The Kirilov Star (24 page)

‘And Sir Edward had it made into a pendant for Lydia. Oh, how she would love to see this book.’

‘I’ll have the page copied for you.’

Alex thanked him, but at that moment the likelihood of him ever seeing Lydia again seemed remote. Yet his efforts to find Yuri were based on that assumption. ‘How did the book survive the Bolsheviks?’

‘Heaven knows. By all the rules it should have been burnt but I found it years ago in an old bookstore that was closing down and selling off the stock. I bought it because I collect old books that depict precious stones.’

‘The Star is famous, then?’

‘It was, in the days before the Revolution. Like so much of Russia’s history it was repressed by the Bolsheviks. Your Lydia is lucky to have it still. It is as well Yuri knew nothing about it. He would have found it difficult growing up with a background like that.’

‘Do you think there’s any chance of finding him?’

‘She cannot possibly expect you to keep such a promise,’ Katya said, referring to Lydia.

‘I don’t know what she expects, but I will not rest until I’ve done all I can, though I have no idea how to go about it. Any contacts I might have had have long gone.’

‘How old would the boy be?’ Leonid asked.

‘He was born in April 1939.’

‘He’ll soon be sixteen then. Is he smart enough to go to university, do you think?’

‘I have no idea. His mother certainly was. Why do you ask?’

‘I sometimes lecture on engineering at the university and some of the cleverer students manage to get there as young as that, though I must say it is rare, especially if he’s had no one to give him a helping hand.’

‘As far as I know there is only Olga and she wouldn’t have influence, unless she married well. That’s a possibility, of course,’ Alex said thoughtfully. ‘On the other hand she may not have survived the war, and if she did, may not have been able to trace Yuri.’

‘It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack,’ Leo said. ‘Isn’t that one of the English sayings you taught me?’

‘Yes, along with “fire away”.’ Alex laughed. ‘Fancy you remembering.’

‘I remember it all, my friend. You make a good teacher. Do you think that’s what you’ll do when you go home?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far. If I cannot find Yuri I am not sure I’ll go home, not to England anyway. Getting out of Russia won’t be easy. I have a feeling I will embarrass the British Embassy if I turn up there.’

‘First things first, then.’ Leo spoke cheerfully to dispel
the gloom that had come over Alex. ‘I’ll try the education authorities.’

‘But there are thousands of schools and hundreds of colleges and universities in Russia, we can’t ask them all.’

‘There’s always the Moscow Central Archive,’ Katya put in.

‘Good thinking.’ her husband said. ‘Olga’s death or remarriage might be recorded there.’

‘Or if she had a criminal record,’ Katya said. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me.’ Without ever having met Olga, she was prepared to dislike her.

‘Is that open to the public?’ Alex asked in surprise.

Leo smiled knowingly and tapped his nose. ‘There are ways if you know the right people and have deep enough pockets.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘It’s the way business is done,’ he went on. ‘You, of all people, should know that the wheels of officialdom turn at the pace of a snail and the only way to speed them up and get the information you need is to take an envelope full of banknotes with you whenever you make any sort of application. It you don’t, someone else will and you lose the deal you’re going after. It is the same for everything, not just business.’

‘I do know that. I meant I have no money.’

‘That isn’t a problem, Alexei. I owe you.’

‘But you’ve already paid for my clothes.’

‘Pshaw! A flea bite.’

‘And you are prepared to do this for me?’

‘Would you do it for me if the shoe were on the other foot?’

‘Yes, I expect I would.’

‘There you are, then.’

‘But I’ve got to get out of Moscow tomorrow, if I’m not to be arrested.’

‘You could stay here, as long as you didn’t venture out,’ Katya offered doubtfully.

‘No, certainly not.’ Alex was adamant. ‘I am not putting either of you at risk.’

‘Have you anywhere to go?’ Leo asked.

‘Yes,’ he said suddenly thinking of Kirilhor. ‘Petrovsk, in Ukraine. Lydia’s family had a
dacha
there. There’s a man there, Ivan Ivanovich, he’ll take me in.’

‘That’s nice and close,’ Leonid said with heavy irony. ‘Don’t you know anywhere nearer than that?’

‘No. Not as safe. You can send me word if you discover anything, and I’ll come back, or meet you somewhere.’

