42.

  One cautious hop at a time, some sparrows had been approaching his feet. He didn’t have any crumbs to share and he shooed them away, but perhaps they were as hungry as he was, and they cautiously regrouped, coming closer again in twos and threes, until they took to the sky when a dog came scampering past.

  Alyosha had just broken his thirst at the little fountain, one of four which spurted from the mouths of lions at the centre of Bayerischer Platz. The water had tasted odd, and he raked his tongue with his teeth in an effort to get rid of the bad taste from his mouth, and spat a few times. But the taste lingered, sour-sweet, redolent of something cadaverous – a dead seagull, rat, or a cat, probably.

  He gazed around him at the mothers and their children, little scenes of fondness and laughter. Two nursemaids in uniform were pushing identical enormous perambulators side by side, gossiping away under their little round hats. And then there were the unemployed men, who came every fine day to sit, sad and slumped, watching the hours inch past.

  It was lunchtime, and he had just spent seven pfennigs on some crusts, a small lump of hard cheese, and a thumb-sized slice of Thuringia sausage. He never ate breakfast, as he couldn’t afford more than two meals a day, and he preferred to keep his money to try and fill his stomach in the evening. At least that meant a reasonable night’s sleep.

  After he’d finished his frugal meal, he walked down the street on the southern side of the square. He stopped outside the Peltzer-Grill, and cupped his face in his hands against the window so that he could read the clock on the far wall. He still had twenty minutes left before he had to go back. Then he noticed that somebody was gesticulating at him to come in. He pressed his forehead against the cool glass to see who it was.

  The swarthy young man who had been sitting with Stanislav Markovich was already on his feet, and left with barely a glance at Alyosha as he approached their table.

  Stanislav ordered a coffee for him, and asked him what he’d been doing with himself. Alyosha noticed that he had become a little jowly.

  ‘Are you working?’

  Alyosha told him how he had recently lost his job selling cigarettes, but had come by a few hours of tutoring at a language school.

  ‘Russian?’

  ‘French.’

  He asked if the work paid reasonably.

  ‘I don’t have any qualifications, so they don’t pay me the going rate. So no, it doesn’t.’

  And Alyosha lifted up his elbows to show the untidy patches he had tried to sew over the holes in his shirt. After taking a few appreciative sips of his coffee, he asked, ‘What brings you to Berlin?’

  ‘I was in Moscow, so I’m just passing through on my way back to Paris. I’ve been commissioned to write a series of articles about the state of the bourgeois nations.’

  ‘For Pravda?’

  ‘Izvestia.’

  Stanislav told him that what struck him most this time in Berlin, in the working class areas of Wedding and Neukölln, was the sense of hopelessness. The people there looked ravaged, in their shabby clothes and leaky shoes. ‘For Sale’. ‘For Rent’. ‘Everything must go’. Street after street of poverty and deprivation. How did people make two ends meet? The answer, according to Stanislav, was quite simple – they didn’t. And the police were so heavy-handed in arresting the homeless, so pitiless in their persecution of the unemployed, delivering savage beatings to anybody who dared raise their voices in protest.

  ‘Everybody’s heart must beat on the left while the enemy is on the right,’ he said.

  Alyosha glanced at the clock; it wouldn’t do to be late. He thanked Stanislav for the coffee and told him he should get back to work.

  ‘I hate to see you wasting your life like this, Alyosha.’

  Alyosha thought of Galina.

  ‘At least I’m still alive.’

  ‘There’s living and living.’

  And dying too, Alyosha thought to himself. The newspapers had all reported the story about the young woman’s corpse which had been fished out of the filthy waters of the Schifffahrtskanal. Galina, described as a known prostitute and heroin-addict, had been slashed forty-two times. There were the usual editorials urging the government to act at once to stop the heroin trade. And there was the usual, slightly prurient speculating about Galina’s life and possible murderer.

  Alyosha didn’t need to speculate. He knew it was Camlo who had killed his friend, Galina Andreyevna, but how could he prove it?

  As he made to leave, Stanislav grasped his hand with both his.

