One Night in Winter полностью

The book was very heavy but Senka was carrying it upstairs again when he saw four men, two in suits and two in uniform with blue tabs.

‘You’re Senka Dorov, aren’t you?’ said one of the men, who had a bald head the shape of an onion dome.

‘Yes. Who are you?’

‘That book looks most interesting. Can we have a look at it downstairs?’

‘I’ve got to get back for supper. Mama’s waiting.’

But the man had taken the book and was perusing it in a very puzzled way. ‘Opera, eh?’

‘Which is your favourite Tchaikovsky?’ asked Senka. ‘Don’t answer Swan Lake. That’s too predictable.’

‘You’re a funny lad,’ said the man as he steered Senka into the lift.

‘Hey! Hang on,’ cried Senka, but at that moment, his arms were held behind his back and one of the other men put a cloth over his face and he went to sleep. And when he woke up (he didn’t know how long afterwards), he was between the same two men in a Pobeda car approaching Dzerzhinsky Square.

‘Where are you taking me? Who are you?’ he asked sleepily.

And the domed one said: ‘We’re taking you to play Reds versus Whites with your friends. There’s nothing to worry about!’

‘You must think I’m very stupid or was born yesterday,’ said Senka fearlessly – though as the drug wore off, he was beginning to feel fear rising up his tummy and into his throat where he could taste its bitterness, a sensation he had only experienced once before, when one of Demian’s horrid friends had held his nose at school and he thought he was suffocating until he remembered that he could breathe through his mouth.

He found he was still holding Discussing Music, Choreography and Libretto in Tchaikovsky’s Opera and Ballet on his knee. He looked out of the windows: I know this building, he thought as they drove into the grey, granite mountain of Lubianka. He had heard his parents mention it as they passed, and he had not missed the awe, even the dread, in their voices. Before he could say another word, the steel gates swung open and the car accelerated into a courtyard, the doors were opened and he was being frogmarched down some steps and up to a filthy counter which he could not see over.

‘Where is he?’ barked an old woman in a brown coat. ‘I can’t even see him. Little blighter, isn’t he?’

‘Are you taking me to see my sister?’

‘Surname, name, patronymic.’

‘Ring my mama. She’ll come and get me. She doesn’t know where I am.’ Then he remembered something important and reassuring. ‘Is my sister Minka here? Maybe I’m here to collect her?’

‘No talking, prisoner,’ snarled the woman. ‘Answer the questions!’ But Senka was so relieved that he had remembered this and so accustomed, at home and even at school, to being treated with indulgent love, that he ignored her.

‘Because Mama says Minka’s going home soon. Now I understand why I’m here.’

‘Another word out of you,’ shouted a man in uniform, ‘and you’ll get a thick ear, if not a beating! Do you understand me?’

‘Yes,’ said Senka, now shocked and deeply worried. ‘Please can I ring my daddy. He works on the Central Committee.’ He thought mentioning his father might frighten them, but they did not seem to care. They took away his book and gave him a receipt that he didn’t know what to do with. Then a fat warder in a brown coat led him through a door: ‘Body search. Medical,’ she said. ‘Take all your clothes off and hurry up about it.’

Senka felt shy. ‘Even my pyjama bottoms?’

‘Move it! You collect your clothes after.’ She pushed him through another door.

‘But I’ve got a terrible tummy ache. Mama makes me lie down when I have it and then it goes. And I have asthma.’

‘Come here,’ said a man with a wen on his nose and a stethoscope and a white coat. He was sitting in an old metal chair beside a plain hospital trolley, its mattress stained a faded brown. Senka could tell he was a doctor but he was not a doctor like his mother. ‘Stand!’

Senka sensed danger: ‘No!’ He bolted for the door. But the doctor had pressed a button on the wall and the door flew open and in came three warders, a man and two women. Senka was crying now, sobbing: ‘I want my mama. I want to go home, my tummy is really hurting!’ But they held his pale naked body and carried him to the trolley where they dumped him roughly.

‘Let me check you, or they’ll hold you down,’ said the doctor, who was wheezing heavily. ‘And it’ll be worse than a stomach ache, I can tell you.’

Senka stopped struggling but he found he was shaking with fear and foreboding. The doctor told him to open his mouth. Then the wen-nozzled medic pushed in his fingers, which tasted of metal and rubbish simultaneously, and felt Senka’s teeth and his tongue. ‘Turn over,’ he said. ‘Take a breath!’