If you don’t have a job, you’re scarcely a person any more.
Andrei won’t know that she came here with the parcel. They took him away with nothing, just the things he had when he was arrested. What if he thinks she didn’t come because she was afraid? Like a fool, she’d thought he was still close.
She’ll go to Moscow. She’ll have to arrange it somehow – but how? She’d have to show her passport to buy the railway ticket. Anna clutches her parcel tighter as her thoughts fly one way and then another like a flock of sparrows. She doesn’t know anyone who can help them in Moscow. The Lubyanka …
No, she tells herself. It’s a name, that’s all. It’s probably no worse there than the Kresty. Except that in Moscow, there’s the Kremlin, which is the centre of it all –
Anna stands stock-still, her lips moving. She’s making herself conspicuous. One or two people glance at her uneasily. The next thing she’ll be down on her knees in the snow, howling like a dog. They’ve seen it all before, and what happens next, too.
The woman who was behind Anna in the queue turns away from the window. She’s empty-handed now; they’ve allowed her to hand in her parcel. As she passes Anna, she brushes against her, as if accidentally. ‘It’s not good to stand about,’ she murmurs, and then she’s gone and Anna’s not even sure if she heard the words or imagined them. But they have their effect. Anna comes to herself as the queue shuffles forward a couple of paces. Heavy, huddled figures that look neither to right nor left, but only ahead, or down at the crushed snow beneath their feet. It is so cold. The wind is rising again. That icy wind that sweeps off the Neva and funnels up the streets, twisting and turning, fingering its way into every stone crevice. Later on it will snow, Anna thinks. The marks of the shuffling queue will be wiped out.
She turns away, and begins to walk briskly, head lowered into the wind. She must be careful. If she falls, it might hurt the baby. She walks faster, feeling as if a thousand eyes are watching her back.
She’s walked only a couple of blocks when she knows she must stop. Cold sweat covers her body, and she can hardly breathe. She stumbles into an entrance, out of the wind. Anna leans against the stone. Just to be out of that bitter wind feels like a reprieve. It’s an entrance like any other, deep-set, with a closed double door. It smells of damp stone. Rubbish has blown into the corner, and no one has swept it away. People hurry past along the street, taking no notice of Anna. They want to get home before the snow thickens into a blizzard.
She’s always wanted to get home, too. It didn’t matter how many chores there were, or how heavy the bags of shopping she had to lug up the stairs. She could cope, never mind if Kolya was being difficult, or Andrei was late home for the third time that week. Of course she’d grumbled sometimes. Sometimes she greeted Andrei with a dry, cold complaint about the spoiled food. When Kolya pushed her too far she would shout at him, ‘You think studying means staring out of the window for an hour with the book in front of you? It won’t go in by magic, you know! What’s going to become of you if you don’t work and pass your exams?’
‘So how many exams did you pass?’ Kolya retorted once, and she replied furiously, ‘Not as many as I’d have liked!’ and then swallowed the bitter words that were rushing into her mouth. If she hadn’t had to care for him, ever since her mother’s death, she might have studied art. She used to cherish the idea of being a student, free to do nothing but think, work, develop. Kolya had no idea how fortunate he was.
‘I just want to live my life!’ shouted Kolya, and she stared at him helplessly, not knowing where to begin to explain to him how wrong he was.
But perhaps it’s Kolya who is right. He’s taken a close look at the life she and Andrei lead, and decided that he doesn’t want any of it, thank you very much. She and Andrei have done everything they were supposed to do. They both believed in work, duty, commitment, self-discipline. Andrei has passed countless exams. Sometimes Anna thinks she’s never stopped working. At home as well as at the nursery, there is always one more thing to be done than she can manage.
She tried to keep her father from despair with endless glasses of tea and home-grown vegetables. She made sure that Kolya gave him peace, and protected the time he needed for his writing. She lay awake at night, listening to her father pace sleeplessly from one side of the room to the other, and wondered if she should go to him or leave him alone. All the while she was doing her best to bring up Kolya as she believed she would bring up her own child.
