‘We did.’
‘A British secret agent?’
‘Quite possibly. American, more likely. He has a taste for American literature. What would you like me to arrange?’
VIII
The clocks on each ward of the hospital chimed midnight, the end of the tenth day of Benya’s war, and he had a visitor.
‘You’re my only friend who knows I am even here,’ said Benya.
‘Or even alive!’ added Lev Shapiro. ‘What are you going to do? Any idea?’
‘I’ve had a visit tonight from a schoolmistress who offered me a job.’
‘So you are becoming a teacher? That was quick.’
‘I had big help.’
‘Impressive, my dear. But tell me, how did you survive out there, in the Camps?’
Benya sighed. ‘I lived each minute and each day as it came. I sought joy in the smallest things. I looked at the stars and the moon and thought that those I love might be looking at them too. Moon magic.’ He looked at Shapiro searchingly: ‘You’re in love, Lev. With someone you shouldn’t be.’
‘You know all that? Just by looking at me?’
‘We Galitzianers can see through each other and I know how dangerous it is. Believe me, I know.’
‘How did you guess now?’ asked Shapiro. ‘I just met her this afternoon, secretly of course. Oh, she’s so sweet, but very clever.’
‘Who is it? Let’s think. Who’s the most unsuitable wife in Moscow for you to choose? Molotov’s wife?’
‘Oh, she’s no one’s wife. She’s someone’s daughter.’ Lev leaned forward to whisper.
Benya held up both hands. ‘Don’t tell me her name. I don’t want to know. No names! That’s what we learned in the Zone. My name is Nothing, my surname is Nobody. Just tell me the story! Oh, I love an intrigue. How did it start?’
‘Well,’ said Shapiro, ‘one day I got a letter from a fan…’
As he came down the steps of the Central Military Hospital, still chuckling to himself about his conversation with Benya, who so understood the excitement of a love affair, Lev Shapiro stopped.
In the foyer a general and some men, with NKVD tabs, were waiting. Lev knew immediately they were there for him, and what was going to happen. He was either going away, far away, for a long time, or he would die that night in a cell under the Lubianka. He would probably never see Svetlana or his wife or his children again. He had miscalculated everything.
Patting the pockets of his jacket, he acted as if he had left something behind. ‘Oh no, hell, I left my case upstairs…’ he said, turning back up the steps, trying to move calmly, not to run, to sprint, to scream.
As soon as he was on the next landing, he asked a nurse, ‘Is there another staircase?’
‘Yes, straight down the corridor.’
He walked fast, faster; now he was running to the other staircase, down the steps and before he reached the bottom, he crouched down and… there they were, more NKVD uniforms. He turned and raced up the steps. Now he was pouring sweat, his heart was throbbing, and he was feeling nauseous. Oh my God, how could I have been so foolish? he shouted to himself. But what could he do? There was nowhere to run. He could try to get back to his home to see his wife and children and say goodbye, but they would be waiting for him there. Running would just make this worse. Besides, they had covered both staircases and lifts.
He found himself walking up the stairs towards Benya’s ward with a feeling of freefalling through a void. He felt guilty about his family. If he was shot, his wife might be told ‘Prisoner Shapiro has been sentenced to twenty-five years – without right of correspondence’, which usually meant someone had received the Eight Grammes. Or they might be told ‘Article 158. Twenty years’ and they would guess he was just about alive, if he survived the journey to Kolyma, if he didn’t die of exhaustion. Either way, he might be gone forever.
If only he could get a letter to Svetlana… but there was so little time…
He peered down the long corridor and there they were: the Chekists were walking right towards him, looking into each ward. He spun round and it was too late: they held his arms.
‘Lev Shapiro?’ asked the general.
‘Yes.’
‘Come with me. We’ve got a car outside. Do you know who I am?’
‘No,’ said Shapiro.
‘I am General Vlasik, Chief of Security for the Head of the Soviet Government. You understand what this means?’
Shapiro nodded. ‘It might mean any number of terrible things.’
‘Prepare for all of them,’ said Vlasik.
Epilogue
I
‘Dear friends, beloved romantics, wistful dreamers!’ said the new teacher of literature, Benya Golden, to his class at the Josef Stalin Commune School 801. Limping into the classroom with the help of his flamboyant walking-stick, he jumped on to the wooden platform at the front.
He had their attention immediately.
After the arrogant bombast of Dr Rimm, the senile babblings of Dr Noodelman, the droning sincerity of Director Medvedeva, they could see this one was a different species altogether. There were rumours about his past, his sins, his war – but no one knew anything and they never would. And conversely, Benya was enjoying a new life, teaching Pushkin, Tolstoy, Gorky, the classics.
It was winter in Moscow, December ’42, and at Stalingrad in the south, now clad in snow, fettered in ice, Stalin had sprung his giant trap and the Russians were strangling the German Sixth Army. Benya had found a little apartment so he could walk to work, and although on his first day in the school common room he had experienced the hostility of Dr Rimm, who smelled his flawed past, he had the support of Director Medvedeva, who was proud to recruit such a distinguished teacher of literature. Of course she had made enquiries with the Central Committee, Education Department, which was curated by Comrade Satinov, and with the Organs, and all had signed off on her appointment of Benya Golden.
He looked out over his class. ‘Open your books. Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin. I hope you will always remember what we’re going to read today. We are about to go on a wonderful journey of discovery.’
On that first day, Benya noticed that there was a girl named Stalina who sat next to one called Peshkova at the back of his class. He could only wonder at the vagaries of this world where a man could travel from a death sentence for planning to assassinate Stalin one day to teaching his daughter about Onegin the next. He paid no attention to her but when he handed back their first essays, he saw each child in turn for a tutoring session after class. After all, he had nothing better to do. He was living quietly, and had no wish to become the flâneur of the 1930s – that had cost him dear. He was just happy to breathe the free air.
When he talked to Peshkova, he told her that he had known her grandfather Gorky, who had corrected his first articles. ‘I was a writer once,’ he said.
Then it was the turn of Stalina. He saw no resemblance to her father. Perhaps she was more like her mother? Her essay showed her intelligence, her culture. He talked to her frankly, as if she was anyone else. And he wondered about her. He agonized. Just when he was free again, he faced this dilemma that could entangle him in her family. But also he knew about Love, its agony and its necessity for living, and tried to keep the memories of his own loves – of which there were really only two – fresh in his mind. There had been his first mature love, the fatal liaison with Sashenka; and those hurried days, hours really, with Fabiana. He saw their ride across the Don, and the moment she died. What an exceptional person she had been, how I let her down by failing to protect her, he thought. Whether my home is a small apartment or a prison cell, loving is what keeps the stars in my sky. You give up one truth after another, you compromise every day, but you always hold something back – you keep the jewels in the secret casket locked with the golden key in the final alcove within the unbreakable strongroom of the last tower of the fortress of your self – and that you never give up.