For all the sternness, Temerity also saw emotion, mostly fear, flicker in the hotel workers’ eyes, and she wondered what the penalties for hotel staff might be if Comintern members misbehaved. She’d gone outside the hotel herself only twice since arriving on the thirty-first of May, both times to visit the nearby food store Gastronom, and both times facing many questions from hotel staff when she returned.
Grateful for the open door and some fresher air, Temerity collected the exercise books. Go, she wanted to tell the girls, run, play. She thought of their parents. The adults often gathered in the communal kitchen and talked, standing around, sometimes drinking tea — mostly women, far fewer men. Rumours among the Comintern members suggested that NKVD considered fathers the easiest prey, docile in prison and submissive under interrogation, all to protect wife and children.
Radio Moscow broke past her thoughts. Speakers blessed every hallway and room, and these speakers lacked a switch. Until the station signed off at night, one could only reduce the volume, never extinguish the sound. Temerity had just taught a class on various English greetings over a muffled yet insistent report on oppressive conditions in the British Empire. Now, the announcer gave the time and introduced a Tchaikovsky recording. Temerity rolled her eyes. This huge country and its embarrassment of riches when it came to composers, and yet Radio Moscow played Tchaikovsky, Tchaikovsky, Tchaikovsky.
A child collided with her and then spoke startled English as he retreated a few steps. —Comrade Bush, I am sorry!
Mikko Toppinen, Temerity’s brightest student, and, if she must choose, her favourite. Aged ten, Mikko already spoke excellent Russian alongside his native Finnish, and he could manage good French. He craved language the same way Temerity did, breathed it, and in his spare time he worked on a large drawing of a complex series of staircases that curved, intersected, overlapped, and sometimes twisted into diacritical and punctuation marks. Babel Interior, he called it.
— Comrade Bush, are you hurt?
— No, I’m fine. You carry on.
He ran off, joining the other boys in a noisy game.
A hotel worker, carrying linens in her arms, gave Temerity a long look.
Temerity nodded acknowledgement. —Comrade.
Ursula Friesen emerged from behind the hotel worker and greeted Temerity in loud Russian. Strands of her greying blond hair fell loose from her bun and framed her face, and her Berlin accent, which strengthened when she got tired, reminded Temerity of childhood visits to the Weihnachtsmarkt and, therefore, ginger cookies. When Temerity told her this, Ursula had first frowned, then chuckled. So I am a Britisher’s gingerbread woman? —Margaret, there you are. All done with language class, comrade?
Temerity offered Ursula her arm, and they walked together down the corridor to the stairwell. They didn’t bother trying the tiny yet stylized lift that Temerity called the art deco coffin. It rarely worked.
Ursula, almost the same height as Temerity, leaned in to murmur in her ear. —Laugh when I finish, as though I’m telling you a joke. Tell Mikko he must take greater care and speak only Russian outside the classroom.
Temerity gave a soft laugh, hoping it sounded genuine.
Another hotel worker watched them until they passed the threshold to the stairwell.
On the stairs, Temerity thought Ursula looked old, much older than forty, tired, and starved for sunlight. She’d not ventured outside Hotel Lux for almost three months.
— Ursula, Mikko was just showing off.
— Yes, and it could get us all in trouble. He should understand that. If he doesn’t, then you must make him understand.
As Temerity opened the stairwell door, she revealed yet another hotel worker, standing there as if by design. The three women nodded acknowledgement and continued on their paths.
Ursula sounded cheerful. —Shall we freshen up and make some supper?
The communal kitchen, where diapers might boil in one pot and fowl in another and still not cut through the lingering stench of vinegar, cabbage, and lard, left Temerity with little appetite. —Not hungry, thank you.
— At least have a cup of tea. You Britishers always want some tea.
— The samovar baffles me.
— I’ll do it. You go sit down, maybe write some letters.
Temerity almost laughed. —So I can give the hotel staff something new to read?
Ursula pretended not to hear.
Temerity told herself to be more considerate of her friend’s fears. —Thank you, Ursula. I’d love some tea.
NKVD Garage Number One. Same old spot, same old racket of execution’s gunfire, same old cars, Ford Model As, manufactured under license in Moscow, painted matte black and nicknamed ravens. Kostya nodded to the older officer in the passenger seat, Gleb Denisovich Kamenev, checked his watch — shortly before two in the morning — and eased the vehicle into the night.
Kostya’s latest argument with Arkady, days old now, still rattled about his head. The old man murmured about the machinery of revolution, gears loose and cogs jammed, purges misled. Arkady dared not mention the arrest of former NKVD chief Genrikh Yagoda, and Kostya, feeling at once loose and jammed himself, ignoring his memories of Spain, craved order and refused to think of Yagoda. He wanted to bury himself in work, as he’d always done, so he might silence not just Arkady’s sudden doubts but his own. You’re getting paranoid, he told Arkady. I’m out of hospital, and I just got a promotion. No one is out to get me. Or you.
Under the car’s wheels, asphalt surrendered to cobblestones. Contradictory signage, warning of construction and offering impossible detours, interrupted the headlight beams.
Kostya braked the car and peered through the windshield. —What the barrelling fuck is this?
Gleb gave the barest of grunts. Nonsensical road signs, an everyday occurrence, merited nothing else.
— That’s no help, Gleb Denisovich.
Shadows fell on Gleb’s thin face, hiding his drunkard’s flush. —If we turn left and take the alley behind the…no, wait, it’s blocked at one end.
Kostya closed his eyes and bowed his head. —Signs should make sense. I just want the signs to make sense. Am I asking too much?
Gleb grunted again, his tone disapproving. Smart officers knew better.
Kostya accelerated. Ignoring Gleb’s warnings of rough road and narrow ways, his doubts of just what punishment the car’s suspension could take, Kostya drove around the various signs and navigated by memory. Apart from knocking over a detour sign shaped like an arrow, he encountered no difficulty. Either the workers had completed the signalled construction, or, more likely, they’d not yet begun. Perhaps they waited on a permit.