‘But, Sveta?’
‘Yes?’
‘He’s forty and he’s married.’
‘Oh,’ said Svetlana. Dammit! Married, she thought, I have no chance. But she was Stalin’s daughter. Anything was possible to her. She knew how to give orders.
‘He’s quite famous, you know,’ Martha went on. ‘His scripts have been filmed. He’s a certain sort of Jewish intellectual. He’s talented.’ Martha knew about writers. Her grandfather was Maxim Gorky, the greatest Soviet writer. ‘But, Sveta, he’s forty. That’s ancient! He’s an antique. And he’s a playboy. I’ve heard he’s a notorious skirt-chaser!’
‘Oh no,’ said Svetlana very primly, but she was really thinking, Thank God. If he’s a playboy I have some chance. If only I was as beautiful as Martha. She can have anyone she wants … She felt despondent suddenly.
‘He’s a married playboy!’ Martha giggled. She was getting more amused by the minute. She savoured the smell of pipesmoke in the apartment. Then she looked serious, grabbed Svetlana’s shoulders and whispered, ‘What would your father say? Think about it!’
‘Ugh, he’s busy with the war, I hardly see him,’ Svetlana replied. ‘Besides, I have to live too.’
‘I must go home,’ said Martha, kissing Svetlana and going to the door. There, she hesitated. ‘Oh, wait – I’ll tell you who knows Shapiro.’
‘Who?’ cried Svetlana, running at her and hugging her. ‘Tell me!’
‘You’re serious about this man, aren’t you, dear?’
‘Yes! As serious as you can be without actually knowing someone at all. But yes, I’ve written to him.’
‘And you signed it?’
‘Yes, from Stalina of the Kremlin!’
Martha’s laughter pealed through the gloomy apartment. ‘That will give him a shock. But he’s arrogant. There are writers who think they are God’s gift to women and he’s one of them. He’ll think it’s his due and he deserves your favour.’
‘Cut to the chase, Marthochka: who knows him?’
‘Your brother Vasily, silly. He knows all the movie people. I saw Lev Shapiro at one of Vasily’s parties at Zubalovo …’
It’s going to be so easy, thought Svetlana. Alone in the apartment once again, she sat down and started to scan the pages of today’s Red Star, looking for his name – and there it was: the latest article by Lev Shapiro. Where was he? She longed to know. Had he yet received her letter? Surely not, and even if he had, he was much too busy to read her silly note. From his articles, she could tell he was a man of the world. A playboy! A skirt-chaser! But it was just possible he had got the letter because she had given it to her bodyguard Klimov yesterday and he had managed to send it down on the Stavka plane to Stalingrad. If Shapiro was in the city, he could have read it. She blushed at the thought. Then another anxiety: had she made a fool of herself? Suppose he told his friends and mocked her? What would her father say if he heard of this?
The door opened.
She hid the paper, and jumped up: ‘Papa, have you eaten?’
‘Hello, my little sparrow. How’s moia khozianka, my little housekeeper,’ said Stalin and kissed her forehead. ‘Just wanted to see you. I’m working the rest of the night out at Kuntsevo.’
‘Goodnight, Papa. Get some rest!’
He turned and left, calling for his driver outside the front door.
She was alone again.
VI
While they waited for Garanzha, old Panka knelt beside Benya and probed his head wound.
‘If it’s a sabre cut, swords are dirty; if it’s shrapnel, cleaner; if a stone, cleaner still, but you can take no chances with a head wound. We need a poultice.’ He was treating Benya just as he had treated Silver Socks.
He took out one of the cartridges and carefully broke it, taking out the black gunpowder. Then, as Benya lay on the ground in the shade, he walked to the nearest tree, scanning its branches until he reached for something. ‘A spider’s web,’ he said, gathering it with surprising delicacy in his huge hands. He took his dagger and cut into the bark of the tree, collecting some resin; next he dug up some earth with his knife, mixed it around, and then popped it all into his mouth. Finally he leaned over Benya, placing his mouth close to his forehead, and regurgitated this sticky mess right on to the wound, plastering it down so it was level.
‘Shame we have no honey but this makes a poultice that will heal you fast,’ Panka said, taking a bandage out of one of his saddlebags and deftly wrapping it round Benya’s head before fastening it in place with a pin. ‘Always sunny on the steppe,’ he said, smiling again.
