Katastrophe, page 8
The woman finally disappeared. Nehmann checked the bathroom. Getting in wasn’t easy because the door hit the washstand and the bath itself was another disappointment. Like the hotel, it smacked of pre-revolutionary days. Perched on four legs, it felt unstable to the touch and, looking down at the water stains on the wooden floor, Nehmann made a mental note not to overfill it. Decades of guests had worn the enamel off the bottom of the bath, and already Nehmann was anticipating the rough sandpaper kiss on his naked arse.
Backing out of the bathroom, he stood motionless for a moment, gazing around at his new home. A studied cough from the corridor outside doubtless signalled the arrival of the promised guard, but he realised he didn’t care. This tomb-like room was thousands and thousands of kilometres away from Kolyma, literally another world, and if he was right about Leon, if he was right to detect a core of decency in the man, then the coming days would be ripe with promise. He smiled to himself, pleased if slightly awed by the prospect of meeting the Vozhd, then he suddenly remembered to check under the pillow.
Nehmann loved moments like these and always had. He’d long ago mastered his own impulses. He relished the pleasures of waiting. Anticipation, he often told himself, was better that the moment of discovery.
But not in this case. Finally lifting the pillow, he found himself looking at a fat volume, scarlet covers embossed in rich gold-leaf. He lifted the book to his nose. It smelled of new calfskin. Then he opened it, breathing in the scent of printer’s ink, his eye alighting on the title. War and Peace. Lev Tolstoy.
6
‘This is a very serious city. Especially in winter.’
It was next day, early afternoon. The morning’s highlight had been a visit to the metro station at the Revolutionary Square, where Nehmann had admired the murals and the extravagant chandeliers, and relished the gusts of hot air that announced the arrival of a train. Leon seemed genuinely proud of a station that looked more like an art gallery than a transport interchange, and prouder still of the provenance of some of the building materials.
‘You see this marble?’ He’d pointed down at the platform, subtly veined. ‘We stole it from the Dom Monastery. It comes from the cemetery. It used to belong to the dead. That’s what makes a place like this so special. We’re in the company of the departed.’
The comment had sparked a rare smile from the escort, and Nehmann had filed the moment away for the day when he might make it back to Germany. What was Russia really like? Listen to this.
Now, in the pale sunshine, he was standing outside an anonymous five-storey building that served as NKVD headquarters. The locals, he knew, called it the Big House, and Leon had disappeared inside to make a phone call. Also with them on the street was a tall figure in a grey uniform with square shoulder boards. The uniform conferred a certain authority, and Nehmann gathered from Leon – who certainly knew this man well – that he worked in the Foreign Office. Nehmann had no idea whether this was true or not but he was certainly a better conversational proposition than the escort. Glum? Yes. But clever, too. A very serious city? Did he really mean it?
‘Serious how?’ Nehmann asked.
‘Serious in the way we conduct ourselves, serious in the way we see the world, serious even in the jokes we make. Moscow jokes are pickled in vinegar. They’re sharp. They leave an after-taste, and that’s because we like to wound. You Georgians are different. Tbilisi is different. All that fierceness and gaiety. That’s why the women love you.’
Because we like to wound. Nehmann had been watching a succession of women, most of them middle-aged, who’d been queueing to get past the uniformed guards on the main door. Now he asked what they were doing, why they’d come here.
The diplomat studied them for a moment while the escort turned his back to the wind and lit another cigarette.
‘They come to find their husbands.’ The diplomat was speaking in German now, his accent – like Leon’s – near faultless. ‘Your man goes missing one day. He’s been to work but he doesn’t come home and after a while you ask around, and wait a little, but after nothing happens you decide he must have been picked up for some reason and so maybe the next day you come here to the Big House and give them the details and ask them where that man of yours can possibly have gone. Do they know? Of course they do. And do they make life easy for you? I’m afraid not. You must wait ten years, they tell you. Ten years without the possibility of a letter. Ten years without a clue what might have happened to your lovely man. In your heart, like all the other women in the queue, you know that ten years is code for a bullet in the back of his head, but you can never be sure, never be certain, and that’s the whole point. We trade in uncertainty. We keep people in the dark. There are people in this city who believe that Communism is some kind of science. They’re wrong. If it was, we’d have tested it on dogs.’
