Читать книгу The Lieutenant’s Lover - Harry Bingham - Страница 8

Pavel was gone.

Kiryl, Tonya’s father, either didn’t know where his son was, or more likely wouldn’t say. But the boy was just fourteen and delicately built. Two winters ago, he had caught typhus, at the same time as their mother had died of it. He had survived, but only just and Tonya knew she couldn’t let him wander the streets, out late and alone. She put on coat, hat, gloves and scarf.

‘I’m going to look for Pavel,’ she said. ‘We can eat when I get back.’

‘Comrade citizen Pavel, you mean,’ said her father.

Tonya ignored him and hurried out. A thin snow was falling, but nothing substantial, just tiny round specks flung around in a piercing wind. Her father’s last comment could have meant nothing at all, just another one of the old man’s jokes, but it had possibly been intended as a clue. She hurried through the streets, feeling her breath beginning to freeze on the brim of her cap.

After walking for twenty minutes, she came to the intersection of Sadoyava Triumfalnaya and Sadoyava Karetnaya. There was a large building with a broad fanlight over a lighted porch. Outside there was a pile of logs, guarded by a soldier with a rifle.

‘Is this where the meeting is?’ she asked.

He nodded. ‘Inside. It’s been going two hours already.’

‘Those logs…?’

‘… are red logs. For the Petrograd Soviet.’

The soldier might have meant his answer, or he might just be getting ready to haggle. Tonya thrust her hand in her pocket and brought out a lump of sugar as big as her fist. It was damp, grey and sticky, but good currency all the same.

‘I’ve got sugar.’

The soldier shook his head. ‘The logs belong to Comrade Lenin. You need to ask him.’

Tonya stuffed her sugar away, unbothered by the rejection. In this strange new world, money was no longer reliable. In a city where food and fuel were desperately short, Tonya now always carried something with her, in case she came across a good opportunity to trade. Most times she failed, sometimes she got lucky. It was just a question of being always ready to try.

She went on into the building. Down in the basement, there was a meeting of the Borough Housing Commission. At the front of the room, there was a kind of podium, planks stretched across wooden egg crates. The podium was dominated by a speaker, hatless and wearing an unbuttoned leather jerkin. The man caught sight of Tonya as she entered. She knew he’d seen her, because his eyes fixed on her, but there was no change in his voice or posture. His presence commanded the room. He was strikingly good-looking with dark curly hair, worn shorthand a lean, handsome, intelligent face. The only bad feature he possessed was a nose that had been badly broken. Though still narrow, it bent sharply where it had been struck.

The man, Rodyon Leonidovich Kornikov, was Tonya’s cousin and a rising star in the new Bolshevik administration. He fixed his eyes on her, then directed his glance deliberately across the room, before bringing it back to her. He never stopped speaking for a second. His sentences came out perfectly, without mistake or hesitation. Tonya looked over to where the man had indicated. Pavel was there, his eyes shining unhealthily, his coat unbuttoned like the man on the platform. Tonya pushed her way across to him.

‘Pavel! You’ll freeze.’

The boy, a fourteen-year-old, began buttoning up almost as soon as he saw his sister; and he let her adjust his hat and scarf. But he still kept his eyes on the platform where Rodyon was winding up.

Tonya turned her attention from Pavel to her cousin. Rodyon spoke of the necessity of establishing revolutionary principles ‘from the first winter on; from the worst slum outwards’. The broken nose in his perfect face served to draw attention to his handsomeness, adding something mesmerising to his features. He finished speaking, to a scattering of applause.

Pavel turned to his sister.

‘Wasn’t he good? When I’m older—’

‘When you’re older you can go out on your own. Right now, you need to stay warm.’

Pavel shrugged. His eyes still shone as though fevered. Rodyon barged through the crowd towards them, stopping in front of Tonya.

‘Comrade!’

‘Rodya! It’s all very well for you to march about like you don’t feel the cold. You should think about Pavel. He copies you.’

‘He will be a good citizen one day. Enthusiastic.’

‘If he doesn’t catch his death first.’

Rodyon smiled. He had perfect teeth, white and even.

‘Well, comrade,’ he said to Pavel. ‘Your sister’s right. You should stay warm too.’

The boy nodded.

‘Are you all right for things? Food and everything?’

‘We don’t have any wood. We’ll have nothing at all to burn by the end of the week.’

‘You have your allocation of course?’

‘If it comes. Last time there was nothing.’

‘That can’t be helped. You can’t rebuild a house without knocking down a wall or two.’

‘They’re not walls. They’re your precious comrade citizens.’

Rodyon smiled. He was an important man, the Housing Commissar of the Petrograd Soviet.

‘I can’t help you. Everyone’s in the same situation.’

Tonya shrugged. She hadn’t actually asked for help, but didn’t say so.

‘But if you want… Uncle Kiryl is still a thief, I suppose?’

Tonya nodded. Her father, Kiryl, worked on the railway and stole coal. An accomplice threw shovelfuls off the train as it entered the station. Kiryl collected the bits up in a sack and sold it on the black market. ‘He only gets vodka and tobacco. He wouldn’t even think of bringing the coal home.’

‘But still, you have things to trade.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then come with me on my tour of inspection tomorrow. You never know what you’ll find in these places once owned by the bourgeois.’

‘Thank you.’

He shook his head. ‘No thanks and no favours. When we have things running properly, you won’t be short of logs.’

He held Tonya’s eyes one last time. Rodyon was a long-time Bolshevik, with two spells in prison to his credit. His nose had been broken in a brawl with police and he was rising fast under the new regime. He had also, for the last two years, been paying careful court to Tonya. He had been constant and, in his way, generous, but Tonya never quite knew whether he was sincere. She wasn’t sure if she was his only girl, or if Rodyon would ever lose his heart to a woman. He seemed too self-possessed for that, too important.

She felt suddenly uncomfortable with him and looked away. But logs were logs, and if Rodyon could help her get some, then she would certainly do as he suggested.

‘Till tomorrow then,’ she said.