The Lieutenant’s Lover (22 page)

In the meantime, there was only one other detail of the report that Konstantinov had seen which bothered him. The interpreter, Kornikova, paid regular visits to a German woman who made a little money giving music lessons. Nothing was known against the German woman. On the other hand, she was not known as a Party supporter either. Konstantinov regarded most Germans with suspicion. Not only had their countrymen attacked Mother Russia, but their working class had failed to rise in revolution against its masters. Both were valid reasons for suspicion. What was more, though Konstantinov had nothing against music as such, there was no doubting that playing the violin indicated possible bourgeois tendencies.

His investigation still had some way to run.

At the door to the Nothing Factory, Misha paused.

Glass was still hard to obtain, so Misha had sealed the only windows with boards. No chink of light peeped through into the star-bitten night, but there was something else, the chirruping sound of Rosa laughing. Misha opened the door and entered.

Although electricity had long been restored across Charlottenberg, the Nothing Factory had no usable electrical circuits, and the only lighting was paraffin lamps. But Misha didn’t mind. He almost preferred the dim, kindly light. And, it was clear, Rosa didn’t mind either. Before he had left for Leipzig, Misha had taken some pieces of broken glass and fixed them together with wire to make lampshades. During his two days away, Willi had had the idea of painting on the glass in translucent paint and making wire cradles that would allow the shades to revolve. His latest creation set a chain of comical fairy tale creatures – witches, dragons, tigers, dwarfs, princesses – spinning around the light and appearing in huge coloured shadows on the walls.

Rosa turned to the door, saw Misha, and bounced out of her seat and into his arms.

‘Look at what Willi’s done!’

Misha let Rosa and Willi display their treasures. They had a fairy-tale shade, a sailing-boat shade, an animal shade, and what Willi called his Berliner shade. The last of these had accurate caricatures of all the senior occupation officials and German party men – Sokolovsky, Clay, Robertson, Schumacher and others. Willi put the shade over the lamp and let it revolve. The walls were suddenly full of red and blue painted figures, following each other in an endless, pompous sequence. Misha watched it turn in silence.

‘I don’t like that one,’ said Rosa, and Willi removed it.

Misha didn’t quite like it either. The little family group had a precarious subsistence living. Whenever it came to jobs that he didn’t like – weaving cotton, repairing looms, selling headscarves, bartering for timber or tools – Willi was a maddening combination of lazy and incompetent. It wasn’t simply that he was unwilling, although he was, it was that he did jobs ham-fistedly and badly. Yet when it came to things he loved – painting lampshades and creating little wire cradles – his commitment and dexterity seemed to know no limits.

‘Have you had supper yet?’ Misha asked. ‘Rosa, it’s after your bedtime. Have you washed your face and hands? Willi, is there enough fire in the stove for a hot drink? You do need to keep it stoked, you know, it’s not enough just to paint lampshades.’

Misha listened to himself scolding and disliked the sound. All the same, he knew that Rosa especially needed structure in her days and it was his job to provide it. He and Willi, with Rosa helping, quickly ran through their domestic chores, clearing up, heating water, getting Rosa ready for bed and then into it. When she was settled down for the night, Willi and Misha sat over their supper (boiled potatoes drizzled with pork fat) and a glass of schnapps.

‘Well?’ said Willi.

Misha nodded. ‘She’s here. In Germany definitely, Berlin probably. Working as an interpreter for the SMAD.’ Misha briefly related his adventures.

‘You drew her?’

‘Well what could I do? The woman wouldn’t talk.’

‘Can I see?’

Misha produced the sketch. The paper was of the worst quality and the ink had already leached outwards, giving the lines a fuzzy, indistinct look. Willi examined the drawing very closely, holding it to the light to see better.

‘It’s good, very good work. You should draw more. All this technical stuff…’ Willi shrugged in distaste. All he’d ever seen Misha draw were quick technical drawings or construction diagrams. He took the drawing and pinned it to the wall, smoothing it carefully. ‘You know what Rosa said when I told her where you were?’

