Red Shadow
Authors: Paul Dowswell
To John,
Wish you were here,
and also to Mary, George, Grace and Hannah
Contents
Glossary of Soviet Era and Russian Terms
Misha looked at the grey clouds and shivered. That afternoon it was cold enough for a thin layer of ice to appear on the puddles on Moscow’s pavements. He was pleased, he supposed, at this first sign of very cold weather because it meant an end to the
Rasputitsa
– the season of soggy rain and mud that preceded the winter and summer.
When he crossed the great bridge over the Moskva River to the Kremlin, the wind buffeted him and he wrapped his coat tightly around his slim frame. His half-hour walk home from school was nearly over.
Five minutes later he reached his family’s apartment inside the Kremlin.
‘Mama, I’m back,’ he shouted as he entered the hall.
There was no reply. Anna Petrov was always home before him.
He knew something was wrong as soon as he entered the living room. A tray with a china tea set lay scattered on the floor, spilt milk and tea leaving dark stains on the Persian rug among the shattered fragments of porcelain.
Misha called out again, panic in his voice. ‘Mama! Are you all right?’
Perhaps she was unwell and sleeping? He went at once to his parents’ room. It was exactly as his mama had left it that morning. He looked in the other rooms. All were empty. Maybe she had been taken to hospital?
He started when he heard the door open. ‘Mama?’ he called out. ‘What’s happened?’
It was his papa. Yegor Petrov was a sickly colour, sweat glistening on his forehead. ‘She has been taken, Mikhail,’ he said, before he crumpled and tears ran down his face.
Misha had never seen his father cry. He stood there feeling useless, reeling at the terrible news, not knowing what to do. ‘Let me make you some coffee, Papa,’ he said.
Misha sat at the dining-room table waiting for his papa to collect himself, watching his hands trembling as he lifted a cup of coffee to his mouth. Eventually Papa said, ‘Colonel Volodin summoned me to his office at five o’clock. Mama has been arrested by the NKVD. She has been declared an enemy of the people.’
Within a week they discovered she had been sent to a camp in the east for ten years, with no ‘right of correspondence.’ Misha was filled with despair. For several days he could not bear to go to school. Who had ordered such a thing? What reason could they have to take his mother away?
A month after it happened Misha pleaded with his papa to talk again to Colonel Volodin, to try to find out more. His father said the Colonel had disappeared too. In a frightened whisper he told Misha they thought he had been liquidated, and that they should never speak of Mama again.
May 1941
Mikhail Petrov was in the bathroom washing his hair in the basin when there was a brisk tap at the door. He recognised the knock at once.
RAP bap-BAP.
It could only be Valentina Golovkin, come to walk with him to the afternoon shift at School 107. He hastily slipped on a shirt and rushed to let her in, towel-drying his hair as he hurried down the corridor of the apartment.
She gave him a smile when he opened the door. ‘Good afternoon, Misha. Like the haircut. Very stylish,’ she said, smirking at his dishevelled appearance. Misha thought maybe it was time to visit the barber but he liked his hair long and floppy at the top.
‘I won’t be long, Valya,’ he said. ‘Come in and wait a minute.’
‘Don’t forget we have to pick up the Princess,’ she said. ‘And she always slows us down so hurry with the hair-drying!’
The Spasskaya Tower clock began to chime the opening notes of the communist anthem ‘The Internationale’, as it did every quarter-hour, and Valya shouted out, ‘We’re going to be late!’
A couple of days a week they went to collect Galina Zhiglov to drop her off at a local primary school on the way to their school. Valya said Galina reminded her of that Russian fairy tale about a
tsarevna
– a princess – who never smiled.
Galina lived in an apartment barely a minute down the corridor from Misha’s. Her father, Kapitan Zhiglov, gave him the creeps. He knew that his mama and papa had been friendly with him once, but the friendship had ended quite abruptly. Misha sometimes wondered if the Kapitan had anything to do with his mother’s arrest.
There was no Mrs Zhiglov. The rumour Misha had heard touched on divorce and a relationship with the head of the Central Museum of Soviet Exports. The Kapitan had been given custody of Galina, which was a mystery to all who knew him. Zhiglov was NKVD. The Soviet secret police were not known for their nurturing qualities.
When they reached the Zhiglovs’ apartment, Valya knocked and they waited. An anxious young woman peered around the crack in the door. It was Lydia, Zhiglov’s maid. She looked relieved when she saw who it was and opened the door wide.
