10
The doorman had confirmed Frau Fassbindert name and managed to locate an address. An hour later Misha had located the house, a place seemingly untouched by war-damage. Behind the painted front door, the yells and shouts of children racketed forth. Misha knocked. A woman answered.
‘Frau Fassbinder?’
The woman shook her head, ducked behind the door, called for someone, then disappeared. A second woman came to the door. Misha explained who he was and what he wanted.
‘There was a woman with Zavenyagin. It’s her I want to find.’
‘A woman. The interpreter, you mean?’
‘Interpreter? Yes, could be.’
‘Who told you to come here?’
‘The doorman, Herr Gärtner—’.
‘Gärtner, that old fool. It wasn’t me who cleaned up in there, it was Frau Wannemaker.’
‘Frau Wannemaker. Listen, if you have an address—’ Misha began to dip into his pocket for another packet of cigarettes.
‘Address!’ The woman snorted. ‘That’s simple. You’d better come in. On the third floor. If those are cigarettes in your hand, then you’re very welcome to hand them over.’
Misha let the woman take the cigarettes from his hand; from his pocket almost. He stepped inside. The door closed behind him. The house was narrow, though tall, and it was clear that several families now lived here. The heaps of washing, the low hum of quarrelling, the precisely marked lines that demarcated territory in the communal kitchen were all familiar to Misha from Kuletsky Prospekt in the time following the October revolution. Frau Fassbinder jerked a thumb at the stairs, then turned away, ignoring him.
Misha made his way up. The stairs were steep and narrow. The house smelt of too many unwashed bodies, but also of boiled laundry and starched cotton; an odd mix. He got to the third floor. There were only two doors. Misha knocked on one and swung it open. It felt as though he had opened a door out onto the sky. A bomb or shell must have taken away a slice of roof, and the room lay open beneath the sky. Except for an abandoned dolls’ house, there was nothing in the room but rubble and snow. Misha closed the door again and knocked on the other. This time, though he still got no direct response, he could hear the sound of people just the other side of the door. He knocked again, for politeness, and opened the door.
Inside there was a single small room. There were three children, poorly dressed and hungry; also a woman, sitting on the only bed, suckling a tiny baby. The woman didn’t move the baby away from her breast when she saw Misha enter. She didn’t get up or say anything. She just looked at him through dark and deep-set eyes. There was very little furniture and the room was bare and cold.
‘Frau Wannemaker? My name is Michael Müller.’
The woman continued to look at him, but didn’t say anything. The children, their ages ranging from about four to eight or nine, drew together, but they too remained silent. Doing his best to avoid anything which might look or appear threatening in any way, Misha said, ‘Frau Fassbinder downstairs suggested I come up. She thought you might be able to help me.’
He took another full packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and placed it on the stool in front of him. The oldest of the children, a girl with bare feet, ran over and snatched it up before going back to the others. Misha was conscious of his height in the small room and tried stooping to make himself look shorter. He knew he looked very Russian, and took care to keep any trace of accent out of his German. Since the woman still said nothing, he decided to continue.
‘I understand that you were cleaning up in the room where the Russian General Zavenyagin was recently. He was the unpleasant man who shouted a lot. Now what I’m very interested in is the woman who was with him. She was a Russian too. I expect she wore an army uniform, but it’s possible that she was in civilian clothes. I wondered if by any chance you happened to learn the woman’s name. Or if you were able to describe her appearance in any way.’
Misha stopped, leaving plenty of silence for the woman to step into if she chose. She said nothing. The girl who had taken the cigarettes went over to her mother and whispered something into her ear. At least that proved she couldn’t have been deaf. Misha guessed that nerve damage from bombs or shells was probably a likelier explanation of the woman’s silence. As the girl drew her head back, she caught Misha’s eye. It wasn’t a nod, exactly, but Misha felt sure there was some gesture of encouragement, but without words he didn’t know what to do next.
Then his eye fell on a bundle of paper that the children must have used for schoolwork or writing practice. He took a sheet and drew a pen from his pocket. He carried the sheet into the light of the only window – then hesitated.
