The Lieutenant's Lover

by Harry Bingham

  It took Misha a second to realise what he’d said, then heard the officer repeat, ‘Prisoner Malevich, present yourself.’

  Misha pushed away his food and stood up. Every eye in the room followed him. There was no further instruction from the Soviet captain, but Misha walked over to the doorway. The Soviets didn’t move until he had reached them, then he was brusquely ordered to follow and was led outside.

  The grey light was far brighter than the dim canteen and a gleam of sunshine was reflected off the wet ground and numerous puddles. Misha contracted his eyes against the glare. The Soviets led him to the back of the truck and shoved him inside. They made no attempt to handcuff him but they did tie his ankles with a short piece of dirty string, as a crude way of preventing him from seeking to escape. All the soldiers carried rifles, but the safety catches were on and the soldiers handled them negligently. Nobody spoke. The captain climbed into the front of the truck and the engine started up. The truck ground its way out of the camp and the heavy double gates were slammed shut behind them.

  The truck headed out on the open road. One of the soldiers pulled at the cord that held up the back panel of the canvas canopy. The cord was wet and wouldn’t loosen, so the soldier took out a knife and slashed at the knot, until the wet canvas shot down, splattering them all with raindrops. Misha couldn’t see where they were going. When the soldiers spoke, they did so quietly and in subdued tones.

  The truck moved on. Night fell. The truck slowed down, no doubt because the roads were poor and unlit. Misha tried to guess whether the roads were getting worse – in which case Poland was the likeliest destination – but he found it almost impossible to tell. At one point, one of the soldiers lit a cigarette. Misha, thinking to demonstrate that he was one of their countrymen, asked in Russian if they had a spare cigarette. The soldiers looked at each other and shook their heads, even though Misha could count at least two large pouches of tobacco among the men. Any conversation that there had been ended abruptly.

  Then, after about two hours, the conditions outside the truck changed. The road surface was clearly better. The truck’s motion began the twists, turns, stops and starts that indicated they were in a city. Based on the size of the city and the time they’d taken to get to it, Misha guessed they must be in either Berlin or one of the larger Polish cities. Every now and then he heard snatches of conversation from passers-by outside the truck, but over the noise of the engine, he couldn’t tell whether the speakers were German or Polish.

  Then the truck stopped.

  There was light outside and the sound of traffic. Footsteps came down the side of the truck from the front. The canvas canopy was pulled back. Outside, there were lights and a huge dark shape; some masonry structure, with its clean lines now war-damaged and ragged. Misha was told to get out. He did so, needing assistance because of the string around his legs. He was half-helped, half-pulled from the truck. The soldier tugging him didn’t bother to let him find his balance on reaching the ground and Misha promptly fell over. The men got back into the truck and the truck roared away, sending a blast of exhaust into Misha’s face. He fumbled at the cord around his legs, trying at the same time to see where he was. He couldn’t make out the large building or monument in front of him. Cars and headlamps were moving fast only a short distance away.

  Then he heard footsteps coming towards him; footsteps and the beam of a powerful torch. The torch caught him in the face.

  ‘What’s up, mate?’ said a voice in English, then, in German or a version of it, ‘Sind Sie all OK?’

  Misha got the string off his legs. The English voice and the big masonry arch fell into place. This was the Brandenburg Gate. Misha had been dropped back in the British sector. The torchlight moved away from his face and a rough, friendly arm heaved him to his feet.

  He began to laugh in shock and relief.

  2

  He ran home quickly, of course. Rosa had come running to the door in her nightdress, tears streaming down her face. The poor girl had been convinced, quite reasonably, that her precious ‘new daddy’ had gone the way of the old one. She had to climb right into Misha’s arms before she could quite believe the reality of this unexpected return. And Willi was not so different. He stood embracing them both, his skinny face illuminated by wide dinner-plate eyes. Misha came on inside, hugging Rosa tightly against his chest. Willi, after accepting one long hug, jumped away again and busied himself at the drinks cupboard, pouring two large whiskies – the bottle itself a present from Hollinger – and fetching cigarettes. But Misha noticed that the boy’s hands had been shaking and that every two or three seconds he was snatching a glance across at Misha.

