‘She’s dead, then?’
Volkov looks at him without replying. Suddenly he swivels his chair, grabs a file from a cabinet behind him, and swivels back to the desk. He slaps the file down on its surface.
‘And so now there’s no reason for you to hold back. She implicated you in her confession, of course. There are pages and pages of it.’ Volkov taps the file and then wrinkles his nose. ‘But all the same I wasn’t … one hundred per cent convinced.’
Volkov’s eyes are clear, grey, unflinching. ‘She implicated you … of course.’ It could be true. If they threatened her mother, for example … And yet he is sure that Volkov is lying. He hasn’t got what he wanted from Brodskaya. Perhaps she got away; escaped him. Prisoners do sometimes succeed in committing suicide, even though they are forced to sleep with their hands outside their blankets in case they strangle themselves secretly, or gouge their wrists with their nails. Brodskaya might have been killed herself. Or perhaps Volkov is lying in a different way and Brodskaya is still alive. She might be here in the Lubyanka, still holding out. Volkov might have said to her, ‘I have Alekseyev’s confession here. Of course, he implicated you. There’s no reason for you to hold back now.’
He wants to believe that she’s still alive, but knows that she is probably dead. For some reason they’ve held back with him. A few nights on the conveyor belt and a beating-up are nothing. They haven’t tortured him. The guards have let him know that he’s got off lightly so far. They drop hints about what goes on in the dungeons.
‘They’ll put you in the meat-grinder down there.’
‘You know what a standing cell is? You’ll be lucky if you don’t find out.’
Don’t think of what might have gone on before she died. She is dead now, and out of it. But if it hadn’t been for him, Brodskaya would never have become involved. He asked her to do the biopsy and she agreed. And then the amputation.
‘It’ll be Dr Brodskaya who does the operation, Gorya. She’s very good. You’ve seen her, she’s the one who did your biopsy. You remember: she has her hair in a bun, and glasses.’
‘I don’t like her. Dad says she’s a Jew.’
‘She was a good surgeon,’ says Andrei now.
Volkov’s face twists. He leans forward, lifts the file high, smashes it down on the desk. ‘Don’t think that I will protect you!’ he cries.
There is sweat on Volkov’s forehead. He wants them all dead, because his son is dying. Andrei understands him.
‘It was Brodskaya who recommended amputation,’ says Volkov. ‘You were persuaded by her.’
He’s offering Andrei a chance. Or perhaps pretending to offer him that chance, so that Andrei will betray himself by grabbing at it.
‘It was the only possible course of treatment,’ says Andrei. ‘Any surgeon would have taken the same decision.’
‘ “Treatment”? You call such butchery “treatment”? My son is dying because of it.’
At the edges of Andrei’s vision, black is thickening. Directly ahead of him there is still light. He can still see Volkov’s face and hear his voice. He draws a deep, slow breath. He is not going to faint. He should put his head down but Volkov would take that as an admission of defeat.
‘I heard that. I am very sorry.’
‘Sorry? Why would you be sorry unless you were guilty?’
‘I meant it in a different sense,’ says Andrei.
Volkov’s voice echoes. ‘I trusted you. I picked you out.’
‘We did what we could. Sometimes that isn’t enough.’
‘I trusted you. I should have killed him myself before I let you butchers near him with your saws and your knives. I should have taken him home with me.’ There is a long silence, and then Volkov says quietly, ‘He was perfect.’ The fat toes that Volkov tickled when Gorya was a baby. The rosy little legs kicking after his bath. Volkov comes in, dismissing the nurse, takes the baby and jumps him on his knee. How strong he is! The baby laughs at his father. Perfect.
Andrei can barely move his lips, they are so cold and stiff. Blackness advances towards the centre of his vision, but there is still a hole through which he can see Volkov. The blackness is not pure black. It has a texture. He sees Volkov move through it. Now he has gone out of Andrei’s field of vision.
Volkov’s voice comes from somewhere towards the window. ‘They’ve sedated him. He’ll die more quickly that way but he won’t suffer as much. That’s the choice I made.’
