The Scarlet Generation

by Christopher Nicole

  Shatrav beckoned three of the men and they grasped Sophie’s arms. Sophie opened her mouth to scream, and Shatrav hit her in the stomach. Sophie gasped. A few moments later they heard the splashes, and another dreadful gurgle, and then watched Shatrav and his men returning through the trees.

  “Let’s move out,” Feodor said. “We want to be well away from here come sunrise.”

  Part Two - Those Who Would Fight

  Whither depart the souls of the brave that die in the battle,

  Die in the lost, lost fight, for the cause that perishes with them?

  Arthur Hugh Clough, The Bothie of Tober na Vuolich

  Chapter 5 – The Waiting

  “We have never met,” Ivan Ligachev said. “But I am your brother-in-law. Welcome to Moscow.”

  Joseph Cromb allowed his hand to be shaken. He knew enough about the Soviet Union to understand that nothing was exactly as it appeared. The fact that he had never met Ligachev before did not mean that back in 1925 this man had not played a part in arresting him, torturing him, and sentencing him to a lifetime in prison. And while he knew that Ligachev was indeed now married to Jennie, Jennie’s previous husband was the man who had carried out that not-to-be-forgotten arrest. Yet he was telling the truth when he said, “It is good to be here.”

  “You are satisfied with the hotel?” Ligachev asked, anxiously.

  “I think we all are.” Joseph went to the window of his room to look down at the street and the pouring rain. Moscow actually revealed very little evidence of being a capital in imminent danger of attack, or of having suffered air attack at all. There had been a few damaged buildings, and no doubt there were actually a lot more; the low cloud and the rain helped to conceal a lot. On the other hand, he had observed at the railway station that people — mainly women and children — were definitely leaving the city, although in a very orderly fashion: only those with special permits could find places on the trains. “How long do we stay here?” he asked.

  “As long as is necessary,” Ligachev assured him.

  “Won’t the Germans have something to say about that? The last communiqué had them two hundred miles from the city.”

  “In the rain and the mud, two hundred miles is a long way, Mr Cromb. And soon the rain and mud will turn to snow and ice.”

  “Your confidence is inspiring. So, what have you got arranged for us?”

  “Well, there is a full programme of meetings of course, including one with Comrade Stalin. It is obviously most important that we receive all the assistance your government can provide, just as quickly as possible.”

  “Yes,” Joseph agreed, somewhat cautiously. One thing had been made perfectly clear to the delegation before it had left Washington: under no circumstances did the State Department intend to ship any materiel if there was the slightest chance of it being surrendered to the Germans in the event of a Soviet collapse.

  “But the meetings do not start until tomorrow,” Ligachev said. “For today, will you not come home with me and see Jennie? I know she would like that.”

  Joseph was extremely nervous as he was escorted in the elevator up to Ligachev’s first-floor apartment, which was situated in a large and opulent eleven-storey building known as ‘Government House’, on the Moscow River embankment. The lower floor housed shops, a clinic, a cinema and even a branch of the Kremlin Restaurant, and he had no doubt that the apartment would be considerably above the average. But what was he going to meet inside?

  It was actually 19 years since he had last seen his half-sister. In the autumn of 1922 she had fled from England, where, although her father was American and her mother less English than Russian, she had been educated as an Englishwoman. She had then been 16, and theoretically as far removed from the wild excesses of her Bolugayevski cousins as it had been possible to imagine. But always had she been Patricia Bolugayevska’s daughter, and Patricia had been always less a Bolugayevska than a Russian, a wild spirit who had dabbled in anarchy and terrorism and indeed revolt. Patricia had been savagely punished for her transgressions against Tsarist Russia, but she had survived, and prospered...and remained a revolutionary at heart. Jennie had inherited all of that.

  Remarkably, Joseph thought, he had not. Oh, he undoubtedly had a wildly romantic streak running through his character, which had got him into sufficient trouble in his time, but his outlook had more often been tempered by the characteristics inherited from the father he had never known, Joseph Fine, from actually having been born in Siberian exile, from being educated in the sober New England and English values of his stepfather Duncan Cromb and above all by his experiences.

