Grigori Trushkin is a couple of years older than Vlad, a Russian worker’s son who, like many other guards, was trained in the Young Pioneers and Komsomol. He was only four years old when the Bolsheviks brought down the Tsar; he remembers nothing other than the Communist government. After leaving school, he was forged into a young OGPU soldier when the wealthy farmers had to be broken at the beginning of the thirties. Trushkin can discuss Marxism and class struggles without any problem, but he also enjoys chess, and loves to play Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring on his gramophone, in spite of the fact that it has been banned for many years.
‘Stravinsky came from my home town,’ he says proudly.
Trushkin takes Vlad out and about in Leningrad, and does what Sven never did with Aron: he allows him to discover the city.
The heels of their boots tap loudly on the wide, cobbled streets of Leningrad, and their blue uniforms make them highly visible. They are never stopped by the police and asked to show their identity papers, not once. They merely nod, like colleagues. And all around them on the pavements, ordinary citizens lower their voices and glance away nervously.
Vlad feels good when he is with Grigori Trushkin. So does Aron. They wander along the quayside by the River Neva and visit a dimly lit teahouse, eventually ending up in a smoky restaurant where vodka glasses are frequently raised — but Trushkin doesn’t drink as much as many of his colleagues. He prefers hot chocolate.
Later, in a grocery shop in the city, Vlad finds anchovies and smoked eel from the Baltic. He buys some pieces of fish and savours every mouthful — and suddenly Aron is thinking of the island across the sea, and his own shore.
He ought to get in touch, write home to his mother. But it’s impossible, of course. Countries outside Russia are full of spies, and anyone who is in contact with foreigners also becomes a spy. Letters are much too dangerous.
After three months’ hard work, Vlad is given a reward by Rugajev: a watch, presumably confiscated from an enemy of the state. He places it on his left wrist so that he will know what time it is when he is interrogating prisoners or writing up reports.
The pressure is increasing from above, with constant demands to elicit more and more names.
Comrade Trushkin conducts interrogations that are at least as harsh as anyone else’s, but one evening, as Vlad is about to run and catch him up a few blocks to the north of Kresty, he sees Trushkin stop by a park bench, then bend down and drop something on the ground before quickly moving on.
Vlad walks up to the bench and picks up an envelope addressed to a woman in Leningrad.
He stares at the name: Olga Bibikova. He recognizes the address; he has written it down himself after an interrogation.
Maxim Bibikov’s wife. But Bibikov is dead; he got a bullet in the back of his neck three days ago.
Vlad doesn’t understand, so he hurries along and catches up with Trushkin. ‘Comrade.’ He holds up the letter. ‘What’s this?’
Trushkin looks, and smiles like a shy schoolboy. This is unusual.
‘It’s just a letter.’ He grabs the envelope and slips it in his pocket. ‘I leave it in a dry spot on the street in the hope that someone will find it and post it.’
‘But why?’ Vlad asks. ‘What kind of letter is it?’
Trushkin laughs, quietly and nervously. ‘It’s just a message.’
‘About what?’
‘I wrote and told Bibikov’s wife that he died of tuberculosis,’ Trushkin says. ‘So that she won’t have to keep wondering what’s happened to him.’
Vlad looks around; there is no sign of anyone else in a blue uniform. Vlad wants to move on, but Aron makes him stay, ask more questions. It transpires that Trushkin has written a series of anonymous letters to the relatives of those who have been executed, informing them that their husband or father has passed away following a heart attack or a lung infection. Short letters, admittedly, but still...
‘It saves them wondering what’s happened,’ Trushkin says again, with a shrug. ‘It’s just to give them peace of mind.’
Aron nods silently, but Vlad is furious. Letters are dangerous. They leave a trail. And he knows that this is wrong, writing letters and sympathizing with the enemy.
‘Stop writing them,’ he says to Trushkin. ‘Immediately.’
Sympathy is the wrong attitude — it means the battle is lost.
Vlad refuses to participate in this particular battle, in spite of the fact that anxious wives and parents regularly turn up at the prison. They stand there with warm clothes and food parcels for the prisoners, pleading for help. As a guard, Vlad is used to it. He listens to them, his face expressionless, and gives the response he has been taught to give: ‘Razberemsja. We will take a closer look at this case.’
Silently, he wonders, how can these people still be at liberty? They are related to criminals; they should all be arrested. This does happen frequently, but there are still many left out there.
Why haven’t we seized all our enemies yet?
Vlad must not lose his grip, not here at Kresty in his uniform. If a woman with frightened eyes stops him in the street, perhaps with a child in her arms, he simply stares her down and goes on his way.
And if she won’t give up, if she calls after him and catches him up, he stops, plants his legs in their shiny boots wide apart, and replies, ‘I’m sorry. Your husband has been moved elsewhere.’
Which is always true.
Gerlof
As the sun blazed down on the landscape outside the windows, Gerlof drifted around the corridors of the residential home. It was cool and airy inside, and it was easy to get about. There were no raised thresholds, no stones, no clumps of grass — but it was lonely. Very little happened.
He had few visitors. John was busy with the shop and the campsite, and Tilda was away on holiday. His daughters popped in, but they were always on the way to somewhere else.
There was a poster by the main door advertising a course that was due to begin in August: ‘Make Friends with the Net’. Gerlof assumed it didn’t have anything to do with learning to fish.
He missed the talks they had during the rest of the year. Veronica Kloss had come in to talk about her family history, and it had been really interesting. Now, of course, he knew quite a lot more about the Kloss family than she had mentioned that day.
There was a small library in the home, so he went down there and found a book by an Anglo-American historian, Robert Conquest, about the Soviet Union in the thirties. He borrowed it and took it up to his room. He wanted to know what kind of life Aron and Sven Fredh had encountered when they reached the new country, and the title of the book made him fear the worst. It was called The Great Terror.
One quiet Friday towards the end of July, Gerlof took the lift down to the ground floor. It was just as cool and quiet down there. Using his walking stick for support, he made his way slowly along the corridor. Greta Fredh’s room had been almost at the end, if he remembered rightly. It was now occupied by someone called Blenda Pettersson, according to the name on the door.
He remembered what Aron had said on the phone: ‘They took everything I had here.’ He had meant the croft by the shore. Nothing else. Hadn’t he?
Gerlof looked at the nameplate, but didn’t knock.
‘Hello there — are you lost?’
A dark-haired, tanned young woman was smiling at him; she was wearing a red uniform and was obviously a temporary member of staff.
Gerlof shook his head and introduced himself. ‘I live upstairs,’ he said. ‘I’m just having a little wander round, calling in on my neighbours.’