One Night in Winter полностью

‘No,’ Benya replied. ‘I wanted to teach literature as I thought it should be taught.’

‘What other way is there but the Party’s way?’

‘I’m not political.’

‘You poisoned the minds of the children with romantic philistinism, manifested by the Fatal Romantics’ Club.’

‘Not at all. I love Pushkin. I had one chance to create a love of literature in young people. In the thirties, I loved a woman. Pushkin was our poet. Our poem, the poem of our true love, was “The Talisman”, so when I was close to Pushkin, I was close to her.’

‘You disgust me, Yid,’ snarled Likhachev. ‘You wormed your way into that school to corrupt the leaders’ children and launch a conspiracy to assassinate Comrade Stalin.’

This answered one of Benya’s big questions. When they started to arrest more children, he’d realized that this was no longer just about the deaths of two teenagers. Somehow this had become ‘a conspiracy’.

‘I was never part of any plot,’ he replied, ‘unless it was a conspiracy to love Eugene Onegin.’

‘Was the conspiracy led by “NV”?’

‘There was no conspiracy. As for “NV”, did that stand for Blagov’s name? Nikolai Vadimovich?’

‘Do you take us for fools? It’s not Blagov.’

‘Then I don’t know an NV.’

‘What does NV mean in Onegin?’

‘Ah. In Onegin, it would be Nina Voronskaya,’ Benya said thoughtfully. ‘She’s the only NV in the poem. I’ll recite it for you. Onegin sees Tatiana next to this lovely society hostess:

Benya shut his eyes, taking consolation from the lines.

‘Is there a page number for this reference?’ Likhachev asked.

‘Page? Chapter eight, stanza sixteen, I think.’

Likhachev wrote this down in his childish handwriting. ‘And this NV has to stand for a girl, right?’

Benya Golden was tempted to laugh, so simplistic was the implication of Likhachev’s question. A conspiracy; an unknown person named after an Onegin character? Could the person they were looking for be a girl after all?

‘I know my Pushkin,’ he said guardedly. ‘But I don’t know if NV was animal, vegetable, or mineral.’

‘GOOD MORNING, LITTLE Professor. Rise and shine!’ said the buxom prison warder whom Senka had nicknamed Blancmange. ‘Have you got any new words to teach us?’

Senka noticed her new tone. He was still in the silk striped pyjamas he had been wearing when he was taken; it was past time he changed them. His mother would never let him wear the same pyjamas for so long!

‘Did you sleep at all?’ asked Blancmange.

‘I slept better.’

‘Good. You need to rest for what’s ahead!’

An hour later, Blancmange brought his breakfast. She smiled at him, ruffled his hair and even presented him with an extra two pieces of Borodinsky bread and a huge triangle of goat’s cheese. ‘You’ve lost weight, young man. We need to feed you up. They’ll be back in a minute to take you down for your daily chat.’

Chat? Cheese? Senka wondered what was going on. He wondered again when the guards joked as they escorted him, one even swinging his keys like a lantern. Could they have solved the murder case? If these lumpy men were really members of the famous Cheka, Knights of the Revolution, founded by the heroic Comrade Dzerzhinsky, they should have solved it by now. Senka himself could have solved it much faster. Probably there was no ten-year-old in the world who had to consider such serious matters as he did.

He was shown into a different interrogation room where he found a new interrogator named Colonel Komarov. Where was the Lobster? Tormenting someone else or lying drunk somewhere in a fecal heap, he hoped. Even better, perhaps someone was punching him!

The curly-haired new man didn’t look like a Chekist at all. He actually smiled at him. Senka dropped his chin and raised his brown eyes in what his mama called his matinée-idol look. Surely someone in here actually thought children were worth bothering with? When the interrogator lit a cigarette, Senka noticed that he was missing half a finger on his right hand.

‘When can I see my mama?’ he asked, encouraged by Komarov’s apparent friendliness. Mama often said that she needed to cuddle him as much as possible and certainly ten times a day. Poor Mama hadn’t cuddled him for weeks. ‘Is my mama all right? I fear that she might be missing me? I’m missing her profoundly.’

‘You’ll see her soon if you’re helpful to us,’ Komarov replied, crossing his legs so that his boots creaked.

‘I’ve been helpful so far, haven’t I?’

‘You certainly have.’

Not too helpful, thought Senka. Only a simpleton would be too helpful.

‘So,’ Komarov said, leaning forward, frowning solicitously on his low furrowed brow, pretending to be very interested in Senka, ‘I went to a football match yesterday to see Spartak.’

Oh no, thought Senka, this one’s going to speak to me as if I’m like all the other little boys. Big mistake, Colonel Komarov.