Red Sky at Noon (The Moscow Trilogy)

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  ‘That’s a compliment from Panka. He might even call you “brother”,’ jokes Fats Strizkaz, embracing him, kind suddenly and Benya loves him with the love of men who kill and die together.

  Panka shrugs and spits, busy with the other horses. He is too experienced to share the exhilaration of the hopped-up Criminals but he has a shot of vodka or two and is cheerful in his level way.

  Benya looks around him. His companions are scarlet-cheeked and shiny-eyed with butchery. There’s madness in the air, and they swagger giddily with the strange aura of rare men who’ve ladled out death and know the secrets of the world. Benya wonders if they are going to slip the reins and go berserk in the village. Socks is going to live though, and he has been through a battle – and he feels eerily powerful, hungry for more war, more savagery.

  There’s singing from the millhouse where the rest of the squadron are swimming in the stream, stark naked. Benya looks at their tanned faces and necks with a ‘V’ down their chests; their bodies are as white as snow. He throws off his clothes, so hot suddenly that the cold seems to scald him.

  Wearing damp clothes that dry fast, Benya lies on a mattress in the shade of a house behind a wattle fence. The house smells of kvass and sausage. There’s the pungent fug of closely packed, sweaty bodies, which he recognizes as one of the pervasive smells of war and prison. A peasant woman in an embroidered hat and skirts sits and stares at him. She gives Benya a glass of milk but she has a sly look. It’s hospitality – or a dagger in the back. Ruined people are cruel people.

  Exhausted, Benya fights to stay awake. He hasn’t slept for twenty-four hours or more, but he is still scudding from the revelation of his newly discovered other self. His sword arm aches and burns: he can hardly lift it; his thighs are agony, and he can barely walk. Yet he is alive. More than alive. He is transfigured. Through the blade he felt the softness of his fellow humans. He has killed several men, men whose eyes he looked into, not Germans but Italians, his favourite nation on earth. He thought he was killing German Nazis. Instead they were the people of Michelangelo, Raffaello and Tiziano and, as if to make the point, someone has found an Italian gramophone. The aria of Rigoletto soars into the still afternoon air. He falls asleep, dreaming …

  The music stops abruptly, and Benya sits up. It’s as if he has awoken in another dimension. The atmosphere is quite different, a swerve of mood, a darkening under the blinding sun. Perhaps it was something to do with the drink? Or just the flesh-eating instinct of born killers who have no other way of expressing themselves, or of feeling free and alive? He goes outside and sees those cutthroats he knows so well, Smiley, and Cut and Run, staggering into cottages.

  The goose is ready. It’s been cooked so long the flesh melts on his tongue. Plates of eggs and pork and kasha and the meat of a dead camel are put before him. For dessert: cherries and peaches. This is a rich, black-earthed land, and Benya eats like an animal, even the chewy camel meat, virtually licking the plate clean. He hasn’t enjoyed such plenty since before his arrest, and the men trough almost silently, quaffing wine and cha-cha, getting sunburnt and soused, like lords of creation. Afterwards, Benya checks on Silver Socks, who is lying down outside in the shade, her legs folded under her. She is not feverish, she’s eaten, and her neck looks clean.

  When Benya went to sleep, there had been laughter and splashing and flirting, a sense of triumph, a glaze of evervescence. They had pulled it off. They had broken the enemy, taken this village. Haven’t they earned their redemption? But now the milk is soured, the sun is so hot that Benya feels its pulse throbbing, and there’s shouting behind the stables. In the yard of the priest’s house, the Political Officer, Ganakovich, is interrogating a collaborator, a Kalmyk scout with wild sweat-pleated hair and grey German britches. The traitor is tied to a chair, bleeding from the eyes, and there are teeth scattered around like jewels. There’s a fat Italian there too, just a boy, sitting against a wicker fence, watching as if this has nothing to do with him.

  When he sees Benya, he asks in Italian: ‘When will we go home? Will we ever eat spaghetti and wine again?’

  ‘Si, si, ragazzo, presto!’ Benya knows some Italian and he understands and is suddenly overcome with the urge to weep, to hug the boy.

  Ganakovich is nervous. He looks around and sees Zhurko in the doorway. ‘Where’s the support? Where’s the artillery?’ he blurts out. ‘Where’s Melishko?’

  ‘They should be on their way,’ Zhurko opines. ‘But I’ll take a look,’ and he heads towards the stables.

