Authors: Paul Dowswell
When the announcement ended, Misha and Valya walked up Gorky Street to the Military Recruitment Office to find there was already a vast queue.
‘I’ll come back tomorrow,’ Valya decided instantly.
Instead they wandered on through the streets.
‘Valya, I think you are wrong about the Germans getting here in a few weeks. Did you see the people? They looked anxious, of course – who wouldn’t? – but they looked like they were going to fight with everything they’ve got. They looked like they were willing to fight to the death. If I was a German in Moscow, one of the diplomats, there must be some of them left, I’d be terrified. I’d be thinking, “What have we stirred up?”’
Valya looked unconvinced. ‘Maybe, Misha, maybe. But you can’t stop a tank with stubborn courage. You need something more than that.’
They listened to the conversations in the street but most people seemed to know very little – ‘Our army will destroy them. The war will be over in a month.’ Or, ‘I have heard our soldiers have already seized Warsaw!’ So far they had heard nothing bad about the government – you wouldn’t expect that in a crowded street. When they rounded the corner of Tverskoy Boulevard and Ulitsa Gertsena, they saw a crowd gathering by the tobacconist’s. An old lady, dressed in a shabby coat and wearing a woollen headscarf despite the warm weather, was haranguing a group of passers-by.
‘This is God’s punishment on us all,’ she shouted. ‘Famine, forced labour, mass murder. God has turned his back on us. And so has Comrade Stalin. Why did he not give the speech? Why did he not speak to his people?’
One man was clenching his fists and looked white with anger. ‘How dare you talk like this when our Revolution is so threatened?’
Other people in the crowd were jostling her. ‘Get stuffed, you mad old cow,’ said one.
But worse was coming. Two Militia men were shoving through the far side of the crowd. Much to Misha’s surprise Valya immediately stepped forward and grabbed the old lady by the arm. ‘Come on,
Babushka
, you cannot say things like this to people. Let me take you home.’
The woman looked startled, then angry, but just at that moment she too saw the Militia men and flinched. Valya turned to face them and addressed the whole crowd. ‘Comrades, this misguided old lady is my grandmother. I have come out to look for her and take her home. Please ignore her ramblings. She has not been herself since her husband died.’
The mood of the crowd changed. ‘Keep her locked in, the mad old bat,’ said one young man. But he sounded indulgent rather than angry.
‘Come on,
Babushka
,’ said Valya, and tugged on her arm. The woman shrank, her anger gone, and she began to walk down Ulitsa Gertsena. Misha could barely stand to watch. The Militia men looked undecided. Was this mad old lady worth their time and trouble? They walked towards them and Misha’s heart sank. He wondered whether to intervene but knew this could easily make things worse.
Instead he tagged behind. One of the Militia men grabbed the woman roughly by the arm. ‘You, you old sow, what have you been saying?’
Valya turned and looked him straight in the eye. ‘Comrade, my grandmother is unwell. She has these episodes. I am taking her home.’
The other Militia man was right behind. Misha recognised him. He was one of the two who had spoken to them back in the spring when they had stopped to help the boy who been run over.
He spoke to the other man and then turned to Valya. ‘Very well, young lady, you may take her home. But keep a close eye on her. We will have to take her away if this happens again.’
When he was sure the Militia were out of sight, Misha caught up with them. ‘Valya, what on earth are you doing?’
The old lady turned on him at once. ‘Aren’t you a gallant young man?’ she snapped. ‘Fortunately you have a very brave girlfriend.’
‘No,
Babushka
,’ said Valya. ‘He was right to stay out of this.’ She was looking flustered and her hand trembled a little. ‘Do you remember the tall one, Misha? He stopped us when we helped that boy.’
She turned to the old lady. ‘Where do you live?’ she asked.
The woman looked fearful. ‘Are you NKVD?’ she asked.
‘
Babushka
, do we look like NKVD?’ said Valya.
The old woman shook her head.
