Red Shadow

by Paul Dowswell

  For a single selfish moment, Misha regretted being so generous with his food supply. He had taken it for granted that he and Papa would always have enough food in the Kremlin.

  The meals they were getting in school had become even more frugal – and so bad he was grateful for the small portions. He sometimes brought a picnic with him these days but Misha had not brought food to share since the incident with Barikada. He ate his own provisions quickly and surreptitiously, when he was alone in a classroom, preparing to teach the younger ones. He did not want anyone to see him and make him feel like a greedy noble stuffing his face while peasants starved around him.

  Today he arrived to find his class of twelve-year-olds half empty. ‘Where are the others?’ he asked the fifteen or so children that clustered around the desks at the front.

  ‘Please, Comrade Petrov,’ said a tall girl with plaits and a grubby beige smock, ‘we had a terrible time getting here through the crowds. Maybe the rest have given up trying and gone home?’

  ‘I had trouble too,’ said Misha. ‘Well done for making an effort to get here. You should be proud of yourselves.’

  ‘Please, comrade,’ said one small boy. ‘I only live in the next street.’

  They all giggled at that and Misha let himself smile too. ‘Well, you can’t be proud but the rest of you can.’

  ‘Comrade, who are the people out in the street?’ asked another child.

  Misha didn’t want to tell them they were fleeing from the Nazis. It would alarm them terribly. ‘They are being moved by our brave soldiers, so they don’t get hurt in the fighting,’ he said, then quickly changed the subject. ‘So, who has read the passage which I set you for homework?’

  All of the children raised their hands and Misha felt really pleased. Despite it all, he enjoyed teaching the younger classes. Once he had adjusted to what these children were actually interested in, he had discovered they responded well to him, and he had little trouble keeping order, even with the rowdier children. It was all down to confidence, he decided. Make it look like you know what you’re doing and they will respond, and behave.

  But as Misha was reading another passage from War and Peace, he noticed something at the back of the class that filled him with horror. All Soviet classrooms had a poster or painting of Comrade Stalin on their walls and this one had too – surrounded with drawings the children had done of the May Day military parades.

  Someone had drawn a great dagger through Stalin’s head, from one ear to the other, the point dripping blood. Two vampiric fangs jutted from his lips, and blood trickled down his chin. A childish hand had scrawled УБИЙЦА – Murderer – on the Vozhd’s forehead. Above, curving around the white space that surrounded his head, was written УБЛЮДOК – Bastard.

  Misha stopped reading. He had never seen anything like this before. He wondered immediately whether he should carry on and pretend he had not seen it, but the children noticed his shock and while some turned round to follow the direction of his gaze, others began to snigger. They had noticed already.

  All at once the class was in uproar. ‘Please be quiet,’ Misha pleaded. He had decided on a plan.

  ‘Class, settle down.’ His voice was harsher. And this time they responded. Misha did not want any of the remaining teachers, or the Komsorg, coming to see what the trouble was.

  ‘Does anyone know who did this?’ he asked in a gentle matter-of-fact voice.

  He looked at the children’s faces. No one was giving anything away.

  Misha walked over to the poster and reached up to take it down. He rolled it carefully into a tube and placed it beneath his desk. ‘Now where were we?’ He smiled, and continued teaching as if nothing had happened.

  Afterwards, when the children had filed out to another lesson, Misha locked the classroom door. With trembling hands he tore the poster into small pieces and hid it in his knapsack. He was not going to report the incident. He did not want an inquisition, with the Komsorg trying to find heretics like Torquemada or the Witch-finder General. These children had enough on their plate waiting for the Nazis to arrive.

  That evening Misha sat alone in his apartment, scouring the latest edition of Pravda for clues on the progress of the war. He saw, with a sickening feeling in his chest, a news piece on Nazi atrocities in the Smolensk area. A camera had been found on the body of a German soldier and the film inside it told a grisly story. Two partisans had been captured and hanged. A series of shots reproduced in the paper told the story in graphic detail. There was a teenage girl, maybe his own age, proud but bruised, surrounded by jeering German soldiers, her hands tied behind her back. She was wearing the same sort of stripy pullover Yelena often wore at school, and had a placard around her neck, saying I AM A TERRORIST, written in Russian. Misha could barely bring himself to look further. He glimpsed another shot of two dangling figures, then folded the paper over so he could not see the photographs, and read the article.

