Unbreakable Union of freeborn Republics

Great Russia has welded forever to stand.

Created in struggle by will of the people,

United and mighty, our Soviet land!

SOVIET NATIONAL ANTHEM

While the German Democratic Republic went on claiming that it knew nothing about the building of a wall, on one side of which people would celebrate socialist happiness and Marxist brotherhood; and while the United States was stationing medium-range ballistic missiles in Italy and Turkey, armed with nuclear warheads pointing at the Soviet Union, the Kremlin launched Operation Anadyr. More than 200,000 tonnes of military equipment was shipped to Cuba. Half of the entire Soviet Navy was needed for the mission. The freighter Omsk, with medium-range missiles on board, docked in Havana on 8 September 1962. American spy planes took aerial photographs of the armaments the Soviets were installing on Cuba, which indicated the presence of missile sites: more than twenty rockets, all of which, if fired from Cuba, were capable of hitting large industrial cities in America. On 22 October, America declared a naval blockade of Cuba. Kennedy addressed the nation and put the US military on Defense Condition 2, the second-highest level of alert, threatening to launch a nuclear attack if Khrushchev didn’t withdraw the missiles immediately. The world held its breath. Thekla and Sopio went on calmly playing Patience in Christine and Stasia’s garden. Stasia watched the ghosts silently laying their cards and no longer knew whether she was losing her mind or whether reality wasn’t, in the end, more flexible than she had previously assumed.

She smoked one of her filterless cigarettes and felt for the gold watch she always carried with her. No missiles in the world would stop her looking for her daughter, no matter where, no matter how, she thought, trying to catch a glimpse of the ghosts’ cards. As far as the CIA was concerned, there was every indication that Khrushchev and Castro had agreed to attack the US base at Guantánamo (yes, the same one that, decades later, did such damage to America’s image).

Christine had picked Miqa up from school, and they were strolling through the narrow alleyways of Sololaki. He was eating a little tub of ice cream, which he loved, and excitedly telling her about his day. They walked down the wide road of Kirov Street and continued along Rustaveli Avenue. When they reached the Hotel Tbilisi, Christine stopped and stared at the imposing building.

‘What is it?’ asked Miqa.

‘My husband used to dine here a lot. Back then, the hotel was called the Majestic, and only rich and beautiful people from all over the world used to stay here. It was a beautiful place in those days.’

‘Do you miss him very much?’ asked Miqa. He took Christine’s hand.

‘Let’s walk on. We don’t want to linger over sad things, do we?’ She didn’t answer the question.

In his bed in a private clinic in Vienna, Kostya turned over onto his left side, seeing his daughter’s cheerful, beaming face in his mind’s eye. He wanted to go back to Moscow, he didn’t want her to grow up without a father, she didn’t deserve that, he wanted to live, he wanted to survive, for her, for Elene. He couldn’t die without seeing her again.

Little Big Men continued to toy with the globe, laughing gleefully all the while. The world escaped nuclear war by the skin of its teeth when the American Navy dropped depth charges on a Soviet submarine armed with nuclear missiles. The seconds that followed took the planet to the brink. A secret meeting took place in Washington. Bobby Kennedy agreed to Khrushchev’s demand about removing US missiles from Turkey and Italy, and that night Khrushchev ordered that missiles be withdrawn from Cuba.

Elene dreamed about her father, and cried out for him. Nana slept in her daughter’s room to dispel her fears, but it didn’t help. When Kostya reached Giorgi Alania on the phone — their phone calls had become increasingly infrequent — his friend thought he sounded optimistic.

‘I’ve survived. I’m out of danger for now. I’ll be going home. To Elene. I’ve survived — no leukaemia, the doctors told me today.’

Alania didn’t understand what this was about, but something told him it was serious, and the fact that the call came from a clinic in Vienna confirmed his assumption. These were not, however, subjects that could be discussed on the phone.

‘I had to tell someone. I just had to tell someone,’ repeated Kostya, euphoric.

Alania couldn’t help thinking of Kostya’s sister, the woman whose voice had become the most reliable reference point of his life in recent years; the now-famous singer who had just put out her second album, entitled Summer of Broken Tears (her single was currently competing with another new song with the rather more profane title Love Me Do, by that new band — you know, Brilka, the ones with the silly haircuts).

Sitting at the desk in his office at the embassy, Alania stretched. Kostya had his private number. Back then he’d told him: only in an emergency. Now he wished he hadn’t said it, and that his friend had called him more often. Back then, after Kitty’s escape, they had spoken more regularly — although it was usually he who had called his friend, always from different phone boxes. They were both all too familiar with the rules; they stuck to the regulations and to what they had agreed. Even if it was sometimes hard to reconcile these rules with their own needs.

‘Are you still there?’ Kostya’s voice roused him from his reverie.

‘Yes, sorry, I was just thinking about what you said. Whatever the reason for your stay there, I’m as happy as you are that you’ve made it. You were always a fighter, and you always will be.’

*

Kitty sat, naked, in the little wicker chair in her bedroom. She could hear the bathwater running in the bathroom: she would climb into the bath, lie there, and chase away the thoughts, the doubts, that haunted her. For four nights now, Fred hadn’t come round; presumably she was at this moment asleep in Amy’s lavender-scented bed. Or getting drunk with shifty characters in her new studio in Hackney, for which Amy was footing the bill. Kitty wondered whether she should ask Fred to go with her to Vienna. She was afraid of the look in Fred’s eyes as she flung a cold ‘no’ back in her face. After fleeing Mödling she had never returned to Austria, not since the night her mother had taken the belt in her hands. But Kitty hoped that, if they went there, Fred would finally be able to shake off the curse of that city. And perhaps the city would also stop being her own unlived dream with Andro.

She dragged herself to the bathroom. Her steps were heavy. She tried to recall her mother’s face. She tried to imagine what time had done to her. The time that lay between them. What was this time like? Leaden, icy, metallic?

She slipped into the foaming water; it was too hot, but she wanted to feel it scald her. It was always like this whenever Fred was absent, or her nameless friend didn’t call for a long time: nothing reminded her of life. Not her performances, not Amy’s euphoria, least of all the small, diligent success of her songs. Whenever she closed her eyes, the East came flooding back. How quickly the West deserts you as soon as you stop focusing on it, thought Kitty, silently enduring the hot water on her skin. Just as Fred was unable to scrub Mödling off her body, Kitty was unable to scrub away the East. The marks it had left on her were indelible. She looked down at her scars. Mariam was there, too. She would always be there. Mariam, and her son. Yes — once the East had embraced you and held you tight, once you had choked on the East, it never went away.