‘It’s not this way,’ she said. ‘Strastnoy Boulevard.’
‘
Babushka
, forgive me, but you should keep your opinions to yourself,’ said Valya. ‘Especially at a time like this.’
The old lady looked dejected. ‘I feel so angry, and sometimes I just snap and it pours out. I know it’s stupid but I can’t help it.’
They walked on in silence, and when they reached Strastnoy Boulevard she said, ‘Come up to my apartment. I want to thank you.’
Misha and Valya let their curiosity get the better of them. The old lady led them to a grand building overlooking a tree-lined square and they walked up a linoleum staircase to a small apartment facing out on to a dark courtyard. The old lady bustled around her kitchen, talking as she fetched cakes from a tin and prepared a pot of coffee.
‘My name is Antonina Ovechkin. You may call me Baba Nina.’
Misha didn’t quite know what to make of this. He called his own grandmother
Baba
– Nana – but it seemed a bit overfamiliar for someone they didn’t know.
Valya seemed comfortable with it. ‘Baba Nina, you put yourself in terrible danger there.’
‘Yes, but it’s over now. So don’t fuss about it,’ she said sharply. Then she softened. ‘I do have a terrible temper, I know. But I get so impatient with people. They just swallow everything they hear. They’re like sheep.’
Valya didn’t want to have a conversation like this with someone she barely knew so she changed the subject. ‘Do you live alone here?’
‘My husband was a colonel in the Red Army,’ she replied. ‘He gave his whole life to the Revolution. And now he’s disappeared. He was on Tukhachevsky’s staff. They all vanished. You saved me, just then. If they’d arrested me, they would have checked my file and that would have been it. If they didn’t kill me, they would have sent me to the camps and that would have done for me, just as surely.’
Baba Nina talked for an age about her grandson Tomil, who she saw only once a month because her son was so busy, and how good he was at walking, and how he had started to say his first few words.
But she asked them about themselves too, and what they were doing with their lives. When Valya told her she wanted to be a pilot, Nina said, ‘A fine ambition for a Soviet girl. But I wish they would make our planes safer to fly. D’you know half our pilots are killed in training?’
Valya was unperturbed. ‘I know how to fly already, Baba Nina. I learned with the Pioneers and the
Komsomol
.’
As they were leaving, she grabbed Valya’s arm and said, ‘I might be old and a bit cranky, but I still have friends. You are one of my friends now.’
By the time they walked out into the street, it was mid-afternoon and the overcast sky had cleared a little. It was trying to be a pleasant summer day. ‘Old people like to talk, don’t they?’ said Valya. ‘I imagine she spends a lot of time on her own. You can tell she used to be important though, don’t you think? She has something about her.’
As they walked back to the Kremlin, they passed long queues outside every shop that sold food.
After a while, Misha said, ‘That was a brave thing you did, Valya. You could have been arrested.’
‘I wasn’t going to let those Militia men beat up an old lady in front of my eyes. Of course she was stupid to talk like that in front of everyone, but could you have walked away while those thugs laid into her?’
Misha didn’t like to admit it, but he could have done, quite easily. He didn’t say anything.
Valya leaned closer. ‘And I thought she made at least one good point. Why was Molotov making that speech? Comrade Stalin should have had the courage to speak to his people.’
Valya went to volunteer for partisan work the next day. Misha asked her to reconsider – she must know she would be murdered by the Nazis if she was caught. They took her name and details and told her to return home to await further orders.
Misha volunteered for air-raid duties and was given training in aircraft recognition. The German bombers looked far more sophisticated than anything the Soviets had.
Valya had been right about the bombers and Yegor Petrov had been wrong. There were air-raid drills in that first week but no bombers appeared in the sky over Moscow. The Nazis were still out of range. But Misha had an awful sinking feeling he would be seeing those angular, sinister-looking planes from the training manuals all too soon.
