The Red House

by Derek Lambert

  ‘I have every right,’ said his father mildly.

  ‘You are not the secret police.’

  ‘I’m not.’ He permitted a smile. ‘But never presume too much, my son.’

  Again Vladimir felt that he was being indicted for naïvety. ‘It’s only scribbling. I wrote down a lot of incoherent words when I had the fever.’

  ‘Not so incoherent. Unfortunately.’ He read a poem to himself. ‘Why war? Why do you always write about war?’

  ‘Because it’s all I lived with for a long time …’

  ‘I understand that. You were one of the heroes of Leningrad and we’re very proud of you. But it’s the way you’ve portrayed the war. The suffering, the lack of supplies and reinforcements. Soldiers of the Red Army wondering if they’d been forgotten.’

  ‘That’s how it was,’ Vladimir said. ‘And in any case it’s only poetry.’

  ‘It implies inefficiency,’ his father said. ‘It implies’—he whispered the words as if afraid of being overheard—‘it implies that our glorious leader may have been at fault.’ God doesn’t make mistakes.

  ‘I didn’t mean to imply that. But does it matter? A few verses on a dozen or so sheets of paper?’

  ‘If they got into an enemy’s hands they could matter a great deal,’ his father said sadly. ‘In your own interests, my son, I suggest we destroy these verses.’

  ‘Why the hell should we? They’re private—no one else’s business.’

  ‘It’s better that we get rid of them. Please believe me, I know.’ And swiftly he ripped the sheets of paper in half, then in half again.

  Vladimir pushed away his plate. ‘That wasn’t necessary, Father.’

  In Leningrad he had vaguely heard soldiers, and some officers, talk about the human automatons manufactured by the State. Staring at the corpses preserved in ice, wincing at the explosions of shells, nursing the burn of his hunger, he had ignored them. Soldiers always grumbled. If they were so discontented with Stalinist Russia then they certainly wouldn’t be resisting the Germans so stubbornly. Likewise he heard about anti-Semitism But, again, that was the crime of the Nazis: you didn’t fight an enemy if you shared his sins.

  His father tore the paper into confetti. A trace of old emotions animated his bony, conformist face. ‘Our country has enormous tasks ahead of it. Mistakes will be made, directives misunderstood. It’s all part of the healing process. It’s not the hour for poetry or intellectuals. It’s the time for common endeavour. I suggest, my son, that you keep your poetry in your head.’

  Vladimir gazed out at the honeyed day dying on the skyline of communal cubist endeavour. Like my ideals, he thought melodramatically. ‘But I want to work,’ he said. Ridiculous that he should feel like a boy. ‘I want to be part of it all …’

  His mother returned with green tea, served in cups without handles, Uzbek style. ‘Have you had your little chat?’ she asked. Vladimir regarded her more as a grandmother, a babushka; she was only fifty-three, but she had retreated, prematurely, into the limbo of memory.

  His father said they had. ‘And now we must think of the future. What you are to do with yourself. As a matter of fact,’ he added quietly, ‘I’ve made some plans for you.’

  ‘What plans?’

  ‘You have too good a brain to waste working with your hands. And in any case the rewards are small.’ It was a confession more than a statement. ‘You also speak excellent English—a great asset in the fight against the enemies of Socialism. I still have influence in certain quarters in Moscow. Nothing very powerful because a Party secretary in Alma-Ata doesn’t rate very high in the hierarchy. But I’ve arranged for you to study at Moscow University.’

  But did he want to go to Moscow? To leave the tractors’ music, the south, the workers. The land of the novelist Auezov, Djabayev the akyn poet, Kunanbayev, the father of Kazakh literature.

  ‘I expected more gratitude,’ said his father; but he had lapsed into his official voice again, a voice that really expected little. ‘I have also tentatively arranged for you to take up a junior post at the Foreign Ministry—if, of course, you pass your exams. If you concentrate on facts instead of poetry’.

  ‘It’s very good of you Father. Let me think it over.’

  A few days later his confusion was compounded by the arrival of a girl named Valentina. She was on holiday from Moscow with a study-group of Komsomols, and, with a couple of other group leaders, had been invited to dine at the Zhukov’s.

