Ice Road, page 18
Besides. All this talk of death is just the result of some insignificant’s, some madman’s, fantasy. Sergei Mironovich cannot know, as few of us can ever know, whether this will really be his last day on earth.
It is 1 December 1934, and Sergei Mironovich Kirov can’t waste time in speculation: he has too much to do.
It is 1 December 1934 and Leonid Nikolaev is coming out of sleep. The transition is unusually abrupt: one moment he is wrapped in oblivion and in the next, opening his eyes, he is instantly alert. He thinks, clearly and with conviction: today’s the day.
He is calm. So calm in fact that he managed to sleep the whole night through, something he hasn’t done for months. Just one thought possesses him: that this, the last day of his ordinary life as he has known it, might also turn out to be his last. In which case he must savour it. And talk to Milda.
There isn’t much space in the room, not with the four of them on camp beds and sofas. He doesn’t want to wake the boys and so he is careful as he turns to face his wife, his intention to reach out, gently, and pull her to him. But then . . . he hesitates. She has contrived, he sees, to turn herself away from him as she almost always does, so that all that is left to him is her back, curved and lumpy. Like congealed pudding. Even her limbs she keeps away from him. She has one arm tucked under her and the other abandoned and outstretched as if reaching out to the sleeping boys, as if she is protecting them from me, he thinks.
Desire has fled and with it the impulse to wake her. He turns away to face the wall. His wall. His place. Needing to clear his mind of her (he will not permit himself the distraction of even righteous anger), he concentrates on the sounds of the city stirring. Directly outside, he can hear the banging of the toilet door as one of their neighbours is early to beat the morning queue. He won’t listen to that – it will only annoy him further – so he stretches his auditory antennae to embrace the world outside.
It must have snowed again last night, he thinks: instead of the tapping of early morning feet, all he can hear is the soft slurring of boots. Soon, he thinks, Milda will be getting up. Soon life will appear to go on as normal. But soon . . .
He shuts his eyes. He will lie here, quietly, as she wakes the boys. He will not speak nor get up. Not yet.
Later he has something to accomplish. For the moment he must conserve his strength.
It is 1 December 1934 and so cold outside that, stepping into the warmth, Kolya finds his vision almost completely misting over. As he waits for it to clear he stretches,easing out the tendrils of damp that have penetrated his bones. He looks across the room.
After first removing his boots so as not to wake Natasha (that’s the reason he volunteers for the night shift, so she can be more comfortable in the small bed they share), he sees she’s already up and dressed and that she’s standing, full-bellied, by the window, gazing out. It’s almost as if she was watching out for him but if she was, she seems to have missed his arrival. She keeps standing. Staring.
She amazes him, she always has, and more now with her shifting female form. When he’s directly behind her, as he is now, she looks almost as slender as she was on the day he first declared his love. All he has to do is change position, however, and she is radically transformed. He moves, one step to the right, and sees what she has become: her once small breasts plumped and rounded, her once flat stomach swelling with new life, her adult thighs firmer and stouter than the girl’s had ever been. And that’s not where the changes end, for although it’s true that pregnancy has physically overtaken her, this transformation in appearance is trivial when compared to those other changes. The Natasha of old had existed only within a blur of frenzied movement. Now, however, the word ‘tranquil’ can even be applied. To be a bystander to this developing body and this personality shift – well, this often leaves him speechless and not a little afraid.
She makes him feel so clumsy.
It’s always been this way. He who is lauded in the factory for his precision work has always felt too big, too gauche around her, and at no time more so than at the present. As she gets larger, she also seems to get more graceful.
She’s so different from him. So much better educated and accustomed to privilege – the dacha, the apartment on Nevsky, the mammoth meals her grandmother always provided – all of which she exchanged for him, this wretched room and the adequate but monotonous diet which is all they can afford. Sometimes it worries him and that happens when he can find himself assailed by doubt. And now the girl he married, his girl who teased him and who, perhaps more importantly, needed him, is being overtaken. Her point of focus has shifted, so much so that sometimes he thinks he has already half-lost her to their unborn child, and then he can’t help thinking: when the child comes, will there be any room for me?
