Everything has changed since the baby’s birth. Kolya is part of a different generation. He is an uncle now; not Anna’s child, but a brother who is almost an adult.
‘Don’t you worry, Anna,’ he said this morning, as she lay there floating, exhausted, with the baby in the crook of her arm, ‘I’ll look after you while Andrei’s away.’
He’s bored, she knows that. He needs to go off, tramping through the snow. He needs to mend things and make things and relieve his restlessness with action. He’s not a country boy but he’s shaping himself that way, as if he thinks Leningrad has turned its back on him.
She’s not going to start thinking about Kolya’s future, because she always comes to the point where her mind hits rock and stalls: What kind of future have we given him? This is their life now. He has to chop wood, feed the stove, repair the ravages of winter, plan the spring planting, do odd jobs in exchange for eggs or honey. She wants to tell him that it won’t be for ever. He will get his own life back. He’ll be able to study, and one day they’ll have a piano again. But she says nothing. He’s not a child, to be comforted with promises. He doesn’t want her to make him feel better. He pulls on his boots and goes off on his own.
Anna strokes the baby’s head. She’s sucking well now. Last night she woke for feeds every two hours while Anna slipped in and out of sleep, feeling the baby’s lips pull and smack. She is small and needs to put on weight. When she was born it seemed impossible this could be the big, vigorous baby who had kicked so hard in the womb. She was a little, curled-up creature with a slick of dark hair and long, spidery fingers. When she opened her eyes they were pieces of a darker sky than ever shone over Leningrad. She cried if she was left alone; she wanted to be held tight, as if she were still inside Anna. When you gave her a finger she gripped as if she would never let it go. Even the soles of her feet curled when Anna touched them, and her toes tried to grip too.
Anna cannot believe she ever thought the baby was a boy. As soon as she was born that idea dissolved as if it had never existed. She was herself and nothing else. Anna watched her for hours, learning how expressions flitted over her face and how she drew up her knees and screamed with pain if she fed too quickly.
‘Poor little mouse,’ Kolya said once, touching her cheek with the back of his finger.
‘She’s tough,’ said Galya. ‘She’ll be fine.’
There’s no snow on the twigs outside her window. Already, Anna sees signs of the coming spring, still locked inside winter. The sun grows stronger every day. By noon yesterday the temperature was up to two degrees, and there was a steady tick-tick-tick as water dripped from the icicles on the sunny side of the verandah.
She loves the way the seasons follow one another. No one can take that away. Newspaper faces and radio voices can rant as much as they like, but they can’t make a single bud open, or a bird build its nest.
Yesterday Kolya was on a ladder outside the window, making repairs. A piece of loose guttering had to be fixed before the thaw began in earnest, or the weight of water might pull it off the roof. She lay and watched him, as Galya passed up tools and told him what to do. And he turned round, looked down over his shoulder at her, and smiled, not with the resentment of a teenager but with the reassurance of a man. She couldn’t hear his words through the double glass but she saw his lips move, and knew that he was saying, ‘It’s all right, I know how to do this. You go indoors and keep warm.’
He was afraid when Anna went into labour. It was evening, and Galya sent him off to the Sokolovs’. He came to see Anna before he left, peering around the door nervously, as if he expected to see her bathed in blood. She smiled with more confidence than she felt and said, ‘It’s all right, Kolya. When you come back in the morning I expect the baby will be here.’
When he came back in the morning, the baby was there, sleeping by the bed in the old cradle Galya had dug out from somewhere. Anna was asleep. Kolya sat by the bed in the little bentwood chair that just fitted between bed and wall, and waited for her to wake up. When she did, at first she didn’t remember anything, and then a creaking cry made it all true again.
‘Do you want to pick her up?’
‘I won’t know how to,’ said Kolya.
‘Pick her up carefully and put your hand behind her neck to support it.’
‘She’s so wobbly!’
‘Yes, I know.’
He sat beside her, holding the baby, who had subsided back into sleep. ‘Are they usually as small as this?’
‘She’s not that small. Galya says she’s almost three kilos.’
‘She’s just a mouse. Was I like this?’
‘You were bigger,’ said Anna, remembering how Kolya had been put into her arms while her mother lay dead in the hospital bed. They hadn’t even had time to take Vera to the morgue.