At nursery the work was endless, but she didn’t mind that. What was difficult was meeting all the targets set for the children while also giving them a life that was worth living. She almost has to laugh when she looks back on herself, so endlessly busy, cleaning, cooking, preserving, ‘getting hold of’ whatever she could, running here and there, studying child psychology even though she found most of it incomprehensibly dull, poring over Kolya’s school-book Latin. The statistics course; battling with the Maleviches; trying to cope with Morozova; saving seeds from year to year in carefully labelled packets; cleaning out the drains with washing soda …
Much good had it all done. It’s comic, really, how naive she’s been. Always looking on the bright side! Even the siege didn’t teach her a lesson. She came out of those terrible years still confident that there was such a thing as normal life to return to, and cherish.
But now she has nothing to go home to. No one would know if she stayed here all night, huddled against this wall.
They’ve taken Andrei to Moscow. How do prisoners travel? By ordinary train? Do other passengers see them?
No, the authorities won’t take that risk. They’ll be in sealed cars, so that it looks to the casual eye as though goods are being transported, not human beings. People who are arrested have to drop out of life and disappear without trace. You might know a bit of detail about one or two arrests, if these are people close to you. Suddenly a colleague isn’t there. Husbands and wives go about looking dazed and pitiful. Even the authorities can’t make a wife fail to notice that her husband hasn’t come home, but each tiny circle of awareness is isolated.
Sometimes, though, you are supposed to talk about a notorious arrest, loudly and dramatically, in order to prove that you haven’t got the slightest sympathy with the person who’s been picked up. Anna is old enough to remember Kirov’s murder, in 1934. She was only sixteen but she remembers the loud public declarations as well as the guarded whispers. She even remembers a joke that went the rounds for years: If all the people who murdered Kirov were laid end to end, the line would stretch from here to the Kremlin. What is said aloud, of course, is very different. ‘Have you heard? Filipov has been arrested.’ And then a careful glance. ‘He turned out to be a Trotskyist sympathizer. It just goes to show. I was completely taken in by him!’
Sometimes they talk about ‘ripping away the masks’, an expression that makes Anna think of a sinister fancy-dress party. Now they’ll use such expressions of Andrei. Of course people who appear to be perfectly ordinary colleagues can suddenly turn out to be spies, saboteurs and wreckers! If you haven’t learned that by now, where have you been?
‘Haven’t you heard? Dr Alekseyev has been arrested. Thankfully, he didn’t succeed in pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes.’
Anna leans her cheek against the stone entrance pillar. Its coldness and roughness are comforting. ‘I’m stone, aren’t I? What else do you expect – sympathy? I’m here to hold the house up, that’s all.’
Inside her, the baby moves. Poor little one, you don’t know anything. Just keep on blindly and confidently growing. Don’t give up, not for a second, and I promise you that I won’t give up either. Wait just a minute. I’ll soon feel better and then we’ll go home. It’s only that your father –
She’ll get money to him. There are things she can sell. You are allowed to send money.
Suddenly the face of a former cook’s assistant at the nursery comes into Anna’s mind. A long, hardened face, utterly devoid of beauty. Skin that looke
d like bark. She had strong forearms and her muscles bulged as she lifted the heavy soup pots. One day Anna asked if she had children at home. Musya laughed, a short bark of a laugh, slapped down a loaf of bread and began to carve it. ‘I know better than that,’ she said. ‘What’s the point? It only makes you soft, see, and then you can’t carry on.’
Anna hasn’t seen her for years. Not since before the war. She disappeared one day, just didn’t come into work, and the space where she had been closed over. Anna remembers another thing. If anyone shivered or complained, Musya would say, ‘Cold! You call this cold?’
If Musya were here now she’d say, ‘Bad! You call this bad? Look at you, you’ve got enough to eat and a warm bed to go home to. What’s the point of complaining? It only makes you soft, and then you can’t carry on.’
If only they don’t hurt him. If only he can keep his strength up.
