One Night in Winter

  And then, later that day, another envelope appeared in his in-tray, typed: ‘Com. Satinov. Secret.’ He opened it to find a page torn out of a cheap edition of Pushkin’s Onegin. He had never read it.

  ‘Chubin!’

  ‘Yes, comrade.’

  ‘Run out and get me Onegin.’

  Poor Chubin, once again bewildered by his boss’s sudden literary whims, had done as he was told and Satinov had started to read Onegin until he found the page she had sent him. And suddenly there it was. Bending over his desk, he studied it intently. It is a long time after Onegin’s duel. After many years of travelling abroad, Onegin meets Tatiana again. By now she is a powerful married lady in St Petersburg – this cool princess so resplendent, and Onegin realizes he is passionately in love with her and he writes to tell her. Tatiana is heartbroken – and here was the passage marked by Dashka’s pencil:

  To me, Onegin, all these splendours,

  This weary tinselled life of mine,

  This homage that the great world tenders,

  My stylish house where princes dine –

  Are empty . . .

  I love you (why should I dissemble?);

  But I am now another’s wife,

  And I’ll be faithful all my life.

  Here it was, in the silence of his office with its lifesize portrait of Stalin, and its array of telephones, here was Dashka’s answer. He had been furious at his children living in the romantic world, and now secretly, he, Stalin’s Iron Commissar, was living it himself. Even though each line flayed him, he read and reread the passage, wondering if he could stand another moment of this emotional rollercoaster that had borne him from misery to exhilaration and back in a matter of days, a circle of joy and despair that had lasted for almost all of their months together.

  Now, sweltering in the heat of the red-walled house in Samarkand, he replayed the course of their affair. He told himself he was lucky to have made love to such a woman. ‘You’re so blessed to love and to be loved,’ he said aloud to himself. Then he remembered how once, when he’d reassured her that her figure wasn’t too curvaceous, she had replied curtly, ‘But you would say that because you’re in love with me.’ By being so in love, he had lost his power, her respect.

  Like a film in his mind, he watched again (for the thousandth time) the joyous scene in the private room in the Aragvi Restaurant. Sex fills just a few hours of our entire existence, he realized, and yet those precious minutes count more than months and years of our normal lives.

  As the Central Asian heat rose around him in waves that distorted his vision, he shook his head. What a contradiction she was: controlled and cool within her own realm yet also capable of this utterly reckless, wanton giddiness that overthrew them both. Sometimes, he would amuse – and torture himself – by imagining what time it was in Moscow. What would she be doing now, he asked himself? Would she be putting Senka to bed? Undressing at the end of the day? How he hated Genrikh for his intimate proximity to the humdrum secrets of her daily life.

  He hated Genrikh too for his role in Satinov’s extended exile in Samarkand even though he was only the messenger boy for Stalin. Genrikh would do whatever Stalin asked him. A wave of murderous anger passed through Satinov and he dreamed of destroying Genrikh himself – but that would bring down Dashka too and her family. No, far better that he, Satinov, should face his ordeal alone in Samarkand while the ones he loved – Dashka, his children, Tamriko – were safe far away in Moscow. Perhaps the greatest relief was that Genrikh Dorov suspected nothing of his affair with his wife. No one knew, and hopefully no one would ever know. And if the Organs despatched him with a shot to the head, it would die with him.

  So here, in the Samarkand house, he awoke each day with the taste of cinders in his mouth and salt rising in his throat. For, every night, he, Marshal Hercules Satinov, wept in his bed.

  52

  ‘PLEASE DON’T REGARD me too harshly, Serafima,’ said General Abakumov, who was talking to her mother in the sitting room at their apartment. He struggled to his feet, boots creaking, medals a-jingle, his sidearm clinking against the metal in his belt. ‘But I wanted to come myself rather than send a subordinate.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Serafima. Abakumov’s knobbly forehead and dark brow terrified her, and she stepped back. He reminded her of her time in Lubianka, a time that even now gave her nightmares.

  She looked at her mother, and knew something was wrong. ‘Tell me, Mama.’