‘And if I can’t?’

‘Then I’ll have to make up my mind what I’m going to do.’

He stayed with them that night at their insistence, and early next morning, Leo took him to the railway station and bought his ticket, before seeing him to his carriage and bidding him goodbye. Alex had given him the address of the telegraph office at Petrovsk railway station. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said, as the carriage doors were slammed and the guard blew the whistle. ‘Don’t despair.’

It was all very well to tell him not to despair, Alex thought, sinking back into his seat. How could he not? He was probably on a wild goose chase, and how could he be sure Lydia would want the information even if he found Yuri? But deep inside him he did know she would never give up on her son, dead or alive. And dead could be a possibility. So many lives were lost in the war, why should
Yuri have survived? Was he simply using the search as a distraction because he was too cowardly to go home and face whatever had to be faced? The journey was a very long one and he had plenty of time to think about that question, to remember going in the opposite direction with a distraught Lydia. Oh, how he had loved her, still loved her! But he was not the man he had been then, young, strong, confident. He had aged beyond his years, his hair was grey and he limped. What had happened to Lydia? Would there be any grey in her hair?

He arrived in Kiev late at night. Even so the air was several degrees warmer than in Moscow. After living in the Arctic Circle for so long, it hit him like a warm bath. Picking up his case, provided by Leo to contain his new clothes, he made his way to a cheap hotel. Leo had given him money, more than he deserved, but he wasn’t sure how long he would have to make it last and so was careful with it. Next morning he continued his journey and by evening found himself once more looking down the Petrovsk main street. The view had not changed, except for being more
run-down
than ever. He booked into the dilapidated hotel, ate a lonely meal and went to bed early. He tired easily these days and the journey had taken it out of him, which was surprising since it was nothing like as long as the journey from the gulag to Moscow, but put the two together, one after the other, and he seemed to have been travelling half his life. In a way, he supposed he had, and he wasn’t at the end yet.

The next morning he set off on foot for the woodman’s hut, telling himself the man had been getting on in 1939 and people died young if they never had enough to eat and not
to be surprised if he had gone. But Ivan was there, chopping wood as if he had been doing it non-stop ever since Alex had last seen him. His white hair had thinned to almost nothing and his beard, left untrimmed, came well down on his chest. His cheeks had fallen in and his bony hands were covered in dark-red veins. He wore an old leather jerkin, a fur hat with ear flaps and long felt boots. He put down his axe and stared at the newcomer. ‘Major Alexei Simenov,’ he said, sinking onto a tree stump, shaking his white head in disbelief. ‘Surely not?’

Alex laughed. ‘So you remember me?’

‘I remember you. Did you find my little Lidushka?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is she well? What are you doing back here?’

‘I found her and I’m here because we never found the baby.’

‘Ahhh.’ It was a long drawn-out sigh. ‘You had better come in.’ He indicated the door of the hovel. ‘I’ll make tea.’

Alex preceded him into the only room. The thatch on the roof was wearing thin and he could see the sky through one spot. ‘You sound as if you know something. Do you know where he is?’

‘He’s at Kirilhor. They came back here in 1947.’

‘My God! I never thought to find him here.’ And then another thought struck him, making his heart race. ‘They? Surely not Lydia?’

‘No, I never saw her again.’ He busied himself over the stove. ‘I mean Olga Denisovna. She brought the boy up.’

‘She’s here too?’

‘Yes, though not quite right in the head, if you understand me – violent sometimes, though not with Yuri, never with
Yuri. But, excuse me – if you did not expect to find the boy here, why have you come?’

For the second time in three days Alex found himself telling the story, while they sipped tea from cracked glasses and he ate a little bread dipped in salt. At the end of the tale, the old man grunted. ‘You should have stayed away. You won’t be welcome and Olga Denisovna has wits enough to denounce you.’

‘I’ve served my time and been given a pardon, she has no grounds for denouncing me.’

‘No?’ The old man gave another of his grunts. ‘What about attempting to lure a Soviet citizen out of the country to be indoctrinated by the West?’

‘I never said I intended to do that.’

‘She will make it sound as though you did.’

Alex sipped tea. There was a lot of sugar in it. ‘What about the boy?’

