Red Sky at Noon (The Moscow Trilogy)

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  She saw the horseman appearing, out of the dust, and she sighed. It could only be one man.

  ‘Malamore inspecting,’ he said, his sun-gouged face, almost chiselled, like rock, expressionless. ‘Inspecting his favourite medical unit. Are you resting?’

  She nodded up at him, shading her eyes with her arm, feeling vulnerable in her white pinafore. ‘I have a patient,’ she said.

  ‘One of ours?’

  ‘I think so. I must get on and examine him.’

  ‘Right.’ He saluted. ‘I’ll be back at nightfall.’ And he rode on into the haze.

  II

  Inside the brown Red Cross tent made of canvas and burlap, Fabiana saw five bare camp beds with stained mattresses. Atop one of them lay a fully clothed man who had been unceremoniously placed there. He was still in his riding boots, and there was a dirty bandage round his head. His face was heavily bruised, and he bled from his nose, lip and right eye. He was very thin, and he was not young. Most of the boys Fabiana saw were between eighteen and twenty-five. This man was somewhere, she guessed, between forty-five and fifty, and he had been badly fed for some time. He seemed tiny and shrunken on the bed; his shirt was stained with blood, some of it black and crusty, and his trousers were filthy with compacted dust, sweat, gore. If he had lice she wouldn’t be surprised. She was not sure what nationality he was, so she searched his pockets, but there were no papers. He was too old for a conscript and too ill nourished for an officer so Fabiana guessed he was either one of Mandryka’s Russians or one of Dirlewanger’s German ex-convicts who were said to be killing Russians and Jews, women and children in the villages. If he was a member of either of these special units, he was a degenerate. She remembered meeting Mandryka and Dirlewanger, when they were out riding with Malamore, and they had disgusted her. But she was just a nurse, and it was not her job to judge Italy’s allies, and that, she thought, was the quiet crime of these times: if you made your conscience elastic enough, you could learn to tolerate anything and still find joy in the blossoming of flowers.

  As Fabiana started to examine him, she realized with a shock that he had been shot, and that his shirt was wet. She wondered if he was going to die. Instantly she set to work, cutting his clothes off him and attending to the wound in the shoulder. She had no orderly so she had to do it all herself. She lifted his shoulder. There was no exit wound which meant the bullet was still within.

  I am going to call him Patient Number One, Fabiana decided, Il Primo. ‘Whoever you are, whatever you’ve done,’ she said aloud to him, ‘you’re my new beginning, my rebirth, the first patient I have cared for on my own, and you are going to live.’

  Benya was dreaming. He was in Kolyma on 22 June 1941, the day the Germans had invaded Russia. After he had finished work with Dr Kapto in the clinic, he found Deathless waiting for him.

  ‘The Boss wants you,’ said Deathless, who held his hands like trowels.

  In Jaba’s barracks, most of the prisoners were lying exhausted in their bunks, peering down the aisle of the dormitory towards Jaba’s section where the Criminals held court, playing cards and boasting about heists and shootouts, girls and money. Benya noticed a new arrival on the bunk by the door, a dark boy smoking. Probably a transfer from a neighbouring Camp.

  As usual, Jaba was shirtless, and playing cards with two females and another Criminal nicknamed ‘Poxy’ – for his scarred face. No wonder every man was almost falling off his bunk to watch this card game, thought Benya. Except for nurses, there were not meant to be women in a men’s Camp.

  Opposite Jaba sat a slim woman whose skin was as dark as a gypsy. Her hair was jet black, her eyes kindled coals, and she radiated such an aura of darkness that it glowed. She was smoking a cigarette, pursing her sinewy lips as she inhaled. She examined her cards with total concentration, and she did not look up when Benya arrived.

  ‘Sit and watch,’ said Jaba. Benya sat on the edge of a bunk. He couldn’t take his eyes off the woman.

  ‘You know who that is?’ hissed Deathless in his ear. ‘The Atamansha!’

  Everyone knew that the Atamansha was the Cossack boss of the neighbouring women’s Camp, which she ran just as Jaba ran this one. Ataman was the title of a Cossack general – but, as far as Benya knew, this woman was the first female chieftain. He thought her gypsyish looks were quite beautiful, and all the more so when she put down the cigarette and absent-mindedly ran her hand through the hair of the nurse Nyushka, who was sitting next to her.