  The brave partisan girl’s final words of defiance to the Hitlerites were: ‘You cannot kill all 169 million of us.’ With such unquestionable revolutionary spirit, how can we lose the war!

  Yelena, he knew, faced exactly the same fate. Only blind chance, or extraordinary luck, would save her from the noose or a German bullet. He put the paper down and sobbed until he had no more tears.

  Chapter 21

  Mid-October 1941

  Over the previous week the weather had turned the ground slushy – but now it was icy cold. Nikolay had told him slushy was good. Mud made it difficult for an army to advance. But colder weather meant firmer ground. The colder it got the easier it would be for the Nazi tanks to press forward and break through to the city. They were only a whisker away now. Out on the street, he would see people anxiously scanning the skies. There had been talk of German parachutists landing in their thousands and whenever a squadron of aircraft flew overhead citizens would stop in their tracks, expecting to see a stream of tiny figures emerge from them. Only when the planes had flown by would they move on.

  The vast processions of displaced peasants and civilians fleeing the western front line had slowed now, but the streets were still clogged with refugees, easily recognisable by their shabby suitcases and exhausted expressions. Misha had got used to navigating his way around the small herds of sheep or pigs that sometimes accompanied them.

  These days he often wondered if he was wasting his time making the journey to school, especially as there were so few teachers and children turning up. School had become a great rumour mill where the latest scare stories spread fear like a contagious disease. Many of the children travelled to school by the tram and metro and both were becoming increasingly unreliable. Whenever they stopped running, people would say the Nazis had reached the outlying stops. When Misha saw a lone tram on Ulitsa Gertsena one day, he half expected it to be full of German soldiers.

  Even the most sensible people would tell the most outlandish stories. Now, after a couple of weeks of such rumours, Misha was almost starting to believe them. As he arrived at school, Nikolay ran up to greet him with the news that Nazi soldiers had been sighted at the metro terminus at Sokol – just to the north-west of the city centre.

  ‘Nikolay, you have lost your mind!’ Misha said. ‘If they were that close, we would have heard the fighting. You know, rifles, machine guns, artillery shells.’

  Nikolay looked crestfallen. ‘Well. Sergey told me his own father had seen German tanks on the other side of Zoo Park. He said he could see the muzzle flashes from their guns.’

  Misha felt disappointed. These were the sort of stories his eleven- or twelve-year-olds would tell him in class.

  ‘I listened to the news before I came out and it said there was still fierce fighting around Mozhaisk,’ he replied. ‘That’s still a hundred kilometres away.’

  Nikolay scoffed. He lowered his voice and said, ‘Misha, you don’t still believe what the radio tells you, do you?’

  Misha felt angry. ‘Nikolay, I’m not an idiot. If I hear the words
“heroic defensive actions”, I know that’s probably where the fighting is.’ He tried hard not to lose his temper and put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘When we start to hear the artillery, that’s when we need to get worried.’

  But a hundred kilometres was nothing. You could drive it in an hour. And there was danger within the city walls too. There had been a strict blackout since the summer, when the Nazis had captured airbases in range of the capital. Tales of rape and looting were rife and he and Valya always walked home together at the end of the day. The previous Day Four they had seen a small crowd smash a grocery shop window on Ulitsa Serafimovicha. Misha walked past it the next day and saw the looters had tried to set it alight. Fortunately for the other shops and apartments in the block, the fire didn’t take.

  Much as he disliked the Militia men, who were usually such a visible and menacing presence, he missed them now. Misha hadn’t seen a policeman or a squad of soldiers out on the street for several days, although the Kremlin seemed to be full of them. Maybe the Vozhd was afraid of an uprising and thought most of Central Moscow’s police and soldiers were needed to protect him.

