One Night in Winter

She sees him twitch. ‘Oh God! Oh Christ!’ she cries. ‘Look – he’s alive!’ She runs forward to kneel beside him, to take his hand, aware that the blood is soaking her knees, her dress; it’s between her fingers. His chest… the cravat and velvet of his fancy-dress frock coat are still immaculate because they are burgundy, she notes absurdly. He pants very fast, groans, and then, most unforgettably, sighs – a long bubbling sigh that seems to come straight from the throat which, on one side, has become the front of his face. He quivers all over and then his chest is still. He is no longer a boy, scarcely a person, never the friend she knew so well, and in his present state, it seems incredible that he ever was.

Minka vomits. Someone is sobbing loudly now; another has fainted and lies on the ground. Strangers rush forward and retreat just as fast, horrified. And Serafima hears a loud and shrill scream very close to her. It is her scream. She stands up, backing away, but finds something sharp like a thorn under her foot and when she lifts it up, she holds two bloody teeth.

Some soldiers and a sailor see what has happened and take the schoolchildren in their arms with the rough-hewn kindness of peasants who have been to war. They move them back, shield them. One of them gives Serafima a swig of his vodka and she grabs it back and takes another and gulps until she is almost sick. But the burn in the belly steadies her. Then the police – the militsia – are there. Red-faced, interrupted amidst their toasting and singing, they seem bleary and lairy but at least they take control of the crowd and move Serafima away from the bodies that she can’t stop looking at.

She goes over to her friends, who cling to each other. But Serafima is smeared with blood and they draw back.

‘Oh my God, Serafima, it’s on you! It’s all over you!’

Serafima raises her hands and they are caked with it.

Silver sparks whirl behind her eyes as she looks back at the bodies and then up towards the red-sapphired stars glowing atop the Kremlin towers. Somewhere in the Kremlin, very soon, she knows that Stalin will be told that two schoolchildren from School 801 have died violently – and that restless, wily, ferocious force will seek meaning in these deaths, a meaning that will suit his own high and mysterious purposes.

As the pink-fractured sky darkens, she is struck by the most unbearable certainty: that this is the last night of their childhoods. These shots will blast their lives and uncover secrets that would never otherwise have been found – hers most of all.

PART ONE The Fatal Romantics’ Club

Unbelievably happy have become

Every hour, study, and play,
Because our Great Stalin
Is the best friend of us kids.

Of the happy childhood we are given,

Ring forth, joyful song!
Thanks to the Great Stalin
For our happy days!

‘Thank You, Comrade Stalin, For Our Happy Childhood’, popular Soviet song

1

Several weeks earlier

THE BEST SCHOOL in Moscow, thought Andrei Kurbsky on his first day at School 801 on Ostozhenka, and, by some miraculous blessing, I’ve just made it here.

He and his mother were far too early and now they hovered in a doorway opposite the school gates like a pair of gawping villagers. He cursed his mother’s anxiety as he saw she was holding a checklist and running through his paraphernalia under her breath: satchel – yes; white shirt – yes; blue jacket – yes; grey trousers – yes; one volume Pushkin; two notebooks; four pencils; packed lunch of sandwiches… And now she was peering into his face with a maddening frown.

‘Oh Andryusha, there’s something on your face!’ Drawing out a crumpled hankie from her handbag, she licked it and started trying to scrub away at his cheek.

This was his first memory of the school. They were all there, the threads that led to the killings, if you knew which to follow. And they began with his mother scrubbing him while he tried to wave her away as if she was a fly buzz-bombing him on a summer’s day.

‘Stop it, Mama!’ He pushed her hand away and proudly rearranged his spectacles. Her pinched, dry face behind metal spectacles infuriated him but he managed to suppress it, knowing that the satchel, blazer, shoes had been provided by begging from neighbours, appealing to cousins (who had naturally dropped them when his father disappeared), trawling through flea markets.