One Night in Winter

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  ‘Why would anyone listen to me?’ She smiled as they walked through the Golden Gates.

  ‘Will you be playing the Game?’ he said, desperate to detain her. ‘You’d suit the costumes.’

  She stopped, her head on one side in that way of hers that made him feel he had her full attention – just for a moment. ‘You mean I’m old-fashioned?’

  ‘I like the way you dress.’

  ‘You admire my Bolshevik modesty?’

  ‘It just makes you even more—’

  ‘A compliment from Andrei?’ She cut him off. ‘Don’t we have enough romantics here already?’

  ‘But you’ll be at the Victory Parade?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘You don’t sound very excited.’

  ‘My parents are excited. I’m not very interested in howitzers and tanks.’ She leaned towards him. ‘But I’m looking forward to the Game afterwards.’

  ‘Why’s it all so secret?’

  ‘Don’t you see? In our age of conspiracy, everything is conspiratorial. Even having a picnic or reading poetry.’

  They’d reached the street and, with a wave, she was gone.

  Andrei hesitates for a moment or two – and then he follows her. She doesn’t notice, so entirely is she in her own world. She pushes her hair back from her face, and when her head turns a little, showing the perfect curve of her forehead, he sees that her lips are moving: she’s talking to herself, to someone, all the time. Up Ostozhenka she goes, past the Kremlin, Gorky Street, and into the House of Books. Up the stairs to the Foreign Literature section. She looks at the same books. Then she’s off again.

  Often she looks up the sky, at trees, at ornaments on buildings. Three soldiers point and whistle at her. She walks down another street, and men look after her. She notices none of them. Several times, he wants to shout, ‘Wait! Stop!’

  He longs to know what she’s saying and to whom. She skips up the steps of the Bolshoi Theatre and vanishes into the crowds waiting for curtain-up.

  9

  THE GOLDEN GATES resembled a parade ground the next morning. Comrade Satinov was in full dress uniform, boots, medals and braid. There was Rosa’s father, Marshal Shako, with his spiky hair, snub nose and Tartar eyes, in jodhpurs and spurs that clanked on the flagstones.

  ‘I’m rehearsing for the Victory Parade,’ he growled at Director Medvedeva. Then he spotted Serafima, whose waist he tweaked as he passed. ‘You’re a beautiful girl. Just like your mother!’ he bellowed.

  ‘Behave yourself,’ said Sophia Zeitlin, waving a jewelled finger at him. ‘Men get more excited about dressing up than women,’ she added, and Andrei realized she was talking to him. ‘Are you Serafima’s friend, Andrei?’

  He blushed. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Serafima told me how kind you were during your trip to the country house of a certain air force general.’ She drew him aside confidentially and took his hands in hers. ‘It’s hard for a mother to say this but may I speak frankly?’

  Andrei nodded.

  ‘I’m concerned about her, and suspect she may be meeting someone after school. Her father and I know she has her admirers, but you probably know more than we do. If you do, dear, may I count on you to tell me?’

  Andrei started to say something but stopped himself. Was she referring to the Fatal Romantics’ Club?

  ‘Oh Mama, leave poor Andrei alone,’ said Serafima, coming to his rescue.

  Sophia laughed. ‘I was only inviting Andrei to dinner with us at Aragvi tonight, wasn’t I, Andrei? I’ll send the car for you.’

  A summer evening in a street just off Gorky. Outside the engraved glass doors of the Aragvi Restaurant, a moustachioed Georgian in traditional dress – a long cherkesska coat with bullet pouches and a jewelled dagger hanging at his belt – stood as if on sentry duty. He opened the door for Andrei, who stepped hesitantly inside a panelled restaurant with tables on the ground floor.

  Andrei looked around him. The place was crowded, every table taken. He felt the thrill of a famous restaurant, the sense of shared luxury, the glimpse into the lives of others, lives unknown and unlived. Where were Serafima and her mother? There, making their way towards some stairs at the back that led to the main part of the restaurant. He hurried to join them, and together they entered a space that contained more crowded tables as well as closed alcoves on a second-floor gallery where a moon-faced and very sweaty Georgian in a burgundy tailcoat sang ‘Suliko’, accompanied by a guitarist.

  Sophia Zeitlin embraced the tiny maître d’ who wore white tie, white gloves and tails: his skin was so tautly stretched over his cheekbones that you could almost see through it.

