‘This is an opportunity we must take, Marion.’
‘I’ll say it again in case you missed it the first time: no.’
‘Hear me out. You may not like what I’m going to tell you, but perhaps in time you’ll thank me for saying it. My friends like to get their own way. They can be quite unscrupulous if they think they’re being resisted. For your own good, please think again.’
‘What can they do, Michael?’ She hoped she sounded as dismissive as she felt.
‘Perhaps I should remind you they don’t play by our rules.’
‘You’re being coy, Michael. These allusions are lost on me.’
‘They’ll use whatever means they can to get their way.’ One of the candles on the table guttered and he got up to snuff it out.
‘Let them try,’ she said.
‘You may get hurt in the process.’
‘How?’
‘They tend to twist the knife in unhealed wounds.’
She was laughing at him now. ‘I’m a pushy woman. I think there’s too much dead wood in this university and much of it is male. I want to chop it out. Is that what you reported to your friends, Michael, when you told them all about my weaknesses?’
‘No, as a matter of fact, it wasn’t.’ He lit another cigarette. ‘Would it help if I prompted you by mentioning a certain name?’
‘You’re being coy again, Michael. It doesn’t suit you.’
‘Bill Gant?’
‘What about Bill?’
‘No need to play games, Marion. We both know what we’re talking about.’
‘No games, Michael. What about Bill?’
‘You’re sleeping with him.’ Michael Scott looked pleased with himself. ‘That’s what I told my friends. I said you were sleeping with poor Bill Gant.’
‘You can tell your friends that they must do better than that if they want me to change my mind. Their informant’s not up to scratch. The news is old hat.’
‘Old hat?’ He looked as if he had been hit.
‘What happened between Bill and me is over.’
‘Since when?’
‘God, does it matter? It’s over, that’s all. Ages ago.’
‘Does Bill know?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I see.’ He was gazing into the bowl of his brandy glass.
‘If that’s all your friends know about me, then they’re not going to get very far, are they? I mean, what can they do? Tell the blessed Jenny that I went to bed with her husband? I doubt she’s in a position to care about anything like that any more, poor woman. All she can hear are weird voices screaming in her head. Put a block on Bill’s career? He’s damaged goods already, Michael. Everyone knows that. That leaves me. Since when is adultery a crime? If they want to plaster the news about my brief affair with Bill all over the university, let them go ahead. I really don’t care because I don’t think anyone else does. But if your friends in high places think they’ve got enough dirt to make me buckle under and hand over Andrei Berlin, then they’d better think again. One small move from them and I’ll scream the house down and claim I’m being molested. So you see, Michael, I’m not interested in playing your little games, and there’s nothing you or anyone else can do to make me. Is there?’
IVAN’S SEARCH FOR HIS FATHER
The rain has cleared, and the sky has been without even a touch of cloud all day. Now it is dark, parents and children have gathered once more in front of the makeshift screen. A light flickers. Andrei hears the familiar clicking of the celluloid over the gates and sprockets of the projector. Someone shouts: ‘Reel three.’ Once more Ivan’s adventure begins.
*
‘Where do you think you’re going?’
The policeman holds Ivan roughly by the shoulder and pulls him away from the door of the police station.
‘I want to see someone in authority. I have something important to report.’
‘Not in there you don’t.’ Ivan is pushed roughly out into the road. ‘On your way. Don’t come back.’
The policeman glares threateningly at him. He had better not try that trick again. Disconsolate, he walks away. Yet again his plan has failed. No one will listen to him because he is a boy without an identity. He cannot prove who he is because he has no papers. They were burned when his first life ended. All he escaped with was what he stood up in. Isn’t it enough to be alive? he asks himself each day as he gets out of bed. Isn’t it enough to have survived the storm? In the eyes of official Moscow, though not in the eyes of the Chernevenko family, the answer is no. Why should I need pieces of paper to prove who I am? Why does no one believe me? He is at a loss as to what to do.