  There were so few teachers and pupils that day that school finished early and Misha returned home to find the Kremlin buzzing with activity. Tanks guarded all the main entrances and scores of trucks were parked up inside the walls. Clearly something significant was happening.

  He entered his apartment to find his father packing a suitcase.

  ‘I am so glad you are home. Hurry and pack as much as you can carry,’ said his papa. ‘The Vozhd has decided to leave Moscow. Essential staff and their families are travelling out tonight.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ asked Misha.

  ‘You’ll find out soon enough. It’s three days on a train, I would guess. So we must bring provisions too.’

  ‘What about the Golovkins?’ asked Misha. ‘Is Valya coming?’

  Yegor snapped. ‘Anatoly Golovkin is staying here. He volunteered. We need to keep a skeleton staff at the Kremlin. Moscow will not surrender without a fight.’

  ‘I must go to say goodbye.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing. Misha, we have to be at Kazan Station in the next hour or so. The Hitlerites have broken through on all three main highways to the west. There are trucks waiting already in the Ivan Square for us and our suitcases. I don’t want to leave you behind.’

  Misha went to his room and filled his suitcase with as much as he could carry. At first he was angry because Papa wouldn’t let him go to the Golovkins, then he felt tearful because he was leaving his home and his life and his friends.

  To Misha, leaving the apartment seemed unreal, like a dream he was having. As his papa locked the door, it occurred to him that he might never see his home again. He had an image in his mind of Mama in her green evening gown, about to go out to a Kremlin banquet with Papa. Tears welled up, and he quickly distracted himself by grabbing his heavy case and marching down the corridor.

  ‘Hey, Misha,’ Papa called. ‘You have to carry some food too.’ He gave him a knapsack stuffed with bread, dried meat and jars of pickled vegetables.

  They walked out into a chill evening drizzle and hauled their heavy cases to Ivan Square. In the blackout this was a dangerous place to be. Lorries were already leaving, carefully weaving through milling hordes of people, their headlights muffled to a dim glow. The Petrovs were quickly consigned to an open-backed canvas-covered truck. Yegor recognised several of his colleagues and their families and greeted them briskly but these were people Misha did not know and he wished again that the Golovkins were coming.

  As most of the passengers in this truck were women and children, Misha thought it would be polite to sit nearest the exit, and he watched his world disappear as the truck drove past the looming shadows of the cathedrals. He peered through the gloom hoping for a last glimpse of Valya, thinking she might have heard about them leaving and come out to wave the trucks off, but he couldn’t see her anywhere. When they drove through the Borovitskaya Tower and turned north, he realised he would probably never see her again.

  Misha had not pressed his papa on where they were going. In fact, he half wondered if they would be making the whole journey by truck. He imagined it would be somewhere east of the Ural Mountains, like Kuibyshev, where Stalin’s daughter Svetlana had spent the early weeks of the war. That was a good thousand kilometres away and the thought of travelling there in the back of the truck filled him with dismay. He began to give himself a pep talk. He would try to think positive thoughts. He was going somewhere pleasant and almost certainly warmer than Moscow. And he would be out of range of the German bombers, and certainly away from the terrible danger of the street fighting that was sure to break out when the Germans reached Moscow.

  The truck drove past all the familiar landscapes, now just dim silhouettes in the blackout: Red Square, the Bolshoi Theatre and the Lubyanka. A strong smell of burning hung in the damp air, most noticeably as they passed government buildings. Misha guessed they were disposing of documents and occasionally he caught a glimpse of a bonfire in a courtyard or sparks rising into the air. That was strictly against blackout regulations and would normally render its perpetrators liable to the most severe accusations. They had told him at his Komsomol air-raid training that traitors and saboteurs would be lighting fires to guide the German bombers to important targets.

  The convoy swung north-west up the long stretch of Ulitsa Myasnitskaya. Misha began to hope they were heading for the cluster of railway stations on Komsomolskaya Square.

