The Vanishing Futurist

by Charlotte Hobson

  I jumped. ‘Lord, Pasha, don’t frighten me like that! Not when I’m holding this thing!’

  ‘Yes, what the hell are you doing with it, may I ask?’

  ‘I’ve thought of something. I mean, I’ve remembered something that I think might help Nikita. Meet me in a couple of hours in front of the National—’

  But Pasha grabbed my arm. ‘No. I’m coming with you now.’ He was already pulling on his coat and boots. ‘How dare you try to leave me here, you bloody . . . Galliffet.’

  Despite myself I laughed and he smiled slightly. ‘What is your plan then?’

  ‘You don’t have to come in the building with me – there’s no need for both of us to be implicated. Wait outside, I’ll need you when I get out. I’m going to see Pelyagin. Just show me how to use this thing, would you?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous! What good will a gun do you? If you fire it, they’ll arrest you immediately. And even if you don’t, you’ll be searched at the door of the National and that’s the end of you as well as any chance of saving Nikita.’

  I grimaced at him and put it back. ‘I suppose you’re right. It was just to give me courage. I’ll tell you the plan as we walk, shall I? On one condition – you promise not to try to stop me.’

  I explained as we trudged through the deep snow towards the centre. Every few moments I had to stop and catch my breath. The moment I stopped, the baby began to turn inside me. Be calm, I willed it. This is for you.

  The first pinkish tinge of dawn was in the sky by the time we reached the National. Pasha took both my hands and gave me a serious look. I knew what it meant. We could still turn around and go on with our lives. ‘Are you sure?’ he whispered.

  I leant my forehead against his for a long moment. ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘So – I’ll wait for you here. I’ll do what I can about transport. If you don’t appear within an hour, I’m coming in to find you.’

  Sweat was running down the back of my neck as I approached the main entrance. I had no pass to get me into the building. The baby kicked me sharply, so hard I saw the bulge through my coat.

  ‘Pass,’ said the guard. ‘Oh, it’s you.’

  I smiled at him. ‘Yes, just me – here to see Pelyagin as usual. I brought you something to thank you for clearing up after me that other time.’ I pushed a lump of barley sugar that I had miraculously discovered at the back of the cupboard into his hands. The boy’s eyes lit up.

  ‘Wait.’ He stopped me suddenly. ‘He told me you weren’t giving him lessons any more.’

  ‘Oh – er, yes. But unfortunately he still has to pay me. These high-ups, you know, they forget we all have to live.’ I took a step past him.

  He grinned. ‘Too right.’

  I was across the hall before he could change his mind. Out of his sight, I climbed the stairs slowly to the third floor. What if my supposition was wrong, and Pelyagin simply didn’t know? There was no turning back now. I stopped for a moment to regain my breath, and slipped into his office. Rosa Gershtein, just arrived at work, was unwinding her scarf.

  ‘Rosa,’ I said hurriedly and in an undertone. ‘Please forgive me, but you must leave us alone now. Go, and do not come back until this afternoon. I don’t want to put you in any danger. And I must warn you, if you alert the guards I shall have to tell Pelyagin your real identity.’

  ‘Wha—’ She looked at me in horror.

  ‘Go now, don’t make a sound. I’ll tell Pelyagin you’ll be back at four o’clock. Not before, do you understand?’

  She nodded, then took her hat and left. I glimpsed Pelyagin’s black shiny head bent over his desk in the next room.

  ‘Rosa!’ he called without looking up.

  ‘Rosa has been called away,’ I said as I entered. ‘Good morning, Comrade Pelyagin.’

  He half rose from his chair as if to bar me from the room. ‘I’ve nothing to say to you.’

  ‘But if you don’t mind, I have something to say to you.’ I took a deep breath and tried to speak calmly. ‘You should know that I am a spy for the British government and you have been passing information to me about the activities of the Bolsheviks for six months.’

  His expression was almost comical. ‘You’re a spy?’

  ‘Am I or not? I know what I would believe if I was the guard in the entrance hall downstairs. Please sit down.’

  He fell into his chair, staring fixedly at me. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Where is Nikita Slavkin?’

  Pelyagin’s face worked. ‘I don’t know, I swear to you – I don’t know.’

