One Night in Winter

‘Father has something to tell her,’ explained George as he led Andrei back to his father’s little study with the gramophone. He closed the doors, restarted the jazz records and lay down on the sofa with his legs crossed. ‘They whisper in the bathroom. He never tells us of course. The less we know the better. Now he’ll have a nap for a few hours, and then probably he’ll be summoned very late for dinner.’

‘You mean—’

‘Don’t say the name, you fool,’ said George, pointing heavenwards. Then he whispered, ‘If you work for Stalin, you call him the Master but never to his face. In documents, he’s Gensec for General Secretary. The generals call him “Supremo”; in the Organs, it’s “the Instantsiya”. And when anyone says “the Central Committee”, they mean him.’

‘So he’ll be having dinner in the Kremlin?’

George sat up. ‘Don’t you know anything? He works at the Little Corner in the Kremlin but he really lives in the Nearby Dacha outside Moscow where my father and the Politburo meet late into the night over dinner. Then my father has to change and shave and be back in his office first thing in the morning. We hardly see him.’

‘He was at the fall of Berlin, wasn’t he?’

‘Oh yes, and at Stalingrad,’ said George proudly. ‘Now the war’s over, Father says he wants to see more of us – which means taking us to school, with all the bowing and genuflecting that entails. Pure hell! But no one tells my father what to do. No one except…’ And he pointed towards heaven again: Stalin.

‘I’d better be getting home,’ said Andrei. ‘My mother worries.’

George put his hand on Andrei’s arm with all the warmth that was lacking in his father. ‘Listen, Andrei, I know you want to get into the Komsomols and I’ve been singing your praises to Marlen. But it would be fun to have you join us in the Fatal Romantics’ Club. We’re planning to play the Game.’

Andrei felt a stab of excitement. This was what he really wanted – wasn’t it?

‘But there’s a problem,’ George continued. ‘It’s Nikolasha’s club and he wants to make it harder to join than the College of Cardinals or the Politburo. And Nikolasha says he’s not sure about you.’

Andrei swallowed. ‘What do you mean?’

‘He doesn’t know you as well as I do,’ George said. ‘Anyway, he says Serafima has the casting vote.’

‘Serafima? But Serafima doesn’t know me either. And I’m not sure sure she cares about anything, especially not the Fatal Romantics’ Club.’

‘But Nikolasha cares about her, and that’s the important thing.’

‘But isn’t he with Rosa? She adores him.’

George nodded. ‘She does, but Nikolasha lives for Serafima. In fact, sometimes I think the entire Fatal Romantics’ Club is really for her.’

Andrei stood up. He cared about this more than he meant to – and he had shown it all too clearly.

‘You helped me out,’ George said, standing too, ‘and I know you’re one of us. They’re planning to play the Game right after the Victory Parade so you have to join before then. It’s a special ritual.’

George led Andrei out of the study, across the corridor to his bedroom where he pulled from under his bed an olive-green leather case, which he flicked open. There, lying in red velvet, were two nineteenth-century duelling pistols.

‘Beautiful,’ said Andrei. He closed his eyes, remembering his Onegin.

Now nothing else mattered –
A brace of pistols and a shot
Shall instantly decide his lot.

Andrei admired the pistols: the bevelled barrels, polished wood, burnished steel. ‘Are they real?’ he asked.

‘I doubt it. We borrow them from the Little Theatre. They use them in plays,’ George said, laughing. ‘And we’re going to use them in the Game – you’ll see.’

A few streets away, School 801 was not quite empty. The janitor mopped the floors of the empty corridors with the disinfectant that gives schools their characteristic pungency, and the director, Kapitolina Medvedeva, was alone in her office planning how the school would celebrate the Victory Parade on 24 June. It was getting closer. A few Komsomols and Pioneers would be chosen to serve in honour guards. And when she thought about this, she wished she could include Andrei Kurbsky because she knew how much it would mean to a boy of tainted biography.

The report on her desk showed that Andrei was thriving in the school and she was proud that she had overruled Rimm to let him in.

‘I wish to register my disapproval of the acceptance of a child of an Enemy of the People,’ Rimm had said. He believed Medvedeva was not Party-minded enough, and he wanted her job. She knew that every school, every institution had a Rimm. They were usually cowards so she’d stood her ground.

‘Fine,’ Rimm had surrendered. ‘Let him in if you must, but a family like his won’t be able to pay the fees.’