Betrayal

by Helen Dunmore

  ‘That was good,’ Kolya approved. ‘But won’t he know that you’d never say anything to him if you were really going to do it?’

  ‘No,’ said Anna, ‘I don’t think he will. He wants us out of the place, anyway, so he was happy. If a man like that is ever happy. And then he said, “No offence, but if you’re ever thinking of leaving us, what about that piano? I’ve always had a fancy to learn the piano.” ’

  ‘That’s unbelievable!’

  ‘It’s what he said. “Would you be thinking of parting with it?” So I said, “Maybe. I’ll think about it and let you know.” I thought that would keep him sweet for a while.’

  ‘It was a risk, even so,’ said Kolya soberly. ‘What if he informs on you?’

  ‘Then our apartment would be sealed, and he’d have no chance of getting the piano. I bet he has his eye on our furniture as well. I don’t think he’ll inform yet, and if he does, he’ll tell them we’ve gone to Siberia.’

  Kolya laughed with pleasure, like a child, and then the anxious look came back. ‘But won’t they take all our stuff if they think we’ve gone?’

  ‘Not yet. The rent is paid and the apartment is all locked up. They’ll wait for a while before they take the risk. But, Kolya, I’m going to have to talk to you properly about the piano –’

  ‘It’s all right, Anna, I know all about it. You don’t need to say anything.’ Kolya spoke rapidly. His face was set, like a man’s face and not a child’s.

  *

  Yes, Kolya understands the situation all right. It’s a relief not to have to explain everything. It’s even more of a relief that he doesn’t complain, or say he misses his friends, or that he is never going to pass his exams at this rate. He seems to have accepted that they are in limbo, and in return he has taken the freedoms of a man. He’ll come and go when he wants, because he’s not a schoolboy any more. He will grow vegetables. He’ll fish, and trap rabbits. He will take over hammer and chisel, axe and saw. What he thinks of his future is a mystery. He never even says that he misses the piano.

  One day, a few weeks after her arrival, she picks up a sheet of paper from the floor by Kolya’s couch. There is music written on it.

  ‘Is this yours, Kolya?’ she asks, but he whips it out of sight as if she’s tried to read his diary.

  She doesn’t ask again, and is surprised when he says, out of the blue one evening when she’s resting on the couch, ‘I’ve been writing a march. It’s almost finished.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A march,’ he repeats patiently. ‘You know, Anna, music for people to march to.’

  ‘Oh! You mean you composed it? Without the piano?’

  ‘It’s not as hard as you’d think.’

  ‘It would be for me.’ She thinks, but doesn’t say, that surely they’ve had enough of marching.

  ‘It’s dedicated to Andrei,’ says Kolya, who has rarely mentioned Andrei’s name since his arrest.

  ‘To Andrei?’

  ‘Yes. It’s called “Prisoners’ March”.’

  ‘Oh, Kolya.’

  ‘Obviously I haven’t written down the title, or the dedication. I’m not an idiot,’ he says quickly, as if defending himself.

  ‘Could you sing it to me – or hum it, or whatever?’

  ‘It wouldn’t work. I could show you a bit on the piano. But it’s not one of those nice lyrical pieces you like.’

  ‘I’ll get you another piano, Kolya.’

  ‘I know.’ He says this as if humouring her own emotion rather than comforting himself.

  ‘Maybe we’ll be able to send you to a conservatoire one day.’

  ‘You must be joking. I don’t play anywhere near well enough.’

  ‘But if you compose –’

  ‘It’s all crap, anyway. What they want in those places is crap. Even if you do what you’re supposed to and make nice musicky-music which says all the right things, you still get stuffed. Someone doesn’t like the sound of it and there you are: banged up for twenty years. I won’t be hanging around waiting for someone to pat me on the back and say, “All right, young man, we’re going to allow you to be a composer! For now!” ’ He stares at her as if willing her to dare contradict him, his underlip pushed out. In his eyes she sees – or thinks she sees – a spark of the child he once was, longing for her reassurance.

