Simon Montefiore - One Night in Winter

Yes, she thought now, I may be on my own and getting older, but I believe that everyone’s capable of redemption, no matter who they are.

ANDREI EMERGED FROM the Granovsky building into the blinding sunlight. On Gorky Street, Moscow’s main thoroughfare, he passed soldiers, not much older than him, in uniforms, laughing with their sweethearts. Their careless happiness was infectious. He was convinced that his life had changed, and couldn’t wait to tell his mother about how the Satinovs lived, about the glacial grandeur of Comrade Satinov, about George’s hints concerning the Fatal Romantics’ Club and their esoteric rituals. Then he saw her. A tall girl with blond hair crossing Gorky Street without looking in either direction so that cars braked around her. She wore her school blouse buttoned right up to the neck and long sleeves, even though it was a glorious summer evening. She turned purposefully into the House of Books, Moscow’s best bookshop.

Andrei had no money to spend and he was already late for supper but he followed her inside. The books of Marx, Lenin, Stalin were displayed at the front alongside the romantic war poems of Simonov, the novels of Gorky and Fadayev, the screenplays of Constantin Romashkin (yes, Serafima’s father). Where was she?

Immediately, Andrei was soothed and inspired by the smell of new books – by the acrid glue and the fresh leather as well as the mustiness of old ones that were almost rotting on the shelves. He scanned students and pensioners, spotted a titian-haired lady in a fuchsia trouser suit, a government apparatchik in a blue suit and peaked cap, but no sight of Serafima.

Andrei had no plan, no particular idea, just the optimism of a summer’s day, and the boost of tea at the Satinovs, as he climbed the stairs to the second floor. Perhaps he had imagined her, he thought, as he surveyed the gorgeously bound special leather volumes on the shelves around him. He went deeper into the metal forest of the bookstacks. Then, as a hunter senses the quick breath of a deer in the woods, he knew she was there. He pulled out a book by Ernest Hemingway in English and, peering through the gap, he saw her. She was leafing through a book, intensely, as if searching for a line. And her head was on one side, that winning mannerism that he had noticed in class.

‘Serafima?’

She started. Green eyes speckled with gold looked at him questioningly. ‘Teacher Satinova recommended Hemingway and I just found For Whom the Bell Tolls and you were just looking at… oh, Galsworthy. The Forsyte Saga. Isn’t that about a bourgeois-capitalist dynasty in London?’

‘What if it is?’ Serafima asked.

Andrei saw the other book she was holding. ‘ The Age of Innocence ? Edith Wharton on the corrupt haut-bourgeois customs of robber-capitalism in old New York? ’

She looked at the book, as though surprised she was holding it, and then up at him again. Her intense gaze made him feel he was being very tedious.

‘If I was reading Fadayev would it tell you something different about my character than if I was reading Wharton or Akhmatova? Are you analysing me by what I read?’

‘No, of course not.’ Feeling embarrassed, Andrei tried a different tack. ‘What’s Edith Wharton like?’

‘Just like our own barons and princelings here. Our secret world is just like hers but with one crucial difference – it’s Edith Wharton with the death penalty.’ She smiled at him, and he felt the rays of the evening sun were shining right on to him. He noticed she had one very pointed tooth to the right of her front teeth.

Then he glanced around, concerned; no one had overheard her. Things were different for people like Serafima, he told himself. She could say what she liked.

‘I’ve got to go.’ She replaced the books and headed for the stairs. ‘By the way, why are you following me?’

‘I wasn’t… I happened to be looking for the same books.’ Andrei knew that he needed to be a better liar to survive in this milieu. ‘I’d heard about the House of Books but I hadn’t had time to pop in until today…’

Serafima looked back at him. They were now on the street outside, and he was about to be dismissed.

‘I’m on my way to the Bolshoi to see Prokofiev’s new ballet…’ she began, but her words were lost in the skid of tyres.

An open-topped Packard had performed a U-turn on Gorky Street and swung towards them so recklessly that its wheels ground against the pavement.

Andrei pulled Serafima out of peril’s way, conscious of the perfume on her neck.

‘God, he almost hit us. What an idiot!’ he exclaimed.

‘Hey, Serafima!’ called the driver. He had a cigarette between his teeth, and was wearing an air force colonel’s shoulderboards. ‘I’ve been meaning to come round ever since I saw you outside school. I was going to surprise you and pick you up at the gates. Wouldn’t that be good for your standing? My sister and I were at School 801, you know. How’s that lesbic witch of a director and that preening motherfucker Rimm?’

‘Still haunting us,’ Serafima said coldly.

Andrei sensed her distrust, her unease.

‘I was just going to grab a drink at the Cocktail Hall. Hop in, darling.’

‘Thank you, but I can’t right now. I’ve got homework.’

‘Your mother won’t mind, I can tell you. She thinks I am a good thing. I love her movies. Come on!’

A diminutive man got out of the car, wearing skin-tight britches, shiny boots, an array of medals. His dark brown hair was brushed back in a wave. He kissed her hand, old-style. ‘Are you going to make me – me of all people – beg?’

Serafima glanced at Andrei. ‘I’m with my best friend, Andrei. He comes too.’

‘Sure,’ said the man. ‘I get it. Best friend comes too! Get in, Andrei.’

He held open the back door and Serafima stepped inside. As Andrei got in beside her, the man ground the car into gear, backed it into the middle of Gorky, and accelerated into the path of a Studebaker truck that swerved to avoid them. A couple of militiamen watched, but did nothing to stop him.

‘Do you know who he is?’ whispered Serafima. ‘He’s Stalin’s son, Vasily. Be careful, OK?’

After a couple of minutes, Vasily swung the car to the right, stopped, and ran round to help Serafima out. They were in a cul-de-sac. In front of them was a plain wooden door guarded by a muscle-bound Uzbek in a crimson blouse.

‘You’re not going in, you hayseed,’ he was telling a cavalry lieutenant with his girl. The queue of people snaked around the corner. When he saw Vasily, he changed his tune: ‘Good afternoon, Colonel!’ he said, shoving the others out of the way and opening the door with a bow. ‘Welcome to the Cocktail Hall. Go right in!’

Vasily and Serafima swept in, but Andrei hesitated.

‘Not you, schoolboy. Scat!’

‘But I’m with them! Serafima!’ Andrei called out, hating the whine of his own desperation. Vasily Stalin raised a hand without even turning.

‘Your lucky day!’ The Uzbek opened the door, and Andrei caught up with Serafima in a crowded rabbit warren of booths and alcoves, all richly upholstered with scarlet silk and pine panelling.

Vasily knew everyone. He kissed the raddled hag at the cloakroom, and the moment he entered the little bar, he began holding court like a chieftain. He was embraced by a drunk pilot, a fat general and two girls in tight cocktail dresses with décolletages. But he seemed happiest to meet a bald toad with a squint who wore three watches on his wrist.

‘Hail the King of Sturgeon!’ he shouted. ‘Send some steaks over to the dacha!’

Another man, dressed in a zoot suit like an American Negro in a jazz band, with two-tone shoes, approached him.