The Lieutenant's Lover

by Harry Bingham

  ‘You can’t read music.’ Marta spoke as if Tonya had declared herself unable to read at all. ‘Never mind. The first thing is to stand right. Now then…’

  For forty minutes the lesson proceeded, as though it were an entirely normal violin lesson. It was half an hour before Tonya was actually allowed to hold the violin itself, and when she did Marta was so appalled by something in the way she held it – too stiff, or too loose, or too rigid, or too something – that the instrument was snatched away and Tonya had to go back to practising her dummy exercises.

  And then, just as Tonya was beginning to wonder if this whole thing was based on misunderstanding, there were quick, sharp footsteps in the corridor outside, a triple-tap on the door, then the footsteps passing away again down the hall. Marta turned to Tonya with a smile – the first glimpse of friendliness she’d shown her.

  ‘Good. That means that Mr Thompson’s friends have checked the area. There is no one watching you. There is no one who can hear us.’

  ‘Thank goodness! You were so strict with me, I thought maybe you really thought I was here for a violin lesson.’

  ‘You are here for a lesson. That’s very important. Whenever you come, we will play. And you will pay me at the agreed rate, twenty Reichsmarks.’

  ‘Yes, yes of course.’

  ‘And Mr Thompson promises that there will be somebody to watch. If there is any danger, then we will play the violin, nothing else.’

  ‘And the papers? I have a packet with me.’

  ‘I will take them.’

  Tonya handed over a packet of documents. She was both translator and typist. There was no great difficulty in inserting an extra carbon paper and making an extra copy of documents that came her way. The difficulty was in removing that spare copy from the building, which was always alive with NKVD men. The first time Tonya had left the building with a typescript crackling inside the belt of her skirt, she felt as though her guilt were shouting loudly enough to attract a couple of armoured divisions. When she’d managed to walk out, unmolested, unfollowed, she’d been almost dazed with surprise and relief.

  ‘Good,’ said Marta, as though she were just accepting a pat of butter or slice of ham. ‘Now before we complete our lesson, there are a few other things to tell you.’ Without altering her matter-of-fact tone in any way, she began talking about rudimentary codes, secret drops, ways of signalling difficulty to Thompson, ways in which Thompson himself could send warning signals to Tonya. Marta took measurements of Tonya’s feet – ‘We are constructing some boots for you, with a compartment in the heel. You will find the man who will sell you the boots standing in the Friedrichskirche market at two o’clock on Monday. He will wear a grey woollen cap and a green jacket with leather buttons. The price will be eighteen marks…’

  Instructions followed in a stream.

  She nodded as though she had absorbed everything, but felt as though she’d absorbed nothing at all. And then it was back to the violin. Tonya still hadn’t played a note. Marta still seemed very worried about Tonya’s damaged right hand. But her clucks of disappointment had softened. By the end of an hour and a half, Marta seemed almost content.

  ‘Good. You may finish there. That’s a good first lesson. It is hard for you with your hand.’

  Tonya stood up, realising that she’d come to know this little apartment much, much better before long.

  ‘Please, Marta, could you play something for me, anything? It’s just I’ve never heard violin-playing before, not properly.’

  ‘Never? You have never heard a violin?’

  ‘In church sometimes. Sort of. Not really.’

  ‘Hmm! Do you like Brahms?’

  Marta picked up the violin and half-closed her eyes. Without looking at any music, she began to play. The notes streamed out; pure, liquid perfection. Tonya listened for a while, awestruck by the beauty. Then, without saying goodbye, not wanting to break the flow of the music, she went to the door and crept silently away.

  15

  The orphanage lay on the outskirts of Grunewald. There was a lodge house set beside the high wrought-iron gates, but the gates were open and Misha walked through unchallenged. The orphanage itself was a neo-classical affair in pale yellow stucco and white pilasters. Misha walked up to the house, then wasn’t sure what to do next. He sat down on a bench in the driveway.

