‘Your mother’s the best!’ Rosa said enviously to Minka. ‘My mother would never take me to Lerner’s atelier.’
‘Mine’s always asking me to go,’ admitted Serafima, ‘but I can’t bear shopping with her. She’s a despot, swans around like an ageing ingénue and makes me feel awful.’
‘And yet you still look irresistible,’ Minka said, trying to work out why Serafima’s dress, done up to the neck and with cuffs to her wrists, looked so alluring.
‘Oh, nonsense.’ Serafima elbowed Minka, who tickled her while Rosa scolded them for embarrassing her at the ballet. They were not schoolgirls on an outing, she reminded them, but eighteen-year-olds on the verge of womanhood in their finest dresses.
‘Shall we have a glass of
In the bar, they caught the attention of some American airmen. Joshing, toothsome, young, they were so smart in their uniforms, and their skin was as unblemished as a baby’s – and what teeth, Serafima noted, compared with the weathered complexions and golden fangs of Russian men. They possessed a lightness that she admired, even as she stood back a little awkwardly. She was happy for Minka and Rosa to flirt, and the men did not seem to notice her at all.
One of the Americans, an air force captain, a broad-shouldered athlete with a buzz cut, asked Minka for her telephone number but she did not give it to him, her refusal making her even more desirable. The other Americans teased him, ‘Oh, he don’t often get turned down! There’s a challenge, Bradley!’
Sensible Minka, thought Serafima, however much fun this might be. The rules had loosened in wartime but her father had warned her that the Party would reinforce them again afterwards. Bradley, spurred on by his friends, not only insisted on buying them four rounds of drinks but offered them some tickets in a box. ‘We’ve got some extra seats,’ he said.
‘Why don’t you need them?’ asked Minka in the perfect English she had learned in Tamara Satinova’s class.
‘We can’t stay for the show, so please take them,’ Bradley said. ‘The box will just be empty if you don’t.’
‘You’re just here for the drinks?’ said Minka.
‘And the dames!’ cried one of Bradley’s friends.
‘We’re going out to eat as soon as the play starts,’ said Bradley.
Filled with uniformed foreigners and Russian girls, the Bolshoi was the centre of all social life in Moscow, so it didn’t surprise Serafima that Bradley and his American friends were not remotely interested in Prokofiev. Even she, Rosa and Minka had seen it so often they could have danced it themselves.
‘Hey,’ Bradley continued, flashing his amazing American teeth, white and clean and big as icebergs. ‘Wanna join us for dinner?’
‘I’m sure you’ll find some girls who aren’t here for the ballet,’ replied Minka, now suddenly haughty and mock-serious. ‘But we are.’
SATINOV WAS STILL in East Prussia a week later. It was evening and he was in the baronial hall of a country house that was now the headquarters of the First Belorussian Front. The first Soviet troops to break into the
‘I think the full staff can join us for dinner tonight, don’t you, Hercules?’ said Marshal Rokossovsky. They were friends, even though Rokossovsky was a real soldier, and he, Satinov, was a Party man, a member of the State Defence Committee, and Stalin’s representative.
‘Why not?’ answered Satinov, who understood by ‘full staff’ that Rokossovsky meant that the generals could invite their PPZhs (it stood for
He looked across at Rokossovsky and raised his eyebrows as they both acknowledged the sound of shooting and cowboy whooping outside. Losha and the bodyguards were culling dinner in the deer park from their jeeps. They too were in good spirits.
Coming down for dinner that evening, Satinov relished the delicious aroma of roasting venison, the sweet smoke of apple-tree wood in the fire, and, he thought, the scent of the women present. Rokossovsky, elegant descendant of Polish nobility, enjoyed female company but disliked any hint of debauchery in his decorous headquarters. This suited Satinov, who was happily married, hated drunkenness and disapproved of womanizers.
In the hall, Marshal Rokossovsky and his staff were at the table. Young female orderlies in khaki were serving plates of steaming venison piled with vegetables and pouring glasses of wine for the officers. Rokossovsky’s batman was fanning the fire in the great open fireplace, and Satinov’s guards were carrying up boxes of wine from the cellars.
