Simon Montefiore - One Night in Winter

‘Don’t be silly, Mama. See you soon.’

But when he went downstairs, it wasn’t Losha at the wheel, but another driver entirely.

‘Hop in, boy,’ said the driver. ‘We’ll have you with your friends sooner than you think.’

‘But this isn’t the way to Granovsky Street,’ said Andrei, five minutes later, as the car swept into Dzerzhinsky Square where the buildings seemed like colossal granite tombs.

‘You’re not going to Granovsky Street,’ replied the driver.

Andrei closed his eyes for a moment and experienced the terrifying feeling of falling into an abyss without end.

‘You’re not surprised, are you, kid?’ asked the driver.

Andrei shook his head. He was not sure he could have spoken even if he had wanted to. He felt the joints in his arms and legs were made of jelly and his blood ice cold.

‘My…’ He could not say it.

‘Your mother? She’ll be fine. After all, she’s used to this, isn’t she?’

The Aragvi Restaurant that night. Maître d’ Longuinoz escorted Sophia Zeitlin and some of her friends from the Mosfilm Studios to her favourite table just below the band. He held her wrist a second longer than necessary: he knew something important.

‘Go right ahead to the table,’ she called to her friends. ‘Order me a cosmopolitan.’ As she lingered beside the maître d’, Longuinoz whispered: ‘More on holiday. Up the hill.’

‘Up the hill? How many? Who?’ she replied breathlessly, her mouth close to his ear with its pearl earring.

‘One Yak fighter plane. Second model. Check-up at the local doctors. Two o’clock appointment.’

Her heart raced: ‘Oh God,’ understanding his code instantly.

On holiday meant arrested. Up the hill was Lubianka Prison. Yaks were the brand of fighter plane built in Satinovgrad. Therefore ‘Yak’ was Satinov. ‘Second model’ meant second son – George. ‘Local doctors’ – Dr Dorova. ‘Two o’clock’: second child, i.e. Minka.

Sophia guessed that Longuinoz knew this because he performed discreet favours for the Chekist ‘responsible workers’, favours no doubt involving food, girls and information. He was safe provided the information only went one way.

Longuinoz raised two hands as if to say: Sorry, but it’s routine. As he showed her to the table, he whispered, ‘A bit of advice, Sophia. Pull your horns in, darling!’

That night, Sophia could not eat her food. Would this touch her Serafima? she thought. They say I’m Stalin’s top actress and he loves Constantin’s scripts. Or am I believing my own publicity? Comrade Satinov is Stalin’s favourite and that hasn’t protected George. Stalin demoted his son Vasily and disowned his other boy Yakov when he was captured by the Germans. The lesson? The shooting would be investigated, whoever was involved. And she could not help but remember those terrible years at the end of the 1930s when her beloved cousin Sashenka had vanished with her husband and children, vanished off the face of the earth.

She thought about her own life: her love affairs, her wartime movies, her hotbloodedness inherited from her incorrigible father, her addiction to those intrigues that made bearable the daily grind of the worthy institution that was marriage. But what if they arrested Serafima? Could she bear it?

THE SCHOOL RUN: eight fifteen the next morning. In the car park at Granovsky, Sophia Zeitlin got into the Rolls with Serafima.

‘Why do you have to come? I hate you coming.’ Serafima frowned at her mother. ‘It’s embarrassing enough to be in this car.’

‘I’m just doing my maternal duty,’ answered Sophia. She was dreading the scenes at the school gates. ‘Look! There’re the Satinovs.’

They watched Hercules and Tamara Satinov get into their car with Marlen and Mariko. Tamara looked terrible. She had black circles around her eyes, her skin seemed tight across her narrow cheekbones – and the poor woman now had to teach classes in which her own stepson’s chair was empty.

Serafima looked at her mother urgently. ‘Where’s George? Mama, you know something, don’t you?’

‘Good morning, Khirochenko,’ Sophia said loudly to their chauffeur. They drove on in silence.

At the Golden Gates, Sophia read the parents and the missing children in a glance. The other parents moved too quickly, too skittishly, looking around but afraid of what they might find. Whose child had vanished into the maw of the Organs? The small crowd outside the school gates, formerly so fashionable and sociable, seemed suddenly despondent and doom-laden.

She met Hercules Satinov on his way out, Tamara having taken the children in with her.

‘Hercules!’ said Sophia. ‘Aren’t we good parents dropping off our children so dutifully!’

‘Duty. My second name,’ replied Satinov.

The Titorenkos passed them, greeting Sophia and Satinov.

‘Yes, comrades, a beautiful day, isn’t it?’ Satinov responded.

Sophia tried to imagine how the Titorenkos must be feeling, and realized that their apparent warmth was a mixture of solidarity and relief. Now that the Satinovs and Dorovs were in the same boat, their Vlad was no longer alone.

Sophia stood in the queue to shake hands with Director Medvedeva. The Dorovs were just ahead – with Demian and little Senka but no Minka. Dashka wore no make-up and her black hair was pulled back in a bun but she still looked lovely in a loose flowery blouse, and she had the chutzpah to chatter frivolously as if nothing was wrong.

‘Doesn’t the banquet seem an age ago,’ said Sophia.

‘Several lifetimes,’ answered Dashka, bustling around her children. ‘Now, did I remember all those textbooks? Every day there’s more and more to remember! They want me to organize a charity quiz night. They seem to have forgotten that I have my own work to do. Oh, Demian, did I forget the maths homework? Right, off you go.’

Dashka usually just gave Demian a peck but today she hugged him.

‘Get off, Mama.’ The seventeen-year-old wriggled out of her arms. ‘You’re like a boa constrictor.’

‘Oh dear,’ sighed Dashka. ‘I got that wrong.’

‘You can kiss me as much as you like, Mama,’ said Senka. Being a little boy, and therefore in love with his mother, Senka gave himself to Dashka, closing his eyes with a beatific smile – until Genrikh poked his wife’s shoulder.

‘Don’t throttle the child,’ said Genrikh sharply. He was paler and more shrivelled than ever. ‘I’ve told you before. You indulge that boy too much. That’s not how we Bolsheviks do it.’

‘I can’t get anything right today.’ Dashka shrugged, smiling bravely.

At the front of the line, Director Medvedeva offered her hand. ‘Good morning, Comrade Dorov, Dr Dorova, I see not everyone’s in today. Summer colds are the worst, aren’t they, doctor?’

‘Let’s hope it doesn’t spread,’ agreed Dashka.

‘Oh Madame Zeitlin, good morning,’ Director Medvedeva greeted Sophia. ‘We do have a full turnout of parents today. It must be the sunshine.’

But Sophia was not listening. She was watching her daughter disappear down the school corridor.

Serafimochka is safe, she was thinking. So far.

In the interrogation room at Lubianka Prison, Kobylov leaned over the desk to smell Minka’s thick hair.

‘You even smell sweet. Like honey. What shampoo do you use? I want to tell my girls what to use. They could use a lesson from a little princess like you.’

Minka shrank from him, afraid of this bull of a man with his rings, and his cologne so strong that she could taste the cloves on her tongue.

She had no idea who else was in prison being interrogated.

At first, as she lay awake all night in the cell that stank of detergent and urine, she had worried about George: had he waited for her? Had he thought she had stood him up? But then she realized that her arrest had been planned. Either the Chekists had been listening to her parents’ phone or George had lured her out to be arrested. But surely he couldn’t have done that. Not George.