  ‘You did me a great favour once,’ he said with some emotion. ‘In Kiev, during the Civil War, you saved my life, and don’t think for a second that I’ve let myself forget that. I haven’t. You shouldn’t be scratching a living like this. You could live a different life, a much better life. Do you understand that, Alyosha? Look, why don’t we meet again this evening?’

  ‘I can’t tonight.’

  ‘Tomorrow, then? It’s my last night before I go back to Paris. I can offer you something worthwhile. You won’t regret it, I promise you.’

  They agreed a time and a place.

  ‘Until then.’

  Alyosha extricated his hand and walked out.

  43.

  It was two of his fellow émigrés, Vlasich Pesotski and Matyev Sava, who had told him about the Russian concert nights at the Café Fürstenhof, insisting that he come along with them. The strongest attraction was the cheap beer and the free food.

  His two friends had many years of exile behind them. In the early days, Vlasich Pesotski told Alyosha once, he had gone to sleep every night with his head resting on his suitcase; but, by now, after packing and unpacking so often, all of that unique smell it had which reminded him of Russia had long since disappeared. The only things that remained of his mother country now were his fading memories.

  Vlasich had started to rant before they even arrived at the Café Fürstenhof. He was raging about the unfairness of the system, where all the unemployed Russians – and there were hundreds upon hundreds of them in Berlin – had to queue at the back door of that ugly old red-walled building on Ludwigkirchstrasse to register. And then, even worse, in order to claim the measly fifty pfennig food stamps, they had to make their way to another centre which was miles away. Was that fair?

  Not a single Russian émigré had any hope of gaining German citizenship, but all those Jews from Galicia, who flowed over the border day and night, wangled it straight away, just because they had the wherewithal to slip a bribe to the right bureaucrat. Was that right?

  Once they arrived at the café, Vlasich proceeded to drink himself into a stupor as quickly as possible, but Matyev was a teetotaller and a vegetarian. That didn’t prevent him from squaring up to all and sundry like a policeman’s son, swaggering and picking fights with gusto.

  Alyosha sat at a table with four other Russians, and listened to them as they – inevitably – discussed Russia. Russia? What republic of workers? What destruction of capitalism? The true aim of the revolution was to give power to the swarming scum from Asia’s underworld: the Slavs, the Muslims, the Tartars, the Huns, the Armenians and the Georgians, so that they could dilute the blood of Christian Europe with barbarian filth, defiling a whole civilization for generations – if not forever. That was the real tragedy of what the Antichrist had spawned in the city of Petrograd in 1917. ‘How is it possible for us to work with the Germans, the people who allowed Lenin to travel on that train to Petrograd?’ asked Vlasich, adding that Lenin was in fact a Jew by the name of Zederblum.

  ‘We’ll have to work with them because we don’t have any other option.’

  Vlasich wanted to spit in the face of every German. Moscow was by now nothing but a second Jerusalem for hothead Jews. The White Armies’ fatal mistake had been to let so-called moderate socialists into their ranks, rather than treat them for what they were – traitors. Mussolini had the right idea, stringing up every last communist he could lay his hands on. Mussolini was Vlasich’s great hero, though he thought the world of Adolf Hitler as well.

  Alyosha concentrated on filling his belly with the free food, as did everybody else. Thankfully, there was more than enough for all. But he was glad when the balalaika orchestra started playing, to drown out the querulous voices around him. The musicians were all wearing the traditional red shirts, black trousers and leather boots. Soon, everybody was singing. ‘Troika, Troika!’ went down well, and they sang the old favourite, ‘Trink, Trink, Brüderlein, Trink!’ four times.

  Encore!

  Whistling and applause.

  Encore!

  They toasted the New Germany.

  And the old Holy Russia.

  ‘Holy Russia!’

  By now, Alyosha was feeling warm and mellow, at one with the world for a change in this friendly atmosphere. Until he’d started to attend these evenings, he hadn’t fully realised quite how lonely he was. Now, he had some company to sing along with.

  ‘I’ll look after you, Alexei Fyodorovich,’ promised Vlasich, pulling him affectionately towards him with his arm over his shoulder. ‘You’re my friend for life.’

