Simon Montefiore - One Night in Winter

‘But Serafima was always on her own.’

‘Did anyone pay her special attention?’

Senka hesitated. He sensed danger, knew somehow that his words could hurt people. But where could the danger lie here? Was it a crime for a boy to admire a girl? He wasn’t at all sure.

‘All boys liked Serafima,’ he said. ‘Me most of all.’

The Lobster was writing on a piece of paper. Now he pushed it across the table. ‘Do you confess to stealing this evidence of conspiracy from the crime scene?’

‘I don’t understand,’ Senka said.

‘You can’t deny you took the notebook and hid it. Your brother Demian found it.’

‘Oh!’ Not only had Demian found the notebook, but he’d also given it to the secret police. That’s why he was free. And he was jealous of Senka and obsessed with rising up the Pioneers and Komsomol and becoming as important as their father. Demian was a snitch and a weasel.

‘If you ever want to see your mother again, sign this now,’ the Lobster said, pushing it to Senka, who signed it quickly.

‘If you were twelve, this piece of paper could sentence you to the Highest Measure of Punishment: death by shooting to the back of the head. But as you’re only ten, you face ten years in the camps under Article 158,’ the Lobster said.

Senka’s head spun and he held on to the edge of the table.

‘But if you help us about Serafima…’

‘Minka said she had… admirers… suitors… chevaliers.’

‘Name them now before I punch you.’

Senka loved Serafima and would do anything rather than get her into trouble but how would this harm her? How would it harm anyone? Beware the mines! He racked his brains for something about Serafima’s admirers. Hadn’t he heard Minka and Serafima laughing about the Crown Prince? They thought he didn’t understand this code name – how stupid did they think he was? But he knew not to mention Vasily Stalin. Anything to do with Stalin was perilous. He had to find something that wasn’t dangerous but it was hard because Senka did not know what the Lobster wanted. The mines were invisible. Senka’s stomach started to churn and his breathing became laboured again.

‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ he said.

The Lobster stood up, his chair grinding against the floor, and he started to count: ‘At three, I’ll beat the answers out of you.’ He pulled out a thick rubber bullystick, and banged it on to the table. ‘I’ve smashed in a man’s skull with this little friend,’ and Senka could see that the club rested happily in the Lobster’s claws as if he was accustomed to using it. ‘One, two…’

‘Well, yes, yes, there was a time…’ Don’t get Serafima into trouble, Senka told himself. Don’t mention Vasily Stalin. Don’t involve Mama or Papa. Don’t harm Minka. There was so much to consider. He ran through the possibilities: this is nothing, that’s secret; this won’t satisfy him, that’s dangerous. His mind was overheating with responsibilities, ambuscades, minefields, unspeakables, unmentionables, all of which were balanced against his own confession of taking the notebook and the ten years awaiting him in the Gulags: the train journeys, the snowy tundra, the threat of never seeing his parents again.

‘There was one time…’

‘When?’ The Lobster put down the club and took up a pen.

‘It was a few weeks ago… Minka and I were walking on Gorky Street and… and…’

The truncheon came down hard on Senka’s hand. It hurt desperately and he started to cry, holding his wounded right hand in his left. The tears blurred his eyes until he couldn’t see. ‘I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you!’

But he still hadn’t decided what to tell.

‘Please don’t hurt me again. I want to see my mama… Once Minka and I were walking down Gorky and we saw Serafima and…’ He tried to remember and then he had it. Yes, this was perfect – and it hurt nobody he loved. ‘Behind her, a hundred metres behind her, we saw him following her.’

The relief was intoxicating as Senka settled down and began to tell his story.

KAPITOLINA MEDVEDEVA WAS in her office waiting for Innokenty Rimm to speak. In the last few days, that witch-hunting hypocrite had pranced the corridors like a broad-hipped conquistador. Something – nothing good – had happened to give him this spurt of confidence. What was it? Kapitolina Medvedeva had studied Dr Rimm as a zoologist does a rare and poisonous spider. His bluster had to be connected to the Children’s Case, she knew this.

Director Medvedeva was a strict disciplinarian, a Party member of many years, but what she really cared about was teaching and the children. This case had ruined her term – and she knew it could ruin her life too.

At night, she couldn’t sleep. By day, she sat at her desk but she couldn’t work. The parents (had Comrade Satinov ever visited the school gates so often?) brought the children; the children attended lessons, which the teachers taught, but all were pretending. They weren’t really there. They were in the dungeons of Lubianka. If she was lucky, the children would be released quickly and the case would blow over, but she knew such crises were often exploited by busybodies with axes to grind, overweening Party-minded pedants like Rimm who could turn harmless scandals into tragedies. I must be strong, she resolved, I must be like steel. Tverdost – hardness – is a Bolshevik virtue.

Rimm hadn’t knocked; he had just barged in. Now she was scrutinizing his nose – it was like a duck’s beak – and his hair the colour of rusty wire.

‘I wish to call an extraordinary meeting of the School Party Committee,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘To examine if any mistakes have been made in your leadership of the school.’

Kapitolina sat back in her chair. I’m in charge here, she thought. Not him. Not the Hummer. ‘I veto that idea, Dr Rimm.’

‘You cannot do so, comrade director. I am its secretary.’

‘There are three members of the committee and I have already spoken to Comrade Noodelman, and he is against.’

Director Medvedeva could see that Rimm was prepared for this. ‘You may remember that the rules allow for me to convene an extraordinary meeting of the School Party Committee with the attendance of all school staff to read Party announcements. Such as this one on mathematics teaching textbooks from the Central Committee Education Sector.’

He raised his eyebrows, and Director Medvedeva could see the gleam of victory in those watery red-rimmed eyes. ‘I shall see you there, shall I?’

The common room was full for Dr Rimm’s special meeting of the School’s Party Committee. The teachers were pale, tense, worried – and Director Medvedeva remembered the tragic meetings during the late thirties when two teachers had disappeared off the face of the earth and they had voted unanimously that ‘Enemies of the People should be shot like hyenas’.

Now only one teacher, Benya Golden, was relaxed enough to recline on one of the sofas with his legs crossed and a world-weary grin on his face.

She opened the meeting but Rimm immediately interrupted her. As secretary, it was his meeting and he moved fast to pass a series of resolutions – that the committee should examine whether the Children’s Case exposed any mistakes by the director of the school; that during this process, he, Dr Rimm, should take over the school…

Silence greeted these proposals.

‘Is this a coup d’état, Dr Rimm?’ said Benya Golden at last. ‘Do you wish to be the Napoleon of School 801?’ There was quiet laughter from somewhere, and then silence.

‘I’m surprised you joke! Your bourgeois and un-Party-minded teaching, particularly in your Pushkin lessons, has played a role in this tragic case, Teacher Golden.’