She caught Kai-Olaf’s eye as he was talking to Hella Wuolijoka. Moscow had exposed a new aspect of his personality: he was far more gregarious here, and even seemed rather flirtatious. Margarita felt a small stab of jealousy as she gazed at the petite girl’s luxuriant black hair and her little snub nose. She’d listened to her story sitting next to her on the train to Moscow. Hella had spent two years at Heidelberg University, where she’d witnessed the rich students at play, those aristocratic sons of the great Prussian estates, whose older brothers had served as officers in Kaiser Wilhelm’s Reichswehr in the 1914–1918 war. One of their favourite games was to throw small coins, which they had heated until they were white-hot, from the roof of the university to the street below, howling with laughter as they watched beggars and street children pouncing on the coins and then screaming and dancing in pain as they burnt their fingers picking them up. Hella had loathed the place so much that she’d abandoned her studies and moved to Paris. She’d taken an evening class at the Lycée Condorcet to improve her French, where she’d met Xavier, a middle-aged communist who used to know Jean Jaurès, who’d introduced her to L’Humanité, a newspaper edited by his cousin. Every day, she’d read it faithfully, and gradually came to see the world, which she had found so difficult to understand, in a new light. She’d begun to take a keen interest in economics, which she’d studied independently at the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, the famous old library a stone’s throw from the Panthéon. There, by the light of a green lamp, she’d read Das Kapital for the first time. By this time, she was living in an apartment by the Jardin du Luxembourg, working as a secretary for the head of Kleyer, a German-French metal company. She’d had to learn shorthand, which was useful later on when she returned to Germany, as she was the main contact between the KPD in Frankfurt and the main office in Berlin. It was due to her good work in this capacity that she had been invited to join the delegation to Moscow.

  Margarita watched Kai-Olaf as he slowly made his way from table to table, shaking a hand here, squeezing a shoulder there, slapping a back, kissing a cheek. His face was wreathed in smiles, his eyes bluer than ever; he seemed the most relaxed she had ever seen him. Here among friends, he was obviously a contented man. Margarita suddenly felt a little left out; she didn’t really know anybody apart from her own delegation. But she resolved to take full advantage of this opportunity to meet as many other communists as she could during her visit.

  Kai-Olaf had joined the Italians. That came as no surprise to Margarita as she knew he had worked there. Mussolini had forced the Communist Party to go underground, like moles, to avoid being beaten to a pulp. She saw Kai-Olaf laugh at one of the Italian’s jokes, and saw Hella half turn to smile at him. Were they lovers? Hella’s attention was taken by somebody else a moment later, and Margarita realised it was pointless to speculate as she had no idea what, if anything, tied them to each other. She had decided to turn in for the night.

  As Margarita crossed the hotel lobby to reach the elevator, she noticed Nikolai Bukharin, flanked by two or three young men in leather jackets – obviously his bodyguards. He was talking to Stanislav Markovich. Stanislav caught sight of her and lifted his hand in greeting, motioning for her to wait for him.

  4.

  Once Bukharin had finished talking with him, Stanislav joined her on a sofa. The conversation flowed easily enough between them. Margarita asked him if still wrote.

  ‘The odd script for a film, when I have the chance.’

  ‘Even after your terrible experience in Berlin?’ she teased him. ‘Do you remember it?’

  ‘I’ve tried my best to forget it.’

  He had been highly relieved that such rubbish had barely garnered any reviews, he told her, and he claimed that he couldn’t even remember the name of the film.

  ‘Russia’s Altar,’ she reminded him.

  ‘Bourgeois nonsense,’ he said dismissively as he relit his pipe. Margarita noticed the change in his speech patterns since the last time she’d met him, when he and his wife Lyuba were passing through Berlin. He spoke now with the authority of a man who was used to giving orders and being obeyed.

  ‘So how many of your scripts have they made into films here?’

  ‘One or two,’ he said vaguely.

  ‘Anything I might have seen?’

  ‘Perhaps. I’m none the wiser what gets shown in Berlin these days.’

