Charlotte Hobson - The Vanishing Futurist

I took one of our last pots of jam with me when I next went to Pelyagin’s office. All the way I rehearsed my thanks. ‘I think you mentioned a drive?’ I saw myself murmuring. It was a windy, dreary day with sleet in the air, and I thought of Pelyagin’s warm office as I walked, swinging my arms to ease a persistent ache in my stomach.

But when I reached the National, Rosa Gershtein was alone. ‘He told me to say that he will not be having any more lessons,’ she murmured.

‘No? Did he say why?’

‘He said it was no longer the best use of his time.’

‘I brought him this, to thank him for helping us,’ I said, leaving the jam on her desk. ‘But did he… is he offended with me, do you think? Did he seem angry? Why does he suddenly not want lessons?’

‘I don’t know.’

I peered at her, trying to interpret her expression. ‘When did he start working for the Cheka?’

‘He always did. But he was only recently given this public job.’

‘I liked him…’

‘Yes…’ She looked at me. ‘I think he felt the same.’

In the half-dark yard back at Gagarinsky Lane stood a silent crowd. Inside, lights were moving about, muffled shouting and banging could just be heard. I found myself standing beside the metalworker from the Volga and his wife. The youngest children were hiding their heads under her skirt.

‘What is it?’ I whispered.

‘Red Guards – they say your lot have been up to something,’ he muttered out of the corner of his mouth. ‘I’d stay out of the way if I were you.’

The lights were moving about in Slavkin’s workshop; crashing metal, splintering glass. ‘Oh no…’

I pushed through the crowd and into the house. Prig was leaning against the doorway to the workshop and smoking a cigarette.

‘Ah, Comrade Freely,’ he said. ‘Your friends thought you had deserted them.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘A report came through that there were valuable materials in this workshop, materials that had been illegally requisitioned,’ said Prig. Behind him the Red Guards were methodically dismantling the room, throwing every book and file off the shelves onto the floor, kicking over his half-completed projects. The Socialisation Capsules were dented, wires wrenched out, batteries destroyed.

‘Where is Slavkin?’

He jerked his head towards the end of the room. ‘He’s not being very cooperative.’

I caught sight of Nikita slumped in a chair at the other end of the room. He was so still that I had not registered him at first. ‘Nikita,’ I hurried over. ‘Quick, you need to find the letter of permission from Lunacharsky.’ I began searching through the papers on the floor. ‘Where did you keep it?’

He gazed at me dully, slowly registering my presence; then a little light of venom crept into his eyes. ‘Oh, you’re back, are you? That letter’s gone, I can’t find it. They arrived just after you went out—’

‘Shh,’ said Sonya to him. She was on her hands and knees, picking up papers.

‘Where have you been? To see your special contact?’ said Slavkin and laughed mirthlessly. ‘Perfidious Albion.’

‘What can you mean ?’ The breath had been knocked out of me; my voice emerged as a croak.

Sonya stood up, swaying a little with exhaustion. ‘I’ve got it,’ she said. ‘The requisition order. It was in the wrong file.’ She stalked up to Prig and handed him the paper silently.

‘Hmm, yes. Very well,’ he said, stubbing out his cigarette on the floor. ‘ Rebyata! Boys! I think you can stop that now.’

‘What about the damage you have caused?’ demanded Sonya furiously. ‘You have set back our experiments by weeks.’

Prig raised his eyebrows. ‘Well, you’ll just have to work harder then, won’t you? Make up for all the time you spent lying on the divan in the old days, eh, mademoiselle?’

They left, and the other inhabitants filed back indoors to their rooms. One of the factory workers spat on the floor as he passed our door. ‘Scum,’ he said. ‘Sooner we put a full stop through you, the better.’

I went upstairs to the empty dormitory and lay down. My stomach was twisted up with cramp and I was shivering. I lay on my own as darkness fell and let the tears slide into my hair. After a while Pasha came to find me. ‘What times,’ he said softly, sitting by my bed. ‘Now Nikita is accusing Fyodor of betraying him to the Cheka.’

‘Really?’

Pasha nodded. ‘Yes, and Fyodor produced his time card and started proving how it would have been impossible for him to denounce Nikita and preserve his productivity level of 84 per cent.’

Despite myself, I laughed. ‘Pasha, you don’t think I would have done such a thing, do you?’

‘I think it would be constitutionally impossible for Miss Gerty to do anything of the sort. Now come on, come downstairs. Slavkin and Sonya are in the workshop. You must eat, and it’s too cold in this room.’

I sat up. ‘Was it just spite on Prig’s part?’

‘Maybe.’

Fyodor, Marina, Pasha and I ate potato soup and drank tea; slowly my stomach relaxed a little. After a while Volodya and Vera joined us. I marvelled at Vera, her prettiness, the delicate flush on her cheeks. Volodya puffed up his chest beside her and told tedious stories of the army.

‘I’ve been talking to the people at Narkompros about an event for Slavkin,’ mentioned Pasha after a while. ‘A bigger hall, we’re thinking of the Polytechnic. Mayakovsky has said he will introduce him. Nikita needs to put across his views more clearly, to get public opinion on his side.’

‘The Camel’s lost it, you know,’ Volodya said.

I was shocked. ‘Volodya, no… don’t lose faith in him.’

‘Shut up, Volodya,’ interrupted Pasha coldly. ‘Don’t dismiss what you don’t understand.’

‘I’ll speak if I want! Can you understand how that piece of trash is going to work? No! No one can! It’s madness…’

Vera was tugging on his arm. ‘Leave it, darling.’

‘We’re going, anyway,’ he said, standing up. ‘We’ve got ourselves registered to a place on Taganka. It’ll be a bloody sight more harmonious than this place, I can tell you. Commune? It’s a joke. You can’t even bear to all be in one room together. Fyodor mincing around with his timetables, Pasha flopping about like a degenerate, Gerty giving the lovebirds in there the evil eye…’

‘You’ve got yourselves re-registered?’ I repeated. ‘That doesn’t happen overnight.’

‘Yes, well, you are not the only one with special contacts, Gerty,’ said Vera with a triumphant look.

Volodya reappeared, carrying their bags. ‘Well, thanks for everything, lads.’

Insomnia was my companion yet again that night, as it has been so many nights since. Sometimes it feels as if I have lived a whole second life lying awake in the darkness, wondering if things could have turned out differently. Remembering, too, how just a few months before, Volodya had adored Nikita.

‘The Camel – well, he uses a lot of complicated language, but underneath all of that, he’s just like one of those calculating machines at the fairground. You feed in the question, whatever it might be, and out comes the answer…’ Volodya used to laugh, full of pride. ‘Come here!’ He’d grab Nikita and put his head in an armlock, wrestle with him until Nikita was pink and tousled as a little boy, laughing helplessly. ‘Ekh, Camel, you’re a freak, you are, but I love you.’

Slavkin woke the IRT, and most of the rest of the house, at half past four the next morning by banging the gong.

I ran, my heart pounding. ‘What is it, Nikita? What’s the matter?’