Moscow – January 1959
Katya has felt indescribably different during the last few days. A feeling of radiance, of sheer weightlessness, has taken her over. It is as though her heavy, blood-filled organs and the solid hard muscle of her heart have been pulled out of her body, and in their place is a suffusion of light. It is an entirely new feeling for her, something she has never before experienced, and she knows it is happening because she has fully revealed herself to him, because at last there is no longer any part of her that is cut off, sealed or contained.
In her tired grey office, she types letters for the headmistress, her fingers playing over the keys, their clatter soothing the swirl of her thoughts, and tying her to the ground, to her everyday life, albeit with the slightest of threads. It is a pleasurable feeling, to be tugged back down to earth now and then, for it throws into relief the freedom she feels in her heart. Svetlana is stealing more frequent glances than usual at her co-worker, for there is something irresistible about her face today, in the glowing smile that lurks within her dark eyes, and in the quick grace of her movements. When the bell rings, Katya smiles, and offers Svetlana a piece of chocolate, a treat to savour on the way home.
“Thank you.”
The girl is thrilled to receive such a gift from Katya. Since she has been married to Alexander, since she has become the wife of such a well-placed young politician, Svetlana has only admired her more. In her eyes, Katya has ascended to the highest level that any young Soviet girl can aspire to. Svetlana takes the chocolate and places it in her mouth, reverently, holding it with her tongue against the roof of her mouth, very lightly, so that it will melt as slowly as possible.
Alexander’s last hour at his desk drags, but he stays there, in his distraction, not wanting to draw attention to himself, even by something as innocuous as leaving early with a headache. He massages his temples, his fingers pausing, then pulling lightly on his hair. What is he to do? With a strange irony, he has never felt more sure of Katya, and their relationship than he has in this past week, for he has felt at last every crevice of her heart is wholly open to him. But he is sure of nothing else, although there is not a waking moment when he is not turning over in his mind the arguments and ideas that she has been sharing with him.
He too has disliked Stalin’s regime, and the people who took part in it, although his willingness to face up to the harsh facts has certainly increased since he has met Katya. The burden of awareness has always been the problem; the sheer weight of acknowledgment - of mass starvation in the countryside, directly linked to insane collectivisation policies, of a rule of fear and terror in the cities, and of war and destruction everywhere - has often been too much for people to consider and digest. Easier to keep moving, keep working, keep concentrated on earning the next meal, than to think too carefully about such nightmares and what lies behind them. But the problem for Alexander is that now there is a change; everyone can feel it. He remembers the first, soft breath of it sweeping through the room at that party where he and Katya first met. The results of Khrushchev’s carefully leaked speech to the closed congress. He considers for a moment. He trusts Nikita Sergeyevitch, even where he has been misguided or hurried, and even though there have been mistakes, terrible mistakes. There was the brutal, bloody Soviet response to the revolt in Hungary – a result of panic and confusion, not reasoning. And now, the mass planting of corn in an attempt to emulate the cornfields of America; they all have the sense that Khrushchev’s primary motivation is bravado, not necessity. Now they are beginning to struggle for bread, the people on the street, and they call him the kukuriznik – the maize freak. But even so, his leader is working with a good will, even where his foresight may be lacking. Alexander feels that to be true. Books and magazines are being published now, American books, and more importantly, Russian ones. There are rumours that more are to come, books that tell of the hardships of the gulag and the war.
But then, he has begun to question the whole communist ethos. The seeds of that questioning had been within him, had been germinating through meetings and work which had been frustrating and often hopeless. But now he wonders if even a good leader and a good government can make something worthwhile of such a system. Oh, Katya, how you have taught me to start thinking. And if every man starts to think for himself, and believe different things, then how can such a system survive?
And yet, the goals and ideas he has grown up with linger on. He always wanted to work for his country, to make a difference from within the existing framework of government. He had hoped that there would be more revolutions for the Soviet Union, but quiet ones. And things are progressing; there is more accountability, a little more respect for the individual.
“But they listen to us in our own apartment, Sasha.”