  ‘There’s a little picture-house I go to where they show pictures from the Soviet Union.’

  Stanislav asked after her cousin Alyosha.

  ‘He’s in Paris, too, I think. He must have been there three or four years now.’

  ‘Where does he live? Which part?’

  ‘I’m not sure, we haven’t been in contact for a while.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I really don’t know, he just seems to have disappeared. Are you and Lyuba still in Paris? Or here in Moscow?’

  ‘Paris. We live mostly in Paris. But I’m often in Moscow.’

  ‘Is Lyuba here tonight?’

  ‘No.’

  Stanislav seemed to tense for a moment, then he tapped his pipe and said levelly, ‘We’ve separated actually. Last year. Things became rather… to cut a long story short, I had an affair. Then she had an affair. We tried to patch things up, moved to another hotel in Paris. But something had broken. I’ve remarried since then. To Tatyana.’

  ‘Happy?’

  ‘Very happy.’

  There was a small silence then Margarita heard herself saying, ‘My sister has got married too. You remember Larissa? She has a little girl who’s a year and a half by now. Ella. For our mother.’

  Stanislav said that of course he remembered her, but then stood up rather abruptly.

  ‘You’ll have to excuse me.’

  Margarita stood up as well.

  ‘Before you go…’ she began tentatively.

  She explained it had been many years since she had heard anything at all about her father. While her mother was still alive, she would make an effort to ask in various places, but without success. For all she knew, he might be in prison, or dead; she had no idea what his fate had been. For her sister Larissa especially, who had always been their father’s favourite and had adored him back, this not knowing was more of a torture than knowing for certain that he was dead. Margarita told Stanislav that she had promised her sister that she would try to find out whatever she could while she was in the Soviet Union. Could Stanislav help her in any way? He promised he’d do his best, and said goodnight.

  Margarita unlocked the door to her room and kicked off her shoes gratefully. Sitting on the edge of her bed, she rubbed her toes. She must have walked the streets of Moscow for miles that day. She poured herself some tea from the thermos, and noticed that the fruit bowl and cigarette box had been replenished. By the window, a vase of fresh jasmine filled the room with its scent. Wearily, she splashed water over her face, pulled her clothes over her head and threw them over the chair. But, before she snuggled down into the blankets, she dabbed Stalin’s Breath liberally between her breasts, wincing slightly at its icy sting.

  5.

  Alyosha stood in the gloom at the head of the stairs, clutching his father’s volume of Catullus in his hand. By now, new tenants had occupied his old room in Passy, a family of Algerians. He’d been handed back the book and his second pair of shoes by a sloe-eyed young man, who’d not been able to tell him anything of his fellow tenant, the ex-soldier taxi driver. Nor was there any trace of the deeds to his Uncle Artyom’s villa. Alyosha tied his shoes together by the laces, slung them over his shoulder and left the building. He stood blinking on the pavement of his old neighbourhood for a moment as he became used to the light, and felt the heat of Paris on his face. He walked on and wondered at the abundance of spiders’ webs in the leaves of the trees. It was a good hour’s walk to the Maison Blanche asylum, and he had a slight feeling of dread as he entered. But his old friend recognised him at least.

  ‘It’s good to see you, Alexei Fyodorovich,’ Yury Safronovich told him. ‘Where have you been keeping yourself all this time? Can you see the change in me?’

  Alyosha hesitated for a second before saying that he hadn’t changed a bit. In fact, he had visibly deteriorated. His speech was slow and laborious, each word an effort.

  ‘I wish I was a free man, old friend…’ he told Alyosha sadly. ‘But what of you? What have you been up to?’.

  Alyosha decided to keep his experiences in Poland to himself.

  ‘When we see each other next time, I’ll be free,’ Yury whispered, his soft fingers gripping Alyosha’s hand. ‘Ask them on your way out if you don’t believe me.’ As the two of them walked along the gravelled paths in the gardens, he refused to let go his grasp. ‘You’ll hear from them how much I’m getting better every day. But, if they don’t let me go, I’m going to escape from here.’

