The Nina Onilova Room in the Kremlin was named after a female machine-gunner killed at the Battle of Sevastopol. On the wall was a framed black-and-white photo of a Red Army general placing the Order of the Red Banner medal on her tombstone. The picture hung over a white marble fireplace that was stained like a smoker’s fingers. All around the room, elaborate plaster moldings framed squares of light paintwork where other pictures had once hung, suggesting that the walls had not been painted since the revolution. Perhaps the room had once been an elegant salon. Now it was furnished with canteen tables pushed together to form a long rectangle and twenty or so cheap chairs. On the tables were ceramic ashtrays that looked as if they were emptied daily but never wiped.
Dimka Dvorkin walked in with his mind in a whirl and his stomach in knots.
The room was the regular meeting place of aides to the ministers and secretaries who formed the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the governing body of the USSR.
Dimka was an aide to Nikita Khrushchev, first secretary and chairman of the Presidium, but all the same he felt he should not be here.
The Vienna Summit was a few weeks away. It would be the dramatic first encounter between Khrushchev and the new American president, John Kennedy. Tomorrow, at the most important Presidium of the year, the leaders of the USSR would decide strategy for the summit. Today, the aides were gathering to prepare for the Presidium. It was a planning meeting for a planning meeting.
Khrushchev’s representative had to present the leader’s thinking so that the other aides could prepare their bosses for tomorrow. His unspoken task was to uncover any latent opposition to Khrushchev’s ideas and, if possible, quash it. It was his solemn duty to ensure that tomorrow’s discussion went smoothly for the leader.
Dimka was familiar with Khrushchev’s thinking about the summit, but all the same he felt he could not possibly cope with this meeting. He was the youngest and most inexperienced of Khrushchev’s aides. He was only a year out of university. He had never been to the pre-Presidium meeting before: he was too junior. But ten minutes ago his secretary had informed him that one of the senior aides had called in sick and the other two had just been in a car crash, so he, Dimka, had to stand in.
Dimka had got a job working for Khrushchev for two reasons. One was that he had come top of every class he had ever attended, from nursery school through university. The other was that his uncle was a general. He did not know which factor was the more important.
The Kremlin presented a monolithic appearance to the outside world but, in truth, it was a battlefield. Khrushchev’s hold on power was not strong. He was a Communist heart and soul, but he was also a reformer who saw failings in the Soviet system and wanted to implement new ideas. But the old Stalinists in the Kremlin were not yet defeated. They were alert for any opportunity to weaken Khrushchev and roll back his reforms.
The meeting was informal, the aides drinking tea and smoking with their jackets off and their ties undone—most were men, though not all. Dimka spotted a friendly face: Natalya Smotrov, aide to Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. She was in her midtwenties, and attractive despite a drab black dress. Dimka did not know her well but he had spoken to her a few times. Now he sat down next to her. She looked surprised to see him. “Konstantinov and Pajari have been in a car crash,” he explained.
“Are they hurt?”
“Not badly.”
“What about Alkaev?”
“Off sick with shingles.”
“Nasty. So you’re the leader’s representative.”
“You’ll be fine.”
He looked around. They all seemed to be waiting for something. In a low voice he said to Natalya: “Who chairs this meeting?”
One of the others heard him. It was Yevgeny Filipov, who worked for conservative defense minister Rodion Malinovsky. Filipov was in his thirties but dressed older, in a baggy postwar suit and a gray flannel shirt. He repeated Dimka’s question loudly, in a scornful tone. “Who chairs this meeting? You do, of course. You’re aide to the chairman of the Presidium, aren’t you? Get on with it, college boy.”
Dimka felt himself redden. For a moment he was lost for words. Then inspiration struck, and he said: “Thanks to Major Yuri Gagarin’s remarkable space flight, Comrade Khrushchev will go to Vienna with the congratulations of the world ringing in his ears.” Last month Gagarin had been the first human being to travel into outer space in a rocket, beating the Americans by just a few weeks, in a stunning scientific and propaganda coup for the Soviet Union and for Nikita Khrushchev.
