One Night in Winter полностью

He had been in his classroom preparing for Communist ethics when he’d noticed the envelope peeping out of his copy of the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): Short Course. When he saw it, his heart had leaped: was it another love letter? Those letters had kept him alive for the last term. Rimm was long divorced from a Communist Party instructor whom he’d met on a Pioneers camping trip to the Crimea – and he had not had a girlfriend since. But surely he deserved happiness like anyone else? (Why did women so adore Benya Golden? What did that effete, skirt-chasing smooth-talker have that Rimm didn’t? Didn’t they know he was tainted?) The feeling that someone – he was sure he knew who it was – loved him had restored his battered pride. He knew their passion was impossible, at least for now, but this aura of love gave him confidence in his ambitions.

The envelope had been addressed in a childish hand. ‘Tatiana’s’ love letters were always typed in capitals. But the disappointment had passed swiftly. The school was on the rack: two children dead, more arrested, all of them the scions of Bolshevik grandees. Out of the tragedy, he was convinced, the rottenness of Director Medvedeva’s headship would be exposed. She had made mistakes, allowing bacterial heresies to spread through the school. He had warned her about the peril of employing Golden as a teacher and allowing the Fatal Romantics’ faction to indulge in bourgeois romanticism. And he had been proven right in the most terrible way possible. Only he could cleanse the school of her un-Bolshevik, unpatriotic mistakes. He opened the note. I need to speak to a person in authority. May we meet by the janitor’s storeroom 7.30 a.m.? A young comrade.

‘Tra-la-la Stalin…’ he burst out singing his favourite song. He had known instantly with a surge of sap in his gut that this note heralded his moment.

So now he was waiting there. He had woken at 4 a.m., heart palpitating, walked around Moscow since dawn, taken a coffee at the Moskva Hotel, just to celebrate. He had not served in the war (too old, and the problems with his hips) but he longed to be a spy or a leader. He knew people in the Organs and they appreciated him. And now, he was the only honest and vigilant Communist at the school, ready to do his duty. What time was it now? Seven forty and no one had come. Inside the storeroom, he began to hum.

The door opened and he jumped. It was the janitor, that hoary Tajik in brown overalls.

‘What are you doing here?’ the janitor asked.

Rimm hadn’t thought how it would look: an important teacher like him skulking in a cupboard full of bleach and lavatory paper.

‘How dare you!’ he barked. ‘Get on with your work! And not a word to anyone! Or you’ll be on the next train home to Turkestan!’

‘Yes, boss,’ said the janitor, backing away quickly.

Five minutes later, Rimm opened the storeroom door to get some air – and there he was, a small dark boy approaching with the tentative steps and lithe vigilance of a night creature. When he saw Rimm, he froze.

The covert craft of a spy comes naturally to me, Rimm thought, as he led the way into his classroom. Closing the door, he sat at his desk and pointed to the front row of desks. The boy sat.

‘Demian Dorov, why did you write me that note?’ he asked.

Demian seemed terrified as he stared at Rimm.

‘If anyone asks, we can say I was tutoring you on Stakhanovite poetry,’ Rimm said more gently. ‘Now, you’ve been very brave coming to see me.’

Demian nodded and relaxed a little, but still he didn’t speak.

‘What have you got?’ Rimm asked again.

Demian shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I… I was just joking.’

Think like a Chekist, like a Bolshevik, Rimm told himself. Analyse your informant and his family. The key will lie there.

The Dorovs. The father Genrikh was the Chairman of the Party’s Control Commission, an admirable enforcer of discipline and morals; the mother, that comely doctor and Health Minister. They had four children. After a son in the army, the daughter Minka had her mother’s looks but was un-Party-minded, frivolous and impertinent. The Organs had been right to pull her in. The little boy Senka was clever but sickeningly spoilt by his mother. So Demian Dorov, who resembled his father and tried to emulate him by leading the school’s Young Pioneers, was stuck between the two favourites. Rimm suddenly warmed to him: Demian too was unappreciated. The other children nicknamed him the Weasel but perhaps he too had seen the poison of bourgeois romanticism seeping into the rotten school…

Rimm came down from his seat on the platform and sat at the neighbouring desk to Demian.

‘You’ve been noticed by the Party and I’ve always known that you will go far.’

‘Thank you,’ said Demian. Rimm could see he was blushing a little.