‘They’ll have plenty on the outside to do their bidding. Where would I go? Where would I live? And be safe?’

  ‘You’d be a free man, so that would be a matter for you to decide.’

  Silence.

  ‘We won’t be asking again, Artyom.’

  ‘This is your last chance.’

  One of them was already gathering up his papers in a neat pile.

  ‘Very well, I’ll do it. But I want you to protect my family.’

  Immediately following his decision, he was kept apart from the other prisoners for his own safety. As he prepared for the trial, he had plenty of time to consider his situation. He wrote to Zepherine asking her to visit, but she refused. Artyom could understand her decision perfectly. The two Corsican brothers were brought before the court within a couple of months. Artyom was the main witness for the prosecution, and he recounted his dealings with them in full. It took three days for him to give his evidence. Several times, he heard heckling from the public gallery, though the two brothers sat impassively in the dock. Thanks to Artyom’s damning evidence, Meme and Lolole Corse were both sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment. Immediately after the trial, a sum of money was transferred into his bank account and, as he requested, a passage on a boat to Tangier was arranged for him. He was being forced to leave Paris, his home for so many years. He could still remember his first afternoon in the city, when he had leant his elbows on the parapet of the Pont des Arts, charmed by the little sails of the pleasure boats, like swans on the Seine.

  He went to the house, but Zepherine wasn’t there, and it felt as though it had been empty for some time. He sat and wrote her a letter, but when he read it over, he realised that everything he wanted to say had remained unsaid. Why did he find it so difficult to put his feelings into words? What was the matter with him? He felt furious with himself, but left the letter on the mantelpiece for her anyway, without knowing if she would ever read it.

  He had so little time.

  He made his way to the Gare de Lyon, and when his train reached Marseille, he made straight for the port and boarded the ship. He stood on deck as the ship’s whistle pierced the air, as the anchor chain was hoisted over the capstan, and as the vessel moved slowly away from the quayside. As the ship gathered speed once it left the harbor, he was the only one who remained there, soaked to his skin as raindrops fell like bullets, watching the lights of France gradually disappear in the distance, as the rain hissed across the sea.

  He was a free man, but his future looked bleak.

  66.

  When Alyosha finally dared to return to his shabby little room, every piece of furniture had been smashed to kindling. Even his suitcase – his father’s old suitcase, the one he had taken all the way to Zürich when he was a student – had been slashed with a knife into long, ugly strips, and his pitiful collection of clothes and his second pair of shoes had also been ripped to shreds. A tornado of revenge had descended, a clear warning that the SA were after his blood. The word was already out that Vlasich was going to find him and the red bitch who had stabbed him in the eye, and kill them both. Alyosha was in no doubt that he would carry out his threat if he found them.

  He was still staying at Vicky’s apartment, and had barely left it since the fight. To begin with, he’d slept on the sofa, but over the summer, they’d felt themselves being more and more attracted to each other, and it hadn’t taken long before he was sharing her bed. When he’d broached the subject of rent with her one morning, Vicky told him there was no need for him to contribute as much as a pfennig, because the KPD paid for the place.

  Vicky’s life ambition was to visit the Soviet Union again, perhaps even to study there, so in the few free hours she had free from working at Die Rote Fahne and her Party duties, Vicky took Russian lessons, as she was desperate to speak the language fluently.

  ‘Don’t go paying for lessons,’ Alyosha told her. ‘I’ll teach you for nothing. It’s the least I can do.’

  ‘I want somebody who can teach me properly,’ she teased him.

  Nothing gave Alyosha more pleasure than introducing Vicky to the treasures of his mother tongue, though she was impatient when he tried to introduce her to Pushkin, and told him she had no time for poetry unless it was revolutionary.