  Abakumov cleared his throat: ‘Your application to travel abroad with your fiancé has been refused, as has your application to marry him.’

  Serafima caught her breath, feeling faint suddenly, only dimly aware of her mother’s hand on her arm. ‘But everyone gets permission. Many girls have gone abroad . . .’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Abakumov. ‘That’s what I wanted to tell you. This is nothing personal and nothing to do with the Children’s Case. It’s the very fact that so many girls have been marrying foreigners and going abroad that has accelerated the change in the rules.’

  ‘Is there any way you can help us, comrade general?’ asked Sophia, fixing her blazing eyes on him.

  ‘I’m afraid not. I’ve already looked into that for you. This comes from the Central Committee. Dear girl, take it from me: the road of life is a twisting path and some seeds fall on stony ground. That’s the long and short of it.’

  Satinov walks into the centre of Samarkand, past the primitive Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Tajiks, walking, squatting, chewing khat, taking chai on the wooden platforms of their chai-khanas, watching the world turn, far from Moscow, in their robes and embroidered skullcaps. He sits and takes tea in a chai-khana. Then he crosses the ruins of the Registan, the old square, and walks between mud-caked walls towards the tomb of Tamurlane; his ‘companions’, plain-clothed Uzbek guards, follow him.

  Tamurlane, that lame, pitiless conqueror who was the Stalin of his time, lies beneath a ribbed and fluted azure dome like a giant’s blue turban. Satinov looks down at the simple jade stone that covers the emperor’s tomb and he realizes that his own works, even the world-historical deeds of Stalin himself, may one day be forgotten like this.

  It seems unlikely . . . but what if Lenin’s state, built on the graves of millions, is one day overturned? he thinks. They might even rename the towns and streets that bear my name. What if all that truly matters is my children, my beloved wife – and her, my secret passion. What if only love will justify my ever having lived at all?

  He bows his head before Tamurlane’s simple catafalque. Satinov longs for death, instant, unexpected death, and doesn’t fear it. His vision blurs as he gives thanks for this delicious sadness that makes him complete.

  High on a mountain over the Black Sea, an old man in a white linen suit was smoking his pipe, his eyes slits in the bright sunlight, the irises as yellow and speckled with black as a beestripe, his high, slightly sunburnt cheekbones set with an archipelago of freckles in a range of pockmarks.

  ‘And down here,’ he said to his visitors, ‘your old host has been weeding the vegetable gardens. Honest labour is good for the soul.’

  A gardener, a foxy old man who looked not unlike Stalin himself, was digging, and Stalin nodded at him and said a few words in Georgian. ‘He says the tomatoes are not bad,’ Stalin explained. ‘Would you like some tomatoes and figs to take back to Moscow?’

  ‘It’s a beautiful garden,’ agreed the American ambassador, Averell Harriman, clad in a cream suit with seams pressed as sharp as razors. ‘Generalissimo, I must congratulate you on your tomatoes as well as your other achievements.’

  Frank Belman, boyish and slim in his immaculate US Army uniform, translated quickly into fluent Russian. When Stalin laughed, the creases in his face resembled the grin of a tiger, but all Frank could really think about was Serafima. When he saw her after their travel plans had been banned, he feared she would make herself ill with disappointment and heartbreak.

  ‘Well, thank you for coming to see me down here,’ said S
talin to the two Americans. ‘An old man must rest a little . . .’

  The visit was over. Stalin ambled along the path with his bowlegged gait up the steps to the verandah and through the white pillars into the cool villa that smelled of orange blossom and tobacco. Frank noticed that every surface in the house was covered with books: he saw novels by Edith Wharton, Hemingway and Fadayev; biographies of Nadir Shah and the Duke of Marlborough; heaps of literary journals; an open book marked with Stalin’s marginalia in a blue crayon.

  Stalin led them through the house and out the other side where the ambassadorial Buick waited alongside Stalin’s limousines. A fat boozy general, probably the chief bodyguard, saluted and tagged along after them down the steps to the driveway. Stalin’s seaside villa in Abkhazia was totalitarianism by architecture, Frank thought. The house was an impregnable eyrie atop a steep cliff overlooking the Black Sea, invisible from every angle except from the water, and could only be reached through a single-track tunnel carved into the solid rock of the mountain. Frank concentrated hard to translate every nuance of the ambassador’s words but his mind was elsewhere. With Serafima.