  ‘What about Mogilchuk? We need the Special Unit here, don’t we?’ No one answers this and no one but Ganakovich misses those hyenas. Then he shouts at the scout, ‘Where are the rest of you traitors? Where’s Mandryka and his auxiliary police?’ He is waving his pistol around in a way that proves he has never seen battle. Ganakovich, Benya knows, is a blowhard in the Russian tradition: a tyrant to those below, a slave to his masters.

  Garanzha approaches softly and then suddenly his steps are as light as a ballerina’s and the spasm of violence so quick Benya doesn’t see it; and the scout starts to talk. With his round, leathery face and almond-shaped eyes, he’s a descendant of Genghis Khan perhaps and they’re still Buddhists … the Kalmyk scout is a tough customer, but he has betrayed Russia, and knows there will be no quarter given.

  ‘Mandryka’s Hiwis?’ he asks. Benya doesn’t know what he’s talking about but he does know that ‘Hiwi’ is short for Hilfswilliger, ‘willing to help’, the name for all Russian traitors, such as the Schuma auxiliary police, who have thrown in their lot with the Germans. ‘Yes, they’re at that village, Shepilovka.’

  ‘Where’s that?’ Even Ganakovich has no idea where they are.

  ‘Ten miles west from here.’ The scout speaks in a toothless monotone, no effort necessary now, death imminent, in an accent that mixes Russia with the Mongol East.

  ‘Where are German forces massed?’ Ganakovich asks.

  ‘All around you. See the dust rising.’

  Ganakovich peers around and sure enough, in the distance, clouds of dust roll forward like a giant wave.

  ‘The offensive is about to start again soon. You got lucky, Cossacks,’ the scout says.

  ‘Lucky? What do you mean?’

  ‘You’re Shtrafniki, aren’t you?’ replies the scout. ‘There’s no backup coming behind you. The Italian Colonel Malamore was here with the traitor Mandryka and some Germans. Just a few hours ago. They know you’re here … But as for you – you’re on your own.’

  Ganakovich is stunned. Unsure what to do, he tells Spider to send the prisoners back to headquarters, and reels out on to the street.

  Garanzha has an ominous ticking stillness about him. ‘What are you looking at?’ he asks.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ says Benya.

  Spider looks right at Benya and, surprisingly in that sharkish face, he has the milkiest goo-goo eyes that could loll a baby to sleep – even as he draws his dagger.

  ‘Garanzha’s got his butcher’s grin! Like it’s a holiday and he’s about to slaughter a sheep.’ It’s Prishchepa, cheerful as a chaffinch. ‘Put it away, brother,’ he says.

  Garanzha sheathes the dagger, and the Kalmyk nods gratefully but without much conviction.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asks Prishchepa. ‘The girls in this village are beauties. Mine’s called Aksinya, fresh as a punnet of strawberries …’ He beams carelessly at the prisoners and the Shtrafniki – as if both are equally his pals. ‘Must go. Aksinya’s waiting,’ and as he leaves, it happens so fast: Garanzha is giving his goo-goo eyes to Benya, never even looking at the scout, as his steps go all quick and balletic and somehow, in that instant, the blade has done its work. The scout twitches slightly as if falling asleep, and the blood pumps out in fast and then shorter and shorter spouts.

  ‘Ahh! Mama!’ It is the Italian boy, staring at the dead scout. Something clicks as he realizes that gentle routines of the Venetian slums, licking gelato in the campo with his mama, coffee wi
th his papa at his usual table, catching the vaporetto to his grandmother’s, all the things he knew and took for granted that he would see again, are gone.

  ‘Ciao, ragazzo, where are you from?’ Benya distracts him in Italian.

  ‘Venice. Alpini. The Tridentine Division.’

  ‘What’s your father do?’

  ‘Cheesemaker. I work with him.’

  Benya longs to grab the boy and run away with him to safety. ‘I was in Venice once.’

  The hope rises in the boy’s lamb eyes. ‘I could make you polenta, spaghetti,’ he says. ‘I’ll cook for you. I was just cooking it up for my unit when—’ He feels Garanzha’s gaze.

  ‘I’ll take care of him, Garanzha,’ says Benya.

  ‘No,’ says Garanzha in his gentle, detached voice. ‘Ganakovich gave me my orders. I’ll escort him back to our lines.’ He gestures to the boy, who gets to his feet. They walk through the graveyard and out into fields. Benya watches them as they get smaller. He feels numb; he wants to get a grip but everything is slippery and runs through his fingers. He knows he won’t see the boy again.