  He would stay in Berlin. That was one of the few certainties now. Just as the various bureaucracies were beginning to grind out a favourable result for his emigration application, he wrote a series of letters cancelling all the requests he’d made. He’d done so curtly and without explanation, as though purposely hoping to antagonise the relevant officials and so block off any hope of trying again. Meantime, he’d made up his mind that if Rosa should want a father, she should have one. Beyond that, he knew nothing at all.

  Every now and then, groups of children would emerge from one door and hurry off in formation to one of the other buildings scattered around the grounds. The front drive saw a stream of UNRRA-stencilled vehicles arriving and departing. Nobody looked long at Misha. Nobody asked him why he was there.

  Misha took a yo-yo from his pocket – Willi said that he’d been given it by a GI at the hospital; Misha was fairly sure he’d simply stolen it – and began to play. The yo-yo was an American one, with a looped slip-string, and an amazing ability to hover and glide. Misha played seriously, his engineer’s brain trying to understand the play of forces inside the twirling object. He challenged himself to find new tricks to play with it, then was delighted when he began to add more stunts to his repertoire. Time went by.

  And then, almost as he’d forgotten that he was there for any purpose, he felt a presence at his right elbow. He looked up. It was Rosa.

  ‘Hello,’ he said.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘I came back.’

  She nodded.

  ‘I’m not going to Canada. I changed my mind.’

  Rosa had eyes too big for her head – most Berliners did, of course, especially young ones, the consequence of too little food. But her long dark-blond plaits, scrawny shoulders and wide eyes made Misha once again think of her as an elf.

  ‘I made a mistake when I brought you back here, but then again, maybe you’ve thought about it some more and decided that you’re happiest here. If you are, you must stay.’

  She looked at him with her grave hazel eyes and shook her head.

  ‘I don’t have much of a house for you,’ he continued. ‘Or much food. I’m rubbish at sewing. There won’t be a mummy, or at least there certainly isn’t one now. You will have a big brother though, a sort of brother anyway. I really can’t promise you much. Most little girls would decide they were happiest here.’

  She shrugged, bony shoulders lifting and falling in careful imitation of the adult movement. The movement said she wasn’t most little girls.

  ‘I’ll get my things,’ she said.

  SIX

  1

  It was the seventeenth of December, 1945.

  Snow was falling.

  It fell in great white spirals, as though some heavily padded fabric were being unrolled from high above. Then, when the flakes had reached almost to street level, they were caught up in the city’s unpredictable winds and eddies and the snow was rushed around, first this way, then that, like a man struggling to pick up papers on a windy day.

  It was evening, almost dark. Tonya had stacks more work to do, but a sudden jabbering headache began to crowd the muscles at the back of her neck. She felt wrung out and exhausted. The tone of the documents that spun through her typewriter – accusatory, aggressive, ideological, grasping – felt like a physical pressure on her skull.

  Making a sudden decision, she stood up. She’d leave now, get an early night, catch up first thing the next day. She muttered apologies to her fellow translators – Tonya was the only member of her group without an officer’s rank; she was also the only woman and the only non-Party member, and she always took care to show the others t
he deference they required and expected. Then she put on her army greatcoat and cap and walked out onto the street. The night was clear and freezing. In a city still shorn of streetlamps, the stars shone down bright and hard

  Her way back to her barracks took her along Prenzlauer Allee, close to Marta’s apartment. Tonya was scheduled to have a ‘violin lesson’ that night, but had decided to skip it. But as she passed the little alley, her resolution suddenly wavered. Marta had never been overtly affectionate towards her, but she had always behaved with a perfectly measured courtesy that somehow amounted to almost the same thing. Tonya suddenly realised that she needed human contact more than anything in the world. The muscles knotting in her neck almost tangibly relaxed at the thought of it. Before any conscious change of mind, her steps changed direction and headed for the little bolthole of Marta’s apartment.

  She reached the familiar door, tapped and entered. Marta answered the door as usual, but almost at once Tonya realised there was something different about the light in the room, the balance of space inside it. She stepped on inside and there, sprawled untidily in the armchair, was the Englishman, Mark Thompson. She felt instant relief at his presence; a feeling of reassurance and warmth.

