Red Sky at Noon (The Moscow Trilogy)

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  ‘Reins tight! They’ll be fine, dear boy,’ replied Panka.

  ‘I can’t swim,’ said Mogilchuk.

  ‘This is the Don,’ Panka shouted. ‘The sun shines yonder on the far bank!’ And he spurred Almaz straight into the river. A shell landed ahead of them, and Almaz balked but Panka whipped him on.

  Benya knew he was going to die in the waters. He and Mogilchuk peered at one another, petrified, wiping their eyes, fellow Muscovites now, townies, sharing the same fear.

  ‘I can’t!’ cried Mogilchuk.

  ‘Me neither!’

  But Speedy Prishchepa had galloped in with an escort of foamy spray, one hand raised as if he was riding a bronco in some Western rodeo, and he was singing right into the storm.

  Benya leaned over Silver Socks’s neck, throwing his arms around her, burying his face in her mane, talking to her and Fabiana all in a seamless stream of love and fear and fury. Socks reared up again and again, trying to avoid the water, but she went deeper with each leap. Spider Garanzha leaned over and whipped her so hard that she bled and she bucked into the frothing water, now up to her knees and then her shoulders.

  An explosion rocked them forwards, and Silver Socks stepped deeper into the river. By now Benya’s boots, and then his britches were in the water, its coldness soaking up his legs. Prishchepa was ahead, the water around his waist and then his chest as his horse started to swim, her head thrashing, her eyes frantic. Mogilchuk was beside him, shaking with fear.

  Benya pivoted and saw a riderless horse, so he turned Socks around, riding back up the bank. Spider Garanzha was on the ground and Benya jumped down beside him. Spider looked up at him with those surprisingly goo-goo eyes first pleadingly then defiantly, his bulging face mushroomed with sweat and pale as paper. Benya saw his belly was open, and a mass of blue and red guts lay smoking, jerking and stirring on the stones of the beach. He raised his eyes to Spider’s, eye to eye as if quite alone, two wolves on a wide steppe. He knew that if Spider had ridden straight in with Prishchepa, leaving him and Mogilchuk to die on the bank, he’d be halfway across now, and living. Poor Spider, Benya thought, he must be cursing his one kindness: staying behind to whip them in, a Zhid and a secret police bastard!

  Benya pulled the saddle off Spider’s horse and put the shabraque under his head. Garanzha gave him his hand, squeezing it like a child. He peered up at Benya and his eyes – one minute they looked back at him and the next they didn’t. That was all it was, a slither of a second and Garanzha seemed part of the bank, of the mud, the hulk of an old wreck half sunk in the sand.

  Benya took a breath, remounted Silver Socks and spurred her forwards, whipping her once with Garanzha’s quirt so that she bucked and reared right into the water, splashing his face, and then she was up to her girth again, higher, as the black water enveloped him amid the sheeting rain that was so thick it seemed as if the river itself was raining upwards into the clouds. Socks was in the river up to her point of shoulder, her withers and croup, and he was leaning forward, holding her mane, and then she was swimming, her head high, her legs pumping, pumping under the water, thick veins pulsating in her neck.

  ‘Go on, Silver Socks, go on, good girl …’ Benya was saying close to her ears. Something heavy touched him and he flinched. Socks was thrashing beneath him, and he was gulping water, about to flounder – was it a snake, a crocodile? Then he saw the arm and the blue face of a Russian soldier floating downriver, swollen like an overstuffed sofa. They were in the middle of the Don, the banks as far behind as ahead, and a shell flashed whining over their heads, the banks whorling and erupting and churning in yellow and orange. Machine-gun fire raked the water, and a dancing line of serpentine splashes spanged around him again and again.

  ‘You fools, we’re Russians!’ Benya shouted but no one could hear him; he couldn’t hear himself. Then Socks’s hooves found the solid riverbank, the water washed off them with a swish, and they were out of the water on the stones of the Don beach. Alone. Machine-gun fire chugged across the stones, so close he felt it punch him. Benya leaned forwards and hugged Silver Socks. Panka and Prishchepa were calling him up the bank. Silver Socks fell to her knees suddenly, Benya collapsing beside her.

  It was pitch dark now, almost midnight, and Socks was holding her head up high, rocking back and forth, and Benya was beside her on the stones of the riverbank, stroking her neck, her mane, her satiny muzzle.

