‘You haven’t fallen asleep, have you?’

  ‘No…’

  ‘I thought I heard you snoring.’

  ‘Listening to you is keeping me awake.’

  ‘I hope you’ve learned something.’

  The future Paul wanted to see in his own country was completely possible, because it was already a reality in the Soviet Union. Communism was the key which would unlock the door to the problem of History. If only everybody shared the same ideals, and fought together to realise the same vision.

  ‘If people could just see for themselves what’s happening in the Soviet Union today, instead of being tricked by bourgeois propaganda…’

  The great need was to inspire men to create a new kingdom; to build new schools, new hospitals, new houses and factories, new prisons even. It had been Paul’s great privilege, in 1927, to be given a glimpse of the future, of a morality so different from the hypocritical morality of his own society. He longed to see his country stepping forward into a pure and clean future, where everybody could co-exist on a continent where unemployment wasn’t sweeping like the Black Plague through Europe.

  He stopped speaking practically mid-sentence, and the cell sank into silence.

  ‘Are you alright?’ asked Alyosha in a while.

  There was no answer.

  ‘Paul?’

  Muteness.

  ‘Can you hear me?’

  Nothing.

  Alyosha felt a lump under his back as Paul screwed his fist into his mattress.

  ‘You,’ hissed the communist.

  ‘Me what?’ asked Alyosha shifting onto his side.

  ‘You can’t trick me.’ His former cheerful volubility had turned into a seething hatred. ‘I know it’s them who’ve put you here.’

  What them? What was he talking about?

  ‘I don’t want to say another word to you ever again, you wanker.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about…’

  ‘The fascists who run this shithouse of a jail. You’ve been put in my cell to try and get me to open my mouth about KPD business.’

  ‘What on earth makes you think that?’

  ‘Don’t try to deny it.’

  ‘I’m here because I stabbed a pimp.’

  ‘Agent provocateur.’

  ‘I stuck a knife into his chest. That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘Spy.’

  ‘I’m not a spy.’

  Silence.

  ‘Are you listening to me?’

  A second.

  ‘Paul, will you listen to me?’

  But Alyosha didn’t hear a single other word from him. The next day, the cell door opened and the unemployed printer and his little mouse were taken away.

  36.

  Wiping her tears away with a handkerchief, Galina couldn’t stop apologising.

  ‘If it hadn’t been for me,’ she said in her little girl’s voice.

  If it hadn’t been for this. If it hadn’t been for that. If it hadn’t been for the other. If I hadn’t been born, he thought. Even though she clearly felt very guilty, she still couldn’t stop herself from listing all her current misfortunes. He didn’t have much patience, and had little to say to her. There’s nothing in the world as loud as the sound of silent anger.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ She made to touch his hand. ‘Don’t worry, everything will be alright.’

  ‘How?’ he asked. ‘How the fuck will everything be alright?’

  ‘If I’d only listened to you.’ she wailed.

  ‘Pity you didn’t.’

  Galina bristled. ‘You’re not my papa, you know.’

  ‘Did he ever stab a pimp for you?’

  ‘Why are you so mean to me?’

  His head pounded, and his heart felt like stone.

  ‘If you want me to leave, you’ve only to say so.’

  ‘No, don’t go… Not yet… Sit…’

  He apologised.

  She apologised.

  There was an awkward silence, then, ‘I do feel awful, Alyosha.’

  ‘I’m sure you do.’

  In spite of himself, his eyes kept wandering to the cleft between her breasts.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ she asked him.

  ‘About the life I would have liked to have lived. Days without storm clouds. A normal life. One without nightmares.’

  ‘There’s no such thing. Nobody lives a normal life,’ was her reply.

  When he was taken back to his cell, there was yet another new cellmate: a sick old man, prostrate on the bunk. He coughed feebly, the phlegm rattling in his chest, and croaked his name, too weak to move from his supine position. He was as frail as a baby, unable to even lift a finger over the edge of his blanket.

  Lothar was a man who was a burden to himself, and seeing him there so broken, watching him weeping quietly to himself, Alyosha suddenly felt his own life to be a beacon of hope in comparison. The old man told Alyosha that he had fallen into a slough of despair. His life was a plenitude of poverty, a richness of nothing. His wife had died young, many years ago, when she was barely thirty. She had been a wonderful wife, and an even better mother, but when she died, the home died too, and the children scattered to the four winds. After that, his life was purposeless. He remarried briefly, but it was a mistake, and proved yet another disappointment.

  In the darkness one night, he started to say in his short, choking sentences how similar everybody was to each other. Angels and thieves, reds and whites, feckless idiots and upstanding pillars of the community; all just minor variations of the same tune made flesh. You could always recognise another’s nature, because you could always see something of yourself there, even in your enemy.

  37.

