‘They’ll put two and two together soon. I’ll probably know the people who interrogate me. I’ve done it enough myself – beaten someone I used to have round for dinner. I hated that expression of relief they had when they saw it was me who had come to question them. No one lasts longer than a couple of weeks. We can get anyone to say anything. We can get them to admit their own mother is a German spy who’s been sending state secrets to the Nazis for the last ten years, and dines out with Hitler and Göring every New Year’s Eve. Everyone cracks because everything is permitted to us. And we have all the time in the world and they have nothing. Perhaps I should just tell them everything and save them the bother.’
Misha was struck dumb. Was this a trick to get him to say something he shouldn’t? He just stared at the Kapitan, wondering what he would come out with next.
‘I know what happened to your mother,’ Zhiglov said out of the blue.
Misha sat bolt upright. A terrible fear squirmed in the pit of his stomach. ‘Is she still alive?’ he asked.
‘I think she is,’ Zhiglov replied with a small smile. ‘They sent her to a camp called Noyabrsk. It’s beyond the Ural Mountains. Way out in west Siberia. It’s not too bad. Well, let me put it like this. There are plenty worse. She’s working on a collective farm, if she’s still alive. But I have every reason to think she is. It’s not a harsh regime. The political prisoners live in barracks outside the town.’
‘Do you know why they arrested her?’
‘Not my case, Mikhail.’
‘Who denounced her?’
Zhiglov snapped, ‘Don’t push your luck.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘You are a good boy,’ said the Kapitan, smiling again. ‘And Valentina is a decent girl. I was sorry when Beria took a shine to her. And Galina, especially, always liked you both.’
The Kapitan fell silent, then with a wave of his hand he said, ‘You can go now.’
Misha walked unsteadily back to his apartment and stood outside the door. For a minute or two, he sat on his haunches there in the corridor, breathing deeply and trying to control his shaking limbs.
The apartment door opened. ‘I thought I heard a noise outside,’ said Valya. ‘Are you all right?’
The vodka, and the awful tension and fear, welled up inside Misha and all at once he thought he was going to be sick. He dashed past her and reached the bathroom just in time.
She came and crouched beside the lavatory bowl, gently holding his hair away from his face.
When his nausea finally passed, she made him a pot of tea. Misha was grateful she had not asked him what had happened. He hadn’t yet worked out how much he could safely tell her. As he sat sweating and willing himself not to be sick again, she placed a cup of tea on the table beside him and patted his arm.
‘Tell me about it later, if you want to,’ she said. ‘Now, if you are not going to be sick again, I need to get to my bed.’
Misha wanted to stay up to tell his papa the news, but he felt too tired and too poorly. He dimly remembered hearing his papa arrive home in the early hours and sometime after that he was abruptly woken by a gunshot. He rushed out of his room to find Yegor standing in the living room, still in his work suit.
They both peered out of their front door and heard the sound of several footsteps running up the marble stairs.
‘Quick, back inside,’ said Yegor. ‘Whatever has happened we don’t want to get involved. And we definitely don’t want to give anyone an excuse to think of us as suspects.’
The footsteps hurtled past their door very shortly afterwards. There were voices. Yegor recognised one of Zhiglov’s neighbours protesting loudly. They heard banging and splintering.
‘Back to bed,’ said Yegor. Then, rather indignantly, he added, ‘Misha, have you been drinking my vodka?’
‘Papa, I went to see Kapitan Zhiglov. He told me Mama was alive. She’s at a camp out in west Siberia – Noyabrsk, I think he said.’
Yegor hugged him tight. Misha could feel him breathing hard and suppressing a sob. ‘Thank God. Thank God . . . But why did he tell you?’
‘I don’t know. He’d been drinking. And he kept giving me lots to drink too. I think that shot probably came from his apartment.’
