‘And down here,’ he said to his visitors, ‘your old host has been weeding the vegetable gardens. Honest labour is good for the soul.’
A gardener, a foxy old man who looked not unlike Stalin himself, was digging, and Stalin nodded at him and said a few words in Georgian. ‘He says the tomatoes are not bad,’ Stalin explained. ‘Would you like some tomatoes and figs to take back to Moscow?’
‘It’s a beautiful garden,’ agreed the American ambassador, Averell Harriman, clad in a cream suit with seams pressed as sharp as razors. ‘Generalissimo, I must congratulate you on your tomatoes as well as your other achievements.’
Frank Belman, boyish and slim in his immaculate US Army uniform, translated quickly into fluent Russian. When Stalin laughed, the creases in his face resembled the grin of a tiger, but all Frank could really think about was Serafima. When he saw her after their travel plans had been banned, he feared she would make herself ill with disappointment and heartbreak.
‘Well, thank you for coming to see me down here,’ said Stalin to the two Americans. ‘An old man must rest a little…’
The visit was over. Stalin ambled along the path with his bowlegged gait up the steps to the verandah and through the white pillars into the cool villa that smelled of orange blossom and tobacco. Frank noticed that every surface in the house was covered with books: he saw novels by Edith Wharton, Hemingway and Fadayev; biographies of Nadir Shah and the Duke of Marlborough; heaps of literary journals; an open book marked with Stalin’s marginalia in a blue crayon.
Stalin led them through the house and out the other side where the ambassadorial Buick waited alongside Stalin’s limousines. A fat boozy general, probably the chief bodyguard, saluted and tagged along after them down the steps to the driveway. Stalin’s seaside villa in Abkhazia was totalitarianism by architecture, Frank thought. The house was an impregnable eyrie atop a steep cliff overlooking the Black Sea, invisible from every angle except from the water, and could only be reached through a single-track tunnel carved into the solid rock of the mountain. Frank concentrated hard to translate every nuance of the ambassador’s words but his mind was elsewhere. With Serafima.
‘Thank you for seeing us, generalissimo,’ said Harriman. ‘I have to tell you we Americans, from the White House to the man in the street, are still amazed and grateful for the heroism and sacrifices of the Red Army under your brilliant command.’
‘Please send President Truman my regards,’ replied Stalin. ‘And I hope you liked the Georgian food and wine.’
‘
A friend of Frank’s father, Harriman was burly and tall, with polo-player’s shoulders and heavy eyebrows.
Stalin scanned Harriman benignly. Their conversation seemed to be going horribly slowly, Frank thought, barely able to restrain himself from intervening. He was terrified that Harriman had forgotten about him or, worse, had decided that now was not the appropriate time to make a request.
‘Generalissimo, before we leave you to this lovely place and your much-deserved rest, may I ask a personal favour?’
Frank was so nervous that he could scarcely translate this, yet these were the words that he wanted to translate more than any that had ever been uttered.
‘Ask anything. After all these years, we’re friends,’ said Stalin, looking somewhat moved. ‘We’ve shared some moments as allies.’
‘Thank you. My interpreter here, Captain Belman, who has translated at several of our meetings, is engaged to a Russian girl named Serafima Romashkina.’
‘Congratulations!’ said Stalin. His eyes flicked towards Frank and back. No hint that he knew who she was. ‘We believe in love between allies.’
‘She’s the daughter of the actress Sophia Zeitlin and the screenwriter Constantin Romashkin.’
‘You must have good taste,’ said Stalin. A grin for a moment, then the inscrutable oriental mask.
‘Yet, probably due to an oversight,’ Harriman continued, ‘this girl has been refused permission to leave the Soviet Union.’
Stalin glanced sideways at Frank, and Frank tried to look honest and modest and earnest simultaneously.
Stalin sighed. ‘Our country is full of yesmen,’ he said. ‘Lenin called it the Russian disease. Your newspapers call me a dictator, but as you see, I don’t control everything. The Politburo has a mind of its own and sometimes I have to be wary not to offend the diehards there.’ He waved at the fat general nearby: ‘Comrade Vlasik, write down the names.’
The general was already writing in a little notebook. Frank felt the unfathomable glare of Stalin’s yellow eyes: ‘Don’t worry, young man, I’ll look into it.’
LATE AFTERNOON. SIX p.m. The phone was ringing. Waiting in the kitchen, Satinov, sporting a prickly grey beard and stained khaki trousers, shirtless, barefoot, picked it up.
‘How are you, darling?’ Tamara said.