‘Kolya.’ She has turned, and perhaps she had seen him coming into the house because she’s seemingly unsurprised to find him there. She’s also smiling, so radiantly he’s ashamed of doubting her.
‘Natyushka. You should still be sleeping.’
‘I wanted to be up for you.’
Stepping over the pile of washed clothes that she hadn’t yet got round to packing away (she never does), she’s soon in his arms, and he’s holding her, feeling the swell of her and his own strength to contain it, and thinking how silly he has been. She loves him, his Natasha. There is no doubt of that. And, besides, she hasn’t really changed. She’s as undomesticated as she ever was, this wife of his, and she needs him just as much. More, even, he thinks, looking round the room and seeing the chaos that seems to have overtaken it since he left for work.
She sees him looking. She laughs: ‘I know. I’m completely hopeless.’
‘No you’re not,’ his voice gruff compared to hers and to cover up the confusion, ‘I doubled my quota last night,’ and then finds himself doubly discomfited as he sees the flash of her eyes – a sure sign that something has amused her – but she doesn’t laugh again, she merely says:
‘My brave worker,’ and he knows he has misjudged her, she hadn’t been about to laugh at him, his thought confirmed when she adds:
‘I bet you’re hungry after that. Let me make you some kasha.’
‘No. I’m fine. I ate at the factory,’ blurting out the lie because he’s not got the heart to tell the truth, which is that she has the knack of making even the simplest of foodstuffs utterly unpalatable.
She laughs again – she knows what a bad cook she is – but doesn’t pursue it. ‘I’ll let you sleep then,’ she says. ‘I’ll go out for a walk.’
He wants to say no, tell her that it’s too cold outside, and too slippery, that she should wait for his help, but he doesn’t. She’s right: he needs to sleep and he knows how much she enjoys the snow and how the fresh air is good for her and, anyway, he’s never been able to stop his Natasha, even this new, grown-up manifestation of her, from doing anything once she’s set her mind to it. So he kisses her and goes over to the bed and sits down, keeping out of her way as she pulls on her coat, tugging at it to draw the two sides together.
But then, instead of going out, she seems to hesitate, and comes quickly over to him and kisses him, full on the lips, and says:
‘Be careful, won’t you?’
This time she leaves abruptly, the imprint of her lips lingering as he thinks: now, why did she say that?
It is 1 December 1934, a crisp and forceful day in which Natasha delights. She walks briskly through the snow-filled streets, walking without purpose, just for walking’s sake.
She loves to walk, her limbs, her flesh, feeling the sharp sting of winter. She is a match for anything: even the cold. She tilts her head back and the first feathery pat, forerunner of a fresh flurry to come, alights on her skin, caressing her forehead and then melting as if that passion that she has inside her is turned outwards, causing her skin’s surface to burn.
At times like this she feels as if she could keep walking, going straight, walking into her future without a break, walking on forever.
‘Natalya Borisovna.’
Someone calling her? She stops.
‘Natasha.’ A familiar voice although at first she cannot place it.
‘Natasha.’
There, she’s spotted him, that figure over the road who is even now breaking away from the knot of bunched pedestrians. It’s the American, Jack Brandon, muffled in a glorious, floor-length astrakhan coat, Jack whose Russian is so perfect but whose appearance so foreign: she hasn’t seen him for quite a while.
‘Jack.’
Later, much later, she will wonder: is this when it began? Was it this, her chance meeting with Jack, that condemned Kolya? Was it her fault? That’s what she will think in the dark times to come, but at the moment all she feels is pleasure as Jack Brandon strides to meet her.
‘Jack.’
He’s close now, close enough to think that either he had forgotten how beautiful she was, or else she’s grown more beautiful, and then he sees how high her coat has ridden, its straining buttons, and he remembers, of course, that she’s pregnant, Boris Aleksandrovich had told him that.