His thought had been to draw Tonya, but he found himself seized by sudden doubt. There was the gap of twenty-five years of course, but it wasn’t that. He suddenly doubted himself. He doubted that the picture of Tonya that he’d carried for all this time was the true one. Was she real or just a fantasy, a mirage? He put pen to paper, but made no further move. Ink from the nib began to spread out in a tiny spider’s web pattern on the coarse war-standard paper. The light coming in through the window seemed empty and unhelpful. Then Misha caught the eye of the girl who had encouraged him. Something in her watchful eyes, her ragged clothes and bare feet prompted him.
He began to draw, hardly even knowing in advance what he was sketching. But there was only one thing he could have chosen. Tonya, in the hunting lodge near Petrozavodsk, dancing. Misha left himself out of the picture, but he knew he was there invisibly, holding her waist, guiding her steps. He drew her with her head tilted back, her hair carrying out behind her. He drew her with bright eyes and an open, excited mouth. As a way of illustrating a person’s likeness, it was an absurdity. Misha should have drawn her face, the way a police identity poster might be drawn, showing the head in full detail, ignoring her body altogether. One of Tonya’s most distinctive features were her green, slightly slanted eyes, and yet he’d sketched those eyes with a few brief strokes of his pen; capturing the essence, but avoiding all detail. Feeling like a fool, he wrote Augen – grün. Haare – braun. Eyes green, hair brown.
He looked at the picture. It was Tonya all right; his version of her perhaps, but a real one all the same. To him, it felt as though Tonya’s spirit had been captured on paper. The sight of his own drawing made him catch his breath with emotion. He showed the picture to the woman who still sat silently on the bed. She looked at the picture for about eight or ten seconds. Then she switched her eyes from the picture to Misha’s face. She nodded.
He wanted to explode into a thousand questions. Was it her? Could she be sure? Did she appear healthy? What was her voice like? Did she seem happy? But even as the impulse rose in him, it died away in the knowledge that not a single one of the questions would be answered.
And then he noticed that the woman was trying to tell him something. He held the drawing up again and the woman indicated Tonya’s right hand, shaking her head. Misha frowned and shook his head. He didn’t understand. The woman shifted the baby against her chest and held up her own right hand, with the first two fingers tucked down.
Misha returned the gesture carefully. The woman nodded vigorously. The interpreter – Tonya – had lost some fingers. Had it been war or frostbite? Hitler’s army or the Gulag?
Then Misha did something else. He put his fingers to the corners of his eyes and pulled them apart, so that his eyelids would appear slanted, like Tonya’s. Again the woman nodded, smiling this time.
Misha breathed out with a long shudder of relief and certainty. In an impulse of generosity, he emptied his pockets of all his money, his cigarettes, everything of value that he kept there. He wanted to give something to the girl who had encouraged him with her nod, but he had nothing suitable. He bowed to the woman and to the girl, then left the room.
Tonya was alive and working as a military interpreter somewhere in Germany, most likely in Berlin itself. She had been injured at some point, and Misha felt with
a rush of certainty that the Gulag had been responsible. He wouldn’t rest until he found her.
11
It was a treat, albeit a small one.
Valentina had been commended by one of her superiors and had been given her own bedroom as a reward. The room was tiny. The bed filled most of the floor space. There was only about fourteen inches between the side of the bed and the wall, and not much more than twice that at the foot. All the same, it had been literally years since either Tonya or Valentina had had anywhere private to sleep and the privilege felt like a tremendous luxury. The two women took their evening meals there together, when they were able, embroidering handkerchiefs for Valentina’s niece and chatting.
In the unfamiliar privacy, both women felt an urge to unburden themselves. At one point, Valentina began a conversation in which she attacked the food shortages that were still desperately prevalent at home in Russia. It was the first time either of them had breached their unwritten rule against talking politics. In a sharp voice, Tonya said something of the sort required – no doubts the rumours were exaggerated; it was a soldier’s duty not to believe fascistic propaganda; in any case, if comrade Stalin were aware of the problem, it would surely be rapidly dealt with and those responsible punished. Valentina accepted the implicit rebuke, and hung her head and agreed with everything that Tonya had just said, adding a few more contrite phrases of her own.
