Betrayal

by Helen Dunmore

‘You remember, Anna, how your Kolya and my Mitya used to play all day long down by that stream, when they were little? And before that it was you and our Vasya.’ She sighed. ‘It’s hard, isn’t it, when you don’t have a grave to visit?’

  ‘Yes.’ Vasya lies somewhere at the bottom of Lake Ladoga. He was driving a lorry with food supplies for Leningrad; the ice broke, and the lorry plunged through the crevasse. Or at least that’s what she thinks happened.

  Vasya was as passionate about dam-building as she was. Often they quarrelled, because they each had their own ideas about what would ‘really make the dam hold’. But when the lakes they made began to swell and brim like real lakes you could swim in, they would grab hold of each other and hop about with glee. Do bones dissolve, after more than ten years?

  ‘It’ll be nice to see another little one playing down there,’ Darya said. ‘Only you’ll have to hurry up and fill the cradle again, because it’s no fun playing on your own.’

  Darya seemed to have made a decision not to ask any questions about Andrei. She behaved as if he were any absent husband, off working somewhere. That was the way things were. You had to take what you could get, and a family couldn’t always be together.

  Anna smiled. She felt grateful to Darya for the simple normality of the phrase. Fill the cradle … Of course she would.

  ‘Are you thinking of buying any honey this year? I’ve got a few jars left.’

  ‘That depends on the price.’

  Darya named one so outrageous that Anna just smiled and shook her head. Simple normality was one thing; but Darya hadn’t changed all that much.

  Anna buttons up her overcoat and ties her scarf over her head. She doesn’t want to see Darya today. She wants to be on her own. Her boots are by the door. Balancing carefully against the weight of the baby, she wriggles her feet into them.

  ‘I’ll be back soon.’

  ‘Don’t go far.’

  The snow is easing. A sharp lemony light shines between the young lilacs, but the snow is blue in its folds and hollows. Everything is effaced. The whole world seems to have been put to bed. Anna follows the path that Kolya cleared just this morning. It’s covered again, but not too deeply. She’ll go a little way into the woods.

  The fresh, powdery snow squeaks under her boots. It’s very still, very quiet. But of course not so quiet, once you start to listen. There is the whine of a chainsaw, a long way off but distinct. A lump of snow slithers off a branch and drops close to Anna’s feet.

  She reaches a little clearing. This is where she used to climb trees when she was little. She remembers it as full of leaf shadows, and secretive, but today light pours down from the pale sky to the glistening snow. She looks up. A ragged crow flaps across the sky.

  Black crows. She shudders. But Volkov is dead. Maybe he’s already buried. He can do nothing more. If Galya’s right, and he’s fallen from power, then perhaps the case against Andrei will collapse.

  Of course that can’t really happen. She’s not such a fool as to think they’ll simply let him out. But a lighter sentence, perhaps. If Volkov’s no longer there, driving the case on, then the prosecutors might lose interest.

  It’s cold. She ought not to stay here, but she can’t bear to go back to the dacha and talk to Galya like her normal self.

  She would like to howl like a wolf, with fury and frustration. Volkov has reached into their lives and torn them apart, and for nothing. He was already falling himself, but he dragged them down with him. Now he’s dead, and he’s got out of it. Why should he escape? If she could find his grave she would spit on it. He doesn’t deserve to sleep. He should be dragged out of his coffin and hung in the wind, for the crows to eat him.

  Anna shivers again, and crosses her arms over her breast. She would never have believed she could feel like this. As if a new self has grown up, inside the shell of the old Anna. Perhaps she’ll become one of those old women, the widows with their bitter, exhausted faces, who believe in nothing and trust no one.

  The baby thuds, deep inside her. In less than two months he will be born. She thinks it will be a boy, but probably that’s only because Kolya is a boy. The baby is strong. Sometimes when he kicks now, she sees a little foot push out under her ribs. She ought to go to a maternity clinic, but she doesn’t want to go anywhere near officials. Galya says things are going well. Anna is in excellent health and there’s every indication that the birth will be normal.

  ‘I’m not going near a hospital,’ Anna says to her.