  He had not known sufficient of his half-sister, that was his problem. They had been separated by war during her early teens, and when he had returned she had already developed a deeply private persona into which neither Priscilla nor himself had been prepared to delve too deeply. That she would elope with a handsome Bolshevik agent had taken them both by surprise, where they should have expected it and taken steps to combat and end the relationship before it could develop. Since then, silence. Joseph’s visit to Russia in an attempt to find her and persuade her to return to the West with him had cost him 12 years in the gulag archipelago. In all that time, so far as either he or Priscilla knew, Jennie had made no attempt to find out what had happened to him, or indeed to contact the rest of the family. Now she wanted to see him. Just like that! All the past was to be forgotten. But was that not why he was here? In every sense?

  *

  “We have not too much time,” Ligachev told him. “The bombers normally come at eleven. Very regular people, the Germans.” He opened the door of the apartment, stood back to allow Joseph to enter. Jennie stood just inside the door, facing it; the building, and the apartment, might be up-market by Moscow standards, but the walls were still paper thin and she had heard the steps on the stairs.

  Joseph realised he might have been looking at his mother, the last time he had seen her, in the spring of 1917, just before he had embarked for France, and just before she had galloped off to her death in Revolutionary Russia. Patricia had been 39 then; Jennie was only 35, but she looked older. There was no grey as yet in her curling auburn hair, but there were stress lines in her face and around her eyes. She was also somewhat more slim than her mother had ever been, although she remained a true Bolugayevska, tall and strongly built and voluptuous, even in a somewhat shapeless dress. He wondered what she saw, as she took stock of him. Grey hair, certainly, and he was only 43, But apart from that, he felt no great signs of hardship or privation. Well, he had had several years to recover.

  “Joe!” she said, and came forward. He took her in his arms, held her close.

  “Champagne!” Ligachev said, uncorking a bottle. “That is what the Bolugayevskis always drink, is it not?”

  “When we can get it,” Joseph agreed.

  Jennie was still holding his arm. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Fit as a fiddle! And you?”

  “Yes.” But her answer wasn’t entirely convincing, as she herself understood. She released Joseph to take a glass of champagne. “We have so much to talk about,” she said, looking at her husband.

  “Then I will leave you,” Ligachev said. “Perhaps you will join me for lunch. Jennie will know where.” He closed the door behind himself.

  “He always eats the Georgian food at the Aragvi,” Jennie explained.

  “Seems a nice, relaxed kind of guy, your husband,” Joseph said. “I didn’t realise places like the Aragvi — Moscow’s most famous restaurant — were still open.”

  “Moscow is trying to be normal. As is Ivan. He has his tensions. We all do. Please sit down.” She did so herself, and he sat opposite her, taking in the furnishings as he did so. He could have been in the small downtown apartment of any lower middle-class American family. But these people were Soviet aristocracy.

  “Nice place,” he commented.

  “Well, Ivan is a close associate of Uncle Josef.”

  “E
xcuse me?”

  “Our great leader, Josef Stalin.”

  “Ah! Yes, I sort of gathered that. So was Andrei Gosykin, was he not?”

  A cloud passed across Jennie’s face, and she got up to refill their glasses. “If you knew how much those days haunt me.” She stood in front of him. “Joe, I did not know what had happened to you, I swear it. I did not know that Gosykin was a professional killer, until it was too late. I wrote you, but I never got any replies. I know now that it was because Gosykin never mailed any of my letters. But I did not know it then. I just thought the family had discarded me.”

  “As they thought you had discarded them. If that is the truth...”

  “It is the truth, Joe. I swear it!”

  “Then we all need to do a great deal of apologising,” Joseph said.

  “I would like that very much. I would like to be your sister again. Especially now that you have come to help us in our great patriotic fight against the Nazis.”

