A thin man in a sober suit opened the door and, when Alyosha gave his name, motioned him in. From the butler’s bored expression, he guessed he was one of many to be seen that day. ‘And the name again?’ He looked Alyosha over with a hint of a sneer.

  ‘Alexandrov. Alexei Fyodorovich.’

  The butler ran his finger over a list on the desk, then unscrewed the cap of a black fountain pen and neatly put a tick against his name. He disappeared into the adjoining bedroom, and Alyosha had a moment to glance around him. The room, like the foyer, was unchanged. The same discreetly luxurious furnishings. And there, on the wall still, the oil painting of Bismarck, and opposite, the rural scene of two pheasants pecking under the shadows of a beech tree by a lake. The cheval mirror, and on the desk, the same bronze blotter and the two inkwells on either side. Was it just a coincidence? Or had fate brought him back once more to the Adlon?

  He was aware of somebody half whistling, half humming in the bathroom, and the sound of a razor being tapped sporadically against the edge of a porcelain basin. Years ago, Alyosha had sponged his father’s tired back in that bathroom.

  With a dressing gown folded over his arm, the butler knocked on the bathroom door and entered. Moments later, his master emerged wearing the burgundy velvet dressing gown, tied with a tasselled gold rope around his middle. The butler was at his tail with a black brush in his hand.

  ‘This is the last one?’

  ‘Yes sir. Alexandrov.’

  Sinking down into a pile of cushions on the sofa, he sighed,

  ‘Thank goodness. I don’t want an afternoon as pointless as the morning we had.’

  He crossed his hairy legs. They were solid, like tree trunks. The room drowned in his Eau de Cologne, and although it was only midday, the butler poured his master a large Armagnac from a crystal decanter.

  ‘Stand up and go over there so I can see you properly. No, no. Not there, you half-wit. What’s the matter with you, boy? You’re right in my light there. Move over. That’s it, there – there. Stop exactly where you are.’

  Captain Malinowski swirled the Armagnac around in his mouth as he ran his eye over him, exactly as though he was appraising a bullock he was thinking of buying.

  ‘I have absolutely no patience with a whole lot of pointless questions and answers, life is too short. I’m a plain-speaking man. Sit. Not there. That one. That’s it.’

  Alyosha sat in the mahogany chair as instructed.

  ‘I much prefer looking a man straight in the eye and letting him give me a fair account of himself. Give me one good reason why I should employ you.’

  He gave as good an account of himself to Captain Malinowski as he could. He was asked briefly about his family, and his time in Paris. Then, so abruptly it took Alyosha a moment to take it in, he was told the job was his. There were no further questions about his work experience, or requests for his references, and on top of everything, he was offered a salary significantly more than what had been mentioned in the advertisement.

  ‘I don’t want anybody accusing the Poles of being a miserly nation.’

  His voice was loud and booming, better suited to the barrack yard than a hotel suite.

  He was a truly ugly man, with a purple pincushion of a nose, small black eyes set too close together, and yellow, snaggled teeth. He also had a birthmark which spread across his left cheek and down his neck. But he had a good head of hair, and when he lifted his head to light his cigar from the match his butler proffered, his dressing gown opened to show a thick reddish-black pampas across his chest. He carried some excess flesh around his waist, but he was a powerful-looking man nevertheless, and when he stood up, he had a straight-backed, military bearing. He told Alyosha he had never learnt to drive a motor car,

  ‘And I’m too old to learn.’

  There was something combative in the way he said this, as though daring Alyosha to disagree. The Captain went on to say he liked the old ways best, and he kept as much as he could to the old traditions of his youth.

  ‘Nobody sensible likes to see change in anything. That’s why you see so many old women with the same hairstyles that they wore when they were young.’

  Captain Malinowski would far rather have been born at the beginning of the previous century than his own (‘…things were so much better then, everybody knew their place.’). He’d practically been born in the saddle, and his favourite smell was that of horse sweat (‘…a cloud of nature’s own glory…’). He used to exercise his horses until he was stiff as a board and every bone in his body ached.

  When he was only a boy (‘…a strapping twelve-year-old…’), he claimed he could catch a year-old roe by running the animal until it was winded. He’d been brought up to a life of hunting and fishing on his father’s estate, and had been a pupil at the same gymnasium in Wilno as Feliks Dzierźyński and Jozef Piłsudski. Later, under Marshal Piłsudski, he had fought off Lenin’s Red Army in 1920, though he had been shot in the leg, and bore the scar still.

  By now, the butler had poured his master a second glass of Armagnac.

  Captain Malinowski went on to tell Alyosha that, while family tradition was important, the most important thing of all was his Catholic faith, and defending that faith. After carrying on in this vein for some time, Captain Malinowski abruptly asked Alyosha what was his opinion.

  ‘My opinion on what?’

  ‘What I’ve just said.’

  He’d only been half listening so he said, ‘I can’t disagree.’

  ‘I loathe flatterers. What’s the matter with you, you fool? You don’t have to butter me up or agree with everything I say, like a puppy looking for a pat. I’ve given you the job. Say your mind freely, I’ll respect you all the more for it. I want you to be straight with me. D’you understand? There’s nothing I hate more than the shilly-shallying of people who bend this way and that, trying to please everybody, but pleasing nobody in the end. Being relative about everything is just a way of trying to avoid conflict.’

