Authors: Paul Dowswell
‘Comfortable?’ asked Papa. Misha nodded. He could imagine sleeping in a plush velvet seat like this. He hoped he would not have to give his place up for an old lady or a mother with a baby. That would mean three days standing up or sleeping on the floor.
Misha noticed how the carriage now smelled faintly of damp coats from the rain and thought it was funny how different these passengers were from the average bunch on a Moscow train or tram. On a night like this the smell of fusty damp clothing in an overcrowded tram would be almost unbearable.
The flow of passengers milling outside the window ceased. The platform was now deserted except for a handful of soldiers pacing up and down with their rifles. These did not have their bayonets attached, which was reassuring. Misha could see his papa getting more fidgety by the minute. Whistles blew, there were shouts, but it was always other trains that left the station rather than theirs.
‘We must hope there are no air raids tonight,’ said Yegor, and Misha remembered again his story about being caught on a train by fighter aircraft during the Civil War.
‘We must guard against defeatist talk, comrade,’ said one of the men sitting opposite.
As if to taunt his papa, the wail of the air-raid siren began to rise and fall only moments later. Some of the passengers got up and headed for the exits, but the soldiers standing by the doors told them to return to their seats.
An awful silence descended on the carriage. A few seats down, a baby began to wail, impervious to the pleas of its mother. Eventually the crying subsided to a whimper and everyone sat there listening for the drone of engines and the
crump
of bombs. Gazing into the sky, Misha could see the usual searchlight fingers but there were no bursts of anti-aircraft fire. Shortly after they all heard bombs exploding and the baby began to cry again. But the bombs were some distance away and they did not appear to be getting closer.
They waited another anxious hour, until the monotonous drone of the all-clear siren sounded across the city. At once the train began to shudder and vibrate as the locomotive began to make steam. But still the train didn’t move.
Yegor’s patience broke. ‘Misha, go to the door and lower the window. Try to see what is happening.’
Misha half expected the two men opposite him to warn them against undermining the Soviet war effort by spreading alarm and unease, but they seemed as keen as anyone to know what was going on. He only had to squeeze past a few people to get to the door. He couldn’t see any soldiers out on the platform so he opened the window just enough to poke his head out and peered up to the front of the train.
The clouds had thinned and the drizzle had stopped. Moonlight now illuminated the rooftops and spires around the station. He could see the locomotive well enough on the curve of the platform, its giant wheels cloaked with steam. There, close to the engine driver’s compartment, half hidden by the billowing steam, a familiar figure paced up and down. His hands were deep in his pockets, an unlit pipe in his mouth. The
Vozhd
.
Misha felt relieved to see him, assuming they were definitely about to go now that Stalin was there at the front of the train. But as he watched, he saw the
Vozhd
beckon to a colleague inside the first carriage. Another figure emerged and the two stood close in conversation. Stalin was shaking his head. The other man was nodding. This did not look good.
A sudden shout gave Misha such a shock he recoiled and hit his head on the top of the window. ‘Get back inside,’ said one of the guards on the platform. Then he instructed everyone to draw the blinds on their carriage windows.
‘Maybe there is bomb damage on the line ahead,’ said Papa.
As they waited, Papa gave Misha a few slices of salami, a chunk of bread and a pickled cucumber. He graciously offered some to the two middle-aged men who sat opposite them but they equally graciously declined.
After he had eaten, Misha began to feel sleepy. But just as his eyes were closing a soldier entered the carriage. ‘Comrades, please return to the station concourse.’
‘That’s it,’ said Yegor. ‘We’re not going. The
Vozhd
has decided to stay.’
As Misha and Papa boarded another lorry to return them to the Kremlin, they saw the station concourse was again filling up with ordinary Muscovites. Where they were going and when they would get there, Misha could only wonder.
Moscow seemed just as chaotic on their return journey. ‘It would be quicker to walk,’ said Yegor.
‘Let’s walk then,’ replied Misha. After all, their cases were going to be loaded on to a separate lorry.
Yegor shook his head. ‘Have some sense, Mikhail,’ he said. ‘It’s anarchy out there.’
Misha sat in the back of the lorry, watching the disorder out in the street. Lines from a poem his old literature teacher had shown him at the start of the year came to mind, and he whispered them to himself:
‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.’
His papa shook his head. ‘What’s this nonsense?’ he said gently.
‘Just a poem, Papa,’ said Misha. He wasn’t going to tell him it was W.B. Yeats. Partly because he knew he wouldn’t be interested, and partly because he had a strong idea that the Party would not approve of W.B. Yeats. Certainly his literature teacher had vanished from their lives not long after.
It was five o’clock in the morning by the time Yegor wearily turned the key in the apartment door. ‘Go to bed and sleep for as long as you need to,’ he said to Misha. ‘Don’t go to school. Wait here. I will telephone if I need to warn you about anything.’
Misha fell asleep as soon as his head touched his pillow. He slept through another air-raid warning, another parade of lorries coming and going and a torrential hailstorm. He woke to the sound of the Spasskaya Tower clock striking eleven. With a sinking feeling, he remembered he was back in his apartment – barely sixteen hours before he had thought he would never see it again. He was overwhelmed with conflicting emotions. All the things he had thought he was about to escape – the constant memory of his mama there in the apartment, the threat of imminent death in an air raid or battle – were now part of his life again. But at the same time he felt slightly exhilarated, strangely excited. He didn’t quite know why.
As he prepared a simple breakfast from the scraps they had left behind, he noticed a note from his papa on the table.
Misha, Please collect our suitcases from in front of the Armoury Chamber. Expected 11 a.m.
