One Night in Winter

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  His head spun, his jaw clenched, his belly tightened and he vomited in the corner of the room. The face was scarcely recognizable but when he wiped his mouth and looked again, Colonel Likhachev said, ‘Don’t you remember your dear friend? Look more closely!’

  The man seemed barely conscious. He was muttering to himself, and one of his eyes was totally closed, with blood seeping out of it. He wore a uniform, though the tunic was missing half its buttons, the chest was torn where the medals had been ripped off and the shoulderboards had been cut away. George half covered his eyes. Even like this, the man was all too familiar.

  ‘Losha?’ he said. ‘Losha – oh God, what have they done to you?’

  ‘Ssssizz!’ The sound came from Losha Babanava’s mouth but it was incomprehensible. He opened his good eye which somehow almost seemed to twinkle at George. ‘Ssshhhzz.’

  ‘Sizzling?’ said George.

  The head nodded.

  George collapsed back into his chair. He thought he might vomit again. After his father, Losha Babanava was the man George most loved and respected. He had known him all his life. Whatever happened, whatever he needed, Losha had been able to fix it. Now Losha, this prince of men, was the bloodied ruin before him, flanked by two guards, in this Godforsaken prison. If Losha was broken, anything was possible. His father could be here too.

  ‘George, George, calm down,’ said Likhachev. ‘You can see what happens when you don’t tell us all you know. No one can stand in the way of the state, however strong you are – isn’t that right, Prisoner Babanava? Losha’s as strong as an ox but we broke him, didn’t we?’ He paused, and then smiled at George, his face shining with sweat. ‘We should thank you, George. How else could we have known where you got the gun that Rosa Shako used to kill Nikolasha and herself?’

  George was almost overcome with the shame of it, and angry too. There was no shortage of guns in Moscow. Nikolasha could have got that gun anywhere. Yes, he, George, had borrowed it from Losha and given it to his schoolfriend, but it had not occurred to him that Losha would get into trouble. And now he realized that this ruin of blisters, blood, bruises, was his own doing.

  But Losha was shaking and trying to say something. ‘Don’t blame yourself,’ he thought Losha was trying to mouth. ‘Do whatever you have to do.’

  ‘Silence, prisoner,’ shouted Likhachev. ‘Or we’ll finish you off!’

  Losha slurred one more word until George recognised it: ‘Family!’ Family was everything to a Georgian, and Losha loved their family. George buried his face in his hands.

  ‘Let’s get on with this,’ said Likhachev. ‘Losha says there’s something you haven’t told us, George.’

  George could barely hear him. He felt the fires of hell were screaming in his ears.

  ‘If you want to earn Losha a visit from the doctor, tell us who was the important man who chased Serafima. Focus, George. Losha might die without a doctor.’

  George looked at Losha and the caked head nodded. He was right. It did not matter. He must tell or Losha would suffer more.

  ‘I’ll tell you, if you get him a doctor. It was Vasily . . .’ Losha nodded. ‘Vasily Stalin.’

  Likhachev stiffened when he heard the name. ‘Vasily Stalin and Serafima?’

  George read in Likhachev’s face that no one else had mentioned that name in connection with Serafima. Well, now he’d said it, and it didn’t matter because Vasily Stalin was untouchable.

  Likhachev rubbed his narrow brow. ‘Vasily Stalin, you say?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Likhachev called out to the guards: ‘Get Colonel Komarov.’

  Komarov joined them, and Likhachev turned to George again.

  ‘General Vasily Stalin was courting Serafima?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said George.

  ‘Did they have an immoral relationship?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Can you confirm this, Babanava?’

  Losha nodded and George told the story that he had heard from his brother about the night Vasily had gone out with Serafima. The two interrogators looked at one another in silence for what seemed like an age while George understood that they, like him, were running through all the possible consequences of his revelation – but from a very different angle. All George could hope was that he had won Losha a medical visit. The interrogators would have to report to their superiors and George wondered if the magic name might stop this crazy investigation altogether. Surely if Comrade Stalin was told, if Vasily complained to his father, then the schoolchildren would be released . . . But this was George’s last burst of optimism: he was so drained that, whatever the consequences to himself, all he wanted to do was sleep, to escape this hell.