The aides around the table clapped, and Dimka began to feel better.
Then Filipov spoke again. “The first secretary might do better to have ringing in his ears the inaugural speech of President Kennedy,” he said. He seemed incapable of speaking without a sneer. “In case comrades around the table have forgotten, Kennedy accused us of planning world domination, and he vowed to pay any price to stop us. After all the friendly moves we have made—unwisely, in the opinion of some experienced comrades—Kennedy could hardly have made clearer his aggressive intentions.” He raised his arm with a finger in the air, like a schoolteacher. “Only one response is possible from us: increased military strength.”
Dimka was still thinking up a rejoinder when Natalya beat him to it. “That’s a race we can’t win,” she said with a brisk commonsense air. “The United States is richer than the Soviet Union, and they can easily match any increase in our military forces.”
She was more sensible than her conservative boss, Dimka inferred. He shot her a grateful look and followed up. “Hence Khrushchev’s policy of peaceful coexistence, which enables us to spend less on the army, and instead invest in agriculture and industry.” Kremlin conservatives hated peaceful coexistence. For them, the conflict with capitalist imperialism was a war to the death.
Out of the corner of his eye, Dimka saw his secretary, Vera, enter the room, a bright, nervy woman of forty. He waved her away.
Filipov was not so easily disposed of. “Let’s not permit a naïve view of world politics to encourage us to reduce our army too fast,” he said scornfully. “We can hardly claim to be winning on the international stage. Look at how the Chinese defy us. That weakens us at Vienna.”
Why was Filipov trying so hard to prove that Dimka was a fool? Dimka suddenly recalled that Filipov had wanted a job in Khrushchev’s office—the job that Dimka had got.
“As the Bay of Pigs weakened Kennedy,” Dimka replied. The American president had authorized a crackpot CIA plan for an invasion of Cuba at a place called the Bay of Pigs: the scheme had gone wrong and Kennedy had been humiliated. “I think our leader’s position is stronger.”
“All the same, Khrushchev has failed—” Filipov stopped, realizing he was going too far. These pre-meeting discussions were frank, but there were limits.
Dimka seized on the moment of weakness. “What has Khrushchev failed to do, comrade?” he said. “Please enlighten us all.”
Filipov amended quickly. “We have failed to achieve our main foreign policy objective: a permanent resolution of the Berlin situation. East Germany is our frontier post in Europe. Its borders secure the borders of Poland and Czechoslovakia. Its unresolved status is intolerable.”
“All right,” Dimka said, and he was surprised to hear a note of confidence in his own voice. “I think that’s enough discussion of general principles. Before I close the meeting I will explain the trend of the first secretary’s current thinking on the problem.”
Filipov opened his mouth to protest against this abrupt termination, but Dimka cut him off. “Comrades will speak when invited by the chair,” he said, deliberately making his voice a harsh grind; and they all went quiet.
“In Vienna, Khrushchev will tell Kennedy we can wait no longer. We have made reasonable proposals for regulating the situation in Berlin, and all we hear from the Americans is that they want no changes.” Around the table, several men nodded. “If they will not agree to a plan, Khrushchev will say, then we will take unilateral action; and if the Americans try to stop us, we will meet force with force.”
There was a long moment of silence. Dimka took advantage of it by standing up. “Thank you for your attendance,” he said.
Natalya said what everyone was thinking. “Does that mean we are willing to go to war with the Americans over Berlin?”
“The first secretary does not believe there will be a war,” said Dimka, giving them the evasive answer that Khrushchev had given him. “Kennedy is not mad.”
He caught a look of mingled surprise and admiration from Natalya as he walked away from the table. He could not believe he had been so tough. He had never been a pussycat, but this was a powerful and smart group of men, and he had bullied them. His position helped: new though he was, his desk in the first secretary’s suite of offices gave him power. And, paradoxically, Filipov’s hostility had helped. They could all sympathize with the need to come down hard on someone who was trying to undermine the leader.