  Misha took the whisky and promised both children, not once but repeatedly, that he wouldn’t enter the east zone again. Rosa had snuggled herself inside Misha’s coat, curled up like a rabbit in a burrow. Without moving from her lair, she asked, ‘Did you see her?’

  ‘Yes, Knospe, I saw her.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And they wouldn’t let her come with me, I’m afraid. I’m sorry. I did my best.’

  Rosa nodded. She was disappointed – somehow she’d always had a faith in the ‘new mummy’ that had gone beyond anything Misha had ever told her – but it was clear that she couldn’t bear the idea of losing Misha again. And Misha too had given up. He had been imprisoned and then released. Why? There could only be one reason. Pavel had wanted Misha to be out of the way while he dealt with his sister. But dealt with her how? Misha couldn’t believe that even Pavel could have had his sister shot. Indeed, since Pavel could have had Tonya shot on the spot if he’d wished it, then the length of Misha’s imprisonment could only be a good sign. But Pavel would certainly not have allowed Tonya to remain in Germany. She must have been sent back to the Soviet Union. To where? To Moscow or Leningrad? To Siberia or one of the labour battalions in the north? Or internal exile? Or to join Rodyon in the Russian Far East, a full half a world distant? It was too much. The possibilities seemed too endless, the Soviet empire too large, too dangerous and inaccessible. Deep inside himself, Misha grieved for the woman he loved and would never see again. Rosa too, in her childish way, understood all this, and she grieved along with him, hiding her tears inside the folds of his coat.

  3

  Three months later, April 1947, and the thaw had come to Russia too, almost in a single day it seemed.

  Tonya first knew of it one night, when her dreams were full of images of water. She dreamed of water in every conceivable form: tiny springs gurgling from the wet earth, heaps of snow trickling and melting, huge lakes stretching as far as the horizon, river rapids hurtling over rocks. And her dreams didn’t just take in the sights of nature. She dreamed of water in every human manifestation too. She dreamed of water in glasses, in decorated enamel jugs, in wooden water scoops and butts, in tin baths, in sinks and drains. Any image at all seemed to count as long as there was water flowing, splashing, glittering and streaming through it.

  And when she woke, she woke to a world transformed.

  She was on a train to the Far East. Pavel had had her sent as translator to an NKVD camp in Poland while he arranged for her move to join Rodyon. The move had been approved and she was on her way, travelling the vast distances of Soviet central Asia.

  The train was in the middle of one of its interminable halts, but it must have made good progress in the night, perhaps taking a southward dip on its way. Because when Tonya stood up from her cramped wooden bunk and looked out of the open window, the whole world seemed to have turned to water.

  As far as she could see, in both directions, the fields and roads were lying under a sheet of water, gleaming pale blue and silver in the first light of day. The flooding was obviously an annual affair, because all the farms and villages around were built on low mounds and earth banks that rose muddily out of the shining water. But everything else – trees, hedges, telegraph poles, even cows and horses – were one, two, even four feet underwater. The railway line itself was raised up on a
low embankment with the floods surrounding it on both sides, so it seemed almost as though the twin steel lines had been laid across the water itself. The whole world smelled of water and damp earth.

  Tonya went to the door and climbed out onto the thin strip of land between the train and where the embankment dropped away into the water. The air was unbelievably fresh and new-smelling. She felt utterly sad, but also somehow reconciled. She had lost Misha, lost freedom, lost the chance to escape from the cold grey hand of the Soviet state. But already, deep in the heart of Russia as she now was, those things had sped away into the distance like dreams of something utterly impossible.

