Red Shadow

by Paul Dowswell

  Misha’s mind was racing. How did this man know about his mother? And it had never occurred to him that a play about the murder of a medieval English king might be counter-revolutionary. He felt an overwhelming urge to tell the Political Organiser that Shakespeare must have been able to see into the future, to write counter-revolutionary propaganda four hundred years ago, but he bit his tongue and waited to hear what this man would say next. Visions of smashed porcelain on his apartment floor and his terrified neighbour being dragged away from the kommunalka flooded into his head.

  The grip on his arm loosened. ‘You are young,’ the Political Organiser said indulgently. ‘Much Ado About Nothing would be a better text to study. I saw it in the Realist Theatre a year or two ago. It was very funny.’

  Misha breathed again and nodded his head rapidly. ‘I am sorry for my political naivety, Comrade Organiser,’ he said, trying to sound as calm and sincere as he could. The man smiled coldly and then left.

  Misha hurried back to the metro and home. The mention of his mother had shaken him more than the warning about what he was teaching. If the Political Organiser knew, who else knew? He wanted to tell Valya about what had happened but he hadn’t seen her all week. In fact, the last time he had seen her was the evening of the banquet. On an impulse, he dropped by the Golovkins’ apartment at the Armoury and banged on the door. No one answered.

  Maybe she was ill? He had been left to collect Galina Zhiglov on his own for several days and missed Valya’s cheery ability to make conversation with the solemn little girl as he walked to her school.

  He hadn’t seen Valya around school either, so that night he asked his papa if he had seen Anatoly Golovkin at work.

  ‘He’s been away this week,’ said his father.

  ‘Is he all right?’ asked Misha.

  Yegor Petrov sounded increasingly impatient. ‘It’s nothing unusual. The Vozhd takes secretarial staff with him when he visits the republics. I expect Anatoly has gone too. I go sometimes, as you know. Why do you ask?’

  Misha felt sheepish. ‘I haven’t seen Valya for several days. I wanted to know if she’s all right.’

  His father sighed. ‘Valentina is a lovely girl. Of course she is. But you are like a little lamb trotting after its mother with that girl. You are too young for her. The sooner you realise that, the happier you will be.’

  Misha blushed bright red. ‘Papa!’ he said indignantly. ‘Valentina is just a good friend, but she likes me too. Can’t you see that?’

  Yegor’s face hardened. ‘Mikhail, you do not talk to me like that. Go to your room.’

  Misha couldn’t help himself. His anger boiled over. ‘Maybe if you had cared as much for Mama, you would have done more to help her when she was arrested.’

  His papa sprang to his feet and cuffed Misha hard on the side of his head, sending him stumbling backwards. ‘Go to your room,’ he said again, his cold, calm voice an eerie contrast to his violent action.

  Half an hour later, as Misha was reading on his bed, still fighting back tears, there was a knock on his door. His father came in without waiting for a response. He was carrying a bowl of cold water and a small sponge, which he put on the bedside table. Then he sat down on the bed. Much to Misha’s surprise he put an arm round him.

  ‘I am sorry I hit you. This is not the way a respectable communist should behave.’

  He felt the side of his son’s head and wrung out the sponge. ‘There is a little lump. Hold this here for a while. It will help. Do you want an aspirin?’

  Misha shook his head. His anger was gone now and he just felt sad for them both. ‘I’m sorry I made you angry,’ he said.

  ‘Never mind. It’s forgotten.’

  ‘I think of Mama often,’ said Misha. ‘Every time I open the front door I hope she’ll be here.’

  His papa hugged him tight. ‘Mikhail, for both our sakes we should not speak of your mama.’

  He got up to leave, then paused by the door. ‘You should go to sleep now, Misha. I’m also sorry I hurt your feelings when I spoke about Valentina, but please think about what I said. She’ll never be more than a big sister to you.’

  Misha felt himself getting angry again and tried to hide it. He knew that if he tried to kiss her their friendship would end in an instant. But he wasn’t going to talk to his papa about that. It was too embarrassing. He nodded and turned his gaze back to his book.