Misha barely saw his father in those first few days of war. Yegor Petrov came back in the middle of the night, and when he rose, usually around eight in the morning, he hurried immediately to his office in the Senate block without having breakfast.
It was almost a week after the invasion when Misha finally sat down with his papa to eat together. He looked haggard and Misha was pleased to be able to cook him a meal. ‘I cannot tell you how terrible these last few days have been. The
Vozhd
has been shouting and bullying everyone. Even that tough old bastard Zhukov burst into tears. The Hitlerites are five hundred kilometres into our territory – in less than a week. Minsk has gone, and Vilnius . . . Odessa is threatened. They expect Smolensk to fall within a week. And the worst of it is, he won’t let the soldiers retreat. We’ve lost
half a million men
in a week! And our so-called great air force . . . a
thousand
planes destroyed on the first day! On the first day . . .’
His voice petered out, lost in despair. Then he spoke again.
‘What will happen to Elena? If only I could have warned her.’
‘She might have got out, Papa. Maybe she’s on a train heading to Moscow with Andrey.’
‘Mikhail, I tell you now, I never liked that husband of hers. I sometimes wondered if he had anything to do with your mama’s disappearance.’
Misha felt queasy. He would never be able to look Andrey in the eye again.
Yegor waved his hand dismissively. ‘I don’t know. It’s just a feeling. A whisper to the NKVD about something she’d said, that was all it took a couple of years ago. I think Andrey would betray his own mother if he thought it would advance his career.
‘So I don’t really care what happens to him. But I am desperate to hear about Elena. Especially as I don’t think the lives of civilians are a concern to the
Vozhd
. All our efforts are concentrated on our military resistance.’
Life went on almost as normal for the first few days of the war. Misha met up with Nikolay, Yelena and other friends from school, often in Gorky Park or for strolls along the embankment next to the River Moskva. When the weather was good, they would go to the chess corner in the park and while away the afternoon playing on the chess sets that were set out there. They talked of friends and relations who had marched off to the distant front line and their hopes for a speedy victory. So far none of them had heard of anyone being killed. The papers gave no hint of the casualties in the areas where fighting was reported. There were air-raid drills almost daily in Moscow, but no bombers arrived.
Yelena had smiled a little bashfully when she saw him again. Misha felt guilty about not calling on her in the weeks since the dance, but his heart wasn’t in it and he didn’t want her to get the wrong idea.
Apart from the air-raid drills and training in the air defence squad there was not a great deal for Misha to do. They did manage a day trip to the Petrov
dacha
at the end of the first week of July, but even Nikolay failed to cheer them up when he revealed a bottle of vodka in his knapsack on the train down to Meshkovo. It seemed wrong to be enjoying themselves with such an impending catastrophe looming on the horizon.
They arrived just after midday and Misha gathered twigs to get a fire started in the kitchen stove, so they could boil water for coffee. Nikolay had not been before and he shamelessly nosed around the place. ‘Treasonous . . . formalistic . . . petit-bourgeois . . .’ he called out with mock disdain when he saw the Petrov children’s paintings and drawings on the living-room wall. ‘Unquestionably the work of wreckers and saboteurs.’
‘Leave him alone!’ laughed Yelena. ‘They are all exemplary displays of proletarian culture.’
Misha smiled to himself. She was joking too, he was sure.
Valya laid out a picnic of tomatoes, pickled cucumber, ham and black bread on a tablecloth on the patch of grass in front of the
dacha
.
Nikolay looked at the spread before them with barely concealed admiration. ‘What a wonderful feast!’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen ham in the shops for months.’
‘Papa rescued it from the office,’ Valya said with a wink. ‘It was going to be thrown away. And when she was alive Mama made enough pickled cucumber to last until the twenty-first century.’
As they sat in the dappled light of the forest, enjoying the warm summer afternoon, Misha sipped slowly at the shot of vodka Nikolay had poured for him. He resisted the urge to down it in one when Yelena called for a toast, ‘To our certain victory.’