  No. She is deceiving herself. He wants her to tell him the truth.

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ she says at last.

  A muscle twitches in his cheek. In a different, quieter voice he asks, ‘But how are we going to know what’s happened to Andrei?’

  She’s glad she is lying down. The bare thought of what might happen to Andrei makes her feel as if every particle of strength is draining from her body. She won’t think of it. Even when they were starving she had refused to believe it, and they had lived.

  They have Julia to thank for the sale of the piano. She has a friend – someone in the film business, with money – who wanted a decent piano for his daughter to learn on. Julia quickly said that she knew of one, and arranged for Kolya’s piano to be taken away and repaired first. The apartment hasn’t been sealed. Julia didn’t go there herself – too risky – but Anna sent the keys to her and Julia passed them on to another friend who had an interest in second-hand furniture. He was to supervise the removal of the piano and at the same time look at the apartment’s contents to see what could be sold.

  He reported back to Julia. Was it just a bit of surplus furniture that her friend wanted to sell, or was it everything? If she wanted, he could clear the whole apartment.

  ‘What do you think?’ Julia asks Anna, when they meet at the local railway station. She hadn’t really wanted Julia to come, but Julia thought a brief meeting at the station would be safe. She wouldn’t risk coming to Galya’s.

  Anna hesitates.

  ‘What do you think, Anna?’

  The rent for the apartment is paid until the end of next month. She won’t be able to pay after that. The nursery has been informed that she won’t be returning to work: ‘High blood pressure causing serious complications of pregnancy,’ it says on her medical certificate. The doctor was a friend of Andrei. He asked nothing; didn’t even ask where Andrei was, but the certificate was prepared, ready to sign.

  All the furniture, the books, their clothes. (Thank God, she thinks again, that I made Kolya take so much with him when he first went down to Galya’s.) Their china and their linen; the kitchen equipment. But the apartment has got to be emptied, and it’s impossible to bring the stuff down here. For one thing she hasn’t the money; but more importantly, it might draw attention to them. It could lay a trail to bring the arresting officers to Galya’s door. Safer to lose everything than risk that. And better to sell now than to hang on in hope. Everyone in the building knows about Andrei’s arrest. The caretaker or the Maleviches might seize their chance, break in, and help themselves. She’s heard of apartments being stripped bare after an arrest if there’s no family to stay and protect the place.

  She will never go back. That life is over. But she has a room to sleep in, and Kolya has a couch in the living room. There’s food on the table. When the snow melts Kolya can begin to cultivate Galya’s vegetable plot, and their own. Once the baby is born she will work there too. They can grow enough to have food for barter as well as for their own use. Next winter is a long way away, and by then the baby will be six months old.

  She should have registered for maternity care. The baby’s birth will have to be registered too. The baby will need its paperwork, like everybody else. Don’t think of that now. Galya will be able to deliver the child. Anna never liked the idea of giving birth in hospital anyway. It brings back too many memories of her mother: the smell of blood and disinfectant, her mother’s colourless face, and the baby Anna fetched from the hospital nursery, and brought home.

  Andrei is alive. She would know if he were not alive. He’ll come back and they will have a life together. She can’t imagine now what that life will be
like, but she doesn’t need to. She must think of today, only today, or she will freeze with fear. If she thinks of the future it must only be in terms of spring coming, and the baby being born.

  ‘Get him to sell everything,’ Anna says to Julia. ‘I need the money to send to Andrei, and we’ve got to manage until I can get work again.’

  ‘Or until Kolya can,’ says Julia.

  ‘Kolya?’

  ‘Yes. He’s not a child any more, Anna. He can always go to university later on.’

  ‘I doubt if they’d let him in, the way things are,’ says Anna. ‘What’s he going to put on the forms? And if there’s anything you want to take, Julia, just say. I know you’ve got lots of stuff, but –’

  ‘I’ll take what I can,’ says Julia. ‘I’ll keep it for you.’

  ‘But not if it can be sold.’