  Alyosha couldn’t wait to escape either.

  6.

  Paris became autumnal. Alyosha’s spirits plummeted at the thought of yet another winter of scurrying home through cold dark streets. Another winter of trying to dry damp clothes in front of an inadequate fire. Another winter of catching colds, sweating through feverish nights and waking in the morning in a damp cold bed, teeth chattering and body shivering.

  And of course, he was in the same old bind: to obtain his permis de séjour, he needed money, as well as having to go through the same old bureaucratic rigmarole all over again. A black-market version would need even more money. But, without a stamp on that precious document, he had no right to live in Paris, and no chance of legal employment. His greatest worry since his return was whether he would be allowed to stay in France.

  As he wandered the streets, the soles of his shoes became ever thinner, and he felt as though he was fading away himself, little by little, compared to the vigorous and well-fed people striding past him. Sometimes, he would find himself pierced with jealousy as he saw lovers nuzzling up to each other, whispering the secrets of their hearts.

  With nothing better to do, he’d often take to simply following someone until they reached their journey’s end. One morning, he followed a girl with a mane of earth-coloured hair, which fell in waves to the small of her back. She looked a most attractive and pleasant young woman, as his grandmother in Russia used to say a long time ago. She was delivering a yellow parcel to somebody. Alyosha felt a sudden urge to cut off her long hair, hank by hank, and leave it in clumps on the pavement.

  He started to follow other heads of hair. This one had light and loose hair, that one had strawberry blonde hair, and for a few streets he followed blue steel hair, thickly dyed. Silver-coloured hair demanded his attention, then salt-and-pepper hair, and white hair, and black hair, and tidy hair, and tangled hair, hair which refused to lie flat however much combing and smoothing it received. He was amazed at the sheer variety of hair there was in the world.

  After wandering the streets of the Latin Quarter, he found himself in the Luxembourg Gardens one afternoon, and he lay smoking on the bench in the last of the autumn sun. Around him, the little birds of Paris bathed in the water fountains, hopping and shaking out their feathers. Now and again, the magpies’ fighting intruded on his reverie with their hoarse cawing. He watched women in high heels taking their little dogs for a walk, poodles or Chihuahuas dressed like their mistresses, pattering along lightly at their sides. Caressing breezes shivered though the trees, softly rustling the late autumn leaves, until the last bit of warmth from the sun faded away like a sad refrain. For the want of anything better to do, he made his way through the soft twilight to the Seine, to watch the long barges laden with barley and wheat, coal and other cargoes from northern France, from Belgium, from Rouen or Le Havre, chugging along on the yellow-brown waters, past the Ile de la Cité. He crossed a bridge and kept on and on and on, walking until he had climbed up the narrow streets of Montmartre to the bottom of the Sacré Coeur. He walked past open doors and heard women and children talking inside. He could smell mackerel frying, and sometimes something more luxurious – perfume or good tobacco – then the stink of dog shit, but he continued climbing, past secluded gardens guarded by iron railings, until he reached the summit, his armpits dripping, a warm wetness at the small of his back.

  Alyosha borrowed a light from a man in a dark red suit, a gold waistcoat and yellow shoes, and fell into a conversation with him. He had a reddish beard, the eyes of a baby and a voice which cracked as he spoke. He’d been a pianist at a picture house for a while, until he’d started drinking too heavily to hold a job, let alone a tune. Alyosha’s gaze roved over the expanse of blue-grey roofs extending towards the far horizon, and came to rest on the lights of the world’s most famous radio tower winking away in the distance. He smoked a third and then a fourth cigarette, until the sky was dark. The floodlights at the top of the Eiffel Tower started to rake across the night. Before him, the endless city unfurled, street by street, out to the suburbs. Such people beetled along those streets – people from every part of the world. Paris was a complicated ocean where everybody had to learn to swim in its waters – some succeeding better than others.

