Дэвид Даунинг - The Dark Clouds Shining

“Separated,” McColl said, as he rushed to rebuild his mental defenses. Komarov’s reminiscences were usually engaging enough to make you forget all other concerns, and McColl sometimes wondered if that was the aim.

“That is sad.” The Russian emptied the second bottle they’d gone through that night into their glasses, and for a moment McColl thought he was about to receive his first dose of Russian sentimentality from a political policeman. He should have known better; Komarov was as practical drunk as he was sober. “Marriage may be a bourgeois institution,” he said, only slightly slurring his consonants, “but I liked it. Remember what Vladimir Ilych said: you have to learn bourgeois manners before you can move on to proletarian graces. I don’t think we’re ready for free love, no matter what Kollontai thinks.”

“I don’t think Comrade Piatakova would disagree with you,” McColl said, rather intemperately.

Komarov smiled ruefully. “No,” he said, “but she is one of our best.” He rose a trifle unsteadily. “I shall wish you good night.”

McColl sat by himself for a few minutes, sipping the last of his vodka. He had, despite himself, come to like and respect Yuri Komarov, but letting that color his judgment would be extremely unwise. He suspected that Moscow’s prisons were full of people who had found the man a good listener.

Walking back to his compartment, he stopped on the coach veranda to savor the cool night air, then impulsively clambered up the iron ladder and onto the swaying roof. The moon was higher and brighter now, suffusing the desert with a pale silver glow. In all directions the featureless landscape stretched out to the flat horizon, and McColl had the fleeting impression that the train was stock-still on moving tracks, throwing fiery sparks into the night but actually going nowhere.

Caitlin was up early nextmorning and found herself sharing the saloon with a talkative Arbatov. The Menshevik’s suitcase was beside his chair.

“I’ll be leaving the train soon,” he explained. “Aruis is the railhead for Chimkent and Verny, and I’m told we should be there soon after eight. I can’t say I’m looking forward to the road journey, but at least it’ll be a change.”

“Do you know anyone in Verny?” she asked him.

“Not a soul. But making new friends is always good, and I expect some old ones will be joining me soon.”

“You really think it’s all over, don’t you?” she asked, surprised at the resentment she heard in her own voice.

He didn’t take offense. “In the sense you mean—probably yes.” He sat back in his seat, looking very much the professor. “Think what Lenin promised us in 1917.” He ticked them off on his fingers: “A free press, a multiparty democracy within the framework of the soviets, a state run by the workers and policed by a workers’ militia, an end to the death penalty. And what do we actually have? A gagged press, a one-party state run by that party’s leaders and policed by its own militia, executions by the thousand. There have been some achievements—of course there have—but most of them are fragile. Take your Zhenotdel and what it’s tried to do for Russia’s women. Changes like those make sense to you and me, but the timing’s all wrong. It’s simple really. We’re too late for capitalism and too early for socialism, and our Russia has fallen into the chasm between them. One that I fear will grow deeper and darker.”

She wanted to argue with him, but the fears he was expressing were ones she felt herself. “I hope you’re wrong,” she said, for want of anything better.

“Oh, so do I, but I’m usually right about things like that. And I do believe this is my stop,” he added as the train began to slow and another cluster of pale brown dwellings slid into view.

Caitlin wished him a good journey and watched through the window as he and Komarov exchanged jovial good-byes. As a less convivial-looking Chekist led Arbatov off toward a waiting line of horse-drawn carts, the train jerked back into motion.

Tashkent, as Maslov informed her a few minutes later, was only four hours away.

The booking hall at Tashkent station was wide, airy, and far from crowded. Komarov sat on his upturned suitcase, feeling impatient. He had sent Maslov off in search of transport, but the rest of the party were standing in a group awaiting salvation, metaphorically clinging to one another like any bunch of strangers in a strange land. Even the cotton experts were reluctant to leave and were busy blaming each other for the fact that there was no one there to meet them.

Maslov returned with the air of someone whose mission had been accomplished. “Our car is here,” he announced, “and there are native troikas on their way from the hotel to collect the others.”

“You go with them,” Komarov said. “Yakov Peters is an old colleague,” he added in explanation. Which was something of an understatement—for several months in 1918, the two of them had virtually run the Moscow Cheka in tandem.

Maslov hid any disappointment well. “It’s the Tzakho Hotel,” he said.

“Right.” Komarov nodded farewell to the party and walked out to the forecourt. The sky was a bleached blue; the pastel-colored buildings on the far side of the park shimmered in the heat. A short, dark-haired Russian was standing by a dust-begrimed Fiat, holding the rear door open.

“I’m not royalty,” Komarov told him, letting himself into the front.

The road into town was wide and flanked by artificial streams that flashed in the sunlight. At first there was little in the way of traffic, but when, after half a mile or so, they turned onto an even wider thoroughfare, he felt he was entering another, busier continent. Long strings of heavily laden camels vied with mule- and horse-drawn carts; dust and the flat smell of animal dung both hung in the air. Yet the buildings were still European, and tramlines shone in the earthen highway.

They veered around a large park, full of office workers taking their lunch in the shade of spreading trees, and entered a narrower street. This, Komarov guessed, was the oldest part of the Russian town. Ahead of them a pair of parked cars indicated the position of Cheka headquarters, while away to his right, a slim, incredibly graceful minaret rose above the square Russian mansions, like a flower climbing out of a tomb.

The Cheka building had clearly been a ballet school in a previous incarnation: in the hall off the vestibule, now filled with typists and desks, exercise bars still clung to the walls. Yakov Peters’s office was on the first floor, a spacious room with a view of gardens and not much furniture: a camp bed, several native rugs, and a wide polished desk encircled by upright chairs. Three of the walls were hung with tapestries; the fourth had a large map of Turkestan and a framed portrait of Lenin.

Two ceiling fans were noisily whirring, but it was still incredibly hot.

Peters came out from behind the desk to embrace Komarov. The two men had never socialized much, but they’d done much the same job for the last three years and dealt with the same inner demons.

“Something to eat, something to drink?” Peters asked. He was wearing an open-necked shirt, baggy trousers, and sandals. A cigarette smoldered on the edge of an ashtray.

“Tea,” Komarov said, remembering that the Lett was a teetotaler. Peters’s complexion had been coarsened by the local sun, but Turkestan’s Cheka plenipotentiary looked in much better shape overall than he had on the occasion of their last meeting, eighteen months before. The haunted eyes were gone. “You’re looking well,” Komarov said, feeling almost envious. “This place must agree with you.”