  ‘She’s here for a card game?’ asked Benya.

  ‘She’s asking a favour,’ said Deathless, ‘and the Boss said he’d play for it.’

  They were playing Camp poker with special rules. Twice they showed their cards and it seemed the Atamansha had won but Jaba, narrowing his eyes and ruffling his plumage of grey spiky hair, somehow raised the stakes and they played on.

  ‘Is that your storyteller, Jaba?’

  It took Benya a moment to realize the Atamansha was suddenly looking at him.

  ‘He’s my teacher,’ said Jaba.

  ‘You’re the book-writer, the ink-shitter?’ She addressed him directly in such a strong Don accent that it sounded absurdly quaint.

  ‘Yes,’ said Benya.

  ‘Well then, storyteller, sit beside me,’ said the Atamansha. ‘Maybe your blue eyes will bring me luck.’

  ‘A cunning gambit, Atamansha,’ said Jaba, ‘but those belong to me.’

  ‘All right, throw in the peach,’ said the Atamansha. Nyushka looked down.

  ‘I didn’t know you liked peaches,’ said Jaba.

  ‘I like everything,’ replied the Atamansha.

  Jaba gestured at Benya, who obediently sat next to her on the chair. Without looking at him again, she showed him her cards. It had been two years since he had been this close to a woman. His leg was close to her leg and he could smell her skin and feel the spicy warmth radiating from her. He took in her britches in their tight boots, her blue Zek shirt open at the neck, her skin dark like baked earth, and he amazed himself by imagining what it might be like to make love to her. He was certain that he could handle her. She offered him a cigarette and he took it. Deathless lit it with a smirk. When she moved, she let her hands brush him; as she smoked, she blew the blue smoke into his face; and Benya started to imagine how this very scenario in the Boss’s barracks could lead to his kissing her coarse lips, to his unclipping her britches and reaching for her thighs …

  He was alive again, he realized suddenly. After his arrest and sentencing, he had no longer felt such things. He had been ground into Camp dust. I had become a eunuch, he thought, a neuter, a husk. He had lost all sexual desire. He had ceased to be Benya Golden. But now here it was again on the very day the war started.

  ‘Show your cards,’ said Jaba quietly. He did everything quietly and never raised his voice.

  The Atamansha threw down her hand.

  ‘You win,’ Jaba said.

  ‘I collect,’ she said.

  ‘All right,’ replied Jaba, nodding at Deathless, who suddenly locked his arms around Poxy, who couldn’t move. Smiley grabbed his hand and, quickly, wielding a pair of wire-clippers, sliced off Poxy’s pinkie finger. Poxy howled and convulsed with the agony. Deathless released him and led him away. Smiley tossed the finger on to the table in front of the Atamansha. Benya jumped up in horror.

  ‘Finally,’ she said. ‘Now can I have what I came for?’

  ‘In return for a diamond,’ Jaba said.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  Jaba’s smile was dazzling when he wanted it to be. ‘Something about your friend.’

  ‘All right, Batono Jaba,’ and, using the Georgian for ‘Lord Jaba’, she whispered in his ear for a while.

  ‘Thank you Atamansha,’ said Jaba.

  She got up. Jaba rose too. She turned back to Benya.

  ‘I have a feeling we’ll meet again,’ he said, surprising himself. The gangsters snorted at his impertinence.

  ‘I doubt it,’ replied the Ataman
sha, showing her teeth, one of them gold. ‘We break fresh ponies where I come from. Go back to your books!’

  Jaba stood up and bowed, every bit the mock Georgian nobleman. Deathless led the way out, followed by Jaba. The Atamansha looked at Nyushka, held out her arm and Nyushka took it, eyes cast down like a bashful bride. Finally the Atamansha and Nyushka proceeded slowly down the aisle as if they were at a gypsy wedding.

  ‘You want to fuck the Atamansha?’ sneered Smiley, husky breath on Benya’s ear. ‘Careful! She wanted to play for your blue eyes but had to make do with Poxy’s finger.’

  Benya swallowed hard, finally understanding what had been going on.

  ‘You know how she killed her lovers in Rostov?’ Smiley said. ‘She cut them while they fucked her, throat to groin, like you gut a fish.’

