One Night in Winter

Stalin stood. Silence fell. He spoke in his Georgian tenor, surprisingly high and soft, toasting the Russian people ‘without whom none of us marshals and commanders would be worth a damn!’ Then he turned to the generals, starting with Marshal Zhukov, whom he invited to come and clink glasses with him. Sophia noticed that Stalin downed his glass of vodka at each toast, and guessed that his carafe was full of water.

When he toasted Admiral Isakov, Satinov whispered to Sophia: ‘How’s Isakov going to walk all that way?’ – Isakov had lost his leg in the war – but Stalin seemed to know where the admiral was sitting for he threaded through the tables to the far end of the hall and clinked glasses with him there.

‘That’s so touching!’ Sophia said.

Ten, twenty, forty toasts were drunk, and she lost count until suddenly, surprisingly, it was her turn.

‘Sophia Zeitlin!’ The breath left her body and she felt quite alone in the magnificent hall. ‘Your beauty inspired our soldiers in dark times!’

Somehow she walked over to him, fifteen feet that seemed like a mile. Stalin kissed her hand: ‘Katyusha!’ he toasted. ‘An example to all Soviet womankind.’ How he had aged during the war, she thought as he stood before her. A paunchy old man, grey, grizzled, his skin yellow with pinpricks of red in his cheeks. But what a fine, noble head, what eyes.

When the toasts were over, Stalin and the Politburo filed out but Sophia realized she would never be able to sleep after so much wine, vodka and excitement. She couldn’t go home. She wanted to go on for a nightcap. Marshal Shako winked at her. And then she remembered Satinov’s tension, his question about Serafima, and, as a woman who listened to her instincts, she called for her driver and told him to hurry home.

Serafima was still in her blue dress with the white Peter Pan collar when Sophia and Constantin came in.

‘Mama!’

‘Aren’t you going to ask who toasted your mother tonight?’ Sophia started, but then she saw her daughter’s face. ‘What is it?’

‘Sit down and tell us,’ suggested Constantin, joining Serafima on the sofa and taking her hand. Sophia had to admit he was good at moments like this.

Sophia poured herself a cognac and lit a cigarette: ‘Come on, darling,’ she said, ‘You know nothing shocks me! I’m an actress, for God’s sake.’

‘Let her speak, Sophia,’ Constantin told her.

Then out it came – the Game, the bridge, the gunshots and the two dead children.

‘Oh my God,’ said Sophia, shocked yet relieved that Serafima was safe. ‘I always thought Nikolasha Blagov was a maniac. But dear Rosa, and her poor parents. What on earth were they doing?’

‘The Organs are investigating,’ Serafima said, wiping her eyes. ‘I just can’t believe that Rosa—’

‘Don’t worry, darling,’ said Sophia, looking at her husband to see if he was as worried as she was. She leaned over and put both her hands on Serafima’s face as if to keep her safe, and then straightened up and started to pace the floor. ‘I’m so sad about sweet Rosa but… Stalin kissed my hand tonight. You will be safe. No one would dare touch Sophia Zeitlin’s daughter!’

‘I wish that were true,’ said Constantin, kissing both Serafima’s hands. ‘How I wish that were true.’

Satinov didn’t get home until 4 a.m. the next morning. Stalin had invited him back to the Nearby Dacha after the dinner. The drinking had seemed interminable. All the time he’d been worrying about the children and Tamara.

She was waiting for him as he opened the front door.

‘You know what happened, don’t you?’ she asked.

He nodded.

‘Those poor children,’ she said. ‘And oh, their mothers! I can’t bear to think what they must be going through.’

‘Tell me what you know,’ he said, and listened carefully. ‘Tamriko, I fear our boys have been foolish.’

Tamara sank wearily on to the divan. ‘I noticed the clique at school; we all did. And I warned George not to get mixed up with it. But, oh Hercules, they’re just children.’

‘It will probably be fine,’ he said, looking down at her in his serious way.

Tamriko – he always used the Georgian diminutive – was blonde with green-brown eyes and the most perfectly delicate bone structure. When he held her body in his arms, she felt vulnerable and soft as a little bird. Bolshevik wives were expected to work and he admired her career as a teacher at School 801. When he had wanted to bring his four grown-up sons by his late first wife up from Georgia, she had agreed, treating them as if they were her own. He couldn’t do without her, and the cosy household she’d created in her own image.

‘Hercules, what will come of this?’ she whispered.

He looked at her with unwavering vigilance in his cool, grey eyes that she understood meant that the apartment was probably bugged. But he could imagine a number of different scenarios including one in which everything was fine. ‘Can you speak to the children now? They’re terrified of what you’re going to say to them.’

‘It’s the middle of the night.’

‘But they’re still wide awake.’

He sighed and stood up. ‘Boys!’ he called out.