It’s Andrei’s second day on the conveyor belt. He’s standing in a pool of light which is so harsh and dazzling that behind it his interrogator becomes a dark stain on the opposite wall. If Andrei closes his eyes the interrogator shouts and one of the guards slaps Andrei across the face. The wound on his head has opened again and is oozing blood.
There are three interrogators, working in shifts. Dmitriev has just come on duty. He has a soft voice and a sympathetic manner. He tuts whenever a guard hits Andrei, but of course makes no move to prevent it. It’s just one of those unfortunate but necessary things which a civilized man has to deplore. If only he could do something about it!
Dmitriev needs Andrei’s help if he’s to help him in return. Surely he can understand that? Andrei moves his head sideways. He can’t see the pile of papers on Dmitriev’s desk, but he knows that they are there and what is in them. The chief document is Andrei’s statement. It is all ready, typed out, waiting only for Andrei’s signature. There are also witness statements, but Andrei hasn’t been allowed to see these. At the start of his first full interrogation, he was given his own statement to read. Dmitriev was on duty then, too. He sat behind his desk and watched Andrei with his arms folded and an expectant look on his face. The lamp wasn’t even switched on. Andrei could see the whole room clearly: the desk, the shiny dark brown floor, the oily green paint on the walls, which looked as if it was still wet. There were no windows. He read the document slowly, examining each paragraph. A flush of rage went through him but he kept his eyes moving, and turned the page calmly. Take your time, he thought to himself. No need to rush, given that every second you are reading this is a second when they are not interrogating you.
They’d made a mistake when he was first brought in; at least, he’s now certain that it was a mistake, from the care they’ve taken ever since to keep him away from other prisoners. Andrei understands that the plan is for each man to feel utterly alone. When he arrived in Moscow late at night, they’d put him into a van with ‘Bread’ written on the side, and driven him straight to the Lubyanka. He’d been pretty sure where they were going. This time, he knew what to expect. They processed him, and then pushed him straight into a cell which was full of sleeping bodies.
Full indeed. There wasn’t an inch to lie down. A dim greenish light shone from a bulb in a cage of wire on the ceiling. Sleepers were hunched on the two narrow benches let down from the walls, but the rest of the men were on the floor. There must have been eight or ten at least, crammed into a two-man cell. The room stank of sweat, urine and faeces. There was a large uncovered toilet bucket within inches of the sleepers’ heads. The air was full of sighs, groans and muttering.
There was no chance of lying down, but it didn’t matter. He could stand against the cell door. But suddenly there was a stir from one of the benches, and a figure sat up. ‘They just brought you in?’ he murmured. His hair hung long and matted around his face. His eyes were set so deep in their hollows that Andrei could not read them.
‘Yes.’
‘Did they transfer you from another cell?’
‘No. From Leningrad.’
‘Right.’
Andrei didn’t understand why the man’s voice changed on hearing he was from Leningrad rather than another cell in the Lubyanka. Later he would learn that there were certain prisoners – spies – who were constantly moved from cell to cell to pick up whatever information they could.
‘Where are your things?’
Andrei indicated his overcoat. ‘This is it.’
‘Nice and warm, anyway. You’d better lie down over there,’ said the man, pointing, but Andrei couldn’t see a space.
‘It’s all right, I’ll stand.’
‘Don’t be a fool, you’ll have the guards in again. Lie down there, by the bucket. What’s your name?’
Andrei told him, and the man nodded. ‘I’m Kostya Rabinovich. Cell foreman. We’ll get you sorted out in the morning. What’s your profession?’
‘I’m a doctor.’
‘Doctor, eh? Could be useful. I’m an engineer myself.’
Andrei picked his way carefully across the sleeping bodies. He eased himself down, and the men gave way for him, grumbling and sighing. He lay as still as he could, wedged in by male flesh. He had never slept so close to anyone but Anna since he was a child. The air was fetid but cold, because the small high window was open behind its bars. He didn’t mind the cold. The room would be unbearable otherwise, with the smell and the heat of all these bodies. He huddled down. Tomorrow night he would take off his pullover and roll it up for a pillow, but he couldn’t do that now, because there wasn’t room to move.