  After reading a little longer, his eyes grew heavy and he switched off his reading light. As he drifted towards sleep, a sudden thought brought him rapidly awake. Had the NKVD come for Valya? She and he had often shared dangerous opinions. He dismissed the idea but it stayed there to nag at him. He would never betray her, but maybe there were others with whom she was just as indiscreet? And if they had arrested her, what would she say about him when she was interrogated?

  He heard noises outside the door and his heart started to beat hard in his chest. Don’t be stupid, Misha, he told himself. That’s just Papa.

  There was no sense in this at all. But then there was no sense in a lot of what the NKVD did.

  He woke again in the early hours after a horrible dream. He was talking to Valya at the school gates and she was being pleasant but distant with him. Then, as she adjusted her hairband, he noticed all the nails were missing from her fingers. She carried on talking about an exam she was taking and he was desperate to ask her what had happened but the words would not come out. And when he looked at his own hands, the nails were missing from them too.

  Chapter 7

  Valya was not at school the following day either and no one he asked seemed to know what had happened to her. Again he knocked on her apartment door on the way home from school and again there was no answer. That evening he fretted alone with his thoughts and went to bed without seeing his papa.

  Yegor Petrov came into the kitchen the next morning as Misha was preparing his breakfast. He looked exhausted.

  Last night’s meeting had ended at 2.30 in the morning, he told Misha. They had been caught up in an argument about German planes flying over Soviet territory. The subject seemed to bore the Vozhd but some comrades who were present seemed to think it was serious. Afterwards, Yegor was not asked to go on to Stalin’s nearby dacha at Kuntsevo with the others. Stalin often asked his associates to go over there when the business of the day was completed. There was usually drinking and feasting and maybe a film, until at least four or five in the morning.

  Yegor said he didn’t mind being left out. ‘I think Comrade Stalin could see how tired I was. You know, I felt sorry for the ones that were asked.’ He told him the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Vyacheslav Molotov, looked especially grey and fatigued, but no one in their right mind would refuse an invitation.

  ‘He keeps such late hours at the dacha,’ Yegor continued. ‘Half the time it’s just vodka drinking and farting contests. And he doesn’t turn up at his desk at nine like the rest of us. We don’t usually see him until the middle of the afternoon.’

  Misha liked it when his papa told him these little secrets. He wondered if Yegor was making an effort to be nice to him after their argument a few days ago. He would try too.

  ‘I shall fry you an egg,’ said Misha and they sat and ate breakfast together.

  As Misha drained his coffee cup, his papa asked if he would lend him a hand tidying the Vozhd’s office before he got on with his homework. Yegor had told him several times he would be able to get him a secretarial job at the Kremlin. Misha wasn’t sure he’d like that. He admired his papa for doing the job he did but he didn’t envy him. He was always pleased, though, when his father asked him to help him with his work. There was something exciting about being in the great rooms where the Soviet leaders directed the lives of millions of Russia’s citizens.

  The office in the Little Corner was barely a couple of minutes away from their apartment. Yegor and Misha passed through the various layers of guards and office staff with little more than a nod.

  They set about tidying
the papers and filling the inkwells round the great baize-covered table in Stalin’s office. Misha had helped his papa like this several times before but Yegor never left him alone with Stalin’s papers. This time his father seemed distracted with tiredness. Misha couldn’t quite believe it when his papa went into the room next door, leaving Misha on his own. He noticed a handwritten note with kisses by the signature in among the official government documents. For a fleeting moment he wondered if this was a note from a lover. The official story was that Stalin hadn’t had a relationship since his wife had died ten years before. But there were rumours of a liaison with his maid at the Kuntsevo dacha. There were other rumours too, that his wife Nadya had not died of appendicitis, as reported, but had actually shot herself.

  Making sure his papa was busy in the next room, he looked again more carefully:

  Daddy,

  I am pleased to tell you that your housekeeper was awarded top marks for her essay. I send a thousand kisses. Housekeeper

  The note could only have come from one person: Svetlana, Stalin’s fifteen-year-old daughter.