  ‘Hello, old thing,’ said Thompson, rising from his seat. As usual he translated his English idioms directly into German, mangling them horribly on the way. ‘Thought I’d better pop over to see how you were getting on. Damned cold, isn’t it? I suppose it isn’t by your standards. Probably ice cream and donkey rides on the beach, as far as you’re concerned.’

  As Thompson babbled, Tonya found herself being wafted into a seat, her coat taken, and a steaming drink put into her hands. Marta helped welcome her, then picked the violin out of its green baize case and began to play, imitating Tonya’s own level of technique. To anyone listening – and Thompson’s presence almost certainly meant that there were British agents posted to give warning in any event – it would have seemed as if it were Tonya, not Marta, drawing her bow over the strings. But after months of lessons, Tonya had become a reasonably competent player, and the music flowed with some grace.

  Tonya listened for a while, then brought the drink up to her nose. She had assumed the drink was tea, which she drank often, or coffee, a little-seen luxury, but it was neither of these. She sniffed uncertainly.

  ‘Bournvita,’ said Thompson. ‘Malted barley, milk, cocoa and egg. Horlicks with chocolate. What a concoction, eh? I remember when it first came out. Seemed like a miracle, sign of the world becoming a better place. Completely bloody wrong, of course, but it’s a damned good drink all the same. What d’you think? Bit too imperialist-capitalist for you?’

  Tonya sipped. She knew that Thompson was talking so much so she could compose herself. She held her face over the mug, feeling it steam up. The drink was delicious, the nicest thing she’d ever tasted. It felt like the taste of England; something comforting and parochial, unlikely ever to shine.

  ‘I love it,’ she said, and meant it. She had started spying because of her conviction that Stalin needed to be stopped in his attempted takeover of Germany. She had continued because of her deepening loathing for the Soviet system itself – but also because of this: Marta’s minor courtesies, and Thompson’s occasional visits, his shambling, genuine warmth.

  ‘I’d give you a tin or two, only that might not be quite the thing. How’s your week been? Pretty bloody from the look of you. The comrades bullying you as usual?’

  ‘Oh—’ Tonya shook her head. She didn’t want to talk about it. ‘Just the usual. There are more quota shortfalls, though. In Leipzig, agricultural production levels are running at just forty per cent of quota. The published statistics talk about yield increases, but that’s all nonsense, of course. I’ll be going to Leipzig tomorrow with General Zavenyagin. I’d expect to learn more then—’

  Thompson initially looked alert and interested, but then his demeanour abruptly changed. He waved his hands in front of his face, stopping her in her tracks.

  ‘No, for God’s sake. Let’s not worry about all that for tonight. The comrades are making a pig’s ear of things, lying through their teeth, and blaming everyone except themselves, hey? Listen, tell me about yourself. You’ve been working for us for months now, and you’re the best. I mean it. Our best source in Berlin. Our best source in the Soviet zone. And so far, all we’ve given you is a few music lessons and one cup of Bournvita. We’ve been a bit stingy, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Stingy?’

  ‘Stingy. Mean. Tight. Parsimonious. As close as a Scottish money-lender.’

  ‘I wasn’t doing this to be paid. In any case, I don’t think…’

  ‘… that the comrades would be happy to see you swanning around in a mink coat and pearls. No, quite.’ Unconsciously, Tonya had been fingering the stub ends of her two frost-bitten fingers. Thompson’s eye caught the gesture, and Tonya dropped her hands. ‘There’s principle, of course,’ Thompson continued, ‘and a jolly good thing that is too. But I thought maybe you might want something else.’

  Tonya shook her head. She wanted peace. She wanted to do the right thing. She wanted Germany to avoid the fate that Russia had suffered. That was all.

  Thompson looked at her hard, then dipped inside his pocket. He pulled out a pouch of pipe tobacco, a pocket knife, a ball of string and a blue booklet with a heavy gold stamp on its cover. Thompson threw the booklet over to Tonya.

  ‘How about one of these?’

