One Night in Winter

‘So he shot her and then himself? Like I said?’ said Kobylov.

‘Please enlighten my blockheaded comrade, professor,’ Beria said.

‘All right, gentlemen. Nikolasha Blagov was killed by a shot fired at about seven metres. You see the wound.’ He leaned over the slab until he was very close to the shattered mouth. ‘No powder burns. Now look at her wound.’ He switched to the other slab with surprising agility. ‘Look! Hers is blackened quite clearly awound the edges. Her wound is point-blank. It was she who killed him and then herself. She made a mess of him, but as is typical of a female suicide: one shot to the heart. A lady likes a tidy house, yes? Her face is immaculate. You see, stwaightforward, all very stwaightforward.’

‘Thank you, professor.’ Beria looked at Kobylov and Mogilchuk and opened his hands: ‘You got it the wrong way round, you imbeciles. Remember the dead are a marshal’s daughter and a deputy minister’s son. Remember whose children we’ve arrested. Get a move on or you’ll find yourself guarding scum in Kolyma. The Instantsiya is impatient.’ He turned away from them, rubbing his hands. ‘Now, I’ve got a girl waiting who’s good enough to eat! Fresh as summer strawberries. And then a game of netball with the guards.’

He swept out of the morgue, followed by Colonel Nadaraia and the other bodyguards.

‘What energy Comrade Beria has,’ murmured Kobylov. ‘And what a brain. Every moment of every day is organized as precisely as a Swiss watch. We are pygmies beside him. Come on, Mogilchuk, let’s return to our school games.’

17

TAMARA HAD SCARCELY spoken to Hercules in their apartment. Was it bugged? He thought so. She couldn’t speak to him in the car because of the guards; nor at the Golden Gates.

So, most unusually, after drop-off at the school, she said, ‘I need to talk to you.’

‘Do you have time to walk with me to Alexandrovsky Gardens?’ Satinov asked her.

Tamara did not have a class until ten so they walked towards the Kremlin in silence. That day Hercules was not in uniform but a summer suit, with a white fedora low over his eyes, and Tamara thought what a handsome man he was.

Two guards walked ahead, Losha behind, and their car purred twenty metres behind them. The summer blizzard of gossamer seeds swirled around them. Young soldiers, a girl in naval uniform, pensioners in cloth caps walked the streets, eyes half closed, cushioned by the soft, easy air. Tamara noticed how sometimes these sleepwalking members of the public were jolted awake with the spark of recognition. ‘Wasn’t that…?’ they asked their companions as they passed Satinov.

If only they knew that our life isn’t as easy as it appears, Tamara thought.

Having checked everyone was out of earshot, she put her hand through Satinov’s arm. Ever since George had disappeared, she had longed to talk to him.

She adored her Hercules. Amongst those coarse, hard-drinking leaders, with their fat, depressed wives and spoilt, disturbed children, Tamara’s friends would often say, ‘If only I had a husband like Satinov. Tamara, you’re so lucky,’ and she would reply, ‘He’s a wonderful husband but I just wish he talked to me more…’

Despite their years together, she found it hard to breathe around his coldness, his detachment. Why didn’t he cuddle her? Why couldn’t she be with a man who talked to her and told her about his day? It had been the same when his eldest son Vanya was killed. She wanted to shriek and tear her clothes – but he just seemed to absorb it. She wondered if he really wasn’t that deep, if he was simply uncomplicated or, worse, flinthearted? He had cried once, but afterwards he just said to her, ‘The whole Motherland is weeping, Tamriko. We’re no different.’ And he had returned to the front, leaving her to comfort the other children. Now his son was in prison and still she could not reach him.

‘Hercules, is there any news of George?’ she asked now.

‘Nothing.’

‘But you saw… him last night?’ She meant Stalin, of course.

‘Yes.’

‘Did he say anything?’

Satinov shook his head. ‘He’s exhausted.’

‘Did Beria say anything?’

‘No.’

‘I do hate that man. He’s repulsive, Hercules. How can you work with him?’

‘The Revolution needs people like him. He’s our most capable Bolshevik manager, whatever his faults.’

‘He’s a rapist, a criminal.’

‘Tamriko!’ He sighed. ‘Let’s be grateful that I am friendly with him now, of all times.’

‘Oh God!’ So George was in Beria’s hands. Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I can’t sleep, Hercules, I’m so anxious. Usually I love my classes but the school is like a hornets’ nest. I look at George’s seat… and Andrei, Vlad, Minka – all absent! And sweet Rosa. I want to cry. The children can’t concentrate either; some are terrified, some are queuing up to denounce their friends. The common room feels… like it did in the thirties. Dr Rimm is up to something…’ She hesitated to share the petty intrigues of the common room with her husband, but she couldn’t stop herself, and out it all came.