One Night in Winter

‘Who dies today? Let’s play…’ said Rosa but her little cooing voice was lost in the roar of the crowd.

No one saw what happened next. They were separated by the currents of the crowd that carried Andrei so far from the others that he lost Serafima altogether and could only just see Nikolasha’s head in the distance when the two shots rang out. Amidst the sudden hush that followed, the rain stopped and with it time itself. Slow steam arose from the sweating, damp crowds, the sticky air congested with white poplar pollen instantly, mysteriously unleashed, and that red head was nowhere to be seen.

When he found them again, standing startled and horrified around the bodies, Andrei looked at his friends, at the other Fatal Romantics – and, across the bodies, his eyes met Serafima’s in a kind of horrified complicity. And then time speeded up again.

In front of him two army medics were working on the bodies, and a clearing had opened up in the dense pack of people. Policemen were running from both directions. And he saw the duelling pistols on the ground, one shattered into pieces, and the Velvet Book, splayed open on the wet ground, its covers all muddy. The police were holding people back, placing bollards around the scene and asking questions.

‘Are you friends of these two?’ a police officer asked, a burly fellow with a Stavropol accent and a paunch. ‘Pull yourselves together. Say something!’

‘Yes we are.’ Andrei stepped forward, conscious that Vlad beside him was shaking in his bedraggled frock coat.

‘Are you actors or something? Do you dress up like this all the time?’

‘We’re not actors,’ Vlad said and began to cry.

‘Christ! What about you, girl?’ said the policeman, pointing at Minka, who was hugging her little brother, Senka.

‘Come away, Senka, I’m taking you home.’

‘But look at that pistol – it’s in pieces – and the Velvet Book’s all torn,’ said Senka, crouching down to look.

‘Leave all that; the police will need them,’ said Minka.

‘No one’s going anywhere yet,’ ordered the policeman, turning to Serafima. ‘You there! What’s your name?’

‘I’m Serafima Romashkina.’ Andrei could tell she was struggling to hold her nerve by being icily calm and formal. Yet she had blood on her hands – she must have got to her friends first.

‘Like the writer?’

‘He’s my father.’

‘You’re kidding. So your mother’s Sophia Zeitlin?’

‘Yes,’ said Serafima.

‘I’m a fan. I loved Katyusha. What a movie! But you don’t look like her at all.’

‘Look, our friends are lying there and you’re just—’

‘So what were you doing here, Serafima Romashkina?’ The policeman was now brandishing a little notebook and pencil that seemed too small for his thick fingers.

‘We were all meeting here. After the parade. Just for fun.’

‘M-e-e-ting,’ said the policeman, trying to write this down. Andrei realized he was drunk. Most of Moscow was drunk and several of the policemen at the scene were struggling to stand up at all. ‘Why the hell are you in fancy dress?’

‘We’re in a dramatic club,’ said Serafima.

‘What the fuck is that?’

‘They’re playing the Game,’ blurted out little Mariko Satinova from the back of the group. Andrei noticed Marlen was standing in front of her so she could not see the bodies or the blood.

‘Give me your name and address and you can take the little ones home.’

‘Satinov,’ said Marlen.

‘Satinov? Like the Politburo member?’

‘Yes, I’m Marlen Satinov.’

‘And I’m Mariko, his sister,’ added the little girl.

‘Mary mother of Christ!’ said the policeman, pushing back his cap and wiping his forehead. ‘GRISHA, GET THE FUCK OVER HERE!’ he yelled, turning around.

A pimply policeman who did not look any older than the schoolchildren ran over, looking anxious. ‘Yes, captain?’

‘Run fast as you can over to the guardhouse at Spassky Gate’ – he pointed towards the Kremlin tower – ‘and ring Lubianka Square. Tell them we have a double killing with special characteristics. It’s for the Organs. Tell them to send someone down here fast. Go!’

Andrei watched the young policeman running; just as he reached the sentry box with its telephone link to the MGB, the Ministry of State Security, he jumped as the sky boomed and a galaxy of fireworks exploded above the Kremlin.

The roar of the crowd spread from the bridge along the packed embankments and bridges of the River Moskva, but Andrei only had eyes for the policeman gesticulating as he told the guards to ring their superiors. He imagined phones ringing from guardhouses up the vertical hierarchy – captains to colonels, generals to ministers – all the way to Lubianka Square and thence to the Kremlin itself.

Around him, the fireworks made the night into a daylight that turned the two bodies on the bridge red and white and green as those supernovas flashed above them in crescents and stars and wheels.

Serafima stood beside him. In the dazzling, bleaching light he saw her tears, and, for a moment, it felt as if they were quite alone. Then he took her in his arms as a stab of sheer dread pierced his innards.

‘It’s begun,’ she kept saying. ‘It’s begun.’