  ‘Gamajoba, Madame Zeitlin!’ the man declaimed operatically. ‘Hello, dear Serafima! Come in! And who’s this? A new face?’

  ‘This is Longuinoz Stazhadze,’ said Sophia to Andrei. ‘The master of Aragvi and’ – she raised her hand in mock salute – ‘one of the most powerful men in Moscow.’

  He’s wearing face powder, noticed Andrei.

  People from many different tables hailed Sophia Zeitlin, and then Minka appeared as if from nowhere.

  ‘Andrei! Serafima! We’re expecting you!’ Minka led them to a table heaped high with dishes – satsivi, khachapuri, lobio . . . Waiters brought more to form a precarious ziggurat of plates. Longuinoz crooked his fingers, and more waiters bearing chairs above their heads wove amongst the closely packed tables, laying out new places just in time for Andrei, Serafima and Sophia to sit down.

  The whole Dorov family was there, Senka perched on his mother’s knee.

  ‘Andrei,’ Senka called out, ‘do you like my suit?’

  ‘You look just like a real little professor,’ Andrei agreed, laughing.

  Their host, Genrikh Dorov, ordered Telavi wine Number 5. His wife, Dashka Dorova, embraced Sophia, and pulled up a chair next to hers.

  ‘Have a martini,’ she suggested in her rather exotic Galician accent.

  ‘I’ll have a cosmopolitan. American-style,’ Sophia declared.

  ‘Eat up, children,’ said Genrikh, who seemed too puny to be a Party bigshot.

  Andrei scoured the restaurant. In the far alcove, next to a table of American officers, sat Comrade Satinov and family. George, next to him, made frantic wing-flapping gestures while pointing at Genrikh Dorov. Andrei smiled back at him to signal that he understood. Genrikh Dorov, the Uncooked Chicken, was looking more uncooked than ever.

  ‘There’s a happy family,’ joked Minka, who was next to Andrei. She was pointing at Nikolasha Blagov sitting in silence with his parents at a poky corner table.

  ‘I wonder if they’re sending Nikolasha’s father abroad as ambassador?’ asked Serafima.

  As they watched, Nikolasha sulkily pushed back his chair and stood.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ said Minka. ‘He’s heading this way!’

  The two girls laughed at what happened next as Nikolasha became stranded in the middle of the restaurant as streams of Georgian warriors flowed around him, balancing plates of lobio for the group of Americans at one of the larger tables.

  ‘You know the Game is just Nikolasha’s way of seeing you, Serafima. That’s what it’s really about,’ said Minka.

  ‘I don’t think Papa would approve of your game,’ said Demian Dorov prissily. ‘Papa would say it’s un-Bolshevik.’

  ‘Are you going to tell him?’ asked Minka. ‘You’d be a real creep if you did.’

  Demian raised his finger. ‘I’m just saying: be careful. There’s something sinister about Nikolasha’s obsession with death.’

  Andrei looked up as Nikolasha loomed over them. ‘My father’s been sent to Mexico as ambassador,’ he said dolefully.

  ‘Surely you don’t have to go too?’ Minka was sympathetic.

  ‘He says I must. It makes tomorrow night especially significant,’ said Nikolasha. ‘It could be the last Game!’ He leaned down to whisper to Serafima and then Minka.

  ‘I think we should invite Andrei to play it this time,’ said Serafima
suddenly.

  ‘But Andrei’s not a full member. He only became a candidate last week. He’s not ready,’ Nikolasha protested.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Andrei. ‘I can just watch.’

  ‘Do you want me to come?’ Serafima looked intently at Nikolasha, who shifted uncomfortably.

  ‘Very much.’

  Andrei saw her green eyes shine as she leaned forward.

  ‘Then Andrei plays the Game. If you want me, you must include him too.’

  10

  THE MORNING OF the Victory Parade, and the rain was pouring down on the soldiers, tanks, horses and, amongst the throng of Muscovites on the streets, Andrei and his mother, Inessa. He was, he thought, the only one of his new friends not to have a seat in the grandstand on Red Square. Wearing hats, galoshes and anoraks, they’d got up early to find a good place at the bottom of Gorky Street to watch the show.