  Alyosha slowly regained his strength, and one Saturday afternoon at the beginning of October, he managed to borrow a yellow tandem, and he and Vicky set off on a bike ride out towards Potsdam, to eat hamburgers with mustard and drink beer at Heiliger See. He was exhausted at the end of the day, but it was a good indication of how far along the road to recovery he had come. But the better he felt, the more bored and frustrated he became, so Vicky suggested he might earn some money tutoring some of her comrades who were also eager to learn Russian, and told him to meet her after work one day so that she could introduce him to them.

  He arrived too early, of course, and Vicky was late as usual, but as he was hanging around outside Karl Liebknecht Haus, two men in their shirtsleeves – their jackets hanging by their fingers over their shoulders, as it was such a mild October – approached him. Alyosha guessed what they were even before they held out their identity cards under his nose.

  Two plain-clothes policemen both wearing sunglasses – one a blue pair, the other dark green. Blue Glasses asked him what he was doing loitering outside the doors of Karl Liebknecht Haus.

  ‘I’m not breaking any law,’ he answered stoutly.

  Green Glasses asked calmly, ‘Are you waiting for somebody?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with you?’

  Blue Glasses asked, ‘Do you understand what this place is?’

  ‘No,’ answered Alyosha as nonchalantly as he could.

  ‘You’re not a red then?’

  He didn’t want to give the two of them any reason to harass him further, so he muttered something and slunk off. He crossed the square and went to sit on a wooden bench, which was covered in bird droppings, keeping an eye on the entrance of the German Communist Party headquarters.

  A swarm of midges were whirling about in the branches of the trees when Vicky and her comrades stepped out. Usually, she wore a leather jacket and a red scarf, but the weather was still unseasonably warm, and she wore a light summer dress which gave her an uncharacteristically girlish air. The dress fitted her perfectly, as though it had been grown onto her, and Alyosha thought how attractive she was, though Vicky never took much interest in her own appearance. She already had a cigarette in her hand. She always had a cigarette in her hand.

  As he walked to meet them, he noticed that her shoes were shabbier than ever. Summer and winter, she always wore the same old pair of shoes. She said to waste money on new clothes, when the movement was desperate for funds, was unacceptable, and if she ever had any money left at the end of the month, she would insist on giving it back.

  Meeting Vicky after work was a rare event, however, as she normally went straight to a meeting, not returning home until late. Alyosha was left to his own devices for much of the time, and even with his new pupils, tutoring only filled a few hours. One evening, sick to death of skulking in the apartment, he went to Café Romanische for a beer, nursing his glass of Edwinger at the bar so it lasted as long as possible. He was so bored, he thought about calling in on Vicky at her office, even though he already knew there’d be no welcome for him. He made his way to Karl Liebknecht Haus, but then he had second thoughts and ended up in the bar opposite. Late as it was, all the lights in the office building were still blazing. He was reminded of an illustration he’d seen in the Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung of the Titanic.

  A third beer bolstered his resolve. After giving his credentials, and being thoroughly frisked for weapons, he was accompanied upstairs. At the head of the stairs, another guard sprang up from his chair in order to unlock a door, which opened onto a nicotine-stained corridor. He walked along the frayed carpet past the hustle and bustle of offices, with the click of typewriters to be heard over everything, and was told to wait.

  The word came back: Vicky was too busy to see him.

  He caught a glimpse of her through the glass door. She saw him looking at her and held his glance, but she looked abstracted and distant, and he felt that he was invisible to her. The room was full of men of various ages, and a few young women; there weren’t enough chairs for them all, so some of them were perched on tables, or were on their haunches on the floor, or standing at the back of the room. Nearly all of them were smoking. Why were communists so fond of arguing in smoky rooms? Vicky was sitting at the front, under posters of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Ernst Thälmann and Heinz Neumann. Two men were furiously debating, hurling words like ‘traitor’ at each other across the office.