‘No.’

‘She just nodded and said, “Oh, of course. He’s gone to find the new mummy”.’

‘Yes, well I’m not sure we should get her hopes up too far.’

‘Why? She’s in Berlin. Berlin isn’t so large. We ask around, put up signs. With all the DPs around, it’s not so out of the ordinary.’ DPs were Displaced Persons. And Willi was right. The war had been like a huge cauldron that had swallowed the people of central Europe, stirred them up, then slopped them out all over the place, wth no concern for order or logic. All over the place, mothers were looking for sons, husbands for wives, children for parents, women for lovers. A few more posters would hardly draw attention.

But Misha shook his head. All the way back from Leipzig – and the journey had been a long and slow one – he’d puzzled over the same brute facts.

‘Think about it. Tonya was interpreting for a Red Army general. That means she’s in a very sensitive position. Perhaps she’s already spent time in the Gulag, perhaps not. But, given her position, the security people will be keeping a close eye on her in any event. If we start to ask around, it could be dangerous for her. What excuse could we have for asking? If the NKVD are even a tiny bit suspicious they’ll order her away. Out of Berlin. Out of Germany even.’

He didn’t add, but he hardly needed to, that Tonya’s fate could be still worse than that. Willi had once drawn a cartoon of the Soviet far north as a huge genie, sucking whole populations into its belly as forced labourers and political prisoners. The risk was horribly real.

‘Perhaps we don’t ask, then. If she works with the SMAD, I suppose she must enter or leave their buildings, whether in Karlshorst or elsewhere…’

He trailed off. The SMAD had facilities all over the Soviet sector and who was to say where she might be located? But even suppose they were willing to try staking out one establishment after another. Every single SMAD building was protected by Red Army guards and by NKVD men, both uniformed and not. For Misha and Willi to try staking out SMAD facilities in plain view of the cream of the Soviet security services would be simply asking for trouble.

Silence fell. Tonya was here in Berlin, but as distant as the sky. The problem seemed all but insoluble. Willi rolled his schnapps around in his glass. Since Rosa had joined them, Misha had started treating Willi less like a friend and more like a son. He didn’t feel himself in a position to withdraw all Willi’s old privileges – the boy was seventeen after all – but he did now set limits to them. One small glass of schnapps was Willi’s nightly limit. The boy grumbled, but he’d become more secure, more grounded, happier.

‘Were you angry about the lampshades?’ asked Willi.

‘No.’

‘I didn’t pick up that steel wire you wanted. I was going to, but I forgot and then it was too late.’

That’s all right. I’ll pick it up tomorrow.’

Misha frowned into his own drink. It was clear that Willi would be useless as a cotton headscarf entrepreneur. He was more trouble than he was worth even as a simple loom operator. There wasn’t a shortage of labour in Berlin of course. The whole city was full of hungry people, who’d do anything in exchange for enough Reichsmarks or cigarettes to buy food and fuel for their families. But sometimes Misha felt burdened by it all, the need to build and mend his looms, find labour, barter for supplies, sell goods, and all the while provide a good home environment for Rosa, cook their meals, attend to their domestic needs. It was a big sackful of troubles to carry by himself. He sighed.

Willi looked savagely into the lamplight. He picked up his glass ‘Berliner’ shade again, settled it back on the lamp and sent it spinning wildly around oil its stand. The huge shadows whirled and flashed on the walls.

‘I’m not much use to you, though am I? You don’t need to deny it.’

‘You help look after Rosa.’

That’s hardly an affliction, is it?’

‘And you can maybe help me in one other way.’

‘
Ja
?’ Willi had stopped the lampshade. With a dab of red ink, he adjusted his profile of Sokolovsky, to add more strut, more exaggerated swagger.

‘I think it’s hopeless for us to look for Tonya. Hopeless for us. Dangerous for her.’