Andrei bows his head. The blackness is underneath him now as well, rushing upwards. Terror of death sweeps over him. ‘Excuse me,’ he says aloud, ‘I can’t –’
He can still hear Volkov. Quick footsteps across the wooden floor. A hand is under his chin, pulling his head back. Now Andrei can see nothing. Volkov’s hand is warm against his icy skin.
‘You’ve taken something,’ says Volkov. Andrei hears a door open and Volkov’s voice, further away now, calling loudly. ‘Bring a doctor! Immediately!’ and then a rush of feet, and a door banging.
He was away somewhere but now he is back. He can see light again. He coughs as ammonia hits his throat. Someone is taking his pulse. A sharp voice, not Volkov’s, says, ‘Have you taken poison?’
‘Where,’ says Andrei, fighting the thickness of his tongue in his mouth, ‘would I get poison?’
The doctor lifts Andrei’s eyelids to peer at his pupils. Quickly and thoroughly he checks Andrei over as a vet checks a horse.
‘He’ll do,’ he says. ‘Just a temporary loss of consciousness.’
He does not mention the head injury. It’s not his job. He has only to confirm that the prisoner is fit for interrogation to proceed. Rags of darkness swirl through Andrei’s head. When you die, this is what it will be like. Remember this.
It’s releasing him. He’s not going to die. It was just an ordinary syncope and now he’s been dragged back to consciousness.
‘There are no signs that any toxic substance has been ingested,’ says the doctor, presumably to Volkov.
At the edge of Andrei’s vision darkness continues to fray like rotten cloth. He glimpses a more solid shadow, which slowly resolves itself into Volkov.
‘He’s all right, then,’ says Volkov. ‘Fine, you can go.’
Quickly the doctor gathers his instruments, looking neither at Andrei nor Volkov, and makes for the door. Andrei licks his lips. No good asking for help from him. He’s not a doctor but a machine. They must turn them out from a production line these days.
‘Drink this,’ says Volkov, producing a glass of water. ‘We haven’t finished yet.’
Andrei sips the water slowly. Drops roll over his tongue and into his throat. As soon as he tastes the water he realizes how thirsty he is.
He could lie down by the edge of a stream and lap from it like a beast.
‘We are treating you well,’ Volkov observes.
Andrei looks up. The trouble with Volkov is that Andrei keeps forgetting who he really is. Volkov has a way of coming close to you. Andrei was on the point of returning the small ironic smile on Volkov’s lips.
‘Could I have more water?’ he asks.
‘I said that we are treating you well, not that we are spoiling you.’ But nevertheless Volkov crosses to his desk, where someone has put down a jug of water. He fills the glass, and returns it to Andrei.
‘Yes, you are alive,’ Volkov murmurs, with a slight emphasis on ‘you’. ‘As alive as life itself, as they say. But soon my boy will not be.’ He says it like a parent, with disbelief. The fact is there but the father still can’t grasp that his son can really die before him. ‘Tell me. When she did the operation, she had the power. Those instruments were in her hands. You were not in the operating theatre; I’ve checked exactly who was present. Those cancerous cells travelled from the tumour in the leg to Gorya’s lungs. Either she let it happen or she made it happen. I’m not blaming you. She pulled the wool over your eyes, too.’
He turns to Andrei as he says this. It’s a naked look, man to man. We are both o
n the same side. You were tricked too. Deceived, just like me. Why not admit it? Either Volkov really believes what he’s saying – for the moment at least – or he has the power of convincing himself when he needs to. Or possibly it’s his training. There’s something in Volkov, despite everything, which makes Andrei aware that he must fight down the desire to please him.
‘He’ll be so angry with me. The running track cost so much money.’
‘You don’t know how angry he gets.’
In a sense Volkov is right. The amputation did no good. It turned out to be exactly what Volkov feared it would be: a pointless mutilation. Andrei feels a flush of pain, almost shame. We did the best we could, in the circumstances, he tells himself, as he’s already told himself many times. We can’t predict whether there will be metastasis or not. We have to proceed on the assumption that a child’s life can be saved. And what if we didn’t intervene – what would our patients’ families say then?
Andrei gathers himself. Volkov has said too much, and revealed too much of himself. Andrei will have to disappear, like Brodskaya. He’s been fighting that knowledge but his body knows that death is coming. That’s why he passed out. It was weakness but it doesn’t matter. He will go on.