  A roar. ‘That’s Stalin arriving!’ said the woman next to Andrei. As the orchestra of fifteen hundred musicians played Glinka’s ‘Glory’, blasted out of giant but tinny loudspeakers mounted on the backs of trucks, Andrei and Inessa could just make out Marshal Zhukov, on a white horse, riding out of one of the Kremlin gates to meet Marshal Rokossovsky in the middle and take the salute. Tanks, howitzers and horsemen passed; flanks of steel and muscle glistened in the rain. They saw soldiers bearing Nazi banners, scarlet and black, like a Roman triumph, and heard their passionate ‘URRAH’ as they tossed them at the feet of their leader, the Great Stalin.

  Afterwards, the roads were clogged with tanks and jeeps, crowds of soldiers and civilians.

  ‘What a shame it rained,’ Andrei said to his mother. But he was not really thinking about the rain. ‘Mama’ – he turned to her and put his arms around her – ‘do you think—’

  ‘Do I think Papa will come home now?’ she finished his thought perfectly. ‘Hush.’ She looked around, even though no one could hear in that din of singing and shouting, footsteps and rain. ‘Lower your voice.’

  ‘I’m sure they will all come back now, won’t they? I feel it,’ Andrei whispered. ‘I so want him back.’ It was something they had never said to each other, because it was so raw even after all these years.

  ‘Darling Andryusha, don’t wish for anything too much. They say you can’t live without hope but I think hope’s the cruellest trick of all. I survive by not expecting much.’

  ‘But, Mama, there are so many out here today who must be like us. And I know they’re all thinking like me. Surely there’ll be an amnesty, and everyone will come back?’

  Inessa closed her eyes for a moment to collect herself and when he looked at her bone-weary face, he realized that she was steeling herself for him. ‘Don’t forget him. Never forget him. But go forward now, darling. Just look forward.’

  Andrei felt a lurch of disappointment. He sighed and dropped his arms, stepping away from her. ‘I’m meeting my friends on the Stone Bridge at five.’

  ‘To read Pushkin? Are you dressing up?’

  ‘Oh Mama, do you think I’d look good in a top hat and velvet coat? No, I’m too late to find a costume.’ They laughed as he pushed his way into the crowds – and afterwards, when he had so many long nights to replay everything, he wished he had said goodbye properly, and told her that he loved her.

  ‘Be careful, you’re all I’ve got. Off you go then!’ she called after him as she let him step into his new world.

  Andrei fought his way up the steps. Soldiers, in cloaks and mantles and greatcoats, caps over their eyes, visors running with droplets, were singing on the bridge. Strangers hugged one another and swigged from vodka bottles handed through the crowd. It was hard to see far through the rain and the mist – he kept having to wipe his glasses – but as the crowd closed around Andrei, so closely packed that it took the weight off his feet, he looked back at the red walls of the Kremlin, the stars atop the towers, the gold of the Great Palace, the onion domes, streaked with light in the sheets of rain, and he thought that somewhere in there was Stalin himself, and with Stalin were Comrades Satinov and Dorov, and probably Sophia Zeitlin, famous people whom he now knew. He’d even dined with them at Aragvi. What were they doing at this moment? He knew Satinov, and Satinov knew Stalin, so he, Andrei, was just a few steps from the greatest man in the world.

  ‘Andryusha!’ It was Minka and she was holding the hand of Senka, who was wearing a new suit under a yellow raincoat – just like a grown-up.

  ‘Hello, Little Professor,’ said Andrei. ‘I see your mama let you out?’

  ‘You’re not wearing fancy dress either?’ said Senka. ‘I don’t blame you. Minka isn’t dressed up. Is it only those credulous imbeciles who take the Game seriously?’ He pointed along the bridge, over the massed heads and bobbing caps, and there was Nikolasha, towering above everyone else in the crowd, at the other end where the road was barricaded to create a wide pedestrian walkway. He was resplendent in an olive-green frock coat and boots, his strawberry-red hair coarsened and rusted by the rain. Shoving through the crowd to get across the bridge, Andrei greeted George and Marlen Satinov, who had their little sister Mariko with them, and nodded at Vlad, who was also in costume. But where was Serafima?

  ‘She’ll come, don’t you worry,’ said Nikolasha. ‘See?’ He smiled triumphantly.

  And there she was, in a blue dress and Peter Pan collar, soaked by the rain which had frizzed her hair into uncontrollable curls. Andrei couldn’t stop looking at her. He scarcely paid attention as Nikolasha clapped his hands and Vlad handed him the Velvet Book.

