The Lieutenant’s Lover (40 page)

There was some business outside, supervised by Pavel. Then Pavel came in with Tonya. He told her to sit, indicating an armchair away from Misha. But she sat down next to Misha and took his hand. The pair of them exchanged an endless glance that left Pavel out of things altogether. He had to cough and stamp for them to turn slowly and face him. They kept their hands locked together, as though able to transmit their innermost thoughts that way. They didn’t speak. They sat in front of Pavel, waiting for him to determine their fates.

It was January 1947. A Tuesday evening.

A thin cold wind blew down from the Baltic and sent a chill through everything. The snow which had been present ever since the night of the abortive escape had stayed hard and crisp for just two days. Then a temporary thaw had set in. The snow had subsided into heavy piles, thick and wet. Then the thick grey heaps dissolved into slush and trickles of dirty water that seemed to run everywhere through the camp. By now, even the slush had disappeared, and all that was left was endless mud, grey clouds, wet grass, and the present chill wind.

Misha was a prisoner. Of all the places in the world to be held, he was being held in camp Oderbruch itself, on the other side of the fence from the area that had been Tonya’s home for the past eight months.

Had been
, because Misha no longer knew where Tonya was. For the first seven days of his imprisonment, he’d stayed close to the barbed wire on the edge of the prisoners’ enclosure, trying to catch a glimpse of her. He never succeeded. He was fairly sure that she no longer slept in the women’s sleeping hut. He guessed that she was either being kept captive herself or she had been transferred somewhere else altogether – perhaps back to the Soviet Union, perhaps to Siberia.

He was still close to the barbed wire now, still looking for a sign of Tonya, but without any real hope. His feet had got wet earlier that day and they were still wet because he had no way of drying them. Over in the canteen hut, there was the banging of a metal spoon against an empty fuel tin – the sign that the evening meal was ready. Misha was too cast down to have an appetite, but made himself go over to get food anyway. He knew that if his imprisonment were to be long-term, then death from malnourishment-induced disease would become a real danger.

He entered the hut, collected his food and sat down at a table with three others. There was almost no conversation. Misha had still not made the effort to make friends. He knew the names of almost no one there. The prisoners ate their slop – a watery stew made with potatoes and turnip. Misha had eaten no meat since his arrival. He had already lost about nine pounds in weight. Rumours spread that dozens, maybe hundreds, of new prisoners would be arriving before long.

A gust of wind threw a sudden flurry of rain against the window. The window fitted poorly, and the rain seeped through, making a dark mould stain on the inside. The man opposite Misha looked sourly at the pane.

‘
Verdammte Wetter
,’ he remarked. He lifted his spoon and poured the watery gravy in a long spout back into his tin. ‘
Verdammte Iwans
.’

Then, as well as the wind, there were noises from outside: a truck engine, the clash of gates, the sound of tyres carving through water, a skirl of brakes. Then other sounds: men, energetic and well-fed, stamping through the muddy ground. The door of the canteen hut burst open. Six Soviet soldiers stood there, armed and resplendent in their immaculate uniforms. The low hum in the canteen fell to an absolute hush. Visits such as these were rare – Misha hadn’t seen one in the ten days he’d been present – and they betokened either something very good or very bad. The senior officer, a captain, holding his chin so high in the air that he must have been seeing more of the ceiling than of the room itself, snapped out a short command.

It took Misha a second to realise what he’d said, then heard the officer repeat, ‘Prisoner Malevich, present yourself.’

Misha pushed away his food and stood up. Every eye in the room followed him. There was no further instruction from the Soviet captain, but Misha walked over to the doorway. The Soviets didn’t move until he had reached them, then he was brusquely ordered to follow and was led outside.