He is in an empty, frozen street. Snow whirls, sinking and falling. Vast banks of snow lie on either side of him, like pillows. If he lay down the snow would take him in. But he mustn’t do that. He has to get to the hospital, where there are patients waiting. There are few medicines left but there are still things he can do and say which will be of use. He walks like an old man, bent and shuffling. He leans heavily on the cherrywood stick which belongs to Anna’s father. On either side the dead lean on the snowdrifts, watching him. Now Brodskaya is there too. She is already covered by thickly falling flakes but he can still see her eyes. They watch him to make sure he keeps on walking.
*
‘That’s not how metastasis takes place. Surely it’s better to believe that what was done was done in good faith?’ says Andrei to Volkov. ‘Brodskaya made the only decision she could possibly have made. It was correct to carry out the surgery, following the biopsy.’
Volkov frowns. ‘ “Correct”?’ he asks.
‘Yes, professionally correct. What if we had decided to do nothing, for fear of what might happen to us if the surgery didn’t cure him and the disease metastasized? Or what if we had pretended we could do nothing for him, and referred Gorya elsewhere?’
‘You … amaze … me,’ says Volkov, slowly and softly. ‘Where do you think you are?’
Andrei doesn’t answer.
‘You must think you have nothing to lose. Let me assure you that you have a great deal to lose. You don’t understand me yet.’
‘I understand that Brodskaya is dead.’
‘But you are alive.’
There is a long pause. Andrei realizes that the room isn’t really silent. He can hear the muffled clatter of typewriter keys from the next room. He can hear a faint rumble in Volkov’s guts. He wonders what time it is. Time to eat, perhaps. Perhaps he’ll never leave this room. No doubt people have been killed before, during interrogation. Suddenly, Volkov could attack him. No one would stop him. No doubt there are protocols but Volkov is powerful enough to get round them, as well as to control what is written in the report of Andrei’s interrogation. Maybe they’ll say he died of a heart attack, like Brodskaya. It could happen now or it could happen later. Before he dies he will allow himself to think of Anna. By then it can do no harm. As long as she remains alive, and the baby remains alive within her, he can sink into that darkness. He will have to go through the terror first, but then it will be over.
He wonders if Gorya feels the same, sedated as he is. He is an intelligent child. He will know that something new is happening to him, and perhaps he will also know that it is called death. His face will change. His parents will see that Gorya has turned away from them. Not because he doesn’t love them, but because he has to. Sometimes the mother will cry out and try to drag him back. It may even work for a while, but then the tide will be too strong for her and she will have to release him.
He’d like to be with Gorya. He would know how to look after him. He has learned not to retreat from dying patients, although he understands why that happens. You are frustrated, and you feel a sense of failure, and so you leave the final stages to the nurses. But there’s a lot you can do, very small things, to make those stages pass as well as they can. He hopes that Gorya has got someone good with him.
‘I am treating you well,’ says Volkov. ‘Do you understand that? I remember that you’re an Irkutsk boy –’
There is a knock at the door. A woman’s voice says, ‘Excuse me, Comrade Volkov, there is an urgent phone call for you. Would you prefer to take it in your office or outside?’
‘Outside,’ says Volkov. ‘Clear the office. And I need two guards in here for this prisoner.’
The guards stand, one on either side of Andrei’s chair. They would have liked to remove the chair but Volkov said over his shoulder, ‘He’s to remain seated.’
Volkov has been gone for a long time. An hour at least, perhaps two. There is no clock in the room. Andrei retreats, deep inside himself. He will not think of anything except the peace of this moment. The guards are not shoving or beating him. The room is warm. Outside the wind has got up, and the light is fading. Snow falls, not thickly enough to obscure the pattern of the branches. He is in Moscow, in the Lubyanka. The city is going on with its life out there. The typewriter is still clacking. The glass of water is on the desk in front of him, a third full. He considers asking if he can drink it, but decides against it. He doesn’t want to stir up the animosity of the guards. He’s never seen this pair before and they are in a different league from Bighead and Squirrel.
