Authors: Paul Dowswell
He had to be especially careful not to let slip to his friends how much he knew, and he noticed how reticent Valya was too. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust them, but who could guarantee that one of them wouldn’t blurt out, ‘Misha told me . . . and his father works in the Kremlin?’ That would get back to the NKVD, he was sure. Then there would be a hammering on the door in the middle of the night. Both he and Papa would be taken away.
But listening to them talk as they ate he could tell his schoolmates had already mastered the art of decoding the news from Soviet State Radio. They had realised how rapidly the Nazis were advancing towards Moscow as the names of the cities where ‘Red Army soldiers heroically repulsed the invaders’ grew nearer.
A little over a week after the invasion, the great Belarus city of Minsk had fallen. Dvinsk and Riga had also been taken. There was fighting in or close to Kiev and Smolensk.
‘Just looking at the map you could tell they’d come three hundred kilometres in the first few days,’ said Nikolay.
Valya said, ‘If they keep going at that rate, they will be here within a month.’ Then she remembered. ‘Misha, isn’t your sister Elena living in Odessa?’
Misha nodded. ‘And Viktor is in Kiev. He must be in great danger too. We have heard nothing from either of them.’
Valya shivered, despite the warm summer sunshine. ‘It’s like one of those horror films from America, like
Frankenstein
or
Dracula
, where the villagers are waiting. Waiting for the monster to arrive and destroy them.’
‘I fear for you too, Valya, going off to join the partisans,’ said Nikolay.
‘I’m not sure I could volunteer for something like that,’ said Yelena.
The others all muttered their agreement.
Valya put her arm around Yelena and gave her a brief hug. ‘I’m still waiting for instructions. The sooner I go, the better. I need to do something to keep me busy.’ She laughed. ‘Better than just sitting around waiting for the worst!’
Misha could understand that. ‘I never thought I’d miss school,’ he said, ‘or think the holidays went on too long. All my workers’ classes have been cancelled too now we’re at war.’
Valya turned serious. ‘That’s why I want to join the partisans. I think if you go and do some training, then join a fighting unit, you can at least feel like you are making a difference.’
They left the
dacha
in the late afternoon and returned to Moscow. After they had said goodbye to the others at Bryansk Station, Misha and Valya walked back to the Kremlin in silence. When Misha got to his apartment, the door was unlocked, which meant Papa must be home. Something must have happened.
He was in the kitchen, pouring a glass of vodka. He turned and beamed, and sank his drink in a single gulp. ‘Misha! Great news! Elena has escaped from Odessa. I don’t know what has happened to Andrey, but she is heading east by train. There was a postcard waiting when I got back from work.’
‘Where is she going, Papa?’ asked Misha.
‘I don’t know. At least she is out of immediate danger for now.’
‘I wonder what will happen to Viktor?’ asked Misha.
‘I think Viktor will join the partisans. He used to tell me he thought the treaty with the Nazis would never last, and said that’s what he would do. I hope he gets away before the Nazis arrive. I have read reports saying they have been shooting Party members on sight. Right there on the roadside if they find them carrying their Party cards.’
Then he looked his son straight in the eye. ‘Misha, if the war continues like this, they’ll be here before the end of the summer.’
After that, Yegor disappeared for another week. Misha did not see a sign of him, not even around the Kremlin grounds, and after a few days he began to worry about what had happened. He went to the Golovkins’ apartment and asked Valya if she’d seen much of her father.
‘He’s been at work every day, sometimes only home for a few hours. I will ask him about your father,’ she said.
She came round a couple of hours later. ‘Misha, your papa is all right, I think. My papa says he is with Comrade Stalin in the
dacha
at Kuntsevo. The Kremlin staff haven’t been able to speak to the
Vozhd
for several days. He isn’t taking calls and your papa is the one who has to tell everyone this.’
She stayed for a coffee.
‘Have you heard more about your enlistment?’ asked Misha.
Valya looked irritated and Misha wondered if he should not have asked.
‘They won’t have me. I got a letter this morning. I am to join the military air force and train to be a pilot.’
‘Why are you so glum, Valya? You love flying.’
‘I want to do something now, Misha. This waiting around while the Nazis are destroying our country . . . I can’t bear it. I’ll have to wait a few months before they decide on a posting, then there’ll be further training, then who knows? I’ll probably have to fly the mail around in Omsk or Novosibirsk. Or deliver fighters or bombers to the pilots who are actually going to fly them against the Hitlerites.’
‘You must be patient,’ said Misha.
She got up and cuffed him around the ear. ‘If that’s the best you can do, I’m going.’
‘Valya, I’m glad you’re not going to fight with the partisans. I don’t think I’d ever see you again if you did that.’
She looked at him.
‘Little Misha. There are a lot of people neither of us is going to see again by the time this is over.’
Misha spent his evenings at his air-raid post on top of the Hotel Metropole. He was on a rota with other Young Pioneers and
Komsomol
recruits and sometimes he worked all night. When this happened, he was grateful there was no school; he would sleep until two or three in the afternoon. Then one day, just after an evening duty, he heard the door. Papa had come home.
Yegor looked grey with exhaustion but he managed a smile. ‘Come and sit with me. I will tell you good news.’
Misha eagerly sat down at the dining table. ‘The
Vozhd
is back,’ said Yegor. ‘I have been with him for a week at Kuntsevo. He seemed to be in a stupor. I was told to tell everyone who rang that he was unavailable. No phone calls, no visitors. I’ve had half the Politburo screaming at me. And half the Red Army generals. I was in despair. This is no way to run a country at war. Yesterday Mikoyan, Beria, Molotov, they all came down. I could tell Comrade Stalin thought they were going to have him arrested, but they begged him to come back. I was there, standing in the corner, wishing I was invisible. But he’s back now. Things are going to change. I think everything is going to be all right.’
