Back inside, she threw the two halves of the log in the stove. She picked up the large pillow that she and Makarov shared. She knelt down beside the girls. She brushed away the flies from their faces and eased them as close to one another as she could. Natasha opened her near lifeless eyes and stared momentarily at her mother before closing them again. Matrena smelt their little heads; the hair infested with lice and caked with dirt. The dry musty smell was unpleasant but she didn’t mind – she was, after all, their mother. She kissed Natasha’s forehead and then Nicola’s. Still kneeling, Matrena closed her eyes, bowed, and clasped her hands in prayer and begged His forgiveness for what she was about to do. She hadn’t prayed for a long time, but if there was ever a time she needed to pray, this was it.
She took the pillow. She crossed herself, not once, but twice. Once for each child. Without stopping to think, she pressed the pillow against their faces and pushed down, holding it there as her eyes clouded with tears. The girls suffered no pain, no distress. They never knew.
Chapter 19: The Store
Moscow, 1935
I had never been to a Torgsin store. Theoretically, they were open to the general public, but because they dealt only with foreign currency or gold, silver or other valuables, they weren’t places frequented by many. I’d walked three miles to find the nearest store, my package wrapped in newspaper and in my string bag, tucked securely under the armpit of my quilted coat. There was no waiting queue outside this store, merely a small gathering of people looking wistfully at the abundance of the window display. I saw for myself the luscious blocks of cheese arranged in a pyramid, the carefully placed array of fruit and loaves. An old bearded man with a newspaper under his arm came up next to me, also to admire the display. He was wearing mittens and wrapped in a black but shabby overcoat, and was leaning his head on his arm against the window. A shop assistant, a young woman, appeared on the other side of the window, tiptoeing carefully among the display, her arms laden with bananas and apples. The woman stopped in her tracks at the sight of the old man, bent down to deposit her bounty of fruit and then, using her hands, shooed the old man away. The man obligingly stepped back and, for the briefest of seconds, I caught his eye. His face was gaunt, his skin pale beneath the coarseness of his grey beard which was streaked with black, like oil stains on dirty snow.
With my package still tucked under my coat, I dismissed the old man from my thoughts and felt the slight thrill of privilege as I pushed open the door and entered the store. The high-ceilinged hall, hung with chandeliers, smelt of a mixture of delicate perfume and fresh bread. Here, was a counter selling leather boots and shoes – practical or elegant, all shiny; there, a display of the thickest of fur coats; elsewhere, a display of meat, the flesh gleaming with freshness, the thick sausages, the generous cuts of bacon; and over there, butter and cheese, all deliciously yellow. In the background, I recognised the scratchy music, a symphonic piece by Rimsky-Korsakov, whose nineteenth century romanticism was back in fashion. I breathed in, the music soothing my nerves, and felt dizzy in such an atmosphere of opulence.
I joined the queue at the pay-desk. It may have been a Torgsin store, but the rules were the same. First, you queued to exchange your cash (or, in this case, your foreign currency or goods) for ration cards. Then, you queued to purchase your goods, and then back to the pay desk to hand back the spent cards. There were about twenty people ahead of me. It was quite the shortest queue I’d seen. A gentleman in front of me turned around and raised his eyebrows in acknowledgement. He was clean-shaven and even smelt of scent but I noticed that his neat outwardly appearance couldn’t hide the dark stain on his long overcoat, the patch on his trouser knee. He leant towards me and whispered, ‘I’ve got my gold wedding ring. How much do you reckon that’ll get me?’ He opened his fist and I saw, resting in his blotchy, red palm, the band of gold. ‘It’s chunky enough, don’t you think? My wife doesn’t want me to sell it, but I tell her, you can’t eat gold.’ He closed his hand on the ring and I noticed the blackness under his fingernails.
I smiled politely. No, I thought, you can’t eat gold; you can’t live off memories when your stomach is empty. The man shuffled forward in the queue and I followed him. The music had changed to Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto. I closed my eyes – Viktor had loved this piece of music, being the first record he’d bought. He’d played it constantly. And then, after his arrest, I had sold the gramophone player to pay for the daily packages I delivered to the Lubyanka prison, but I still had the record.
Eventually, the man in front of me was being served. Behind the counter, with its shiny till and abacus, stood a heavily made-up middle-aged woman, her face ludicrous in its layer of powder, her unnaturally auburn hair tied tightly in a bun, her fingernails painted bright crimson. She took the man’s ring and couldn’t help a grimace as their fingers touched. She glanced at it with an expression of disinterest and passed it to a male colleague behind her, a young man dressed in a tight, dark blue suit with waistcoat and watch-chain, his hair greased back with a severe central parting. He peered at the ring through an eyepiece for a few moments then, without removing the eyepiece, shook his head. ‘One,’ he said, passing the ring back to his female assistant.
‘One bond,’ she said abruptly, handing the ring back to its owner.
‘What do you mean one bond?’ asked the man leaning forward, leering at her.
‘One bond – that’s all it’s worth.’