He does not recall when Katya actually said those words to him, but he hears them now as clearly as if she is standing in the room with him. He glances up at the imposing leather-covered double doors of his office, his head still resting on his hands, but of course there is no-one there. He sighs and looks down again. Maybe she is right. Maybe it is time to make a difference from without. Perhaps it is the only way. Today, at work, he has found something out, some news that he has been dreading. She is in immediate danger. He rubs his head again. There is no way out of this place. And yet, if they stay, they will both end up in prison, or worse.
There is a knock on his door. It is Sergei, the departmental driver.
“Working late tonight, comrade?”
Alexander shakes his head, and gets up. “I have a headache,” he says.
Sergei smiles, a brown-toothed smile, and puts his cap on his head.
“Then come, I’ll take you home.”
From the soft cradle of the back seat, he sits quietly, mind blank, watching the mustard buildings of the central city blur past the window. The movement accentuates the throbbing in his temples, and so he faces forwards, and watches the back of the driver’s head. The head is small, and fits Sergei’s thin, small frame. The fragile bones and unformed muscles of a boy who grew up during the war, hungry. Starved of even the most basic nutrients. There are so many like that, of a slightly unnatural height and shape. Sergei is from Leningrad, and suffered more than most in surviving the brutal German siege. He has told Alexander how his grandfather, who was already weak from old age, died within weeks of the food supplies being cut, and how his mother then boiled the old man’s shoes over and over again to make a soup from whatever goodness and flavour she could wring from the soaked leather. No one had much back then, but thanks to Alexander’s father’s position, he got through it incomparably better than many other boys his age. When Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, he and his family were evacuated with other government-related families to Kuibyshev. By the edge of the flowing Volga, Alexander lived with his parents and aunt in two small rooms. It was a strange, short interlude in his life, but they were kept safe, distanced from the worst traumas of the war. He puts away the recollections and sighs silently. He is tired, but the weariness is not a physical sensation.
There are long moments when he finds himself removed from the problems and issues that they are facing now, in these last days before his trip to America. At these moments, his mind returns to the fact of Katya’s betrayal, her lying. He finds himself thinking back to dinners they have had, evenings when he has waited for her to get back from the school, times when she has given him such detail about her day’s work. At which of those times was she lying? Or omitting to tell him the things that really mattered to her? Which of his papers did she pick up from the hall table where he would leave them as he walked in some evenings? He pictures himself in the bath, and Katya outside, silently sliding documents from his bag, photographing them, or copying them, her eyes darting up now and then to the closed bathroom door. Her open smile when he emerges, clean and shaved. He is so regular in his routine that she must have been able to calculate to the minute the time she had for reading. For stealing.
He is staring out of the window at his own building, his eyes focused far away from it, when he realizes that the car is stationary. He sits up abruptly, catching Sergei’s amused look in the mirror, and taking up his neat pile of papers, he gets out. He leans down to the driver’s window, which is slightly open to the frosty evening.
“Thank you, Sergei,” he says.
The chauffeur smiles an acknowledgement and presses down on the accelerator, his taillights disappearing into the thick, dark evening. The main door is vast and old, and sometimes, in this cold, requires a push of the shoulder to open. Alexander slips in while it is just ajar, and continues quickly up the stairs. He has lived in this block for nearly four years, and he has never before noticed the dark length of grain that snakes like a fine vein of feathers down the gritty, dirt-darkened wood of the banister. His hand slips along it as he walks. The whole day has been like this – he has been seeing very clearly, noticing that which he had not caught sight of before.
They will go to the Bolshoi that night. He has had an invitation from his superiors, and they will dress up now, after work, he in a dark blue suit and tie, she in a simple, fitted black dress. She does not wear the fur throws and overstated jewellery, or the overpowering scent that many of the other wives do, and by comparison she sometimes appears to the others to be under-dressed or unfashionable, but to Alexander she always looks coolly elegant. After the ballet, which they will watch from the front stalls, or perhaps even from the box reserved for the party leaders, they will have a glass of champagne with his boss and his colleagues under the brazen chandeliers of the Metropole Hotel; a drink that it would be impolite and impolitic to refuse. And so another evening will pass, another few of the precious last hours that they have together before his trip will be gone, wasted on people they do not want to see, in places where they do not wish to be.