Vera was hovering in the anteroom. She was an experienced political assistant who would not panic unnecessarily. Dimka had a flash of intuition. “It’s my sister, isn’t it?” he said.
Vera was spooked. Her eyes widened. “How do you do that?” she said in awe.
It was not supernatural. He had feared for some time that Tanya was heading for trouble. He said: “What has she done?”
“She’s been arrested.”
“Oh, hell.”
Vera pointed to a phone off the hook on a side table and Dimka picked it up. His mother, Anya, was on the line. “Tanya’s in the Lubyanka!” she said, using the shorthand name for KGB headquarters in Lubyanka Square. She was close to hysteria.
Dimka was not taken totally by surprise. His twin sister and he agreed that there was a lot wrong with the Soviet Union, but whereas he believed reform was needed, she thought Communism should be abolished. It was an intellectual disagreement that made no difference to their affection for one another. Each was the other’s best friend. It had always been that way.
You could be arrested for thinking as Tanya did—which was one of the things that was wrong. “Be calm, Mother, I can get her out of there,” Dimka said. He hoped he would be able to justify that assurance. “Do you know what happened?”
“There was a riot at some poetry meeting!”
“I bet she went to Mayakovsky Square. If that’s all . . .” He did not know everything his sister got up to, but he suspected her of worse than poetry.
“You have to do something, Dimka! Before they . . .”
“I know.” Before they start to interrogate her, Mother meant. A chill of fear passed over him like a shadow. The prospect of interrogation in the notorious basement cells of KGB headquarters terrified every Soviet citizen.
His first instinct had been to say he would get on the phone, but now he decided that would not be enough. He had to show up in person. He hesitated momentarily: it could harm his career, if people knew he had gone to the Lubyanka to spring his sister. But that thought barely gave him pause. She came before himself and Khrushchev and the entire Soviet Union. “I’m on my way, Mother,” he said. “Call Uncle Volodya and tell him what’s happened.”
“Oh, yes, good idea! My brother will know what to do.”
Dimka hung up. “Phone the Lubyanka,” he said to Vera. “Tell them very clearly that you’re calling from the office of the first secretary, who is concerned about the arrest of leading journalist Tanya Dvorkin. Tell them that Comrade Khrushchev’s aide is on his way to question them about it, and they should do nothing until he arrives.”
She was making notes. “Shall I order up a car?”
Lubyanka Square was less than a mile from the Kremlin compound. “I have my motorcycle downstairs. That will be quicker.” Dimka was privileged to own a Voskhod 175 bike with a five-speed gearbox and twin tailpipes.
He had known Tanya was heading for trouble because, paradoxically, she had ceased to tell him everything, he reflected as he rode. Normally they had no secrets from one another. Dimka had an intimacy with his twin that they shared with no one else. When Mother was away, and they were alone, Tanya would walk through the flat naked, to fetch clean underwear from the airing cupboard, and Dimka would pee without bothering to close the bathroom door. Occasionally Dimka’s male friends would sniggeringly suggest that their closeness was erotic, but in fact it was the opposite. They could be so intimate only because there was no sexual spark.
But for the past year he had known she was hiding something from him. He did not know what it was, but he could guess. Not a boyfriend, he felt sure: they told each other everything about their romantic lives, comparing notes, sympathizing. Almost certainly it was political, he thought. The only reason she might keep something from him would be to protect him.
He drew up outside the dreaded building, a yellow brick palace erected before the revolution as the headquarters of an insurance company. The thought of his sister imprisoned in this place made him feel ill. For a moment he was afraid he was going to puke.
He parked right in front of the main entrance, took a moment to recover his self-possession, and walked inside.
Tanya’s editor, Daniil Antonov, was already there, arguing with a KGB man in the lobby. Daniil was a small man, slightly built, and Dimka thought of him as harmless, but he was being assertive. “I want to see Tanya Dvorkin, and I want to see her right now,” he said.
The KGB man wore an expression of mulish obstinacy. “That may not be possible.”
Dimka butted in. “I’m from the office of the first secretary,” he said.