  There’s howling from a nearby house. Benya looks sideways and Smiley comes out through the garden, chuckling and wiping his hands on his trousers. There is more weeping as Fats Strizkaz looms in the doorway, pig-drunk and lairy, and barrerls in while just outside Little Mametka, poky-faced except for luxuriant lips, lingers like a randy schoolboy outside a cathouse.

  Benya is afraid of Smiley though grateful to him for many things. ‘How could you?’ he asks now.

  ‘Fancy swimming in my milk?’ Smiley stands in front of Benya, who notices his maddened red eyes set in his strangely handsome face. ‘Be my guest, Jewboy.’

  ‘You … forced her?’

  ‘Are you a priest? Never.’ Smiley shakes his head. ‘A dog doesn’t harass an unwilling bitch. What about you, Mametka? Keen to lose your cherry?’

  ‘I’ve had women,’ pipes up Mametka.

  Fats Strizkaz snorts as he slams the door of the house behind him – the weeping is now quieter – and stamps up the garden path. ‘No, you haven’t, you lying little eunuch. Your voice hasn’t even broken. You’ve never touched a woman, have you, Bette Davis!’ Strizkaz was a former Chekist interrogator – until arrested himself. A Trusty in Kolyma, he has kept his connections to the secret police so the men humour him. But no one forgets what he was.

  Smiley pokes Mametka in the side. ‘You going to put up with that, Mametka?’

  ‘Ignore him,’ says Benya. ‘Come on, let’s go and see the horses.’

  ‘Horses? Riding horses is all Mametka can do with his little woodpecker; he couldn’t do a woman if he wanted, could you, Bette Davis?’ leers Strizkaz.

  ‘Not funny. Not funny,’ says Mametka timidly. ‘I won’t put up with it.’

  ‘What’s that? You’ll put up with it if I say you fucking put up with it,’ replies Strizkaz. ‘Won’t you, Bette Davis?’

  ‘You should apologize, Fats,’ says Smiley in what Benya thinks is a statesmanlike, League of Nations-peacekeeping manner. ‘I think you’ve gone a little far, eh?’

  Strizkaz smirks but takes no notice.

  ‘Ignore him, Mametka,’ says Benya, concerned that Smiley and Strizkaz will come to blows. ‘Look!’

  On the village street, Captain Zhurko rides in. Ganakovich, clearly in despair, rushes out to meet him. ‘Where are supply carts? Where’s the guns? Where are the communications people?’ he shouts, waving his arms.

  ‘I don’t know! How can I know?’ This is the sensible voice of Zhurko. ‘No one followed us.’

  ‘And where’s the rest of the battalion?’

  ‘I rode back towards our lines. There are Fritzes everywhere, tanks and guns, and none of ours.’

  ‘The Kalmyk said we got lucky. We found the Italians. But now we’re on our own.’ Ganakovich gulps. ‘Where’s Melishko?’

  A silence.

  ‘We need Melishko.’

  Benya feels sick. Surely these two fools can’t be right?

  ‘Melishko will come,’ says Zhurko decisively. ‘Melishko will know what to do.’

  Afterwards Koshka joins Benya. He has been listening too.

  ‘Maybe this wasn’t a victory after all,’ he whispers hoarsely. ‘Maybe we’re lost!’

  III

  In Stalin’s apartment in Moscow, Svetlana was alone and miserable. She could tell by the looks the teachers gave her at school that she was an outcast, albeit a much revered, almost sacred one. Although her father was the greatest man alive, her teachers were afraid of her; many of the boys and girls avoided her and she knew their parents told them to have nothing to do with her.

  Her father sometimes stayed with her in the Kremlin apartment, especially when the war was in crisis, but more often he visited her after his meetings and then drove out to his real home, the Nearby Dacha at Kuntsevo, twenty minutes outside the city. In the apartment, she lived with her devoted nanny, her cook, and Mikhail Klimov, her bodyguard from the secret police. Her father was so busy with the war that he had little time for her, but Svetlana still worried about him. The stress, she knew, was almost unbearable. No other man could take it. Her elder brother Vasya – Colonel Vasily Stalin – certainly couldn’t. He had just been cashiered for his outrageous and drunken behaviour. He had taken some of his men fishing but instead of fishing rods, Vasya had thrown grenades into the river and one of his men had been killed. Her father had been furious.