The following night they go to visit his parents. They eat there, a robust meal which Alexander helps his mother to complete. There are many dishes prepared this evening – borscht and meat and sausages and cheese – because this is a meal to celebrate Alexander’s trip to America. He is leaving the following day, and his father is swelling with pride and pleasure that his son will accompany the Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union, will be part of such a prestigious delegation. Alexander does not know how he manages to do so, but he smiles, and even laughs once or twice, and tries not to let the aching fear in his belly overcome him when his father hugs him and wishes him a safe journey there and home. And home.
“Well done, my son. This is everything I wished for you.” He grasps the back of Alexander’s neck. “It’s everything I wished for myself too, but I am happier that it has worked out for you. Well done, Sasha, well done.”
Alexander hugs him back, feeling that he is betraying his father with every breath. If only you knew, papa, if only you knew what I am planning to do. To walk away from all these opportunities that we are celebrating here tonight, to walk away from my work here in this government, the work that is making you so proud. He breathes in deeply, in an effort to take control of himself, and he takes in the smell of his father’s shirt and skin. They are scents that were once familiar, but that now remind him only distantly of his boyhood. He wants to stare at his parents, to take in every last detail of their faces, their speech, their eyes – to commit them to a memory that will never fade, for after tomorrow, that is all that will remain to him of these two people whom he has known longer than anyone else. His eyes begin to fill, and he busies himself slicing more cheese and handing it around. When he reaches Katya’s plate, he looks up at her, and she pauses in her chatter and smiles at him, encouragingly. The sight of her makes him feel worse, though, for he realises that spending this final night with his mother and father, attempting to hoard away the details of their faces and characters for his future remembrance, is a luxury that she never had with her own parents. He sighs inwardly and sits down.
“Cheer up, Sasha. America will be more fun than you can imagine.” Misha pats him on the back and Alexander smiles.
“Wish you were going, Misha?”
“Absolutely. I hear the women are….”
Katya hits his shoulder playfully, and they all laugh. Alexander is pleased that Misha has been able to join them. He has removed the burden of conversation from Alexander’s shoulders and has made this a lively two hours, full of jokes and laughter. Katya is also in good spirits, has been so since the night of their talk, and Misha’s laconic humour has been a good foil for her. Between them, they have entertained the Ivanovs, and kept at bay the spectres hovering before Alexander’s troubled eyes.
Now it is late, and Alexander and Katya walk home alone, spurning the two stops on the metro in order to have some peace and privacy amongst the few people who are out on the cold streets.
“You were quiet tonight,” she says, her eyes upon him, concerned. “How is your headache?”
“Fine. Not very bad.” They walk a little further. “Katya?”
“Yes, Sasha?”
“I’m afraid.”
“So am I. But everything will be fine, my love.”
His steps slow down and he waits for her to meet his eyes, and then, when he can see his own misgiving reflected in her anxious gaze, he speaks again.
“You don’t understand. There was news at work yesterday. I haven’t had time to tell you.” He pauses. “They’ve caught someone.”
She takes a moment to digest this.
“Who?”
Alexander shrugs. “No-one’s even supposed to know. The rumour is it’s someone high up, working for the Americans.” A slight laugh. “It all seems so strange. Our lives. This catching of spies. It’s like one of those stories – ‘Red Leaves’. It doesn’t seem real.” He is referring to the series of articles about the outwitting and capture of American spies in the popular magazine Ogoniek.
“Everyone seems relieved now, but I’m worried,” he continues, with panic in his voice. “That person will talk. Do you know anything about it, Katya?”
Misha was just at dinner with them. That is all she knows, and she breathes in the ice-laden air gratefully. There might be others who might know her identity and her role – she cannot be sure - but at least it isn’t Misha that they’ve caught.
Katya shakes her head. “I don’t know what’s happening.”
“It means they’re getting closer.” He doesn’t add “to us.”
