One Night in Winter

Andrei had never been so close to a leader before, and glanced back anxiously at his mother.

‘Let’s step back a bit.’ Inessa gestured: retreat. ‘Best not to be too far forward.’ Rule number one: Don’t be noticed, don’t draw attention. It was a habit born of long misfortune and suffering in this flint-hearted system. Years of being invisible in crowded stations where they feared their IDs would be checked.

Torn between fearful caution and the craving to rub shoulders with his new classmates, the Golden Youth of Moscow, Andrei couldn’t take his eyes off the nape of Comrade Satinov’s neck, shaved military style. And thus it was that before many minutes had passed, they found themselves near the very front of the line, almost between the two gold-crested pillars of the school gates, under a hot Moscow sky so cloudlessly blue it seemed bleak.

Around Andrei and his mother, the crowd of parents – well-dressed women, men in golden shoulderboards (he saw a marshal up ahead) and creamy summer suits, and children in the red scarf of the Pioneers – pressed close. Beside him, Inessa was sweating, her face made ugly by worry, her skin dry as grey cardboard. Andrei knew she was only forty – not that old – yet the contrast with the glossily coiffed mothers of the school in their smart summer frocks was all too obvious. His father’s arrest and vanishing, their banishment from the capital, seven years’ exile in Central Asia, all this had ground her to dust. Andrei felt embarrassed by her, irritated by her and protective of her, all at the same time. He took her hand. Her crushed, grateful smile made him think of his father. Where are you, Papa? he wondered. Are you still alive? Was their return to Moscow the end of their nightmare or yet another cruel trick?

Comrade Satinov stepped forward and a woman in a sack-like black shift dress, which made her resemble a nun, greeted him.

‘Comrade Satinov, welcome. I’m Kapitolina Medvedeva, School Director, and I wish on behalf of the staff of the Stalin School 801 to say that it is a great honour to meet you. At last! In person!’

‘It’s good to be here, comrade director,’ replied Satinov with a strong Georgian accent. ‘I’ve been at the front and haven’t done a thing with the children since the twenty-second of June 1941’ – the day Hitler invaded Russia, as Andrei and every Russian knew – ‘but now I’ve been summoned back from Berlin to Moscow.’

‘Summoned,’ repeated the director, blushing faintly because ‘summoned’ could only mean an order from Marshal Stalin himself. ‘Summoned by…’

‘Comrade Stalin has instructed us: now the war is over, we must restore proper Russian and Soviet values. Set an example. The Soviet man is a family man too.’ Andrei noticed that Satinov’s tone was patient and masterful yet never arrogant. Here was Bolshevik modesty. ‘So you might be seeing too much of me at the school gates.’

Director Medvedeva put her hands together as if in prayer and took a deep breath. ‘What wisdom! Comrade Satinov, of course we know your family so well. Your wife is such a valued member of staff and we are accustomed to prominent parents here but, well, a member of the Politburo – we… we are overcome, and so honoured that you’ve come personally…’

The boy in front of Andrei was shaking his head as he listened to this performance. ‘Mother of God, you’d have thought Papa was the Second Coming!’ he said aloud. Andrei wasn’t sure whom he was addressing. ‘Are we going to have this bowing and scraping every time he drops us off at school?’ It was one of Satinov’s sons, who had half turned towards Andrei. ‘It’s bad enough having a mother who’s a teacher but now… oh my God. Nauseating.’

Andrei was shocked at this irreverence, but the dapper boy, with polished shoes, creased trousers and pomade in his bouncy hair, seemed delighted at the effect he was having on the new boy. He gave Andrei an urbane smile. ‘I’m Georgi Satinov but everyone calls me George. English-style.’ The English were still allies, after all. George offered his hand.

‘Andrei Kurbsky,’ said Andrei.

‘Ah yes. Just back in the city? You’re the new boy?’ asked George briskly.

‘Yes.’

‘I thought so.’ And the smile vanished. Without it, George Satinov’s face looked smug and bored. The audience was over – and Andrei felt himself falling back to earth.

‘Minka!’ George was embracing a curvaceous girl with dark skin. ‘What’s news?’ he was asking.

Andrei paled a little and felt his mother beside him again. They both knew what George had meant by ‘Just back in the city?’ He was tainted by exile, the child of a Former Person.