‘You didn’t know?’
‘I did. Your father told me. Congratulations. You look well on it.’
‘Do I?’ She does something then, this married woman. She executes an almost perfect pirouette, a full circle, there in the snow, twirling on tiptoes and coming to rest in front of him but closer than she was before, and looking up she obviously decides she has come too close because she steps back a little, as if ashamed, this girl struggling with a new womanly consciousness of her dignity and saying in a slightly strained voice: ‘And you? Are you also well?’
‘Yes.’ Her confusion is endearing, he can’t stop smiling:
‘Thank you. Very well. And pleased to be back. I’ve been in the States.’
‘The States! Did you see the Statue of Liberty? Or the Brooklyn Bridge?’ She pronounces the unfamiliar names with such enthusiasm (so uncharacteristic in this country that disparages all things American) that he almost bursts out laughing as he answers:
‘No. Afraid not. I was only in Boston,’ and as soon as the words are out of his mouth he regrets not pretending that he had seen them, if only to give her the satisfaction of it, and regrets also that the laughter is obvious in his voice because he sees her face flooded by uncertainty, and when she speaks again her voice is dulled.
‘You’re back here for work?’ she says, finding refuge in this, her country’s obsession with labour and quotas and production achievements, and adding dutifully: ‘How’s the factory?’ As she asks this, she starts to walk, perhaps because by standing in this constantly flowing mêlée she thinks they would be too noticeable or perhaps because it’s just too cold to stand, and he keeps pace with her. She finishes with: ‘Have you solved your production problems?’
‘Yes. I have. The production line’s moving smoothly thanks to your father’s efforts,’ and then he adds: ‘Boris Aleksandrovich is a miracle-maker,’ because this is what he really thinks of Boris and also because he thinks it will give Natasha pleasure. And it’s true his words manage to draw a smile from her, but it’s not as open as he’d anticipated and it occurs to him that, although she’s still a free spirit, she is also changed and no longer so enamoured of her father. Which, he thinks, is only right for a married woman. ‘Are you heading anywhere in particular?’ he says.
‘No. Just walking. Giving Kolya time to sleep.’ She pulls her coat tighter. ‘But I didn’t realise how cold it was.’
And he sees how she does indeed look cold, her skin not so much white as blue in this half-light and he finds himself putting an arm around her, as a friend might do, and saying:
‘There’s a café round the corner: why don’t you let me buy you a hot drink?’ and seeing her hesitate and draw away he says, quickly:
‘Come on, Natasha, I’m not going to hurt you.’
The words spring out unbidden but he’s glad they do because now he’s named what must have been on her mind (she’s just an ordinary girl, like any other). She laughs and says:
‘A chocolate would be lovely’, and then she lets him guide her across the road and towards the light.
It is dark outside and inside as well but Leonid Nikolaev doesn’t bother turning on the light. There is no need to. He is leaving. Soon. And, besides, he doesn’t need a light. He can see without it: not the stuff of everyday life, of course, the position of the table, for example, with his pen beside his inkwell, or the piano with his diary safely ensconced, or the door to their bedded cubicle, but beyond all that. He can see the things he needs to do. He can see: his future. His country’s future. The things that must be done. That only he can do.
His phantoms, his heroes, his Corday and his Zhelyabov, who have been with him so long, are no longer in the forefront of his mind. No need to look for them. Soon another name will be added to their ranks: Leonid Vasilyevich Nikolaev.
He hasn’t eaten. Although that’s inaccurate. Better to say that he has eaten but not retained his food. He sat at the table chewing at a chunk of heavy rye bread, hard even after he had dipped it in water, and then he swallowed it but couldn’t keep it down. It had come churning out so fast he had no time for the basin, all he could do was watch helplessly as that grey lumpy starch flavoured by bile flowed out of his mouth in one gelatinous stream, so that he could feel parts of it passing through his lips even as he watched the remainder landing on the floor, so noxious it made him retch, over and over again, until he thought that he was even going to spew up his very guts and so he’d waited, too weak to do anything else, for the dark redness to ensue. But all that happened was that the waves of nausea gradually subsided until what churned out of him was no longer food but air, and he began to cough, dryly and so hard he felt his chest might cave in, and he could hear his own wheezing, distant, as the world seemed to shake and he must have blacked out, for the next thing he knew he was lying on the floor.