The KGB man refused to be impressed. “And what do you do there, son—make the tea?” he said rudely. “What’s your name?” It was an intimidating question: people were terrified to give their names to the KGB.
“Dmitri Dvorkin, and I’m here to tell you that Comrade Khrushchev is personally interested in this case.”
“Fuck off, Dvorkin,” said the man. “Comrade Khrushchev knows nothing about this case. You’re here to get your sister out of trouble.”
Dimka was taken aback by the man’s confident rudeness. He guessed that many people trying to spring family or friends from KGB arrest would claim personal connections with powerful people. But he renewed his attack. “What’s your name?”
“Captain Mets.”
“And what are you accusing Tanya Dvorkin of?”
“Assaulting an officer.”
“Did a girl beat up one of your goons in leather jackets?” Dimka said jeeringly. “She must have taken his gun from him first. Come off it, Mets, don’t be a prick.”
“She was attending a seditious meeting. Anti-Soviet literature was circulated.” Mets handed Dimka a crumpled sheet of paper. “The meeting became a riot.”
Dimka looked at the paper. It was headed Dissidence. He had heard of this subversive news sheet. Tanya might easily have something to do with it. This edition was about Ustin Bodian, the opera singer. Dimka was momentarily distracted by the shocking allegation that Bodian was dying of pneumonia in a Siberian labor camp. Then he recalled that Tanya had returned from Siberia today, and realized she must have written this. She could be in real trouble. “Are you alleging that Tanya had this paper in her possession?” he demanded. He saw Mets hesitate and said: “I thought not.”
“She should not have been there at all.”
Daniil put in: “She’s a reporter, you fool. She was observing the event, just as your officers were.”
“She’s not an officer.”
“All TASS reporters cooperate with the KGB, you know that.”
“You can’t prove she was there officially.”
“Yes, I can. I’m her editor. I sent her.”
Dimka wondered whether that was true. He doubted it. He felt grateful to Daniil for sticking his neck out in defense of Tanya.
Mets was losing confidence. “She was with a man called Vasili Yenkov, who had five copies of that sheet in his pocket.”
“She doesn’t know anyone called Vasili Yenkov,” said Dimka. It might have been true: certainly he had never heard the name. “If it was a riot, how could you tell who was with whom?”
“I’ll have to talk to my superiors,” said Mets, and he turned away.
Dimka made his voice harsh. “Don’t be long,” he barked. “The next person you see from the Kremlin may not be the boy who makes the tea.”
Mets went down a staircase. Dimka shuddered: everyone knew the basement contained the interrogation rooms.
A moment later Dimka and Daniil were joined in the lobby by an older man with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He had an ugly, fleshy face with an aggressively jutting chin. Daniil did not seem pleased to see him. He introduced him as Pyotr Opotkin, features editor in chief.
Opotkin looked at Dimka with eyes screwed up to keep out the smoke. “So, your sister got herself arrested at a protest meeting,” he said. His tone was angry, but Dimka sensed that underneath it Opotkin was for some reason pleased.
“A poetry reading,” Dimka corrected him.
“Not much difference.”
Daniil put in: “I sent her there.”
“On the day she got back from Siberia?” said Opotkin skeptically.
“It wasn’t really an assignment. I suggested she drop by sometime to see what was going on, that’s all.”
“Don’t lie to me,” said Opotkin. “You’re just trying to protect her.”
Daniil raised his chin and gave a challenging look. “Isn’t that what you’re here to do?”
Before Opotkin could reply, Captain Mets returned. “The case is still under consideration,” he said.
Opotkin introduced himself and showed Mets his identity card. “The question is not whether Tanya Dvorkin should be punished, but how,” he said.
“Exactly, sir,” said Mets deferentially. “Would you like to come with me?”
Opotkin nodded and Mets led him down the stairs.
Dimka said in a quiet voice: “He won’t let them torture her, will he?”
“Opotkin was mad at Tanya already,” Daniil said worriedly.
“What for? I thought she was a good journalist.”
