The Black Maria

by Rupert Colley

  Rosa whitened, stepping back against the front door. Anna stood by her side and took her hand. The two women had never met before today but it’s strange, I thought, how circumstances can bond.

  Rykov continued, still orbiting his prey. ‘And how sad it is that the association is no more. The Moscow East Division, certainly, is a thing of the past. Such an austere association, who’d have thought it would turn out to be just a front.’ He noticed Dmitry’s eyebrows rise. ‘Yes, Comrade Kalinin, you heard me correctly: a front for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda. Your colleague Comrade Mamontov spilt the beans, and then your old pal, Mikhail, is, as we speak, confirming it all. Couldn’t wait to tell us all the sickening, traitorous details.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ snarled Dmitry. My heart stopped a moment at his effrontery.

  ‘Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you? But it’s amazing how many times your name cropped up. Again and again, isn’t that right, Comrade Vladimir?’

  Vladimir didn’t answer, assuming, as I had done, it was a rhetorical question. ‘I said isn’t that right, Comrade Vladimir?’

  ‘Yes – yes, boss.’ I realised at that moment that he was as nervous as the rest of us; only Rykov was enjoying himself, savouring the moment of capture.

  Rykov then circled around me; like the Devil on my back. ‘And you, Maria Radekovna. How empty your block is today. Think how disappointed your neighbours will be when they realise what excitement they’ve missed. I saw your husband only a few days ago, did you know that? No, of course not, why should you? He was lying on the cold slab, his body as white as snow, the poor sod.’ Rykov then stopped and faced us. ‘What a lot of questions I have for you both.’

  ‘We have nothing to say,’ said Dmitry.

  What happened next, happened so quickly, I didn’t realise until later how much I screamed. Rykov whipped his revolver from his coat pocket and smashed it, sideways on, against Dmitry’s face. Dmitry fell back, toppling into me, using the sideboard to maintain his balance. Anna and Rosa collapsed into each other’s arms for support; Vladimir stepped forward as if backing up his boss. ‘You filthy dog, you treacherous bastard,’ bawled Rykov, the revolver pointing at Dmitry’s chest. ‘You think you can stand up to me, but when I’ve finished with you, you’ll be begging for death to come release you.’ Suddenly, he swung round to face Anna and Rosa, and fired. Anna and Rosa screamed as they dropped to the floor. Plaster from the wall fell about them, splattering their hair. Dmitry made to move but Vladimir had also produced his gun and had Dmitry within his sights.

  ‘Next time,’ said Rykov breathlessly, ‘next time I’ll aim for her heart. Five seconds. I give you five seconds to get your ass out that door.’ Stepping back, he lifted the revolver and aimed it directly at Rosa. ‘One...’

  Rosa lay huddled on the floor, whimpering, Anna’s arms wrapped around her, a tangle of legs spreading out from beneath them, their faces pressed against each other, their tears mingling. I glanced at Dmitry, his eyes fixed on Rykov, his mouth gaping open.

  ‘Two...’ My life had lurched to this moment. My name is Matrena. I cross myself, not once, but twice. Once for each child. The girls suffered no pain, no distress – an easy transition from this miserable life to the next, without a sound, not even a whimper. Poor, poor pathetic girls, they never felt a thing; they never knew.

  ‘Three...’ The wind whistles outside, the light fading, slowly drowning the inside in darkness. The world feels dead, our existence forgotten. I’d expected my heart to be pounding, instead it had slowed down to such an extent, I wondered whether it was beating at all. I can’t remember how they looked; my mind, in an effort to protect itself, has conveniently forgotten the details. But how heavy were those hessian sacks with their dismal contents as I dragged them outside and into the woods. Viktor had dug a hole for me. He was weak but it was May, the soil was soft. He never said a word, asked me nothing. Alone, I lowered them into the grave, kneeled, and said a prayer. I prayed that God might realise that by denying them their existence, I had saved them from further torment. They had known nothing but misery in their short, pathetic lives. May He forgive me.

