One Night in Winter Read Free Page B

on the very edge of destruction, you don’t need reminding that you must be careful. His mother felt like a bag of bones in his arms. Food was rationed and they could scarcely afford to feed themselves.
    ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘People are arriving.’ Suddenly children in the school uniform – grey trousers and white shirt for boys, grey skirt and white blouse for girls – were arriving from every direction. ‘Mama, look at that car! I wonder who’s in it?’
    A Rolls-Royce glided up to the kerb. A driver with a peaked cap jumped out and ran round to open the door at the back. Andrei and Inessa stared as a full-breasted woman with scarlet lips, a strong jaw and jet-black hair emerged from the car.
    ‘Look, Andryusha!’ exclaimed Inessa. ‘You know who that is?’
    ‘Of course I do! It’s Sophia Zeitlin. I love her movies. She’s my favourite film star.’ He had even dreamed of her: those full lips, those curves. He had woken up very embarrassed. She was old – in her forties, for God’s sake!
    ‘Look what she’s wearing!’ Inessa marvelled, scrutinizing Sophia Zeitlin’s checked suit and high heels. After her, a tall girl with fair curly hair emerged from the Rolls. ‘Oh, that must be her daughter.’
    They watched as Sophia Zeitlin straightened her own chic jacket, checked her hairdo and then cast a professional smile in three directions as if she was accustomed to posing for photographers. Her daughter, as scruffy as the mother was immaculate, rolled her eyes. Balancing a pile of books in her arms and trying to keep her satchel strap on her shoulder, she headed straight towards the school gates.
    Inessa started to brush imaginary dust off Andrei’s shoulders.
    ‘For God’s sake, Mama,’ he whispered at her, pushing her hand away. ‘Come on! We’re going to be late.’ Suppose his classmates first sighted him having his face cleaned by his mother! It was unthinkable.
    ‘I just want you to look your best,’ Inessa protested but he was already crossing the road. There were not many cars and Moscow looked faded, scarred, weary after four years of war. At least two of the buildings on Ostozhenka were heaps of rubble. The Kurbskys had just reached the pavement when there was a skidding rush and a Packard limousine, black and shiny, sped towards them, followed by a squat Pobeda car. Braking with a screech, a uniformed guard with waxed moustaches leaped from the passenger seat of the Packard and opened the back door.
    A man climbed out of the car. ‘I recognize
him
,’ Andrei said. ‘That’s Comrade Satinov.’
    Andrei remembered him in
Pravda
wearing an entire chest of medals (headline: ‘Stalin’s Iron Commissar’) but now he wore a plain khaki uniform with just a single Order of Lenin. Arctic stare, aquiline nose: emotionless discipline, Bolshevik harshness. How often had he seen that face on banners as big as houses, on flags aloft in parades? There was even a city in the Urals called Satinovgrad. His mother squeezed his arm.
    ‘It’s quite a school,’ he said. The bodyguards formed a phalanx around Comrade Satinov, who was joined by a tiny woman and three children in school uniform, two boys who were Andrei’s age, and a much younger girl.
    Hercules Satinov, Politburo member, Secretary of the Party, Colonel General, approached the school gates holding his daughter’s hand as if he was leading a victory march. Andrei and his mother instinctively stepped back and they were not the only ones: there was already a queue at the gates but a path opened for the Satinovs. As Andrei and his mother followed in their wake, they found themselves right behind the Satinov boys.
    Andrei had never been so close to a leader before, and glanced back anxiously at his mother.
    ‘Let’s step back a bit.’ Inessa gestured: retreat. ‘Best not to be too far forward.’ Rule number one: Don’t be noticed, don’t draw attention. It was a habit born of long misfortune and suffering in this flint-hearted