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He had been born in 1920 when the Red Army was still fighting its enemies in the civil war that followed the Revolution. There were many orphans in those days but not many who had the good fortune to be farmed out almost immediately to a respectable but childless young couple.
Viktor stood up to give his seat to a pregnant woman who had pushed her way through the strap-hanging passengers. The bus bounced as the hard tyres passed over pot-holes in the roads, but at least the crush of bodies stopped you from falling.
From what he had subsequently gathered the Golovins had become remarkably self-sufficient in the dangerous, disordered streets of Moscow. They had found a small house in a relatively tranquil suburb; his father had been given a job at the library where he helped Bolshevik authors re-write history; his mother had devoted herself to the upbringing of little Viktor.
In photographs he looked an uncommonly smug child, scrubbed, combed, smiling complacently at the cameraman. It was a paradox that such self-assurance should have led to the self-doubts he was experiencing now.
It wasn’t until he was sixteen that his father had told him that he was adopted. And it was only then that he began to question the uneventful security of his life.
To the inevitable question: ‘Who were my parents?’ his father, bearded and patient, replied, ‘We don’t know. There were thousands of children without parents in those days. You see it wasn’t just the men who were killed in the Revolution and the fighting after it: women fought side by side with them.’
‘But how did you find me?’ Viktor asked.
‘We didn’t find you. You were allocated to us. We knew by this time that my wife, your mother … foster mother? … no, let’s always call her your mother … we knew that she couldn’t have a child so we went to an orphanage. You had been taken there by an old woman who left without giving any details about your background. Perhaps she didn’t know them; perhaps she was your babushka; we shall never know.’ His father put his hand on Viktor’s shoulder. ‘But we do know that we were very lucky.’ A pause. ‘And I think you were very lucky too.’
But it wasn’t the mystery of his birth that bothered Viktor because it was true, a baby could easily have lost its identity in those chaotic days when a new creed was being spawned. What bothered him was the cloistered life that he and his parents lived; questioned on this subject his father had no real answers.
‘We’re decent, upright citizens,’ he said in his calm voice. ‘Your mother keeps a good home.’ Which was true; in her early forties when Viktor was sixteen, she was a fair-haired, handsome woman who cooked well and was obsessively house-proud. ‘And I work hard,’ which Viktor later discovered wasn’t quite so true because his father had taken to nipping vodka behind the bookshelves in the library off Pushkin Square. ‘So why shouldn’t we have our security? We’ve earned it.’
When he was seventeen Viktor pointed out that the apartment on the Lenin Hills, to which they had just moved, and the dacha were hardly commensurate with a librarian’s income. And it was then that he first heard about his father’s biography of Tolstoy. ‘I was given a considerable advance by my publishers,’ he confided.
‘Enough to support two homes?’
‘They have high hopes of my project.’
Viktor’s doubts were assuaged until he discovered that the great work consisted of an exercise book half filled with jumbled notes and a letter from the State-controlled publishers saying that they would consider the manuscript on its merits when it was delivered. Which, judging by the scope of Tolstoy’s life and the paucity of his father’s notes, wouldn’t be this century.
The bus swung round a corner and the standing passengers swayed together, laughing, still drunk with the sun. Viktor loved them all; but he wasn’t one of them – his parents had seen to that.
At school he had subtly been kept apart from other children. Even now at university where he was studying languages – English, German and Polish (he could have taken a couple more because foreign tongues gave up their secrets to him without a struggle) – his privileged circumstances created suspicion.
Through the grimy windows of the coach he could see blue and pink wooden cottages tucked away among birch and pines; then the first scattered outposts of Moscow, new apartment blocks climbing on the shoulders of old houses.
Pride expanded inside him. So much achieved during his lifetime! What scared him was the gathering threat to the achievement. War. Fermented in the east by Japan and in the west by Germany. Viktor, orphan of war, was a preacher of peace. Russia had most certainly had her fill of war, but would the belligerents of the world let her rest?