  ‘But you did know where he was taken, didn’t you? Last time I saw you, you told me as much. “The Cheka aren’t holding him,” you said. It took me all this time to realise you meant “They aren’t holding him now.”’

  He said nothing, looking at me coldly. Was I right? Or was he weighing up what I might do, what his best option was? Backing away from him, I opened the door into the corridor and called, ‘Comrade?’

  Pelyagin jumped up. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘You seem unconvinced. So I’m calling the guard up from the hall to tell him about our lessons. All the information I’ve gathered from your office. All right?’

  ‘No!’ He was ashen. ‘Wait—’

  The young guard was coming up the stairs. ‘Did you need me?’

  I raised my eyebrows at Pelyagin. ‘Do we?’

  ‘No, no – I’ll tell you what I know. For God’s sake—’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry to bother you, comrade. We don’t need you after all. Thank you so much.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the guard, a little disconcerted. ‘All right then.’ His footsteps turned and receded down the stairs again.

  ‘You’d better be quick,’ I said to Pelyagin. ‘If I have to keep calling him up and down the stairs he’ll be in an even worse mood to hear what I’ve got to say.’

  He swallowed. ‘All right. I don’t know much – only that our boys arrested him that night. He knew they were coming. They’d been questioning him that day, then they let him go, idiots. They were sent more or less straight back to pick him up. He was taken first to the Lubyanka. But after a few days they transferred him. He went to a special place, a laboratory . . .’

  ‘Lab 37.’

  Pelyagin looked amazed. ‘You knew?’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘It’s . . .’ He gulped. ‘It’s in the Church of the Ascension at Kolomenskoye.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘I – I—’

  ‘You put together a case against him, didn’t you?’ I said slowly. Hatred boiled in me. ‘You said – let me think – that his experiments were counter-Revolutionary? That he was plotting against the State? Why?’ With my huge belly, standing before him, I suddenly felt my rage was invincible. ‘Why? Was it because he humiliated you, that time at the Futurist performance? Or was it because you were offended I didn’t want to go out for a drive with you?’

  Pelyagin frowned. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, it was, it was some little pettiness like that, wasn’t it?’

  He looked at me oddly. ‘No, that wasn’t it,’ he said quietly. He sat up. ‘Of course his line about “Communism can’t exist in this version of the universe” was enough to get him thrown into jail alone. But have you forgotten that you denounced him yourself?’

  Ice down my spine. ‘I told you – I said I was mistaken, don’t take it seriously, I said.’

  ‘It was too late by then. Why did you think I came to the house that day? I had the warrant in my pocket.’ He had recovered his sangfroid. ‘By then you’d all denounced him, one after the other. We could have arrested him ten times over. Marina Getler spoke to an agent of ours at the hospital; Volodya Yakov shopped him to the Cheka; Fyodor Kuzmin came to us not long afterwards to tell us that Slavkin was making anti-Soviet statements; it seems as though it was one of the few things that commune of yours managed to agree on—’

  ‘Stop.’

  Pelyagin stopped
with his mouth still open.

  I began to improvise. ‘How many hours have I spent here, in this room? You’ve left me here on my own several times, do you remember? When I fell asleep, for example? A spy doesn’t fall asleep like that. I’ve got so much good information from you, Pelyagin. The British Foreign Office are very happy with you.’

  ‘What information?’

  ‘Numbers in Cheka prisons, methods of interrogation, conditions in prisons, arbitrary arrests . . . It’ll cause quite a scandal, you know.’

  He sat down. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I just . . . I just want you to leave me alone. All right? I’ll leave now, and you won’t send anyone after me. You won’t mention this conversation to anyone, you’ll forget it entirely. Otherwise you’ll soon be at the mercy of those Cheka officers of yours.’

  He stared at me for a moment, and then he nodded. ‘All right.’

  ‘I’ll need your ID card, and those spectacles, too.’

  He gave them to me reluctantly.

  ‘Just one last thing. When you first asked me to come and give you lessons, was Slavkin already under investigation?’

  He smirked. ‘You were a useful source from our first lesson.’

  I slipped out of his office and down the back staircase. I could barely feel my feet on the floor. With shaking hands I pulled my shawl over my head and walked the long way around the building to the Aleksandrovsky Gardens.

