One Night in Winter полностью

Like a film in his mind, he watched again (for the thousandth time) the joyous scene in the private room in the Aragvi Restaurant. Sex fills just a few hours of our entire existence, he realized, and yet those precious minutes count more than months and years of our normal lives.

As the Central Asian heat rose around him in waves that distorted his vision, he shook his head. What a contradiction she was: controlled and cool within her own realm yet also capable of this utterly reckless, wanton giddiness that overthrew them both. Sometimes, he would amuse – and torture himself – by imagining what time it was in Moscow. What would she be doing now, he asked himself? Would she be putting Senka to bed? Undressing at the end of the day? How he hated Genrikh for his intimate proximity to the humdrum secrets of her daily life.

He hated Genrikh too for his role in Satinov’s extended exile in Samarkand even though he was only the messenger boy for Stalin. Genrikh would do whatever Stalin asked him. A wave of murderous anger passed through Satinov and he dreamed of destroying Genrikh himself – but that would bring down Dashka too and her family. No, far better that he, Satinov, should face his ordeal alone in Samarkand while the ones he loved – Dashka, his children, Tamriko – were safe far away in Moscow. Perhaps the greatest relief was that Genrikh Dorov suspected nothing of his affair with his wife. No one knew, and hopefully no one would ever know. And if the Organs despatched him with a shot to the head, it would die with him.

So here, in the Samarkand house, he awoke each day with the taste of cinders in his mouth and salt rising in his throat. For, every night, he, Marshal Hercules Satinov, wept in his bed.

‘PLEASE DON’T REGARD me too harshly, Serafima,’ said General Abakumov, who was talking to her mother in the sitting room at their apartment. He struggled to his feet, boots creaking, medals a-jingle, his sidearm clinking against the metal in his belt. ‘But I wanted to come myself rather than send a subordinate.’

‘What is it?’ asked Serafima. Abakumov’s knobbly forehead and dark brow terrified her, and she stepped back. He reminded her of her time in Lubianka, a time that even now gave her nightmares.

She looked at her mother, and knew something was wrong. ‘Tell me, Mama.’

Abakumov cleared his throat: ‘Your application to travel abroad with your fiancé has been refused, as has your application to marry him.’

Serafima caught her breath, feeling faint suddenly, only dimly aware of her mother’s hand on her arm. ‘But everyone gets permission. Many girls have gone abroad…’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Abakumov. ‘That’s what I wanted to tell you. This is nothing personal and nothing to do with the Children’s Case. It’s the very fact that so many girls have been marrying foreigners and going abroad that has accelerated the change in the rules.’

‘Is there any way you can help us, comrade general?’ asked Sophia, fixing her blazing eyes on him.

‘I’m afraid not. I’ve already looked into that for you. This comes from the Central Committee. Dear girl, take it from me: the road of life is a twisting path and some seeds fall on stony ground. That’s the long and short of it.’

Satinov walks into the centre of Samarkand, past the primitive Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Tajiks, walking, squatting, chewing khat, taking chai on the wooden platforms of their chai-khanas, watching the world turn, far from Moscow, in their robes and embroidered skullcaps. He sits and takes tea in a chai-khana. Then he crosses the ruins of the Registan, the old square, and walks between mud-caked walls towards the tomb of Tamurlane; his ‘companions’, plain-clothed Uzbek guards, follow him.

Tamurlane, that lame, pitiless conqueror who was the Stalin of his time, lies beneath a ribbed and fluted azure dome like a giant’s blue turban. Satinov looks down at the simple jade stone that covers the emperor’s tomb and he realizes that his own works, even the world-historical deeds of Stalin himself, may one day be forgotten like this.

It seems unlikely… but what if Lenin’s state, built on the graves of millions, is one day overturned? he thinks. They might even rename the towns and streets that bear my name. What if all that truly matters is my children, my beloved wife – and her, my secret passion. What if only love will justify my ever having lived at all?

He bows his head before Tamurlane’s simple catafalque. Satinov longs for death, instant, unexpected death, and doesn’t fear it. His vision blurs as he gives thanks for this delicious sadness that makes him complete.

High on a mountain over the Black Sea, an old man in a white linen suit was smoking his pipe, his eyes slits in the bright sunlight, the irises as yellow and speckled with black as a beestripe, his high, slightly sunburnt cheekbones set with an archipelago of freckles in a range of pockmarks.