  Alyosha recognised one of them as the unemployed printer, Paul, who’d shared his cell in Moabit. He listened to him call the Social Democrats dishonest pigs, men who did nothing but feather their own nests. They may have been the great heroes of the working class, thundered Paul, but they betrayed them without a thought back in August 1914, when they voted for war credits, and sent overflowing trains of young men to the front through salvoes of flowers and hats, and crowds shouting ‘Victory!’ When all those husbands and wives and mothers and sons were kissing each other for the very last time, what were these politicians doing? Filling their bellies in cafés as they gossiped spitefully about each other. With such scum in their ranks, why was anybody surprised that the Social Democrats had voted for the Imperialist War?

  ‘Why do you insist on going over the same old ground, Paul?’ asked someone impatiently.

  ‘Because their betrayal was unforgiveable,’ shot back Vicky.

  ‘It’s in the past,’ piped up somebody else.

  ‘Perhaps it is, but the effects are still felt today. That’s why we can’t make a pact with the SPD,’ insisted Vicky.

  There was some protest at this.

  ‘Vicky’s right!’ insisted Paul. ‘We never can!’

  Vicky warmed to her theme. Had they forgotten 1919? When Karl and Rosa announced a revolution on the streets of Berlin in the name of the working class? Who gave a free rein to the Freikorps to destroy them? Who was truly to blame for the vicious murders of Karl and Rosa?

  Alyosha had heard enough. He must have heard Vicky rehearse this argument a thousand times, that it was the Social Democrats, and not the Nazis, who were the biggest enemies of the communists. In their hearts, all but the zealots thought by now that it was necessary to change policy, but the discipline of the KPD and the order from Moscow bound them all to the party line.

  He left them to it.

  It was mid-morning the next day when Vicky finally returned to the apartment, Margarita and Kai-Olaf in tow, after working all night.

  While Vicky was in her bedroom, changing her stockings, Alyosha asked his cousin how she was.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘How are things at Aznefttrust?’

  ‘All well. I’m on my way there now – but we have things to do first.’

  ‘You’ve made a good recovery.’ Kai-Olaf made this a statement, not a question, and Alyosha was reminded of why he had never been able to warm to him.

  ‘The wound is nearly healed. Thanks to Vicky. She’s a very good nurse.’

  Vicky came out of her bedroom and said smilingly, ‘What are you doing? Talking behind my back again?’

  ‘I’m praising you.’

  As the three made to leave Alyosha asked, ‘When will I see you?’

  ‘Don’t stay up for me,’ Vicky told him, ‘And whatever you do, don’t come by work again.’

  The door shut behind them.

  67.

  That autumn, he started to go with her on Sundays to canvass in the working-class districts of the city. He went slightly reluctantly, out of a sense of obligation, but also because he was worried Vicky might be attacked. Seeing her argue at people’s doorsteps made his hair stand on end. She would take on even the most out-and-out Nazi, who often seemed about to take a punch at her.

  One rare weekend in December when Vicky wasn’t working, he persuaded her to come shopping with him. Alyosha actually had a little money in his pocket from his tutoring, and he wanted to buy her a new pair of shoes. The Christmas displays in the windows of the big shops, so colourful and pretty, gave Alyosha a delightful warm feeling. It had been snowing a little and there was already a white carpet underfoot.

  As they entered the KaDeWe, they passed a man standing with a cap in his hand, singing drunkenly,

  ‘Hoch soll’n Sie leben

  Kinder soll’n Sie kriegen

  Frei-mal hoch.’

  Alyosha had come to a decision. He was sick and tired of his life in Berlin. 1931 was nearly over, and he knew if he didn’t act, he would be in exactly the same place in a year’s time, still living hand to mouth, still looking over his shoulder with the constant fear of being wounded or killed. He longed for a less haphazard existence. The more he thought about it, the more apparent it became, that the first step he should take, which might give him the security he longed for, would be to marry Vicky.

