He mispronounced the French, but the humanity of the hand-kissing broke something within Serafima’s mother.
‘Please, comrade general, please… Do you have to take her? You don’t have to. She’s done nothing. She’s a child! Take me instead!’
The two Chekists flanking Serafima took her arms, and together they walked down the wide steps of the Granovsky building; then they stood back as Abakumov strode past them, his gold-braided hat on his head, his dark eyes straight ahead under the visor, and the movie poster under his arm.
‘Get in with me, Serafima,’ said Abakumov, gesturing at the open door of his car, a white Fiat sports car, once the toy of an Italian general. ‘Few girls resist a ride in this machine.’
The creamy leather creaked as he manoeuvred himself into the driver’s seat next to her. ‘I like to drive myself,’ he said, slipping on his driving gloves and gripping the beige calf’s leather of the wheel. ‘You’ll be more comfortable than in a ‘black crow’.’ He looked at her as she sat mutely in the passenger seat.
Throwing the gearstick into first, he accelerated out of the courtyard of Granovsky, followed in convoy by one of the secret police vans, known as ‘black crows’, and a little Zhiguli full of guards. As they sped through the streets, Abakumov saw that Serafima was still crying. Fuck it, why did I transport her in my car? he thought. Because of the mother, of course. Weeping girls were tough for a man to see, even for him, whose rise had been oiled with the blood of men, women and children, those he had beaten to pulp with his own fists, or despatched with his own sidearm – and those hundreds of thousands more he had never met but whose lives he had destroyed. He suppressed a spasm of anger at her tears: didn’t the little fool realize how kind he was being to her? She could have been in the cage in the back of a ‘black crow’.
‘And I thought it was just a love story,’ Abakumov repeated Stalin’s words to him from the previous day. Stalin had been implying that the Children’s Case was a serious conspiracy that Abakumov must investigate vigorously. Well, he had arrested the children – even the ten-year-old Senka Dorov – but these were VIP kids. Silk gloves were called for. Stalin was preparing for the Potsdam conference but what did he really want Abakumov to do with them? Stalin spoke in hieroglyphic codes and Aesopian fables, and even Abakumov was often bewildered by the obscurity of his intentions. Abakumov needed another clue.
The high steel gates of Little Lubianka Street were opened by guards and the car swung into the courtyard. The gates closed behind and the car doors were opened by two Chekists.
‘Take her down and register her,’ said Abakumov.
He watched Serafima Romashkina get out of the car as if she was in a trance and look around, unsure which way to go, at the high walls with the tiny barred windows and, to the side, at the rank of waiting ‘black crows’. Placing his hand on her shoulder, he pushed her gently towards two figures in long brown coats who looked like laboratory assistants. ‘That way! And don’t worry, girl. You’ll be home before you know it. It’s just routine – you know that. Don’t cry.’
The stench of detergent, distilled urine, compacted sweat – the perfume of prison life – made his nose twitch even though he knew it so well. He saw her face as it hit her for the first time. She staggered a little on her long legs and fear shadowed her green eyes. Well, prisoners were meant to be afraid, and this prison had been designed to frighten them because the power of the Knights of the Revolution had to be beyond the imaginations of the Enemies they had to break. But the main thing for him was that he was always on top. He always won. Stalin trusted him, and he believed absolutely in his own invincible destiny.
Holding her little case, Serafima walked down the steps into the lobby of the prison and stood before the counter. Its varnish was cracked, its surface greasy from the hands of thousands upon thousands of prisoners, and there were two slight indentations formed by their elbows as they leaned forward, just as this new prisoner was doing now.
‘Surname, first name, patronymic and age?’ said a brown-coated woman.
‘Romashkina, Serafima Constantinovna. Eighteen.’
She was pretty, this Serafima, thought Abakumov, but it was the mother, the film star, that he wanted. He wondered what else Serafima was saying but weren’t the words, like the tears, always the same, and hers were lost in the cacophony of doors slamming, cars arriving, locks grinding, orders barked and the crack of his boots on the stairs worn smooth by decades of unsteady feet entering the lost world for the first time.
‘Sign here, prisoner,’ said the warder. ‘Go through that door. Body search.’
