Derek Lambert: The Red House

Manhattan’s streets and avenues opened up and the sky narrowed—grey canals high above. He saw a Hollywood cop feeling his nightstick as if it were a damaged limb and thought of the Soviet militia with their dramatic topcoats and irritable toothpick truncheons. Discovery and nostalgia fought each other. Steam billowing from vents in the city’s bowels and lingering in the icy, lacy air: felt boots crunching fresh snow on Arbatskaya Square.

Discovery won the battle without deciding the war; the shops the stormtroopers. Windows of nonchalant plenty. Furniture in theatrical sets, beds of jewellery and dormant watches, racy clothes and gossamer fabrics, skis and golf-clubs, package tours to Las Vegas, Miami, Dublin or Tokyo, a coffee carafe of Pyrex and silverplate like a contemporary samovar, beckoning beds, busty, gutsy displays of brassieres and corsetry, a garden window with simulated grass being cut by a mower (plan ahead for summer), Tsarist perambulators, floors of shoes ready to quick-march, toys Russian children couldn’t dream of because they couldn’t imagine them. Everything cheaper than everything else, every store flaunting infinitesimal advantage.

And the Christmas tableaux in cavernous windows. Dwarfs and children and fairies strutting and dancing and blessing; a carousel carrying dizzy teddy-bears; a rocket bound for the moon with Santa Claus (Grandfather Frost) astride the command nodule. And Christmas trees (yolka) buttoned on to the haunches of the elephantine buildings with white electric bulbs.

Grigorenko interrupted as he had done with many other newcomers. ‘I know just what you are thinking.’

‘You do? You presume too much, comrade.’

‘You are wondering what can be wrong with Capitalism if it produces so many fruits.’

The vein had subsided, the ache at the base of his skull fading. ‘Is that what you wondered when you first arrived?’

Grigorenko’s pattern was disturbed. ‘Not I. But you. Is that not what you are thinking?’ The growl lost a decibel of menace. Brodsky felt the bridge of his sinus and made a noise that could have been a simper, a giggle or a sneeze.

Zhukov said it wasn’t, enjoying the transient authority of unexpected attack. He was, after all, a second secretary.

‘Then what are you thinking?’

‘Just remembering that in the shops in Gorky Street you can see nothing in the windows.’

‘You are commenting unfavourably on the commerce of the Soviet Union?’

‘On the contrary, Comrade Grigorenko. I’m surprised that you should interpret a remark so prematurely and so incorrectly.’ He gestured towards a windowful of lingerie threaded with tinsel. ‘If you judge a woman by her jewellery you may find a whore.’

‘Just so, comrade.’ Grigorenko made notes in his mind. ‘You speak very well—but of course that’s your job.’

‘Surely yours as well, comrade.’

Valentina’s elbow nudged his ribs, warning.

Brodsky said, ‘Perhaps Zhukov’s words are as empty as those shops in Gorky street.’

Zhukov said, ‘But the shops aren’t empty. Only the windows.’

‘You will make a very good diplomat,’ Grigorenko observed. ‘You’re smart with words.’

‘I am a good diplomat.’

‘Forty-four? Second Secretary? Perhaps your capabilities have been underestimated.’ The doggy face regarded Zhukov with total seriousness; in the bruise-coloured pouch under one eye there was an incipient growth.

If I were a man, Zhukov thought, I’d reply, ‘But you’re only a third secretary.’ But you had to be smart with not saying words as well as saying them.

The city was slowly on the move, the snow like the fuzz the morning after too much Stolichnaya.

A Buick fanning wings of slush hove past bearing the legend ‘Save Soviet Jewry.’

From what? Ah, diplomacy …

A street sign said Tow Away Zone. Another said Snow Emergency Street. They turned into East 67th Street. No. 136—The Mission of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to the United Nations. And those of Ukraine and Byelorussia. And, across the road, down the street from the red-brick 19th police precinct clubhouse a synagogue.

2

BUT the spirit of good will and New Year’s resolution hadn’t penetrated the pale and clinical building at 136.

In the foyer Zhukov’s body turned clammy in the artificial heat. A woman with greying hair forced into a bun, and a lackey in a miserable suit and thin tie regarded him suspiciously. A plastic Grandfather Frost and the Snow Maiden beamed in the corner in spite of it all.

‘We shall stay here until they open Washington Airport,’ Grigorenko said. ‘You would perhaps like to get some sleep?’

‘I’d like to have a look at New York while I’m here,’ Zhukov said.

‘It would be better if you got some sleep.’

‘I should like to see New York. It might be my only chance.’

Valentina sided with Grigorenko. ‘I’m very tired, Vladimir.’

You couldn’t make a scene within minutes of arrival; nor could you relinquish all authority to a couple of third secretaries protected by the ghost of Beria. ‘Perhaps later,’ Zhukov said.

Outside they heard scuffling. Russian oaths involving mothers. A voice with a Uzbek accent screaming ‘Samarsky!’

The door sprang open. A blast of cold air followed by a young man held by two squat captors. They pinioned him easily, his feet just touching the ground. His hair was black and curly, badly cut; his skin dark, his body slight and struggling.

Grigorenko strode across to them and growled as softly as he could, showing the squatter of the two an identification card.

Grigorenko spoke to the young man.

‘Go and fuck yourself,’ screamed the young man. His dark face was frenzied with fear—a man being carried to the hangman’s noose.

Grigorenko nodded slowly, as if abrupt movement might dislocate the big head from his neck. ‘Put him down.’ The hunters released their quarry. ‘You haven’t made a very good start on the New Year,’ he observed.

‘Shit on you,’ said the prisoner.

Grigorenko stepped forward kicking hard and down the shin, crunching on the instep, bringing his knee up into the crotch as the man gasped forward, finally rabbit-punching the side of the neck with the blade of his hand.

The young man, doubled over in pain, was carried away.

‘Tomorrow,’ Grigorenko said, ‘he will be on the plane to Moscow.’

‘And what was that all about?’ Zhukov asked.

‘It’s nothing for you to worry about,’ Grigorenko replied.

Brodsky, who’d been watching with his inhaler held up one nostril, said, ‘Just another drunk, probably. They will insist on drinking Scotch when they’re used to vodka.’

‘That man wasn’t drunk.’

‘It affects different people in different ways.’

‘And now,’ Grigorenko announced, ‘it’s time for bed.’

He was, Zhukov thought, very avuncular. As avuncular as Stalin.

Only Grandfather Frost who had once been on the receiving end of denunciation—a puppet of the priests, no less!—saw any humour in the situation.

He allotted himself two hours’ sleep and lay down on one of the two single beds in the small bedroom. A bowl of fruit and a picture of Lenin dominated the decor.

He listened to his rapid vodka heartbeat and told himself to calm down about everything. About the priorities shifting around in his mind. About the tests of loyalty ahead.

Although I am a good citizen, Vladimir Zhukov assured himself. A good Party member. I believe in our crusade. His trained brain recited, unsolicited: ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.’ The last lecture in Moscow surfaced. ‘We know that an accelerating, unmanageable national debt will effect civil collapse and open the floodgates of Socialism.’ The lecturer’s fanatic face peered closer. ‘This is now happening in the United States of America. It is up to you …’