  Alyosha answered that Catholicism was not something he was very familiar with.

  ‘What about the history of Poland? How familiar are you with that?’

  Alyosha has a sudden image of Ludwika wrapped inadequately in a towel.

  ‘Not familiar at all,’ he answered.

  Captain Malinowski was snappish, but for the occasional peal of bright laughter – a sudden warm bout of merriment.

  One thing wasn’t clear to him, Alyosha ventured.

  ‘What’s not clear to you?’

  The Captain was on his third Armagnac by now.

  ‘Am I being employed just as a chauffeur? Or as a tutor as well?’

  ‘What?’

  Was he a little hard of hearing?

  ‘Am I being employed just as a chauffeur? Or as a tutor as well?’

  ‘No need to shout for heaven’s sake, I’m not deaf.’ The Captain settled back on the sofa. ‘You’ll only be expected to work as a chauffeur to begin with. I might need your services as a tutor in a month or two. It depends.’

  ‘What does it depend on?’

  ‘Every great event in life is a bend in the road. What is round the next corner? Who knows?’ He stood up. ‘Remember that every nation on the face of the earth lives within narrow walls of possibility, even the most powerful and arrogant. The existence of a nation is not a fact, but a painful question, because history has taught us all that annihilation is a very real possibility. When one nation decides to impose its will on another, that is not a sign of strength, but a clear sign of weakness, and it will only ever be a matter of time before another bigger nation comes along and conquers that one in turn. That’s why your future, lad, depends on which way the wind will blow.’

  What was the man jabbering on about?

  The Captain took another swig of his Armagnac.

  ‘When it comes – and it’s sure to come sometime, sooner than we think perhaps, it’ll be one warm blast from the east, and a warmer blast from the west, with those in the middle roasting in the heat.’

  2.

  Motorcycles and rows of policemen were blocking the top of the street, which gave onto Bülowplatz, so nobody could enter the square. Alyosha made his way past more and more of them, standing in pairs at every door, until he came to a solid wall of schupos, their guns across their shoulders and their helmets tightly strapped under their chins. He was stopped from going any further.

  The square itself was also cordoned off by more policeman. He was due to meet Vicky in the bar opposite Karl Liebknecht Haus, but how was he meant to reach her? From the amount of police, something big was afoot. Were they planning another raid on the KPD headquarters? The schupos had been there several times already, poking and prying from the attics to the cellars. The first time they came, Vicky had been very roughly manhandled by two policemen twice her size. Alyosha was worried about her, and turned down another street, hoping to slip through the cordons, but when he reached the entrance to the square by the park, there were schupos there, too, on horseback, and it was impossible to get past them. More and more motor lorries roared past, their side flaps bolted down, so that the policemen inside could leap out quickly if the need arose. People were already gathering to shout and protest, but they were herded firmly back on the pavements, so that the road was kept clear for the motor lorries to enter the square.

  Alyosha found himself in the middle of a crowd who were pushing forward slowly towards the square. He asked one of the protestors what was going on, and was told that the SA intended to march in front of Karl Liebknecht Haus. This was clearly an inflammatory act, and it was sure to lead to people getting hurt, if not worse.

  ‘Red Front!

  The shouting became louder.

  ‘Red Front!’

  A long whistle was the signal for the mounted police to turn and urge their horses forward into the crowd, to the outraged and panicked shouts of those directly in the path of the trotting hooves. Now voices were raised in anger.

  ‘Red Front!’

  ‘This is our street!’

  A young worker was the first to be grabbed in a stranglehold under the armpit of a schupo. He was given a good kicking by another, and then flung into one of the motor lorries. This set off a fresh storm of protest and booing, and soon, batons were flying and shouts turned to screams. Alyosha felt himself being momentarily carried along by the crush of the retreating crowd, until there was enough space for it to disperse. People were still being beaten and dragged to the lorries.

  Then, the first column of Brownshirts marched into the square, accompanied by a double cordon of policemen at their side. Their voices rang out:

  ‘Die rote Front, schlagt zu Brei,

  SA marschiert, Achtung die Strasse frei…’

  The man at the front, his black cap planted squarely on his head, and his leather straps pulled tight across his shoulders, held a flag aloft. The crowd of protestors pressed against the ranks of policemen, booing and heckling, but they were kept firmly in check. The flag-bearer heading the column marched past Alyosha, his shirt a paler brown than the ones behind him, his breeches of a finer material, his boots a softer leather, and the silver buckle at his waist shinier. It was Bruno Volkman.

  ‘Red front! Red front!’ shouted voices from the crowd.

  ‘Sod off, you Nazi scum!’

  The protestors finally managed to breach the police cordon, and dozens of them rushed headlong into the middle of the SA, kicking, punching and shoving. The police whistles calling for reinforcements were deafening, and it didn’t take long for the schupos to regroup, herding the protestors back against the walls so tightly that many of them were in danger of suffocating, and started panicking.