But the typist doesn’t seem afraid of them. At one point her typing stops, and she opens the door and comes right into the room. She says in a voice which has an edge of flirtation in it: ‘Would either of you boys like tea?’
Yes, they say, nodding their heads, they would certainly like tea. Plenty of sugar, please.
After a while the typist returns with two steaming glasses of tea.
‘Very nice,’ says one of the guards. ‘I appreciate that.’
She stands there, just within Andrei’s field of vision, simpering. Incredible, but she seems to find the guard attractive. Andrei can smell the tea. Real tea. The guard takes a gulp.
‘I don’t know how you can drink it as hot as that,’ says the typist.
‘Always have.’
‘Iron mouth, he’s got,’ says the other guard approvingly.
‘My dad was the same,’ says the typist. ‘A real man.’
She goes out. The guards look at each other.
‘Nice tea,’ says Iron Mouth, with meaning.
‘If you can get it,’ rejoins the other.
They must know that there isn’t a microphone in the room, thinks Andrei. Presumably Volkov has the power to make sure of that.
He’s beyond tired now. Beyond tension, or even fear. Every minute feels so full that he could live his whole life inside it.
I am alive, he thinks. Everything is complete.
It is dark and late when Volkov comes back. Andrei has been taken out to pee once, but he has had nothing more to eat or drink. He has just sat there, without moving, barely thinking. It might be midnight, or it might only be mid-evening. The typing in the outer office stopped for a while, then restarted. Probably they work shifts, just as the guards and interrogators do. As Volkov enters the room, the guards snap to attention, their eyes fixed on a point in the distance. Andrei also looks up.
Volkov is exhausted. The bones of his skull seem to push against his skin. He is wearing a dress uniform with military decorations, as if he’s been to the ballet. He dismisses the guards and they clump away into the outer office. Someone is still typing. Do they never stop? Yes, the clicketty-tap stops and he hears a murmur of voices. But he mustn’t think of outside. H
e must concentrate on Volkov, who drops the file he’s holding on to the desk, and sits down heavily. Volkov spreads out his hands on the desk top and gazes down at them as if he has never seen them before.
‘You’re an Irkutsk boy,’ he says, as if there’s been no interruption. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll soon be seeing your homeland again.’
Instantly, as if their minds are linked, Andrei understands him. Volkov is telling him that he will not be shot or beaten to death. He will not disappear somewhere in the Lubyanka dungeons. He’ll be tried, sentenced, and sent to a camp. Everything is already decided, at least in Volkov’s mind, and that means it will happen. It’s within his power.
Andrei’s mind floods with an extraordinary blend of joy and rage. He will not die. Now he knows it, he also knows how afraid he was. And how angry, that Volkov can do this to him.
There was never any possibility of release. You knew that, Andrei tells himself. You are not a child. Arrest and interrogation have to be followed by guilt and sentencing. If he’s lucky it will be five years. Surely ten is the most it can be.
‘Saboteurs,’ murmurs Volkov, still looking at the back of his hands as if they contain an answer. ‘Traitors, criminals, spies … Can you imagine the scum I have to deal with?’ His fists clench. He heaves himself up and his chair crashes backwards to the floor. He leans forward over the desk, breathing heavily. ‘Why do they do it, eh? Can you tell me that? Why do these cunts think that they can get away with it?’
Andrei holds himself still. Who is this ‘they’? Volkov is glaring at him.
‘You don’t know, do you?’ demands Volkov. ‘You don’t fucking know anything. There you sit, in your own little world. You’re in the Lubyanka, my friend! Things are hotting up! Doesn’t that mean anything to you? Listen. I understand you now. You made a mistake, that’s all. You kept bad company. Insufficient vigilance. But my son liked you and that means something to me. Levina – that’s a Jewish name, but she’s not Jewish, is she, your wife? Don’t worry, we know all about her. She’s in the clear. They’re Jews, the lot of them. Things are coming to the boil, my friend. Soon they’ll all be in the pot together. Listen. My son liked you. That means something to me.’ Volkov is sweating heavily. A fume of vodka comes off him. ‘At the highest level, concerns are being expressed about your profession,’ says Volkov, suddenly pedantic and enunciating each syllable. ‘The very highest level. Do you understand me?’