  And Pavel had, in his way, been kind to her. Not kind enough to let her go with Misha. But kind enough to spare her the bullet or the camp. It had somehow mattered to him that she was still married to Rodyon. Perhaps in his own unfathomable way, he thought he was doing right by bringing the two of them together again. She could hardly imagine seeing Rodyon again. More than a decade had passed since he’d been torn from her – and the intervening years had been so full of imprisonment, loss, battle, and then the whole adventure of Berlin and Germany. How would she feel? She asked herself the question almost incessantly, but in truth she already knew the answer. She would feel about him as she always had. As a friend. As an ally. As a man she deeply respected. But not as a lover. Not as a husband. But still. It would be good to see him. She hoped he was well.

  THIRTEEN

  1

  Tonya arrived in Preobrazheniye one spring evening. She didn’t know where she was meant to go. There was no one on the platform to meet her. She put down her bag – her life’s possessions packed into a bag small enough to swing easily from her shoulder – and waited. In the lee of the station canopy, the shadows grew thicker. A quince tree hung its blossoms over a fence. The air was curious to Tonya: it felt heavy, thick and moist, almost like the air in a communal bath house. She supposed it was the unseen presence of this eastern sea, so unlike the cold northern sea she remembered from Petrograd. Some way away, a bird sang, in a voice Tonya couldn’t recognise.

  An hour passed. It became darker. Tonya wondered what to do – realised that there was nothing she could do, not this late in the evening – and determined to wait. Another forty minutes ran past. The smell of the quince blossom grew more intense as the evening breeze dropped away.

  And then, she heard boot steps running across the dirt yard in front of the station. She stood up. The steps approached. A wooden door was thrust aside with a hollow boom. A man emerged onto the platform and stood in the thin iron lamplight above the doorway, looking around. Tonya realised that she was standing in the shadow, effectively invisible. The man couldn’t see her.

  But she could see him.

  The man was thinner than he had once been. The old flash and fire in his eyes had gone, his former tigerish energy sunk away almost to nothing. But it was Rodyon, all right. She walked towards him, hands outstretched.

  2

  It was the evening of June the 18th, the end of a fine, warm day. The linden tree in Misha’s back garden was just budding into early flower. A honeysuckle had clambered up into the lower branches then collapsed downwards as though fagged out. The scents of both hung seemingly for ever on the still air.

  It was eight-thirty in the evening. Rosa was usually required to be in bed by that time but, uncharacteristically for her, she had hung around downstairs, making excuses and dragging her feet. Misha, after a couple of attempts to shoo her up, had given up. He’d mixed her a drink of lemon juice, water and sugar and the two of them had gone outside to sit in the garden and enjoy the last of the sun. They didn’t speak much. Willi was out somewhere with his camera and his journalist friends. Misha had erected a hammock under the linden tree in the garden and Rosa swung on it, while Misha sat on the grass beneath. She sipped her drink. There was almost no sound except the bedtime songs of birds and the squeak where the hammock rubbed against its fixing.

  Suddenly Rosa spoke.

  ‘Harry’s coming now,’ she announced.

  ‘Harry? Hollinger?’

  Rosa nodded.

  ‘I don’t think so, little Knospe.’

  The truth was that Misha hardly ever saw Hollinger now. There was a real friendship between the two men, but their professional relationship had come to an end. It was no longer possible to reach Tonya, and Misha could no longer safely travel in the east zone, and consequently no longer had nuggets of information to feed the Englishman. Hollinger still came around from time to time, but he was too busy to come often.

  Rosa didn’t argue against Misha’s verdict – she hardly ever did – but she just nodded again to demonstrate that she didn’t agree. In any case, her occasional bursts of intuition had nothing to do with logic. She went on rocking. Misha saw a spider lower itself onto her head from the branches above and he stood up to brush it away. And just as he did so, there was the sound of a car engine outside. The car slowed and stopped. Rosa raised her eyebrows in a silent told-you-so. Surprised, Misha stood up and walked around the side of the cottage – its stone walls still warm from the day’s heat – to the front. There, sure enough, was Hollinger struggling with a large cardboard box.