  20

  ‘Here, dyevushka – girl, over here!’

  From the other side of the gardens a gnomish figure was gesturing to me. Behind him stood a cart pulled by an ancient donkey. As I drew closer I saw Pasha in the back.

  ‘Where to, then?’ sang out the old fellow.

  ‘Where to? My God, Pasha, what on earth are you doing?’ I hissed. ‘We need to get to Kolomenskoye! Dobbins here won’t get there before nightfall!’

  I calculated that Kolomenskoye was eight or nine miles from the centre of Moscow. At a walk that would take us three hours . . .

  ‘Kolomenskoye? Chort vosmi, I thought we wouldn’t be going so far . . . but this is all there is, and the old man tells me she trots. She might do it in a couple of hours.’ Pasha pulled me in. ‘Poekhali, golubchik! Let’s go, whip her up, as fast as she can go!’

  ‘We might not have a couple of hours!’ I snapped at him, but he fastened up the back of the cart and we set off, the old man whispering a commentary to the donkey. ‘Yes-s-s, that’s a good leg, and the other one’s good, and that back one, pick it up nice and smart, yes, my beauty! Oh, you’re a fine old lady, twenty years and you trot like a schoolgirl . . .’

  The tension twisted my insides as I watched the National slowly, slowly dwindling behind us.

  ‘Perhaps we’ll be able to catch a lift on a lorry if we see one,’ murmured Pasha. ‘And we’re resting here. If we have to get out and run, we’ll be faster than if we’d already walked five miles.’

  We were at least inconspicuous on the cart. Huddled down and covered with a blanket, it looked as though the old fellow was simply returning home with an empty load.

  In whispers under the blanket I told Pasha all of it – almost all of it, all that I could bear. At the end he was silent for a moment.

  ‘Don’t think you are going into the church alone,’ he remarked.

  ‘No, I need you with me. You’re going to use Pelyagin’s papers.’

  ‘What, me, impersonate that evil slug?’

  ‘Don’t be so vain.’

  Pasha laughed and fell quiet again. ‘So Nikita had spent a day being interrogated when we saw him.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He wanted us all to go to the hospital with Sonya, didn’t he?’

  ‘I think he did. He wanted to be alone when they came. That’s why he shouted at Anna Vladimirovna, and maybe why he didn’t want me to stay behind.’

  ‘They would have arrested all of us, I presume. Why didn’t they come back for us?’

  ‘Perhaps we’ll find out now.’

  The last time we had seen him was over two months ago – when Sonya was still alive, when the IRT still existed. I had thought about him every hour, every minute since, obsessively going over the possible reasons for his disappearance. Every other feeling, I realised, had been pushed aside in order to concentrate on my hunt for Slavkin. With a grimace I remembered poor Sonya crying helplessly in the hospital, her thin, pale hands plucking at the blanket. ‘Where is he, where is he?’ Even while she was dying I burned with jealousy. Pasha was sobbing, trying to make her drink water, until Marina stopped him gently. ‘It’s no use, Pasha, the little bird has flown away.’

  I had watched it all as if from a distance, and slipped away to find him. I had been determined to be the one to tell him she was so ill. I had wanted to see his pain, and then, no doubt, to comfort him myself, the loyal Gerty who can always be counted on, strong, capable – so different from the flighty little bird. Who needs a little bird in a Revolution!

  And yet Nikita had loved her, despite himself – despite our ridiculous insistence that love was no longer relevant. What fools we had been. At least he and Sonya had found a few moments of happiness together – the night they walked together, the days and nights they spent in his workshop, while Pasha had watched me twisting and torturing myself with Revolutionary ideals.

  And now, what of Pasha and me? Last night we had comforted each other. I had felt something astonishing, a sense of basking in another’s warmth that I had no memory of ever feeling before. Yet what did it really mean? Slavkin had carved himself into my heart so powerfully. The habit of placing him first in all my thoughts was deeply engrained. But I couldn’t tell whether it was love – or some kind of bitter longing for suffering, a poisonous egotism masquerading as devotion.