  ‘Thank you for seeing us, generalissimo,’ said Harriman. ‘I have to tell you we Americans, from the White House to the man in the street, are still amazed and grateful for the heroism and sacrifices of the Red Army under your brilliant command.’

  ‘Please send President Truman my regards,’ replied Stalin. ‘And I hope you liked the Georgian food and wine.’

  ‘Didi madlobt!’ said the ambassador in Georgian.

  A friend of Frank’s father, Harriman was burly and tall, with polo-player’s shoulders and heavy eyebrows.

  Stalin scanned Harriman benignly. Their conversation seemed to be going horribly slowly, Frank thought, barely able to restrain himself from intervening. He was terrified that Harriman had forgotten about him or, worse, had decided that now was not the appropriate time to make a request.

  ‘Generalissimo, before we leave you to this lovely place and your much-deserved rest, may I ask a personal favour?’

  Frank was so nervous that he could scarcely translate this, yet these were the words that he wanted to translate more than any that had ever been uttered.

  ‘Ask anything. After all these years, we’re friends,’ said Stalin, looking somewhat moved. ‘We’ve shared some moments as allies.’

  ‘Thank you. My interpreter here, Captain Belman, who has translated at several of our meetings, is engaged to a Russian girl named Serafima Romashkina.’

  ‘Congratulations!’ said Stalin. His eyes flicked towards Frank and back. No hint that he knew who she was. ‘We believe in love between allies.’

  ‘She’s the daughter of the actress Sophia Zeitlin and the screenwriter Constantin Romashkin.’

  ‘You must have good taste,’ said Stalin. A grin for a moment, then the inscrutable oriental mask.

  ‘Yet, probably due to an oversight,’ Harriman continued, ‘this girl has been refused permission to leave the Soviet Union.’

  Stalin glanced sideways at Frank, and Frank tried to look honest and modest and earnest simultaneously.

  Stalin sighed. ‘Our country is full of yesmen,’ he said. ‘Lenin called it the Russian disease. Your newspapers call me a dictator, but as you see, I don’t control everything. The Politburo has a mind of its own and sometimes I have to be wary not to offend the diehards there.’ He waved at the fat general nearby: ‘Comrade Vlasik, write down the names.’

  The general was already writing in a little notebook. Frank felt the unfathomable glare of Stalin’s yellow eyes: ‘Don’t worry, young man, I’ll look into it.’

  53

  LATE AFTERNOON. SIX p.m. The phone was ringing. Waiting in the kitchen, Satinov, sporting a prickly grey beard and stained khaki trousers, shirtless, barefoot, picked it up.

  ‘How are you, darling?’ Tamara said.

  ‘Good.’ Once he had blotted out the momentary disappointment that it was not another voice saying ‘It’s me’, he was comforted to hear her.

  ‘How’s the project?’ asked Tamara.

  ‘I’m working hard here,’ he lied.

  ‘Is there as much to do as you feared?’

  ‘More. I’m busy from dawn until . . . I just got in.’

  ‘Is the sugar harvest going to fulfil the Plan?’

  ‘I hope so, if we can iron out the problems.’

  ‘Darling, do you know when you’ll be back?’

  ‘No, but I think of you all the time. How are the children?’

  ‘Mariko’s right here. Would you like to speak to her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you OK, Hercules? You sound a little down.’

  ‘Just tired.’

  ‘Here’s Mariko.’

  ‘Hello, Papasha!’ A voice as beautiful to him as the nightingale’s call. He struggled not to weep.

  ‘Darling Mariko: how are the dogs in their school?’

  ‘They’re doing a singing class today.’

  ‘Kiss them from me.’ His voice shook. Love, he thought suddenly, is only enough if it can exist in the world one lives in.

  ‘Mariko, I kiss you with all my heart,’ said Satinov.

  ‘Bye, Papasha! Here’s Mama again.’