  ‘But your mother –’

  Galya is thinking of the post-partum haemorrhage that killed Vera, after Kolya’s birth. Anna thinks of it too, but says, ‘It didn’t help her, being in hospital, did it?’

  After a pause, Galya shakes her head.

  ‘We’ll manage,’ says Anna to the baby now. ‘Don’t worry, I’m going to make sure you’re all right.’

  The baby kicks again. He’s so strong, so imperative. He doesn’t know anything about Volkov. None of it matters to him. He just wants to be born. To push his way out of Anna, just as the buds will push their way out of these trees. It’s almost frightening, how powerful that force is, thinks Anna. As if Andrei and I don’t matter, as long as he gets born. We’ve served our purpose, in making him. But perhaps that’s as it should be.

  She feels calmer now. She’ll be able to go back, and talk normally. She’ll ask Kolya what’s happening at the Sokolovs’, and whether Darya has had second thoughts about the outrageous price she’s asking for her honey.

  ‘I’m here, Andrei,’ she murmurs, surprising herself. ‘Don’t be afraid.’

  The wind sifts, but nothing answers. Anna straightens her back. She looks up at the sky, and clenches her fists. The baby kicks even harder, as if he senses her fury – or as if he shares it. ‘We’re going to be all right, you bastards!’ she calls into the empty sky, as she called once before, long ago. ‘Just wait and see! We’re going to live!’

  Galya meets her at the door. ‘I’ve been looking out for you.’

  ‘You shouldn’t stand here, it’s much too cold.’

  ‘Look.’ Galya holds up a package. For a wild moment, Anna thinks it might be something from Andrei. But no, the package has been delivered by hand.

  ‘You just missed him. He didn’t give his name. A tall chap. He said this came from a friend of yours in Leningrad.’

  Sure enough, there are fresh footprints in the snow, not Anna’s.

  ‘He said he couldn’t stay,’ says Galya. ‘He was so muffled up that I didn’t really see his face.’

  ‘Oh.’ Anna turns the package over in her hands.

  ‘Close the door. That child of yours may be a Spartan, but my bones are growing old. Come to the stove.’

  Anna sits by the flank of the stove. There is string around the parcel, and she unties it carefully and rolls it up. She takes off one layer of paper, and then another. Inside, there is a thick envelope. Nothing is written on it. Her heart beats fast as she opens the flap.

  There it is. A pile of banknotes, used and shabby, held together with a rubber band.

  ‘Julia must have sent it,’ she says. ‘It’s the money from the furniture.’

  She riffles through the notes, counting them. Halfway through, she looks at Galya with disbelieving eyes. ‘It’s far too much. Our stuff can never have fetched all this.’

  ‘You sold the piano, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but it was just an ordinary piano. It had a good tone but it wasn’t especially valuable.’

  ‘I suppose that depends on what the buyer was prepared to pay. And you sold all your household stuff as well, remember.’

  ‘But it can’t have been worth all this. This will keep us going for months if we’re careful, and I can send plenty to Andrei. It’s Julia who’s done this.’

  ‘Good for her.’

  ‘She shouldn’t have. It’s too much. No one can afford to give away all this.’

  ‘Not in our world, that’s true. But didn’t you say her husband w
as a Stalin Prizewinner?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There you are, then. Why shouldn’t you have it?’

  ‘I don’t know. It doesn’t seem right.’

  ‘Of course it’s “right”,’ says Galya with such finality that Anna says no more.

  Besides, it means that she can give Galya money, and buy food and things for the baby. Only an idiot would refuse. Julia hasn’t put in a note. She wouldn’t have wanted there to be anything with her name on it.

  ‘I expect that the man who brought it was her husband,’ says Galya. ‘I only hope he knows how to keep his mouth shut.’

  ‘Of course he will.’

  ‘There’s no “of course” about it, and you know it. But he’ll be careful. It would come out that his wife is your friend.’

  ‘That’s why I worry about us staying here with you.’

  ‘I know you do. I can see you worrying away, Anna, you have a very transparent face.’

