Lauren Chater - Lace Weaver

‘Like hell.’ Joachim’s face darkened. ‘You see? I knew you’d be like this. You see now why I didn’t want to tell you. Look…’ His face softened. He plucked my hand away from my mouth, capturing it between his own. ‘I will talk to my father, if it makes you feel better. But I’m not going anywhere. That’s what I told them. I haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘But my uncle…’ I glanced around. My chest was tight. ‘He will kill you! You must tell your father now.’ I pulled my hand free of his grasp. ‘You must go to his apartment at once. You mustn’t go home.’

‘Why not?’

Joachim seemed genuinely surprised. His mouth opened and shut, and in that moment I realised he was just a boy. He had no idea about the things that had gone on before. It had started when I was sixteen, when my uncle first began to criticise the clothes I wore, commenting that my skirts were too short, my blouses too revealing. To Olga, he had made pointed remarks about my ‘desperation’ in wanting to attract the notice of men. At the time, I’d been so embarrassed I asked Olga to let my school skirt down until it brushed past my knees. But the comments had grown worse as time wore on. The last time I visited him with Olga, six months ago, he had flown into a rage, accusing me of seeing men when I’d been expressly forbidden from having lovers. The possessive rage on his face had frightened me, but it had also strengthened my resolve when the opportunity came to rebel. If I was already accused of such misdemeanours, why should I not taste for myself the forbidden fruit?

‘They will be trailing you,’ I told Joachim. ‘Surely you must know they will still be watching us. How could you be so naïve?’ Through my rising panic I saw a trolley car approaching, its vague outline growing closer.

I tried to push Joachim towards it, but he resisted, digging in his heels.

‘Don’t call me,’ I said. The liberating sense of freedom – how had I ever thought that kissing a boy in a darkened cinema would be allowed – evaporated into the blue sky. ‘It’s not safe.’

Mamochka, please , I thought, picturing my mother’s face. Just allow me time to speak to Uncle first. To explain.

A word floated back to me, suffused with the faintest hint of night-blooming jasmine; my mother’s favourite scent. I felt her voice calling to me, the word growing clearer until it filled my head with a sound like breaking glass.

Run!

Tyres squealed behind us. I spun around. A car – sleek, black; a Packard – juddered to a halt at the kerb. The chatter of people’s voices around us fell away. A man emerged from the passenger side and walked straight towards us, his shoes clipping the pavement.

‘Joachim Sorkin?’ The agent did not wait for Joachim to speak. ‘I have a warrant for your arrest. You must come with me.’ He seized Joachim by the arm and pulled him towards the car.

Desperately, his courage fleeing, Joachim looked back.

Help me , he mouthed, his chin trembling.

His black dress shoes squeaked, slipping against the concrete.

I wanted to move, to do something but my legs were locked into place. ‘Where are you taking him?’ I said.

The agent pulled the door back. ‘To the Lubyanka. Go back to your apartment. You have visitors.’ Turning back to his work, he shoved Joachim roughly into the car’s interior. The car door slammed, a thunderclap in the silent street.

I staggered back, my head pounding. Lubyanka: the prison where spies and those accused of anti-Communist behaviour were held before they were executed. And waiting for me at my apartment, Uncle’s cronies, ready to scold or excoriate me, to mete out whatever punishment he had devised.

Olga was waiting for me in the hallway of our apartment block, pacing back and forth. When I stepped onto the landing, she shrieked then rushed towards me, her thick fingers twisted together.

Wisps of white hair escaped her bun as if she’d been sitting in a sauna. A house dress of pale blue crepe dotted with daisies clung to her plump body, the fabric slightly crushed. I remembered with a guilty start that today was the second Thursday of the month, the day she often wandered downstairs to the beauty salon to have her round face scrubbed until it was tight and shiny and her nails trimmed. With a sick feeling, I wondered if Uncle’s men had dragged her out of the salon to question her; whether my own selfishness had been responsible for this added humiliation. I waited for her to rap my fingers and yell at me as she had done when I was a child. Instead she flung her arms around my waist and squeezed me tightly to her chest. When she drew back, her hazel eyes were reproachful. ‘You are a wicked girl, Lydochka. Why did you lie? You told me you were meeting with Sveta for coffee. Now I find out it was a young man!’ She shook her head, her nest of hair trembling.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I should have told you the truth.’ I pressed the heels of my palms into my aching eyes; I had not been able to hold back my tears on the trolley car home. Joachim was gone. Who knew what they were doing to him? In my wretched state, I had only barely registered the man following me, shadowing my footsteps. Not Kirvenko. A stranger. A new bodyguard. Had Kirvenko betrayed me? It didn’t matter now.

Something creaked behind me; I turned, heart thumping, wondering if the guards I had passed at the entrance downstairs had followed me up. But there was only the silver mirror in the hallway throwing my own dishevelled image back.

Olga was still staring at me, her lips puckered in disapproval. Then her face relented a little, and I saw fear creep in, replacing the hurt. She tugged me towards the door.

‘Your uncle is waiting to speak to you,’ she said. She lowered her voice. ‘Lydochka, I’ve never seen him so angry.’

‘He came himself?’ I tried to swallow the burning lump in my throat. Surely he was too busy to bother with me. He had any number of people to do his bidding. Was the crime I had committed so terrible? Why had he not sent Colonel Rumyanstev to punish me?

There could be only one good thing to come from his being here: the possibility that I could beg him for Joachim’s release. Perhaps, if I apologised, I could convince him to grant Joachim a pardon, or at least have him placed under house arrest. His parents might be able to smuggle him out. It all hinged on how Uncle took my apology. What could I say to soften him, to make him laugh? When I was a child, playing about his feet when we visited him, I had always managed to bring him out of his rage by flinging myself around his boot.

‘Dear boot,’ I would say, stroking its polished surface. ‘How angry you are. Why do you shout so? You must rest. You must be calm. Shall I sing you a song? Shall I tell you the story of Brave Vasilisa?’ Then I would feel the boot shake with laughter, the adult voices growing calmer, my father’s rational words easing the tension from the room.

But I was no longer that child, and he was no longer just my uncle. Now he was the State. As his power had increased, so had his temper, his intolerance for little things.

Olga prodded me forward into the parlour where we took our tea each afternoon, the samovar filling the room with clouds of steam. He stood beside the window looking out over the River Moskva, hands gripped behind his waist, a short man in a grey suit.

His hair was combed back, streaked with silver–grey. His uniformed guards stood at attention, their faces expressionless. They looked strangely incongruous standing against the fine wallpaper and wood panelling of the apartment walls. My legs wanted to turn and run, dragging me with them, but I forced them to be still. Think of Joachim’s face , I told myself. Imagine his fine nose, his dimples. His grin. Think of the books he gave you, the records smuggled in from America beneath his sweater. You must help him! I willed my feet to shuffle forward but I could not stop my hands shaking.