“She’s brilliant. But she turned down an invitation to a party at his house on Saturday. He wanted you to go, too. Pyotr loves important people. A snub really hurts him.”
“Oh, shit.”
“I told her she should have accepted.”
“Did you really send her to Mayakovsky Square?”
“No. We could never do a story about such an unofficial gathering.”
“Thanks for trying to protect her.”
“My privilege—but I don’t think it’s working.”
“What do you think will happen?”
“She might be fired. More likely, she’ll be posted somewhere disagreeable, such as Kazakhstan.” Daniil frowned. “I must think of some compromise that will satisfy Opotkin but not be too hard on Tanya.”
Dimka glanced at the entrance door and saw a man in his forties with a brutally short military haircut, wearing the uniform of a Red Army general. “At last, Uncle Volodya,” he said.
Volodya Peshkov had the same intense blue-eyed stare as Tanya. “What is this shit?” he said angrily.
Dimka filled him in. As he was finishing, Opotkin reappeared. He spoke obsequiously to Volodya. “General, I have discussed this problem of your niece with our friends in the KGB and they are content for me to deal with it as an internal TASS matter.”
Dimka slumped with relief. Then he wondered whether Opotkin’s entire approach had been to maneuver himself into a position where he could appear to do a favor for Volodya.
“Allow me to make a suggestion,” said Volodya. “You might mark the incident as serious, without attaching blame to anyone, simply by transferring Tanya to another post.”
That was the punishment Daniil had mentioned a moment ago.
Opotkin nodded thoughtfully, as if considering this idea; though Dimka was sure he would eagerly comply with any “suggestion” from General Peshkov.
Daniil said: “Perhaps a foreign posting. She speaks German and English.”
This was an exaggeration, Dimka knew. Tanya had studied both languages in school, but that was not the same as speaking them. Daniil was trying to save her from banishment to some remote Soviet region.
Daniil added: “And she could still write features for my department. I’d rather not lose her to news—she’s too good.”
Opotkin looked dubious. “We can’t send her to London or Bonn. That would seem like a reward.”
It was true. Assignments in the capitalist countries were prized. The living allowances were colossal and, even though they did not buy as much as in the USSR, Soviet citizens still lived much better in the West than at home.
Volodya said: “East Berlin, perhaps, or Warsaw.”
Opotkin nodded. A move to another Communist country was more like a punishment.
Volodya said: “I’m glad we’ve been able to resolve this.”
Opotkin said to Dimka: “I’m having a party on Saturday evening. Perhaps you would like to come?”
Dimka guessed this would seal the deal. He nodded. “Tanya told me about it,” he said with false enthusiasm. “We’ll both be there. Thank you.”
Opotkin beamed.
Daniil said: “I happen to know of a post in a Communist country that’s vacant right now. We need someone there urgently. She could go tomorrow.”
“Where’s that?” said Dimka.
“Cuba.”
Opotkin, now in a sunny frame of mind, said: “That might be acceptable.”
It was certainly better than Kazakhstan, Dimka thought.
Mets reappeared in the lobby with Tanya beside him. Dimka’s heart lurched: she looked pale and scared, but unharmed. Mets spoke with a mixture of deference and defiance, like a dog that barks because it is frightened. “Allow me to suggest that young Tanya stays away from poetry readings in future,” he said.
Uncle Volodya looked as if he could strangle the fool, but he put on a smile. “Very sound advice, I’m sure.”
They all went out. Darkness had fallen. Dimka said to Tanya: “I’ve got my bike—I’ll take you home.”
“Yes, please,” she said. She obviously wanted to talk to Dimka.
Uncle Volodya could not read her mind as Dimka could, and he said: “Let me take you in my car—you look too shaken for a motorcycle ride.”
To Volodya’s surprise, Tanya said: “Thank you, Uncle, but I’ll go with Dimka.”
Volodya shrugged and got into a waiting ZIL limousine. Daniil and Opotkin said good-bye.
As soon as they were all out of earshot, Tanya turned to Dimka with a frantic look. “Did they say anything about Vasili Yenkov?”
