One Night in Winter

Stalin shook his head. ‘Fancy dress, you say? We let our guard down during the war. This could be the work of our enemies abroad – or of the children themselves.’ He held up a single finger as straight as a tallow candle. ‘No little princelings are above Soviet justice. Everyone knows how I demoted my Vasily for behaving like a spoilt aristocrat. Solve the case. If it’s murder, heads must roll.’

‘Right, I’ll get to work,’ said Beria, backing away from Stalin and leaving the room.

Satinov felt the hand of fear clutch his heart: what role did his children play in this? What if George or Marlen or Mariko lay dead on the bridge?

But Stalin was strolling back towards him and Satinov saw that he was bristling and bushy-tailed again, a satyr refreshed by the macabre excitement of conspiracy. His eyes twinkled roguishly.

‘How’s your family?’ Stalin asked. Satinov concealed his worries with all the arctic expertise of a veteran of Stalin’s world. There would be time later to find out what happened on the bridge.

12

JUST BEFORE 7 p.m., Sophia Zeitlin and her husband Constantin Romashkin climbed the steps to the Georgievsky Hall. The dinner to celebrate victory would be her moment to shine and be admired – but that depended on her table placement. The fifteen hundred guests crowded nervously around the table plans on boards outside; a seat near Stalin endowed the lucky ones with an almost visible halo; those seated furthest away could scarcely hide the shadow of disappointment.

‘Darling, that dress will dazzle everyone,’ said Dashka Dorova, kissing Sophia and Constantin. Many were quick to criticize Sophia for un-Bolshevik vulgarity but she knew that Dashka was a real friend who wished her well.

‘I have to give the public what they expect.’

‘Well, your dress certainly does that,’ said Dashka.

‘I love your dress too. That cream colour really suits you, and the pleated skirt shows off your curves,’ said Sophia, who also meant it. ‘I have to tart myself up a bit, but you always look so chic and professional. You are our most glamorous minister!’ She hesitated, and then gave her deep throaty laugh. ‘But that’s hardly a compliment when you see the rest of them!’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Dashka laughed away the compliments and started to peruse the table plans. ‘Ah, there I am. Not too bad. I’m on the Council of Ministers’ table.’ She looked at her husband. ‘How about you, Genrikh?’

Genrikh looked pasty and irritable. ‘I’m nowhere near the Politburo,’ he said glumly.

‘No one will notice, dear,’ Dashka said, patting his arm. But Sophia knew that everyone noticed such things and she certainly liked her own placement. Her husband was placed with the editors of the Red Army newspaper, even further away than Genrikh, but she was on the Politburo table.

The leaders hadn’t arrived yet and she could feel everyone looking at her as she put a cigarette in her holder and Marshal Shako lit it.

A hush; then a collective intake of breath: Stalin had entered with the Politburo. The entire Georgievsky Hall jumped to its feet and shouted ‘Urrah! Urrah!’ and cheered for so long that Stalin himself first waved at them to sit down, then clapped back at them and finally became cross, ordering them to stop. But no one would stop. Stalin sat down at the table next to Sophia’s between Marshal Shako and Molotov, and, shrugging modestly, looked a little embarrassed until the cheering subsided.

Sophia could not take her eyes off Stalin. As an actress she noticed how he seemed to change before her eyes, walking sometimes with quick little movements, occasionally like a clumsy goose, often more like a stealthy panther.

She was sitting between Satinov and Mikoyan, the most courteous and elegant of the leaders, who were, as a rule, uncouth and dreary. When she looked around, she saw most of them sported the telltale archipelago of red spots on their cheeks, the signs of alcoholism and arteriosclerosis. She noticed the gruesome Beria making eyes at her across the table.

‘I wish he would look at someone else,’ she whispered to Satinov.

‘You are dressed to be admired,’ replied Satinov, who seemed to Sophia to be uncharacteristically tense. ‘Wasn’t Serafima meeting with her Pushkin club friends tonight on the Stone Bridge?’

‘I think so, but I never know where she goes these days,’ Sophia said with a sigh.

‘We know less about our children than we think,’ Satinov agreed. ‘It worries me.’

‘And they know even less about us! Thank God!’ And Sophia laughed huskily.

Twenty stodgy courses – blinis and caviar, borscht with cream, beef Stroganoff, sturgeon, suckling pig, Georgian wines and Crimean champagne, brandy and vodka – were served by the waiters Sophia recognized from the Aragvi as well as the Metropole and National Hotels.