‘But what will that buy me? A sausage, one single sausage? Maybe two?’
‘Your choice. Take it or leave it.’
‘It must be worth more than that – it’s gold, isn’t it?’
The young man with the eyepiece interrupted. ‘Poor quality, I’m afraid.’
The older man stared at his ring. ‘But it’s my wedding ring,’ he said quietly.
The woman leaned up. ‘Next,’ she said.
The man looked at me, his face creasing with lines of rage and indignation. ‘You bastards.’
‘Next!’
‘You stuck-up bastards.’ In the corner of my eye, I could see a squat man in a brown uniform fast approaching. The older man had seen him too. ‘Bastards,’ he said one more time as he turned to leave, but his voice had lost its venom, instead sounding pathetically hollow.
I watched him leave, being trailed from a discreet distance by the brown uniform. ‘Next!’ repeated the counter assistant with obvious impatience, bringing my attention sharply back into focus.
‘I’ve got something that may interest you,’ I said, producing the newspaper-wrapped article from my bag. The mere size of it interested both the counter assistant and her eyepiece colleague behind her. They watched as I unravelled the last layers of newspaper, putting each one back into my bag. Denuded of its umpteenth layer of wrapping, the final package seemed rather small. But nevertheless, the golden bust of Tchaikovsky looked impressive on the counter top, the chandelier lights reflecting off its shiny curves.
The young man came out from behind his desk, his eyes focused on the bust. ‘Well, what have we got here then?’ he said. He was impressed, I could tell, and I felt a small prickle of pride that my brother’s moment of glory was still able to dazzle. The man picked up the bust, commenting on its surprising heaviness, and inspected it, turning it this way and that. It was about six inches high, with a green felt base and the inscription Tchaikovsky Prize for Youth Musician. ‘I think you’d better come with me.’ With that, he scooped up the bust and beckoned me to follow him. ‘This way,’ he said.
I followed him through the store and the crowd of staff and customers, past the stalls and counters, the convergence of smells, and through a staff only door and up to the second floor. He knocked on a door, waited to be summoned, and walked in. Behind a large desk, was an elderly man with a pince-nez, his grey hair parted and greased down; an older version of the floor manager. He eyed me suspiciously, obviously surprised to be visited by a member of public. The younger man placed the bust on the desk and
whispered an explanation. The older man inspected the bust in a similar fashion, removing his pince-nez and peering at it through a magnifying glass and occasionally nodding his head.
‘Hmm, interesting.’ Looking up at me, he asked, ‘Where did you get it from?’
‘My brother won it.’
‘Impressive. Go on.’
‘Best new musician. He played the bassoon.’
‘Doesn’t he want it any more?’
‘My brother died – a week ago.’
‘And so now you want to sell it?’
‘I have little choice,’ I said, disappointed that the director had offered nothing by way of condolence.
‘Hmm. Well, it’s solid all right, it’s a good piece of craftsmanship; excellent even.’ He sat back in his chair, his elbows on the armrests and arched his fingers. He remained silent for a few moments, his eyes still fixed on the bust standing on the blotting pad in front of him. Eventually, he sighed and spoke, gazing at me from above his pince-nez. ‘I can offer you Torgsin bonds to half its true value.’
‘Half?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is that all?’
‘What else you going to do with it? No one’s going to want to buy a piece of sentimentalism like this, even such a good piece of sentimentalism,’ he said, waving his hand towards the bust. ‘And Tchaikovsky? Mawkish codswallop. Trust me, your average Joe Public doesn’t have the means and most of my fellow Torgsin directors wouldn’t touch it. You won’t get better than half. You could try and prove me wrong but I warn you, you’d be wasting your time. Now, had it been Shostakovich, I’d offer you almost its full value. And Prokofiev, well, the sky’s the limit... But Tchaikovsky? No one’s got time for Tchaikovsky any more.’
‘Half?’
‘Half. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got much to get through. If you don’t want it, then leave.’
*
Half an hour later, I was sitting in a small café in a narrow street, half a mile from the Torgsin store, the bust of Tchaikovsky tucked away in my bag between my feet on the floor. I hadn’t been to a café in over three years, I could barely afford to. But today, I was determined to counter the humiliation I’d felt at the hands of the Torgsin director. I still had a little money coming in from the NKVD; otherwise I may have accepted the director’s humiliating offer. But not yet. I bought a small coffee and sat at a table next to the window and watched the uniform black figures pass outside. I cupped my hands around the mug and breathed in the delicious aroma.
It was a few months before his arrest when Nadya and I watched Viktor play Mozart’s Concerto for the Bassoon in B Flat and receive a standing ovation. It was his moment of creative glory, the highlight of his brief musical career. Many times, after his arrest and Nadya’s death, I resisted selling his bassoon, but eventually, circumstances forced me into parting with it. But never the bust. I’d always been determined not to sell it, however desperate the situation; it was too integral to his life. After his return from the prison camp, I placed it in Viktor’s brittle fingers and watched as he caressed the golden contours and run his finger along the inscription. A reminder of a life long since gone.