  Have I? I think you might be surprised, even so, if you could see into my mind …

  ‘But you don’t need to worry about me. I have nothing to lose.’ And Galya smiles calmly, as if this were the most obvious and incontrovertible fact in the world.

  25

  The train creaks to a halt. Andrei stirs, and shifts his swollen legs. If he turns his head a little to the right he can see through a chink in the wooden slatting. He can taste the air.

  Outside there is a platform, bathed in bluish light. There’s a low wooden shed, not much more than a shack. Someone is walking up the platform in heavy boots. Andrei can hear their tread but he can’t see the figure. There is a sudden ringing clang. His heart jumps, then settles. They are only testing the wheels. He’s sure that’s all it is.

  All around him, men stir. Old Vasya groans. He’s probably not that old, but with his yellow skull-like head and huge eye sockets, he looks a hundred. He has dysentery; probably amoebic dysentery, Andrei thinks. The pail in the corner of the truck brims and reeks.

  There is never enough water for Vasya to drink. His tongue is cracked and swollen.

  ‘What’s going on?’ murmurs Kostya.

  ‘Don’t know. Just a halt, I think. We’re at a station.’

  ‘What can you see?’

  ‘The platform. A shed. Some birch trees.’

  It had seemed like a miracle when he had met Kostya again, in the ‘bread-van’ that took him to the railway station. Kostya had got twenty-five years.

  ‘You only got ten! You lucky sod. I thought they’d stopped handing out tens. The rest of us are all halves and quarters.’

  A ‘half’ was fifty years, and a ‘quarter’ twenty-five. Why sentence a man to fifty years when there was no chance he could survive that long? For the same reason, Andrei supposed, that they did everything else.

  When the prisoners were offloaded at the railway station – in a special area screened from the public – he saw how pale Kostya was. The dead-white look you get from being locked away from the light for months. All the men were blinking in the winter sun as the guards lined them up and crammed them into the trucks. Vitamin deficiencies, as well as lack of exposure to light, Andrei thought. What a rabble they look. If he saw himself coming along the street, he’d probably cross over to the other side.

  ‘Stick close,’ said Kostya. ‘We’ll get ourselves sorted. It’s good to have a doctor on board.’

  Once they were in their truck – a cattle truck lined with wooden plank beds all the way up to the ceiling – Kostya began to organize them. There was no argument about electing him as their foreman. They needed someone who could speak up, who knew their rights and yet wouldn’t antagonize the guards. It was bitterly cold in the truck.

  ‘We’ll have to get this stove lit,’ said Kostya, but there was no sign of the guards. Andrei spread out his blanket and rolled himself up. He would get some sleep. He didn’t feel the cold as much as some of them; his Siberian upbringing must have seen to that. He had his padded jacket, too. He had done a deal with one of the guards after he was sentenced and knew that his winter overcoat wasn’t likely to be much good for ‘corrective labour’. It was a good overcoat. Anna had saved up her wages for months, and surprised him with it. But the padded jacket was thicker, and very little worn. As long as he could hold on to his things he would be all right. He needed padded trousers but God knows where they could be obtained. Maybe the camps issued some kind of work uniform.

  The clanging sound runs up and down the train.

  ‘Maybe this is it. Maybe we’re there,’ says one of the men uneasily. Old Vasya moans loudly.

  ‘I wish he’d shut the fuck up. He’ll have the guards in,’ someone hisses angrily.

  Old Vasya has scurvy as well as dysentery. There are petechial haemorrhages all over his body. Several of the men have bleeding gums, but Vasya is by far the worst, probably because he’s not absorbing what nutrients there are in the soup. It is even more salty than the Lubyanka swill.

  ‘Do they think we’re animals?’ the men mutter in disgust as their bowls are filled.

  Probably, Andrei thinks. If you treat a man like an animal, then you have to believe that he is one. He’s learned that the guards hate it if you look directly into their eyes. It can lead to a beating.

  There is supposed to be absolute silence when the train is at a halt. The logic must be that if civilians heard human noises coming out of a cattle truck, they might get uneasy. But it’s so cold that Vasya can’t help groaning.

  ‘Can’t someone shut that bugger up?’