  ‘Comrade Romantics,’ Nikolasha declared formally, ‘I am recording the first attendance of Andrei Kurbsky as a full member qualified to play the Game.’ The crowd was so noisy that Andrei could barely hear him and it was hard to stay with the others, such was the shoving of the crowds. But everyone was in a good mood that day and when George and Minka began to pour out shots of vodka and hand round the glasses, a spotty sailor grabbed one and quaffed it and soon it seemed as if they were providing drinks for the entire Baltic Fleet.

  ‘Are you a theatre troupe?’ asked one of them, pulling on Nikolasha’s frock coat.

  Rosa, in a purple cloak over a red dress with golden appliqué, fought her way through the mass of passersby. ‘Sorry, Nikolasha, I couldn’t get through. Here they are!’ She handed him the pistols in their little green case. She bowed before Nikolasha who nodded back.

  ‘Comrade Romantics . . .’ he started in his solemn high priest’s voice. ‘We’re here as always to celebrate poetry over prose, passion over science. What is our choice?’

  ‘LOVE OR DEATH,’ replied Vlad and Rosa. ‘WITHOUT LOVE, LET US DIE YOUNG!’

  ‘Let the Game begin!’ said Nikolasha, but his incantation was drowned out by the sailors singing ‘The Blue Shawl’, and then ‘Katyusha’ – for Katyusha was a song as well as a movie.

  ‘Get on with it or we’ll lose each other!’ George shouted, swigging the vodka.

  ‘What? I can’t even hear myself!’ shouted Nikolasha, nodding at Vlad, who held up the case and showed them the two duelling pistols. As he chose his pistol, Nikolasha stowed the Velvet Book in the pistol case – out of the rain.

  ‘Who dies today? Let’s play . . .’ said Rosa but her little cooing voice was lost in the roar of the crowd.

  No one saw what happened next. They were separated by the currents of the crowd that carried Andrei so far from the others that he lost Serafima altogether and could only just see Nikolasha’s head in the distance when the two shots rang out. Amidst the sudden hush that followed, the rain stopped and with it time itself. Slow steam arose from the sweating, damp crowds, the sticky air congested with white poplar pollen instantly, mysteriously unleashed, and that red head was nowhere to be seen.

  When he found them again, standing startled and horrified around the bodies, Andrei looked at his friends, at the other Fatal Romantics – and, across the bodies, his eyes met Serafima’s in a kind of horrified complicity. And then time speeded up again.<
br />
  In front of him two army medics were working on the bodies, and a clearing had opened up in the dense pack of people. Policemen were running from both directions. And he saw the duelling pistols on the ground, one shattered into pieces, and the Velvet Book, splayed open on the wet ground, its covers all muddy. The police were holding people back, placing bollards around the scene and asking questions.

  ‘Are you friends of these two?’ a police officer asked, a burly fellow with a Stavropol accent and a paunch. ‘Pull yourselves together. Say something!’

  ‘Yes we are.’ Andrei stepped forward, conscious that Vlad beside him was shaking in his bedraggled frock coat.

  ‘Are you actors or something? Do you dress up like this all the time?’

  ‘We’re not actors,’ Vlad said and began to cry.

  ‘Christ! What about you, girl?’ said the policeman, pointing at Minka, who was hugging her little brother, Senka.

  ‘Come away, Senka, I’m taking you home.’

  ‘But look at that pistol – it’s in pieces – and the Velvet Book’s all torn,’ said Senka, crouching down to look.

  ‘Leave all that; the police will need them,’ said Minka.

  ‘No one’s going anywhere yet,’ ordered the policeman, turning to Serafima. ‘You there! What’s your name?’

  ‘I’m Serafima Romashkina.’ Andrei could tell she was struggling to hold her nerve by being icily calm and formal. Yet she had blood on her hands – she must have got to her friends first.

  ‘Like the writer?’

  ‘He’s my father.’

  ‘You’re kidding. So your mother’s Sophia Zeitlin?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Serafima.

  ‘I’m a fan. I loved Katyusha. What a movie! But you don’t look like her at all.’

  ‘Look, our friends are lying there and you’re just—’

  ‘So what were you doing here, Serafima Romashkina?’ The policeman was now brandishing a little notebook and pencil that seemed too small for his thick fingers.