He rubbed at his light-coloured eyebrows. He drew his puritanical lips together as if he had remembered a particularly unpleasant sin, either of his own or someone else’s. ‘You wouldn’t have had anything to do with the fire in that church? It was like a damned beacon. It helped us move in last night. I heard Petlyura or the French had installed a secret weapon up there. It had gone wrong. Was that you?’
‘It was,’ I said. ‘I sabotaged it.’
He smiled.
‘I was fired at by Petlyura’s men,’ I said, ‘while I was doing it. I’d been asked to work with it. I agreed. It was about to be turned on our forces when I set the sights out of alignment. There was a fight. It exploded.’
‘I think we’d better shoot you,’ said the commissar. I had irritated him. Over the months he had been doing his job he had evidently ceased to listen to words. He listened only to the sounds his victims made. He had learned to recognise desperation and anxiety and to identify these, as the simple-minded always will, with guilt. I could only continue to repeat the names of certain Bolsheviks whom I had known slightly in Petrograd. These names produced what Pavlov calls ‘a conditioned response’. It made him hesitate. He probably hated uncertainty, but he would hate those who made him uncertain so it was a dangerous game I played. These Moscow leather-jackets were famous for their snap decisions: a look at the clothes, a glance at the hands to see if they had done manual work, a quick check to ascertain ‘bourgeois background’, and off to the firing squad. Someone had since mentioned that the whole of the Bolshevik leadership could, by this yardstick, have been shot by the Cheka. My hands were not soft. I held them out towards the Chekist. I was mute. He frowned. I held my hands out to him, showing the fingers and palms calloused by the mechanical work I had been doing. He hesitated. He coughed for a second or two and drew a cigarette from a cardboard box he carried in one of his pockets. He had to shift his holster to get at the cigarettes. He struck a match. I looked around for my own cigarette. I had dropped it, but nothing was on fire. My papers went into his other deep pocket. ‘You’re wasting my time. You’re under arrest.’
‘House arrest? What have I done?’
‘This room’s needed.’
There was a sound of feet in the passage outside. A woman’s voice. Mrs Cornelius came in. She was wearing a loose, one-piece dress made of bright red silk and she had a red cloche on her head. Her lips and cheeks were carmine and emphasised the blue of her eyes, the gold of her hair. When she saw me she stopped dead and began to laugh.
‘ ‘Ullo, Ivan!’ She embraced me. ‘Yore a proper littel bad kopek, ain’t yer!’
‘You’re with the Reds?’ I said in English.
‘Been wiv ‘em all ther time, ain’t I? Lucky fer me, eh? Well, they’re more fun than the ovvers. Or were. I’ve got a noo boyfriend. ‘E’s ever so important.’
The Chekist was now looking firmly at his polished boots and frowning. He said something very sharp to the sailors. They began to carry Mrs Cornelius’s trunks into the room. She glanced round. ‘I’m not kickin’ yer art, am I? They’ll do anyfink fer me. But it’s too much, reelly. Sort o’ musical chairs. Yer never know ‘ose bed yore gonna sleep in next, eh?’ She threw back her head and bellowed with laughter. She giggled. She put a soft hand on my arm. ‘Yer gotter larf, incha?’
I did my best to smile and to adopt an easy stance which might convince the Chekist, who remained in the room, that I was one of the party elite. ‘Is Lunarcharsky here?’ I asked.
“E stopped bein’ any fun ages ago. And ‘is wife or somefink got stroppy. Nar. I’m serposed to be wiv Leo, but ‘e keeps goin’ ter ower places. I jest carn’t catch upwiv’imat all. I don’t reelly mind.’
‘Leo?’
‘Lev,’ she said. ‘You know. Trotsky. Littel trotty-true-ski I corl ‘im. Har, har, har.’
‘You’re his - paramour ...’
‘Lovely of yer ter say so, Ivan. I’m ‘is bit o’ all right, if that’s wot yer mean. Well, it’s fer the best. I’m tryin’ ter get back ter the sarth. Is that wot you’re doin’? I couldn’t stand anuvver winter’ere, could you?’
‘To Odessa?’
‘Seemed a good idear. ‘E don’t speak a word o’ English,’ she confided of the commissar, who was looking very sourly at both of us, ‘and ‘e
‘I don’t think he is. You are going to the coast, then?’
‘I’ve orlways liked ther seaside.’ She winked. ‘Funny time ter pick fer an ‘oliday, innit?’
She knew I was in trouble. It was a knack she had. ‘Wot’s ther service like ‘ere?’ she asked casually.
‘It depends who you are.’
The leather-jacket said: ‘Would you mind speaking Russian, comrade. When in Rome...’