‘I’m an uncle now,’ said Kolya, prodding the baby’s foot doubtfully.
‘So you are,’ said Anna in surprise. She had almost been thinking of the baby as Kolya’s little sister.
‘Are you all right, Anna?’ he asked, embarrassed, not looking up. ‘Is there anything that you want?’ She recognized that these were a brother’s questions, not a child’s.
The radio is broken. Anna is glad of it, but Galya misses it terribly.
‘I can’t manage without my radio. I’ll have to get it repaired. I asked Darya if she knew anybody who might be able to fix it, but she doesn’t.’
Much better the silence, Anna considers, than what’s been on the radio lately. More and more doctors are being arrested. Confessions are pouring out of them. They are spies, traitors, murderers in white coats, collaborators with American agents. The radio voices thicken with synthetic outrage.
‘You have to know what’s going on,’ says Galya.
No, thinks Anna, you don’t. You can decide not to allow such poison into your ears. It doesn’t help Andrei if I listen. I have to think of him, not of these madmen. I have to try to reach him. If he’s thinking of me at the same moment that I’m thinking of him, then perhaps our thoughts can touch. ‘Galya,’ she says aloud, ‘do you think that Andrei has received that money yet?’
‘I should think so by now,’ says Galya.
‘But we haven’t had a word from him. Not one.’
‘Sometimes prisoners are deprived of the right to correspondence.’
‘Can they receive parcels, if that’s the case, do you think? Do they still get their letters?’
‘I’m not sure.’
They’ve gone over all this so many times. Each time the conclusions – or lack of them – are the same, but even first thing in the morning Anna can’t leave these questions alone.
Suddenly the baby pulls off the nipple and begins to scream. Anna rocks her, and tries to coax her back, but the baby turns her face from side to side, frantically. Deep crimson floods her skin, darkening to purple. Her hands bat the air. ‘Oh, Galya, what’s wrong with her?’
Galya leaves the sink and comes over to where Anna’s lying on the couch with the baby. Her firm, experienced hands feel the baby’s forehead.
‘She’s all right. She just got into a lather. They can feel your tension, you know. We shouldn’t have talked about Andrei while she was feeding. Give her a minute and then try again.’
The screams rise, ricochetting around the room. Sweat starts under Anna’s arms. She is a bad mother, on top of everything else. She can’t even feed her own baby properly. Tears sting her eyes. Stupid, idiotic – I forbid you to cry –
‘Give her to me a moment.’ Galya picks up the baby and walks away with her, humming. After a while the screams begin to lose conviction. The baby still shudders and hiccups, but she is calming down. ‘There, that’s better. Now, in a minute, you’re going to settle down and have your feed. Poor little one, she doesn’t find life easy. Some of them do and some of them don’t.’ Galya rocks the baby, swaying from hip to hip. She looks like a mother. Her brisk professional expertise is still there, but cloaked by tenderness. ‘Here we
are, you have her back. It’ll be fine now.’
And it is fine. The baby shivers all over as she latches on and shuts her eyes, sucking vigorously. After a minute she opens one eye and gazes up at Anna reproachfully, before losing herself in the milk again.
‘She’s happy enough now.’
‘Yes,’ murmurs Anna, ‘perfectly happy.’ Her heart contracts with pity as she watches the baby suck blindly, her fingers palpating the air. Now she is happy.
‘I’ll look after you, my darling,’ she whispers. ‘Don’t be frightened. I won’t ever leave you.’
The baby feeds until she falls asleep. Slowly, her mouth comes away from Anna’s nipple, still connected by a glistening string of saliva and milk. In her sleep, her lips move. She is utterly relaxed.
There’s a bang on the door. One blow, and then another. A rain of blows, rattling the door in its frame. Anna jumps violently. The baby startles and flings out her arms and legs with a piercing cry.
‘Oh my God!’ says Galya.
The knocking goes on, but this time a voice comes too, shouting, ‘Anna! Galya!’
‘It’s Darya,’ breathes Anna.
‘Darya!’
‘Yes, it’s only her.’
The women look at each other, their eyes still dilated with fear. But it’s all right, Anna tells herself. Only Darya, in a state about something – that’s nothing unusual. The knocking goes on. You’d never think one woman could make so much noise.