  ‘Let’s return to the New Leader,’ said Likhachev. ‘If you still want to help Losha, that is?’

  George rubbed his eyes. ‘I don’t think NV means New Leader. Nikolasha may have been referring to someone in Onegin. You need a Pushkin scholar . . .’

  As the guards were dragging Losha towards to the door, he looked back at George trying to say something again. ‘Sszzy . . .’ And then George understood it: ‘Sissies.’

  George wept. For himself. For Losha. For sissies everywhere. Innokenty Rimm had never been happier. In the past, he had often felt himself handicapped by his figure, by the bottom that looked big in whatever suits or tunic he chose. (He replayed the pain of his schooldays, thanks to the trousers that made his hips look ungainly, however tight or baggy they might be! What tantrums he had had when his mother bought him trousers and he looked in the mirror!) When he had received those love letters from ‘Tatiana’, he had often wondered what such a Helen of Troy had seen in him. But now power had lightened his chunky midriff, now he felt snake-hipped with the headiness of success. If she liked him then, when he was merely deputy director, she must love him so much more now. He expected the next letter to acclaim his new status.

  He was at the Golden Gates, greeting the parents with bon mots. How natural: they all treated him as if he had always been in charge.

  Assembly. School, stand! A simple gesture to sit. A merry song. A pointed homily.

  Afterwards: ‘Morning, Teacher Golden. A word please?’ he said, buttonholing Benya as the children pushed back their chairs. The children were watching him inconspicuously, wondering if he was reprimanding Golden, interested in his every act now he was (acting) director.

  ‘Yes, Innokenty,’ said Benya Golden. ‘I’m all ears.’

  ‘Your Pushkin classes are suspended while the school is under such scrutiny and while we are rethinking the literature syllabus. Understood?’

  Benya Golden had opened his mouth to make one of his facetious comments when Rimm spotted four strangers in suits who were obviously plain-clothed officers of the Organs. Now he was in charge, he hoped they were not here to arrest any of his pupils. He was quite sure that the children in custody would be released very soon. If the Party believed Kapitolina Medvedeva had committed crimes, well, he would not dream of challenging the Party. ‘Morning, comrades!’ he said to them masterfully. In fact, he knew why they were here: to arrest Benya Golden after his denunciation.

  The agents marched purposefully down the central aisle. The children too recognized them as the comrades who had arrested Vlad Titorenko on the day after the shooting, and shouldered their satchels more slowly, scared but still curious. The teachers froze in their seats. Rimm smiled as they approached, knowing why they were there, ready to guide them. Sure enough, one of them gestured slightly towards where he and Golden stood. So he had been correct. He always was.

  Rimm looked at Golden and he was amazed to see that, while he was pale, he was calm. A courage of sorts.

  Rimm stepped forward towards the Chekists. Now that they were close, he could not help but take control (as acting director and advisor to the Organs). He gestured a little towards Golden, to guide them to the right place, and they were grateful because they placed their hands on Golden’s arms, lightly but firmly.

&
nbsp; ‘Would you come with us?’ said their leader. ‘It won’t take long. We just have a few questions.’ They turned Golden around – he glanced back at Agrippina Begbulatova – and were just about to march him out when the chief agent said, ‘You are Innokenty Rimm, are you not?’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ said Golden.

  ‘I’m Dr Rimm,’ Rimm said. ‘But surely . . .’

  ‘Apologies,’ said the chief agent, patting Benya Golden on the arm in an entirely different way than a second earlier. ‘Do carry on and have a good day.’

  Then, moving with the robust agility of men who live in the realm of physical force, they laid their hands on Rimm in such a way that they instantly assumed possession of him. He felt cumbersome as if made of clay. He could not move his legs, and his face seemed to burn.

  ‘Innokenty Rimm? Come with us, please. Just a formality. A couple of hours and we’ll have you back in class. Nothing to worry about . . .’

  As he was frogmarched out of the hall, Rimm glanced back, expecting to see a smirk of triumph from Benya Golden – but instead he saw only deep sympathy, and this from a man who had every reason to despise him.