I missed him. As much as I’d become accustomed to living without him, there had always been hope. Hope is such a giver of strength, however desperate things seem. With hope, there’s possibility and the motivation to continue the struggle. In many ways, life was more difficult following Viktor’s return. The fight was finished but far from won because the price had been so high – the fortnightly visits to Rykov’s office, my double life as an informer, as a State spy. The nights I lay wide awake wondering whether this was the night my unfortunate victims would receive the knock on the door, the silhouette of the uniformed men in the doorway, the Black Maria parked on the kerbside outside their home. How well I knew that moment, that moment when one’s normal life is brought to an abrupt end, when the nightmare of mere existence starts. It’s so sudden, like the switching off of a light, the swift plunge from light to dark. The intensity of it is terrifying, watching these forbidding men searching through one’s life, ordering you around with intense threats. Yonov and Ivanova. I’ll never forget them. It was like having a hand reach inside your chest and tear out the heart.
And the Viktor of those last few months was not the Viktor I’d grown up with. There was nothing in his spectre-like appearance that resembled his former self, the gifted young bassoonist, the fervent revolutionary, the steadfast servant of the State. And this is how they re-paid him. I could have accepted the physical change if I could have seen something in his eyes, some light, some glimmer of his former self. But even that was gone; they’d taken that away too. His eyes were lifeless and dull. That was what pained me the most. Without a hidden spark, I knew he had no fight left in him.
Viktor. Along with his wife, the only person who knew me as Matrena and knew me as Maria. Matrena had already died from within, but what about Maria? Everyday, I think of them, of my little girls. I imagine them growing up, of the games they’d play, of how they’d look. No one knew of this inner torment I carried within me for so many years. But by never revealing the truth of my darkest moment, I felt as though I was denying them a right to an existence. By never speaking of them, it was as if they never lived. I was the only living person who knew that they’d ever been alive at all and I was failing to acknowledge the fact. But I had no choice. I had been a kulak – despised and condemned from the moment Stalin had ordered the liquidization of the kulaks as a class. My poor husband Makarov had had the misfortune to own a couple of cows and a few chickens and even an old mule. His Bolshevik leanings counted for nothing – he was a kulak and that was that. They couldn’t make him join the collective but they stole the grain from under our noses while our children starved. And then they took him. I never knew what became of him; I doubt if I ever shall. Perhaps, he is still alive, eking out an existence in the frozen East somewhere. Perhaps the memory of our girls lives on in him too. But somehow, I doubt it. I fear he perished along with all the thousands and hundreds of thousands of peasants tarred with the kulak brush.
And so, Natasha and Nicola, starved to death by politics, exist only in my memory and in my dreams – they might as well never been born for the mark they left on this world.
For two days, Viktor and I scrambled around in the forest surrounding our village, surviving on insects and bits of bark scrapped off the trees, sucking the snow off the leaves, until we came across the railway track. We followed it, for what seemed like hundreds of miles, to the next village where we waited, hiding behind the station, scavenging for edible roots in the mud. This village lay directly west of our own and we knew the westbound trains would ultimately be heading for Moscow. My brother and I stowed away on the next train and two days later, found ourselves in the communism capital of the world.
I sipped my coffee slowly, concentrating on the delight of swallowing the hot sweet liquid, enjoying, for the second time that day, a sense of decadence.
Chapter 20: The Job
Vladimir had a job to do. Rykov had told him to question Maria on what she knew about the discovery of a body in some woods directly outside the dacha belonging to her friend’s brother. Rykov was tightening the net around the Russian fucking-Association of Proletariat Artists, as he called them. He wanted to see them dead and buried but Dmitry’s position was, for the time being, secure. They couldn’t arrest him now that he was about to receive his Order of Lenin; it’d make the Politburo look foolish. Another year, and it’d be all right; enough time would have lapsed, enough time for a former recipient to have strayed from the rightful path. But then the phone call from the Criminal Investigations Unit had juiced things up. A crime is a crime, at least one of a non-political type. The Politburo wouldn’t interfere in the investigation of a suspicious death. An old man, apparently, had been walking his dog in the woods early one evening, when the dog went wild over a particular spot. The old boy could see the ground had been recently disturbed an
d returned home to fetch a shovel. A couple feet down, and there it was – the freshly buried corpse.
Vladimir was glad to be given the excuse to interview Maria, for the hope he might see Rosa. He hadn’t seen her since their trip to the closed store and it was bothering him. It was partly his fault, he supposed, work was heating up by the day – the number of arrests they were having to make because of the purges was putting the department under huge pressure. He was working every day – ten, twelve, fourteen hours at a time. He was exhausted, both physically and mentally, and in desperate need of a break. The thought of a few days off at his mother’s dacha was like an unreachable oasis in this drab city with its drab, frightened people. The fact that it was his department that was the main source of terror passed him by.
The Black Maria Page 19