  ‘Silver Socks, how I love you, darling friend, darling friend,’ he sobbed. ‘Thank you for all you’ve done for me, for saving me a thousand times. No man ever had a better friend than you and I didn’t think … I just didn’t think …’ He remembered the glow of her four silver legs at the stud farm, and the starflash on her face. ‘You chose well with that one, brother,’ Panka had said. ‘Tend her like a wife. Respect her like a mother. Feed her like a daughter.’ But she’d been more than all those things to him. He remembered the charge against the Italians, the way she’d watched as he made love to Fabiana … Then her head was down, and a shudder ran through her, and Prishchepa and Panka were pulling him up the bank until all three were lying at the top, panting, their horses standing nearby.

  ‘Mogilchuk?’ asked Benya.

  ‘Down the bank somewhere. He’s OK. I saw him ride out.’

  ‘Silver Socks?’

  ‘Gone, my brother,’ replied Panka.

  ‘Shot?’

  Panka nodded. ‘One in the neck. She was quite a horse. Not many born like that. Even on the Don.’ He handed Benya the flask. They stood up, swaying. Benya was half mad with grief, scorched and desolate, and he felt his midriff and saw the blood on his finger.

  ‘I’m hit,’ he said, remembering the punch.

  Hands gripped him.

  ‘Hold it,’ said Prishchepa, his eyes utterly cold, his dagger in his other hand. ‘Mogilchuk’s coming for us now. We’ll be checked out by the Cheka. You need to vouch for us. Say that this week we were with you every minute. Or they’ll shoot us. Swear it, Zhid, or I’ll cut your throat now and we’ll say what we need to say about you. Say it right now!’

  Benya shook him off. He didn’t care where they’d been for those days; he guessed they had been somewhere, guessed they had played some double game out there with the Nazis, but right now he was too tired and angry to be spoken to like this. He’d lost Fabiana; Silver Socks had died in his arms; now these goons were threatening him, and they had no idea that he was way past rock bottom. ‘I can do better than that … Drop the knife. Step back!’ he said.

  ‘We know where you were too,’ said Prishchepa. ‘You weren’t alone. We know things too …’

  Benya sank to his knees, weakness creeping up on him in flickerings of dizziness, but a hopeless and doom-laden fury made him fearless. How dare they threaten him with Fabiana? He pointed his pistol at them, keeping them covered, feeling the power within him. Beside Prishchepa, Panka mouthed his prayers, touching his necklace, serene, always himself: ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he said.

  Prishchepa switched on his happy-go-lucky bandit’s charm. ‘Wait a moment, dear brother Golden—’

  Suddenly Benya could not tolerate any more.

  ‘I’m not your brother,’ he said, raising his pistol and firing twice.

  Day Ten

  I

  Unshaven and weary but bursting with the images and phrases he wanted to use in his articles, Lev Shapiro was in the hospital train heading back to Moscow, his typewriter in its case over his shoulder. He was walking up through the wagons: some were old ones from Tsarist passenger trains with soft seats worn smooth by generations; others had old hard seats; some were from cattle cars – all were full of wounded. The walking wounded sat on the seats but every inch of the floor was crammed with broken men, some lying on bare wooden planks in the cattle cars, groaning with the lurching of the train; others were lucky enough to be on stretchers. Some smiled at him as he stepped over them; and he noticed a couple who were so still, so grey they were probably already dead. And all around him
came the sound of groaning, of men crying for the doctor, or their mothers or for God. Shapiro was accustomed to such things but it was still hard to hear. Always the reporter and observer, his notebook was out.

  ‘What sector were you in?’ he asked a man with bandages over one eye who was well enough to sit up on a wooden seat. ‘I want to tell your story.’ To a Tartar boy from Kazan, who had lost his arm: ‘What section were you in, what happened?’ He crouched beside the men, taking notes, and they could see that he had been with the troops and suffered with them and they were happy to talk to him. They wanted their stories to be known. He walked on, thinking about the battle and then his secret, Svetlana … If they knew who his sweetheart was, would they believe it?