  ‘No, not if it can be sold. And I’ll get the money to you. I’ll have to think how to do it, because it’s not a good idea for me to come out here again. I’ll write to Galya once everything’s sorted out.’

  ‘Julia, you are – well, I don’t know what to say. Thank you.’

  ‘There’s my train – I’ll have to rush. I’ll be in touch, Anna!’

  But she isn’t in touch. No letter comes. Anna lies awake, fearing that Julia too might have been arrested. In mid-January, Galya goes to the city to visit an old colleague. Just an overnight stay; they arranged it months ago and Galya’s been looking forward to it, even though she finds the city too much for her these days.

  Anna is sitting at the window, staring idly into the falling snow, when Galya returns. She’s walking slowly, head down, shuffling in her heavy boots. She looks like an old woman, thinks Anna. She has never thought of Galya as old before. Galya comes in, stamps her boots on the mat and brushes the snow off the shoulders of her coat before hanging it up. She sits down heavily in her chair.

  ‘It’s the end for my profession,’ she says. ‘They’re calling us murderers now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s in Pravda. We are fiends and killers who disgrace the banner of science, apparently.’

  ‘Who are?’

  ‘Doctors. Us.’ She sighs heavily and begins to unlace her boots. ‘Read it. The paper is in my bag. I don’t want to talk about it.’

  Anna seizes the paper.

  Today TASS news agency reported the arrest of a group of saboteur-doctors. This terrorist group, uncovered some time ago by organs of State Security, had as their goal the shortening of the lives of leaders of the Soviet Union by means of medical sabotage …

  She reads on, heart pounding. Victims are named: Zhdanov … Shcherbakov … My God, are they saying that Andrei killed Zhdanov? But it’s impossible. It’s crazy. No one can believe a word of it. ‘Recruited by the Americans … International Jewish-bourgeois nationalist organizations … poisonous filth …’ The words pour on but she can make no sense of them.

  ‘But Andrei was arrested weeks ago,’ she says aloud. ‘Long before all this.’ It can’t have anything to do with Andrei. These are eminent doctors who have treated Party leaders, generals and admirals. That’s why they are supposed to have been part of a plot: because they had access to such senior figures. You couldn’t possibly say that a paediatrician whose clinics are crammed with Leningrad children is part of an American conspiracy.

  Of course you couldn’t. Sense and logic defy it. But even while she is reassuring herself, Anna knows that sense and logic have nothing to do with it. Pravda isn’t simply reporting these cases, but signalling the start of another campaign against yet another profession. In the thirties scientists and engineers got it – and before long everybody was getting it. After the war it was writers and artists and musicians. The only thing that doesn’t change is the language. Anna reads on. ‘Warmongers and their agents … spies … traitors who plot to destroy our Motherland …’ She can hear her father’s voice in her head, saying with bitter irony, ‘Yes, this is all just as it should be, just as normal.’

  How happy Volkov will be now. He’ll be able to build a case against Andrei with no trouble at all. He’s just the kind of high-up Party man these doctors were supposed to have tried to murder. But a child – how could anyone think that a doctor would deliberately kill a child with cancer? Even the most perverted imagination would be hard put to it.

  ‘Galya, did you talk to anybody, what else are they saying?’

  Galya eases off her boots, first one and then the other. ‘Andrei’s not a Jew, be thankful for that. They’re talking about deportations. Special settlements for Jews. They’ve arrested hundreds of doctors, apparently, far more than it says in the paper, and nearly all of them are Jewish.’

  ‘But those are just rumours, surely, Galya –’

  ‘Rumours? Everything’s a rumour in this country, until it happens to you. When you’ve lived as long as I have, you won’t dismiss rumours.’

  Galya sounds as if she were angry with her, Anna. Perhaps she regrets taking them in now. Even Galya might be afraid.

  ‘We could go back to our own dacha,’ Anna says.

  Galya’s hand, which has been massaging her calf, freezes. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘It might be safer for you if we left, now that all this is happening.’

  ‘Safer! What kind of a person do you think I am?’