An engineer! Perhaps the entire cell was packed with surgeons and architects and marine biologists. Andrei shrugged his head down between his shoulders. The man behind him groaned, heaved his weight over, and then was still again.
Andrei could not sleep. He lay quite still, listening to the sounds around him. In the far corner of the cell, a man sobbed in his sleep. It went on for a while until there was a commotion as another man heaved himself up with a thick curse and pummelled the sleeper’s back. ‘Give it a rest, can’t you?’
From time to time a figure rose and went to the bucket. The splash of urine seemed to go on and on. Andrei’s stomach hurt, but it was only nerves. He could wait until morning.
Suddenly, from outside the cells, there was an explosion of voices. A man screamed, on and on. How could he scream like that, without taking breath? The hair crisped on the back of Andrei’s neck. At last the scream broke into a howl. There came a clatter and a thud as if something had been thrown on the floor. Guards yelled and cursed. There was the sound of blows raining on flesh. The man yelped like a dog with a choke chain around his neck. At last the noise guttered, and died. Inside the cell there was silence too. Most of the men must have woken up, but no one spoke.
Deliberately, Andrei sought out the tension in his shoulders and arms. He clenched his muscles even tighter, and then let them go. As he did so he named the muscles to himself: anterior deltoid, lateral deltoid, posterior deltoid, rotators, biceps, triceps … Over and over again he tensed and then relaxed, taking care not to nudge his neighbours. Little by little, the sounds of the cell flowed back, like peace. A man farted, another muttered in a quick, panicky voice as if he were explaining himself to somebody.
He’d expected solitary confinement. This was better, surely. They were all in the same boat and to some extent it must be organized. Kostya had said he was the foreman. He’d been in here for a while, to judge by the length of his hair.
Suddenly keys grated in the cell door, and it was opened wide. Two guards flung a man through the entrance, and then immediately stepped back and slammed the door shut. The prisoner had fallen forward, on top of the sleeping bodies. Men roused up, swearing, but Kostya was already on his feet. ‘Lie down, can’t you? Where’s that doctor? Over here! Make way for him.’
Andrei got up. This time it was easier to get across the cell. The other men shuffled up so he could kneel by the collapsed prisoner. The pulse was rapid, but weak. He put his head to the prisoner
’s chest and listened to his heart. ‘He’s fainted. Call the guards and ask them for ammonia.’
‘Call the guards! Can’t you bring him round? He’s been on the conveyor belt, that’s all.’
Before long, the man came round. His legs and feet were horribly swollen. In the dim light his face was distorted, with blackened eyes, cracked lips and a swollen tongue. Andrei wondered if this was the man he had heard screaming.
‘He’s been on the conveyor belt for five days, no wonder,’ said Kostya. All the time they talked in the same almost noiseless murmur.
‘What’s that?’
‘The interrogators work you over in teams. You can’t sleep and you have to stand up. Sometimes they move you from room to room so you get disorientated. This is Mitya’s third time on the belt, but they’ve had no luck with him yet. He’s tough, this one. They won’t be very happy. He just says no to everything. It’s hard but it’s the way to survive. Start signing things and that’s the end of you.’
They gave Mitya water, and he sank into sleep.
‘He’ll be all right in the morning,’ said Kostya, somewhat optimistically in Andrei’s view. ‘Leave him now, get your sleep.’
But Andrei had barely settled back on the floor when a voice behind him began to murmur: ‘ “Neither hast thou destroyed me in my transgressions, but in thy compassion raised me up when I lay in despair …” ’
So they were still jailing believers. Odd, thought Andrei, that you have to be in prison before you know what’s really going on. ‘Raised me up …’ Can he possibly believe it? The voice of the praying man was like a trickle of water. Surely I’ll be able to sleep soon, thought Andrei. ‘The interrogators work you over in teams.’ Probably it was best to know these things, or Kostya wouldn’t have said them. He seemed a decent man –