  ‘What was that she said about her friend and the diamond?’

  ‘She’s the mistress of Shpigelglas, the Zone Commandant, and a diamond is a priceless piece of information that can be used against someone.’

  The Atamansha had reached the door – but she hesitated and then looked over at the young man on the last bunk. The new arrival.

  ‘Is it you, Mikhail Cherkin?’ she said.

  The man looked up in surprise. ‘Yes, but I don’t think …’

  ‘No, we haven’t met,’ she said cheerfully. ‘But I hope you like your new home here?’ Before he could agree, she added, ‘Did you watch the game?’

  ‘Yes.’ He was sitting up now, nervously. ‘What were you playing for?’

  She gave a piratical smile, a flash of gold. ‘You,’ she said.

  Cherkin’s face was still swinging between uneasiness and bewilderment when Deathless lifted a board that was hanging on the wall by the door and in one unbroken movement of intense force smashed it on to the top of Cherkin’s head and removed it with the same gusto, hanging it back where it came from. It happened so fast that Benya had scarcely processed the popping sound, but he knew there was a long nail in the middle of the board. Cherkin, without altering his uncertain expression, raised his hands to his temples as if trying on a hat that did not quite fit, then two neat lines of blood began to run like treacle down his forehead. The men in the bunks stared for a moment and then started to look away as, very slowly, Cherkin toppled sideways on his bunk and began to twitch in his death throes.

  The Atamansha guided Nyushka out of the door and into the night, which was when Benya realized she’d also won some time with the nurse.

  He felt Jaba’s hand squeeze his neck. ‘In case you’re wondering, that man disobeyed an order from the Atamansha. We never forget that. Sit down.’ Benya sat. ‘I hear you volunteered for the army?’ Jaba asked this as if nothing of any significance had occurred, as if a man’s body was not being lunked out of the barracks by his men with much falsetto swearing from Little Mametka.

  ‘You heard?’

  ‘Why would you do such a crazy thing, Benya?’

  ‘To fight the Fascists.’

  ‘And you think the Red Army can’t cope without your warlike ardour?’

  ‘It’s something I have to do. Boss, I am a Russian, a Jew. The Nazis are my enemies.’

  Jaba shook his head. ‘In our code of Brigands, we don’t work for the state and we don’t fight for the state. None of us will volunteer. Aren’t you missing something, writer-in-residence?’

  Benya hesitated. Smiley, Deathless and Mametka were back now, watching their master, like guard dogs waiting for a whistle. ‘What?’

  ‘To survive here a man needs two things. The spirit of life; you have it. But he also needs luck, not once but many times. Golden, I am your luck. Don’t I look after you?’ A pause. He was still grinning but the almond-shaped eyes were slate-cold.

  ‘I apologize, Batono Jaba,’ answered Benya, who sensed this was the moment for antique Georgian courtesy. ‘I was ungrateful. I will never go to the war … Yes, you saved my life. I belong to you.’

  III

  ‘He’s here, just back from the front,’ said her brother, Vasily Stalin. ‘Let’s find him!’ Wearing his air force uniform with a colonel’s pips, he led Svetlana through the carousers in the white stucco dacha with its Grecian pillars. ‘Zubalovo’s made for parties, isn’t it? Shame Papa never enjoyed it.’

  Svetlana had almost not come. The revelation about her mother had so upset her. Why had her mother abandoned her? She had been tricked all these years only to discover the truth in a newspaper. She wanted to discuss it with Vasya but he was so frivolous and so soused that this was obviously not the moment. Instead she took a glass of champagne and downed it and felt a little better. If it hadn’t been for the possibility of meeting Shapiro, she would have missed the party, but she sensed that this opportunity might not come again.

  The rooms of the villa were filled with officers in boots and tunics and tall glamorous Russian Veronica Lakes and Ingrid Bergmans with curled hair, bare shoulders and vertiginous décolletage. Svetlana was wearing her first dress, copied from Vogue magazine, and flat shoes, and she felt awkward amongst so many of Moscow’s beautiful women and dashing men, the Stiliagi – the Stylish Ones. She recognized many of them: there was the poet Simonov and his wife the film star Valentina Serova; over there, the movie director Roman Carmen with his wife Nina, another actress. Svetlana knew all the gossip: her brother Vasily was in love with Nina; Vasily had moved Nina into his house, kicking out his wife Galina. Nina’s husband was so furious that he’d written to Stalin to complain!