  He found her carefully framed words, so obviously placed in her mind by the Party propaganda machine, disturbing. “We will do what we can,” he said. “But there is one thing that still puzzles me: why did you stay in Russia, after you learned the truth about Gosykin?”

  Jennie frowned. “Where was I to go? This is my home.”

  “Well, do you not think England, or America, is more your home?”

  “Of course it is not. I am Russian.”

  Jennie actually only had a drop of Russian blood in her veins, through her grandmother: the mainstream was Scottish. “But the regime...”

  “Our regime is better, and less corrupt, than any in the West.”

  “What of all the millions of people Stalin has had slaughtered? The great purges, of only four years ago, the...”

  “Joseph, you are spouting Western propaganda,” Jennie said severely. “Massacres? What massacres? Some people who attempted revolution against the government were killed. Does that not always happen in revolutions? The purges were of traitors and elements hostile to the government. Believe me, Uncle Joe hated what he had to do. But the good of the nation comes first. He knew there was this war coming, and he had to prepare for it, first of all by rooting out all the traitors in our midst.”

  If Stalin knew this war was coming. Joseph thought, he has gone about preparing for it in a very odd way. But he decided against saying it, which might provoke a quarrel — she obviously worshipped Stalin, but then, amazingly, so did so many Russians, he had discovered on his journey here, via the Arctic Sea and Murmansk. He chose to soften the subject. “I was told you had a daughter.”

  “Tatiana, yes.” Jennie’s eyes shone with pride.

  “By Gosykin?”

  “Yes. She is Andrei’s child.” She went to a small table, picked up the framed photograph and gave it to him. “That was taken this spring. Just before she went away on summer camp.”

  The photograph was redolent of regimented severity. The girl wore a khaki sidecap, khaki blouse and skirt; it ended at her knees. But he did not doubt she would be wearing khaki stockings and severe brown shoes. The face fitted the uniform, in its solemn severity. But it was undoubtedly a beautiful face, the somewhat large regularity of Jennie’s features sharpened by those of Gosykin himself. There was little hair visible, but Joseph got the impression that it was dark — the photo was in black and white. “She is very attractive. Is she in Moscow?”

  “Tatiana is in the Pripet Marshes,” Jennie said.

  Joseph raised his head sharply. “But that is behind the German lines!”

  “Yes. She was in summer camp close to Brest-Litovsk when the Nazis invaded. She was trapped there.”

  “My God! Are you not worried? Do you know if she is still alive?”

  “We know she is alive,” Jennie said. “And she is killing Germans. She killed two German officers who tried to rape her. Now she has been joined by her brother...”

  “You have a son?”

  “No, no. This is Ivan’s son. He is a splendid fellow. He is a captain in the Army, and he volunteered to join his sister and her people in the Marshes. It is he who radioed the news that she is alive. And do you know what, Joe? She has been made a commissar, in command of that group of partisans.”

  “But do you realise how dangerous that is? Do you know what will happen to her if she is caught?”

  Jennie’s lips tightened, for a moment. Then she smiled. “She will not be caught.” Her head turned, “There is the air-raid siren. We must hurry.”

  Her calmness was reassuring; Joseph had never been in an air raid before. It was, in fact, several years since he had been under fire. Now he followed her down the stairs and into the cellar beneath the apartment building, looking at the insubstantial walls as he did so. “Is this place supposed to withstand a bomb?” he asked.

  “Not a direct hit, no,” Jennie conceded.

  “Or even one nearby, I would have said.”

  She shrugged. “We are all in the front line now, Joe.” The cellar was already crowded, but as all the people sheltering lived in the block they were all well-to-do and well-behaved, seating themselves quietly on blankets, in groups and showing no great curiosity at the stranger accompanying Jennie; Joseph took after his Jewish father rather than his Russian mother, certainly in looks, and there was nothing to indicate that they were half-brother and sister. “This is our place,” Jennie said.

  People were seated or standing all around them, but the spot she had indicated was vacant. “You mean you all have your own places?”