  The two Nazis, Max and Moritz, spent their time smoking and boasting about their prodigious capacity for drinking, fighting and fucking. They were two fine specimens, tall and strong without being too meaty. In their own way, they were open and kind, and during their conversations, it became clear that, at one time, they had been full members of the KPD. They had even been on a visit to the Soviet Union, which, in their opinion, was the arsehole of the world, full to bursting with Jews and whores.

  ‘Too many Jews by half, and that’s a fact.’

  ‘Everywhere you went, there was some cunt wanted to tell you about some fucking farm or foundry or factory or other. It was a joke. They couldn’t shut up. Claiming they had the best of everything. Morning, noon, and night, every fucking day.’

  They had both been unemployed for years, but since they joined the NASAP, they had found an outlet for their unruly energy. They usually interrupted each other, their words tumbling out of their mouths like toys from a cupboard, but Max and Moritz were of exactly the same opinion: what their country needed was a strong leader who could put Germany back on her feet again, make her proud and vigorous once more, and, most importantly, restore her former glory in the eyes of the world.

  They relished insulting the communists, the socialists and the Jews. Looking back, they claimed that Russia wasn’t any kind of workers’ republic at all – that was all a ploy. After visiting all those factories and foundries where the workers cringed under the bridle and the bit, punished for the slightest misdemeanour, and treated like dogs, the two had seen the communist regime for what it was. They couldn’t understand why their former comrade, Paul, still had any illusions.

  ‘Stupid bastard,’ said Max. ‘Fucking wanker …’

  ‘I’d like to give it to his mother in front of him…’ agreed Moritz.

  ‘We will, too.’

  ‘He can depend on it, because we know where the fucking bitch lives.’

  ‘Why? Is she like Paul?’ asked Alyosha.

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Is she a Bolshevik as well?’

  ‘Who cares? She gave birth to one didn’t she? That’s enough of a reason to give it to her.’

  They both knew his cousin Margarita as well, thought she was a right pain in the arse; a mouthy bitch who was asking for it. When they found out he was related to her, they thought he must be a communist as well, but once they understood that he hated the Reds as much as they did, Max and Moritz were as good as gold, always ready to share their tobacco with him.

  According to Max, Kai-Olaf was ‘the biggest wanker of the lot.’

  ‘Fucking bald twat…’

  ‘He needs his cock and balls chopped off…’

  ‘Till the bastard’s squealing for his life…’

  ‘And stuffed into that big gob of his…’

  ‘That would stop the cunt’s bullshit once and for all.’

  After spending nearly three days on his own, Alyosha was glad of their company. But after spending another three days with them, their extremely limited topics of conversation palled. They didn’t have much talent for silence, and he longed to have the cell back to himself. The prisoner in the cell above them’s constant marching back and forth, and the hoarse, persistent cries from another cell, were beginning to drive him mad as well. Anxious as he was about his own fate, his nerves were jangled by the slightest thing.

  38.

  Margarita came to see him again with good news: his new lawyer was convinced that Camlo would never come near a court of law to testify against him.

  ‘What judge is going to set any store by the word of a pimp?’ she asked.

  It was a matter convincing the police of this so that they dropped the charges, and as they were realists, if nothing else, they would eventually agree. Alyosha didn’t have to worry about facing judge, jury or more prison, but Margarita’s greatest concern was how he would keep himself safe once he was released; there was no question but that Camlo would be after his blood.

  ‘He’ll kill you. You’ll have to get out of Berlin the minute they release you,’ was her advice. ‘Why not go back to Paris? You’d be a lot safer there. Don’t you think?’

  ‘I’m not sure I want to leave Berlin.’

  When Galina next visited him, she voiced the same concerns.

  ‘You know what he’s like. He always bears a grudge.’

  ‘I can’t ever go back to France.’

  There were too many bad memories in Paris.

  ‘Go somewhere else then. Anywhere.’

  ‘Without money?’

  He was strangely resistant to leaving Berlin, though he wasn’t sure why. Did he want Camlo to kill him?

  ‘For your own sake, I’m begging you to catch the first train out of the city once you’re free.’

  39.

  Very early one morning, he heard the key turning in the lock of his cell door, and the heavy bolt being pulled back. When he stepped out of the prison into the fresh air, he was half expecting to see Margarita, but it was Larissa who stood there waiting for him. She slipped her arm through his, and they walked away from Moabit’s high walls. Alyosha sucked the morning air into his lungs, and lifted his eyes to the sky, but it was a disappointingly cloudy day.

  ‘Margarita wanted to come but they wouldn’t let her have a day off work.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She didn’t say. She never really discusses Aznefttrust. You need feeding, Alyosha, you’ve lost weight. I could feel your ribs when I hugged you. Come on.’

  Over a good breakfast in a café on Wiebstrasse, Larissa told him how she’d wanted to put a roof over his head, but Bruno had objected.

  ‘I can understand why,’ he told her.

  They smoked a cigarette, and Larissa said it was because he was worried about the safety of his wife and children. His greatest fear was that Camlo might find out Alyosha was living with them, and come to the house when Larissa and the children were there on their own.