  He looked around him at the wounded from the battle of the Don Bend which had ended so badly. First the Germans had been on the attack. Then the Russians had counter-attacked in all sectors, fighting heroically. At one point, he had even witnessed a small squadron of Shtrafniki cavalry break through an Italian sector. But Hitler had brought up reinforcements – Germans, Italians, Hungarians, Romanians – and thrown them all at the Russians. At Izbushensky, a thousand Italian cavalry had smashed through Soviet infantry who turned and ran; at Kalach, the last Russian forces of the 62nd Army had been broken. Now the Germans could advance – they were already crossing the Don on great pontoons and pushing on to the outskirts of Stalingrad.

  Lev had been ordered to report to his editor in Moscow and had hitched a lift back on the train. He was excited because he would get the chance to see Svetlana – his little Lioness! The bleak Kremlin with its forbidding red battlements, her terrifying father who lived only for himself and the state, her mother who had preferred death to her children, her pathetic, vicious brother who was both crushed and overpromoted – this was her world. Lev was fascinated by her. As a man, he found her so fresh, so youthful; and as a writer, well, what writer would not want to know all about her? She was at the centre of history.

  He shrugged. Women liked him for some reason, and he knew she did too, with all the solemn passion of her age. Hell, the women in Moscow liked him at least partly because they loved movies; every young actress wanted a part and he was the scriptwriter – ‘Lyovka sweetie, Lev darling, won’t you write me a beautiful part in your new project, Stalin at Finland Station. Or how about the empress in your Peter the Great, Part Two?’

  ‘Of course,’ he would answer, ‘shall we meet at the Aragvi for dinner – I’ll book a private room – or a cocktail at the bar in the Metropole Hotel?’ Well, of course he was married and he’d been married a long time – but any stray bullet at the front could kill him tomorrow. Who could blame him for enjoying himself?

  But Svetlana was different. She brought out his best qualities – he was the finest man he could be with her. He was her teacher: she wanted to learn about writing and literature. And though she was so young, she didn’t bore him like most teenagers he’d met. She was an old soul, and no wonder. He wanted to protect her, to make her feel cherished, to boost her confidence. In some ways this was a crazy, quixotic affair, a reckless adventure that gave him a thrill, but the war had opened society up and afterwards there would be more freedom. He mocked himself as a knight, a loving friend for the loneliest girl in Russia, and Svetlana truly was a damsel in distress, a sensitive girl living in a wilderness of fear, neglect and boredom. It is my mission, he thought, to rescue her. Oh, he loved their calls, and her letters were so romantic. And when they had kissed and held each other, her touch was so sparky, so forthright … How she had blossomed in just these short days. He would see her tonight if he could. Then he had to get his editor to send him back to Stalingrad to report on the coming struggle. If Stalingrad fell to the Germans, where would the Russian retreat end?

  Then he heard a voice he recognized.

  ‘Lev! Is it you?’ He looked around at the damaged men in the wooden seats and on the floor as the train steamed northwards. ‘Lev, what are you doing here?’ He was stepping over the wounded, careful where he put his boots. ‘Shapiro! It’s me!’

  ‘Christ! Can it be—?’ And it was – it was Benya Golden, lying in a filthy uniform on the floor, pale and older, so much older. He had only been gone two or three years but the man in front of him seemed to have aged a hundred. He and Benya had been members of the same worldly, rather privileged milieu of writers, actors and jazzmen. The novelists Babel and Ehrenburg, the actor Mikhoels, the jazz singers Utesov and Rosner, the film actresses Valentina Serova and Sophia Zeitlin – these were the friends they had in common. But they also shared the jealousies all writers can’t resist – he had called Golden’s book ‘overrated, a bit childish’, while Golden had sneered at Shapiro’s script: ‘stiff, formal, I could do better’. But then Golden had been arrested, vanished off the face of the earth, and Lev had presumed he had been shot.

  Lev stretched over the two boys lying between them, one of them unconscious, the other with no legs, and crouched on the planks next to him. The men shook hands, and Lev leaned down and kissed his cheeks thrice, all ancient jealousies forgotten in the familiarity of a long-lost friend, newly found. He glanced down at Benya’s dressings.

  ‘Hit in the leg and hip,’ said Benya. ‘I won’t be able to walk for a while. But I think I’ll live.’

  He was a shrunken sunburnt shell of a man; only his blue eyes were the same, Lev thought. When he offered cheese and bread, Benya wolfed it down with a swig of vodka and some water from his canteen.