The grey light was far brighter than the dim canteen and a gleam of sunshine was reflected off the wet ground and numerous puddles. Misha contracted his eyes against the glare. The Soviets led him to the back of the truck and shoved him inside. They made no attempt to handcuff him but they did tie his ankles with a short piece of dirty string, as a crude way of preventing him from seeking to escape. All the soldiers carried rifles, but the safety catches were on and the soldiers handled them negligently. Nobody spoke. The captain climbed into the front of the truck and the engine started up. The truck ground its way out of the camp and the heavy double gates were slammed shut behind them.

The truck headed out on the open road. One of the soldiers pulled at the cord that held up the back panel of the canvas canopy. The cord was wet and wouldn’t loosen, so the soldier took out a knife and slashed at the knot, until the wet canvas shot down, splattering them all with raindrops. Misha couldn’t see where they were going. When the soldiers spoke, they did so quietly and in subdued tones.

The truck moved on. Night fell. The truck slowed down, no doubt because the roads were poor and unlit. Misha tried to guess whether the roads were getting worse – in which case Poland was the likeliest destination – but he found it almost impossible to tell. At one point, one of the soldiers lit a cigarette. Misha, thinking to demonstrate that he was one of their countrymen, asked in Russian if they had a spare cigarette. The soldiers looked at each other and shook their heads, even though Misha could count at least two large pouches of tobacco among the men. Any conversation that there had been ended abruptly.

Then, after about two hours, the conditions outside the truck changed. The road surface was clearly better. The truck’s motion began the twists, turns, stops and starts that indicated they were in a city. Based on the size of the city and the time they’d taken to get to it, Misha guessed they must be in either Berlin or one of the larger Polish cities. Every now and then he heard snatches of conversation from passers-by outside the truck, but over the noise of the engine, he couldn’t tell whether the speakers were German or Polish.

Then the truck stopped.

There was light outside and the sound of traffic. Footsteps came down the side of the truck from the front. The canvas canopy was pulled back. Outside, there were lights and a huge dark shape; some masonry structure, with its clean lines now war-damaged and ragged. Misha was told to get out. He did so, needing assistance because of the string around his legs. He was half-helped, half-pulled from the truck. The soldier tugging him didn’t bother to let him find his balance on reaching the ground and Misha promptly fell over. The men got back into the truck and the truck roared away, sending a blast of exhaust into Misha’s face. He fumbled at the cord around his legs, trying at the same time to see where he was. He couldn’t make out the large building or monument in front of him. Cars and headlamps were moving fast only a short distance away.

Then he heard footsteps coming towards him; footsteps and the beam of a powerful torch. The torch caught him in the face.

‘What’s up, mate?’ said a voice in English, then, in German or a version of it,
‘Sind Sie all OK?’

Misha got the string off his legs. The English voice and the big masonry arch fell into place. This was the Brandenburg Gate. Misha had been dropped back in the British sector. The torchlight moved away from his face and a rough, friendly arm heaved him to his feet.

He began to laugh in shock and relief.

He ran home quickly, of course. Rosa had come running to the door in her nightdress, tears streaming down her face. The poor girl had been convinced, quite reasonably, that her precious ‘new daddy’ had gone the way of the old one. She had to climb right into Misha’s arms before she could quite believe the reality of this unexpected return. And Willi was not so different. He stood embracing them both, his skinny face illuminated by wide dinner-plate eyes. Misha came on inside, hugging Rosa tightly against his chest. Willi, after accepting one long hug, jumped away again and busied himself at the drinks cupboard, pouring two large whiskies – the bottle itself a present from Hollinger – and fetching cigarettes. But Misha noticed that the boy’s hands had been shaking and that every two or three seconds he was snatching a glance across at Misha.

Misha took the whisky and promised both children, not once but repeatedly, that he wouldn’t enter the east zone again. Rosa had snuggled herself inside Misha’s coat, curled up like a rabbit in a burrow. Without moving from her lair, she asked, ‘Did you see her?’

‘Yes,
Knospe
, I saw her.’

‘And?’

