Charlotte Hobson: The Vanishing Futurist

Sister Serafima watched. ‘In this hut they are on the whole peaceable. In the neighbouring hut we keep the difficult ones. You heard them earlier.’

‘How did this man get so bruised, then?’ I asked.

‘Sometimes there are problems in this hut too. Have you seen everything you wanted?’

‘No – no. We were looking for a scientific establishment, a workshop,’ burst out Pasha in fury.

‘What?’

‘Lab 37. We believe that a certain prisoner was brought here – Nikita Slavkin was his name.’

For the first time Sister Serafima’s expressionless mask slipped. ‘Slavkin?’ she repeated.

‘Yes. We believe he was brought to Laboratory 37 in January of this year, from the Lubyanka. Do you know anything about this?’

She turned to the young soldier. ‘You may leave us now, Kurotov. I think I hear your comrades returning. You’d better let them in.’

When he’d gone she turned back to us and her face was suddenly animated. ‘Now – you answer some questions for me. You’re not Chekists, for a start. The Cheka visited me last week, a very different kettle of fish. What do you know about Lab 37, or Slavkin? Tell me the truth or Kurotov’s comrades will get their hands on you, and they are not as meek as he is, I’ll tell you that.’

The inmates seemed to pick up on her tone and they began to talk excitedly, gathering around us. A woman touched my arm and someone pressed themselves against my back. I took a deep breath and spoke.

‘Sister Serafima, we are not from the Cheka, you are right. Please understand. We are friends of Slavkin’s. We have been hunting for him all over Moscow since he disappeared in January. We were told he was working in a laboratory here, in the Church of the Ascension.’

Sister Serafima looked at us and I was amazed to see tears in her eyes. She turned swiftly to the people around us. ‘Go to your places!’ she barked. They fell back. ‘They don’t understand, they could hurt you without realising. So… you are Slavkin’s friends. The IRT, wasn’t it?’

I nodded. ‘He told you?’

‘Yes.’

Her charges had taken up their places on wooden bunks around the walls, four or five to each bunk. Those that did not fit sat on the earthen floor. They were silent and watchful. I gazed at them, trying to take this in. ‘So is this where they brought Slavkin after the Lubyanka?’

She nodded.

The baby suddenly began to twist violently inside me, the nausea in me was so strong I felt myself stumble. Pasha caught my arm and held me. I saw he was crying. ‘But’ – it came out in a wail – ‘ why? ’

Sister Serafima took a deep breath. ‘When he came here, he was… I thought he might not survive the night. As they dragged him out of the van he was having a fit. He lay frothing at the mouth and convulsing for almost half an hour. He didn’t speak for days.’ She put her hands on my shoulders. ‘I fed him like a baby, spoon by spoon. Those brutes at the church there, they make sport of my poor charges. Oh my God, the suffering! But I didn’t let them near Slavkin. He was so weak…

‘Come with me, I’ll show you. This is the room I kept him in’ – a bare little cell with a tiny window – ‘not comfortable, but clean. And safe. After a week I was washing him and he suddenly looked at me and smiled. “Dear one,” he said, “how tired you look.” I couldn’t believe my ears. His eyes were clear, his speech was a little blurred because he’d bitten his tongue so badly in the fits, but it was calm, reasonable. He had forgotten a great deal, but slowly he began to remember, and to tell me, little by little.’

‘Did he tell you about his machine?’

‘More than that, he began to build it again. As soon as he could get about, he went out by day and gathered materials – bits of scrap metal, this and that. I thought at first he was still crazed, but then I saw him at work, shaping, hammering. He took a broken engine from one of the Army trucks here and fixed it – even those brutes of soldiers were impressed then. I found tools for him in one of the old stores. What he needed was a furnace, but that was impossible. “It doesn’t matter,” he kept saying. “Victory will be ours.” He worked constantly, eighteen hours a day – I couldn’t stop him. He said, “Thank goodness they arrested me. I had no idea before how much there is to do.” He talked to my poor patients. He explained to them about the machine that he was building, and how it would transport us all far away from today into another world, where Communism is possible.

‘I have lived all my life as a nun, but God forgive me, I believe that Communism will come one day… and I believed him that his machine could make it possible. Why not? Why not? God will not stand by and watch us all suffer for ever…

‘But I worried that he was exhausting himself. I was dreading another attack. Sometimes his mind would wander, and he’d start talking gibberish. All of us are starving, every one of us, but he was so thin – his wrists, his shoulders – and yet he burned with energy. I don’t know. He seemed to have some kind of superhuman strength, just for those weeks. I used to look at his bony back, the shoulderblades that stuck right out through his shirt like wings, and I used to think…’ She looked away. ‘Never mind what I thought.

‘He told me about the IRT, about all of you. He was terrified that you had been arrested. He hunted the streets for the papers to check for your names on the lists. He felt that if he made contact with you it would endanger you. They arrested him on charges of plotting counter-Revolution, but he must have had his first fit almost as soon as they took him in, because he couldn’t remember anything about the prison at all. So presumably they dropped the case. Once he went to watch you – to spy on the building from some doorway or other. He came back so sad. I think he was hoping to see someone – perhaps someone who wasn’t there?’

‘Sonya.’ My voice came out strangely. ‘He was hoping to see Sonya. But she died of typhus the week after he was arrested.’

‘Sonya. Yes, he did mention that name when he was ill.’

‘But where is he now, Sister? Our… our informer said he didn’t know.’

‘He was telling the truth. We don’t know.’

‘ What? ’

‘I don’t know where he is. At the end of March I had to make a trip out to the countryside to try to collect food for my patients. We are starving here, I’ve already said. What food I grew last summer ran out and we receive only third-class rations. I left my patients here in Slavkin’s charge; he was not entirely well, I knew, but still – he was the only person I could trust.

‘I came back… Oh, forgive me. I came back and that Red Army filth had wreaked havoc. They claimed there was trouble and they had to come in to sort it out. I’m willing to bet that any trouble before they arrived was nothing to what they left behind. And Slavkin had gone. He and his machine – disappeared.’

‘And… and you don’t know where he went?’ I said stupidly.

Without a word, Sister Serafima led us out of the cell and through a dank corridor. At the end was a heavy door with two bolts. ‘Be very calm and quiet,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘These patients are anxious about people they don’t know.’

The sign on the door read ‘Laboratory No. 37’.

‘Good morning,’ said Serafima politely as she swung open the door. ‘I hope we are not disturbing you.’

We stepped inside another long, dark hut. There were many fewer people in here – perhaps a couple of dozen – each sitting on their own, bare pallet. At first the greater order and space seemed to contrast favourably with Lab 36. Then I realised that they were manacled. Many lay motionless, as if barely alive. One man was curled up in the corner, groaning. One, who looked young and strong, was straining at the end of his chain, tugging on it and grunting.