‘I’m afraid you do look scary, but I don’t care. I will always miss you and think of you as long as I live because you’ve always been my favourite grown-up, Serafimochka. And I will come and see you,’ he said. ‘Please reserve me my usual presidential-imperial suite at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel!’
‘Do you promise?’ she asked.
‘Come on, Senka, you’re upsetting her,’ said Minka, pulling her brother away. ‘Serafimochka, good luck, my dearest friend. Promise to write soon and we’ll all have to visit you.’ She put her arms around Serafima and held her close. ‘To think it all started that day at the Bolshoi and you managed to keep it secret.’
‘The big boys always said you were a mystery,’ Senka laughed. ‘And they were right! I think it’s the biggest romance I’ve ever heard of, greater than all the romances of the medieval troubadours.’
‘Quiet, Senka, or you’ll make me cry again,’ said Serafima.
Her father climbed down from the carriage where he had been stowing her trunk. ‘God, that was heavy,’ said Romashkin, wiping his brow.
‘It’s got all her books in it,’ said Sophia Zeitlin. She was wearing a purple suit with a white mink collar and a wide-brimmed hat veiled in white chiffon. ‘Good luck, my darling.’
‘I’m missing you already,’ said her father. ‘Send us a telegram as soon as you arrive in Paris. Come back and see us soon or we’ll visit you too often!’ He wiped his eyes and Sophia hugged him as she had not done for years. ‘You’d better get in. You leave in five minutes,’ he added.
George took Serafima’s hand and helped her into her carriage where the best seat had been reserved. A uniformed steward asked if she had any cases to be put above the seat.
Senka jumped into the carriage and put his hand in hers.
‘As long as I live,’ he said, ‘I’ll always wish it had been me instead of that American. Am I really too young for you?’
‘Oh Senka,’ Serafima said, laughing through her tears, ‘out you get!’
The train groaned, doors slammed and the carriages creaked and shunted as if they were waking up. Senka and George jumped off the train. A whistle blew. Serafima heard someone calling her name, and looked through the Dorovs and Satinovs to see Andrei Kurbsky running up the platform. She leaned out of the window to say goodbye to him just as the train jerked into movement.
A puff of steam whooshed out as if the train had coughed. And then it was too late for any more farewells as the train moved away, leaving George and the Dorovs and Andrei Kurbsky waving and blowing kisses until she could no longer see them.
Dear Comrade Stalin, honoured father,
I committed grievous errors in my conduct of the aircraft industry. I am sorry that my mistakes and arrogance led to the loss of aircraft and brave pilots. I apologize. As a Bolshevik, I place myself humbly at the feet of the Party and of the Great Leader whose trust I have disappointed and whose wisdom I so need to succeed as a responsible Party worker. On my knees before you, esteemed Josef Vissarionovich, I admit my sins. Please punish me as you will. I am ready to perform any task high or low to help you lead the country and the Communist movement to more victories under your brilliant genius and visionary leadership.
I look to you as a beloved father to teach me. Without this paternal instruction, I am, like all of your assistants, lost and in need of guidance.
It was long after midnight in Samarkand, and the cockroaches in Satinov’s red-walled house were manoeuvring as confidently across the floor as tanks in a Red Square parade.
Satinov put down his pen and called the guards. The letter would be despatched at once to wherever Stalin was.
He just hoped it wasn’t too late.
AS THE TRAIN raced through the rolling emerald meadows and ravaged battlefields of Belorussia, Serafima sat in her luxury compartment watching birches rising slim on silvery parade, ruined villages, blackened tanks and row upon row of skeletal trucks. Sometimes, starving wild-eyed women, more like scarecrows than people, ran alongside the train, their yellow fingers outstretched for a crumb of food.