“Yes. They said you were with him. Is that true?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, shit. But he’s not your boyfriend, is he?”
“No. Do you know what happened to him?”
“He had five copies of Dissidence in his pocket, so he’s not getting out of the Lubyanka soon, even if he has friends in high places.”
“Hell! Do you think they will investigate him?”
“I’m sure of it. They’ll want to know whether he merely hands out Dissidence, or actually produces it, which would be much more serious.”
“Will they search his flat?”
“They would be remiss if they didn’t. Why—what will they find there?”
She looked around, but no one was near. All the same she lowered her voice. “The typewriter on which Dissidence is written.”
“Then I’m glad that Vasili isn’t your boyfriend, because he’s going to spend the next twenty-five years in Siberia.”
“Don’t say that!”
Dimka frowned. “You’re not in love with him, I can tell . . . but you’re not wholly indifferent to him, either.”
“Look, he’s a brave man, and a wonderful poet, but our relationship is not a romance. I’ve never even kissed him. He’s one of those men who has to have lots of different women.”
“Like my friend Valentin.” Dimka’s roommate at university, Valentin Lebedev, had been a real Lothario.
“Exactly like Valentin, yes.”
“So . . . how much do you care if they search Vasili’s apartment and find this typewriter?”
“A lot. We produced Dissidence together. I wrote today’s edition.”
“Shit. I was afraid of that.” Now Dimka knew the secret she had been keeping from him for the past year.
Tanya said: “We have to go to the apartment, now, and take that typewriter and get rid of it.”
Dimka took a step back from her. “Absolutely not. Forget it.”
“We must!”
“No. I’d risk anything for you, and I might risk a lot for someone you loved, but I’m not going to stick my neck out for this guy. We could all end up in fucking Siberia.”
“I’ll do it on my own, then.”
Dimka frowned, trying to evaluate the risks of different actions. “Who else knows about you and Vasili?”
“No one. We were careful. I made sure I wasn’t followed when I went to his place. We never met in public.”
“So the KGB investigation will not link you to him.”
She hesitated, and at that point he knew they were in deep trouble.
“What?” he said.
“It depends how thorough the KGB are.”
“Why?”
“This morning, when I went to Vasili’s flat, there was a girl there—Varvara.”
“Oh, fuck.”
“She was just going out. She doesn’t know my name.”
“But, if the KGB show her photographs of people arrested at Mayakovsky Square today, will she pick you out?”
Tanya looked distraught. “She gave me a real up-and-down look, assuming I might be a rival. Yes, she would know my face again.”
“Oh, God, then we have to get the typewriter. Without that, they’ll think Vasili is no more than a distributor of Dissidence, so they probably won’t track down his every casual girlfriend, especially as there seem to be a lot. You may get away with it. But if they find the typewriter, you’re finished.”
“I’ll do it alone. You’re right, I can’t put you in this much danger.”
“But I can’t leave you in this much danger,” he said. “What’s the address?”
She told him.
“Not too far,” he said. “Get on the bike.” He climbed on and kicked the engine into life.
Tanya hesitated, then got on behind him.
Dimka switched on the headlight and they pulled away.
As he drove, he wondered if the KGB might already be at Vasili’s place, searching the apartment. It was a possibility, he decided, but unlikely. Assuming they had arrested forty or fifty people, it would take them most of the night to do initial interviews, get names and addresses, and decide whom to prioritize. All the same, it would be wise to be cautious.
When he reached the address Tanya had given him he drove past it without slowing down. The streetlights showed a grand nineteenth-century house. All such buildings were now either converted to government offices or divided into apartments. There were no cars parked outside and no leather-coated KGB men lurking at the entrance. He drove all around the block without seeing anything suspicious. Then he parked a couple of hundred yards from the door.
They got off the bike. A woman walking a dog said: “Good evening,” and passed on. They went into the building.
Its lobby had once been an imposing hall. Now a lone electric bulb revealed a marble floor that was chipped and scratched, and a grand staircase with several balusters missing from the banister.