Time is passing. He cannot let it go. Up he gets. On his feet. Straightens himself as best he can. Washes his face. Wipes his clothes. Clears up his own disorder. He cleans up his vomit, too. He almost didn’t: he almost left it where it was, an inheritance to his family. But then he remembered that what he would leave them would most likely turn out to be more bitter than that vomit, at least in the short term, and so he gets down on his hands and knees and scrubs the floor, scrubbing out his traces. Scrubbing out himself.
There’s satisfaction in that.
And now he’s ready, even though the traces of what he spewed up linger on. No matter how often he rinses his mouth, and scrubs his tongue as well, he cannot rid himself of the taste. And now it is as if his tongue has swelled, as if it is hanging out of his mouth, lolling slack and purple, like the idiot that people wrongly assume him to be. For a moment he imagines stuffing his mouth, not with food but with leaves and bark and dried herbs, those rich aromas of country remedies his babushka used to feed to him when he had a fever, and, imagining this, he feels himself filling with her wisdom in this inhalation of the very earth, his taking it in, his dying in order that all the rest shall live, and he finds himself gagging again but there is nothing left to regurgitate and he stops himself by force of will for nobody would ever again say of him, as they told him in that meeting when he lost his job: ‘You have no concentration, no energy to carry what is needed to its inevitable conclusion.’
He stands, and thinks, I’ll show them now. He thinks, how wrong they were.
Oh yes, he will show them. He puts on his leather jacket. No matter that it’s snowing. That he will be cold. That people will notice him for what he wears. He likes its animal smell. Its softness. His only garment that improved with age. And what does he care about the cold? He doesn’t feel it. He won’t.
And so he goes. For the last time, out of his door. For the last time, into his street. For the last time. Or at least he hopes that it is so.
In another part of town, in Leningrad, someone else is also on the move. Sergei Mironovich Kirov, who, having already phoned down to warn his men that he is leaving, now steps out and waits for his black car to draw up. When it does, however, he doesn’t climb in beside the driver but rather leans down and, speaking through the open window, tells the man that he plans to walk at least as far as the Troitsky bridge. Why not? Sergei Mironovich is a physical man who spends far too long at desks and in meetings. And besides – he’s due at the Tauride only later. At 6 p.m. He has ample time in which to stretch his legs, to walk, breathing in the air. So there he goes, a stocky figure striding out, unremarkable in these parts and largely unremarked on although later, when everything has come to pass, those who were here this day will tell their loved ones how they saw him, if not then, then many other times before. A kind man, Sergei Mironovich, they will say. A good man. One of us. Man of the people. See how he chose to walk. He liked to be with us.
It is 1 December 1934 and Sergei Mironovich Kirov pushes his way through the falling snow, ignoring the car that glides beside him. As he reaches the bridge he stops a moment, under a lamppost, and turns his wrist, squinting into the lowering dark to catch the numbers on the watch face. It’s later than he thinks, but not too late. He looks up.
The car door is already open, waiting to receive him. He gets in, slamming the door shut, and facing forward says:
‘The Smolny.’
He takes his driver by surprise, for Kirov’s due at the Tauride, not the Smolny; it’s written in the schedule, plain for all to see. They’re probably filing in already, so they’ll be there when he arrives. Besides, there’s not much time, no time at all, and the schedule needs fulfilling for without it they are lost.
None of this does the driver actually say. He’s not the boss, and if Kirov says the Smolny then the Smolny it will be, and so the driver puts his foot down, his tyres spinning momentarily in the gathered snow, and then they grip, and Sergei Mironovich Kirov is off.