  There was a reply on it too, in Stalin’s neat, instantly recognisable hand: We send our congratulations to our housekeeper. Daddy, J. Stalin.

  Misha felt uncomfortable intruding in this intimacy. But he couldn’t help feeling that the exchange seemed a bit childish too. Although Svetlana was well on the way to becoming a young woman, he’d noticed how Stalin still liked to pick her up and cuddle her and kiss her as if she were a young girl. It was one of the strangest things, seeing the all-powerful Vozhd cooing over his daughter. Maybe she sensed he still wanted her to be his little girl and played along with it. Misha had seen her flirting with Stalin’s bodyguards when her father wasn’t around. She could be disarmingly bold. Svetlana made Misha anxious. She walked the corridors of the Kremlin with the same assurance as Beria and even Stalin himself.

  He continued to tidy the Vozhd’s large desk, thrilled at this peak into the inner workings of the great Soviet state. He was guiltily glancing over a report on the increasing instances of German warplanes flying over Soviet territory when something else caught his eye. Among other papers casually scattered across the desk there was a sheet marked with the NKVD stamp and filled with spidery black scrawl. He could hear his father in an ante-room speaking on a telephone so he picked it up. A quick scan revealed it to be a confession. Between 1938 and 1940 I colluded with the arch traitor Trotsky, and counter-revolutionary forces, deliberately sabotaging aircraft designs for our Yakovlev Yak-4 bombers . . .

  As his eye drifted over the document, Misha noticed a mark along the right-hand side of the sheet which he was sure was dried blood, and recoiled in revulsion. He heard his papa put down the phone so he hurriedly replaced the sheet where he had found it and tried to compose himself.

  ‘You can go back to the apartment now, Misha,’ he called. ‘Get yourself ready for school.’

  The afternoon passed in a blur. Misha felt too anxious to focus on his classes. The bloodstained confession kept intruding into his thoughts and he wondered if Valya had signed a similar one, full of traitorous things he had said to her over the last few weeks.

  But when school finished at 8.00 that evening, she was there at the school gates waiting. He ran up to her and took her hand. ‘Valya! How are you?’

  She looked pale and sullen. ‘I’ve been ill, Misha,’ she said. ‘Will you walk home with me?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, trying to contain his pleasure in seeing her.

  There were several things he wanted to tell her about – like poor Vladlen at the automobile plant, and Svetlana’s note to her papa – but not the confession. That was too dangerous.

  Valya was so quiet he wondered if he’d done something to annoy her.

  Eventually he told her about Svetlana and how she had got ‘top marks’ in her composition test. He thought that might catch her interest. ‘I suppose she’s spent her whole life being fawned over by people who want to get close to the Vozhd,’ he whispered.

  Valya nodded. ‘I don’t envy her future husband, whoever he might be,’ she said in a monotone. ‘Stalin will never forgive him for taking her away.’

  ‘Yes,’ Misha agreed. ‘He wouldn’t dare to step out of line with either of them.’

  ‘Mind you, she likes you,’ said Valya, cheering up for a moment. ‘You’ve helped her out with homework a few times, haven’t you?’

  Misha blushed. It was true. She came to him when she had an assignment on Shakespeare to write. ‘She’s all right really. She just doesn’t expect anyone to say no to her, and so far I haven’t had to.’

  Valya gave a hollow laugh. ‘Play your cards right and she might be Mrs Petrov one of these days.’

  Misha gave her a dig with his elbow. ‘I’ll start spreading rumours about you and Vasily Stalin, if you don’t watch out! I know you’ve always had your eye on him!’

  Valya shuddered and for a moment Misha thought he saw a tear brim in her eye. Stalin’s youngest son, Vasily, was only a few years older than both of them but they had both heard awful stories about him propositioning girls on the secretarial staff.

  She grew quiet again and their conversation ground to a halt. As they neared the Kremlin, she surprised him by hooking her arm around his, and they continued to walk the final kilometre home in silence.