  *

  I tried to eat after writing this last chapter, but I couldn’t keep it down; every mouthful seems to smell like blondinka. Even a whole slice of bread is too much for me now. I’ve been welcoming in my hunger for so long that now I seem to have forgotten how to swallow. I’m a little dizzy when I stand, but if I sit and keep writing, I feel fine. Sophy rang, but I couldn’t speak to her. She’ll read this soon enough, and then . . . then we’ll see what she wants. Whether she’s willing to talk to me then.

  *

  At midday we finally trotted up to the Gate of the Saviour at Kolomenskoye. Pasha and I clambered out of the cart, aching and chilled, and blinked in astonishment. Since the morning the sky had cleared. The Church of the Ascension stood out, white as a swan against a cobalt-blue sky, on a high bank of the Moscow river. Behind it the snowy Russian countryside glittered and perfectly still columns of feathery smoke rose here and there.

  The old man seemed agitated, and took our payment without demur. ‘Got to get my girl home,’ he muttered. ‘No good waiting around here.’ And he whipped up the old donkey and disappeared.

  Neither of us particularly looked the part, but Pelyagin’s photograph was over-exposed and printed on poor paper – all that could really be made out was a man with a moustache and spectacles. Pasha put on Pelyagin’s glasses and grinned at me.

  ‘You see, the moustache turns out to be necessary after all.’

  I laughed shakily.

  ‘Nu shto. Are you ready?’

  I took a breath of the sharp, clean air, leant forward and kissed him. ‘Ready.’

  We made our way to the main door of the church.

  ‘Open up, comrades!’ called Pasha.

  A long pause. In the distance we could hear footsteps.

  ‘Open up!’

  A young man, dishevelled and pale, looked out. ‘Forgive me, comrades, I was just . . . Oh,’ he looked at us in surprise, ‘I thought you were . . .’

  ‘You’ve kept us waiting,’ snapped Pasha, stepping inside. ‘Commissar Emil Pelyagin, from the Moscow Special Commission. Where is your commander?’

  ‘Oh, yes, well – he’s out, Comrade Commissar, he’s on a mission. They went during the night and they’re
not back yet—’

  ‘Didn’t you get my telegram?’

  ‘T-telegram?’

  ‘I sent a telegram to say I would be coming this morning to inspect your set-up. I have heard poor reports of this outfit.’

  ‘Yes, no, comrade . . . They won’t be long. Perhaps the Comrade Commissar would like to drink a cup of tea?’ The poor fellow was shaking with fear.

  ‘Drink a cup of tea!’ bellowed Pasha. ‘I don’t have time to sit about and drink tea like a debutante! You’d better show us around. Come on.’

  ‘Yes, certainly.’ He led us into the aisle of the church, which was being used as a barracks. Shafts of red, blue and golden light, spinning with dust, fell on filthy piles of rags, broken bottles and ground-out papirosy. A girl was sleeping in a corner, bare feet sticking out from a blanket. ‘We use this as the mess room—’

  ‘Express yourself properly!’ barked Pasha. ‘Who’s “we”?’

  ‘First patrol, fifth division, South-East Moscow Region, Comrade Commissar!’ he shot back sharply, drawing himself up.

  ‘That’s better. You live like pigs, comrade. We need discipline to win this war.’

  This was not what we were expecting. It was an ordinary Red Army post. I noticed the door to the vestry and moved towards it.

  ‘What’s through that door?’

  ‘Right away, Comrade Commissar . . . we have an office here . . . and a storeroom.’ He showed us through the empty rooms. ‘We keep ammunition in here—’

  ‘We were informed that there was a laboratory on the premises,’ said Pasha.

  ‘A laboratory? Well—’

  A thin, high sound echoed suddenly through the walls. Pasha turned silently to the young man, his eyebrows raised.

  ‘Yes, sir, comrade, I was just going to take you,’ he stammered. ‘Through here, in the back courtyard – I have no authority, but of course you do—’

  He unlocked a small door at the back of the vestry and led us out into the courtyard and a huddle of wooden sheds. We heard it again, more animal than mechanical. My stomach turned over. We crossed the snowy courtyard while the young soldier said over his shoulder. ‘They can’t control them, that’s the problem, Comrade Commissar.’ He pushed open the door and yelled, ‘Serafima! The Special Commission are here!’ He turned to us again and said, bizarrely I thought, ‘They should really just settle their accounts, there’s no place for them in our Revolution.’