Simon Montefiore - One Night in Winter

‘Tell me,’ he coaxed.

‘I’ve never heard of NV. But can I suggest something it might be? Could “NV” stand for “New Leader”? NV. Novi Vozhd. Someone that none us knew about?’

‘Go on?’

‘Perhaps it was Nikolasha’s candidate for a new Romantics’ leader?’ proposed Minka.

‘So you’re confirming that this was a conspiracy? For there can only be one Leader, the Father of Peoples, the Head of the Soviet Government.’

‘Well, no, I was just suggesting something…’

‘There are no suggestions here, girl. There is just evidence. We will find the so-called New Leader of this conspiracy.’

‘I was guessing,’ Minka said, beginning to feel unsure of herself again.

‘Are you telling me lies? Are you wearing a mask?’

‘No, of course not… I’d never lie to you.’

‘Good, then explain this. Here in the notebook, Nikolasha writes this: Serafima and NV. NV and Serafima. Meeting to approve the Romantic government. What was Serafima’s relationship with Nikolasha?’

‘There was no relationship. She didn’t even like him.’

‘So if Serafima Romashkina was not having a relationship with Nikolasha, who was she with?’ Komarov settled back in his chair. ‘She was with NV , wasn’t she? NV is Serafima’s lover.’

‘No! She had no lover. I’m her best friend and I’d know if she did.’

Komarov opened his arms wide and stretched, like a diver leaping into a pool, and then he ran his hand through the fluffy hair that seemed alien to his uniform, his job, his lifeless eyes. ‘We’re going to have to start again. Tell me about Serafima and her relationship with NV . ’

Minka felt the sweat start to shimmer through her skin; her jaw clenched, her shoulders tensed. She had meant to protect Senka, and Serafima. Now she realized that the sight of her little brother had distorted everything. To save him, she had made a terrible mistake and had placed Serafima at the centre of a conspiracy that had never even existed.

Too late, she saw that in this world, every breath had consequences.

‘I’LL BE HONEST, Madame Zeitlin, I’m a fan. So I had to come myself,’ said Victor Abakumov in his deep baritone. ‘I’m a movie buff. I watch everything. Of course I have some of Goebbels’s movies from Berlin. I have a movie director’s eye. But you in that movie Katyusha. I’d call it a masterpiece. Your husband’s script contributed to its success but your performance…’

It was early morning, and Serafima could hear Abakumov talking as she quickly packed a little bag under the eyes of the two uniformed Chekists who had already searched her bedroom and taken away books and letters.

‘Well, Comrade Abakumov, you are very kind but I wish we had met under other circumstances,’ her mother was saying. Her actress’s voice lacked its usual vigour but Serafima was grateful her mother was not howling in hysterics. She too hoped that if Sophia was civil to the Chekists, it would somehow help her.

‘Is that a poster from the movie I see over there?’

‘Yes, it is.’ A silence. ‘Would you like it?’

‘I would and I’d like it signed: “To Victor, with love”. Yes, that’ll impress my friends.’

‘You flatter me, comrade general.’

‘I’d like to discuss the art of movies with you.’

‘I’d like that too – but couldn’t you question Serafima here? Do you really need to take her in?’

‘Perhaps we could meet some time later. Just you and I—’

The Chekist’s trying to seduce my mother, thought Serafima, but didn’t every marshal or apparatchik flirt with her, regardless of the feelings of her long-suffering papa?

Serafima felt the joints of her body prickling like pins and needles: it is fear, she told herself. Two of your friends have died; the incident has to be investigated; that’s why your other friends are in prison. There is nothing to fear! Yet when the Organs investigate, they always find something more, and that is what I must hide at all costs.

Still wearing her school uniform, Serafima had finished packing her bag. Toothbrush. A sweater. Pyjamas. A couple of books: Hemingway and Pushkin.

‘Are you ready?’ said one of the Chekists.

Serafima nodded. She wanted the packing to go on forever. She wished Abakumov would keep talking to her mother eternally. She sat down on her bed again. Her legs were weak. She put her face in her hands and started to cry, and the next thing she knew, her mother was with her, and had taken her in her arms.

‘There, there, Serafima, you’ll be back soon, just answer their questions… You’re not the only one, so don’t worry. Darling, I love you so much.’ But this only made the goodbye even worse. Her mother was trying not to cry herself but her voice petered out, and now Serafima was weeping so hard she couldn’t stand. She wished her papa was there too but he was away, covering the war against Japan. Yet there was something worse than that, far worse. She couldn’t say goodbye to the man she loved.

She had always known she might be arrested. She had felt the shadow over her ever since the day on the bridge because she realized (and she had always known) that Nikolasha’s ideas were tinged with madness. She saw clearly how the members of the Fatal Romantics’ Club were roped together: when one fell into the abyss, the rest would surely follow.

‘She’ll be back soon,’ said Abakumov jovially as if he was taking her on a camping expedition. ‘We’re talking to all the children and then we’ll release them soon enough. It’s just a formality.’ He filled the doorway like a slab of Soviet manhood. Wiping her eyes, Serafima looked up at his thick black slicked-back hair, his heavy eyebrows, his general’s uniform with its rows of medals and his sportsman’s barrel chest. Looking bored, he crossed his arms and leaned on the doorpost.

Finally she managed to stand up. If you love someone, she thought, you can endure anything. Slowly – unbearably slowly – her mother walked with her to the door, and gave her the overnight bag.

‘Time to go!’ Abakumov said breezily. ‘Madame Zeitlin, it’s been an honour,’ and he took Sophia’s hand and kissed it. ‘ Enchanté! ’

He mispronounced the French, but the humanity of the hand-kissing broke something within Serafima’s mother.

‘Please, comrade general, please… Do you have to take her? You don’t have to. She’s done nothing. She’s a child! Take me instead!’

The two Chekists flanking Serafima took her arms, and together they walked down the wide steps of the Granovsky building; then they stood back as Abakumov strode past them, his gold-braided hat on his head, his dark eyes straight ahead under the visor, and the movie poster under his arm.

‘Get in with me, Serafima,’ said Abakumov, gesturing at the open door of his car, a white Fiat sports car, once the toy of an Italian general. ‘Few girls resist a ride in this machine.’

The creamy leather creaked as he manoeuvred himself into the driver’s seat next to her. ‘I like to drive myself,’ he said, slipping on his driving gloves and gripping the beige calf’s leather of the wheel. ‘You’ll be more comfortable than in a ‘black crow’.’ He looked at her as she sat mutely in the passenger seat.

Throwing the gearstick into first, he accelerated out of the courtyard of Granovsky, followed in convoy by one of the secret police vans, known as ‘black crows’, and a little Zhiguli full of guards. As they sped through the streets, Abakumov saw that Serafima was still crying. Fuck it, why did I transport her in my car? he thought. Because of the mother, of course. Weeping girls were tough for a man to see, even for him, whose rise had been oiled with the blood of men, women and children, those he had beaten to pulp with his own fists, or despatched with his own sidearm – and those hundreds of thousands more he had never met but whose lives he had destroyed. He suppressed a spasm of anger at her tears: didn’t the little fool realize how kind he was being to her? She could have been in the cage in the back of a ‘black crow’.