‘Galina, your friends are here for you,’ she called. She turned to Valya and Misha and gave them a look of weary exasperation. Lydia, they knew, spent most of her time trying to entertain Galina. Zhiglov himself worked long hours at the Lubyanka, the headquarters of the NKVD. They said he was a close adviser to the head of the secret police – Lavrentiy Beria. Misha had seen Beria around the Kremlin too – a stubby bald man with spectacles. He could have been a provincial tax inspector but for the palpable air of menace that surrounded him, almost like a cloud of cologne.
A solemn little girl emerged from the shadows and gave them both a formal nod. She was dressed beautifully in a calico floral-print dress and had her golden hair tied in two neat plaits. A red and gold enamel Young Octobrist badge on her collar caught in the light.
‘And how are you today, young lady?’ said Valya.
‘I am very well, thank you. And how are you?’ she answered with unnerving poise.
Lydia dashed out with a coat, hat, gloves and scarf, and Galina stood like a mannequin as the maid draped these clothes around her.
Misha resented having to walk Galina to her school. Valya was the only person he felt he could talk to honestly and he couldn’t do that when the little girl was there.
Valya was the only one among his school comrades who knew his mother had been arrested. When it happened, he had trusted her enough to tell her. But even with Valya he didn’t usually talk about his mother. Recently he was beginning to wonder if others had found out too. Maybe their parents had connections with the NKVD and someone had let it slip. These days he always felt a twisty anxiety when he went to school. Children of ‘enemies of the people’ could expect to be denounced and humiliated in front of their classmates, then barred from further education. It had been seven months now since his mama’s disappearance and, as yet, it had not happened to him.
He was even more surprised that he and Papa still lived in their Kremlin apartment. In the weeks after Mama’s arrest he woke with a start every time he heard noises in the night, expecting them both to be dragged away. But that had not happened either. Misha thought that maybe it was because his father was one of Stalin’s secretaries. They had a friendship of sorts.
Valya, Galina and Misha emerged from the grand apartments of the Arsenal building into bright sunshine. Misha loved the spring – didn’t everyone in Moscow? That early May afternoon, as they began their walk to School 107, it was so hot they even took off their hats and carried their coats.
The authorities had introduced two shifts in schools to cope with Moscow’s swelling population. Misha liked being on the second shift – 2.30 until 8.00 – with the morning free for homework and chores. It meant he could have a lie-in. And Papa usually worked very late so he sometimes got to see him before bedtime, if Comrade Stalin finished his meetings early.
Just as they were about to leave the Kremlin grounds Misha spotted a familiar face. When the family had first moved to the Kremlin, he had been introduced to General Rokossovsky in their apartment. The General had been briefing his father on naval deployment along the sea frontier with Japan, so Yegor Petrov could prepare a report for the
Vozhd
– the Boss.
Rokossovsky had a gallant manner and it was whispered he had been a cavalry officer for the Tsar before the Revolution. Papa had told Misha he spoke to everyone, from the
Vozhd
to the cleaning ladies, with the same courtesy, which made him one of the most widely liked men in the Kremlin. Misha liked him because the General had always smiled at him when he saw him in the corridor, whereas most of the adults he passed ignored him completely. But not long after Misha met him he vanished – along with many other senior army officers. Everyone thought he had been liquidated. Yet here he was again, very much alive.
Misha went over to speak to him. ‘Comrade General, how nice to see you again. How are you?’
Rokossovsky smiled pleasantly and looked him straight in the eye. ‘I am well, young citizen,’ he replied. ‘I have been resting.’ Then he gave Valya and Galina a brisk little bow. Misha introduced them and Rokossovsky said to Valya, ‘Ah yes, I know your father.’
As he spoke, he brushed a stray hair from his eyes, and Misha noticed all the fingernails on his hand had been removed. It was all he could do not to flinch. ‘Comrade General, if I may say so, I am pleased to see you back,’ Misha muttered, his heart racing. What could he say to Galina if she asked about his fingers? Could he pretend he hadn’t noticed?
As they walked away, Valya turned to Galina with a smile and asked, ‘So, what have you been doing this morning? Have you been keeping Lydia busy?’
Valya always knew what to say to Galina, and Misha was relieved when the little girl answered with her usual composure.
‘Lydia told me about the house spirit Domovoj when she was reading me bedtime stories,’ said Galina. ‘He lives behind the stove in the kitchen and he comes out at night to pinch naughty girls who are rude and ungrateful.’