The Lieutenant's Lover

by Harry Bingham

  Tonya heard his words as though he were talking about taking her to dinner on the moon, or asking her how she would like to furnish her palace. His words seemed ludicrous, but also somehow believable, coming from him. For the first time, Tonya began to believe that things might yet all turn out for the best.

  4

  Tonya was home early from the hospital. It was early July, the season of Petrograd’s famous white nights, when the nights were so brief that darkness never really set in, a late twilight fading into an early milky dawn.

  Normally, she would have gone straight to the rail yard to wait for Misha to emerge. But not tonight. Misha wanted to use the long night to complete the secret compartment in one of his grain hoppers. He planned to stay up all night to do it. He wouldn’t see Tonya again until the following evening.

  But, though Tonya missed him, she didn’t mind too much. She was behind with her housework and the apartment needed cleaning. She spent half an hour with her grandmother, Babba Varvara, then went back into the main room and began working. She hummed to herself as she worked, and sometimes found herself unconsciously repeating the dance steps that Misha had taught her. She was doing just that, twirling as she carried the cooking pot over to the stove, when she sensed the door open behind her. She stopped dancing and put the pot down. It was Rodyon.

  He looked tired and thin, worn down. She saw him still from time to time, but not often. She was surprised to see him, and guarded.

  ‘Zdrasvoutye,’ she said.

  Rodyon nodded, but said nothing. He sat down.

  ‘Tea?’

  ‘Yes, please, if you have it.’

  ‘You can have bread too, if you want.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You’re not fine. You look tired and hungry.’

  Tonya put the kettle on the stove, then jiggled the logs inside to stir up the heat. The apartment was hot even with the windows open wide, and the heat was an unwanted extra. There was also something unsettling about the length of these summer days. When she was with Misha, the long days made sense. But when he was absent, the endless days and shimmering nights seemed mildly insane, as though the world had lost its ability to rest. She cut a slice of bread and spread it with pork dripping and salt.

  ‘Here.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Rodyon ate it wolfishly, then sighed.

  ‘You know, Marx took a material view of humanity. It was his greatest insight, his greatest accomplishment. But you don’t realise how right he was until you’ve been hungry. All the time I’ve been sitting here, I’ve wondered whether you had sugar or jam to go with the tea. I desperately hope that you do, but have been too proud to ask. A spoonful of sugar against a man’s soul. Pitiful, isn’t it?’

  ‘I have sugar, yes. And lemon.’

  ‘Ah, the careful management of the official allocation or the miraculous bounty of the black market. I wonder which.’

  ‘You know very well which.’

  ‘Yes, and I’m going to enjoy it anyway. You were cooking as I came in. At least, you were dancing with a cooking pot, which I assume is the same thing. Don’t let me stop you.’

  Tonya did as he said. To the pot, she added cabbage, beans, carrot, onion and a thick shin of beef. She put the whole thing on to boil. She worked carefully, guarding her expression. She wasn’t exactly nervous of Rodyon, but the two of them hadn’t seen each other for a while and Rodyon seldom did things without a purpose. She waited for him to reveal it.

  The kettle boiled. She made tea, let it brew, then poured it, adding three spoonfuls of sugar. Rodyon took the cup with thanks. He had barely changed his posture since first sitting down, but she could see his tiredness slipping away, and he wore it now as a mask more than anything.

  ‘We’re seeing Pavel more and more at the Bureau of Housing,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  It was true. Because of Misha, Tonya had been at home very little. Pavel, never properly rooted since their mother had died, had taken to leaving home more and more. He often ended up at the Bureau of Housing, where his admiration for Rodyon had blossomed into something close to hero-worship.

  ‘He is useful. He runs a lot of errands for us.’

  ‘He’s a good boy.’

  ‘Yes… And when did he last wash, do you know?’

  ‘Wash? He washes every day.’

  ‘Face and hands, yes. I meant more than that. All over.’

  Tonya shrugged. ‘He’s fourteen, nearly fifteen. You know what it’s like.’

  ‘This week? Last week?’

  ‘What do you care? He won’t wash in cold water and boiling enough water for a bath in this heat … well, he’s old enough to boil water for himself if he wants it.’

  ‘You didn’t always say that.’

  ‘He wasn’t always fifteen, or as good as.’

  ‘But the change came four months ago, didn’t it, Antonina Kirylovna?’

  Tonya swallowed. Rodyon was creeping around to the real subject and she felt her mouth go strangely dry. Though she wanted to blame it on other things – the endless day outside, the light glittering from the city’s roofs and cupolas, the heat of the stove – she knew it was none of those things.

  ‘Maybe,’ she admitted.

  ‘Mikhail Ivanovich Malevich. Son of Ivan Ilyich Malevich. Ivan Ilyich was one of the country’s richest men. Not in the top fifty perhaps, but not so far outside either. Coal mines. Iron works. Land.’

  ‘They have none of that now.’

  ‘No.’

  Rodyon stopped as though he’d finished. He finished his tea and pushed his cup away from him.

  ‘More?’ said Tonya.

  ‘Please.’