Nehmann was startled. This kind of candour, he thought, could put a man in serious jeopardy, especially given the presence of a stranger. The diplomat had turned away to accept the escort’s offer of a brief drag on the cigarette. Now he was back with Nehmann. Earlier, over endless glasses of scalding tea in Leon’s room at the hotel, he’d put a series of questions about the years Nehmann had spent in Berlin feeding Goebbels’ propaganda machine. The thrust of these questions suggested an intimate knowledge of the workings of various ministries at the heart of the Reich, but when Nehmann asked whether he’d been attached to the Soviet Embassy he’d refused to answer.
‘Just convince me you really know Herr Goebbels,’ he’d said. ‘That’s all I need from you.’
Nehmann had done his best. He described how he’d submitted a couple of stories to a secretary in the Promi who he knew had the ear of Goebbels. The Minister had liked what he was reading. Within days, he’d invited Nehmann for a light early evening snack. They’d started with one bottle of Gewürztraminer and ended the evening by emptying three. Goebbels, he’d told the diplomat, seemed to have recognised a kindred soul. Both men had little regard for the truth. Both were fascinated by the dark arts of manipulation. And both loved the rewards that journalism of a certain kind could confer. After a courtship like that, no more than a couple of months, Nehmann was allotted his little corner in the Promi, with absolute freedom to dream up any fiction that took his fancy.
The diplomat, Nehmann knew, had enjoyed his account of the Berlin years. More importantly, he’d made a series of notes – dates, specific stories, individual headlines – and seemed to have taken them at face value, which was important from Nehmann’s point of view because for once in his life he’d resisted the temptation to lie. Just where all these notes were headed was a mystery but now the diplomat put a gloved hand on Nehmann’s arm and drew his attention to the bulky figure of Leon who’d just emerged from the Big House.
‘This may be your last day in Moscow.’ He gave Nehmann’s arm the briefest squeeze. ‘Ever.’
Leon rejoined them. He muttered something to the diplomat that Nehmann didn’t catch, then tapped his watch. The hotel was five minutes away. In a sudden flurry of movement, the diplomat extended a hand, wished Nehmann gute Reise and departed. Upstairs, once they’d got to the hotel, Leon stood by the biggest of the windows while Nehmann gathered his few possessions. Stalin, Leon said, was out at his dacha at Kuntsevo. An NKVD car was due any moment. Stalin, like time itself, waited for no man.
‘It’s been a pleasure.’ Leon extended a hand. ‘And I mean that.’
‘You’re not coming?’
‘No.’
Nehmann gazed at him a moment. Leon was uncomfortable. He could see it in his eyes, in the way he seemed to be urging Nehmann towards the door, and the lift at the end of the corridor, and the waiting car. Finally, Nehmann shook his hand.
‘Thanks for the book,’ he said.
*
Downstairs, Nehmann left the hotel without a glance from the woman behind the reception desk. The rear door of the black ZiL was already open, a tall, suited escort in attendance, but Nehmann’s eye was taken by the long column of men shuffling up the cobbled street. There must have been hundreds of them, moving in untidy ranks four abreast. In their worn fatigues, they looked thin, weary, beaten. Some of them had a binding of filthy rags around their feet, Kolyma-style, and their heads were down, avoiding eye contact with the uniformed guards. A handful of the guards were on horseback, and a couple kept urging their mounts into the rear of the column, trying to hurry the men up, and when prisoners tripped and fell other guards beat them with batons and rifle butts, hauling them upright again, pushing them back into the column.
Nehmann paused at the kerbside, waiting for the last of the column to pass. When he asked his own escort what was going on, who these men might be, he shrugged.
‘Germans,’ he grunted.
He gestured for Nehmann to raise his hands. Under the circumstances, it felt uncomfortably like a gesture of surrender, but Nehmann recognised the touch of an expert and the search for a weapon was over within seconds. Nehmann got into the car. The windows at the back were curtained but the shuffle of receding footsteps told him that the street was clear again. The guard in the suit got into the passenger seat beside the driver. The rear doors were locked, he said tersely. Enjoy the ride.