He moved on to the next task: ‘Everyone drink water. Eat one tack biscuit. Water the horses,’ he ordered. ‘Garanzha and Prishchepa, you take on guard duty. Golden, shut your eyes.’
The men were talking around the fire they’d made, mostly about Kapto. Had he always been a traitor? What about Tonya? Who else had gone with them? Nyushka – had anyone seen her? Koshka was another one who’d vanished. But no one would be surprised if Koshka was a snivelling traitor, and it would be no loss either because Uzbeks were the worst soldiers in the Red Army. But they kept coming back to Kapto – and so did Benya.
He remembered that morning back in Kolyma, recuperating in Kapto’s clinic when his bed had shaken abruptly. He’d opened his eyes to find a man with a heavily tattooed face and head – a green bullseye encircling his skull and making his cranium look like some sort of instrument – standing over him. ‘Get up,’ said the man, clearly a Criminal. ‘The Boss is waiting for his first lesson.’
The blizzard, perhaps the last of winter, ripped into the Camp with such blasting force that Benya, wrapped up in a felt hood, padded coat and felt boots, and trying to follow the Criminal along the walkways, had to hold on to the ropes to find his way. The Criminal, shrouded in furs, walked stiffly with his legs and arms straight like a mechanized Golem. The wind drove the snow at such a slant that it tore into his hood and almost blinded him and the temperature was something extreme, minus thirty or more.
Benya just thanked God and Dr Kapto that he was not working that day: he knew his brigade, which would have been up at the mine since 4 a.m., would lose men today. His guide disappeared inside the barracks next to the dining block, and Benya followed him.
Once inside, he was amazed by the light and the warmth. This barracks was quite unlike any of the others. The men who slept in these wooden bunks were lucky: this was the best-kept dormitory in the Camp. It still stank of sweat and bodies and disinfectant but also something resinous and heavenly. Perhaps it was the smoke of a woodburner mixed with stale, overcooked vegetables – what luxury! Most of the bunks were empty as the brigades were working but as he followed the Criminal up the central aisle, he saw the brazier up ahead and it got warmer as he approached.
‘Here he is! That’s him. The storyteller,’ said Smiley, looking at him with his red eyes beneath his slightly pointed brow. Benya had guessed that ‘the Boss’ would be Smiley but he was wrong.
‘Benya Golden? Is it really you?’ said a much older man, who was sitting in reindeer fur boots, military britches and no shirt, in a half-gutted leather chair, right next to the brazier. The accent was Georgian, more particularly Svanetian, the remotest and most ungovernable province of Georgia. He was holding a dumb-bell and doing curls with one bicep while a girl, a young nurse from the clinic, was rolling a bandage around his shoulder. ‘I strained it,’ he said. ‘It happens at my age.’
He handed the dumb-bell to Smiley who bore it away into the shadows as if he was solemnly carrying the scrolls of the Torah through synagogue. The girl finished her bandaging.
‘All right, Bunny, go,’ the older man said. The nurse, Nyushka, had a soft, bruised Russian beauty, and Benya noticed her feathery auburn hair, tied loosely back, and her peachy skin. But such beauty was a curse in here, and he realized she must need a strong protector in order to survive.
The muscular older man turned his attention to Benya. ‘I’ve read everything you ever wrote. I have a pr
oposal for you.’
Benya was so surprised that he didn’t reply.
‘Hey, Deathless, give him a pew,’ said the older man to the thug who had escorted Benya to the barracks. Deathless, who moved as if wrapped in bandages like an Egyptian mummy, pulled up a chair and Benya sat down. A pot of soup bubbled behind them.
‘Cigarette?’
‘Yes please.’
‘Smiley, roll him a makhorka, will you? He still looks frail. Mamekta, give him some soup.’ Smiley lit his cigarette; a tiny ratty boy with oversized lips, was stirring the soup. He ladled out a bowlful and gave it to Benya, who gulped it from the bowl without a moment’s hesitation, licking it clean.
‘Better?’ said the Boss. ‘Now … do you know who I am?’
Benya spluttered at the pungent tobacco but the cigarette, expertly wrapped in Pravda newspaper, warmed him as did a tot of vodka. He had an idea who this was but he was not foolish enough to risk a guess.