Late July 1941
Posters of a severe young woman in a red headscarf, index finger to her stern, tight lips, had appeared all over Moscow.
Don’t chatter
, it said in large angry letters, and
Be alert. In days like these, the walls have ears. It’s a small step from gossip to treason.
Misha squirmed whenever he saw that poster. He and Valya gossiped all the time, and his papa often told him things he knew he shouldn’t be hearing. But how else were you supposed to find out what was really going on?
It seemed strange carrying on with normal life when terrible things were happening. Misha kept thinking of those thousands of planes, destroyed on the runways before they’d even taken to the sky. Like squashed flies on a windscreen. How could their forces have been so unprepared? How could they possibly drive away the Hitlerites when so much had already been destroyed? Papa had said little about the course of the war recently, and had swiftly scolded Misha when he’d asked. Perhaps Yegor felt he had said too much all ready? So Misha just did what everyone else did – listened to the radio to hear where the Red Army was fighting its latest ‘heroic defensive actions’.
There was always school work to be done, even in the holidays, and Misha was determined to carry on with it. The German bombers had come a month after the war began, and air-raid sirens went off almost every night now, any time from dusk to dawn. It made everyone exhausted and bad-tempered from lack of sleep. It was even difficult to sleep during the day as the Kremlin grounds were full of carpenters putting up fake wooden buildings to try to disguise this most desirable of targets. When Misha wasn’t on duty with the air-defence cadres, he would see how much work he could get done before the sirens went and they had to hurry to the air-raid shelter.
As he tried to settle to his homework one evening, Misha heard a determined knock at the door. He thought it might be Valya but when he swung back the heavy wooden door the
Vozhd
’s daughter Svetlana was standing there. He had not seen her since the very first days of the war, and he had heard she had been sent away from Moscow, to protect her from the danger of bombing. Misha had met Svetlana several times before and had always been very wary of her. He’d heard the children of other Kremlin families whispering that she was a spoiled, capricious child.
‘You’re back,’ he blurted out. She looked different. A bit more grown-up now, more of a young woman. It was barely a couple of months since he had noticed her ‘housekeeper’ message to Stalin. He couldn’t imagine her writing like that any more. She looked distracted too. The usual glint of mischief had vanished from her eyes.
‘Comrade Petrov,’ she said in a quiet voice, ‘I have come to ask for your help.’
Misha was astonished. She had never addressed him in this way before. Or with such respect. ‘Call me Misha,’ he said. ‘Everyone else does. How can I help you?’
She lowered her head. ‘Please may I come in?’ she asked. This was unprecedented. When she had seen him before, she had burst in through the door demanding his assistance.
‘Of course, come and sit at the table. Shall I make you a cup of tea?’
She sat down and placed her heavy bag on the table. Misha called out to his father. ‘Svetlana is here to pay us a visit.’
Yegor came in and immediately began to make a fuss of her. She explained that she had returned from Sochi, on the Black Sea, to spend a few days in Moscow before they decided where to send her next. ‘I want to be here with Papa, and to share the danger,’ she said. Misha felt a sudden flash of admiration for her, something he had never felt before.
‘And what can we do for you?’ said Yegor, who had taken over the preparation of the tea.
‘It’s Mikhail I’ve come to see,’ she said. ‘Misha’s fame as a Shakespearian tutor continues to grow. I have an essay to write for my literature teacher. He wants to know what I think about
Antony and Cleopatra
. I have to explain the meaning of a speech.’
‘I shall leave you two to get on then,’ said Yegor, as he poured three cups of strong brown tea. He brought two cups over, then disappeared back to his study.
Svetlana smiled and fished a book out of her bag. ‘It’s the speech about the evening, the night sky. I’ve got to explain it in ordinary terms.’
Misha loved that speech. He wished he could read it in English but he barely spoke a word – just a couple of phrases: ‘How are you?’ and ‘Thank you’.
‘Aren’t you learning English?’ he asked Svetlana. She nodded but seemed distracted. ‘If I help you, will you do me a favour too? If you can find the English edition, will you read it out to me, so I can hear how he meant it to sound?’
Misha could tell by the way her eyes darted around that she was taken aback by this request. Clearly Svetlana was not used to trading favours. But she managed a smile. They talked about the piece, how a ‘promontory’ was a mass of higher land or land jutting out into the sea, and how ‘black vesper’s pageants’ meant the beautiful sights and sounds of evening. Misha thought, as he explained, how well his own teacher had taught him. But he also noticed how little attention Svetlana seemed to be paying to what he said. She was there but her mind was somewhere else.
‘You look worried,’ he said carefully. ‘I hope everything is all right.’
She looked around, wanting to make sure she was alone in the room. ‘Comrade Mikhail,’ she whispered. ‘We have known each other for some years. Our papas are old friends. I must talk with someone I can trust. Can I trust you?’
Misha nodded and wondered what on earth was coming next.
She fished around in her leather satchel, and pulled out a magazine. Misha had never seen it before and the typeface was completely indecipherable to him. He recognised the squiggles – they were the Western-style alphabet – ‘Roman’ it was called – but he understood it about as much as he understood Egyptian hieroglyphics.
‘Are you allowed such things?’ he blurted out. Misha knew anything at all from the West was regarded with deep suspicion by the Soviet government.
‘Of course I am,’ she said indignantly, barely keeping her temper. ‘I am studying English. Papa asks me to talk to visitors from England when they come here. But look at this I read today.’ She turned to a page where Nadya Stalin, holding Svetlana as a toddler, peered out at the reader from a black-and-white photograph. Misha could see a likeness with her mother, especially now Svetlana was growing older. Svetlana looked very cross in that photograph, although Misha thought it best not to mention this.