  The moon shines on outside. Andrei puts his face as close as he can to the chink in the slats, and snuffs up the air. There is a smell that tantalizes him. It is so near, so familiar. He breathes more deeply, and suddenly the smell hits a part of his brain that almost remembers it.

  A charking sound comes from Vasya, then stops. After about half a minute, it begins again, louder and more agonized.

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’

  ‘He’s dying,’ says Andrei. ‘Let me get near him.’

  There’s nothing he can do. Old Vasya is lying on his back, with his nose jutting towards the roof of the van. His mouth has fallen open like a cave. It stinks of decay, as if he has already begun to rot from within. Andrei takes his wrist. A pulse flutters, and then jumps. Vasya’s trousers are sodden with liquid faeces. He’s been like that for a while, because a couple of days ago he lost the strength to go to the bucket. The charking noise begins again, rising in pitch, then dying back.

  Andrei takes his hand. There’s nothing he can do. The hand is limp, and already cold. The sound will go on for a little while longer, and then it will stop.

  In the morning, when the guards have heaved Old Vasya’s body out of the van, Kostya persuades them to bring water with disinfectant in it so they can wash down the floor.

  ‘We’ve a doctor in here and he says there’s a risk of infection. We could all be going down with it.’

  The word ‘infection’ works. Andrei watches the guards jump to it. They are terrified of lice, too. ‘You’ll all be fumigated once you get where you’re going,’ one of them announces, as if this is a reward. I must remember this, Andrei thinks. They are afraid of typhoid epidemics, because disease doesn’t know which is the prisoner and which is the guard.

  ‘Who’s the doctor, then?’ asks the old guard they call Starik, the one in charge of their van.

  ‘I am,’ says Andrei.

  The guard’s eyes find him in the gloom, and assess him. ‘Name?’ he asks.

  ‘Alekseyev, Andrei Mikhailovich.’

  ‘Right.’

  The guard’s eyes rove over the rest of the men. You have to watch yourself these days. These aren’t like the prisoners you got back in the thirties. Most of these men are war veterans and they know how to handle themselves. You have to act accordingly.

  ‘Right,’ he says again. ‘Full disinfection will be ordered at the next halt. Any noise, you’ll find yourselves in the punishment cell.’

&n
bsp; For of course, even on a train travelling the breadth of Russia and on to Siberia, there has to be a punishment cell.

  At that moment Andrei remembers the smell that filled his nostrils the night before, when he pressed them to the gap where icy air poured in. It seemed all the sharper in contrast to the fetid air of the cattle car. His brain comes alive, remembering, recognizing. It was the smell of the taiga. It was the cold, wild air of home.

  26

  ‘Make sure she latches on properly. That’s right. Don’t let her chew the nipple.’

  Anna strokes the baby’s head. It is hot and fragile, like an egg when the chick is ready to be hatched. The baby looks up at her and sucks frantically, as if she doesn’t believe she will ever taste milk again.

  They call her ‘the baby’ still, for she has no name even though she’s eight days old. She was born in late February, a little earlier than Galya or Anna had expected. Already, it seems as if she’s been with them for ever.

  ‘Do you think “Natasha”?’ she asks Galya, who is rinsing out nappies at the sink.

  ‘I don’t like it, personally. There was a spiteful little girl at school who used to pull my hair – she was called Natasha.’

  ‘It’s difficult, isn’t it? So many names have associations.’

  ‘You could always call her Vera,’ says Galya. She doesn’t turn round, but Anna sees from Galya’s sudden stillness that this is important.

  ‘I don’t think I could do that,’ she says gently. ‘I’d be thinking of my mother every time I said her name.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you want to do that?’

  ‘Of course. But I want to think of her and the baby separately.’

  Galya nods, and plunges her hands back into the sink.

  ‘When Kolya comes back, I’ll ask him if he’s had any more thoughts,’ says Anna.

  Kolya got up at first light and went over to their own dacha, to clean out and repair the guttering there, as he has done at Galya’s. He needs to get out of the house. It’s a bit too much for him, the smell of milk and blood and baby faeces, with nappies in buckets and baby clothes hung up to dry all around the stove. He’d rather be out, alone.