It was just as well.
Behind their heads, buried in the light fitting, a concealed microphone picked up their words and relayed them to a tape recorder in a downstairs cupboard. When Konstantinov obtained the tapes, he had one of his men listen to them. There wasn’t much there, he reported. Just two gossipy women. One of the two – the comrade driver – was prone to spreading anti-Soviet propaganda. Konstantinov shrugged. He knew, of course, that whenever two Russians came together and spoke without fear, the crime of spreading anti-Soviet propaganda was likely to be committed. But still, it was his task to enforce the rules. Every minor infraction punished now meant a major problem avoided later. Valentina was summoned by her commanding officer, reprimanded for believing false rumours, and punished for spreading them. Her private bedroom was removed. She was given four weeks on guard duty, in addition to her existing work as a driver. She was demoted from corporal to a mere ryadovoy, or junior private. Valentina, of course, blamed Tonya for denouncing her. Tonya denied the charge. Valentina didn’t believe her and refused to see her again.
In the meantime, there was only one other detail of the report that Konstantinov had seen which bothered him. The interpreter, Kornikova, paid regular visits to a German woman who made a little money giving music lessons. Nothing was known against the German woman. On the other hand, she was not known as a Party supporter either. Konstantinov regarded most Germans with suspicion. Not only had their countrymen attacked Mother Russia, but their working class had failed to rise in revolution against its masters. Both were valid reasons for suspicion. What was more, though Konstantinov had nothing against music as such, there was no doubting that playing the violin indicated possible bourgeois tendencies.
His investigation still had some way to run.
12
At the door to the Nothing Factory, Misha paused.
Glass was still hard to obtain, so Misha had sealed the only windows with boards. No chink of light peeped through into the star-bitten night, but there was something else, the chirruping sound of Rosa laughing. Misha opened the door and entered.
Although electricity had long been restored across Charlottenberg, the Nothing Factory had no usable electrical circuits, and the only lighting was paraffin lamps. But Misha didn’t mind. He almost preferred the dim, kindly light. And, it was clear, Rosa didn’t mind either. Before he had left for Leipzig, Misha had taken some pieces of broken glass and fixed them together with wire to make lampshades. During his two days away, Willi had had the idea of painting on the glass in translucent paint and making wire cradles that would allow the shades to revolve. His latest creation set a chain of comical fairy tale creatures – witches, dragons, tigers, dwarfs, princesses – spinning around the light and appearing in huge coloured shadows on the walls.
Rosa turned to the door, saw Misha, and bounced out of her seat and into his arms.
‘Look at what Willi’s done!’
Misha let Rosa and Willi display their treasures. They had a fairy-tale shade, a sailing-boat shade, an animal shade, and what Willi called his Berliner shade. The last of these had accurate caricatures of all the senior occupation officials and German party men – Sokolovsky, Clay, Robertson, Schumacher and others. Willi put the shade over the lamp and let it revolve. The walls were suddenly full of red and blue painted figures, following each other in an endless, pompous sequence. Misha watched it turn in silence.
‘I don’t like that one,’ said Rosa, and Willi removed it.
Misha didn’t quite like it either. The little family group had a precarious subsistence living. Whenever it came to jobs that he didn’t like – weaving cotton, repairing looms, selling headscarves, bartering for timber or tools – Willi was a maddening combination of lazy and incompetent. It wasn’t simply that he was unwilling, although he was, it was that he did jobs ham-fistedly and badly. Yet when it came to things he loved – painting lampshades and creating little wire cradles – his commitment and dexterity seemed to know no limits.
‘Have you had supper yet?’ Misha asked. ‘Rosa, it’s after your bedtime. Have you washed your face and hands? Willi, is there enough fire in the stove for a hot drink? You do need to keep it stoked, you know, it’s not enough just to paint lampshades.’
Misha listened to himself scolding and disliked the sound. All the same, he knew that Rosa especially needed structure in her days and it was his job to provide it. He and Willi, with Rosa helping, quickly ran through their domestic chores, clearing up, heating water, getting Rosa ready for bed and then into it. When she was settled down for the night, Willi and Misha sat over their supper (boiled potatoes drizzled with pork fat) and a glass of schnapps.