  Ordinarily, such a journey would take ten or fifteen minutes from the Kremlin at this time of night, but that evening progress was slow. Traffic was particularly heavy. Misha had never seen so many cars on the road at once. Most were bursting with luggage both inside and strapped precariously to the roof, and Misha glimpsed anxious faces through their windows. Large trucks, loaded with factory machinery, were also caught in this human tide, and thousands of people were heading out on foot, dragging bags and cases with them. These weren’t the peasants Misha had seen earlier in the month, fleeing from the Germans with their livestock; these were citizens of Moscow.

  Through the gloom and drizzle, Misha could see smashed shop windows and figures emerging clutching table lights, chairs, typewriters – a mad assortment of anything they could find. He wondered if there was any food left to loot, or bottles of vodka, or whether these had all gone days ago.

  From somewhere ahead they heard gunfire, and everyone around him stiffened. The truck, already moving at barely walking speed, came to a halt. Misha stood up and peered cautiously around the side of the canvas cover. People looked terrified and the crowds on the streets were hurrying away from the sound. Misha heard people shouting, ‘The Germans are here.’

  There was more shouting and more gunfire. Misha had his Komsomol membership card in his jacket top pocket. If the Hitlerites searched him and found it, he would be shot on the spot. He wondered if he could take it out and throw it away without anyone noticing. Someone might see and denounce him for defeatism and cowardice in the face of the enemy. And if he was stopped by Soviet soldiers or Militia men and he didn’t have it, he would be in all sorts of trouble. They might even shoot him as a spy or a deserter.

  Ahead in their convoy, he could see fighting had broken out in one of the trucks. Soldiers were rushing towards the trouble and Misha felt an odd sort of relief. Whatever was happening was between Russians and Russians. The Germans were not here after all. He immediately sat down on his suitcase again. He didn’t want to see people being shot. No one asked him what was happening. His fellow passengers were sitting back, their faces stiff with fear, not even daring to see what was going on in the street.

  Then Misha started to worry that people in the crowd might try to board their truck.

  There was more shouting, but no gunfire. After a further delay, the truck lurched forward. Everyone sat back now, their faces in the shadows.

  Ten minutes later, after much stoppi
ng and starting and honking of horns, the truck drove under a gateway, through a dense phalanx of soldiers carrying rifles with fixed bayonets, and under the cover of a vast iron canopy. Misha recognised the interior of Kazan Station at once. That gave him a clue about where they were going. It was from here that trains departed for the east: to Kazan, Yekaterinburg, Ryazan and Kazakhstan.

  Soldiers appeared and helped them down, taking suitcases to load on to trolleys. ‘Comrades, you are to board the train on platform six,’ said an officer. ‘We will load your cases, so take what you need for the journey. Carriages three to seven have been reserved for government administrators and their families.’

  The convoy of trucks had parked inside the enormous concourse of the station, which was almost deserted, apart from a few squads of soldiers, and a scattering of travellers, sitting despondently on their luggage. Misha coughed as exhaust from the truck caught in his throat. He peered through the gloomy electrical light of the station interior. He could see piles of abandoned bags, cases and blankets covering the entire marble floor, vast as a football pitch.

  The whiff of smoke from the locomotives also caught in his nostils. That was reassuring. There were trains and they were running. The new arrivals were hurried through to the platform. The train before them seemed to go on forever. He guessed there must be thirty passenger and goods carriages at least. The platforms were not covered and Misha and his father were damp with drizzly rain by the time they reached the forward section of the train. The compartments were packed solid with passengers who had arrived earlier and by the time they got to carriage number three Misha was beginning to worry that they would not be able to find a place to sit.

  ‘Quick, Misha, two seats at the far end,’ said Papa.

  They were lucky. Within a couple of minutes the rest of the carriage had filled to capacity. Two thickset middle-aged men in civilian clothes sat opposite them. They nodded a greeting but looked too intimidating to engage in conversation. Misha immediately assumed they were NKVD, there to listen for seditious conversations. He thought they would have been better off sending two young women in floral dresses, or a couple of lanky bookish types. These men were too obvious.