It is the same at school. His requests for help have been ignored by his teachers. They are suspicious of him. He is sure it is because they cannot establish to their satisfaction who he is because he has arrived from nowhere. Behind his back, in class, in the schoolyard at break times, he can hear them sneering at him. Who is the orphan Ivan? Where does he come from? Are his parents really dead? Is he hiding some grave crime? Perhaps he killed his own parents, or his brother. Were his parents imperialist spies who were executed for betraying secrets to the West? Perhaps the stories of the fire are Ivan’s camouflage for what really happened. He has heard them say this. Until they can establish who he is and how he got to Moscow, they remain wary of him.
In the face of this reaction, he is helpless. There is nothing he can say or do that will make them believe his story. He can remember his parents: their names, their ages, where they lived, what they did, how they died, when they died, but he has nothing to prove that what he is saying is true.
Why should he invent the first part of his life? he asks repeatedly. Why should he invent such a brutal story?
‘To be satisfied, we need more than you can tell us,’ he is told.
‘Everything was burned,’ he replies, but the expressions on the faces of his listeners tell him they have heard that one before. Until the mystery is solved, he will never be accepted by his teachers or his classmates. He will remain an outcast. At times he feels so miserable he wants to cry, but he knows he mustn’t.
He walks away from the police station, bitter with disappointment. How can he make himself into someone they can recognise, or respect, or even admire? How can he become a Soviet hero whom crowds will surround wherever he goes, at whom young mothers will smile while their young ones try to model themselves on him?
He knows these dreams of revenge are merely fantasy. The reality is, he can do nothing.
*
He finds no relief at home. In the days since his stepfather Chernevenko’s arrest, his wife, Anna, has done little more than sit on the bed all day and weep.
‘It’s wrong,’ she tells him. ‘It must be a mistake. He’s done nothing. Nothing at all.’
The words in her husband’s defence pour out of her in an unstoppable flow. Boris is the victim of a conspiracy. Some of his colleagues at the Ministry, jealous of his recent promotion, have fabricated stories that he is a spy and passed the information to party officials. Of course the charge is nonsense. How could he be a spy? He is a loyal communist, an intellectual sprung from the working class. Boris is a man who has willingly and selflessly dedicated himself to a cause that he believes in and that has given him everything he has ever asked for. Those who’ve betrayed him, she says, are the old bourgeoisie, who resent the new breed of communists.
For days they wait for news of Boris Chernevenko. They hear nothing. It is as if he has dematerialised into the air. At school Ivan cannot concentrate. First him, now his stepfather. Two injustices have been committed. If he can do nothing to help himself, then he must act to help the man who, out of the goodness of his heart, took him in when he was starving. He has tried to talk to his teachers to explain what has happened at home, why he is so preoccupied all the time, but they either won’t listen to him or are afraid to do so. He has been punished for inattention at school. He has spoken to the youth leader at the Komsomo
l, who has refused to hear what he has to say. Now he has tried the police station and once again he has been rejected. He has to save Chernevenko. But how?
It is while he is daydreaming in the classroom than an idea comes to him.
*
There are guards, he has expected that, but he is young, agile and still quite small for his age. For a moment he is tempted to see if he can dodge past them – but that would mean ditching the plan he has so carefully worked out. He manages to resist the temptation: it is simply too risky. Better to stick to what he has decided. He goes up to the guard.
‘Please direct me to Comrade Stalin’s office. I have a letter for him.’ He clutches the envelope tightly in his hand.
The guard laughs. ‘What makes you think he is here?’
‘This is where he lives, where he watches over the children of Soviet Russia, where he guides our lives as we build the future.’ He has been diligently rehearsing what he will say. He is surprised, when it comes to the point, how easy the deception is.
‘Go and see that man over there.’
He is inside the Kremlin gate. He feels the first flush of success. Each time he repeats his request he is passed on to someone else. Each time he draws a little closer to his goal.
‘Knock on that door and ask.’