  ‘And you’re my friend for life, too.’

  ‘Like the Jews, we have to learn how to watch out for each other.’

  ‘We’ll watch out for each other, that’s what we’ll do.’

  ‘A new party!’

  ‘A new party!’

  ‘You and me.’

  ‘You and me.’

  Then they joined in with the chorus again and sang and sang until their throats were hoarse.

  44.

  The following evening Alyosha met Stanislav in the bar of the Hollstein Hotel on the corner of Möckernstrasse as they’d arranged. They hadn’t been talking long before it became clear to Alyosha that Stanislav knew more about him than he’d imagined. He’d heard that things hadn’t gone smoothly for him in Paris, and mentioned his romantic difficulties with ‘the aristocratic Polish girl’. He even knew about the two months he had spent under lock and key in Moabit prison for stabbing a pimp. It was through Margarita, of course. How else? They’d obviously been discussing him. Alyosha felt a little annoyed, but obscurely glad, too, that there was actually somebody who took an interest in his life.

  Stanislav took a big pinch of his tobacco, and packed it tenderly into his pipe. Alyosha noticed how carefully he sucked as he lit it, before extinguishing the match between his finger and thumb.

  ‘I want the two of us to be completely frank with each other,’ Stanislav told him.

  ‘In which case, tell me frankly, are you going to try and persuade me to come and live in the Workers’ Paradise?’

  ‘Mmmm-hmmm.’ Smoke curled from the bowl of the pipe.

  ‘Because that’s the only possible future?’

  Stanislav ignored Alyosha’s ironic tone and said, ’Look at me Alyosha.’ His voice was quiet and warm. ‘When I was living here in Berlin before and starting to think seriously about what I wanted to do with my life…’ He coughed a dry cough. ‘Excuse me. Everybody needs some structure to their lives. When I decided to go back to the Soviet Union, you’d be surprised how many people advised against it. ‘Naïve idiot’ was probably one of the kindest things I was called.’ He wasn’t smiling. ‘Of course, some of my countrymen, the ones who couldn’t forgive the suffering the revolution had caused them, also called me a traitor. And I’d be the first to admit, it wasn’t the easiest decision in the world. I thought long and hard before I accepted a Soviet passport, but by today—’

  ‘It was the best decision of your life,’ said Alyosha with heavy sarcasm.

  ‘Actually, it was the most sensible thing I ever did.’

  ‘But you live in Paris’

  ‘I do, though I’m often in Moscow.’ Stanislav leaned back in his chair and sucked his pipe quietly. ‘What of it?’

  Alyosha heard the voices rising in his head, voices from the mists of the past mingled with those closer to home, like his friend Vlasich, who he knew would never forgive him for turning his back on the cause. How could he, of everybody, betray people who had suffered so much under the hands of the communists?’

  ‘You wouldn’t regret it, I promise you.’

  Alyosha pondered deeply. What should he do? Stanislav was still staring at him. Alyosha sighed. He noticed there was a section of wall in the corner of the room where chunks of plaster had fallen away, exposing the lathes.

  ‘I can’t.’ The suggestion of a smile on Stanislav’s lips vanished. ‘Isn’t it obvious why I can’t?’

  ‘Rubbish. Nobody cares anymore on whose side your father fought during the Civil War. All that’s unimportant now; it belongs in the past. The only thing that matter to the Soviet Union is that hundreds of thousands of our best people are scattered all over Europe, their talents wasted – from Sophia to Prague, from Prague to Paris, from Paris to Berlin. Worse than that, their bitterness is killing them slowly, when they should be burying the hatchet and coming home.’ In his mind’s eye, Alyosha saw Vlasich roar his opposition. ‘I know as well as the next man what kind of a wound homesickness is, and how it can destroy a man’s peace of mind. You’re homesick, Alyosha. When I saw you peer through the window of that café yesterday there was something about you which told me at once how lonely you were. You’re standing on the outside, longing to come inside.’ Stanislav leaned towards him. ‘Look. Isn’t it a good feeling to be part of a society, instead of its enemy? The communists of the Soviet Union are hard at work trying to create a society quite different from anything that’s gone before. This is the biggest enterprise in the history of mankind. This is the greatest challenge for every one of us, because this society, before too long, is going to transform human nature itself.’