‘He’s a good little Pioneer, a real Soviet citizen. He believes everything they tell him. He was even seen to weep when Stalin died. And he loves Olga, looks after her all the time, even when she’s at her worst.’

‘That’s hardly surprising if she brought him up.’

‘He doesn’t know she’s not his real mother.’

‘Why didn’t you tell him as soon as he was old enough to understand?’

‘What would that have achieved?’ Ivan answered one question with another. Olga Denisovna had told him, when they first arrived, that if he said one word to the boy or anyone else about who Yuri really was, she would denounce him. ‘You’ll be sent to a labour camp, and how long do you think you’ll survive there?’ she had said belligerently. ‘Keep your mouth shut.’ And so he had. There was no point in
stirring up trouble either for himself or Yuri, and there was no one left in the village who remembered Olga before the war or Yuri being born. Besides, if he kept quiet he could keep his eye on the boy and see he came to no harm. It was strange when he thought about it: Yuri was the grandson of Count Kirilov and by rights the heir to Kirilhor. Not that there was anything worth inheriting. It was a ruin. He had once asked Olga, when she was in one of her more sensible moods, why she had come back. ‘It’s where the boy was born,’ she said. ‘I thought Svetlana might still be here and help us, but she wasn’t. I have no one but Yuri. He’s a good boy. And clever too. I am going to be proud of him.’

‘I should like to see him,’ Alex said. ‘At least then I can tell Lydia I have seen him and he is well. Perhaps if I spoke to Olga Nahmova first …’

Ivan shrugged. ‘You must do what you think is right, but don’t blame me if you get less than a welcome.’

Alex thanked him and went back to the hotel.

Yuri Nahmov was chopping down a fir tree in the forest. They needed more logs for the stove. Ever since he had been considered old enough to wield an axe, he had been responsible for seeing the stove was never without fuel. His mother couldn’t do it. Half the time she didn’t know what she was doing. She often burnt the soup and she went for any visitors to Kirilhor like a wildcat, as if they had evil intent. ‘Hide!’ she would cry whenever a stranger arrived in the village. ‘Hide in the cupboard.’ Yuri hated being shut in a cupboard; that was how you were punished at the orphanage and it always brought back unpleasant memories. It made him want to scream and beat his fists against the door, but nothing would satisfy Mama until
they had hidden and waited for whoever it was to go away again. She was afraid, always afraid. Did she suppose the authorities would come and take him back to the orphanage?

How he had hated that place! They were half starved and brutally treated, especially those whose parents had been arrested and sent to Siberia. He had had no idea who his parents were and it had been assumed he was either one of those or one of the thousands of
besprizomiki
, street children without family and means of support, who had been rounded up to be made into useful Soviet citizens. He was full of jealousy when someone came to claim a child and take him away amid tears of joy, which didn’t happen very often. He would hide his misery in a show of indifference, until in the end his pretence became real and he
was
indifferent.

He was a son of the Soviet system. Stalin was his father and every morning when the children were required to chant ‘Thank you, Comrade Stalin, for a happy childhood’ he sang out, unaware that there was, or could be, anything different, until one day, when he was about six or seven, a strange woman had turned up and claimed she was his mother. She said his name was Yuri Nahmov and not Ilya Minsky which was the name they called him in the orphanage. Worried and frightened, he had been handed over to a complete stranger and begun a very different life.

‘It’s not the best tree for making firewood,’ Ivan told him, watching him from his seat on a tree trunk. He was fidgety, unable to make up his mind whether to say anything about yesterday’s visitor. Perhaps he should, perhaps he shouldn’t. ‘It’s too green. It will spit.’

‘It’s easier than cutting down one of those big deciduous
trees.’ Yuri had long ago decided that Ivan was the nearest thing to a father he would ever have and treated him with gentle tolerance. ‘And it won’t matter about the spitting if we close the doors of the stove. It’s too hot to have them open anyway.’

The tree toppled with a creak and a groan and a satisfying thump. Yuri set about stripping it of its smaller branches, ready to saw the trunk into logs. Ivan got up to help him with the two-handed saw.

When they had filled the basket, Yuri picked it up and hefted it onto his shoulder. He had grown into a big strong lad, uncannily like his grandfather, the count, and the weight of it meant nothing to him. ‘Are you coming back to the house?’