  The week before Christmas, he barely saw her, because she was so busy arranging a rally at the Sportsplatz, working tirelessly to ensure the stadium would be full to bursting with red flags. He went with her to the rally, which was a success, and as they all poured out of the Sportsplatz, still singing, they brought the traffic to a standstill. Vicky and Alyosha were on their way to a small party Margarete Neumann and her sister Babette Gross were holding for their husbands and their co-workers at the Aschinger, a bier keller on Friedrichstrasse. As they wove their way through the lines of cars which had been forced to slow down, the streets were full of bad-tempered drivers and horns were blaring, but Vicky was in good spirits, pleased that everything had gone off smoothly, her cheeks rosy as she strode on energetically.

  Alyosha suddenly grabbed her hand and pulled her towards him.

  ‘What a place to ask!’ she exclaimed.

  A horn blared behind them until the bonnet shook.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d appreciate my going down on one knee – much too bourgeois.’

  ‘I don’t appreciate you asking me at all.’

  Alyosha had imagined her throwing her arms around his neck, and going on her tiptoes to give him a passionate kiss, but Vicky just said,

  ‘I’ve already tried marriage once. It didn’t work.’

  He pulled her towards him again, the leather of her jacket cold in his hand. ‘Will you, though?’

  She tried to pull away. He seemed to be singing to the deaf. ‘Vicky, put the KPD to one side for a second.’

  ‘You don’t know me at all, do you? After living together all this time. You don’t. Or you wouldn’t be asking something so idiotic. Marriage exists to protect and transfer property from generation to generation. Private ownership is the basis for all greed and selfishness. Without the family and without property, the world would be a better place by far. Even Jesus Christ saw the benefits of turning his back on his family.’

  ‘But it’s just a normal impulse to want to have something of your own,’ he answered.

  She tutted again.

  ‘I’m only saying. I wouldn’t mind having my own house and motor car.’

  ‘Alyosha, have you learnt nothing? Are American factory workers who own motor cars free? Or are they forced to buy one because that’s the only way they can get to work? How do they pay for a motor car anyway? By borrowing money from the bank, probably. Just as they borrow to buy their little house and strip of garden. But once they’ve done that, they’ve chained themselves even tighter to the order which exploits them.’

  Having expressed her fury at his idiocy, she relented a little, as the depths of his disappointment started to dawn on her.

  ‘I like it that you and I are together…’ she squeezed his arm. ‘And together we’ll be.’

  Which perhaps for Vicky was the nearest thing to being married, Alyosha thought, slightly comforted that she still had a warm corner in her heart for him.

  From the front seat of a Wanderer convertible – the patch on his eye like a black hole in his head – Vlasich Pesotski was glaring at him. Alyosha caught his eye. Vlasich’s face was thinner and paler, his cheeks hollowed out and sunken, his chin surprisingly small and narrow. Vlasich dragged his finger slowly across his throat. With thousands of communists like a warm blanket around him, in that moment, Alyosha didn’t feel so much as a smidgeon of fear.

  IV: 1932–1933

  1.

  The same familiar smell of polish and hot-house flowers wafted a greeting when he walked in through the main entrance of the Hotel Adlon. The foyer hadn’t changed at all, the same black-and-white tiles, the same wallpaper, the same furniture and the same round glass in the door to the bar on the right. Even the magazine and newspaper rack was in exactly the same place.

  Alyosha recognised the receptionist, but the one-armed porter was no longer there, and he didn’t know any of the other staff. He passed an old couple, arm in arm, both feeble and hobbling, moving step by decrepit step while he bounded swiftly up the stairs, past the big plant pots in the alcoves. As he made his way, he half expected to see Grete coming round a corner of the corridor with her arms full of clean linen.

  Grete the maid, as she had been before their world changed. He remembered how she would pad around as lightly as a cat in a gutter, in a negligee or, more often, naked. Even when she walked in a pair of shoes, she longed to be barefoot. Their afternoons in bed came back to him, her flesh sweeter than a nut, before she vanished from his life, leaving him heartbroken. Lovely Grete, his sweetheart, who, by now, belonged to another time, when he himself had been someone else.

  He pulled his shoulders back, cleared his throat and rapped lightly on the door. Number 32. His father’s old suite.