‘And they wouldn’t let her come with me, I’m afraid. I’m sorry. I did my best.’

Rosa nodded. She was disappointed – somehow she’d always had a faith in the ‘new mummy’ that had gone beyond anything Misha had ever told her – but it was clear that she couldn’t bear the idea of losing Misha again. And Misha too had given up. He had been imprisoned and then released. Why? There could only be one reason. Pavel had wanted Misha to be out of the way while he dealt with his sister. But dealt with her how? Misha couldn’t believe that even Pavel could have had his sister shot. Indeed, since Pavel could have had Tonya shot on the spot if he’d wished it, then the length of Misha’s imprisonment could only be a good sign. But Pavel would certainly not have allowed Tonya to remain in Germany. She must have been sent back to the Soviet Union. To where? To Moscow or Leningrad? To Siberia or one of the labour battalions in the north? Or internal exile? Or to join Rodyon in the Russian Far East, a full half a world distant? It was too much. The possibilities seemed too endless, the Soviet empire too large, too dangerous and inaccessible. Deep inside himself, Misha grieved for the woman he loved and would never see again. Rosa too, in her childish way, understood all this, and she grieved along with him, hiding her tears inside the folds of his coat.

Three months later, April 1947, and the thaw had come to Russia too, almost in a single day it seemed.

Tonya first knew of it one night, when her dreams were full of images of water. She dreamed of water in every conceivable form: tiny springs gurgling from the wet earth, heaps of snow trickling and melting, huge lakes stretching as far as the horizon, river rapids hurtling over rocks. And her dreams didn’t just take in the sights of nature. She dreamed of water in every human manifestation too. She dreamed of water in glasses, in decorated enamel jugs, in wooden water scoops and butts, in tin baths, in sinks and drains. Any image at all seemed to count as long as there was water flowing, splashing, glittering and streaming through it.

And when she woke, she woke to a world transformed.

She was on a train to the Far East. Pavel had had her sent as translator to an NKVD camp in Poland while he arranged for her move to join Rodyon. The move had been approved and she was on her way, travelling the vast distances of Soviet central Asia.

The train was in the middle of one of its interminable halts, but it must have made good progress in the night, perhaps taking a southward dip on its way. Because when Tonya stood up from her cramped wooden bunk and looked out of the open window, the whole world seemed to have turned to water.

As far as she could see, in both directions, the fields and roads were lying under a sheet of water, gleaming pale blue and silver in the first light of day. The flooding was obviously an annual affair, because all the farms and villages around were built on low mounds and earth banks that rose muddily out of the shining water. But everything else – trees, hedges, telegraph poles, even cows and horses – were one, two, even four feet underwater. The railway line itself was raised up on a low embankment with the floods surrounding it on both sides, so it seemed almost as though the twin steel lines had been laid across the water itself. The whole world smelled of water and damp earth.

Tonya went to the door and climbed out onto the thin strip of land between the train and where the embankment dropped away into the water. The air was unbelievably fresh and new-smelling. She felt utterly sad, but also somehow reconciled. She had lost Misha, lost freedom, lost the chance to escape from the cold grey hand of the Soviet state. But already, deep in the heart of Russia as she now was, those things had sped away into the distance like dreams of something utterly impossible.

And Pavel had, in his way, been kind to her. Not kind enough to let her go with Misha. But kind enough to spare her the bullet or the camp. It had somehow mattered to him that she was still married to Rodyon. Perhaps in his own unfathomable way, he thought he was doing right by bringing the two of them together again. She could hardly imagine seeing Rodyon again. More than a decade had passed since he’d been torn from her – and the intervening years had been so full of imprisonment, loss, battle, and then the whole adventure of Berlin and Germany. How would she feel? She asked herself the question almost incessantly, but in truth she already knew the answer. She would feel about him as she always had. As a friend. As an ally. As a man she deeply respected. But not as a lover. Not as a husband. But still. It would be good to see him. She hoped he was well.