  ‘Four...’ I didn’t cry for months. Survival and self-preservation never allowed me the luxury of tears. It was only when I’d become ensconced into my new identity, when I was alone for the first time within the warmth and safety of these four solid walls; when, for the first time, I could look into a mirror and not expect a shadow behind me; when I’d finally stopped running and hiding by turn – that was when I cried. And how I cried.

  ‘Five...’

  I am crying now and I don’t think I shall ever stop.

  ‘Put the gun down.’ The words, so quietly spoken, felt as though they’d seeped through the floorboards.

  ‘What the...’ Rykov realised and looked incredulously at his assistant. Vladimir had swung his gun round from pointing at Dmitry, and was pointing it now at his superior.

  Rosa sat up a little, her face soaked, her eyes widening. ‘Vladimir?’ she said in a bewildered whisper.

  Vladimir kept his eyes firmly on Rykov, his hand shaking slightly. ‘I said put your gun down, boss.’

  The look of incredulity on Rykov’s face vanished in an instant as he burst out laughing, ‘You stupid... stupid fucker,’ he said between bouts of laughter. ‘What the...’

  Dmitry, standing on the balls of his feet, glanced from one to the other, not sure how to react.

  Rykov still had his gun pointing at Rosa. ‘I’ll kill her, then what would you do? Kill me? You wouldn’t have the guts, you wouldn’t...’ He trailed off, realising that he’d tutored the boy in his own image, that perhaps his young shadow was indeed worthy of having the guts. His arm, still pointing his gun towards Rosa, slackened a fraction as he tried a different tact, ‘And how do you think you’d get away with it? You can’t kill me and sweep my existence under the carpet. Vladimir, we haven’t come this far together for it to end like this. Vladimir? Vladimir...’

  Rykov’s arm stiffened. Vladimir saw it. A gun fired. I screamed as the shot rang out and echoed and bounced round the four walls.

  Vladimir almost fainted at the realisation of what he’d done. Rykov lay in a heap, his hands clutching his stomach, unable to prevent the blood gushing through his fingers, his revolver inches away. How quickly the blood came, drenching his shirt, forming a pool on the floor. His legs shook violently, his eyes rolled to the back of his back.

  Huddled in the corner, near the front door, Rosa and Anna were crying hysterically, clutching each other for support while Dmitry and Vladimir stood over Rykov watching Rykov’s fingers clasp and unclasp. I’d backed myself against the window, my hands shielding my eyes from the scene before me.

  Through my fingers, I saw Dmitry kick the gun away from Rykov’s reach. ‘He’s not dead,’ I heard him say to Vladimir.

  Vladimir nodded. ‘What do we do?’

  ‘Well, we can’t leave him here.’

  ‘And we can’t take him anywhere.’

  The conclusion, horrendous although it was, was obvious. We all knew it. Rosa pulled herself away from Anna’s arms and unsteadily rose to her feet. ‘We have to take him to a hospital.’

  Vladimir shook his head. ‘No, he won’t live that long.’

  ‘Couldn’t we just leave him?’ asked Anna.

  ‘Too risky,’ said Vladimir. He glanced down at his hand and looked at his revolver as if surprised to find it there. He took a step towards the crumpled figure of Rykov and knelt down next to him.

  ‘Vladimir?’ said Rosa. ‘What – what are you doing?’

  He placed the end of the gun against Rykov’s temple, the perspiration glistening on his brow. He took a deep breath, braced himself and pushed the muzzle hard against the skin.

  Anna covered her face with her hands. Dmitry put his arm around Rosa’s shoulder, and Rosa buried her head into his chest. Only I watched intently, barely daring to breathe.

  I could see the shaking in Vladimir’s hand. With each p
assing second, as Rykov’s laboured breathing became more audible, Vladimir’s shaking got worse. Then, he suddenly rose to his feet and swung round with frustration, his eyes filled with tears. The moment had gone; nothing would make it come back. But the problem still persisted.

  I crossed myself – just the once. Vladimir was facing me as I approached. I held out my hand but it took him a few seconds to realise what I meant. He passed me the revolver. How heavy it felt, and so large in the smallness of my hand.

  Dmitry stepped towards me. ‘No, Maria.’