Is this Comrade Stalin’s study? His knees turn to water. He hesitates, then knocks. There is no answer. He knocks again and listens carefully: no sound. Could the room be empty? He turns the handle and goes in. He sees a large desk. Is this where Comrade Stalin plans the radiant future of the Revolution? He smells the bitter smell of old tobacco – the cigars Comrade Stalin smokes? There are papers on the desk, a reading light is on, there are telephones – why does someone need more than one telephone?
‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’
It isn’t Comrade Stalin. The man is too short, and he has a bald head and protuberant eyes partly hidden behind small round spectacles. He is wearing a waistcoat without a jacket. He has stains of sweat under his arms, and the musky smell of his body is everywhere in the room. Comrade Stalin is tall and well built, and he has a thick head of hair and a bushy moustache. Ivan knows that because he has seen photographs of the Great Father in the newspapers and magazines, and sometimes in newsreels.
Ivan stands frozen to the spot. There is something menacing about the man’s appearance that frightens him. He is unable to speak.
‘What are you doing in my room?’ the man demands again.
Ivan finds courage from somewhere. ‘I have come to deliver a letter to Comrade Stalin. I was told to knock on your door. There was no answer, so I came in.’
‘You were wrong to do that. You should have stood in the corridor and waited until you heard the command to enter.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Give me the letter and I will give it to Comrade Stalin.’
‘I cannot do that.’ Ivan holds the letter behind his back.
‘I said give it to me, boy.’
‘I have promised the young pioneers that I represent that I would give this letter to the Father of the Nation in person.’
‘If you want him to read it, you must hand it to me first.’
‘I hold this letter in trust for the children of the nation, the citizens of the future. My instructions are to hand it over to the Great Leader myself. I have no authority to give it to anyone other than him.’
‘What if he refuses to see you?’
‘I will wait outside his study until he does.’
‘What if he doesn’t come out of his study for days, for weeks? Winning the world for communism demands his full attention. It is an endless task.’
‘I will stay at my post for days, months, years if I have to.’
The bald man with the bulging eyes laughs. ‘Brave words, young man. Wait there.’ He dials a number and speaks quietly, grinning as he does so. He turns to Ivan. ‘You’re in luck. Come along with me. Our Great Father has agreed to see you.’
They go along another corridor, up some stairs, wide and carpeted now, with pictures on the walls of battle scenes from history. Russian victories, he guesses. Then through two huge gold-embossed double doors, past secretaries at desks who look up amazed as he walks by, to another double door. The man with the bulging eyes knocks. The doors are opened at once.
‘Is this our young friend?’
Stalin comes towards him. He is dressed in a simple khaki uniform without insignia. He is shorter than Ivan imagined. His face is more weather-beaten and pock-marked than he would have guessed from the official photographs, his hair thinner. In real life Stalin is somewhat less than Ivan has expected.
‘I gather you have written me a letter on behalf of the young people of Russia.’
‘My instructions are to speak to you alone,’ Ivan says.
‘I have a few moments.’ Stalin nods at the bald man, who leaves the room. The doors close. Man and boy are alone in the vast room. Suddenly Ivan’s courage deserts him. He stands before the Great One, speechless.
‘Well, I am here and so are you. What is your letter about?’
He feels tears pricking at his eyes. He struggles to maintain his composure.
‘This letter.’ He stumbles over the words. ‘This letter is not from the young people of Russia. Nobody has asked me to bring it to you. I wrote it myself. I lied because I wanted to speak to you about an important matter.’
‘Your envelope is empty.’ Stalin is puffing at a pipe and sitting on the arm of a chair. ‘There is no letter in it?’
‘None.’
‘I see.’ Stalin takes the pipe out of his mouth and inspects it. ‘Then you had better say what you came to say, and make it quick.’
‘It is about my stepfather, Boris Chernevenko. The man who took me into his house when I was orphaned, and who has always treated me like his own son.’
‘What has happened to your stepfather?’
‘He has been arrested.’
‘Has he committed a crime?’
‘No.’
