Not for the first time, Serafima wondered about Dashka. She respected her as a former minister and doctor, but she was a very private person, an enigma, apparently so tough. Long blinded by Dashka’s sunniness, she saw there was shade there too.
‘You sound like you have some experience of this yourself?’
Dashka inhaled her cigarette and stared into the fire. ‘What’s important is not who
Now, eight years later, Serafima said goodbye to Dashka on Yaroslavsky Station and watched her husband welcome her home. Like so many others, Serafima had not been able to get a message to her parents, but she eagerly sifted through the crowd of faces to see if someone had come to meet her. Some families had been notified; some did not know when their loved ones would be returning. She was just about to head out into the streets to wave down a car to drive her to her parents’ apartment when she spotted a familiar face with a diffident smile.
‘Andrei? Is that you?’ she asked, suddenly delighted to see him.
‘Yes,’ replied Andrei Kurbsky. He was still handsome in his wholesome way but much shabbier. ‘I’m so happy to see you.’
‘Who are you here to meet?’
‘You, of course.’
‘But how did you know I was on this train?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘How lucky we bumped into each other.’
‘Not quite luck. I didn’t like to think that there’d be no one here when you came home.’
‘How did you know that we were being released now?’
‘Your mother told me you were in Pechora. I asked a favour so I knew it would be sometime this month.’
‘This month? But that means—’
Andrei smiled and adjusted his heavy spectacles, blushing slightly. ‘Yes, I’ve met every train.’
‘Every night?’
‘Yes. It’s not so bad… I bring a book and smoke a few cigarettes and sometimes warm up with a jot of vodka. Oh, here, I have some for you.’ He gave her a small flask and she took a swig.
The vodka streaked its burning path down her throat.
‘Thank you, Andryusha!’ She took another shot. ‘I don’t have anyone else waiting for me. I don’t have anywhere to be…’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘That’s why I’m here.’
It struck her then that he must have always loved her, even when it was not clear she was alive or that she would ever return. She could see too he was not sure how much of this devotion to reveal, afraid that it might frighten her off.
‘But you never wrote… I never knew,’ she said.
‘How could I tell you?’ he asked. ‘I didn’t know where to begin.’
She raised her fingers to her face. ‘I look truly awful. I was once a little attractive but I must seem like a sort of witch now.’
‘Not to me,’ Andrei said, speaking in a rush. ‘You were always entirely your own person, and now you’re even more so. You’ve probably forgotten that I saw you off on the train that day when you were leaving to be married in the West. I told myself then that I’d meet the train when you came back.’
‘You did see me off,’ Serafima said, remembering his face as the train pulled away. She had not thought about him once in eight years yet now she was nourished by the feeling he had been with her even then and that somehow she’d known him well a long time. ‘It’s cold here, isn’t it? I’m shivering.’
He picked up her case. ‘May I? I suppose you want to go to your parents’ place, but’ – he searched her face – ‘I have a small apartment, and it’s warm and full of books and…’
As he pushed his way through the crowd into the street where his car was parked, Serafima followed him with tears streaming down her face; she was crying not just out of gratitude for his kindness, but because it was only at this very second that she was really letting go of Frank Belman. This was the end of her old life and the start of a new one with Andrei Kurbsky.
As she passed through the arches of the station, she saw a tall man in the shadows. Through the blur of her tears, she glimpsed a face that reminded her of Hercules Satinov. But it couldn’t be him: he was more important than ever now, so what would he be doing here? Pulling down his black fedora, the man disappeared into the night and when Serafima blinked, he was gone.
The guards called up from the checkpoint on Granovsky: ‘The guest is on the way up, comrade marshal.’
‘Thank you,’ said Satinov. Mid-seventies but as lean as a much younger man, he looked at his watch. It was seven in the morning; Tamriko was at the dacha with Mariko, who had never married, and an American delegation was in Moscow to negotiate an arms-limitation treaty, so he, as Defence Minister, had been busy entertaining the Westerners at the Bolshoi and a banquet until the early hours. When he finally got home, the phone was ringing. Satinov had listened carefully.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Come early in the morning.’
So he was expecting this visit – but he had scarcely slept, imagining what it might mean.
