Simon Montefiore - Red Sky at Noon

He shrugged. Women liked him for some reason, and he knew she did too, with all the solemn passion of her age. Hell, the women in Moscow liked him at least partly because they loved movies; every young actress wanted a part and he was the scriptwriter – ‘Lyovka sweetie, Lev darling, won’t you write me a beautiful part in your new project, Stalin at Finland Station. Or how about the empress in your Peter the Great, Part Two ?’

‘Of course,’ he would answer, ‘shall we meet at the Aragvi for dinner – I’ll book a private room – or a cocktail at the bar in the Metropole Hotel?’ Well, of course he was married and he’d been married a long time – but any stray bullet at the front could kill him tomorrow. Who could blame him for enjoying himself?

But Svetlana was different. She brought out his best qualities – he was the finest man he could be with her. He was her teacher: she wanted to learn about writing and literature. And though she was so young, she didn’t bore him like most teenagers he’d met. She was an old soul, and no wonder. He wanted to protect her, to make her feel cherished, to boost her confidence. In some ways this was a crazy, quixotic affair, a reckless adventure that gave him a thrill, but the war had opened society up and afterwards there would be more freedom. He mocked himself as a knight, a loving friend for the loneliest girl in Russia, and Svetlana truly was a damsel in distress, a sensitive girl living in a wilderness of fear, neglect and boredom. It is my mission, he thought, to rescue her. Oh, he loved their calls, and her letters were so romantic. And when they had kissed and held each other, her touch was so sparky, so forthright… How she had blossomed in just these short days. He would see her tonight if he could. Then he had to get his editor to send him back to Stalingrad to report on the coming struggle. If Stalingrad fell to the Germans, where would the Russian retreat end?

Then he heard a voice he recognized.

‘Lev! Is it you?’ He looked around at the damaged men in the wooden seats and on the floor as the train steamed northwards. ‘Lev, what are you doing here?’ He was stepping over the wounded, careful where he put his boots. ‘Shapiro! It’s me!’

‘Christ! Can it be—?’ And it was – it was Benya Golden, lying in a filthy uniform on the floor, pale and older, so much older. He had only been gone two or three years but the man in front of him seemed to have aged a hundred. He and Benya had been members of the same worldly, rather privileged milieu of writers, actors and jazzmen. The novelists Babel and Ehrenburg, the actor Mikhoels, the jazz singers Utesov and Rosner, the film actresses Valentina Serova and Sophia Zeitlin – these were the friends they had in common. But they also shared the jealousies all writers can’t resist – he had called Golden’s book ‘overrated, a bit childish’, while Golden had sneered at Shapiro’s script: ‘stiff, formal, I could do better’. But then Golden had been arrested, vanished off the face of the earth, and Lev had presumed he had been shot.

Lev stretched over the two boys lying between them, one of them unconscious, the other with no legs, and crouched on the planks next to him. The men shook hands, and Lev leaned down and kissed his cheeks thrice, all ancient jealousies forgotten in the familiarity of a long-lost friend, newly found. He glanced down at Benya’s dressings.

‘Hit in the leg and hip,’ said Benya. ‘I won’t be able to walk for a while. But I think I’ll live.’

He was a shrunken sunburnt shell of a man; only his blue eyes were the same, Lev thought. When he offered cheese and bread, Benya wolfed it down with a swig of vodka and some water from his canteen.

‘Do you know where you’re going?’

‘Gospitalnaya Ploshad.’ Hospital Square. The main military hospital in the centre of Moscow.

Lev whistled. ‘You were lucky,’ he said.

‘More than you know.’

Lev did know but everyone was listening in the carriage and they had to be careful. ‘You were… out of Moscow for a while?’

‘Innocents abroad,’ said Benya and, used to talking in riddles with his friends, Lev got it immediately: The Innocents Abroad was by Mark Twain who had said: ‘Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.’ So he had been in the Gulags; Lev had heard all the stories of that netherworld. But how had Benya got out? He was a Political yet somehow he had joined a Shtrafbat.

‘You were there, weren’t you, in that mad cavalry charge? I was covering it. The commander was a heroic guy… let me see… Melishko?’

Benya nodded but Lev saw the sadness in his face.

‘He didn’t make it?’

‘Not many of us did but… we broke through the Italian lines.’

‘And you were on horseback? I never had you down as a Cossack athlete.’

Benya smiled weakly. ‘I was better than I expected.’

‘Did you…?’ Shapiro raised his eyebrows and Benya guessed what he was asking. Had he been redeemed or was he still a Smertnik?

‘Don’t you despise religion?’ replied Benya. ‘How can those fools believe extra Christum nulla salus .’ Shapiro got it: ‘outside Christ, no salvation’. Benya meant that he had found salvation in the redemption of his own Soviet Christ; in Stalin. He had redeemed himself by shedding blood. He was free.

‘Do you know what you’re going to do?’ Lev could see Benya was struggling to stay awake.

‘I haven’t thought…’ Then he whispered, ‘Teacher. I want to teach… Yes…’ And his eyes closed.

‘That cavalry charge seems an age ago, but it was only eight days,’ said Lev. ‘So you had a pretty easy war, eh? Eight days and you’re invalided out.’

But Benya was already sleeping as Lev, his eyes full of tears, leaned over and embraced him.

It was a short flight, just fifteen minutes.

The Junker 52 landed on the heavily guarded airfield amidst the dark pine woods, and the officer who’d climbed out on his own, carrying a leather briefcase, jumped straight into the open-topped staff car that drove up to the plane. He didn’t talk en route but rehearsed his arguments, over and over again. This was not the first time he had reported but he felt it was the most important and he wanted to get every detail right. As the car drove into the woods, he noticed the anti-aircraft guns, tank traps, concrete fortifications. They approached the first checkpoint, then the second and third. Each time his papers were inspected carefully. Security was tight; they drove swiftly along the road past twenty or so single-storey log huts, overshadowed by the hulking concrete ramparts which were the visible parts of the bunker complex, towards a large wooden hut, heavily guarded. He had been here once before, and enjoyed having his hair cut at the barber’s and soaking in the sauna. But this time his attendance was different and all the more urgent.

Entering the adjoining hut, he showed his papers for the fourth time and surrendered his handgun. He could see there were other officers from different fronts and a minister waiting, and he sat down with them in the anteroom, twice getting up to check his appearance in the mirror. Finally he was called and he walked into the low-roofed wooden hut where he could just see the backs of the men leaning over the maps on the table and hear the famous husky, guttural voice.

‘They’re falling apart,’ he was saying in a jovial tone. ‘Faster than last year. Like a house of cards. They’re close to collapse. The big decision is what resources to assign to Army Group B and Stalingrad. Army Group A is sweeping all before it. You know, gentlemen, what my instinct tells me, but this new intelligence may help us decide. Let’s hear what he has to say. Is he here?’