  And he wondered in that fearsome moment of freefalling if he had been wrong about Golden, about the headmistress, about everything, all along.

  27

  WAS IT MORNING or midnight, midsummer or the dead of winter? The days and nights were blurred together: interrogations that started in the middle of the night seemed to last into the afternoon. But the very fact that Senka had settled into the almost reassuring routine of the Grey Granite Mountain proved that a great deal of time had passed. More than a week. Maybe even two weeks. How could he tell? All Senka Dorov knew was that he was very tired and very hungry, and back in the interrogation room that had become his entire world, facing Colonel Likhachev.

  I am cleverer than you, you ugly old bully, he thought as he looked at the Lobster. Senka had confessed to taking the Velvet Book but in innocence. When he saw the notebook, there on the bridge, he had grabbed it. When he read all that nonsense about the Romantic Politburo and Minister of Love after lights-out in his bedroom, he grasped that he must hide the book. But he had made two grievous mistakes: the first was not destroying it, and the second was telling his snitch brother. But in that all-important session, he had managed to find something to give the Chekists a new strand of investigation: ‘Once we were walking down Gorky and we saw Serafima, and a hundred metres behind her, we saw Dr Rimm following her.’ Yes, he’d offered up the grotesque Rimm as Serafima’s secretly besotted admirer, and wondered if they had arrested him too.

  The stench of Likhachev brought him back to earth. Senka analysed the Lobster (after all, he had spent hours with the horrible man). He identified: cologne, sweat, salami, garlic, too much vodka and wee – yes, not unlike the odour of the school lavatories. However, he felt a tremendous urge to please this thug, to win his favour. This man had absolute power over him and his family, yet he was determined that he would not tell anyone anything, not anything important anyway. He remembered that his papa often said, ‘Discretion is one of the cardinal Bolshevik virtues.’ Comrade Genrikh Dorov was a clever and important man (if lugubriously solemn – did he never laugh?). Yes, even his mama admitted with a laugh that Papa was a curmudgeon. And how he loved his mama. Even here, he could will her presence: her lovely scent (it came all the way from Paris, she said), which he could identify quite separately from the sweet way her skin and hair smelled. But his daddy understood Bolshevism and politics better than his mama: Genrikh Dorov had been one of Stalin’s own secretaries and Papa said, ‘The Party is always right.’ But why did his parents whisper things if the Party was always right? There was an inconsistency there, thought Senka, an inconsistency that could not be explained, not even by his parents.

  One thing was clear amidst all the esotheric mysteries of the Lobster’s questions: he would be a lot more comfortable in his professorial suit than these pyjamas. And now his chance came.

  ‘So,’ said the Lobster in a new amused tone. ‘I hear you wear a suit all the time and sweep up leaves instead of doing school gymnastics. A weird little boy, aren’t you?’

  ‘Comrade colonel,’ Senka burst out, encouraged by this lugubrious affability, ‘when my mama comes, please can you ask her to bring my suit?’

  The smirk hovered around Colonel Likhachev’s mouth. ‘A Soviet child should wear socks and shorts.’

  ‘Yes. But my dignity depends on a suit.’

  ‘Your dignity? A suit?’ Likhachev pulled out his bullystick and thumped the table.

  Senka lowered his head, his eyes fixed on the truncheon. He was afraid of course but he was clever enough to appear even more afraid, and he saw that his fear pleased the Lobster.

  ‘Quick question for you tonight, Senka. Which of you really knows Pushkin’s Onegin?’

  Senka sighed. Could it be part of a code? There were often codes within ordinary things: he liked to read the Fables of Aesop, and Papa had explained to him that the Party leaders often used a special secret language that was Aesopian, with lots of double meanings, so Senka was always aware of the Aesopian language when he read the newspapers or listened to the news on the radio, and here in Lubianka he constantly examined each question with the diligence of a cryptographer.

  So Senka turned the Lobster’s literary question over in his mind: how could that hurt his mama and papa? He could not imagine that it would. How could it hurt his sister Minka? No, he could not see that either. He was puzzled. It appeared to be a question that he could answer but what was its meaning in Aesopian language? Was Pushkin, in this case, national poet (good) or romantic nobleman (bad)?