‘I am Jaba,’ said the Georgian, leaning forward to examine Benya closely. He was perhaps the only prisoner in the entire Camp who had hair, grey, thick and spiky, and it was clear that even here, somehow, he was clean and groomed. His Roman good looks were only spoiled by the tattoo that lapped up his neck like a sinister tide. His bare shoulders were inked with eagles’ wings, his nipples eyes within stars, shoulder blades bleeding crucifixes on which a nude woman was nailed, a voluptuous female Jesus complete with stigmata. On Jaba’s stomach, which was muscled and creased like that of a retired boxer, a tumescent penis thrust towards his sternum emblazoned with the words RUSSIAN GIRLS WORSHIP MY GEORGIAN COCK.
‘You have heard of me,’ Jaba stated as if checking an unimpeachable truth.
‘Yes I have, of course.’ Benya knew that Jaba Leonadze was one of the leading Criminals of the Kolyma Zone, a Mafia boss, a Brigand-in-Power who was entrusted by the Commandant to make the mines achieve their quotas.
Jaba beamed at this. ‘Most people have. As for you, Smiley told me how you entertained him with your stories all the way across the Sea of Okhotsk and I’ve read your Spanish Stories. Am I a surprise for an old bandit?’
Benya admitted he was indeed a surprising bandit.
‘You see, Golden, life is like a plate of lobio beans. I missed school but now I want to write. You will teach me to write like Shakespeare, Pushkin, Balzac. Every day for an hour. And then there’s something else. Prishchepa!’
A young man, blue-eyed and baby-faced and startlingly pretty, appeared from the back of the barracks, where he had apparently been manning a kettle, bearing a pile of papers which he handed to Jaba.
‘Can you guess what this is, Benya? It’s my play, based on my life. Entitled Bank Robbery ’37.’ Benya knew that Jaba’s most outrageous exploit had been his Kharkov bank robbery in 1937. As Stalin purged the Communist Party, this bank robber had dared to defy him and steal his money. That was courage! He pulled off three or four of these heists, stealing the entire payroll of bureaucrats in Tashkent, Odessa, Baku. For years, he’d lived in luxury, bribing the militsia to turn a blind eye – until a shootout at the State Bank in Kharkov when he’d been captured. ‘Ah, Benya, I put my heart into this work.’
Benya took the manuscript, noting that the script was typed. One of the Commandant’s typists in the office must have typed it up, he thought. Jaba’s influence was usually defined in violence and the availability of food but this typed play was a rare demonstration of pure power.
‘You are to read it and criticize it.’ Jaba took a shirt from Mametka and pulled it on, doing up the buttons as he gave Benya his orders. ‘Didn’t Gorky read your stories? Well, you’re going to be my Gorky. In return, you get to work in the clinic and when we get out of this hell and back to Magadan, you’ll come with me. Now, don’t be afraid to tell me the truth; I can take criticism. You see, professor, it’s a masterpiece and no one but me could have written it. Now, do we have a deal?’
VII
‘Horseman approaching!’ Spider Garanzha called out quietly. They grabbed their guns while Zhurko looked through his fieldglasses. ‘At ease. That’s the Cat. Koshka’s back.’
‘I thought he—’ started Little Mametka.
‘Perhaps the Germans didn’t want him,’ said Benya. The Cossacks snickered at this.
‘The Germans always say: Can we swap our Romanians for your Uzbeks?’ Little Mametka agreed.
‘Shall we question him?’ asked Garanzha.
Zhurko raised a hand. ‘Gently does it. We are now only seven, eight with Koshka. We don’t have the luxury to launch a witch-hunt. No, we welcome him and watch him.’
Koshka rode in. He was, Benya knew, one of those tedious men who thought it was his duty to tell others the truth about their lives such as whether their wife was secretly unfaithful or how they should become better at their jobs. ‘Just saying,’ he usually concluded.
The men gathered round him.
‘I was thrown from my horse and then lost her for a while …’ Koshka said. No one looked particularly convinced but they let the twitchy Uzbek sit with them and share the food they had gathered in the Italian village.
‘What do we do now?’ Garanzha said after they had eaten.
Captain Zhurko cleared his throat. ‘I was waiting for others but … it seems no more of us are coming in,’ he said in his plain way. ‘We need to make a plan.’
‘You’re our officer,’ said Benya.
‘If you wish me to command you, I shall,’ replied Zhurko, stroking his strong chin. ‘But I think our circumstances are a little unusual.’