  I stared into him. How far we’d come in such little time. I was no longer even convinced whether it’d been the right thing to do. But now it was done and it was too late to question it. His mind, I am sure, was drifting through the same territory. He stepped aside.

  Following Vladimir’s example, I placed the muzzle against Rykov’s temple. I couldn’t afford to hesitate. For a moment, I thought I saw Rykov open his eyes.

  But only for a moment.

  Epilogue: Moscow, 29 February 1992

  Four deaths. But history, as they say, is a foreign land, and so, who was I to sit in judgement?

  Maria looked at her watch. ‘Oh dear, it is dark, you must be hungry and tired, listening all day to my horrible story–’

  ‘No, no, not at all,’ said Caroline.

  ‘Yes, but I must eat. Irina leaves me something, but it is not enough for us all.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘We’ll go now. But can you just tell us, what did you do with the... the body?’

  ‘Dmitry and Vladimir hid it in the locked wardrobe in the bedroom and Anna and Rosa wiped away the evidence – that much I can remember. But the details escape me. Did I cry, did I curl up into a ball, did I pray? I don’t know. All I see is the gun on the floorboards, the light from the window reflecting in its barrel.

  ‘You know, it was many days before they found him. And when they did, hundreds of people were arrested. In the end, they find their scapegoat and he was found guilty and shot. But still, hundreds of others died too. But we five – Anna, Rosa, Vladimir, Dmitry and I, we all escaped. But as five people, we never saw each other together again. We all became new people with new histories. Vladimir and Rosa disappeared in one direction, Dmitry and I in another. Only Anna remained here in Moscow.

  ‘Vladimir and Rosa, I heard many years later, were married but it was not to last. What happened to Vladimir, I do not know. Rosa married again in 1946 but that too wasn’t to last. After the war, the suspicions and paranoia of the pre-war came back, and she was arrested and sentenced to ten years. Whether she ever survived the Gulag, I shall never know.’

  ‘Poor Rosa.’

  ‘Yes, born in the year of the Revolution. Only Anna found any peace. She re-assembled the pieces of her life and married Mikhail in 1940.’

  ‘Mikhail? Dmitry’s patron?’

  ‘Yes. He was lucky. He served only five years in the gulag. When he came back, his wife and children had disappeared. Together, he and Anna lived the life of good proletariats – humble and cautious but content. Sometimes, she wrote to Dmitry and I. Her last letter came in 1953, the year of Stalin’s death. She told me of Rosa’s arrest and exile and it made me feel sad – it was like she was writing about a passing friend. She and Mikhail were still living happily together.’

  ‘What happened to Dmitry and you?’

  ‘Dmitry and I moved from town to town, trying to live – doing work where we could find it, for shelter and food. We married. We had one child – a son. Dmitry’s dream was to start painting again. But in 1941, on the eve of the war, he worked in a munitions factory. And with the war, he was enlisted into the army.’ She paused for a few moments and her fingers played with the kingfisher brooch on her cardigan. ‘Dmitry, your grandfather, Richard, was killed in the streets of Stalingrad in forty-three.’

  Caroline and I exchanged glances.

  My grandmother continued. ‘Not long ago, I paint a copy of The Workers’ Rest. The local gallery even exhibited it for me. Just think how proud Dmitry would have been! A collector saw it, and returned the following day with the original. In a moment of sentimentalism, she present me with Dmitry’s painting – as a gift. That is why you see it now, after all these years.’ I followed her eyes and gazed at the painting. ‘Look at her. I know her so well but behind her mask, she is no more than a stranger. But I am still here and the Soviet Union is dead. Two revolutions, two turns of a gigantic wheel...’ she said something in Russian, her words trailing off.

  Caroline leant forward and took her hand and spoke to her in her native tongue.

  ‘You must hate me now,’ said Maria, fishing in her cardigan pocket for her handkerchief. ‘All those things, those dreadful things...’

  ‘No,’ whispered Caroline, ‘of course not.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Caroline’s right – what else could you have done? We can’t imagine what it was like but we understand, Grandma...’

  ‘Grandma?’ She looked at me through a haze of tears and gulped. ‘You called me... thank you, thank you, Richard.’