By the time he and Anna alighted from the bus and made their way towards her lodgings in the Arbat her mood had changed. She seemed to regret what she had proposed.
‘Of course you don’t have to go,’ she said and, when he protested, she insisted: ‘No, I mean it. You’re entitled to your opinions. I was being possessive.’
‘No, I must go,’ confident that in any case there would be nothing to see.
It was early evening and heat trapped in the narrow streets of leaning houses engulfed them. In the distance they could hear the rumbling of a summer storm.
She slipped on the cobblestones and he held her and she leaned against him.
She said: ‘There’s no one in the house. Would you like to come in and I’ll make some tea?’ and he said he would, but he wasn’t thinking about tea and his double standards surprised him; an hour ago they had been snapping at each other like wayward husband and nagging wife.
She slid the key into the door of the tenement owned by a baker and his wife. The stairs creaked beneath their feet, splintering the silence.
Her room was a revelation. He had expected garish touches, photographs of film stars, vivid posters from Georgia, beads and powder scattered on the dressing-table. But it was a shy, chaste place and he wondered if he had misjudged her. On the mantelpiece above the iron fireplace stood a photograph of her parents, and the only beads on the dressing table were those strung on a rosary … So even she had to admit that you were still free in Russia to worship whatever god you chose.
She lit a gas-ring in the corner of the room, put a blackened kettle on it and sliced a lemon. ‘What are we doing this evening?’ she asked.
‘Whatever you like.’ He was fascinated by the change in her.
‘You know something? You’re the first man who’s ever been up here.’
He believed her.
‘I always kept it reserved for … for someone special.’
‘I’m honoured,’ he said inadequately.
‘How do you like your tea?’
‘Hot and strong,’ he told her.
‘I wish I had a samovar. Perhaps one day. But I have a little caviar.’
She poured the tea in two porcelain cups and spread caviar on fingers of black bread.
As he sipped his tea, sharp with lemon, he said softly: ‘You know you really should take care. Your talk, it’s too bold. It will get you into trouble.’
‘So, who would care?’ She was estranged from her parents; he didn’t know why.
‘I would care.’
‘But we must be free, Viktor.’
‘Aren’t we?’
She shook her head sadly. ‘Let’s not start that again.’ She popped a finger of bread loaded with glistening black roe into her mouth.
‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. After I’ve been to this place that Professor Nikolai Vasilyev babbles about I’ll prove to you that this is a free country.’
‘You really believe it, don’t you?’
‘We’ll each try to prove our points.’
‘And yet by warning me to watch my tongue you disprove yours … But enough of that. Here, have some more tea.’ She poured a scalding stream into his cup. ‘How about going to the Tchaikovsky?’
Her suggestion was hardly inventive: they went there most evenings since they had paired off together. It was a student café, strident with debate and none too clean; but the beer was cheap and the company stimulating.
‘Why not?’
‘Do you mind looking the other way while I change?’
He stared through the window thinking how strange it was that a girl who only that afternoon had lain half naked beneath him in the forest should suddenly be overcome by modesty.
Suddenly thunder cracked overhead. The first blobs of rain hit the window and slid down in rivulets. Behind him he heard the rustle of clothing.
Another crack of thunder and he turned and she was naked and he reached for her
*
The summons came ten days later.
His father took the call in the living room.
‘It’s that girl,’ he said, exuding displeasure, and handed the receiver to Viktor.
‘Do you still want to go through with it?’ Anna asked.
‘Of course. Where shall I meet you?’ He wanted to stop her from committing any indiscretion on the phone. But why should I worry?
‘Nikolai says—’
‘Forget about Nikolai,’ he broke in. ‘Just tell me where to meet you.’
‘At the Tchaikovsky in half an hour. But Viktor—’
‘I’ll be there.’ He hung up.
He glanced at his watch. Six pm.
‘That girl,’ his father said, stroking his grey-streaked beard. ‘Anna, isn’t it?’
