Simon Montefiore - Red Sky at Noon

When the Spanish Civil War started, Benya, hungry for ‘the grit in all of us’, every writer’s ideal material, rushed to Madrid. His despatches to Pravda recounted his adventures at the front, and the irony of being a frail Jewish writer amongst fanatical killers. Once, on the Madrid front, he had even seized a rifle and fired at the Fascists, just for the thrill of being alive and so close to death. During the fighting on the Ebro, he had learned to ride and galloped out with the soldiers, afraid and yet so thrilled that he was where it mattered, at the hot stope of war and life, where every man who cared about the struggle wanted to be.

And then the Terror started in Russia. There were show trials and famous Bolsheviks were being executed but Benya never seriously considered staying in the West; he was Russian and he was sure his soul would wither abroad. Besides, back in Moscow, the secret police would surely never touch him. But when he got home, he found they were arresting many of his friends: writers, officials, actors, and their wives and families, and they never came back. Eight Grammes in the head or the Camps, that’s what they got. Benya wrote a few articles in praise of Stalin, just to be safe, but then, so sterile was the atmosphere, he dried up altogether, and couldn’t write a word.

The Head of the Writers’ Union called him into his office one morning and sat him at the T-shaped desk under the obligatory portrait of Stalin.

‘So, Writer Golden, how is the book coming along?’

‘I haven’t started yet—’

‘Listen carefully, Writer Golden. Last week Comrade Stalin said, “Why doesn’t this Golden write anything on Spain? On our fighters there? Where’s the book?”’

‘Comrade Stalin said that? He knows I exist?’ Benya didn’t know whether to be flattered or terrified.

‘Comrade Stalin reads everything, and that includes your articles. Comrade Stalin understands literature and, now Gorky is dead, he takes an interest in you. I don’t need to tell you this is an honour, but that wasn’t all Comrade Stalin said. “Is Golden on strike?” he asked. “Is he holding out on us?” When Comrade Stalin makes such a joke, he does so for a reason. Well, the Party demands that you produce some work now. So I’m sending you to the writers’ resort at Sukhumi for three months. Don’t come back without a book!’

Hailed by critics as ‘vivid, grotesque and sensual’, Benya’s Spanish Stories had been a bestseller in Russia and beyond. The Head of the Writers’ Union called him back: ‘Comrade Stalin enjoyed the book but he noted it was more emotional than political.’ He checked his notebook. ‘He grinned and said: “This scribbling Casanova cares more for skirt than war…”’

Benya was confused: ‘Is that praise or isn’t it?’

The Head of the Writers’ Union smiled lugubriously, relishing the power Stalin had delegated to him. ‘Take Comrade Stalin’s comments to heart, Citizen Writer.’

Benya awoke. He didn’t know where he was. It was so humid that the drugs and heat anaesthetized him into a trance that was deeply pleasurable and he felt he could sleep forever. He saw a chair and a nurse sitting there, not looking at him but facing away, reading a book. It was a scene of exquisite langour. And then she reached up and took off her white nurse’s cap and started to pull the clips out of her hair. It was copiously thick and when her dark brown locks fell around her ears and down her neck, he could almost smell its sleek sweetness.

He watched how her hands reached down and took a strand of hair and plaited it, and then reached for another… Hands, fingers stretching, gathering the thick tresses, holding them, weaving them through and starting again, time and again. He watched for a very long time and he thought it was the most beautiful thing. It was almost hypnotic, the rhythm of it, the delicacy, the repetition, the concentration, the thickness of the nurse’s hair and yet its exquisite fineness, and the scent of skin and sweat; he was observing a delicious ritual that soothed and delighted him. He plunged in and out of sleep; sometimes he heard his own voice speaking and realized that he was delirious but always rapturous, and each time he opened his eyes, the nurse was still there, sometimes reading, other times combing through her hair, and each time it transfigured him into someone else in another, kinder place.

He heard the whispering shift of the canvas flap, and his eyes opened a slit. An ominous figure was standing in the doorway, one moment in uniform, the next in a carapace of armoured, ridged skin like a dinosaur. Benya gasped in fright, but the nurse had turned. She evidently knew the man in the black shirt.

‘ Buonasera, Console Malamore.’

Malamore circled the bed, looking at Benya, inspecting the dressings on his wounds. Benya lay still.

‘You did this yourself?’ said Malamore, boots creaking.

‘ Si, signore .’

‘Impressive.’

‘For a woman, you mean?’ she said, raising her chin in a defiant way.

‘Killing things is easier, that’s all.’

‘That I can see,’ she replied. ‘No one finds that a problem out here.’

He took out a cigarette and struck a match.

‘Not in here, consul’ – and she blew it out. Benya almost laughed out loud with surprise and approval.

‘Strict, eh?’

‘You’re not the first to say that. This is a medical facility.’

‘It’s a tent in a damned Russian village, that’s what it is,’ Malamore rasped.

‘Well, in here, I do as I wish,’ she said.

‘Some men wouldn’t take kindly to that…’ Malamore said.

If this was his attempt at flirting, thought Benya, the old crocodile needs some lessons.

‘How do you put a woman in her place, consul? Ippolito’s way?’

Benya wondered who Ippolito was – her husband? It sounded as if he was violent. He felt protective suddenly of this nurse with the braided hair.

‘God bless his memory,’ Malamore said, ‘but I guess his way didn’t get him anywhere, did it?’

The nurse crossed herself. He is dead, thought Benya. Thank goodness!

‘He didn’t suffer. You know I saw him. It was a single shot. Just plain bad luck.’ Malamore coughed. ‘I must go,’ he said but at the flap he turned back. ‘This is for you.’ He put a bottle of wine on the table. ‘It’s Russian stuff from the Crimea. Massandra. I’m not good with words… but only a strong woman… can do this.’ He gestured towards Benya. ‘Well, my mother was an able woman. She could do something like this. She and you.’

The canvas flapped shut.

Fabiana dropped into her chair with a sigh.

‘ Sti cazzi! ’ exclaimed Benya. His temperature was still dangerously high, and it came out louder than he’d intended.

‘What did you say?’ said the nurse, sounding shocked.

‘ Sti cazzi! Porca puttana! ’

‘That’s vile language.’ She looked at him very strictly, her black eyebrows lowered, but Benya found he was smiling a little, and then so was she. It was the first time Benya had laughed for ages.

‘You can swear in Italian too? Not bad but how do you even know that? Don’t use Roman swear words with me: I am a Venetian. How long have you been awake?’

‘A while,’ said Benya. He was shivering again but quite lucid.

‘So you heard all that?’

He nodded weakly. ‘It was painful.’

‘Your wounds, you mean?’

‘No, hearing that old crocodile flirt with you… Are you tempted?’

‘How about you mind your own problems?’

‘Am I an impertinent patient?’

‘The worst so far.’

‘I’m just a curioso ,’ he said. He thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know your name?’