  ‘The sugar doesn’t come from father’s coal-stealing. It comes from Misha. The soup things too. He trades his family’s last few possessions. He is generous.’

  ‘Bourgeois sugar, eh?’

  ‘That’s one way to put it.’

  ‘Then I’ll have another spoonful.’

  Tonya poured the tea and pushed it back at Rodyon. Her movement contained an ounce or two of anger and tea slopped over the rim of the cup. He ignored both the anger and the spillage.

  ‘His family’s last few possessions. What a piteous-sounding phrase!’

  ‘There’s no pity. It’s a simple fact.’

  ‘Is it? Really? That’s another insight of Marx’s. Facts aren’t necessarily simple, even the simplest ones. His father accumulated possessions by exploiting his workers. Each year, every year, men died underground in his coal mines. Others were cut to pieces in industrial accidents at his iron works. And he reaped the profit.’

  ‘He employed them. I don’t suppose conditions in his mines were worse than elsewhere.’

  ‘He gave them the lowest wage he could possibly pay them, you mean. Yes. And that wage wasn’t always enough to give his workers enough food, fuel, medicine or housing. Look at this rat-hole you live in. You have always counted yourself lucky to have it. How does it compare with Kuletsky Prospekt, eh? How does it compare with that? So: you say his family’s last few possessions, but if he stole the labour that allowed him to acquire them, then to whom, really, do those things belong?’

  Tonya shrugged. ‘Who cares? In a few months, they’ll have nothing.’

  Rodyon nodded, as though he agreed. He stood up. All at once, the lean tigerishness of his energy seemed to come rushing back. When before he had looked tired, now again, as usual, his face radiated an intense, challenging handsomeness, spoiled and completed by his broken nose. He paced the tiny apartment as though he felt cooped up in it. He leaned out of the open window, traced a line on a cupboard with the tip of his finger as though to check for dust, then came over to the stove and felt it for heat.

  ‘Good soup.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The smell is almost the best part.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘A meat bone?’

  ‘Beef.’

  ‘You’re lucky.’

 
; ‘If it’s luck that we’ve been talking about, then yes.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  Rodyon paced again. Back to the window, behind Kiryl’s armchair, which he rocked to and fro on its back legs, then to the table and the carrot ends and onion skins left over from Tonya’s cooking. He took some carrot ends and began to munch.

  ‘Babba Varvara’s all right, is she?’

  ‘She’s fine. No different from ever.’

  ‘No. You do well with her. If she weren’t your responsibility she would be mine. Thank you.’

  Tonya shrugged. Then he turned abruptly around, and faced Tonya. She found herself fixed in the sudden glare of his intensity.

  ‘Listen, Antonina, this boy of yours, Mikhail Ivanovich. He is a danger to you. You must stop seeing him.’

  Tonya opened her mouth to protest. The anxiety that she’d felt since Rodyon’s entry had been pointing all along to this one inevitable moment. She felt fiercely, passionately protective of Misha. But Rodyon didn’t let her speak. He waved down anything she might have had to say.

  ‘You’ll protest of course. But hear me out. At the heart of the Communist Party lies the understanding that the interests of Malevich’s class are irreconcilable with the interests of the workers. It isn’t any longer a question of living space or property or anything like that. But Malevich knows that the Party is his enemy. The Party knows that Malevich is its enemy. If you align yourself with Malevich, you align yourself against the Party. That’s dangerous. It’s inconceivably foolish, if I may say so.’

  Tonya moved her tongue inside her mouth. She found only glue and ash. She couldn’t have spoken if she’d wanted to, but Rodyon hadn’t finished.

  ‘The second thing is this. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee is about to issue a new set of decrees. Malevich and his kind will be sent into internal exile all over Russia. It’s no use having these people crawling over the seats of power in Petrograd and Moscow. They’ll be given work to do. They will work of their own accord, or they will be made to work in a labour camp. We find it helps to keep the alternatives fairly simple. The decrees will be published any day now. They will have immediate effect.’

  Tonya felt the blood rushing in her head. She wanted to find some way to block the sound of Rodyon’s words, but couldn’t. The words had already smashed aside any possible barrier and were roaring forwards in their destructive progress. Only time could tell what wreckage would be left behind.

  ‘And one last thing. I think I’ve handled things badly. I should have acted sooner or perhaps later. I kept putting things off. But in the end I realise that the only important thing is that I should act. Antonina – Tonya – I am – I have always been your greatest friend and admirer. I know that this isn’t the time – there’s Malevich in your thoughts I know. But you will put him aside. You’ll have to. And when you do, please know that I’m here. I have loved you for a long time. For ever, so it seems. I would like to be – if you’ll let me – I know it’ll take time – more than just your friend and your cousin. Don’t give me an answer now. The timing is all wrong, I know. Forgive me. But some day. I shan’t go away.’

  Rodyon took a step or two forwards as though intending to grasp Tonya’s hands or kiss her. Then, realising any such movement would be profoundly unwelcome, he simply nodded his head, briefly looked around the room, then strode briskly away.

  5

  Tonya told Misha of Rodyon’s visit. She didn’t tell him about the first part of what he’d had to say, nor the last part either. But she told him about the decrees, the awful fact of impending banishment.