They headed out of Moscow on a big road, parts of which looked newly surfaced. The driver was evidently in a hurry, clocking up more than 120 kph on the speedometer, and uniformed militia, recognising the car, waved them through one intersection after another. After a while – ten minutes? Fifteen? – they were out in the country, thick stands of silver birch on either side of the road, and the promise of more snow from a looming bank of clouds. Then, without warning, the driver dabbed at the brakes and hauled the big car into an abrupt turn. If you didn’t know already, thought Nehmann, you’d never spot a hidden entry like this.
The ZiL followed the road deep into the trees. No signs of life. Then, around another corner, a red and white pole, waist-high, forced the car to a stop. Two NKVD guards in capes and caps emerged from a sentry box. One of them bent to the driver’s open window, registered Nehmann’s presence in the back, and then slapped his gloved hand on the sill of the door. The driver engaged gear again and drove on. Ahead was a long curve, the verges on either side heavy with shrubs, then came a second barrier, a wall this time, five metres at least. There were gun slits between the blocks of concrete and as the driver began to slow, unseen hands opened one of a pair of iron gates.
‘This is it?’
Nehmann was looking at a sizeable two-storey house. It was easy on the eye, big timber-framed windows, the walls painted a pale shade of green. The ZiL finally came to a halt and Nehmann caught a glimpse of a patio at the back of the property. In early spring there was still snow on the ground and bulbs in the flowerbeds were still pushing up through the frozen soil but in summer, he thought, this space would be perfect for entertaining, or simply idling in a deckchair with a book.
The guard in the suit was already out of the car. He seemed impervious to the savage bite of the wind and he opened the rear passenger door, gesturing impatiently for Nehmann to join him. Once again, the sense of urgency, of a deadline to be met, was palpable. These men, this entire army of security militia, only existed because of the Vozhd. They were there to serve at his pleasure, to meet his many demands, to make sure that no particle of the Soviet hour went unfilled. All the stranger, therefore, to hear a voice Nehmann had least expected.
‘Magalashvili?’ Heavy Georgian accent.
He spun round and found himself looking at an old man. He was short, broad, swarthy. His eyes were baggy from lack of sleep, his hair was turning grey and his face was pockmarked with tiny scars. His complexion, an earthy brown reddened with blotches, would have troubled any doctor, and when he circled the car his movements were slow and stiff. Nehmann had heard somewhere that a childhood accident in Tbilisi had nearly robbed him of a leg, and when he stopped, his left arm hung down, useless, until his right hand tracked across and tidied it into the pocket of his ancient coat. The coat had fur on both sides, inside and out, and when he shifted his weight on the cold gravel, Nehmann noticed holes in the decrepit old boots. This might have been the dacha’s gardener, he thought. Not the most powerful man in the world east of Berlin.
The suited escort, after a dismissive gesture from Stalin, had melted back into the car. The Vozhd nodded towards the house. The rest of the afternoon was his own. He’d be happy to offer his visitor a little Georgian hospitality.
The route to the big dining room where Stalin liked to entertain lay down a passage beyond the entrance hall. He paused for a moment beside an upright piano at the end of the corridor and the fingers of his right hand picked out the opening notes of a tune that Nehmann didn’t immediately recognise.
‘René Clair? ‘Sous les toits de Paris’? They told me you were a cultured man, Magalashvili.’
Nehmann caught the hint of mild reproof and asked him to play it again. Stalin offered the faintest smile and let his fingers rest on the keyboard for a second before picking out the tune again. This time, Nehmann got it. He’d first seen the film in Paris in 1931. Three men fall in love with a beautiful Romanian girl, and suffer the consequences, most of them unexpected. It was a comedy with very dark edges and thanks partly to Maurice Chevalier, it had taken France by storm.
Nehmann half closed his eyes and concentrated very hard, knowing that he had to meet this test, that he had at least to offer the refrain’s opening lines.
‘Sous les toits de Paris…’ He had a good voice for a song. ‘Tu vois ma p’tite Nini…’
‘Excellent. You know the rest?’ Stalin stepped away from the piano.
‘Of course. What should I call you, sir?’