  She waited for Misha every day for the next week, although she did not call on him in the morning. She wasn’t unfriendly but she was still subdued. And she did that thing again – hooking her arm around his when they reached the streets near to the Kremlin.

  Misha knew she would be angry with him if he asked her what was wrong. He was sure it hadn’t just been an illness. He wondered if she’d fallen out with a boyfriend – someone she hadn’t told him about. Or maybe there were arguments at home about her choice of university subject?

  He tried a more oblique approach. ‘How did you get on with that aeronautics exam? Have you had the results yet?’

  She shrugged and smiled for the first time that week. ‘Ninety-five per cent. Best in the class. Keep it up, they say, and I’ll definitely get a place at the university.’

  So it wasn’t that.

  Halfway up Ulitsa Serafimovicha she stiffened. ‘Keep walking,’ she muttered. ‘Don’t look round.’ Misha could feel how tense she was but said nothing.

  After a minute, she glanced over her shoulder and Misha could feel the tension drain from her body. He looked at her expectantly. She swallowed hard and nodded. ‘Misha, let’s go and sit in Bolotnaya Square. Somewhere away from people. I have to tell you something.’

  So they did, and she sat right next to him and began to talk in a low voice.

  ‘I was walking home the day after the banquet, one of the days when you were off teaching at the automobile plant, I think, and it was raining really heavily and I got soaked. Just as I got to Ulitsa Serafimovicha I noticed there was a big official car driving very slowly behind me. I ignored it but it stayed there matching my pace. Then it drew level and I could see a window opening. Someone said, “Get in the car,” like it was an order. I turned to look and was all set to tell them to get lost when I saw it was Comrade Beria. I don’t know if he’d realised it was me. Everything is a bit hazy when I think about it now. Maybe he thought I was just any young woman, but when he recognised me I think he decided he didn’t care that I knew him. “Comrade Golovkin,” he said. “It is a terrible afternoon, devotchka. May I offer you a ride back to the Kremlin?” Well, I was frightened of offending him, and I thought maybe he really did just want to give me a ride back, so I got in.

  ‘I asked him how he knew my name and he told me he had seen me waitressing at the banquet. That made me feel uneasy and I could tell he’d been drinking. He offered me a cigarette and of course I told him I didn’t smoke, then he grabbed my arm and tried to kiss me.’

  Misha had seen this scene played out in films about life before the Revolution – most often with a beautiful peasant girl and a fat, lech
erous landlord. The girl usually broke down in tears when she told the story to her brother or father, who would seek vengeance and end up being executed for defending her honour.

  Valya continued her story in the same quiet monotone. ‘His hands were all over me. It was vile so I just froze like an icicle. I didn’t know what else to do. Maybe that made him think twice about what he was doing, or maybe it just put him off, and he stopped. We sat there in the traffic with the rain pounding on the roof. It was the longest five minutes of my life. Neither of us said anything. I could just hear him breathing. Long, angry breaths. Then shortly before the bridge he tapped the glass between the compartments and the car pulled into the side of the road. “You know what happens to anyone who tells state secrets, don’t you?” he said. “Off with their heads, is what happens.” Then he gave me the most horrible smile I’ve ever seen in my life and said, “Goodbye, Comrade Golovkin.”’

  ‘Oh, Valya,’ said Misha. ‘I’m so sorry . . .’ He was lost for words.

  ‘There’s more,’ she said. ‘When I got out of the car, I caught a glimpse of Kapitan Zhiglov at the wheel. He was looking away – probably didn’t want me to see him. But I was sure it was him. So that’s what he does when he isn’t beating up enemies of the people. I’ll never be able to look him in the eye again.’

  ‘We can tell him your routine has changed. I can collect Galina and then we can call round at yours on the way to school?’

  She leaned forward and kissed him on the side of the head. ‘Thank you, Misha. That would be very helpful. Now listen, you mustn’t tell a soul what happened. “Off with their heads” – remember.’

  ‘Have you seen Beria since?’ asked Misha.

  She nodded. ‘I saw him in the corridor at the Armoury, later the same evening. He looked straight through me as if nothing had happened.’

  Valya was shaking a little.