  Vasily was pulling her by the hand, a sour-faced imp whispering horrible things to her: ‘I fucked that one with her husband in the next-door room,’ he was saying. ‘And that one …’

  ‘Stop telling me, or I’ll block my ears,’ said Svetlana – but he didn’t. Making love couldn’t be as ugly as he made it seem, she thought, surely it must be exquisite when you’re in love? Women danced to the gramophone. The foxtrot was the new dance, so fast, so close – and Svetlana longed to be able to do it. Sometimes a girl wrapped herself around Vasily snickering and dancing and he was lost and she was left standing apart, watching like a prim spectator.

  ‘Oh, wait, Sveta, I’ll be right back,’ he’d say, and she had to wait like a fool. But soon he was back, and pulling her onwards. ‘Why do you want to meet him?’

  ‘Just to talk about his articles.’

  ‘Ugh, don’t bullshit your brother. You’re in love with him!’

  ‘No! You’re wrong.’

  ‘You’re just a girl. It’s a schoolgirl crush then. But do you want to kiss him, do you want to get naked—’

  ‘Shut up, Vasya, don’t be disgusting. Not everything’s about that …’

  ‘Isn’t it? Yes it is! You want to fuck him!’

  ‘Stop it, Vasya, or I’ll leave. You coarsen everything! Really I should leave …’

  ‘Go, leave then, you little prude …’ Vasily turned nasty so quickly. His sallow face was tightening, his lips thinning. But then he changed again. ‘Then you won’t meet your fancy man!’ he said.

  ‘He’s not my – Oh, please, Vasya.’

  ‘Come on, little sister, we’ll find him. And you can fuck him later!’

  ‘Vasya—’

  ‘Wait!’ He grabbed her arm. ‘He’s right here. See! You can’t leave now.’

  And finally there he was.

  ‘Lev!’ cried Vasya, embracing him. ‘Look who wants to meet you!’

  A tall man in army uniform with a thick shock of grey-streaked black hair and intense dark eyes was talking to a group of women who were listening to him intently. Svetlana would always remember that his hand was raised in a fist with one finger pointing to make his point. He put his arm around Vasily.

  ‘Lev Shapiro, this is my sister Svetlana,’ Vasily said. ‘I hope she doesn’t bore you. She’s very serious!’

  Shapiro looked down at her, and in that moment Svetlana felt tiny and ugly and very young. The women turned to her with their scarlet lips, curled hair and black made-up eyes, and they seemed irresi
stible, carefree and sophisticated. But to her amazement Shapiro left them without a further word and led her aside.

  ‘Your letter made my day,’ he said. ‘How daring of you to write like that! And I wrote back.’

  ‘I know! How did you dare to reply?’

  They laughed with mouths open as if they already knew each other.

  ‘Aren’t we lions?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s your name.’

  ‘And it will be your name too. I am going to call you Lvitza. May I, Lioness?’

  ‘Yes, oh yes.’

  He looked very closely at her: ‘You have something sad in your eyes. Do you want to tell me about it?’

  It was the strangest thing, Svetlana thought later. He had just met her and he saw right into her heart. It was the greatest secret in her life and this man whom she had known for a minute seemed to know about it. So she told him about her mother and what she had learned. And he comforted her, told her it was unjust, analysed how she must be feeling, listened to her. What kindness there was in this man.

  ‘Now we’ve talked are you feeling better?’

  ‘So much better.’

  ‘Would you like to dance a little with me?’

  ‘The foxtrot?’

  ‘Yes, the foxtrot. Have you tried it?’

  ‘Yes, but only with my girlfriend Martha. She taught me.’

  He took her hand and pulled her on to the dance floor and held her so close that she sensed his strength and his virility. Gradually she relaxed against him, trusting him, following his movements. Afterwards she said, ‘I was useless. Sorry! My flat shoes are hideous!’

  ‘What do you mean, Lioness? You were brilliant. I loved dancing with you. And that dress is so chic. Is it new?’

  Then he took her hand again, just like that, without a moment’s hesitation, as if she was an ordinary girl. ‘Tell me what you think of the coverage of the war. Are we getting it right?’