‘How did you know her name?’
‘I’ve heard you talk about her.’
Viktor who didn’t remember ever discussing her said: ‘Well, what about her?’
‘I’ve heard,’ his father said, ‘that she’s a bit of a firebrand.’ His voice didn’t carry authority; but it was a voice that wasn’t used to being contradicted.
‘Really? Who told you that?’
‘We get a lot of people from the university in the library.’
‘And they thought fit to discuss your son’s friends with you? Your adopted son,’ he added because he was angry.
‘Just one of your friends. They seemed to think that she wasn’t desirable company.’
‘What were they implying? That she was a whore?’
‘Viktor!’ exclaimed his mother who had just entered the room, clean and bright from a good dusting that morning.
‘I’m sorry, mama, I didn’t know you were there.’
‘What sort of excuse is that? I won’t have that sort of language in my house.’ With one finger she dabbed at a trace of pollen that had fallen from a vase of roses on the table.
Viktor turned to his father. ‘Why did they think she was undesirable, whoever they are?’
‘Apparently she has an ungovernable tongue.’ He had a way of emphasing long words as though he had just invented them.
‘She’s got spirit if that’s what you mean.’
‘Misdirected by all accounts. I really think, Viktor, that you should give her up.’
‘There must be some nice girls in your class,’ his mother said.
What would they say, Viktor wondered, if they knew that he had celebrated his release from celibacy by making love to her twice in one day? Twice! He almost felt like telling them; but that wouldn’t be fair, they had been good to him in their way.
His father said: ‘Wasn’t there some gossip about her and her private tutor?’
‘Was there? I didn’t know.’
‘Your father’s only telling you for your own good,’ his mother said.
Viktor wondered if his father had been fortified by a few nips of vodka. ‘And I’m grateful,’ he said stiffly, ‘but I’m nineteen years old and capable of making my own judgements.’
His father drummed his fingers on a bookcase crammed with esoteric volumes discarded by the library. ‘You’re going to see her now?’
‘You were listening to my conversation, you know perfectly well I am.’ He consulted his watch again. ‘And I’m late.’
His father’s fingers returned to his beard but the combing movements were quicker. ‘You realise you are displeasing your mother and me. Do you think we deserve that?’
Addressing his mother, Viktor said: ‘Look, you’ve been wonderful to me. If it wasn’t for you I might be living in a hovel, working on an assembly line; I might even be dead. I’ve never been disobedient before. But I’m a man now. And I have the right to choose my friends. After all, it is a free country. Isn’t it?’ turning to his father.
His father said: ‘I’ve warned you.’
‘And your warning has been considered and dismissed.’ Viktor kissed his mother on the cheek. ‘I’m sorry but there it is: your little boy has grown up. And now I must rush.’
He took a tramcar to the centre of the city. It was another fine day, cumulus cloud piled high on the horizon. Two more months and the jaws of winter would begin to close. But Viktor didn’t mind the long bitter months. Perhaps his parents had been Siberians. That would account for his blue eyes.
He walked briskly through the Arbat, past sleeping dogs and a group of children wearing scarlet scarves and red stars on their shirts and old people in black becalmed in the past on the pavements.
She was waiting for him at a table by an open window. A breeze breathed through the window stirring her black hair. She wore a yellow dress with jade beads at her neck. She was smoking a cardboard-tipped cigarette with nervous little puffs.
‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ he said. ‘Coffee?’
‘We haven’t time. Come, we can’t talk here.’ Outside she said: ‘You have to promise me, Viktor, that whatever you see you won’t tell a soul. You won’t say where you’ve been and you won’t say who with. Do you promise?’
‘Of course, it was understood anyway. Where am I going anyway?’
She was silent for a moment. Then she said: ‘To a place of execution.’
Apprehension was germinating inside him: she seemed so confident. ‘How do we get there?’ he asked. ‘Wherever there is.’