  ‘Get a fucking move on, boy, or you’ll feel this across your face.’ The Lobster brandished the bullystick. ‘Who knows Onegin best of your sister’s friends?’

  He chose the boy whom he hoped would do the least harm. ‘Andrei Kurbsky. You could ask him.’

  Kapitolina Medvedeva was suspended. Even though her chief accuser, Rimm, was under arrest, her decisions on Andrei Kurbsky and Benya Golden were under investigation. At home that night, she wondered if she was going to be destroyed. She was being called before a judgement tribunal of the Education Sector of the Agitprop Department, Central Committee, at Old Square. Most likely, she would be sacked and then arrested. She would never teach again. The Gulags were likely. Even execution was possible. At the very least: exile. It was time to make a plan. A plan for survival.

  I know who I am, Serafima told herself as Likhachev interrogated her. I know I love and am loved. Nothing else matters. And she touched her scar, the mark she called her snakeskin with her hand, and heard his voice reciting their poem. But Likhachev was asking her something again.

  LIKHACHEV Who was your lover, you whore? Who was NV? Name the New Leader.

  SERAFIMA There was no New Leader and I don’t know what NV means.

  LIKHACHEV Don’t play the saint with me, girl. You prostituted yourself to a counter-revolutionary conspiracy and your hot tail attracted tomcats from all over town. Now answer the questions or you’ll be sorry. Was George Satinov your lover? Vlad Titorenko? Or Andrei Kurbsky?

  SERAFIMA No. Andrei wanted to protect me. George is a friend. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  LIKHACHEV Kurbsky is the son of an Enemy of the People. Was Innokenty Rimm your lover?

  SERAFIMA No! Dr Rimm is really old. He’s about forty! I don’t think any girl could be in love with Dr Rimm.

  LIKHACHEV A degenerate traitor who is capable of conspiring to overthrow the Soviet Government is capable of sexual intercourse with Dr Rimm. Don’t lie to the Party! We have the letters! We found them in your bedroom. Let me read this one: My darling ‘Tatiana’, I know it is you, Serafima Constantinovna – your letters have reached the throbbing heart of this Bolshevik lover, your handsome pedagogue. In my Communist ethics lessons I gaze upon you. I sing for you in the school corridors! Your ‘Onegin’ (yes, of course it is I, Innokenty). Prisone
r, your friends have told us that they saw Rimm following you in the streets. Confess this teacher seduced you. What depravity did he demand? Sodomy? If you lie to me, you’ll rot in the camps! Confess!

  SERAFIMA No. He sent me those letters but I was bewildered. Then I laughed. That’s all.

  LIKHACHEV Why didn’t you report them?

  SERAFIMA I wasn’t sure what to do. If I reported him, would I be blamed? He was important at the school, and I’m leaving soon. I thought it best just to keep them and ignore him.

  LIKHACHEV You are a lying prostitute. When we searched his home, we found your love letters to him! Look read this one. Tuneful singer . . . sweet Onegin . . . Kiss me like a true Communist. ‘Tatiana’. You’re lying to the Organs of the Communist Party. Take this!

  SERAFIMA Please don’t hurt me. God, I’m bleeding.

  LIKHACHEV Confess or I’ll smash your teeth in. You’ll be like a toothless hag, sucking your gums. Are these your letters to him?

  SERAFIMA I’ve never seen these before. I didn’t write them, I swear to you. Someone was playing a prank on Dr Rimm. You know everything and I’m sure you even know who was teasing Dr Rimm. Perhaps one of his pupils?

  LIKHACHEV The Organs know everything. What about Teacher Golden? Was he your lover too?

  SERAFIMA No!

  LIKHACHEV You were his favourite pupil?

  SERAFIMA Why are you asking me these questions?

  LIKHACHEV Because you’re a pretty girl and he’s a fornicator. [Pause.] I have to ask you a question that is sensitive because of its relation to the Head of the Soviet Government. You were acquainted with General Vasily Stalin? Did you and he ever have immoral relations?