Yegor hugged him again. ‘Go back to bed now. We’ll talk over breakfast.’ Then, after a pause he said, ‘I know of Noyabrsk. I prepared a report for the Vozhd on the factory relocations just last week. We have been rebuilding an aeroplane instruments factory there. Some of the politicals at the camp are going to work at the factory. Thank God she hasn’t been working in a mine or digging a canal. That would probably have killed her.’
Then, just as he turned to go to bed, he said, ‘Misha, the more we talk about Mama, the greater the danger to her and to us. For the moment we must not speak of it again.’
Chapter 17
The next afternoon Valya came round to see how he was. ‘I thought I’d let you sleep off your hangover,’ she said.
Then, when she could see Misha wasn’t going to tell her, she said, ‘I heard about Zhiglov. Papa came home for lunch and told me he’d been found with a bullet in his head. Papa thinks someone might have gone to his apartment and murdered him.’
Misha froze in horror.
‘Don’t worry, Misha, I didn’t say anything. Are you sure no one saw you come or go last night?’
‘It was late. No one was about.’
‘Good. Then you should be safe.’
‘But, Valya, my fingerprints are on one of the vodka glasses.’
‘That’s nothing. You could have been there that afternoon. The neighbours told what time they heard the gun go off. So they know it happened in the middle of the night.
‘They say he had fallen foul of Beria,’ she said, and then looked unsettled. ‘Who hasn’t?’
Papa came home at 7.00 p.m. that day. Early for him. Comrade Stalin had decided to carry on his work at the Kuntsevo dacha and instructed Yegor Petrov to go home to rest. Misha was pleased to have the opportunity to eat an evening meal with his father and Yegor said they would open an expensive bottle of French wine ‘to celebrate their good news’. Yegor had picked up some frying steak from the Kremlin kitchens, although he said the chef there had told him he thought it might be horsemeat.
As they sat down to eat, Yegor poured the wine and raised his glass. Putting a finger to his lips he whispered, ‘To Mama!’
They ate and drank heartily, and the bottle was soon empty. Misha hoped his papa wouldn’t inflame his ulcer with all this rich food and drink.
‘Misha, I want you to do me a favour,’ said Yegor. ‘I want you to go to our dacha. I want you to find something there and destroy it. Will you do that for me? I can’t go myself. I’m too busy at work. And Comrade Stalin expects me to be only a phone call away, even when I am not in the office.’
Misha immediately felt anxious, but he had a strong suspicion this was about his mother and he was eager to do anything that would help him understand why she had disappeared. ‘Of course, Papa.’
‘You know how in the main room downstairs we have lots of paintings. Ones that you and Viktor and Elena did when you were younger, and ones that Mama did too, when she took her watercolours out in the garden. There’s a big one of the poppies that bloom at the side of the garden. It was one of her best, so we put it in a big, expensive frame. Well, there’s something inside that frame. Some documents and photographs that we should never have held on to, but your mama couldn’t bring herself to throw them away. Now I know she’s still alive I want to get rid of them. I think the Nazi soldiers might reach Meshkovo soon, and they will ransack the place, I’m sure of it. They are bound to smash things up, looking for loot.
‘They’ll be driven out, I’m sure of that too, and I don’t want any of our soldiers or our policemen coming back and finding these photographs, especially the NKVD. Do you understand?’
‘What do they show, Papa?’ asked Misha.
‘You’ll see. But p
lease put them in the stove and make sure they’re all burned. You must go as soon as possible. I think it will be a nice day tomorrow. Make the most of the last of our warm autumn days and take a trip down there.’
Chapter 18
Early October 1941
The next day was a Rest Day and Misha had originally agreed to meet Valya and go to Gorky Park where some of their friends from school were gathering at the chess corner for a lunchtime picnic and a game.
When she came to bang on his door, he invited her down to the dacha on an impulse. He was sure his papa would consider this too great a risk but Misha trusted her absolutely.
She agreed at once and they set off with a small picnic. The metro was not running but after a brisk walk they reached Bryansk Station.