  She sighed and looked at the newspapers as she always did in the evening and there it was in the Red Star. Another article by her favourite correspondent Lev Shapiro.

  Sometimes even the lowest can perform like heroes. In the early hours, I caught a lift on the ferry across the Don and saw one of the new Shtrafbats go into action to defend our positions holding the Don Bend. They were outfitted on horseback with Marshal Budyonny’s Cossack mounts and I saw them gallop into battle in squadrons. As Shtrafniki, they were criminals, cowards, officers cashiered for retreating without orders, rightly sentenced for crimes, but thanks to the ingenuity of our Great Stalin in Order 227, they have been given this new chance to redeem their sins and serve our Motherland. They were a mixed crew of misfits and criminals and there was even one writer. But their spirit showed the genius of Comrade Stalin in giving them this opportunity to bleed and be rehabilitated, for they were patriots longing to serve.

  In a scene that would quicken every heart, the squadrons of eight hundred horsemen recalled some of the finest moments in our great Russian history, fighting against vicious invaders – the Teutonic Knights, the Swedes, the French and now the Hitlerites. They file into position. ‘It’s always sunny in the saddle,’ says an old Cossack, a veteran of Budyonny’s Red Cavalry; and then their commander, a Colonel Melishko, says, ‘You can’t get me!’ and his men cheer. Then he shouts: ‘Draw your sabres,’ and I see the blades flash; then: ‘Forward! Charge!’ and, with their sabres held at an oblique angle, the curved steel glinting above their heads, I hear them shout, ‘For Stalin! For the Motherland!’ and, under brutal cannonfire, they charge the Nazis and fall in their droves – but some break through to terrorize the invaders … It’s a sight that brings tears to my eyes: how can any Russian reading this not weep at such courage?

  Tears ran down Svetlana’s cheeks too. She had to write to this man to tell him that she adored his work. She reached for a pen and paper and wrote in a rounded girlish hand:

  Dear Lev Shapiro,

  Forgive me for writing to you. I know you are busy. But I just wished to express to you that for this reader at least your writing is truly a service to our Motherland and is read keenly here.

  Best wishes,

  Svetlana Stalina

  The Kremlin, Moscow

  IV

  It is late afternoon as Benya walks through the village. Each house has its gated wattle fence at the front, and a back yard leading to a garden festooned with vines and cherries.

  ‘Hey, Golden, look!’ They’ve found m
ore Italian bodies in one of the cottages. There is a dead Italian officer on the doorstep, a splendid-looking fellow, tanned and immaculately dressed – shot neatly through the heart. Everyone stares at him – before the Criminals start stripping him of accoutrements. Smiley, Cut and Run, Cannibal Delibash and Koshka are working their way through the houses, looking for food, weapons, girls. At the moment of impact: screams and smashed glass; afterwards; a light symphony of sobbing. It is not the liberation the villagers deserved.

  Spider Garanzha appears suddenly, wiping his sabre on the grass, his guess-what-I-just-did smile on his gaping shark mouth, and they join the men lazing in the churchyard, which now resembles a macabre gypsy banquet with food, bottles and bits of uniform scattered amidst the gravestones. Some of the men are still drinking in the sun and a few have passed out. Lying on his back, his bell-shaped head sunburnt to a fluorescent puce, propped up on a doubled-up mattress, his belly a swollen winesack (the only man ever to emerge with a paunch from the Camps), Fats Strizkaz gives his opinions on all matters. Did you see Koshka in the charge? What a coward! How Ganakovich is scared of war – don’t you notice when his voice goes high? Fats has a bottle of Italian wine which he happily shares with Smiley and Garanzha. Then he scopes Little Mametka, who has stolen the Italian officer’s gleaming boots, holster and dagger scabbard engraved with his initials.

  ‘Hey, Mametka, those boots are too big for you!’

  Smiley raises a warning hand but Strizkaz won’t be restrained.

  ‘Hey! What? We all called him Bette Davis in Kolyma! Jaba made it up.’ That was true, thought Benya, but Mametka could take anything from Jaba, his Boss; he was younger then; and besides, Jaba had an affectionate way of saying it.

  ‘I apologized,’ Strizkaz drawls. ‘I apologized and you accepted it, right?’

  Mametka looks twitchy. He nods gingerly.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Strizkaz tells Smiley and Garanzha. ‘I apologized and he accepted it …’ Then his face with its patch of moustache turns vicious again. ‘Didn’t you?’