‘Well?’ said Willi.
Misha nodded. ‘She’s here. In Germany definitely, Berlin probably. Working as an interpreter for the SMAD.’ Misha briefly related his adventures.
‘You drew her?’
‘Well what could I do? The woman wouldn’t talk.’
‘Can I see?’
Misha produced the sketch. The paper was of the worst quality and the ink had already leached outwards, giving the lines a fuzzy, indistinct look. Willi examined the drawing very closely, holding it to the light to see better.
‘It’s good, very good work. You should draw more. All this technical stuff…’ Willi shrugged in distaste. All he’d ever seen Misha draw were quick technical drawings or construction diagrams. He took the drawing and pinned it to the wall, smoothing it carefully. ‘You know what Rosa said when I told her where you were?’
‘No.’
‘She just nodded and said, “Oh, of course. He’s gone to find the new mummy”.’
‘Yes, well I’m not sure we should get her hopes up too far.’
‘Why? She’s in Berlin. Berlin isn’t so large. We ask around, put up signs. With all the DPs around, it’s not so out of the ordinary.’ DPs were Displaced Persons. And Willi was right. The war had been like a huge cauldron that had swallowed the people of central Europe, stirred them up, then slopped them out all over the place, wth no concern for order or logic. All over the place, mothers were looking for sons, husbands for wives, children for parents, women for lovers. A few more posters would hardly draw attention.
But Misha shook his head. All the way back from Leipzig – and the journey had been a long and slow one – he’d puzzled over the same brute facts.
‘Think about it. Tonya was interpreting for a Red Army general. That means she’s in a very sensitive position. Perhaps she’s already spent time in the Gulag, perhaps not. But, given her position, the security people will be keeping a close eye on her in an
y event. If we start to ask around, it could be dangerous for her. What excuse could we have for asking? If the NKVD are even a tiny bit suspicious they’ll order her away. Out of Berlin. Out of Germany even.’
He didn’t add, but he hardly needed to, that Tonya’s fate could be still worse than that. Willi had once drawn a cartoon of the Soviet far north as a huge genie, sucking whole populations into its belly as forced labourers and political prisoners. The risk was horribly real.
‘Perhaps we don’t ask, then. If she works with the SMAD, I suppose she must enter or leave their buildings, whether in Karlshorst or elsewhere…’
He trailed off. The SMAD had facilities all over the Soviet sector and who was to say where she might be located? But even suppose they were willing to try staking out one establishment after another. Every single SMAD building was protected by Red Army guards and by NKVD men, both uniformed and not. For Misha and Willi to try staking out SMAD facilities in plain view of the cream of the Soviet security services would be simply asking for trouble.
Silence fell. Tonya was here in Berlin, but as distant as the sky. The problem seemed all but insoluble. Willi rolled his schnapps around in his glass. Since Rosa had joined them, Misha had started treating Willi less like a friend and more like a son. He didn’t feel himself in a position to withdraw all Willi’s old privileges – the boy was seventeen after all – but he did now set limits to them. One small glass of schnapps was Willi’s nightly limit. The boy grumbled, but he’d become more secure, more grounded, happier.
‘Were you angry about the lampshades?’ asked Willi.
‘No.’
‘I didn’t pick up that steel wire you wanted. I was going to, but I forgot and then it was too late.’
That’s all right. I’ll pick it up tomorrow.’
Misha frowned into his own drink. It was clear that Willi would be useless as a cotton headscarf entrepreneur. He was more trouble than he was worth even as a simple loom operator. There wasn’t a shortage of labour in Berlin of course. The whole city was full of hungry people, who’d do anything in exchange for enough Reichsmarks or cigarettes to buy food and fuel for their families. But sometimes Misha felt burdened by it all, the need to build and mend his looms, find labour, barter for supplies, sell goods, and all the while provide a good home environment for Rosa, cook their meals, attend to their domestic needs. It was a big sackful of troubles to carry by himself. He sighed.
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