Mama’s very hard-working. She’s a doctor.’

  ‘But she likes the good things in life, doesn’t she? How many fur coats does she have?’ Komarov asked.

  ‘I don’t know but she looks so beautiful in them.’

  ‘I’d like to hear more about your mother. Will you tell me?’

  How strange, Senka thought, that there were no questions about them any more, the schoolchildren.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Do your parents ever talk about politics?’ Komarov asked again.

  Not in front of us, Senka thought. Only when they whisper in the bathroom (though I sometimes hear things I shouldn’t). He was about to say this, and then thought that if they were whispering, it would be because they didn’t want anyone to hear, so he decided not to.

  ‘They talk about what’s for dinner, what films to see, the weather.’

  Komarov reached over and stroked Senka’s cheek; then he followed the line of his jaw all the way to his chin, which he tilted up a little with the stump of his finger. Senka sat very still, and tried not to shiver.

  ‘You must help us. If you don’t, you won’t see your mama. Ever again’

  ‘I will. I promise,’ Senka whispered.

  ‘Now,’ said Komarov, straightening up and speaking normally. ‘Did you hear your father boasting how his “Genius Boss” used to trust him, but that now he didn’t appreciate his talents?’

  Senka was instantly alert, adrenalin pumping. His father worshipped Stalin, everyone knew this – but he had once, after Stalin had sacked him early in the war, criticized his master. But how did Komarov know this? It had been in the garden at the dacha. No one had been there except his parents and him. Minka was away. But he remembered now that Demian had been present. Demian had heard it.

  ‘These are just tiny things,’ said Komarov affably. ‘Nothing really. But you probably remember the occasion? Do you?’

  ‘Criticizing the Head of the Soviet Government would be very out of character for my father,’ said Senka.

  ‘Don’t fool with me, kid. Don’t lie. And there’s another little thing. Do you remember the time your mother said, “After all they’ve been through, our Jewish compatriots round here need some place of their own?” Presumably she meant a Jewish homeland? A Zion in the Soviet Union. She’s Jewish, isn’t she? Before she was married, wasn’t she called Dashka Moiseivna Diamant?’

  They had been walking along Granovsky soon after Soviet troops had liberated Babi Yar where so many Jews had been murdered by the Nazis. Senka remembered how upset his mama had been by this. There had been no one else with them – except Demian. So now he knew that when Demian handed over the Velvet Book to the secret police, he had given them this deadly information too. Senka felt a trickle of fear run down his spine. Demian was a meanie, and Senka knew he was angry all the time because their mother loved Senka more than him. Well, Demian was an imbecile. These two stories could destroy both their parents.

  ‘I’m trying to think,’ he said softly.

  ‘Do you know how vast the Soviet Union is? Think of all its tanks, factories, steppes, guns, its people, the Party, the armies and the power of the Organs – and then think of you, Senka Dorov, aged ten. What chance do you have? We could crush you and nothing would be left of you. All we’re asking is that you recall two little comments by your parents. Not much to ask, is it?’

  ‘I am thinking but neither sound accurate.’

  ‘I could accept that your brother perhaps made up one of them,’ Komarov said reasonably. ‘But we think at least one of his stories must be true.’

  ‘One of them?’

  ‘Yes, one of them.’

  One of the stories was against his father and one was against his mother. Senka knew that neither of them were ‘tiny things’. The first: criticism of Stalin himself. The other: Zionist anti-Soviet nationalism. Cut through the codes and put them in Party language and both could be presented as treason. Either could lead to instant arrest and perhaps execution. Yes, Mama, Papa: the nine grams.

  Senka’s world started to spin. He breathed faster but couldn’t get enough air into his lungs. His tummy spasmed.

  ‘He can’t have made up both, can he?’ Komarov feigned a casual airiness – but then he chewed on the stump of his fourth finger and Senka realized this tic confirmed the question’s importance.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Senka. His asthma made his lungs feel shallow, and he began to strain for oxygen. He was nauseous; he needed sugar. He remembered the day he couldn’t jump over the horse in gym, and how his faked collapse had solved that crisis. He had to do something. How quickly this session had gone from banter to the scaffold.

  ‘Look, it’s simple. I’ve told you two stories, one of which must be true.’ Komarov reached out and traced Senka’s jawline again. ‘Choose one,’ he whispered.

  Senka felt like a deer in a trap. If he confirmed either story, the Organs would have a case against one of his parents. His papa or mama would be taken away from him and possibly liquidated. Whichever way he took, he would destroy someone he loved. The more he pulled, the tighter the steel jaws would close on his legs. He wanted to offer himself instead of his parents but this wasn’t the choice he was being given, and he was feeling so sick that he was swaying in
his chair. His mother or his father? Papa or Mama? And why was he being given this terrible choice?

  ‘You can’t turn down this small request from the Party,’ Komarov was saying. ‘Choose one or you’ll never get out of here.’

  ‘I feel so faint . . . I can’t breathe.’ And Senka slipped off his chair on to the floor as darkness closed over him.

  43

  VLAD TITORENKO MAY have been nearly eighteen but he was coping with his interrogations in Lubianka much less well than Senka. Whereas previously he had worshipped his friend Nikolasha Blagov, he now found himself looking up to his interrogators, especially Colonel Likhachev, whose visage of fury and violence he saw as the face of the Soviet State. He would, he thought, do anything for some sign of approval from Likhachev. Instead he had been beaten, but every time Likhachev hit him, Vlad hated Nikolasha a little more. That weird cretin, that traitor seemed to be mocking him from the grave with his ludicrous plans. Now he would be sent to Siberia, and disowned by his parents. Undernourished, sleep-deprived, he babbled about conspiracies, his hands fidgeting, legs jiggling, and he was so jumpy that he was startled by the least sudden movement. His condition even alarmed the warders, who put him on twenty-four-hour suicide watch.

  Yes, Vlad said, Nikolasha, that snake, was planning a coup and using the Fatal Romantics’ Club as cover. He was an evil counter-revolutionary, a pervert who was in love with Serafima, and yes, sir, all his hyena-friends were in on the conspiracy. Who was the mysterious New Leader? Well, he wasn’t sure. The Chekists suggested names and he agreed. Director Medvedeva possibly, maybe Teacher Golden – or how about Marshal Shako? One time he had seen the Marshal pat Serafima on her behind at the Golden Gates. Yes, he could be the one. Or was it Dr Rimm? And so Vlad jabbered on, frantic to please the Organs. Yet nothing seemed to do so.

  Until today, when he found the other interrogator, Colonel Komarov, reading the sports pages of the newspaper with his boots on the desk and a cigarette in his mouth. Vlad waited silently, standing at attention. Komarov looked up, waved him into the chair and without a word offered him a cigarette. When Komarov tried to light it for him, Vlad jumped back from his chair, expecting a punch. When he was coaxed back into his seat, his hands were shaking so much that Komarov had to light it for him and then hand it back across the table – as if he was an adult, even a friend.