‘There might have been an accident down there.’ But Galya still hesitates.
‘You’d better open the door,’ says Anna, shielding the baby’s head with her hand.
No sooner is the door open than Darya bursts in across the threshold. She looks as if she’s rushed out of her house, throwing only a shawl over a jumble of clothes. Her head is bare. She’s panting and her eyes are wild.
‘Sit down, for goodness’ sake,’ says Galya. ‘No, don’t try to talk. Get your breath back.’
Darya must have run all the way, and she’s far from young. Her face is pale and sweaty, with a patch of crimson in each cheek. She collapses into a chair, her hands on her knees, heaving for breath. Galya gives her a glass of water. ‘Sip it slowly.’
But Darya pushes the water aside. ‘Did you – hear it?’
‘What?’
‘The news.’
‘No. Our radio’s broken, you know that.’
‘No one’s been and told you?’
‘Told us what?’
‘They said last night – he was critical – in a critical condition they said.’
‘Who?’
‘And then today – early this morning – well, you know how I am, I don’t sleep so I’m up no matter how early – they said –’ She pauses as if not daring to say it, as if the words themselves may burn her mouth. ‘They said – “This is Moscow speaking” …’
‘Yes – Yes –?’
It’s obvious Darya hasn’t paused for dramatic effect. She simply can’t get the words out.
‘ “D-dear” …’ she stammers, ‘ “Dear c-comrades – and f-friends”–’
Galya bends down over her. As if Darya Sokolova were an hysterical girl she takes hold of her sholders and shakes them firmly. ‘Now, tell us sensibly,’ she says.
‘Stalin is dead,’ bleats Darya. Her eyes look like a doll’s eyes, rolling.
‘What do you mean? Are you sure?’ demands Galya severely. ‘Because, you know, it’s a very serious matter to make up something like this.’
‘I’m not making it up! It was on the radio! “This is Moscow speaking.” ’ Darya is beginning to regain some self-possession. She dashes her sleeve over her face, as if wiping away tears. ‘I can’t believe it. It’s too – too –’ she pauses. ‘Too terrible. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I just sat there frozen, hours it was. And then I thought of you, not having your radio, and I thought, I’ve got to tell them, it’s not right they don’t know … And I just up and ran, fast as I could. What are we going to do without him?’
What, indeed, thinks Anna, letting her hair fall forward over her face so that it is completely concealed. Her heart beats so fast she’s afraid she’ll be sick. Let Darya think she’s overcome. The baby has stopped crying, as if the news has shocked her into silence. Her mouth is open, and a small, pearly milk blister shows on her upper lip.
‘You’re right,’ says Galya. Her voice trembles a little, then steadies itself. ‘No one can take in such news all at once. Excuse me, I must go and lie down. And Anna will need to rest; such a shock is very bad for her, you know. Anna, dear, are you feeling faint?’
Galya’s worn, intelligent face is as pale as curd, but she’s already mastered herself. She won’t betray them.
‘A little,’ mutters Anna.
‘You’ll have to forgive us, Darya. Anna must go back to bed. Such terrible news; no wonder she feels ill.’
‘I was just the same when I first heard it,’ says Darya with an edge of competitiveness in her voice.
‘I’m sure you were.’ Galya is steering Darya to the door. ‘Now, walk home slowly. Take deep breaths. Remember, you’ve had a shock; we all have.’
‘ “The breathing became more difficult and the pulse,” ’ continues Darya, as if she’s memorized the entire radio broadcast. ‘ “Boundlessly dear to the Party,” that’s what they said.’
‘Are you sure?’ asks Anna sharply. ‘Are you really sure that’s what you heard? They announced that he was dead?’ For if it’s a trick, some gigantic, monstrous plot to make people betray themselves –
‘As sure as I’m still breathing,’ says Darya, and then gives an incongruous smile, as if the fact that she is still breathing while Stalin is not has suddenly struck her with all its force.
‘Go home, my dear,’ says Galya, like the doctor she will always be. ‘Go home and rest.’
Galya stands and watches Darya hurry away, huddling her shawl around her. Slowly, she closes the door and turns to Anna.