  She was eighteen, hair coiled, with bangs, reminding him of the Brontë sisters whom he’d read, face city pale, cool and informed in debate—the sort of girl who made young men hot and stupid through trying too hard. She was excessively neat, black skirt and white blouse with breasts demurely contained, shoes a little decadent with raised heels, single pearls on her ears. Despite her pallor Vladimir noted dark pigment alien to the Muscovite; also a slight Mongol set to cheekbones and eyes.

  Her conversation was assured. But the talk over the rough brandy and red wine bored him. So he made few contributions, pondering tactics to upset her aplomb for reasons which he didn’t yet understand.

  He found his chance during a debate on productivity in which yawns inflated in his throat like balloons. A sudden inspiration about her colouring, the surprisingly blue eyes.

  ‘The Soviet Union will never prosper until the peasants of Siberia are cured of their laziness,’ he announced grandly and incongruously. Like a trade union leader exhorting renewed labour.

  It worked astonishingly well. ‘What do you know about work?’ she demanded, colour rising. ‘You people of the south are notorious for your idleness.’

  He grinned nervously. ‘You’re a Sibiryak?’

  ‘My parents came from Irkutsk. A wonderful city. Moscow may be our capital but it isn’t the true Russia. Nor is the south.’ She paused seeking ammunition. ‘You produce apples and we produce diamonds.’

  The brandy, Vladimir suspected, was contributing to her passion. And to her disrespect for her hosts. (His father looked decidedly disgruntled.)

  ‘We also produce good manners,’ Vladimir said, proud of his nonchalance.

  The girl glanced at his parents, at the other two startled Komsomols. ‘I’m sorry. But I get tired of hearing people dismiss Siberia as if it were some medieval wilderness. Siberia,’ she recited, ‘is the prosperity and the treasure chest of the Soviet Union.’

  I’m sure it is,’ Vladimir goaded. ‘If you don’t mind your feet frozen off by permafrost in the winter and being blinded by duststorms in the summer. If they have any summer that is.’

  She regarded him with distilled contempt. ‘Siberia has the finest climate in the world. Actually your ignorance appalls me. The cold in the winter is dry and bright—none of the foggy November mush of Moscow. And we have twice as much sunshine as Moscow. Did you know that, hidden away among your apple trees?’

  Vladimir said he didn’t and he was surprised because wasn’t Siberia where all the enemies of Socialism were dispatched? If what she said was true then it was just like sending prisoners to sunbathe at a Black Sea resort.

  The other two guests, earnest young men with red triangles of sunburn glowing between the open necks of their white shirts, tried to divert the conversation. Vladimir’s father said, ‘We shouldn’t compare the republics of our country. We must regard ourselves as a single great nation.’ Vladimir’s mother retired to the kitchen to make green tea.

  Valentina spoke with exaggerated patience. ‘Of course prisoners are sent to Siberia. Because it’s so vast they can’t escape. It’s the biggest forest in the world—bigger than the whole of the United States of America put together. Even Krasnoyarsk is three times the size of Texas.’

  ‘You’ve convinced me,’ Vladimir said, ‘that Siberia is very big.’

  ‘You are a fool,’ said Valentina.

  ‘And you sound like a travel brochure.’

  She tossed back half an inch of brandy and gasped. ‘I believe you fought at Leningrad?’


  ‘I was in the siege, yes.’

  ‘Then you have suffered and Russia is grateful.’

  ‘You are very kind.’

  ‘And you will know, of course, who were the bravest and toughest fighters during the war?’

  ‘Let me guess,’ Vladimir said. ‘The Sibiryaks?’

  She nodded. ‘The Nazis called them polar bears because not even the iciest blizzard could stop them. And whenever they fired a gun they hit the target.’

  ‘They were good fighters,’ Vladimir acknowledged.

  Smouldering peace ensued. The guests drank their tea quickly. Excused themselves with alacrity—they had a full day ahead. Departed. And Vladimir went to his room to escape retribution.

  But not before he had made a date to continue the debate next day. An invitation accepted with sulky bad grace.

  The hostility soon faded as it does in the courtship of many animals. And the Komsomol did not receive quite the dedication it expected from Valentina.

