The Lieutenant’s Lover. Harry Bingham
her! She felt light-headed at the thought.
‘You say you have to get them out … do you know how?’
‘Yes. The Rail Repairs Yard. I didn’t just end up there by chance, you know.’
‘The rail yard? You mean…?’
Misha told her. He told her about the single-track railway which crept out of Petrograd up to the Gulf of Finland. How it crossed the border between Vyborg and Lahti before turning and heading for Helsinki itself. How six wagons from the Vyborg line had come into the yard. How he had manipulated Tupolev into assigning the repair job to him.
‘They do need repair,’ said Misha. ‘They’re in a terrible state. A couple of them are probably beyond salvage. But that’s not all I’m doing.’
He told her the rest of it. How he was building a compartment flat against the rear of one of the wagons, built to look like the sloping wagon wall itself. How he would put in a bench, airholes, a sliding entrance panel. How another few weeks’ work would see his project completed. How he planned to conceal his mother and Yevgeny in the compartment one summer’s evening before the hoppers were loaded for export.
Tonya could well imagine the labour, ingenuity and sheer courage that had gone into Misha’s plan.
‘Your mother is very lucky,’ she said.
‘Well, we have yet to see if the idea works.’
‘And money. You said they needed money.’
‘Yes.’ Misha hesitated. He trusted Tonya, of course. He could hardly have told her about his escape plans otherwise, but telling her about the money seemed like a still more serious confidence. After all, senior Bolsheviks had been on the trail of the money when Misha had wafted it from in front of their noses. He had even at one stage suspected that Tonya had been involved in the whole affair.
‘You don’t have to tell me.’
‘No, no. It’s all right.’
Misha preferred to trust Tonya than to hold anything back. So he told her. About the safe. The codes. The items inside. ‘There was jewellery there. Not a huge amount, but – well, plenty.’ Misha felt embarrassed. It might not have been a huge amount to him, but to Tonya it would have represented vastly more money than her father had earned in his entire life. ‘And papers,’ he added. ‘Father had been buying stocks, bonds, anything he could. But buying it through agents abroad. He was clever about it. He didn’t know whether England and France or Germany and Austria would win the war. So he shared the funds about. Some in Berlin. Some in London. Some in Paris. Some in Geneva. Part of that money will be lost of course, but not all. If my mother gets to Switzerland, she will have plenty. She will be a rich woman. Rich enough. If, one day, we go to join them, then we’ll have enough to set up in business, to make a good life out there.’
Tonya heard his words as though he were talking about taking her to dinner on the moon, or asking her how she would like to furnish her palace. His words seemed ludicrous, but also somehow believable, coming from him. For the first time, Tonya began to believe that things might yet all turn out for the best.
4
Tonya was home early from the hospital. It was early July, the season of Petrograd’s famous white nights, when the nights were so brief that darkness never really set in, a late twilight fading into an early milky dawn.
Normally, she would have gone straight to the rail yard to wait for Misha to emerge. But not tonight. Misha wanted to use the long night to complete the secret compartment in one of his grain hoppers. He planned to stay up all night to do it. He wouldn’t see Tonya again until the following evening.
But, though Tonya missed him, she didn’t mind too much. She was behind with her housework and the apartment needed cleaning. She spent half an hour with her grandmother, Babba Varvara, then went back into the main room and began working. She hummed to herself as she worked, and sometimes found herself unconsciously repeating the dance steps that Misha had taught her. She was doing just that, twirling as she carried the cooking pot over to the stove, when she sensed the door open behind her. She stopped dancing and put the pot down. It was Rodyon.
He looked tired and thin, worn down. She saw him still from time to time, but not often. She was surprised to see him, and guarded.
‘Zdrasvoutye,’ she said.
Rodyon nodded, but said nothing. He sat down.
‘Tea?’
‘Yes, please, if you have it.’
‘You can have bread too, if you want.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You’re not fine. You look tired and hungry.’
Tonya put the kettle on the stove, then jiggled the logs inside to stir up the heat. The apartment was hot even with the windows open wide, and the heat was an unwanted extra. There was also something unsettling about the length of these summer days. When she was with Misha, the long days made sense. But when he was absent, the endless days and shimmering nights seemed mildly insane, as though the world had lost its ability to rest. She cut a slice of bread and spread it with pork dripping and salt.
‘Here.’
‘Thank you.’
Rodyon ate it wolfishly, then sighed.
‘You know, Marx took a material view of humanity. It was his greatest insight, his greatest accomplishment. But you don’t realise how right he was until you’ve been hungry. All the time I’ve been sitting here, I’ve wondered whether you had sugar or jam to go with the tea. I desperately hope that you do, but have been too proud to ask. A spoonful of sugar against a man’s soul. Pitiful, isn’t it?’
‘I have sugar, yes. And lemon.’
‘Ah, the careful management of the official allocation or the miraculous bounty of the black market. I wonder which.’
‘You know very well which.’
‘Yes, and I’m going to enjoy it anyway. You were cooking as I came in. At least, you were dancing with a cooking pot, which I assume is the same thing. Don’t let me stop you.’
Tonya did as he said. To the pot, she added cabbage, beans, carrot, onion and a thick shin of beef. She put the whole thing on to boil. She worked carefully, guarding her expression. She wasn’t exactly nervous of Rodyon, but the two of them hadn’t seen each other for a while and Rodyon seldom did things without a purpose. She waited for him to reveal it.
The kettle boiled. She made tea, let it brew, then poured it, adding three spoonfuls of sugar. Rodyon took the cup with thanks. He had barely changed his posture since first sitting down, but she could see his tiredness slipping away, and he wore it now as a mask more than anything.
‘We’re seeing Pavel more and more at the Bureau of Housing,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
It was true. Because of Misha, Tonya had been at home very little. Pavel, never properly rooted since their mother had died, had taken to leaving home more and more. He often ended up at the Bureau of Housing, where his admiration for Rodyon had blossomed into something close to hero-worship.
‘He is useful. He runs a lot of errands for us.’
‘He’s a good boy.’
‘Yes… And when did he last wash, do you know?’
‘Wash? He washes every day.’
‘Face and hands, yes. I meant more than that. All over.’
Tonya shrugged. ‘He’s fourteen, nearly fifteen. You know what it’s like.’
‘This week? Last week?’
‘What do you care? He won’t wash