LITMIR.BIZ

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walked up the hill behind the Kremlin onto the wide plaza.

      Above him loomed St Basil’s, famously named for the saint who was supposedly watching over Moscow and protecting her citizens. Appropriate, he thought. He went inside, admired the frescos and the ikons of the saints. The cathedral was cool in the hot summer day, and Ryzhkov walked into one of the chapels, stood in front of the array of ikons, and, more as a test for himself than anything else, tried to pray.

      It didn’t matter that no prayer came. It didn’t matter if he was killed. He’d long since given up worrying about death. Like all the men who’d lived through the trenches he’d only prayed that death might come quickly. A little mercy, that was all.

      There was no more time, he thought. He saw a man who had come in behind him and was waiting there, hat in hand. Another was standing just at the outer doors. Both of them were young but looked like they might know what to do. He turned to leave and they followed him out onto the steps.

      Below him two carriages had drawn up and four other men were waiting.

      ‘Bonjour,’ one of the men said. They were laughing and it was too late to run.

      

      From sleep. Dark and vast; adapted for survival so that one part of him was lost in the void, while the other heard the step of the guard in the corridor; the change of the shift, the scratch of a match, the exhale of tobacco. The scattered snap of the gunshots in the courtyard.

      He would never have a whole sleep again, Ryzhkov knew. Along with millions of other men, he had adjusted to it. Lying there in a daze, you could at least gain some rest. Besides, if you really slept you might have dreams.

      Ryzhkov knew his jail; he had walked past it a hundred times as a young man in Moscow, been into the offices with his father back when it had been the headquarters of the Anchor Assurance and Lloyds of London. Now, it was known by its street address, Bolshaya Lubyanka 11 – newly transformed into the headquarters of the the Extraordinary Commission – the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police.

      It was summer, but the cell was dank. Lit by a window that itself was bisected by a new wall that the revolution had thrown up, red bricks with sharp crusts of mortar that had oozed out of the gaps. Maybe six feet wide and twice as long to the cold outside wall; a thin flea-infested pallet and a bucket.

      At first all cells were the same, he thought. And then, once you’d spent enough time fantasizing about escape, or trying to find tiny hiding places to store your pathetic contraband items – a pencil stub, a nail, a fragment of tobacco that had been filched from under the door and saved in hope of a wayward match – you realized that each cell was an individual, like people with their own personalities. There were the impassive ones who’d been wrenched from the soft life and burned down to an austere essence; cruel cells, like people who could watch you die rather than sacrifice a single tear; the cells that kept their dark stories to themselves; cells that couldn’t stop screaming.

      It had been three days and he was still in the clothes he had been arrested in; there were no uniforms for the prisoners. You were interrogated, then executed in whatever you were wearing when they picked you up; the last set of clothing you wore became your shroud.

      He’d had one long session on the first afternoon. Just questions, no side talk. First one Chekisti, then another and another until there were four. They didn’t bother identifying themselves.

      They knew all about him and his attachment to the French intelligence networks once he’d come back to Russia when Kerensky’s Provisional Government granted amnesty to all the politicals. He was openly working at the French embassy and it wasn’t a great leap of detection for them to bring him in.

      He sat there handcuffed to his chair and gave them all the obvious answers. One of the men wrote it all down. Testimony. He took his time and was careful. He was a translator, an embassy employee. He wanted to be put in touch with the Ambassador’s office, and he wanted the services of a legal representative. All the time he was answering he was trying to work it out.

      Something had cracked, something under the pressures of civil war and counter-revolution had pushed events into an emergency. Events had obviously overrun whatever immunity he might have possessed as an employee of the French. It could be a change of plans on high; there was a faint possibility he could be some sort of bargaining chip, or maybe the French had given him up to the Cheka for some favour.

      He would never know, and, whatever it was, the world had moved on. He was not a prize catch, there was nothing he could divulge that would make the slightest difference to either side. He thought it might possibly be that he was only being kept alive because of a clerical error.

      In semi-sleep he heard the laughing guard coming along the corridor, his stick banging against the doors. Ryzhkov stood, his knees paining him, bladder full, every muscle gone stiff, reluctant. The stick approached, crossed his doorway and continued along the hall. He counted the doors. Three until the end, and then the guard turned back down the line, peering inside to check that everyone was alive this morning. The grill slid open. Ryzhkov looked into the watery blue eyes, the shock of blond hair.

      ‘Ah, good morning, Monsieur Ryzhkov,’ he called out. ‘You’re looking thinner, but why waste food on the likes of you when the people’s army needs nourishment, eh?’ Of course the guard didn’t know any of the details of his case, it was the only advantage Ryzhkov had over the boy.

      ‘I’m wondering if you have heard the latest news, that everyone on this corridor is to be executed. Did you know that? Only a matter of days, I’m afraid,’ and then the little laugh as the grill slid shut. The story continued to the next chamber. ‘…morning, Monsieur Swetovsky. Yes, you heard me correctly. We’re cleaning out all the dead wood…’

      Ryzhkov walked the length of the cell, urinated into the bucket, and then returned to the door. The guard’s hearty greetings were still echoing down the hall. From somewhere there was the scuffling of boots on the tiles, a protesting voice, the sudden sound of metal against metal. It meant they were taking someone out. Now he could no longer hear the laughing guard; his cheeriness had evaporated. The men who came to take you were solemn when they did it. For them it was just a grim task, getting a physically reluctant creature from point A to B. More clatter along the corridor, the closing of the door, and then, finally, the laughter of the guard returned.

      Ryzhkov walked the length of the cell a hundred times, folded over the mattress and sat on it and waited while the guard came at last to his door, slid the morning meal through the hinged gate. ‘There you are. A waste, if you ask me, since you’re going to die soon.’

      ‘Thank you very much,’ Ryzhkov said, rolling off the mat, dragging the plate across the floor and, hungry now, sipping the soup out of the tin before attacking the archipelago of cabbage marooned in the centre of the dish. There was a tiny sliver of something that looked like meat, or perhaps it was a stick of wood, a fragment of a cooking spoon or a ladle. It didn’t matter; he ate it.

      The guard had developed an attachment to him. Perhaps because he was a mystery and Ryzhkov hadn’t offered the young man anything. A polite mystery, because that was the only way to deal with jailers. You couldn’t intimidate them, or abuse them. The only thing you could do was wait. There had been one revolution that had put him here, maybe another would free him.

      The boy sat outside on a stool that he’d hauled down he corridor, taunted him with questions. Perhaps he saw it as a way of educating himself by studying the enemy, just as an apprentice angel might study a lesser demon. ‘I don’t understand you,’ he said to Ryzhkov. ‘You claim to be a revolutionary? That’s absurd. How can you say something like that?’

      ‘Absolutely.’ Ryzhkov was trying not to bolt the cabbage. It was all he would get until the evening, and as for activity, it was just about all he would do, unless using the bucket or strolling from wall to wall counted.

      ‘You claim that you are a clandestine operative. For the revolution also?’

      ‘I claim nothing. I already told them everything, and besides, it’s none of your business, is it, comrade?’

      He

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