  “Of course. This is Galina Shermetska.” Joseph’s head jerked up. The woman was short and plump, with crisp Tatar features and raven black hair. Jennie frowned at his reaction. “Do you know her?”

  Galina Shermetska was looking him up and down. “I have never met you, Comrade,” she remarked.

  “No, you have not,” Joseph agreed. “It is just that I knew a Galina once. Briefly.”

  “Galina lives in the flat above mine,” Jennie explained. “We are the best of friends. Galina, this is my brother Joseph.”

  “Ah!” Galina said. “The American who writes bad things about the Soviet Union.”

  “An American who is here to help us,” Jennie said. Galina smiled. “In that case, Comrade, welcome to Moscow!”

  The raid lasted half an hour. It was nerve-racking, because although they could hear the rapid fire of the Soviet anti-aircraft guns, there did not seem to be much in the way of air defence, and the bombs dropped all around them with unending intensity. Yet when they emerged into the rain it was difficult to determine how much damage had been done. Certainly as soon as the German planes departed Gorki Street was as busy as ever, and Aragvi, where Jennie and Joseph joined Ivan for lunch, was packed to the door. Joseph understood that places like Aragvi were only open to Party members and foreigners with hard currency to spend, but certainly at this level there was no shortage of anything, from caviar to champagne. “You will not believe this,” Ivan said, “but the Germans are only fifty miles away. Do you know, they have captured Mozhaisk? When they got there the tram from Moscow had just arrived.”

  “Then may we expect them here for dinner?” Jennie asked.

  “I do not think so,” Ivan said. “We are counterattacking.”

  It was amazing how calm everyone seemed to be, and not only at official levels either; that very day a call went out for a volunteer unit, a sort of Home Guard, to be raised to assist the soldiers in defending the city, and within a week 12,000 men had come forward. The difficulty was arming them. From the point of view of Joseph and the American delegation it was all very unreal. Although they stood every chance of being killed by a German bomb, they were basically in no danger should the Germans actually capture the city: the last thing the Nazis would dare risk would be antagonising the United States by deliberately harming any of its envoys.

  Business continued as if there was no threat. They spent every day with officials from the various Soviet ministries, and were subjected to lengthy ha
rangues; once they were even lectured by Stalin himself — this was the first time Joseph had ever laid eyes on the man he now knew had been responsible for locking him away, in atrocious conditions, for 12 years. But now was not the time for thoughts of vengeance, this would only be possible after the defeat of Hitler, if that was going to happen, Joseph thought. Stalin was in upbeat mood, reminding his audience of how Kutusov had beaten Napoleon, and Peter the Great defeated Charles XII of Sweden, both great soldiers who had appeared to have Russia at their mercy. “To compare Hitler or any of his generals with Napoleon or Charles is to make a bad joke,” the Premier declared. But the Germans were there, and coming closer, and for all the confidence exuded by the Soviet leader, it was difficult to determine the source of that confidence. He admitted they were short of all the material of war. That was why the Americans were there. But what the Russians were asking for was aid on an unimaginable scale.

  This led to a certain amount of dissension within the American camp. The military men, basing their professional opinions upon known facts, on the sheer magnitude of the German advance taken together with the enormous casualties in both men and materiel sustained by the Russians, were unanimous in their view that the Russians would probably not last the year. The civilians, headed by Hopkins, were impressed by the determination shown by Stalin and his leading henchmen, not to mention the people of Moscow themselves, and felt that, sufficiently encouraged, the Russians might well keep on fighting indefinitely.

  Joseph’s personal feelings were ambivalent. He invariably met Jennie and Ivan for lunch, and sometimes he visited them in the evenings as well, although this time was eaten into by the various social functions the Americans were required to attend. Quite amazingly, although the Bolshoi was closed, its reserve section, the Filiale, was still performing on Pushkin Street in the Operetta Theatre — it was even possible, on occasion, to watch Lepeshinskaya dance —while the cinemas, not to mention the Cocktail Hall on Gorki Street, were always packed.