Kapitolina is no use at all. She is frantic with worry about her relatives in the village. Terrible things are going on there: armed brigades of activists are coming out from the cities to search for hidden stores of grain and force the peasants to sell it to them at state procurement prices, which are too low to allow them to afford anything with their earnings. Sometimes, peasants have even been paid with government state bonds or receipts, that is to say, they have been robbed, purely and simply.
Several times, I have arrived home to find Kitty under the bed. She hides there and puts my gloves on her shoulders. “I’m pretending you’re giving me a hug.”
This makes me feel like a criminal, so I try to get ahold of treats for her—chocolates, toys, and books, but of course, none of it helps.
Every morning, I explain to Kitty that I have important business and I need to go to work. But what business could be more important than my own child feeling abandoned right now? Every day, Kitty is learning a lesson that her own feelings are unimportant and that it is wrong to ask for love and attention. Whether I like it or not, I am training her to expect pain and loneliness in life.
Kitty needs a mother, but I have cut off all ties with Nina because its simpler for me. At the merest mention of her name, I am thrown into a protracted gloom. I have to admit I was even pleased when Elkin was thrown out of his store.
But my former wife still haunts me. Recently, Kitty discovered her photograph in my diary and announced that she wanted to see her mother.
“Haven’t you found her yet?” she asked me.
“We don’t have a mother anymore,” I replied, only to regret my words a moment later.
Kitty went into such hysterics that she made herself ill. “You’ve taken away everything I ever had!” she wailed. “You don’t love me! Where’s Mommy?”
She struggled in my arms like a captive animal. “Let me go! I hate you!”
She has been sick now for several days. She has come out in a rash, her face is swollen, and she has pains in her stomach.
The doctor from the German Embassy came out to have a look at her and shrugged. “It seems the Moscow climate is bad for your little girl. You need to take her to the seaside and get her some sunshine.”
But I can’t drop everything and go south. Who would grant me any leave from work now? As for resigning, it’s out of the question. I haven’t any savings, and if I quit my job, I lose my visa. And where could Kitty and I go then?
Nina was right when she said I would regret our quarrel. If we had parted on good terms, she could have helped me with Kitty. True, it would have meant mastering my feelings every day, but at least our daughter wouldn’t be suffering now on account of my hurt pride.
I turned Nina’s photograph over in my hands. On the back, Magda had written “Nina Kupina, November 1927.” I crossed out the name of my ex-wife and wrote above it, “Mrs. Reich.”
I still find it impossible to believe that this is the truth.
19. THE SHAKHTY TRAIL
On the morning of the 18th of May, 1928, the House of Unions was surrounded by a double police cordon, struggling to restrain the public from breaking through to the recently refurbished building with its pillared facade.
There were crowds milling about—journalists, children, and foreign tourists holding cameras. People kept arriving, and soon the pavement outside the building was overflowing, stopping the cars and cabs from passing and unleashing a chorus of motor horns.
Klim showed his press card and was allowed into the House of Unions. Last minute preparations were taking place there. Smartly dressed young men in OGPU uniform were dashing up and down the staircases, and catering assistants with lace headdresses pinned to their hair were wheeling trolleys furnished with decanters of water.
Klim walked into the Pillar Hall and felt as if he was in a theater on the night of a grand premier. Crystal chandeliers lit up rows of red seats for the spectators of the trial, and red cloth banners hung on all the balconies. Several powerful floodlights stood in the aisles, directed toward the stage. The carpet beneath them bulged with cables.
“Gangway!” called a workman wheeling in a huge, cumbersome movie camera.
Although people were fussing around nervously, the mood was generally one of excited anticipation. There were high hopes of the forthcoming show.
The foreign journalists exchanged greetings and handshakes.
“Don’t expect to see any justice done here today. That’s all I can say,” the correspondent from the Christian Science Monitor told Klim. “The Soviet judges are quite openly guided by questions of class origin—with full official approval. If it turns out that the defendant is a former aristocrat or, God forbid, was born into a priest’s family, then no proof of guilt is required whatsoever.”
“But it would be stupid,” a French correspondent intervened, “to pass an obviously wrongful verdict when the whole world is watching. Bolsheviks would never resort to such a thing.”
“There will be executions, you mark my words,” said Luigi, a little Italian with a beaky nose. “The authorities want to force poorly performing employees to work harder. Soviet industry is rife with substandard production. They want to tackle it.”
Seibert would listen to no one and was loudly indignant about the fact that the OGPU had named among the saboteurs a number of German citizens who were working in the mines on contracts.
“When our ambassador reported to Berlin about this story,” he said, “Germany almost broke off diplomatic relations with Russia. The country is up in arms. The Russian secret police have arrested my compatriots simply to show that the saboteurs had foreign connections. I don’t know what the Kremlin is thinking of! The day after tomorrow, there will be an election to the Reichstag, and thanks to this scandal, the communists will lose a great many votes.”
“Don’t pretend to be so upset about it,” laughed Luigi. “You’ve made a career for yourself out of the story.”
Seibert had indeed become something of a celebrity in his own country. Following Germany’s defeat in the Great War, patriotic feelings were running high, and any report on the sufferings of the German people brought forth a storm of protest. Seibert had been allowed personal access to the Germans who had been arrested, and he had gone to Berlin several times to give interviews about his visits to a Bolshevik jail. He had even been invited to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and had decided that he would, in future, most definitely go in for politics. He had hugely enjoyed his role as spokesman for the German people.
At last, the spectators were allowed in, and the hall filled with a hubbub of excited voices and the urgent shouts of stewards directing people to their places. The wealthier spectators took out field glasses and opera glasses and, in the absence of the main players, began to inspect the foreigners. Klim felt uneasy as if all the glittering lenses were directed at him alone.
When the guards brought in the defendants, a gasp of disappointment went up in the hall. Seibert even took off his spectacles and wiped them with his handkerchief as if he could not believe his eyes.
“So, these are the criminals?” he asked.
Klim was also amazed by the appearance of the saboteurs. Without realizing it, he had been infected by the mood of his colleagues and begun to picture the accused as fanatical, menacing individuals prepared to risk their lives to challenge the Bolshevik system. But on the defendants’ bench, he saw not proud counter-revolutionary conspirators but a bunch of ordinary-looking, disheveled men, glancing around them nervously.