The Lieutenant’s Lover

3

Four weeks passed the same way.

Misha and Tonya were in love: each was the other’s ‘little paw’, as the Russian phrase had it. Each day after work, Tonya would meet Misha by the road leading down to the rail yard. Mostly, they spent their time together walking. The spring was a warm one and it was a pleasure to be outside after a long and dreary winter. They strolled through the city parks, or along the banks of the Neva. But they were outside for another reason too. There was nowhere else for them to go. Twice Tonya had come to Misha’s rooms on Kuletsky Prospekt. Both times his mother had treated her as she would have treated any member of the servant class. Tonya felt invisible, irrelevant and unwanted. Neither she nor Misha could behave normally in that atmosphere and they burst downstairs and outside as soon as they could.

Things were no better at Tonya’s home. Her father had been sent home from hospital, but his arm was healing slowly and it would be months before he was able to return to work. Deprived of his work, the nasty old man was also deprived of his access to tobacco and vodka. When Tonya and Misha were there together, he missed no opportunity to make a cackling joke, a dirty innuendo. He never thanked Misha for saving his life, nor did he ever once refer to the incident. When Tonya had to go next door to look after her grandmother, Misha had to sit and endure the old man’s silent, malicious scrutiny until Tonya was done and they could leave.

So, in the time that they weren’t at work, or taking care of their respective families, Misha and Tonya walked – outside, covering miles and miles, talking, laughing, kissing and walking. They made love too, not once but many times. There was a spot in the park they returned to again and again. It lay inside a thicket of birch trees, screened off by a dense curtain of juniper and broom. They were hardly alone in wanting privacy, of course, and there were times when they found their spot had already been taken (‘Give us a sodding minute, will you, mates?’ came from inside the thicket), and other times when they sensed a queue forming outside (‘Sorry, comrades, take your time’).

But, despite the limitations on their relationship, their love expanded. They lived in a daze. When they were with each other, nothing else seemed real. When they were apart, they dragged themselves around as though drugged.

There was one subject, and only one, that had never been broached by them, but, aside from Tonya herself, it was the topic uppermost in Misha’s mind. The subject had to come up, and one day it did. It was the middle of May. They were walking through the streets in the deepening shade, listening to the dying burr of traffic and the clop-clop of horses’ hooves. Then Tonya squeezed Misha’s hand and said, ‘Your mother. You said she was ill.’

‘Yes.’

‘Headaches again?’

‘Headaches, yes, and back pain. And if it isn’t headaches or back pain, then it’s a cough or a fever or something else.’

‘She’s not strong.’

‘Oh, she’s strong enough, or would be if things were easier for her… You know they want her to start work as a factory hand?’

‘Your mother, a factory hand!’

‘At the saw mill down by the Finlyandsky goods depot. Can you imagine? Wearing blue overalls and shouting above the rotary saws all day.’ Misha laughed, but his face reverted almost instantly to its former serious expression. ‘I have to get her out of Russia. You know that, of course?’

‘To get her out? But…’

‘Her and Yevgeny. They’ll have to join Natasha and Raisa in Switzerland.’

Tonya heard his words and something inside her began to freeze. She walked along, silent and tense. Misha was preoccupied and took a moment or two to notice.

‘What’s up with you?’ he said in surprise.

‘Switzerland!’

‘Yes. Where else? Most of Europe is still at war, you know.’

‘But if she goes, won’t you need to … will you … who would go with her?’

‘Who would go with her?’

Misha stopped and looked full into Tonya’s face. He saw the worry gathered between her eyebrows, her green eyes flitting from one place to another on his face. He was still for a moment, then his mouth quivered and broke out in a merry, widening laugh.

‘Oh, comrade Lensky, comrade Lensky!’

He took her by the waist and her left hand, and, whistling out a tune to give them rhythm, he led her in a rapid waltz down the empty street. Infected by his mood, she started to laugh, but her anxiety hadn’t gone.

‘But really … wouldn’t you need to go?’

‘Comrade Lensky, you’re missing your steps!’

‘No, tell me!’

‘One-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three, one. That’s better. Keep going.’

Tonya’s feet began to move as he instructed her. She was naturally a better dancer than he was, even though he’d been the one with the boyhood dancing tutor. He’d begun to teach her one evening and already she was technically more competent than him, though she still didn’t give herself to the dance the way he did.

‘Excellent, Lensky! Lensky of the Bolshoi!’

Misha turned from a simple waltz into a complex Viennese one, full of turns inside turns, spinning and circling down the street. Then he fumbled his steps. She pushed him in mock disgust. The dance ended with them leaning against a high stone wall, panting.

‘Charmante, Madame,’ said Misha bowing.

‘Tell me.’

‘My job is to get them out of the country with a little money. Natasha and Raisa are fifteen and sixteen. Mother will be safe enough with them.’

‘Really?’

‘No. I lied. Raisa must be seventeen now.’

‘Misha!’

He took her in his arms. He wasn’t broadly built, but there was something in his tallness and confidence that made him seem bigger. ‘I won’t leave Russia without you. And you have your family to think of – your brother, father, and grandmother.’

‘Yes. Yes, I do.’

‘You wouldn’t leave them?’ It was half statement, half request.

‘No… No, I don’t think I could. Father – well, he needs me, but I don’t know if I owe him much. But Pavel’s young, you know. Younger than his age. And Babba, my grandmother, depends on me completely.’

Misha nodded.

‘That’s what I thought. You’re right.’

They walked on.

Tonya wanted to ask Misha if he meant what he had just said about not leaving without her, but she kept her mouth shut, knowing that if she asked him again, he would be certain to bound off again on some teasing diversion. All the same, the thought boomed in her head. Her lover, an aristocrat, a wealthy bourgeois of the old regime, was willing to stay in a country which had, for him, turned into something not unlike a prison camp. And for 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.