They hold hands, and both of them are quiet, thinking now of the practicalities of leaving. How do you plan to do the impossible? His part is undoubtedly the easiest. He will leave the next day for Washington. It will be a long journey, one plane solely for the whole delegation. Once they arrive, he will behave well and carefully, for they will be assiduously chaperoned, and on the following evening there will be a banquet for all the diplomats and attendees. It is then that he must target someone, and quietly make known his wish to defect. He must do it then, must cross over, that night, before any more time passes, for every day may bring his superiors closer to finding out who has been leaking information. In the meantime, Katya will wait until the night of the banquet, and then make arrangements with her contacts here to leave at once. And he will wait, with the Americans, for Katya to join him. And this is where his imagination goes blank. He knows she will bargain her way out by offering his information to her contacts here. But she has been able to tell him very little else, and the timing is so important. He needs detail to feel secure, and now, in this most nerve-wracking of times and hardest of decisions, he has none. Whom will she speak to, how will she escape, and when and where will they ever meet again?
“I don’t think we can plan to move any more quickly than we have already,” she says, and there is a tone of query in her voice.
“No, I’ve just been thinking about it. I can’t see how.”
“Good; then we’ll just think about the plan and wait and it’ll be over with soon. So soon, Sasha. Within a few days. Less than that.” She is whispering to him now, and he nods and tries to feel something of her optimism, or strength of purpose, but his fear is so intense at the thought of all that can go wrong, that he feels himself shivering as they walk. Her hand snakes into his pocket and grasps his, through their gloves, and he squeezes it, but does not look at her. How can he leave her when he does not know what will happen to her?
Outside their building she steps onto a snow bank piled by the road. The surface is icy and brittle and her boots do not sink into it. Standing above him, her face is pink with cold, and her black eyes contain a glitter that seems to reflect the sparkling surface of the ice, refracted by yellow streetlamps. She looks different just now, like a stranger, and he feels a crisp chill clasp his heart, remembers again how deeply she has lied to him. But in America they can begin again. A life together, without threats or lies or pain.
“Will it be this cold in Washington?” she asks him.
“I don’t know. Maybe not.”
“Take your galoshes and your gloves, just in case.”
“Yes.”
Inside the apartment, they shed coats and hats and gloves and she holds him immediately, for a long few minutes, in the warm darkness of the kitchen. Then she goes to the bathroom. He hears the water running, her muttered words, perhaps complaining at the temperature, and the familiar sounds of her footsteps, and her undressing. He follows her in, having taken off his tie and belt and opened the top buttons of his shirt.
“You’re bathing now?”
She nods, and steps out of her underwear. She dips a foot into the water.
“It’s late,” he says.
“I know. But I don’t think I can sleep. Not right now. I feel so strange.”
She slides her body into the water and shuts her eyes. The bath is a little too small, and so her knees are bent, emerging pale and bony from the warmth. He sits on the side of the bath, leans over and kisses an exposed knee.
“Why do you feel strange?” he asks.
Her eyes stay closed, but a single tear escapes out onto her cheek. He leans forward to her.
“This is our last night together, for a while,” she whispers.
He is grateful for the last three words, clings onto them as though they are a life belt around his neck. He holds a hand over his eyes. He feels as though he is sinking.
“I can’t bear it,” he whispers. “I can’t bear to leave without you.”
Her hand emerges, dripping, and takes his. His shirt cuffs get wet, and she pulls back, but he does not care about that now, and he grabs the hand back and will not let it go. Her fingers entwine with his and she sits up slightly, so that she can grasp him properly. His head leans forward to hers and he breathes the words into her ear.
“I don’t want to go. How will you manage? Can’t I go with you?”
She shakes her head, a definitive movement, but her eyes hold understanding and a sympathy for his anxiety. She whispers into his ear.
“You must go. It is our only hope. I’ll arrange everything as soon as you’ve gone. Immediately.” She kisses his ear, with her cool, moist lips, and sits back in the bath.
He stands up and goes to the basin to wash. She is right, of course; they have been through it all already. She cannot arrange anything for herself until he is safely out, or he will be jeopardised. And then, the details of her trip are uncertain, even for Katya – she does not know as yet what route she will take, where she will be hidden, how she will travel, until she has advice from those who will help her. But will they advise her well? He watches her in the small mirror, her eyes closed as she lies there in the water. Please keep safe, my Katyushka, he thinks. Please keep safe, and come to me soon.