Mouche had gone quite pale. The pretty girls in the streets drifted out of Gideon’s vision, and he put his hand on his chest.
“If you’re not feeling well, we can talk another time,” said the young man, who sported a thin ginger mustache.
“Papa, will you be OK?” asked Mouche.
Gideon puffed up his barrel chest and nodded.
“It’s probably just a chat, darling. I’ll see you later.”
It was routine, he told himself. Nothing to worry about. He’d be back with Mouche in a couple of hours.
As Mouche watched her father get into the car, she had a terrible feeling that she might never see him again. Where was her uncle Samuil? Vanished. Half of her father’s friends had disappeared. First their works were mocked in the newspapers, then their apartments were searched and sealed. When she saw those friends again, she could barely say hello. They carried the plague of death. Finally they too were arrested, and vanished. But Gideon had strode over their bodies, and Mouche saw that he was a master of survival. He did what he had to do, although his family background was utterly damning. He survived only because it was said that Comrade Stalin liked his work and his connections with the European intelligentsia.
Now swaying in the summer wind, Mouche watched the car drive off with an ostentatious skid of the wheels up the hill toward the Lubianka. As it left, she had seen her father turn and blow her a kiss.
Mouche hurried to the public telephone and rang her cousin.
“Sashenka? Papa’s fallen ill unexpectedly.” She knew this was all she needed to say.
“Which hospital is he at?”
“The one at the top of the hill.”
18
At her apartment in the Granovsky, Sashenka was playing with the children in the playroom. Carolina, the nanny, had made them toast and peach jam for tea and was now frying calf’s livers for supper. Vanya was meant to be home by seven but he was late, and Satinov and his heavily pregnant wife, Tamara, had already arrived for dinner.
“What is it?” Satinov had asked, as soon as he saw her anxious face.
“Hercules, may I show you our new car downstairs?”
Sashenka knew that Satinov understood this code perfectly. Leaving the doll-like Tamara with the children, they took the elevator down to the courtyard where an array of the most dazzling limousines were parked under the watchful eye of the janitor and an NKVD guard. Granovsky was now such a bosses’ residence that it had its own wooden guardhouse.
A gaggle of elderly men and women sat in a half circle of canvas chairs in the evening light, warmed by the hot asphalt—the mottled men in fedoras, white vests and shorts, displaying creased old bellies and white-furred chests, the swollen women in cheap sandals and sundresses with floppy hats, broad in hip, white skin burning raw. The men were reading the newspapers or playing chess, while the women talked, pointed, laughed, whispered and talked more.
At their center was Marfa, Vanya’s fishwife of a mother, a cheerful walrus in a straw hat.
“Hey, there’s my daughter-in-law,” Marfa cried out raucously. “Sashenka, I’m telling them about the May Day party and who turned up at the dacha. They can’t believe it.”
Her father-in-law, Nikolai Palitsyn, an old peasant, pointed proudly at Sashenka. “She talked to HIM!” said Nikolai. “HIM!” He raised his eyes to heaven.
“But HE mentioned how much he admired Vanya!” added Vanya’s mother.
Sashenka tried to smile but Vanya’s parents were a source of danger. The courtyard was in its way quite select: these were all the parents of bosses but any gossiping was reckless, and could prove fatal.
“Hello, Comrade Satinov,” called out the old Palitsyns.
Satinov waved, impeccably smart in tunic and boots.
“I’m showing Hercules the new car,” Sashenka said. “Can you believe them?” she whispered. “How can we shut them up?”
“Don’t worry, Vanya will keep them quiet. Now tell me what’s happened,” he said.
“Mouche called. They’ve arrested Gideon. I thought it was all over except for a few special cases. I thought…”
“Mostly it’s over but it’s our system now. It’ll never be over. It’s the way we make our USSR safe, and we’re living in such dangerous times. Probably it’s nothing, Sashenka. Gideon’s always been a law unto himself. He’s probably got drunk, told a stupid joke or groped Molotov’s sourpuss wife. Remember: do and say nothing.”
A Buick drew up and the driver opened the door.
“It’s Vanya.”
Sashenka was not surprised to see her husband looking bleary, unshaven and exhausted—it was the hours he worked, and the stress.
“What is it?” he asked, before he even kissed Sashenka or greeted Satinov.
“I’m going upstairs to play with the children,” said Satinov.
“Did you know about Gideon’s arrest?” Sashenka asked her husband, while, for the benefit of the geriatrics and the guards, she pretended to look at the car.
Vanya took her smooth hands in his big ones. “Rest assured, they’re very pleased with me at the moment. I don’t know any details but they mentioned it to me and I just said, ‘Let our comrades check him out.’ Understand? I promise you this doesn’t touch us in any way.”
Sashenka looked into Vanya’s reassuringly proletarian face, taking in his lined forehead, greying temples and crumpled uniform. She was so relieved that they were safe. Gideon was a special case, she told herself, a European writer who knew foreigners, who visited whorehouses in Paris, who gave interviews to English newspapers. Once again, she was grateful for her husband’s rock-like stability. Then she remembered Benya’s sarcasm about his “boisterous” hard work, which, in turn, was obscured by a delicious memory of Benya’s lips on her body earlier that day. A trickle of unease ran down her spine.
Upstairs, Snowy and Carlo were chasing Satinov round the apartment. Sashenka came in as they caught Satinov and tickled him.
“Tell me, Uncle Hercules,” said Snowy, sitting astride her godfather, “where do cushions live?”
“Cushonia, of course.” Satinov had helped Snowy develop her fantasy world. “Are they Wood Cushions, Sky Cushions or Sea Cushions?”
“Hercules, you’re such a sport,” said Sashenka. “You’ll be marvelous when you have your own!”
“I love these children,” said Satinov as he surrendered to them, allowing Carlo to pull off his boots.
Carolina came in to announce that dinner was ready.
19
Gideon was numb with fear as the car crossed Red and Revolution squares, then climbed the hill toward Lubianka Square. His vision crumpled as five mountainous storeys of grey granite and three of yellow brick overshadowed the car, which turned through a side gate into Lubianka Prison.
His mind kept working. He thought remorsefully of his brother, whom he had not seen for almost ten years and whom he had not telephoned since 1935. Surely Samuil had understood that it was risky for them to be in contact? But where was he now?
Gideon remembered his brother at the mansion on Greater Maritime Street, in that study crammed with Edwardian bric-a-brac, clanking on his Trotting Chair. How could it be that he had ceased to exist?
Without even thinking, Gideon bowed his head and whispered the Kaddish for his brother, amazed he could even recall that old Jewish prayer for the dead…Facing death, one returns to childhood, to family. Gideon realized