‘Come to the stove,’ says Anna. ‘You shouldn’t have stood in the cold like that. You’re shivering.’
Galya pulls back her shoulders and settles her glasses on her nose. This is how she must have looked, when she was working, after she’d dealt with some emergency on the ward.
‘Well, there we are, then,’ she says.
‘You think it’s true?’
‘It has to be, if it was on the radio. They wouldn’t dare say it otherwise.’
‘It didn’t seem as if he would ever die.’
‘None of us is immortal,’ says Galya. The words ring strangely in Anna’s ears. Someone else said that, a long time ago. She pulls back a corner of the baby’s shawl, and gazes at her face. The baby’s eyelids are almost closed.
‘What do you think it will mean?’ asks Anna.
‘Who knows?’
‘Can it really be true, though?’
‘He’s capable of dying, I suppose, like everyone else,’ says Galya drily.
‘Everything will change. It’s got to.’
Galya sighs. ‘Maybe. There are plenty to step into his shoes.’
‘I hope he suffered,’ says Anna, smoothing the baby’s cheek with one finger. ‘I hope he was alone and suffered for hours, and no one came to help him.’
‘That’s not very likely. He’d have had phalanxes of doctors.’
‘I hope that just before he died, he saw the ghosts of all the people he’d murdered, and knew that they were waiting for him.’
‘Good heavens, child! Don’t be so superstitious. Death is death, and there’s an end of it.’
‘Do you really believe that, Galya?’
‘Of course I do. Why else would we work so hard to make the world a better place? I remember when we were students, your mother and me. You would get old women coming in with terrible prolapses that had never been repaired, and ulcers all over their legs. They could barely walk. They believed in the next world, and no wonder, when this one had given them nothing. But we believed
in making this world a better place. Of course things went wrong – mistakes were made –’ She sighs deeply, convulsively.
‘I know.’ Anna is not really listening; she has heard all this a thousand times. It was the theme tune of her childhood: these women, Galya and her mother and all the others, with their handsome, dedicated faces, their hair pulled back, their glasses and their professional expertise. Galya hasn’t really taken in the news yet; she’s living in the past.
Anna’s mind is full of Andrei. Does he know? Have the prisoners been told that Stalin is dead? No, probably not. There might be a riot. But they will find out.
‘Look at her, fast asleep,’ says Galya. ‘That’s all we can ask for, a better world for these little ones. We have to keep on working and hoping. You can’t go backwards.’
‘No.’ But Stalin is dead. He is stiff and cold. His hands can’t move. He can’t write as much as a single word. He can’t give another order. He and Volkov –
‘You’ll have to find a name for her. We can’t keep on calling her “the baby”.’
Anna looks down at her daughter, who has fallen asleep. They are dead, and the baby is here. Andrei’s baby, and hers. ‘It’s so hard to decide without Andrei. It seems wrong.’
‘She can’t be nameless,’ says Galya briskly. ‘Didn’t you two ever discuss names?’
‘No.’ But at that moment, gazing down at the baby, Anna knows what her name has to be. ‘I shall call her Nadezhda,’ she says.
‘That’s good. Yes, I like it. Little Nadya.’
‘My God, Galya, you know something? I’m beginning to believe it. He’s dead. It doesn’t sink in all at once, does it? He’s dead, and we’re alive. But do you know, it frightens me to say it out loud.’
Galya looks at Anna with the child cradled in her arms. ‘You’re alive twice over,’ she says.
Anna’s eyes glow, and her cheeks are bright. She smiles at Galya as a woman might smile on the battlefield after she has stripped and mutilated the corpse of her enemy. ‘Let the earth fill his mouth,’ she says.
Involuntarily, Galya glances round. No one is there. The broken radio is silent. She thinks of sitting here with Vera, years ago, when Anna and her own little Yura were babies playing on the floor. Anna’s too young yet to know that the past is just as real as the present, even though you have to pretend that it isn’t, and carry on towards the future. Vera would sit there, in the wooden rocking chair that Galya kept in her bedroom for years afterwards. Anna sits in it now, to feed the baby. Mikhail would be out, walking, smoking, composing lines in his head. He would come back when the supper was ready. That was before Marina, and all the trouble she caused between them. Dear Vera. What strength she had, and what dignity.