  ‘That’s quite a challenge.’

  ‘Yes it is, but the people have hope in their hearts. What do you have against it? How can you be against hope? Why are you so reluctant to join with us? Is it fear? Doubt? Individualism?’

  ‘Perhaps I value my freedom too much.’

  ‘Your freedom to live in loneliness.’

  ‘It’s freedom just the same.’

  ‘But what about the price you have to pay? Hmmm? The loss of security. The loss of hope. Is it worth it?’

  Alyosha couldn’t answer that.

  ‘Look, it’s far easier to criticise than to create. When you commit to something, you shoulder a burden of responsibility. Like a marriage.’

  Stanislav was offering to arrange his return. He had connections in the government – at a pretty high level. Alyosha had only to give the word, and Stanislav could smooth away all difficulties.

  ‘You’d be back home in less than a week. In less than a fortnight, you’d be in a good job, earning a decent wage.’

  ‘You’ve forgotten one important thing,’ Alyosha reminded him. ‘I’m not a communist.’

  ‘Not at the moment, but you’d soon become one of us.’

  Alyosha shook his head.

  ‘You’re speaking thoughtlessly, Alyosha. Nobody stands still. We all change, all through our lives. Look at your cousin, Margarita. Life is a journey for all of us.’

  With an early train to catch the next day, Stanislav had already ordered a taxi. A word came from the door to say that it was outside waiting for him.

  Alyosha was sorely tempted, there was no denying it. Everything Stanislav had just voiced was, in one sense, true. He had been just treading water for years, barely keeping his head above the water, nothing more. What had he achieved? Nothing. He was getting older every day, and any hope of a career was as out of reach as ever. But the thought of going back to the Soviet Union was troubling.

  ‘What do you say?’

  He felt the decision like a hand weighing heavily on his shoulder.

  ‘There’s a reason why returning to Russia would be dangerous.’

  ‘What would that be?’

  ‘I might be arrested the minute I arrived.’

  ‘Explain.’

  He wondered whether Stanislav was pretending not to understand.

  ‘For what I did in Kiev.’

  ‘Nobody’s arrested me.’

  ‘It wasn’t you who shot the Commissar dead.’

  Stanislav frowned and, lowering his voice, chose his words carefully. ‘Who could ever accuse you? Who was in that little orchard that night, apart from me? Eh? You, me and the Commissar. Nobody else. Nobody saw what happened.’

  Alyosha couldn’t prevent himself from saying the obvious. ‘You, Stanislav Markovich – you saw what happened and you could betray me.’

  There was no sounder reason for not going. Someday, for whatever reason, there was no knowing how both their circumstances might change. But if he ever lived in Russia, his life would always be at the mercy of another man’s will. And it was this particular man’s will at that. Alyosha already knew that Stanislav wasn’t a man to be trusted to keep to his word.

  Alyosha stood up. ‘Safe journey to Paris.’

  Stanislav slipped his pipe into his pocket.

  ‘Can I give you a lift?’

  Alyosha sensed his anger. ‘There’s no need for you to go out of your way on my account.’

  Stanislav fumbled for the sleeves of his coat as the waiter held it for him. He wrapped his scarf around his neck and put his soft hat on his head. The taxi driver was waiting patiently at the door.

  ‘You can’t take my word on trust, Alexei Fyodorovich? I’m disappointed. Personally disappointed.’ He looked him in the eye for a long moment.

  ‘I’m sorry, but no, I don’t suppose I can.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Stanislav, looking affronted.

  ‘Because I can’t.’

  ‘You’re a fool, man. And do you know why? You’re frightened of the future. That means you’ll never be free. You know in your heart that the Soviet Union is the best chance for mankind. She’s the truth which will one day free the human race from the oppression of the centuries, the only thing which can offer us all salvation. This is the best offer you’ll ever have.’