  Misha had listened in silence, then nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘I’d expected something like that,’ he said, ‘only I’d hoped it wouldn’t come so soon. All the same, there’s no reason to change plans. We’ll just have to work a little faster.’

  And work they did. Misha barely slept for working. He finished building a false wall into the back of one of the grain hoppers and got three of the six wagons workable. He couldn’t do more.

  Nor was Tonya idle.

  It was one thing to build a false wall onto the back of a freight car, it was quite another thing to get that freight car onto the right train on the right line at the right time. After consulting intensively together, Misha and Tonya agreed that it was essential to take Kiryl at least partly into their confidence. The old man was utterly untrustworthy in most respects, but there was little he wouldn’t do for vodka, and Tonya promised him enough to swim in. Somehow, Kiryl used his railway contacts to attach the wagon to a train bound for Finland. A date was set – then postponed – then set again.

  And finally, things were ready. The train would leave at first light, which meant that it would be loaded overnight. Emma, Yevgeny, Tonya and Misha stood in the corner of the freight yard, watching the process.

  A locomotive stood at the head of a long line of grain hoppers, moving the wagons forward in short eight-yard bursts, letting each one fill with grain from the loading chute. It was past midnight and the process was accompanied by flares of lamplight, whistles, and the occasional thundering curse. The short season of white nights had passed. The night was dark.

  Misha’s wagon was near the back of the line, but the line kept moving forwards. It was time.

  ‘Well then,’ said Emma.

  ‘You’ve got the blankets?’

  ‘Yes. And the cushions are already inside.’

  ‘Good.’

  Emma had a basket in her hands: food and water enough for three days, plenty of soft wax for earplugs, a candle stub and matches, enough jewellery to bribe any number of border guards. The crucial bank documents, which represented the family’s future worth in the new world, were sewn into the lining of Emma’s travelling jacket. Yevgeny, absurdly dressed in a neat blue sailor suit, stood wide-eyed with tiredness, looking at each of the three adults in turn.

  Up ahead the locomotive jolted forwards. Misha reached out instinctively to pull Yevgeny away from the moving train, then kept his arm around him as they walked the eight yards on to their wagon. The sound of the grain chute was louder now. The farewells could no longer be put off.

  Misha climbed into the wagon first, hoisted Yevgeny after him, then watched Emma and Tonya climb in as well. Though from the outside the wagon looked the same as all the rest, and would do even in full daylight, the inside was different. Alone in the repairs yard, working mostly by night, Misha had welded a compartment that lay up against the sloping rear of the wagon. Access into the little space was via a sliding panel which would be completely concealed when the grain was loaded. At the top of the compartment Misha had fixed a grating to provide air, but a plate had been fixed so that nobody could look down through the grating to what lay beneath. The whole thing had been made to took like a permanent feature, inconspicuous. The compartment would be cramped, noisy, sweaty, dirty and uncomfortable. But it would be roomy enough for two people to get from Petrograd to Finland in safety.

  Misha slid back the steel panel. It clanked loudly, but the night air was full of clanks and bangs. No one was around, either to notice or care. The compartment yawned darkly open in the lantern’s light. The only minuscule concessions to comfort were two low metal benches, little more than sixteen inches wide, and a metal bucket with drainage holes drilled through to the bottom of the wagon. The bucket would be their toilet for the duration of the journey.

  ‘Very well then,’ said Emma, rubbing her hands together as though needing to keep warm. ‘Right then.’

  To Misha’s surprise, the prospect of escape had revitalised his mother’s long dormant practical streak. It had been she who, without prompting, had opened the lining of her jacket to take the documents that Misha had given her. She had been surprisingly astute and accurate in understanding and assessing the value of the various bonds and stock certificates. She had been brisk and matter of fact about provisioning herself for the coming journey. She had even, to Misha’s delight, allowed herself to acknowledge Tonya for
what she was – her son’s beloved – and had made her feel welcome in their apartment, with a kind of courtly, dilapidated grace.

  Misha nodded. ‘Right then,’ he smiled.

  He embraced his mother. He felt a surge of love for her. He felt himself, every inch, his mother’s child. He bent his head down and let her cradle it against her shoulder as she had done years ago. Then they embraced again in the normal way. Her eyes and his were blurry with tears.

  ‘Take care, Mother.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Come with us, Misha. You still can.’

  Misha smiled and shook his head. ‘I’ll be fine.’ Behind him he felt pressure from Tonya’s hand on his back. ‘Go,’ she whispered. He could hardly hear her over the noise of the grain chute, closer now than ever. He didn’t even bother to shake his head. Picking up Yevgeny, he hugged him once, then eased him through the open panel into the claustrophobic metal compartment.

  ‘Farewell, little man.’

  The boy nodded, but was too overcome to say or do anything more.

  ‘Mother.’

  Emma was about to make a movement, when the train jerked forward again, and they all steadied themselves until it stopped. Then Emma simply smiled and kissed Misha on the lips. ‘You are a good boy.’ She climbed into the compartment, her basket on her lap, and began to arrange their blankets and cushions for Yevgeny’s comfort.