They went up the stairs. Tanya took out a key and opened the apartment door. They stepped inside and closed the door.
Tanya led the way into the living room. A gray cat observed them warily. Tanya took a large box from a cupboard. It was half full of cat food pellets. She rummaged inside and pulled out a typewriter in a cover. Then she withdrew some sheets of stencil paper.
She ripped up the sheets of paper, threw them in the fireplace, and put a match to them. Watching them burn, Dimka said angrily: “Why the hell do you risk everything for the sake of an empty protest?”
“We live in a brutal tyranny,” she said. “We have to do something to keep hope alive.”
“We live in a society that is developing Communism,” Dimka rejoined. “It’s difficult and we have problems. But you should help solve those problems instead of inflaming discontent.”
“How can you have solutions if no one is allowed to talk about the problems?”
“In the Kremlin we talk about the problems all the time.”
“And the same few narrow-minded men always decide not to make any major changes.”
“They’re not all narrow-minded. Some are working hard to change things. Give us time.”
“The revolution was forty years ago. How much time do you need before you finally admit that Communism is a failure?”
The sheets in the fireplace had quickly burned to black ashes. Dimka turned away in frustration. “We’ve had this argument so many times. We need to get out of here.” He picked up the typewriter.
Tanya scooped up the cat and they went out.
As they were leaving, a man with a briefcase came into the lobby. He nodded as he passed them on the stairs. Dimka hoped the light was too dim for him to have seen their faces properly.
Outside the door, Tanya put the cat down on the pavement. “You’re on your own, now, Mademoiselle,” she said.
The cat walked off disdainfully.
They hurried along the street to the corner, Dimka trying ineffectually to conceal the typewriter under his jacket. The moon had risen, to his dismay, and they were clearly visible. They reached the motorcycle.
Dimka handed her the typewriter. “How are we going to get rid of it?” he whispered.
“The river?”
He racked his brains, then recalled a spot on the riverbank where he and some fellow students had gone, a couple of times, to stay up all night drinking vodka. “I know somewhere.”
They got on the bike and Dimka drove out of the city center toward the south. The place he had in mind was on the outskirts of the city, but that was all to the good: they were less likely to be noticed.
He drove fast for twenty minutes and pulled up outside the Nikolo-Perervinsky Monastery.
The ancient institution, with its magnificent cathedral, was now a ruin, disused for decades and stripped of its treasures. It was located on a neck of land between the main southbound railway line and the Moskva River. The fields around it were being turned into building sites for new high-rise apartment buildings, but at night the neighborhood was deserted. There was no one in sight.
Dimka wheeled the bike off the road into a clump of trees and parked it on its stand. Then he led Tanya through the copse to the ruined monastery. The derelict buildings were eerily white in the moonlight. The onion domes of the cathedral were falling in, but the green tiled roofs of the monastery buildings were mostly intact. Dimka could not shake the feeling that the ghosts of generations of monks were watching him through the smashed windows.
He headed west across a swampy field to the river.
Tanya said: “How do you know about this place?”
“We came here when we were students. We used to get drunk and watch the sun rise over the water.”
They reached the edge of the river. This was a sluggish channel in a wide bend, and the water was placid in the moonlight. But Dimka knew it was deep enough for the purpose.
Tanya hesitated. “What a waste,” she said.
Dimka shrugged. “Typewriters are expensive.”
“It’s not just money. It’s a dissident voice, an alternative view of the world, a different way of thinking. A typewriter is freedom of speech.”
“Then you’re better off without it.”
She handed it to him.
He moved the roller rightward to its maximum extension, giving himself a handle by which to hold the machine. “Here goes,” he said. He swung his arm back, then with all his might he flung the typewriter out over the river. It did not go far, but it landed with a satisfying splash and immediately disappeared from sight.
They both stood and watched the ripples in the moonlight.
“Thank you,” said Tanya. “Especially as you don’t believe in what I’m doing.”
He put his arm around her shoulders, and together they walked away.