  ‘Guten Abend, old bean,’ said Hollinger. ‘Here, take an end.’

  The two men carried the box around the house into the garden. Rosa had jumped down out of her hammock and came skipping to greet the Englishman with a big hug around the neck.

  ‘Hello there, Rosie. Still up, eh? Here, do you want to see what’s in this box?’

  Using his car key, he ripped the tape on the box and opened the lid. The box inside was crammed with tinned goods from England and other things that had seldom been seen in Berlin for almost as long as Rosa had been alive. There were tinned peaches, condensed milk, golden syrup, tea, Oxford marmalade, bars of soap, and much else. Hollinger let Rosa dig around in the box emitting shrieks of excitement and delight, then he himself reached down into a corner and pulled out a bottle of whisky. Misha went into the kitchen and came out with two glasses for himself and Hollinger, and a bowl, spoon and tin opener so that Rosa could enjoy her first ever taste of tinned peach. He poured the whisky and decanted the peaches. Rosa bent over her bowl breathless with excitement.

  Hollinger’s face had been beaming while Rosa was being sorted out, but as soon as Misha stood up again and faced him, the Englishman’s face looked sombre.

  ‘What is it?’ Misha spoke in French, a language that Hollinger knew well enough and that Rosa didn’t.

  ‘Nothing, nothing … well, I hope nothing.’

  ‘And if it weren’t nothing?’

  Hollinger sighed, swilling whisky around his glass, staring hard at the glittering liquid.

  ‘More and more, I’m getting a bad sense of things.’

  ‘The Soviets?’

  ‘Yes, in a way. In the western zones, things have become very bad. In some of the bigger cities, the daily calorie count was down to just 900. That’s awful, but at least it’s had the effect of waking people up. The Americans, more. Our chaps were awake, but too poor to do much. Anyhow, as you know, this fellow General Marshall has offered real help. Money. Increases in permitted industrial production, even steel. There’ll be reform of the currency as well. There’ll have to be. You can’t get a country to function on cigarettes and banknotes that everyone knows are worthless.’

  ‘And comrade Stalin won’t like that.’

  ‘No. He’ll never permit a western currency reform to take place in his sector, which means that the country will be effectively split in two.’

  ‘And Berlin?’

  ‘I don’t know. The Russians have it surrounded. If they want to cut it off, they can do so easily. We’ll never start a shooting war to stop them. Even if we did, we don’t have the troops to do it. If Stalin wants Berlin, he’ll take it.’

  Rosa had almost finished her peaches now, but she was making the last peach half last by chasing it around the painted china bowl with her
spoon, watching it squirm and squeal away from her. The box full of goodies had taken on a darker meaning now. It was Hollinger’s way of protecting them against what was about to come; the starvation and the hopelessness. But a cardboard box, no matter how large and wonderful, would not go far against a Soviet attempt to starve the city.

  ‘It won’t be soon,’ said Hollinger, reading his thoughts. ‘That box isn’t meant to be … well, it’s just a gift. But if you want to get out of the city now, I’d help clear the paperwork.’

  Misha breathed out, watching his girl playing on the grass. A brown caterpillar with purple spots had crawled over the lip of the bowl and Rosa was intent on seeing whether the caterpillar liked peach.

  ‘I ought to do it, I know,’ he said. ‘For Rosa’s sake, if not mine. But I can’t. Somewhere, back in the early days with Willi, I realised I could never run again. I still can’t.’

  Hollinger nodded, then changed the subject.

  ‘How is Willi?’

  ‘Well. Very well. His photography is getting better all the time. He is getting commissions from the best American papers now. He’s still doing cartoons for Die Trümmerzeitung. He’s always busy.’

  ‘He’s got a talent, that boy.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Hollinger opened his mouth to say something, then closed it, then decided to say it anyway. ‘You know, your little family here?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s Germany, isn’t it? Germany as she was always meant to be and now is.’