One Night in Winter

People from many different tables hailed Sophia Zeitlin, and then Minka appeared as if from nowhere.

‘Andrei! Serafima! We’re expecting you!’ Minka led them to a table heaped high with dishes – satsivi, khachapuri, lobio… Waiters brought more to form a precarious ziggurat of plates. Longuinoz crooked his fingers, and more waiters bearing chairs above their heads wove amongst the closely packed tables, laying out new places just in time for Andrei, Serafima and Sophia to sit down.

The whole Dorov family was there, Senka perched on his mother’s knee.

‘Andrei,’ Senka called out, ‘do you like my suit?’

‘You look just like a real little professor,’ Andrei agreed, laughing.

Their host, Genrikh Dorov, ordered Telavi wine Number 5. His wife, Dashka Dorova, embraced Sophia, and pulled up a chair next to hers.

‘Have a martini,’ she suggested in her rather exotic Galician accent.

‘I’ll have a cosmopolitan. American-style,’ Sophia declared.

‘Eat up, children,’ said Genrikh, who seemed too puny to be a Party bigshot.

Andrei scoured the restaurant. In the far alcove, next to a table of American officers, sat Comrade Satinov and family. George, next to him, made frantic wing-flapping gestures while pointing at Genrikh Dorov. Andrei smiled back at him to signal that he understood. Genrikh Dorov, the Uncooked Chicken, was looking more uncooked than ever.

‘There’s a happy family,’ joked Minka, who was next to Andrei. She was pointing at Nikolasha Blagov sitting in silence with his parents at a poky corner table.

‘I wonder if they’re sending Nikolasha’s father abroad as ambassador?’ asked Serafima.

As they watched, Nikolasha sulkily pushed back his chair and stood.

‘Uh-oh,’ said Minka. ‘He’s heading this way!’

The two girls laughed at what happened next as Nikolasha became stranded in the middle of the restaurant as streams of Georgian warriors flowed around him, balancing plates of lobio for the group of Americans at one of the larger tables.

‘You know the Game is just Nikolasha’s way of seeing you, Serafima. That’s what it’s really about,’ said Minka.

‘I don’t think Papa would approve of your game,’ said Demian Dorov prissily. ‘Papa would say it’s un-Bolshevik.’

‘Are you going to tell him?’ asked Minka. ‘You’d be a real creep if you did.’

Demian raised his finger. ‘I’m just saying: be careful. There’s something sinister about Nikolasha’s obsession with death.’

Andrei looked up as Nikolasha loomed over them. ‘My father’s been sent to Mexico as ambassador,’ he said dolefully.

‘Surely you don’t have to go too?’ Minka was sympathetic.

‘He says I must. It makes tomorrow night especially significant,’ said Nikolasha. ‘It could be the last Game!’ He leaned down to whisper to Serafima and then Minka.

‘I think we should invite Andrei to play it this time,’ said Serafima suddenly.

‘But Andrei’s not a full member. He only became a candidate last week. He’s not ready,’ Nikolasha protested.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Andrei. ‘I can just watch.’

‘Do you want me to come?’ Serafima looked intently at Nikolasha, who shifted uncomfortably.

‘Very much.’

Andrei saw her green eyes shine as she leaned forward.

‘Then Andrei plays the Game. If you want me, you must include him too.’

10

THE MORNING OF the Victory Parade, and the rain was pouring down on the soldiers, tanks, horses and, amongst the throng of Muscovites on the streets, Andrei and his mother, Inessa. He was, he thought, the only one of his new friends not to have a seat in the grandstand on Red Square. Wearing hats, galoshes and anoraks, they’d got up early to find a good place at the bottom of Gorky Street to watch the show.

A roar. ‘That’s Stalin arriving!’ said the woman next to Andrei. As the orchestra of fifteen hundred musicians played Glinka’s ‘Glory’, blasted out of giant but tinny loudspeakers mounted on the backs of trucks, Andrei and Inessa could just make out Marshal Zhukov, on a white horse, riding out of one of the Kremlin gates to meet Marshal Rokossovsky in the middle and take the salute. Tanks, howitzers and horsemen passed; flanks of steel and muscle glistened in the rain. They saw soldiers bearing Nazi banners, scarlet and black, like a Roman triumph, and heard their passionate ‘URRAH’ as they tossed them at the feet of their leader, the Great Stalin.

Afterwards, the roads were clogged with tanks and jeeps, crowds of soldiers and civilians.

‘What a shame it rained,’ Andrei said to his mother. But he was not really thinking about the rain. ‘Mama’ – he turned to her and put his arms around her – ‘do you think—’

‘Do I think Papa will come home now?’ she finished his thought perfectly. ‘Hush.’ She looked around, even though no one could hear in that din of singing and shouting, footsteps and rain. ‘Lower your voice.’

‘I’m sure they will all come back now, won’t they? I feel it,’ Andrei whispered. ‘I so want him back.’ It was something they had never said to each other, because it was so raw even after all these years.