‘Me?’ His eyes briefly met Nehmann’s, then flicked away. ‘My friends call me Koba. My enemies, too. You’re a Georgian, Magalashvili. Georgians understand each other. Koba should be safe. At least for the rest of the afternoon.’
Nehmann nodded and followed him into the dining room. The long table had chairs for eight. There was a fan of paperwork at the far end of the table, and a rack of pipes beside it. A wind-up gramophone stood in one corner and Nehmann’s eye was drawn to a black and white framed photograph hanging above the mantlepiece. A younger Stalin was sitting in bright sunshine with an older man, thinner, domed forehead, and a pair of burning eyes sunk deep in his face.
‘You recognise this man?’ Stalin missed nothing.
‘Lenin,’ Nehmann said. ‘Vladimir Ulyanov.’
Stalin nodded. He took off his fur coat and folded it carefully over the back of one of the chairs, before inviting Nehmann to sit down.
Nehmann took the seat next to the pipe rack. Stalin settled beside him at the head of the table. Under the coat, he’d been wearing a simple military tunic, olive-green, adorned with nothing but a single golden star. Nehmann couldn’t take his eyes off the star. Kolyma, he thought. The twelve-hour days at the mine, tormented by mosquitos, the icy bite of the water from the mountains, even in high summer. Had Kolyma gold made this man a Hero of the Soviet Union? He suspected the answer was yes.
‘They tell me Svaneti.’ Stalin had produced a packet of cigarettes and was using the tobacco from one of them to stuff his pipe.
‘That’s right.’
‘Svaneti produced the best bank robbers. A man needs courage, but he needs brains as well. Quick with the fists, fastest to the draw, you expect that. But he has to be able to think. Grow up in Svaneti, in the mountains there, and you’ll find a way out of any corner. Am I right, Magalashvili? Or is this just bar talk?’
‘You’re right, sir.’
‘Koba.’
‘Koba.’
‘So why did you ever leave?’
‘Because I had to. Because I didn’t want to become my father.’
‘He beat you?’
‘No.’
‘That makes you lucky, Magalashvili. Maybe you were a saintly child. Somehow, I doubt it. Tell me about Joseph Goebbels, one Georgian to another. Is the man crazy?’
‘No.’
‘What, then?’
‘He’s like all of us. He’s a prisoner.’
‘Of what?’
‘His own nature.’
‘Very pretty. What does that mean?’
‘It means he loves power.’
‘For himself?’
‘Of course. Power for Goebbels is everything. It gives him control. It means being boss in his own shit hole. It also means he worships Hitler, because Hitler is power. He’ll do anything for the man, anything, tell any lie, take any risk. He also loves fucking women, starlets mainly. From the Promi he has the pick of them from the studios, Czech, German, Italian, it never mattered until he fell in love with one of them.’
‘Baarova.’
‘You know about Lida?’ Stalin didn’t answer, merely gestured for Nehmann to continue. ‘She was Czech, this woman. Goebbels tried to move her into his own marriage, but his wife went running to Hitler and that was a problem because Hitler’s a choirboy when it comes to sex and he rather approved of Frau Goebbels and her lovely children. So Goebbels had to take a good look at himself and make a choice. His mistress or his wife, his family, his kids, and most important of all his beloved Führer. Need I go on?’
‘This was years ago.’
‘Of course. I’ve been a bit out of touch for a couple of years. Not my doing, nor my fault, really.’
‘No? I understand we picked you up at Stalingrad. Whose fault was that?’
‘Hitler’s. Goebbels’.’
‘And you? In Berlin? What was your role? Why were you useful?’’
‘I was the court jester. I made Goebbels laugh. I also made him look good, smell good. He liked that.’
‘Until it all went wrong.’
‘Yes.’
‘With Baarova.’
‘Yes.’
‘Because you carried his love letter to Rome and had the nerve to read it en route.’
‘Yes.’
‘Very Georgian.’ Stalin slapped his knee and laughed. He had terrible teeth, stained, broken, uneven. ‘So what happens when you meet Goebbels again? Is this a man who forgives easily? Does the word betrayal matter to him? Will you be welcome back in court? Will he give you the time of day? Will he even recognise you?’
