One Night in Winter полностью

‘Good.’ Once he had blotted out the momentary disappointment that it was not another voice saying ‘It’s me’, he was comforted to hear her.

‘How’s the project?’ asked Tamara.

‘I’m working hard here,’ he lied.

‘Is there as much to do as you feared?’

‘More. I’m busy from dawn until… I just got in.’

‘Is the sugar harvest going to fulfil the Plan?’

‘I hope so, if we can iron out the problems.’

‘Darling, do you know when you’ll be back?’

‘No, but I think of you all the time. How are the children?’

‘Mariko’s right here. Would you like to speak to her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you OK, Hercules? You sound a little down.’

‘Just tired.’

‘Here’s Mariko.’

‘Hello, Papasha!’ A voice as beautiful to him as the nightingale’s call. He struggled not to weep.

‘Darling Mariko: how are the dogs in their school?’

‘They’re doing a singing class today.’

‘Kiss them from me.’ His voice shook. Love, he thought suddenly, is only enough if it can exist in the world one lives in.

‘Mariko, I kiss you with all my heart,’ said Satinov.

‘Bye, Papasha! Here’s Mama again.’

‘I love you, Hercules,’ said Tamriko, sending, he felt, a ray of warmth that seemed too generous to emanate from her small body. It reached him faithfully, as she had meant it to, like an arrow flying through a dense forest to find its mark.

‘I love you too, Tamriko.’

‘Until tomorrow then,’ she said, and hung up.

It hit him then that he might never see Tamriko and Mariko ever again. That he had been so dangerously obsessed with Dashka that he had scarcely cared about his true life. It was only now, as Tamriko put Mariko on the line, that he remembered the interrogation protocols of Marshal Shako. As a Politburo member he had been sent a copy; they contained the following lines:

How much torture had been required to elicit this from his brave friend? But he, Satinov, had read the words like a blind man and had gone about his life as a sleepwalker somehow navigates the familiar stairs and corridors of his life without seeing them.

The next morning, Chubin had come into the office. ‘Comrade Molotov wonders respectfully if he might have a word with you and Comrade Dorov in his office?’

Satinov had walked down the long corridors and into the antechamber, where he found Molotov and Dorov waiting with odd expressions on their faces. Before he could say anything, Colonel Osipov, the head of Molotov’s bodyguard, had stepped in between him and them.

‘Hello, Comrade Satinov.’

‘Greetings, colonel.’

‘This is for you.’ He handed him an envelope.

He looked for Molotov and Dorov but they had gone.

‘When do I go?’ Satinov had asked Osipov.

‘Have you read it?’ Osipov had asked dubiously.

‘Of course. Do I leave now?’

‘No. First the Organs have arranged a meeting. Follow me.’

And so they’d led him into Comrade Molotov’s meeting room. At the table, between two plain-clothed secret policemen, sat a broken man, so thin he barely filled the shabby suit, his shirt collar loose around his bent neck, his face scarred and blistered, his once luxuriant moustaches now meagre. Osipov told Satinov to sit facing this man, and he knew this was a so-called ‘confrontation’ to elicit a confession from him.

‘You recognize this man, Comrade Satinov?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who is it?’

‘Colonel Losha Babanava.’

‘Would you accept, Comrade Satinov, that Babanava knows everything about you?’

‘No, not everything,’ replied Satinov. Babanava did not know about Dashka. Or did he? ‘But yes, he knows a lot.’

‘Babanava resisted us a little. He’s strong man. But now you must tell what you know, Losha.’