‘Can you be sure of that?’
‘He is a good communist. He has taught me to be a good communist. He is your loyal supporter. He works for the Revolution every day. He would never commit a crime.’
‘Then why was he arrested?’
‘His colleagues invented charges against him. They are not good communists and Chernevenko knows this. He has criticised them for their lack of effort. They are lazy. He has worked twice as hard as they have in order to conceal their laziness. Now he has won a promotion. They are trying to put him in prison to protect their own easy way of life.’
‘What can I do about that?’
‘You can release him and punish the guilty for their crime.’
‘Suppose you are wrong, and your stepfather is as guilty as his comrades suppose?’
‘He is not guilty.’
‘How do you know? Show me your evidence.’
‘I have only the evidence of my heart. I cannot prove what I say. But I know he is innocent. If he is freed, I will dedicate my life to the socialist revolution.’
There is silence. The Great One puffs at his pipe. His eyes seem pale and distant. Suddenly he smiles his famous kindly smile, reserved especially for the children of the Revolution.
‘Write the names of your father’s colleagues on this paper.’ Ivan does as he is instructed. ‘If you tell me he is innocent, then your stepfather shall be freed.’
Stalin writes something else on the paper and rings a bell. A secretary enters and he gives her the folded note.
‘You are a brave young man. Tell me, what is your name?’
‘Ivan.’
‘Come with me, Ivan. Together let us tell the world how the love of a child has saved an innocent father from wrongful imprisonment.’
The Great Leader holds out his hand. Ivan takes it gratefully. They walk towards the double doors, which open before them as if by magic. At that moment, lights come on around them. Comrade Stalin is
illuminated, and the effect is to make him appear not of this world, but somehow divine, a god on earth, a man mightier and more powerful, more compassionate than any other. Ivan looks up at him in wonder. If only his friends at school, his teachers, the policeman who chased him away – if only they could see him now.
‘Come,’ Comrade Stalin says.
Ivan takes his hand again, and together they walk towards the arc lights and the cameras.
‘Do you know what is happening?’ the Great One asks.
‘No,’ Ivan replies.
‘This moment is being recorded on film. Tomorrow the world will see evidence of your courage – the true courage of the youth of the Soviet Union, our hope for the future.’ The Great One smiles at the camera. ‘This,’ he declares, ‘is Ivan, who has come to ask my help to save his stepfather. His courage against huge odds earns him the right to be a youthful hero of the Soviet Union. Let him be an example to the young people of today. It is on the backs of young men like Ivan that the future of our great country will be built.’
Comrade Stalin turns towards Ivan and smiles. Ivan smiles back because his heart is bursting with happiness. He has found his true father at last.
9
1
Four weeks after her father’s death, Olga Radin held a party in her flat. Officially it was to celebrate her birthday. In fact, her intention was to use the occasion as an opportunity to celebrate her father’s life, though she told no one about this. On the day of the party, she put a framed photograph of Viktor on a table in the hall next to one of her brother, Kyrill, and beside it a small vase of white flowers. Around the apartment she placed some of the many photographs of her father that she had collected over the years. With no words spoken, the message would be understood by her guests, and they would react accordingly. She had no fear of betrayal. Within her closed circle she knew that this secret ceremony to honour her dead father would remain safe.
The cramped apartment was thick with cigarette smoke when Berlin arrived. He recognised Generals Melnikov and Orenko, Ustinov, a senior member of Radin’s team at Baikonur, and two cosmonauts, one of them Titov, the other whose face he knew but whose name he couldn’t recall. Towering above them all, his lean frame upright and dominating, the shoulders of his dark green uniform covered with the embossed gold that marked his rank, was the elderly Marshal Gerasimov. No members of the Politburo were present; no party officials, no politicians, no administrators. Berlin could imagine Viktor smiling. He may have gone to his grave but the faithful Olga would ensure that his prejudices would not die with him, in much the same way that she would not let his death go unnoticed.
Dr Berlin Page 24