  ‘Do you know where you’re going?’

  ‘Gospitalnaya Ploshad.’ Hospital Square. The main military hospital in the centre of Moscow.

  Lev whistled. ‘You were lucky,’ he said.

  ‘More than you know.’

  Lev did know but everyone was listening in the carriage and they had to be careful. ‘You were … out of Moscow for a while?’

  ‘Innocents abroad,’ said Benya and, used to talking in riddles with his friends, Lev got it immediately: The Innocents Abroad was by Mark Twain who had said: ‘Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.’ So he had been in the Gulags; Lev had heard all the stories of that netherworld. But how had Benya got out? He was a Political yet somehow he had joined a Shtrafbat.

  ‘You were there, weren’t you, in that mad cavalry charge? I was covering it. The commander was a heroic guy … let me see … Melishko?’

  Benya nodded but Lev saw the sadness in his face.

  ‘He didn’t make it?’

  ‘Not many of us did but … we broke through the Italian lines.’

  ‘And you were on horseback? I never had you down as a Cossack athlete.’

  Benya smiled weakly. ‘I was better than I expected.’

  ‘Did you …?’ Shapiro raised his eyebrows and Benya guessed what he was asking. Had he been redeemed or was he still a Smertnik?

  ‘Don’t you despise religion?’ replied Benya. ‘How can those fools believe extra Christum nulla salus.’ Shapiro got it: ‘outside Christ, no salvation’. Benya meant that he had found salvation in the redemption of his own Soviet Christ; in Stalin. He had redeemed himself by shedding blood. He was free.

  ‘Do you know what you’re going to do?’ Lev could see Benya was struggling to stay awake.

  ‘I haven’t thought …’ Then he whispered, ‘Teacher. I want to teach … Yes …’ And his eyes closed.

  ‘That cavalry charge seems an age ago, but it was only eight days,’ said Lev. ‘So you had a pretty easy war, eh? Eight days and you’re invalided out.’

  But Benya was already sleeping as Lev, his eyes full of tears, leaned over and embraced him.

  II

  It was a short flight, just fifteen minutes.

  The Junker 52 landed on the heavily guarded airfield amidst the dark pine woods, and the officer who’d climbed out on his own, carrying a leather briefcase, jumped straight into the open-topped staff car that drove up to the plane. He didn’t talk en route but rehearsed his arguments, over and over again. This was not the first t
ime he had reported but he felt it was the most important and he wanted to get every detail right. As the car drove into the woods, he noticed the anti-aircraft guns, tank traps, concrete fortifications. They approached the first checkpoint, then the second and third. Each time his papers were inspected carefully. Security was tight; they drove swiftly along the road past twenty or so single-storey log huts, overshadowed by the hulking concrete ramparts which were the visible parts of the bunker complex, towards a large wooden hut, heavily guarded. He had been here once before, and enjoyed having his hair cut at the barber’s and soaking in the sauna. But this time his attendance was different and all the more urgent.

  Entering the adjoining hut, he showed his papers for the fourth time and surrendered his handgun. He could see there were other officers from different fronts and a minister waiting, and he sat down with them in the anteroom, twice getting up to check his appearance in the mirror. Finally he was called and he walked into the low-roofed wooden hut where he could just see the backs of the men leaning over the maps on the table and hear the famous husky, guttural voice.

  ‘They’re falling apart,’ he was saying in a jovial tone. ‘Faster than last year. Like a house of cards. They’re close to collapse. The big decision is what resources to assign to Army Group B and Stalingrad. Army Group A is sweeping all before it. You know, gentlemen, what my instinct tells me, but this new intelligence may help us decide. Let’s hear what he has to say. Is he here?’

  ‘Colonel von Schwerin?’ said the Chief of Staff Generaloberst Halder. Schwerin noticed the two Iron Crosses won in the Great War.

  Schwerin coughed a little self-consciously. ‘I’m here.’ The air was sweltering in the hut.

  ‘Welcome to Führerhauptquartier Werwolf, Colonel von Schwerin,’ said Halder. ‘Step forward next to Generaloberst von Weichs …’

  The wall of backs in field grey opened up for him. Keitel and Jodl gave him a brisk nod, and the bespectacled Weichs, commander of Army Group B, his ultimate superior, shook his hand and made space on his right around the map table.