The carriage they sat down in was empty and remained so. Misha always enjoyed the slow journey down to Meshkovo. The train stopped at every little station en route and he would sit there with sunshine pouring through the windows enjoying the smell of smoke from the steam engine, and drink in the scents of the forest. Before Mama was taken away, they would travel down for whole weekends. They would wind up the gramophone there and Mama and Papa would dance to one of Chopin’s waltzes in the last light of the evening, while he and his brother and sister sat in the garden with their sketchbooks, pencils and crayons. He felt a deep yearning for those carefree days.
The further south-west they travelled from central Moscow, the greater his unease. Within weeks, maybe even days, anyone who had not fled Meshkovo would hear the grinding and clanking of tanks and then Nazi soldiers would appear out of the forest.
‘So, how did you end up with this place? I thought your papa would want a dacha nearer the Vozhd,’ said Valya, breaking into Misha’s thoughts.
‘No. He deliberately chose a place away from Kuntsevo,’ said Misha. ‘I remember him talking about it over supper when I was younger. “I need to get away from the Vozhd sometimes,” he said. I remember one time Mama said, “Even the most loyal servant needs time away from his master,” and Papa flew into a rage. “Why do you have to belittle me like this?” he shouted.
‘We were all there round the table, Viktor and Elena too. We didn’t know where to look,’ he confided. ‘They argued a lot and often over little trivial things.’
‘My parents used to bicker too, Mikhail,’ said Valya. ‘They all do it.’ She looked out of the window. ‘Sky looks good. I think it will be warm for the rest of the day.’
As the train trundled down through the industrial outskirts of Moscow and into the thick birch forests that surrounded the city, there were plenty of lunchtime picnickers setting up their little tables along the side of the rail track. It seemed strange to see such normality with such danger looming. The train passed a rotund babushka and her scrawny husband, quaffing a glass of red wine and puffing contentedly on their cigarettes, and Misha wondered if they had any idea what was coming.
‘Surely they must have heard the news on the radio or read about it in Pravda?’
Valya agreed. ‘It’s plain enough. They said this morning our troops had fought a heroic defensive action at Mozhaysk. That’s only a day or two away.’
‘Hours if there’s no one there to stop them,’ said Misha glumly.
‘Defeatist talk!’ said Valya in mocking imitation of government radio announcements.
Misha leaned in and dropped his voice to barely a whisper. ‘Valya, I have to tell you something.’
Valya flinched a little and moved away from him. Misha suddenly realised she thought he was going to tell her he loved her or something like that. He began to blush and quickly explained. ‘It’s about why I wanted to go to the dacha.’
‘Go on,’ she said warily.
‘Mama left some photos hidden there. Photos that Papa doesn’t want anyone to find. And some documents.’
Valya relaxed in an instant and began to laugh. ‘Did she used to be a belly dancer or something?’ she said.
Misha felt a little hurt at her flippancy. ‘No. I don’t know what they are. I just know where they are and that I have to burn them in the stove.’
‘I’m sorry, Misha,’ she said. She was looking embarrassed now. ‘I thought you were going to say something else.’
She let that hang in the air. It was a conversation Misha definitely did not want to have.
The train arrived at Meshkovo shortly after noon. The day was at its hottest and when they reached the dacha Misha gathered a few twigs to add to the sticks in the little iron stove. Once he had started the fire and put a kettle on to boil, he asked Valya to help him take down the heavy gilt frame with his mother’s watercolour of the poppies in the dacha garden.
‘She was good, your mama,’ said Valya. ‘I wish I could paint like that. I wish I could paint at all!’
They laid the frame face down on the living-room table. The painting was held in place in the frame by a thin wood panel and tiny upholstery nails. Misha took a knife from the kitchen and began to gently prise the nails away.
Lifting the wooden panel off they immediately saw there was another underneath it and in the space between were several documents and three small photographs. Misha picked up the photos and quickly glanced through them. They showed a bewildering array of images.
There was a distinguished-looking naval officer with a beard, the white jacket of his uniform covered with medals, posing with a beautiful younger woman in a stylish black velvet dress and a fur hat with a feather in it. The couple had two small girls seated on their knees and both leaned against the other with cosy familiarity. The children were four or five and each wore an identical silk and lace dress. What puzzled Misha especially was how familiar these people seemed to him.