  *

  Twenty minutes later, Caroline and I were outside the apartment block, standing in the snow, breathing in the cold night air. Beyond the faint rumble of traffic, everything seemed so quiet. We were hungry and the numbing wind battered our faces but we couldn’t move. It was as if we needed time to reacclimatise to the present before throwing ourselves into the frenzy of the Moscow metro system. I looked up to the block looming above us in the dark and my eyes scanned the lights on the fourth floor. Somewhere, behind one of those windows, sat my grandmother. I imagined her sitting in her leather armchair, with a tray on her knee, eating the supper left by Irina, watching the television news. In a few hours time, we were due to be on the night train to St Petersburg. I didn’t have any choice. I so very much wanted to go back up, to see her one last time, to hear my name pronounced as Rich-hard, to kiss her goodbye again. The thought of leaving her behind, of leaving this wonderful city behind bit into me. She was part of me – the only family I had left. For so long, I’d lived without the comfort of family. I was strong, independent, totally self-reliant. But not any more. Forty-eight hours and everything was turned on its head. Having found her, I didn’t want to leave, I didn’t want to be alone any more. The thought of being back in London with her so far away, with only the sullen Irina for company, was unbearable. I imagined buying her Christmas presents and writing the name Grandma on the tag. I wanted to do her shopping for her, to pop in unannounced – just to see if she was okay.

  ‘Come on, Richard, I’m cold.’

  ‘Caroline, what were you and Grandma saying to each other in Russian?’ I surprised myself how easy it was to say Grandma.

  She pulled the earflaps of her hat tighter against her face. ‘When?’

  ‘Earlier on this morning, when you both laughed. I asked you what you were saying and you said it was a secret.’

  ‘Oh, that.’ She smiled.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll tell you later.’ She started walking away from me.

  ‘No. Tell me now.’ I watched her as she stopped beneath the glow of a street lamp and turned around, her gloved hands clutching at her scarf beneath her chin, her shadow reaching towards me. The shaft of light, illuminating the falling snow, fell at an angle across her face.

  ‘Richard, do you know what day it is?’

  ‘February twenty-ninth, why?’

  ‘Exactly, a leap year – Maria reminded me. But I told her I was going to already – tonight, on the train.’

  As I stepped towards her, I thought I saw a figure at one of the many windows on the fourth floor. ‘Going to do what already?’

  She pulled me closer and kissed me, our cold faces touching, our numbed lips thawing under the warmth of our contact. ‘Richard,’ she whispered, ‘will you marry me?’

  *

  Maria sat at the window and watched them. She smiled as they embraced and kissed, t
heir shadows stretching across the fresh snow. She watched them walk slowly away. For a moment, she thought she saw Richard glance up. She waved but he didn’t see her. Her hand remained suspended in the air as they turned the corner of the neighbouring block. And then they were gone.

  She rose to her feet and, using the table for support, hauled herself back into her armchair. She sat down with a sigh. Everything was so much effort. It was six o’clock and she felt exhausted. Re-living those events had drained her. She ought to go through to the kitchen and put Irina’s meal into the microwave. But not yet.

  How different Richard was from his father; so much kinder, more compassionate. She’d always wanted to tell her son the story of her life but he was part of that Russian generation who didn’t want to know. Stalin was history and he, like so many others, was too busy living the present Soviet life without having to confront the previous. She’d feared that Richard would be much the same. But he wasn’t. She’d known that within seconds of him stepping into the apartment. Richard, she knew, would listen. Their presence still filled the room, she could smell them, almost touch them. It seemed strange to think they were still within walking distance of her apartment, but they were walking away. And each step would take them further away from her. She was alone again.

  For sixty years she’d waited to tell someone there once lived two small girls. Two small girls who, occasionally, still greeted her in the mornings as her dreams faded; two smiling faces who still called her Mama. The longing never went away and, after all this time, she still thought of them every day. She used to try and imagine how they’d be as the years passed, from little girls to young women. But now, she preferred simply to remember them as they were, forever caught in that whisker of time when the name Stalin was as unreal and ethereal as God Himself. God, she missed them, still.