  She looked at it. It was a British passport, something she’d never seen before. She fingered the grey pages in wonderment. All the time she had been working for Thompson, she had literally never once thought about reward; or if she had, the violin lessons had seemed like reward enough. The passport was Thompson’s own. There was no document in the name of Antonina Kirylovna Kornikova, not yet anyway.

  ‘Obviously, if you became a Brit, you’d have to have some money, and a nice little cottage somewhere, a few roses, view of the cricket pitch, that sort of thing. Old HM Government is a bit strapped for cash at the moment, but I expect we could find something suitable. A poky little boarding house in Clapham and a dozen tins of Bournvita at any rate.’

  Tonya interrupted him. ‘Yes. If you mean it, then yes. I would be … very grateful.’

  ‘No, no, you’ll have earned it.’

  Thompson swept his tangle of straw-coloured hair back from his face, and Tonya could see the sharp and solemn intelligence which lay behind his words, his sprawling asinine speech. She read struggle in his expression and realised that she was the subject of that struggle. She didn’t know why.

  ‘Listen, I’m serious about the passport. I’m also serious when I tell you that HMG is unlikely to pay you what it ought to, but I’m sure there’ll be a job for you as a translator over in London. But we should make sure we have an understanding.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘How long you go on working for us here before we bring you over into our sector. What seems reasonable to you?’

  Tonya shook her head. She had never in her life been asked by anyone in authority what seemed reasonable. ‘I don’t know. For a passport? Perhaps two years? Three?’

  ‘Good God, woman!’ Thompson exploded, speaking English, before continuing, ‘You don’t bargain very hard. Listen, I want you here as long as possible, but I’m damned if I want to be the one responsible for letting you injure yourself. Can we say six months? At most. If we get worried about you before that, we’ll bring you across without delay. And for Christ’s sake, think of yourself. I know that’s a damned bourgeois thing to worry about, but just do it anyway, will you?’

  He stood up. As usual when standing, he seemed too big for the room. Marta stopped her violin playing and swivelled around on her stool. Tonya realised that the big man was worried about her. That he was facing a conflict between duty, which was urging him to retain her services for as long as he could, and some softer protective instinct. Tonya was now forty-six. Her son Vassily, had he lived, would have been about
Mark Thompson’s age now.

  She nodded. ‘I will.’

  ‘I doubt it. Damned Bolsheviks. Lost any decent sense of selfishness. Listen. I’m interrupting your lesson. I’ll skedaddle. Don’t worry about your damned agricultural quotas today. Just play.’

  He was about to go. Tonya had taken the violin from Marta and her fingers were already beginning to find their places on the strings, when she was shaken by a wave of longing so strong, it physically shook her. Thompson stopped and stared at her.

  ‘You asked me if there was something I wanted.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘A passport… I would like that – no, love it. I’d never thought. But in the meantime, there’s something else you could do for me. It’s probably silly. There’s probably no chance. There’s somebody you could try to find for me. A man, Mikhail—’

  ‘—Kornikov?’

  ‘No. Malevich.’ Tonya blushed – what an unfamiliar sensation that was! ‘I was not married to him. I last saw him in 1919. He was taken off to fight in the Civil War, against the Whites, against his own sort really. He promised to escape if he could. Sort of promised, anyway. He couldn’t do much more than nod. But I believe that he would have come to Germany to settle. Here or Switzerland. He was an engineer. Not exactly trained, but a born engineer all the same. Gifted. I have no idea what happened to him. Perhaps it’s no use. It was so long ago. But I suppose you have lists of who’s who in your sector—’

  ‘Yes. Lists and lists. Rooms full of them. The Americans too, of course. Even the French, if they’d have the grace to cooperate with us about anything ever. Do you know what town or district we should start looking in?’

  ‘No. I have no idea. None. He had family in Switzerland.’ Tonya gave their names. ‘But that was so long ago now. Perhaps it’s useless.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ There was that grave look in Thompson’s eyes again, the look which Tonya guessed was much closer to the true him than all the nonsense about Bournvita and donkey rides. Thompson closed the moment with a long, slow nod. ‘But perhaps not. We won’t know until we start looking, will we?’