Panka spoke up: ‘I propose we form ourselves into a circle in the old Cossack tradition,’ he said, ‘and that we elect Zhurko as our ataman, our chieftain. What say you, brothers?’
Everyone agreed.
‘What are our options?’ asked Spider Garanzha.
‘Well, I think we have five options,’ said Captain Zhurko. ‘One, fight our way back to our lines. Travel at night. Find a quiet sector, preferably Italian or even better Romanian …’
‘What? After we’ve offered them Koshka as a present?’ joked Mametka in his high voice. The men chuckled.
‘They’d prefer you, Bette Davis,’ replied Koshka.
‘Not funny,’ said Mametka. Benya remembered what had happened to Fats Strizkaz and held his breath.
‘Enough,’ said Zhurko. ‘Cut it out. Mametka, you asked for that. Koshka, you have my protection.’
‘Carry on,’ said Smiley.
‘Then we’d report back to our forces at the last strongholds in the bend of the Don or ford it somewhere and rejoin the Stalingrad Front. Find our units.’
‘What unit? We’re Smertniki – the Dead Ones – and we’re damned whatever we do,’ said Koshka.
‘We all know what would happen,’ Smiley agreed, gravely.
‘We can’t go back,’ said Benya. ‘We’d receive the Eight Grammes before we’d even given our names.’
‘True,’ Zhurko said. ‘As a Russian patriot and a good Communist, death, for me, is better than defection and I propose surrender is out of the question. That’s our second option.’
‘We’re stranded behind enemy lines. Our army has collapsed. Come on, fellows. Be honest. Is anything out of the question?’ said Koshka. ‘Just saying.’
‘Surrender is impossible for me,’ replied Benya. ‘You’ve seen the things the Germans are doing here.’
‘You say that because you’re a Jew, right?’ said Koshka. ‘We can’t listen to you.’
‘Permission to shut him up?’ said Smiley, those hornlets rising on his forehead.
‘Wait,’ said Benya. ‘I am a Jew, it’s true: I can’t surrender. But I’ve heard too the Germans simply starve their Russian prisoners to death.’
‘Some Russians surrendered to the soft-hearted Italians,’ Koshka pointed out. ‘Or we could defect to Mandryka and join the Schuma. They get good food. And girls, lots of girls.’
‘If you wanted to join them, why didn’t you?’ asked Little Mam
etka softly.
‘I don’t want to. If I did want to, I wouldn’t be here,’ protested Koshka.
Sergeant Panka stood up. ‘We’ve heard enough now, and I can tell you this, boys: I am not going anywhere! Captain, what are our orders?’
‘I think there is a right thing to do,’ opined Zhurko earnestly, looking at them through his steel-rimmed spectacles and lighting up a cigarette. ‘But we could also hide out here and hope to be liberated.’
‘But that might never happen,’ said Koshka. ‘Right now, we’ve got to face the possibility that we’re going to lose the war. Just saying.’
‘No, Koshka, we will win the war,’ answered Zhurko. ‘I am certain. I was an economist at Gosplan. That was my job in Moscow. We did the Five-Year Plans.’
‘A great success!’ said Benya.
‘Is that Odessan humour?’ asked Zhurko.
‘If you’re that clever, captain,’ asked Smiley, ‘how did you end up here?’
Zhurko grinned, cleaning his spectacles. ‘I predicted a recession, but a recession is impossible in our Socialist Paradise. Anyway we, on our own, will out-produce the Germans this year. With the Americans, we are unbeatable. If Hitler didn’t win in the first year, he can’t win the war.’
‘So he’s gonna lose?’ piped up Mametka.
‘Exactly. All the laws of science confirm it but it will take years and we don’t have the luxury of time. Next option, we find our Soviet partisans, who are fighting the Germans behind their lines, and join them.’
‘But where are they?’ asked Koshka.
‘Honestly? We don’t know and the steppe has been so swiftly overrun, it is possible there aren’t any partisans here.’
‘So far, these are not tempting options,’ Koshka observed.
‘Who are you to judge anything?’ Garanzha glared at the little Uzbek. ‘Where did you suddenly arrive from, Koshka?’
‘I got lost, I told you. I looked for you. Finally I found you.’
‘Got lost, found us? Hmm. It stinks,’ said Spider Garanzha. ‘Just saying!’
‘Enough, both of you,’ said Panka, suddenly drawing his sword. Panka never fooled around. He was straight as a lance. The two Shtrafniki stopped arguing.