  Also her severity softened. Especially in the foothills of the mountains where birch and poplar conceded to conifer, loam to granite—mauve at sunset—drunken cidery perfumes to scents of pine-needles and eternal snow far above.

  They found a basin in this stern terrain, scooped there for lovers, jungled with rich grass and yellow flowers of the meadow. There he unloosened her earphones of glossy hair, embraced her and the future, kissed her and respected her although he was not sure about the wisdom of that.

  Russia seemed to them then to be the finest country on the globe for young people. To help in the resurrection after war; to unfurl the red flag of equality wherever the poor were exploited. In their insect-buzzing arbour they saw noble warriors of peace, muscled athletes carrying torches. Although occasionally it sometimes seemed to Vladimir Zhukov that Valentina saw the future a little more seriously than necessary. The heritage of the Young Pioneers, the Komsomol. The wood-smoked evenings, the violet crags, the lights of the city below switching on: this wasn’t the setting for Marx and Lenin and the class struggle.

  So he kissed her and quieted her. And momentary unease was forgotten.

  In the evenings they went to the café where a dreamy young man in a black cotton jacket and a sleepy bow tie played folk music on his guitar and, when the tea had been laced with sufficient brandy smuggled past the bear-like doorman, a few Glen Miller numbers including ‘In the Mood’ and ‘Moonlight Serenade.’ Although the guitar didn’t quite string along the Miller way. Afterwards, to silence critics, he played a string instrument called a dombra. ‘Once upon a time,’ Vladimir explained, ‘the folk poets used to meet in a felt tent and hold contests of song and poetry.’ Which led to a guided tour by Valentina through Siberia including—encouraged by the brandy—a verse of ‘Glorious Baikal, Sacred Baikal’ all about the deepest and coldest lake in the world. And a few snippets of lore from the taiga including the information that the horn of a particular deer was said to be an aphrodisiac. Which made Vladimir regret his chivalry in the mountains: these Sibiryaks were wild and passionate people. Maybe she thought he was impotent! Bitterly Vladimir regretted the girl in Berlin, the first and only time … Ridiculous for a man of twenty-one. He felt ashamed of the one time, ashamed of his purity; but in Leningrad a hunk of mouldy bread had been more desirable than a woman’s body.

  They danced a little and she told him that he looked melancholy.

  You’re leaving tomorrow,’ he said. They hadn’t mentioned it all day. ‘Can’t you stay a little longer?’

  She shook her head, hair still loose and brushing his face. ‘I have to return to my work with the Komsomol. I’ve already neglected my duty here.’

  To hell with the Komsomol, he thought.

  She kissed his ear. ‘But you will be coming to Moscow soon to study at the university?’

  He hadn’t made up his mind; but he made it up then. The city of Alma-Ata was suddenly an arid and provincial place. The harvest gathered, tractors stilled in the snow, his father’s stifling obedience disguised as crusading endeavour. He was, after all, a Muscovite. There he would meet intellectuals, the Kremlin leaders, make his contribution to the cause through the arts of diplomacy. Become an ambassador of their faith in Paris, London, Washington. Peking, perhaps. Why had he hesitated? The confusions of his fevers, probably. Her breasts pressed against his chest. Warmth and tumescence. The sharing.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Soon we’ll be skiing together down the Lenin Hills.’

  And ski down the gentle slopes they did. Gazing with smug wonder at the sprawl of Moscow, its spires and fragile gold baubles belying its history: its purges and pogroms, its invasion by two dictators whose megalomania had perished in flames and frostbite. City of gilded aristocrats—and peasants goaded to mutiny when their misery was patronized. A poet’s city, a musician’s city; city of one God, moustached and smiling, inviolate in his bulwarked cathedral. All its cruelty, all its ponderous authority so alien to its graceful heart, soothed now by snow and the low smoke of evening, the domes as delicate as soap bubbles.

  Vladimir was studying, poetry banished—except for an occasional midnight scrawl—to make way for languages, economics, history and, inevitably, sociology which seemed to be a pseudonym for Socialism. But he was content, with Party membership almost attained, with this city of plodding aspiration and occasional ballet graces, with Valentina and the sharing.

  And tonight he was going to make love to her.

