Simon Montefiore - One Night in Winter

They had been walking along Granovsky soon after Soviet troops had liberated Babi Yar where so many Jews had been murdered by the Nazis. Senka remembered how upset his mama had been by this. There had been no one else with them – except Demian. So now he knew that when Demian handed over the Velvet Book to the secret police, he had given them this deadly information too. Senka felt a trickle of fear run down his spine. Demian was a meanie, and Senka knew he was angry all the time because their mother loved Senka more than him. Well, Demian was an imbecile. These two stories could destroy both their parents.

‘I’m trying to think,’ he said softly.

‘Do you know how vast the Soviet Union is? Think of all its tanks, factories, steppes, guns, its people, the Party, the armies and the power of the Organs – and then think of you, Senka Dorov, aged ten. What chance do you have? We could crush you and nothing would be left of you. All we’re asking is that you recall two little comments by your parents. Not much to ask, is it?’

‘I am thinking but neither sound accurate.’

‘I could accept that your brother perhaps made up one of them,’ Komarov said reasonably. ‘But we think at least one of his stories must be true.’

‘One of them?’

‘Yes, one of them.’

One of the stories was against his father and one was against his mother. Senka knew that neither of them were ‘tiny things’. The first: criticism of Stalin himself. The other: Zionist anti-Soviet nationalism. Cut through the codes and put them in Party language and both could be presented as treason. Either could lead to instant arrest and perhaps execution. Yes, Mama, Papa: the nine grams.

Senka’s world started to spin. He breathed faster but couldn’t get enough air into his lungs. His tummy spasmed.

‘He can’t have made up both, can he?’ Komarov feigned a casual airiness – but then he chewed on the stump of his fourth finger and Senka realized this tic confirmed the question’s importance.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Senka. His asthma made his lungs feel shallow, and he began to strain for oxygen. He was nauseous; he needed sugar. He remembered the day he couldn’t jump over the horse in gym, and how his faked collapse had solved that crisis. He had to do something. How quickly this session had gone from banter to the scaffold.

‘Look, it’s simple. I’ve told you two stories, one of which must be true.’ Komarov reached out and traced Senka’s jawline again. ‘Choose one,’ he whispered.

Senka felt like a deer in a trap. If he confirmed either story, the Organs would have a case against one of his parents. His papa or mama would be taken away from him and possibly liquidated. Whichever way he took, he would destroy someone he loved. The more he pulled, the tighter the steel jaws would close on his legs. He wanted to offer himself instead of his parents but this wasn’t the choice he was being given, and he was feeling so sick that he was swaying in his chair. His mother or his father? Papa or Mama? And why was he being given this terrible choice?

‘You can’t turn down this small request from the Party,’ Komarov was saying. ‘Choose one or you’ll never get out of here.’

‘I feel so faint… I can’t breathe.’ And Senka slipped off his chair on to the floor as darkness closed over him.

VLAD TITORENKO MAY have been nearly eighteen but he was coping with his interrogations in Lubianka much less well than Senka. Whereas previously he had worshipped his friend Nikolasha Blagov, he now found himself looking up to his interrogators, especially Colonel Likhachev, whose visage of fury and violence he saw as the face of the Soviet State. He would, he thought, do anything for some sign of approval from Likhachev. Instead he had been beaten, but every time Likhachev hit him, Vlad hated Nikolasha a little more. That weird cretin, that traitor seemed to be mocking him from the grave with his ludicrous plans. Now he would be sent to Siberia, and disowned by his parents. Undernourished, sleep-deprived, he babbled about conspiracies, his hands fidgeting, legs jiggling, and he was so jumpy that he was startled by the least sudden movement. His condition even alarmed the warders, who put him on twenty-four-hour suicide watch.

Yes, Vlad said, Nikolasha, that snake, was planning a coup and using the Fatal Romantics’ Club as cover. He was an evil counter-revolutionary, a pervert who was in love with Serafima, and yes, sir, all his hyena-friends were in on the conspiracy. Who was the mysterious New Leader? Well, he wasn’t sure. The Chekists suggested names and he agreed. Director Medvedeva possibly, maybe Teacher Golden – or how about Marshal Shako? One time he had seen the Marshal pat Serafima on her behind at the Golden Gates. Yes, he could be the one. Or was it Dr Rimm? And so Vlad jabbered on, frantic to please the Organs. Yet nothing seemed to do so.

Until today, when he found the other interrogator, Colonel Komarov, reading the sports pages of the newspaper with his boots on the desk and a cigarette in his mouth. Vlad waited silently, standing at attention. Komarov looked up, waved him into the chair and without a word offered him a cigarette. When Komarov tried to light it for him, Vlad jumped back from his chair, expecting a punch. When he was coaxed back into his seat, his hands were shaking so much that Komarov had to light it for him and then hand it back across the table – as if he was an adult, even a friend.

‘You’ve been very honest with us, Vlad. You’ll be going home soon. To see your parents.’

‘Oh, thank you, colonel.’ Vlad’s eyes filled with tears.

‘We don’t have to talk about this bullshit any more. We can talk about anything. Sport. Or home. I’m bored of talking about school pranks.’ He paused. ‘Where will your parents be at the moment?’

‘I don’t know… They go to the dacha at weekends.’

‘Your father is a very capable man, isn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘What does he want you to do?’

‘He wants me to be an engineer like him. But I’m not doing very well at school. He’s disappointed in me.’

‘How can that be? I was just saying to Colonel Likhachev that you’ll make a perfect Soviet man. You can do anything you want, you’re a patriot.’

‘Me? Oh, thank you, colonel.’

‘So your father should appreciate you a little more. But perhaps he’s too busy with his top job.’

‘Yes, and my mother thinks he’ll soon be promoted.’

‘Really? And why hasn’t he been?’

‘Well, they think he should be. They think he’s been overlooked because everyone’s so busy.’

‘Who’s everyone?’

‘Well, the authorities.’

‘The Central Committee?’

‘Yes, Papa thinks they haven’t noticed him, or he’d have a bigger job by now. My father’s very clever and hard-working, you know, a good Communist.’

‘But he says the Central Committee is to blame? You’ve heard him say that?’

‘Yes, but only to my mother in their room when they’re talking at night.’

‘She’s proud of him?’

‘Of course. She says without his planes, we couldn’t have won the war.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘He agreed.’

‘Have you ever seen the factory at Satinovgrad?’

‘Yes, Papa once took us just before the war.’

‘Did you hear there were many planes that crashed?’

‘Yes, but those weren’t the fault of my father.’

‘How do you know?’

‘He was worried about them but he said the problem was that the designs couldn’t be changed.’

‘Why not?’

‘That wasn’t his job.’

‘He talked about it with you?’

‘Well, yes…’