Papa
That was a good excuse to drop in on the Golovkins. Let Valya know he was back. He washed quickly and hurried to collect the cases before the rain began again. But as he approached the Armoury Building he saw the unmistakable figure of Anatoly Golovkin being dragged away by two burly men in NKVD uniforms.
He was shouting and struggling but what he was saying was drowned by a passing convoy of trucks. By the time they had passed, Anatoly Golovkin had disappeared, although Misha did see a Black Raven driving towards the Borovitskaya Tower. He shuddered. That was what they called the cars the NKVD used when they went about their business.
The suitcases were waiting exactly where Papa said they would be and he quickly found both of theirs and dragged them to the Arsenal apartment. Then he hurried again to the Armoury and the Golovkins’ apartment. He knocked on the door but there was no answer. He knocked again, calling softly, ‘Valya, it’s me.’
He heard the shuffling of footsteps inside and the door opened a crack.
She pulled him inside and burst into tears. ‘Misha, what can I do?’
‘Let’s go and sit down,’ he said, feeling helpless.
He held her hand across the table until she had stopped crying. Her cat, Kotya, leaped up and demanded attention.
‘They said he’d been an accomplice to Zhiglov. He went mad. I’ve never seen him so angry. They dragged him off, shouting and screaming, and they were hitting him to try to shut him up, but the more they did that, the more he shouted. Misha, it was horrible . . .’
‘And what about you, Valya? Are you OK?’
She nodded, wiping her eyes. ‘I wonder if they’ll come back for me. You’d think if they had me down in their book, they would have arrested me at the same time. I don’t know, Misha.’
Misha had never seen her look so frightened.
‘I tried to say something but they just pushed me aside.’
‘I wish I could ask my papa to help,’ said Misha. ‘See if he would talk to the
Vozhd
. But he has just been telling me how people who do that are arrested themselves.’
‘I wouldn’t ask you to do that, Misha,’ she said. Then she added, ‘Isn’t that what happened to your mama?’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I’m sorry, Misha. You did know, didn’t you?’
‘Papa told me the other day. Why did you never tell me? No, forget I said that. I’m sorry, Valya. We’re all whisperers, aren’t we? We’re all too frightened to talk. We all have secrets we don’t want to share for fear of setting off some trapdoor that will swallow us in an instant.’
She squeezed his hand. ‘I will go to Beria. I will see if we can come to an arrangement. I know it sounds like madness but I can’t sit here and do nothing.’
Misha was aghast. ‘Valya . . .’ He tailed off. What could he say? People did desperate things when they were in desperate situations. If she thought she could persuade Beria to release her father, who was he to judge?
She had calmed down now. ‘Misha, it might work. I honestly can’t think of anything else I can do.’
Misha returned to his apartment. Papa had been round with some food from the Kremlin kitchens and had left another note telling him not to venture out beyond the Kremlin walls. The events of the last twenty-four hours caught up with him and he went to his room to rest.
He must have slept for several hours because he was roused from a deep slumber by a persistent knocking at the door. It was Valya again. He was startled when he saw her. Beneath her black winter coat she was wearing her red dress and had a matching red ribbon in her hair. She looked more beautiful than ever and he noticed with a shock she was wearing make-up.
Misha expected more tears but she seemed detached. ‘I tried,’ she said plainly. ‘I saw him in the corridor where we’ve often crossed paths, and I smiled as seductively as I could manage in the circumstances and asked if I could see him alone. He looked me up and down with a cold smile and I could see he was trying to make his mind up. Then he stroked the side of my face. He said, “Dear little Valentina, you’re camp dust,” and walked off.’
‘That was all?’ said Misha.
‘What am I going to do? Do I wait at the apartment for the NKVD to arrest me? Shall I pack a suitcase? Do I try to escape? Where would I go?
Misha was amazed at how calm she was being.
‘Valya, stay here and have supper, then you can decide what to do . . .’
He looked in the refrigerator and saw that Papa had left some eggs and a litre of milk. He noticed a new tub of margarine rather than butter. The usual Kremlin luxuries were obviously getting harder to find. Still, there was a fresh loaf in the bread bin, so Misha decided to make scrambled eggs. He was good at scrambled eggs.
He heard a stifled sob and turned back to Valya. Her eyes were full of tears. ‘I keep thinking about what they are doing to Papa,’ she said.
Misha hugged her awkwardly. ‘You must have something to eat. That will make you feel better,’ he said, realising how stupid it sounded.
Just as he placed the eggs on the plates and was bringing them to the table the hall door flew off its hinges.
Three NKVD men burst into the dining room. ‘Valentina Golovkin, you are to come with us immediately.’
Misha stood up and shouted, ‘If you knocked, we would have let you in.’ He pointed at the door. ‘Look what you have –’
One of the men knocked him to the ground, scattering his cooking over the floor. As he lay reeling from a blow to the side of his head, Valya said, ‘Why am I being arrested?’
Misha expected them to hit her too, but they just grabbed her arm. ‘You are an enemy of the people,’ he heard one of them say.
A burly bear of a man yanked Misha up from the floor, as easily as if he were a small bag of shopping. ‘And you, Mikhail Petrov, are aiding an enemy of the people.’
They were dragged out of the apartment and hustled down the corridor, leaving the door wide open and hanging half off its hinges.
A Black Raven was waiting for them just outside the entrance, with its engine running. Misha could guess where they were going. It was a short ride, barely a minute or two. But as the car took its predictable route along these familiar streets his heart began to thump hard in his chest.
The car ground to a halt by a little door at the side of the Lubyanka. Several men waiting on the pavement bundled Misha and Valya out of the Black Raven, kicking them through the door with their shiny black boots. One of the NKVD men grabbed Misha by the scruff of his neck and frogmarched him along. The stench of urine, sweat and a pungent chemical detergent made his nose smart. For a second, he and Valya were bumped together.