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Valentin Ivanov had never cried so openly. He wandered down Moscow’s Gorky Street in a haze. All round him, people looked shocked, many had tears in their eyes. Strangers embraced and consoled each other. Soviet flags hung everywhere half-mast, loudspeakers played Chopin’s Funeral March repeatedly. Trams and cars drove slowly as if embarrassed to be still going about their business on such a day as this. The whole world seemed to be in mourning. The unthinkable had happened; and now life would never be the same again. What would become of them; what did the future hold? But it was too big a question, too daunting a prospect and not one to be dealt with today, or for the foreseeable future, not while the shock still pained their souls, not while the grief seeped from every pore. Valentin knew he would remember this day forever more. 5th of March 1953 – the day Comrade Stalin died.
The day seemed to highlight the other disappointments in his life – the day his mother died, the day he left love behind in Budapest, the day he knew his footballing days were over. Years of existence, punctuated by these days of disappointment. And now this. For thirty years Josef Stalin had been their guiding light; for thirty years their father and saviour. And now he was gone. It was inconceivable. The man who’d been at Lenin’s side at the forefront of the revolution; who’d succeeded the Soviet Union’s founding father; the man who’d fought so hard to rid the country of enemies; who’d exposed sabotage and counter-revolutionaries at every turn as he sought to protect socialism; the man who’d guided the nation to victory against the Nazis, who’d out-thought and outmanoeuvred Hitler; who’d brought harmony to the Soviet Union. Yes, people had suffered, families torn apart, but no one said revolution was easy when there were so many with evil intentions and selfish motivations. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. Everything the country now stood for was down to the one man. And now that man was dead. No wonder people cried, no wonder they looked on the future with uncertainty. Life without Stalin was unimaginable.
Valentin was a soldier now, a sergeant in the Red Army and he wore his uniform with pride, but never with such pride as on this day. As a young lad, he’d managed to avoid national service by virtue of playing for one of Moscow’s premier football teams. He’d been the envy of his friends but his moment of glory was short-lived. The game in Budapest, four years ago, had, in effect been his swansong. On their return to Moscow, he was reprimanded for missing too many training sessions whilst in Hungary, for too often turning up late. When they demanded an explanation, he wouldn’t tell them. He couldn’t tell them it was because he preferred to be walking in the park with Eva; he didn’t want Eva’s name written in their grubby files. Then, soon after that, a youngster, a ‘name for the future’, had risen through the ranks and was waiting for his turn to play in the first team. His chance came at Valentin’s expense. Valentin remembered too well watching the team play, wanting them to win out of a lifetime’s loyalty while desperately wanting to see the usurper fail. But game after game the team won and the usurper played better each time until even Valentin had to stand back and admire his pernicious talent. The end wasn’t long in coming. Called in for a quiet word – greeted by the sympathetic voices and heart-felt gratitude for three year’s service, and then ‘goodbye’.
The barren years, as he liked to call them, followed. Years of mundane jobs disguised as doing one’s duty as a proletariat that sapped his energy. Feverish attempts and applications for a transfer to Hungary were rejected out of hand. He could provide no reason or justification for such a move. Finally, he gave up, as he knew he would do all along.
Then, the previous year, in a moment of patriotic ardour, he volunteered. No conscript was he, but a volunteer. There was kudos in that, and when added to his illustrious past as a footballer, it resulted in a fast promotion to the rank of sergeant. He was liked, his companionship sought, his opinion respected. Unlike the dukhs, the young conscripts, Valentin never suffered the bullying, the habitual violence meted out by the longer-serving boys while the officers too readily turned a blind eye. He was never forced to clean toilets with a toothbrush, or made to spend hours cleaning one pair of boots. Officers and recruits furnished him with books, writing paper, cigarettes and respect.
He’d joined with a grin on his face, happy that he’d made the commitment and given himself some direction in life. They shaved his hair and gave him his uniform, trained and drilled him, and finally accepted his oath of loyalty to the People’s Army, promising to serve their beloved leader and the motherland with honour and dignity, prepared, if necessary, to forfeit his life for the greater good. He spent his spare time in the barracks’ Lenin Room, reading his history, learning military science and polishing up his political theory. The officers appreciated the good example he set to the younger boys, and verbally patted him on the back. He purposely kept his distance, refusing to join cliques, maintaining a jovial comradeship with all but aligned to none.
By chance his regiment had been ordered into Moscow a month before Stalin’s death. Amongst their duties was guarding visitors through Lenin’s Mausoleum, the most sought-after and easiest of duties, guiding the daily streams of visitors passed Lenin’s waxwork-like figure, ensuring no one stopped or tried to take photographs. The day of fifth March was a rare day’s leave. Never did he think he’d spend all of it in tears, his ears devoid of all sound but Chopin’s Funeral March.
Often, during his idle moments, he would think of his days in Budapest. It felt like another lifetime, a memory that by right belonged to someone else. He’d had many affairs during his time as a footballer; the players attracted women, and his affair with Eva was amongst the most short-lived. They’d only made love the one time, the rest consisted of coffee in the café and genteel strolls in the park. But it was Eva with her beautiful bronze-coloured hair, and Eva alone, who’d stolen his heart, and she alone who remained indelibly fixed in his memory. There’d been a sadness about her, a part of her life stained by some event too raw to mention, too real for words. But he’d never been tempted to ask. Her past belonged to her and he had no wish to interfere; he didn’t want to associate her with any catastrophe he had no control over, just as he knew that he could never exist in her future, nor her in his. Theirs was a time spent in the present for each other. That present now survived in the past but the smell, the touch of it still belonged in his memory as a living thing. He found himself capable of reliving their conversations, their sideway glances, the gentle brushing of hands. He remembered too the old man thrown out of the café, the two waitresses, the boy and his football in the park, the little details, the small components that made up the whole.
He remembered vividly the goal he scored, the goalkeeper who should have saved but fumbled. He wasn’t a player who scored often but that was his most prized goal because she’d been there to witness it. It was also quite the strangest game he played in, something had upset the Hungarian players, something he could never pinpoint, culminating in their goalscorer’s fainting fit following his penalty goal (the most doubtful of penalties he’d ever witnessed). The boy looked like death, fear written all over his face, as if scoring that goal was the biggest mistake of his life. Strange game, football.
He wished he could relive those times for real, to touch her, to smell her breath; to relive that final afternoon in the hotel room, her nakedness, her desire. He’d call it love but love seemed too big a word for so short a time. But, he knew, in his heart, there was no other way to describe it.
But for now, he was a soldier in Stalin’s army and Stalin was dead. It was impossible to comprehend, that a man who’d been such a huge part of everyone’s life, should now be gone. Impossible and frightful. The world would never be the same again. And at that moment, on the afternoon of 5th March 1953, the future looked bleak.
Very bleak.