  ‘Can’t breathe…’

  ‘Give me some air…’

  ‘My little boy is here,’ screamed a young woman.

  Those on the outside tried their best to break free, and the schupos started to back up a little as the dark boots marched further along. Then, some of the residents in the apartment block overlooking the square started hurling potted plants down at the marching Brownshirts from the balconies and window sills above.

  The schupos were quick to react, aiming their guns up and shouting,

  ‘Shut the windows!’

  ‘Now! Or we shoot.’

  The tail of the procession was passing by, though the voices of the SA swelled louder than ever.

  Vicky, out of nowhere, was suddenly at his side.

  ‘Follow me,’ she said urgently.

  ‘It’s impossible to get in,’ he shouted at her back.

  ‘Come on!’

  ‘Vicky.’ He ran after her. ‘Vicky – wait!’

  She was fairly sprinting along.

  ‘We’ll never get in this way…’

  She was as sprightly as a squirrel, and he had difficulty keeping up with her. He followed her into a side street, but others were running ahead of them with the same idea. Alyosha put on a sprint to catch up with her, and, panting, asked her what they were doing, but she didn’t bother to answer. She was conserving her strength. She picked up speed again, and he managed to stay close. At the far end of the street, there were still more schupos, double-banked, head to head with a group of workers who were trying to gain entry to the square. Over their shoulders, Alyosha saw the columns of the SA marching purposefully: row after row of tough men. At the head of one regiment marched Vlasich Pesotski, with his black leather patch over the empty socket.

  ‘There’s another way,’ urged Vicky. ‘This way – come on!’

  ‘We don’t have a hope. We’ll never get in…’

  ‘There’s always hope.’

  They were running down an even narrower backstreet, when they heard the guns being fired, followed by screams and shouts. They turned around and saw terrified people running towards them. ‘What’s happening?’ Vicky shouted at one of them, but nobody stopped to anwer her. One or two of them stumbled and fell, sending the people behind them flying, too, but they all struggled to their feet and ran for their lives.

  Then came the schupos, the ones at the front firing their guns. A woman fell to the floor, and Vicky and Alyosha dragged her into the shelter of a doorway. More protestors ran past, some flinging their red flags down. Alyosha pushed against the door and when, to his enormous relief it opened, he pushed the woman and Vicky hastily through it.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she said furiously. ‘I have to go – get out of the way.’

  ‘What do you think you or anybody else can do?’

  They heard horses’ hooves clattering on the cobblestones outside and gunshots.

  ‘Alyosha, I won’t tell you again – move!’

  ‘Vicky, just think for a minute. What can you possibly do? You’re no good to anybody dead.’

  3.

  They were decorating the Christmas tree with glass birds, bells and candles. Larissa kept an eye on Ella, who was standing on a chair and getting crosser by the minute because her little sister was being more of a hindrance than a help.

  ‘Mummy, take her out.’

  ‘She just wants to pass the things to you…’

  ‘She’s a nuisance.’

  Ella stamped her foot. She was very close to tears.

  ‘Now look what she’s done! She just spoils everything…’

  Larissa sighed, and told Margarita it would be easier if she rang for the maid to take Clara away, but Margarita, seeing Clara’s crestfallen little face, took her hand and suggested they go and play upstairs. Clara cheered up at this, and took her aunt to her bedroom, where she introduced her to all her dolls, explaining who were best friends and who always quarrelled. Then she found her favourite picture book, and in no time, she was cuddled up on Margarita’s lap, listening to the story. But somebody else was hovering at the door. With her thumb in her mouth, Ella came in, clutching her rag doll, and, her quarrel with her sister forgotten, she shared Margarita’s lap for the remainder of the story. After playing with her nieces a little longer, the maid came in to give the girls their bath, with a message for Margarita that she was expected downstairs.

  Bruno had arranged a small party at the house, for some thirty or so of their friends; doctors and their wives for the most part. By the time Margarita went back downstairs, most of them had arrived, and there was a lively hum of talk coming from the drawing room. Margarita helped herself to a glass of punch and then stood for a moment, feeling slightly awkward, as she didn’t know any of the guests very well. She hadn’t really wanted to come, but she had used the occasion to see her nieces and bring them their Christmas presents, as there were only two days until Christmas. Then, a familiar face came towards her, and she felt rather pleased to see her old tutor. Professor Krieger had a glass of wine in one hand, and he extracted the other hand from his jacket pocket to shake her hand.

  ‘Margarita Kozmyevna…’

  ‘Herr Professor.’

  ‘How are things at Aznefttrust?’

  He knew all about her. He had heard that the company was doing good work as far as trade went. There was a great need for new trading and business opportunities, in order to create more jobs, get the unemployed back into work and get the country back on its feet.

  ‘Have you happened to bump into your cousin lately?’

  ‘Alyosha? No, I haven’t seen him in a while,’ she lied.

  ‘Neither have I.’

  Margarita was silent.

  ‘He was with us for a while. I found work for him. But… he left.’

  ‘Wasn’t there some incident?’ she asked. ‘A shooting?’

  ‘There was.’

  ‘Then perhaps it’s not surprising he left you.’

  ‘We all need to be careful with things as they are.’