  ‘I love you, Hercules,’ said Tamriko, sending, he felt, a ray of warmth that seemed too generous to emanate from her small body. It reached him faithfully, as she had meant it to, like an arrow flying through a dense forest to find its mark.

  ‘I love you too, Tamriko.’

  ‘Until tomorrow then,’ she said, and hung up.

  It hit him then that he might never see Tamriko and Mariko ever again. That he had been so dangerously obsessed with Dashka that he had scarcely cared about his true life. It was only now, as Tamriko put Mariko on the line, that he remembered the interrogation protocols of Marshal Shako. As a Politburo member he had been sent a copy; they contained the following lines:

  INTERROGATOR Who is responsible for the criminal sabotage of these planes?

  PRISONER SHAKO One man is to be blamed – Satinov.

  How much torture had been required to elicit this from his brave friend? But he, Satinov, had read the words like a blind man and had gone about his life as a sleepwalker somehow navigates the familiar stairs and corridors of his life without seeing them.

  The next morning, Chubin had come into the office. ‘Comrade Molotov wonders respectfully if he might have a word with you and Comrade Dorov in his office?’

  Satinov had walked down the long corridors and into the antechamber, where he found Molotov and Dorov waiting with odd expressions on their faces. Before he could say anything, Colonel Osipov, the head of Molotov’s bodyguard, had stepped in between him and them.

  ‘Hello, Comrade Satinov.’

  ‘Greetings, colonel.’

  ‘This is for you.’ He handed him an envelope.

  Top Secret

  To: Comrade Satinov, E. A.

  From: Comrades Stalin, J. V., Molotov, V. M., Zhdanov, A. A., Beria, L. P.

  The Politburo agrees that

  Comrade Satinov has committed grave mistakes in the manufacture of aircraft;

  That the Security Organs shall check out sabotage and wrecking in Comrade Satinov’s departments;

  We appoint Comrade Genrikh Dorov to investigate Comrade Satinov’s conduct;

  That Comrade Satinov is suspended as a Secretary of the Communist Party and First Deputy Premier;

  That Comrade Satinov be sent forthwith to investigate sugar harvests in Turkestan.

  Signed: Stalin, Molotov, Zhdanov, Beria

  He looked for Molotov and Dorov but they had gone.

  ‘When do I go?’ Satinov had asked Osipov.

  ‘Have you read it?’ Osipov had asked dubiously.

  ‘Of course. Do I leave now?’

  ‘No. First the Organs have arranged a meeting. Follow me.’

  And so they’d led him into Comrade Molotov’s meeting room. At the table, between two plain-cloth
ed secret policemen, sat a broken man, so thin he barely filled the shabby suit, his shirt collar loose around his bent neck, his face scarred and blistered, his once luxuriant moustaches now meagre. Osipov told Satinov to sit facing this man, and he knew this was a so-called ‘confrontation’ to elicit a confession from him.

  ‘You recognize this man, Comrade Satinov?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Colonel Losha Babanava.’

  ‘Would you accept, Comrade Satinov, that Babanava knows everything about you?’

  ‘No, not everything,’ replied Satinov. Babanava did not know about Dashka. Or did he? ‘But yes, he knows a lot.’

  ‘Babanava resisted us a little. He’s strong man. But now you must tell what you know, Losha.’

  ‘I’ve told them everything. Everything. I’m sorry, boss.’ Losha raised his eyes, and Satinov looked into them searchingly. Had Losha really betrayed their friendship? He wouldn’t blame him if he had, but he had to consider what his former bodyguard knew. Could Losha know his only secret: Dashka?

  ‘You see?’ said Colonel Osipov. ‘So save yourself much pain, Comrade Satinov, and tell us what Losha has already confirmed. Losha?’

  A lull. One of the guards tapped Losha’s arm, pointing at a typed paper before him. He seemed to awaken.

  ‘I heard you say often that our planes were flying coffins for our pilots and that this was Stalin’s fault.’

  ‘Not true. I never said that. Not once.’

  Losha seemed to doze off and was again tapped. This time he had difficulty finding his place on the paper so Colonel Osipov whispered to him. He nodded.