Valya was looking over his shoulder. ‘Nice-looking bunch. Do you know who they are?’
There was another photograph of one of the girls, now aged about twelve or thirteen, posing by an elaborately decorated grand piano, one hand languidly placed on the keyboard, her shoulder covered by an ermine stole, a string of pearls around her neck.
‘That looks a bit like your mama,’ said Valya. Misha could see it too, but surely it couldn’t be.
The final shot showed the two girls, now in their middle teens and wearing ball gowns, curtsying to a distinguished-looking man with a full beard and a uniform covered in braid and medals. Behind them was a table heaving with silverware, candelabras and china. The girls both looked the very picture of prosperous, happy young ladies. Behind them similarly well-dressed figures mingled and conversed. Perhaps it was a party, even a ball of some sort.
‘Good God, Misha. That’s the Tsar. That’s Nicholas, with all his medals,’ said Valya. ‘Who are these people?’
Misha’s hands began to shake. What had his mama been hiding here?
He looked at the documents. There were five of them in total, all from Moscow Imperial Conservatory, dated between 1911 and 1916. All declared that Anna Potemkin, of the Prince Alexander Baryatinsky Academy, had passed a succession of piano exams, each one with distinction.
‘That can’t be Mama,’ said Misha. He sounded relieved. ‘She could just about bash out “The Red Flag” and a few other communist songs.’
The kettle on the stove began to whistle. They sat on the veranda in the watery sun enjoying a coffee and their little picnic.
‘What are you going to do with this haul?’ she asked.
‘The piano certificates can go on the fire,’ he said. ‘I’m keeping the photographs.’
‘Misha, I’m not going to nag you about this, but if your papa specifically asked you to destroy them, then shouldn’t you do that?’
‘Valya, it must be Mama in the photos. That’s why Papa wanted me to burn everything.’ All of a sudden he felt as though he had a cold stone in his stomach.
They sat in silence, then Misha took the piano certificates and tore them into pieces before throwing them into the stove. He put the three photographs in his top pocket and hammered the panel back into place in the g
ilt frame. Then, in a pleasant early afternoon haze, they wandered through the ragged silver birches of the forest, almost shoulder to shoulder, their feet kicking up the autumn leaves. Misha ached to touch her, even just hold her hand. Out of nowhere a cold wind blew down from the east and she shivered.
‘Here, have my jacket,’ he said, and had to hide his delight when she took it.
‘It’s my favourite time of year, the autumn,’ she said wistfully. ‘You savour every moment of a day like this, knowing it won’t come again until May.’
‘Time we headed back,’ Misha said. ‘There’s a train just after four.’
Misha busied himself with the shutters and made sure the fire was out. ‘I wonder if we’ll ever come back,’ he said.
He picked up the poppy painting, and she picked one of his pictures from the wall – something he had drawn with coloured pencils when he was ten or eleven, of the cat who used to visit their garden.
Weighed down with the frames, they hurried to the station. The train had still not appeared by twenty past four and both of them began to fret. Maybe the Germans had taken the line further down? But a few minutes later they heard a distant whistle and soon spotted the engine approaching with its plume of smoke.
Misha felt that familiar sinking feeling as the city began to close in around them. Factories, gas-storage cylinders and grain silos all stood black against the fading evening sky. Now an icy fear gripped him too.
‘No air raids now, please God,’ said Valya, which surprised Misha as he had never heard her mention God before in her life. She looked a little embarrassed. ‘Wouldn’t it be awful to be caught on a train in an air raid?’ she said. ‘The Hitlerites are strafing trains, even little local trains, not just the goods trains and the troop trains.’
Misha could picture it all too vividly. The Stukas with their screaming sirens, the roar of the engines, the stutter of machine guns, the splintering glass and wood, and an agonising death dancing to the steel whip of machine-gun fire.
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