Red Shadow Read Free

much of a scientist, although he tried as hard as he could. His real interest lay in plays and novels: Chekhov, Tolstoy and, most of all, Shakespeare. He liked words and what they did to your imagination. He was good at writing too, so much so that his classmates said he should edit The Pioneer , School 107’s newspaper. He was flattered and said he could be persuaded. But he was beginning to regret that. Barikada Kozlov was the current editor, and he would be a powerful enemy to make. Barikada’s father worked for the NKVD, just like Galina’s father, Kapitan Zhiglov. Misha wondered if they knew each other, but he was shrewd enough not to ask. A question like that could get you denounced as a spy. Sometimes he wondered if Barikada had found out about his mama. The boy looked at him occasionally with a knowing smirk.
    And besides, The Pioneer ’s monthly diet of the school’s sporting achievements, the necessity of ‘world revolution’ and the perils of ‘anti-Soviet conversations’ didn’t really appeal to Misha. He had already realised it would be dangerous to produce a more interesting magazine.
    As Misha walked into his first-floor classroom, he was greeted by a hail of catcalls from Sergey and Nikolay, who had been watching through the window as he and Valya arrived. ‘A bit out of your league, isn’t she, Mikhail?’
    ‘Has she let you kiss her yet?’
    ‘Get lost!’ said Misha, but he could feel himself beginning to blush.
    Yelena was there too, sitting by the window, her blonde bob glowing in the spring sunshine.
    She gave him a broad smile when he came to sit next to her, and whispered, ‘They couldn’t get a girl to look at them if they were the last two boys in Moscow!’
    ‘She’s just a friend,’ he said, feeling a bit flustered. ‘We just live near each other.’ She looked surprised and for a second Misha thought he saw a flash of relief in her eyes.
    She was working on an embroidery of Lenin for the school sewing circle. She had told him about it before in rather more detail than he wanted to hear – a series of vignettes showing the life of the leader of the Revolution from his birth in 1870 to his death in 1924.
    ‘A fine likeness, Yelena,’ he said, looking at the embroidery. ‘You’ve got his steely gaze just right.’
    She blushed now, and wondered if he was teasing her, which he was.
    They talked a little about the volunteer teaching they both did as part of their Komsomol duties. Like any ambitious Soviet youths, they were both in the Komsomol – the communist youth group for aspiring Party members. Yelena had recently begun to give reading classes to peasant children just arrived in Moscow. She was shocked to discover many were completely illiterate.
    And every Day One Misha also went out before school to teach literature to workers in their lunch break, over at the Stalin Automobile Plant. He was so good at it the students had asked him to do an early evening class as well. School had agreed to that – letting him go two hours early every Day Four. Teaching was definitely the career for him, and he loved the enthusiasm of the workers he taught. He could see a genuine interest in their faces, quite unlike the obligatory displays of zeal required for political speeches and parades. Recently Stalin’s daughter Svetlana had even sought him out at the Kremlin to help her with her literature homework. Misha kept quiet about that though. A good Komsomol cadet did not boast. Only his father and Valya knew.
    Yelena said, ‘Will you be going to the meeting this breaktime? It would be nice to walk there with you.’
    ‘I was thinking of going,’ said Misha, as if a member of the Komsomol could do anything else. ‘Remind me what it’s about.’
    ‘It’s Barikada again. The need to unmask class enemies.’ She dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘I don’t like him but I do think he gives the comrades a good moral lead.’
    Misha liked Yelena but she irritated him too. She was too