  When the polish on their cheeks began to glow. When the tea was drunk. When the curtains in the wooden rooming house off Gorky Street where he lived were drawn and his room was as snug as a babushka in a shawl. Then he would undress her on the sighing bed and show her how to make love. With gentleness and caution because, for a girl, the first time was painful and could cause frigidity if mishandled. (In Berlin he had read an American textbook on the subject.) But with immense authority to illustrate, now and forever, that the horn of the Siberian deer would never be needed.

  He undressed her rapidly and looked with great excitement at her flesh and fur. Wondering if he should confess to the incident in Berlin, because that’s all it had been—an incident. A thrust from a starving soldier seeking the rewards of victory. At least the girl, as thin and frightened and inexperienced as himself, had been willing; not like some of the girls raped by the conquerors. Valentina, hair still in bangs, held out her arms to him and he decided not to confess just yet.

  ‘I won’t hurt you,’ he promised; the German girl had pleaded with him not to hurt her.

  ‘My love,’ she said.

  Such a mingling of affection, respect and lust. And marriage ahead.

  With brief chagrin, he found that the need for textbook delicacy was unnecessary. Valentina had been shared before. But for the moment there was no place in his hunger for recrimination. And only very much later did he wonder who had possessed whom.

  ‘I know,’ she said carefully—her words like cats’ paws feeling the snow—‘I know what you are thinking.’

  ‘I didn’t realize,’ he said miserably.

  ‘It was only once.’

  ‘An official of the Komsomol, I suppose.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘A student.’

  Desire sated, prim disgust and jealousy took over. ‘Did you love him?’

  ‘Not really. I suppose you could call it infatuation.’

  But she wasn’t the girl for infatuation. Nor, with her common sense and practical ways, was she the sort of girl to sleep around. Or was she? Again the indictment of his naïvety. ‘Just the one?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘just the one. I’m not all that old, Vladimir. And is it so important? I love you and it has meaning now.’

  ‘So it had no meaning the other time?’

  ‘Not much. He wanted to. I was curious. Girls are just as anxious for experience as men.’

  ‘Supposing there’d been a child?’ Perhaps there had been! Disgust at himself for questioning and doubting.

  ‘No,’ she said,
anticipating the next question, ‘I didn’t become pregnant.’

  Triumphantly Vladimir tossed some of his new knowledge at her. ‘You know, of course, that under the law of July, 1944, you would have had no claim on the father. You couldn’t sue him for a single kopek.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘The law for men.’

  ‘Not such a bad law. It is meant to encourage men and women to get married instead of living together. To end the old Bolshevik immorality.’

  She covered herself with a blanket, fear beginning to assemble. ‘Aren’t you being a little hypocritical, Vladimir Zhukov? After all, you’ve just made love to me. What would happen if I became pregnant? Wouldn’t you support me and the child?’

  ‘Of course.’ He knew she was inviting a marriage proposal, but the moment had been spoiled.

  ‘And am I the first girl you’ve made love to?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There you are then.’

  He felt she should have been disappointed, but she didn’t seem to mind. ‘There have been several others,’ he lied.

  ‘Then why should you be so disgusted because I have slept with one other man?’

  ‘I suppose I should have anticipated it,’ he said. ‘What more should I expect from a Sibiryak.’

  She turned and clawed him, getting in one good scratch on his cheek before he grabbed her wrists.

  To hell with you, he thought. To think I treated you with such respect up there in the mountains. When all you wanted … He pushed her arms down on the pillow, spread her legs. She fought, then called his name.

  Afterwards she cried. And it seemed to him as if it had been the first time for both of them.

  A year later they were married.

  Vladimir Zhukov’s patriotism and idealism remained fairly steadfast despite many onslaughts.

  It was sustained by the war he’d fought and by the privations and shortages that lingered in Moscow. Crude sugar, no soap, endless queues in the frost-biting cold for bread and potatoes and crude cuts of meat. The blood war had been won but the battles of peace still had to be fought. Vladimir observed with fierce pride the head-scarved women waiting outside eyeless, nameless shops for food. They as much as the soldiers of Leningrad and Stalingrad had beaten the Fascists. And if the capital was truly kupecheskaya Moscva—the Moscow of merchants—then the kupecheskaya were having a thin time of it right now.