‘You won’t even try?’ Willi was incredulous.

‘No. She needs to look for us. But first we need to tell her that we’re here.’

Willi put his brush and ink carefully away. He was more careful of his brushes than of anything else in the happy disorder of his life. He spun the shade again, but slowly this time, solemnly.

‘And how do we do that?’

Misha shook his head. ‘No, Willi. Not we, you.’

It was three weeks later, dinner-time on a Sunday evening.

Misha always sought to provide meat for them all at least once a week, and Willi, whose stomach was bottomless, was almost never late. But on this occasion he was nowhere to be seen and had left no word as to where he was. Misha kept the stew heating for a while, then decided to eat anyway.

Rosa, reading his thoughts as ever, said, ‘Don’t worry. It’s only Willi being late.’

‘Of course it is,’ he told her, worrying anyway.

They ate. Rosa was having a phase of not enjoying vegetables, and it took her twenty minutes to finish her red cabbage, which she ate by picking out one long strand at a time and dropping it into her mouth from above. Misha told her that the cabbage would make her grow big and strong. Rosa rolled her eyes at him, in scepticism.

Then, at last, there was the clattering outside which signified that Willi had arrived on his push-bike and had flung it up to rest against the metal dustbins. Rosa clapped her hands, and Misha too felt an immediate lightening of worry.

Willi entered.

‘Food! I’m not late, am I? I’m starving. I had to go to Rudi’s to get some proper ink. My inks were getting too faint to use.’

Beneath his arm, he held a long tube of paper. Misha, knowing what it was, was excited about seeing it, but Willi insisted that the paper was frozen and that it needed to thaw out properly before it could be unrolled. He warmed it through over the stove. Misha cleared a space on the table and moved the lamp back to make room. When Willi was finally happy, he unfurled the paper – a big, poster-sized sheet of it – and laid it out.

Misha caught his breath.

There were six cartoon strips, each four or five frames in length.

Each strip revolved around a single invented character, an ordinary Russian soldier, a Red Army
frontovik
, endearing, tipsy, accident-prone. The character had a pot-belly, an expression of happy and peaceable mystification, and a short wooden rifle that could threaten no one and nothing. The little soldier was an appealing sort – slow-witted perhaps, but charming. The sort of man anyone would take a liking to in an instant, befriend in a moment.

The cartoons were excellent. Funny and touching at the same time. Rosa, who didn’t entirely understand the point of them, chuckled at the friendly, dumpy little chap. Misha too was struck by Willi’s talent for these things. The cartoon strips told of the little man’s adventures in all the situations that so baffled, enraged and exasperated Berliners. No one could read these cartoons and not laugh at the humour, smile at the accuracy.

But their true genius lay elsewhere. Because the good-natured
frontovik
was called Comrade Lensky – the name which gave the cartoon strip its title. Lensky’s best friend, who featured in every cartoon, was a brilliant caricature of Misha himself and was called Mikhail Kuletsky. And every single cartoon, every single story contained buried references to a past that only Misha and a certain female Red Army interpreter could understand. There were references to hunting lodges, waltzes, an empty safe, railway repairs, the hot white nights of Petrograd, a woman and boy making an escape under piles of grain …

Misha scrutinised the cartoon that lay immediately in front of him. This one, the first, was making a series of well-aimed jokes about the pitiful rations handed out by the Western Allies. The cartoon was pithy, well-drawn, funny and likeable. But there was something missing. Misha sat and pondered without getting anywhere. Willi, with a sudden impatient movement, signified that he was waiting for a reaction.

‘They’re brilliant, Willi. You have a natural genius for these things…’

Then he got it – the thing that was missing. The cartoon, of course, had its title in German:
Kamerad Lensky
. That was fine, of course, but Tonya would never have seen her name written that way. Why would she? Misha took the sheet and, beneath the main title of the first strip, he wrote the same thing in Russian:
He put pen and paper down. The ink dried from glistening black to a dark grey-purple.