  Had it not been for the kindness of one French consul in Danzig, a man whose dazzling goodness was obvious in his smile, he doubted he would ever have seen Paris again. The Poles had taken him for a spy, and the Defensira were convinced of it.

  ‘Don’t give us that hard luck story of being on your uppers in Paris. What the fuck do you take us for? Fools? Where are you papers, you little bastard?’

  He had spent days doing his best to persuade them he hadn’t been trying to slip into Poland unnoticed and that he wasn’t a spy for the Soviet Union, he was just a young man in love. Wisia. Her name like a distant echo from somebody else’s life.

  He shut his eyes: he could still hear that poor girl, the young communist from Lvov, as her whimpers turned to howls in Pawiak prison. They made sure that he could hear her, as they continued to work on him in the next room.

  Although he did his best to forget his experience of being locked up in a cell in Warsaw, he couldn’t help but re-run the hours in his head, those hours when he’d been trying to convince them of his true identity. They had threatened to break the bones of each of his fingers in turn.

  ‘But that’s who I am…’

  Nobody had believed him.

  Equally futile were his attempts at forgetting Ludwika, because wherever he turned in Paris there were reminders. The city was full of her. As he walked past solid, respectable-looking houses, he felt like knocking on a door or two to ask about her. Down in the dry warmth of the metro, which sucked people in and blew them back out, he half expected to bump into her. In Montmartre. Around the Louvre. In Montparnasse. As he walked through the Père-Lachaise cemetery one cold afternoon at the beginning of November, he thought he saw her, but when he got closer, the girl putting some white roses on a grave was nothing like her. Wandering the city parks he felt she was there. Turning the corner of the street under a yellow lamp, he still half expected to come face to face with her… One day, he passed that little place on the Rue de la Cité, where they’d spent their first evening together, gradually falling silent as they gazed longingly into each other’s eyes. How was he ever going to be able to live without her?

  7.

  Christmas displays were already filling the windows of the big shops. Alyosha always thought there was something otherworldly about the light in Paris shops. As he wandered around Galeries Lafayette, purely in order to stay warm, the scent of perfume and candlewax reminded him of better days. Around him, he watched parents holding their children by the hand, women with their Pekinese or Chihuahuas in their little coats tucked under their arms, men on the way home from work carrying flowers tied in pink ribbon, all walking so purposefully and confidently. A person with money in his pocket walks differently from a person with none.

  One evening, as people streamed past him, criss-crossing the city streets in their buttoned-up raincoats, the puddles under their feet shining blood-black after a sudden downpour, Alyosha though he caught a sudden glimpse of his mother making her way in the crowd towards the Vavin metro. Could it be her? Had he really just seen his mother in the flesh? He ran after her retreating back, down the stairs of the metro, putting on a spurt to catch up with her as she got to the gates. He grabbed her arm. She turned to look at him and her frightened eyes met his, a fragile woman, half anticipating that he was going to snatch her bag, until fear turned to recognition. But, before she could say a word, Alyosha turned on his heel and hurled himself back up to the clamour of Montparnasse, the cold night stinging his cheeks.

  8.

  ‘I couldn’t help but hear the conversation at breakfast this morning, Gretushka.’

  Margarita was halfway across Red Square with Kai-Olaf. As ever, his knapsack was slung over one shoulder, his hands were thrust deep in his coat pockets, and his blue cap covered his bald head. In front of them were Elfrida and Lornena, and, just behind, Paul, with his mouse, Rosa, perched on his shoulders, was walking with Max and Moritz. Margarita was concentrating on not turning her ankle as she walked across the cobbles.

  ‘Is this the same Masha as the one who came to Berlin, to the conference at the Sportsplatz?’ asked Kai-Olaf.

  ‘Yes it is, Masha Ivanovna.’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’ he asked, and she wondered why he always sounded slightly impatient with her.

  ‘I’m finding it difficult to get hold of her.’

  ‘There’s such a thing as the telephone in Moscow,’ he turned to look at her with his blue eyes.

  ‘She never picks up…’