  ‘Really, you don’t have to apologise. I totally understand.’

  Bruno probably wants to keep the stink of prison out of his respectable parlour as well, Alyosha thought to himself. So that she wouldn’t worry about him, he told her he already had somewhere in mind to live. The café smelled of sawdust, and their little round table kept wobbling. Larissa told him she had to share her secret with him: she was in love.

  ‘I know,’ Alyosha said.

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  ‘Yes, I do. Simon, the doctor… When I was staying with you…’

  Larissa shook her head. ‘Simon… That came to an end ages ago…’ This was somebody else. She sighed quietly. ‘But everything is so complicated.’

  She hadn’t been in love with Bruno for years. Looking back, she wasn’t sure whether she had ever loved him, but she had married him because she’d been so desperate to put down roots; she could see that now. That had been a mistake, no two ways about it, but how was she to get out of the trap? She was in such a pickle, and now here was Bruno starting to talk about trying for a baby brother for Ella and Clara. Of course, he wanted a son; he was a Catholic after all, and having a large family was very important to him. Every time they were with his parents, the conversation would turn to more grandchildren. But Larissa could barely stomach him near her, let alone him touching her.

  ‘So who is he?’

  ‘Walter.’ Her expression brightened at once. ‘Let me tell you about him.’

  40.

  Margarita was distracted from her work by voices in the corridor outside her office, which became louder as they approached. She heard one of them excuse himself, and recognised the voice of her ex-lover, Stanislav Markovich. The next minute, he had walked in to her office without knocking, sucking on his pipe as always, wearing a mackintosh over his grey suit. They greeted each other, exchanging a kiss on the cheek, and then he perched on the corner of her desk, explaining that official business had brought him to Berlin, but he wouldn’t be there for long – a couple of days at most – and then he’d be back in Paris.

  ‘You’re looking well,’ Margarita told him, noticing his tanned face.

  ‘Tatyana and I took a vacation in the Crimea.’

  ‘Lovely.’

  ‘Why are you smiling?’

  ‘I just remembered something I did years ago. My sister, Larissa, and I were collecting seashells on the beach at Yalta. The two of us had wandered along the seashore, and had ended up all the way along past the headland…’ She stopped, suddenly embarrassed. ‘It’s really not very interesting…’

  He tapped his pipe into the ashtray on her desk. ‘No, no, finish your story.’

  ‘It’s not important.’

  Stanislav half smiled and gazed at her consideringly. She had noticed that his hair had some grey streaks now, and he had put on a little weight around his middle. He seemed to have slipped into middle age rather suddenly. But perhaps he was thinking something similar about her.

  ‘I have a gift for you. Something I promised you back in Moscow,’ he said, producing a small envelope out of his inside pocket. Before he placed it in her hand, he added, ‘I know how much it was worrying you.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She waited for him to leave before she opened the envelope. It was a black-and-white photograph of a grave, with some Michaelmas daisies at the base of the headstone. She studied it intently, but the inscription was too small to read, so she went over to the accounts department to borrow a magnifying glass. Back in her office, she shut the door and examined the photograph again through the lens.

  On the headstone, she could just make out her father’s name and the date of his death.

  41.

  It was almost seven o’clock when Margarita rang the bell of her sister’s house. The maid showed her in. Bruno was in good spirits and seemed pleased to see her.

  ‘Sit, sit,’ he urged her benevolently. He was just on his way out to a wrestling championship at the Sportsplatz. Larissa saw him to the door, and Bruno claimed a kiss from her. The second she’d shut the door behind him, she rushed to the telephone in the hall and made a call. When her sister eventually joined her in the sitting room, Margarita said,

  ‘Larissa… can I ask you something?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You and Walter…’ She hesitated but then went on. ‘If you’re serious, why all this deception? You don’t love Bruno… Why don’t you leave him?’

  ‘It’s not that simple. If only it were. But it’s not…’

  ‘Why?’

  I’m frightened of how he’ll react. What he’ll do. I think he’ll take the girls. And now Walter says his wife is becoming suspicious, even though we’ve tried to be so careful. I just don’t know what to do.’

  ‘You can’t keep on living like this…’

  ‘No, I know…’

  Seeing her sister’s distress, Margarita changed the subject, and told her about Stanislav’s visit. She took the photograph out of the envelope and showed it to her. There was no magnifying glass in the house, so Larissa had to take her sister’s word about the date of their father’s death. On the back of the photograph, somebody had written the name of the cemetery in Lvov in blue ink.

  ‘So Papa must have fought with the Red Army against the Poles?’ mused Larissa. ‘That’s difficult to believe…’

  ‘Yes, isn’t it?’

  It had been raining for a while, but the wind suddenly picked up, and from nowhere, a February storm of unusual ferocity whipped over Berlin. The rain pelted against the windows and the wind shook the branches of the trees. In spite of the weather outside, Margarita felt a deep peace inside herself. Her father had been a communist.