  Galya’s eyes flash. Suddenly she’s the Galya of Anna’s childhood. She is Vera’s friend, who can be suddenly and terribly stern if she finds you doing anything which would upset your mother.

  ‘Safer! I’d be safer if I were dead. That’s the only kind of safety there is for us now. At least I’m old, and out of the profession. I don’t have to see my colleagues terrorized. Can you imagine what Vera would have said? When I think how we studied, how we worked, how we thought nothing of going whole nights without sleep – and now they say that we want to murder our patients. You’ll stay right here, Anna. You have the baby to think about. If I can do nothing else, I can help you deliver that child. As for Kolya, he’s rebuilding my house for me, so I’m certainly not going to risk losing him. We’ll put that rubbish in the stove,’ she says, reaching for the newspaper. ‘I should never have brought it home. But you’d have been bound to hear it on the radio, anyway.’

  ‘I have to read it, because of Andrei,’ says Anna, drawing back and keeping hold of Pravda.

  ‘It’s not Andrei they’re after,’ says Galya quickly. ‘All the names they give are senior doctors. Some of them have world reputations, and they’re almost all Jews. This isn’t to do with Andrei.’

  Anna sits with her head bowed. Let Galya think she’s reassured me. She knows, and I know, that this has everything to do with Andrei. Probably this is why Julia hasn’t been in touch. Her husband must have excellent contacts, and he might have got wind of what was happening before it was made public. He might have warned Julia that she must keep right away from Anna now.

  What will they do to Andrei? The paper talks about treason. Zhdanov, Shcherbakov. … Tomorrow there could be another name: Gorya Volkov. Her stomach hurts. She splays the newspaper out on the table and leans forward as if she’s studying it, to hide the pain from Galya. It’s nothing to do with the baby. Just indigestion.

  ‘You should go and lie down,’ says Galya.

  ‘No,’ said Anna, ‘I’m fine.’ She stares at the sheet of dirty newsprint without focusing. ‘I’m going out in a minute.’

  ‘What? In this?’

  Anna raises her head and looks out of the window. It’s still snowing. ‘I’ll wait a bit.’

  It’s when she looks down again that the name draws her gaze like a magnet. The newsprint swims, then sharpens. S. I. Volkov, it says. The heading to a tiny paragraph, close to the bottom of the page:

  The death is announced from heart failure of S. I. Volkov, formerly Commissar of State Security.

  She scans above and below the item, but there’s nothing more. Volkov is dead. She puts her fists on the table to support herself
. Volkov is dead.

  ‘Anna! Are you ill?’

  ‘I’ve just seen something in the paper. Volkov is dead. You know, the man whose son Andrei –’

  ‘Give it to me. Now, where are my reading glasses – wait a minute –’

  ‘There, Galya.’ Anna points to the announcement.

  Galya takes it in. ‘ “Formerly Commissar of State Security …” Now what does that mean, I wonder? Do you know, Anna, I’d say that the wolf had fallen from favour.’

  ‘Surely he can’t have.’ Her heart leaps. If Galya’s right, then that changes everything.

  ‘You remember when Yezhov fell? It can happen, even to them. All the signs are there, look. No list of titles and honours. No fulsome testimonials to his war service. They’ve only given him a couple of lines. And I’ve never liked the look of “heart failure”. “Shot in a cellar”, more likely. And good riddance. Let him taste the bullets.’

  Anna looks at Galya in amazement. She’s never heard Galya speak like this. ‘Do you think it can really be true?’ she asks. ‘Volkov’s really dead?’

  ‘Would they put it in Pravda otherwise? Either he’s dead, or someone intends him to be dead very soon.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ says Anna. ‘I hope he suffered.’ Volkov is dead. He is dead, and Andrei is alive. ‘I’m going out now,’ she says.

  She crosses her shawl over her chest and ties it at her back before putting on her overcoat. Kolya has gone over to see Mitya Sokolov, and no doubt he’ll stay to supper with them if he’s asked. Darya Sokolova welcomes him these days: Kolya is a piece of the past. She likes to have him about the place.