Simon Montefiore - One Night in Winter

‘Kurbsky?’

Oh my God! Rimm was calling him. George and Minka vanished as the teacher summoned him from the doorway. As he went back inside to face Rimm, Andrei wished he had known nothing about the spoof love letters.

‘Kurbsky,’ said Dr Rimm jocosely, ‘I hear your Pushkin is more than proficient.’

‘Thank you, Comrade Rimm.’ The title ‘Comrade’ meant Rimm was a member of the Communist Party.

‘You might have heard of my class on socialist realism?’

‘Of course.’

‘I teach literature as it should be taught,’ Rimm said, and Andrei knew he was referring to Benya Golden’s class. Rimm hesitated, and then his eyes rolled as he checked they were alone in the corridor. ‘Are you happy in Teacher Golden’s… group, where Pushkin is taught, I understand, without class consciousness at all, merely as the cravings of bourgeois romanticism? Would you like to switch?’

‘Thank you, Dr Rimm. I am content in whatever class the director places me.’

‘Your answer is correct,’ he said. ‘But bear in mind that it is the Party that teaches us the only way to analyse literature. The non-Party path has no future. You’re intelligent. I know your tainted file, but remember this is the school that Comrade Stalin chose for his own children. If things go well for you, there’s Komsomol, and perhaps the Institute of Foreign Languages. Do you understand me?’

Andrei had dreamed of wearing the Komsomol badge. The cleansing of his tainted past would mean that he could join the Party and follow his heart into academia or the diplomatic corps. His mother had warned him; now Dr Rimm was doing the same thing. The antics of the Fatal Romantics could ruin his rehabilitation. But as Andrei hurried towards his next lesson, he sensed it was already too late.

‘KURBSKY! ARE YOU Kurbsky?’

A strapping security officer in MVD blue tabs loomed up in front of Andrei outside the school at pick-up a few weeks later. He was someone’s bodyguard no doubt, but Andrei’s heart still missed a beat: he remembered the night, long ago, before the war, when the Chekists had come to arrest his father, when men in boots had tramped with ominously officious footsteps through the apartment.

‘I… I am,’ stammered Andrei.

‘Are you a sissy like those floppy-haired friends of George? Do you read girlish poetry? Do you pick flowers? Do you fold your britches before you fuck a woman – or do you just rip ’em off, toss ’em aside and go to it like a man?’ asked the security officer.

Andrei opened his mouth to answer, but then closed it again.

‘Just joking, boy.’ He introduced himself: ‘Colonel Losha Babanava, chief of security for Comrade Satinov,’ and Andrei’s hand was crushed in a throbbingly virile handshake. Losha’s accent was thickly Georgian, his barrel chest was covered in medals, and his red-striped britches were skin tight. Andrei noticed his ivory-handled Mauser in a kid-leather holster, and how his teeth gleamed under an extravagantly winged set of jet moustaches.

‘George is waiting in the car with his brother and sister. You, boy, have been invited to tea with the Satinovs.’

The officer guided Andrei by the shoulders towards a ZiS limousine.

‘Hello, Andrei,’ said George through the open window. ‘Get in.’

Losha opened the door and Andrei saw George, Marlen and little Mariko in the back seat, which was almost as large as his bedroom. George gave him a smile. ‘You see the door and windows? Fifteen centimetres thick. Armour-plated! Just in case anyone tries to assassinate Marlen.’

‘Why would anyone want to kill me?’ asked Marlen, looking around.

‘Because you’re so important in the school. Our enemies will certainly know you’re school Komsorg.’

‘Really?’ Marlen seemed pleased by this.

Losha slammed the door; then, whistling at the ‘tail’, the small Pobeda car filled with guards behind them, he placed his hairy hands on the car roof and swung himself into the front seat as if he was leaping into a saddle. ‘Foot down!’ he barked to the driver. The cars accelerated together, the driver spinning the white leather steering wheel and manipulating the brakes to give unnecessary screeches of burning rubber that made passersby jump out of the way as the little convoy careered past the Kremlin.

‘Your papa was up all night and he’s been in the office since dawn,’ Losha told the Satinov children, nodding at the red crenellated walls of the Kremlin and lighting up a cigarette. ‘I’ll be picking him up in a moment…’ Then, with a creaking of leather and a whiff of cologne, Losha swivelled around and pointed at a girl on the pavement. The chauffeur, also in uniform, craned his head to look – and almost crashed the car. ‘Hey, Merab, eyes on the road!’ Losha turned back to the children. ‘You see those Russian guys? No rudeness intended, Andrei, but most of ’em don’t know how to handle a woman. Russian girls are always looking sideways. Do you know why?’

Andrei shook his head.

‘They’re always looking for a Georgian guy, that’s why! You understand me, right?’ He slapped his palms together. ‘Kerboosh!’

The drive from Ostozhenka to Granovsky Street took only a few minutes. Soon they were turning into a small street, and guards were waving them through the checkpoints into a car park.

‘Welcome to the Fifth House of the Soviets,’ said George as a guard from the Pobeda car behind them jumped out and opened the door for them.

‘Out you get, youngsters,’ said Losha. ‘I’ve got to get to the Little Corner and pick up the big man.’ Banging his hands on the dashboard, he gestured to the chauffeur to drive on, leaving Andrei and the Satinovs standing amidst a collection of beautiful cars.

‘Whom do these all belong to?’ asked Andrei.

‘Well,’ explained George. ‘Most of the leaders live here. But these are ours – you’ve seen the big one, but then there’s the Cadillac, the Dodge, and that open-topped Mercedes came from Berlin. It belonged to Goebbels. Or was it Himmler?’

‘Do you use them all?’

‘Of course not. Papa couldn’t care about cars and stuff. But no one turns down a gift from the Central Committee.’

Andrei looked around him at the cars shimmering in the sunlight, then up at the pillared pink building above.

‘Recognize that Rolls-Royce?’ George asked. ‘Serafima lives here too. It’s the only privately owned Rolls in Moscow.’

A guard opened the back door of the apartment building, and Andrei and the Satinovs walked up a flight of wide, marble steps.

George pushed open the door on the first floor. Inside, a dazzling corridor of parquet and crystal chandeliers beckoned. So this is how the grandees live, thought Andrei as the maid, a swarthy but cheerful girl in a white and black uniform, hugged each of the children, kissing them several times on the face and shepherding them down the corridor.

‘Go on,’ she called after them. ‘I’m cooking up a Georgian feast. Oh and your big brother’s here. Hurry!’

The smell of spicy vegetables, melting cheese and roasted chicken curled through the airy spaces of the apartment. They passed through a reception room with a grand piano, Persian rugs, photographs of the children, a display case of turquoise china, an oil painting of Stalin – larger than life – at the front holding binoculars (could it be an original by Gerasimov, Andrei wondered?). Then they were in a small wood-panelled room filled with books and papers.

‘This is Papa’s study. We never look over there.’ George pointed at the heap of beige files on the desk marked ‘Central Committee. Top Secret.’ Andrei glanced at them: were they signed by Stalin himself? George opened a wooden case, took out four discs and, placing them carefully on the turntable mounted in a laminated wooden cabinet, he turned a knob. The turntable started to whirl, a long arm with a needle jolted into place, and the jazz songs of Utesov started to play.