‘What about you?’ she asked him. ‘Are you married yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do have a lover?’

  ‘I did have.’

  ‘But not any more?’

  He explained that things were rather complicated.

  ‘Don’t tell me… She’s married?’

  ‘No, it’s not that.’ he smiled.

  ‘Oh, I know what it is. No need to say more. She’s in love with somebody else? Or are you in love with somebody else?’

  ‘I’m not in love with anybody.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘I’m not even sure if I’m still with her by now.’

  Vicky was on the run. He hadn’t seen her for some time.

  Ludwika didn’t offer a word of explanation or apology for what had happened in the past. Could she begin to comprehend the pain and the agony she had caused him he wondered? Alyosha tried to raise the subject, but she made it quite clear she was not interested in discussing anything of their former lives in Paris.

  ‘That’s all water under the bridge.’

  From the opposite box in the opera, somebody half lifted his hand in greeting – a middle-aged man with something impressive in his stillness. Some SA lads were going round the opera house, raising money for the cause by selling postcards of Hitler, Goering and Goebbels. One of them, thick-set and swaggering, stepped through the divide in the curtains into their box, and Ludwika went into her purse and gave him nine pfennigs, leaving the card of Hitler face down on her lap.

  ‘Just water under the bridge now,’ she repeated when he’d gone. ‘It all belongs in the distant past.’

  ‘Distant past or not,’ Alyosha persisted, ‘There are still a couple of things I’d like to ask you about.’

  She let out a little sigh, as though a small stream of sadness was flowing out of her.

  ‘I do think I have the right Ludwika. The right to know why you acted like you did.’

  She fumed a little, ‘The right?’

  ‘There’s nothing worse than dashing somebody’s hopes.’

  ‘Tonight? Must we?’

  Although he was desperate to hear her side of the story, he wilted under her displeasure.

  ‘Another time, then.’

  ‘Another time, you’re right. Let’s discuss it another time. Why don’t we just enjoy each other’s company without anything spoiling tonight’s happiness.’

  The second act was about to begin.

  ‘You were a student when we met for the first time.’

  She smiled.

  ‘I used to love hearing you talk about your subject.’

  ‘Are you teasing me?’

  ‘Not at all. You gave me a taste for philosophy.’

  He reminded her how they’d sit in the Luxembourg Gardens after her lectures, discussing what she’d learnt. He repeated her example of the two brothers who enlisted in the army, one because he was a patriot and the other because he was afraid of what people would think of him if he didn’t volunteer. Both of them had acted in exactly the same way – for two entirely different reasons. What, then, did this prove? That the moral worth of an action wasn’t always implicit in that action?

  ‘Wasn’t I insufferable, though?’ laughed Ludwika, blowing smoke out over her lower lip.

  ‘I didn’t think so. I learnt so much from you.’

  She smiled at him.

  ‘Did you really?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘What else did I teach you? Try and remember.’

  ‘That it’s not economics, or politics, or religion that drives History. It’s emotion. And that Europe’s dreams have always been emotional ones.’

  She was no longer smiling.

  ‘You were an excellent teacher, Wisia.’

  When he called her that, she held his glance for a long moment, and then smiled that radiant smile of hers.

  After the opera, they went to the Hotel Kaiserhof for dinner. As they walked in, he took a quiet pride in the fact that every eye in the place was fixed on Ludwika. With her at his side, his whole body seemed to fill with a delicious feeling of quiet contentment. He felt they slotted together perfectly.

  Once they’d ordered, she was eager to hear more about Vicky, and wanted him to give a full account of her.

  ‘You? Living with a communist? Who ever would have thought?’

  ‘She’s totally committed to the cause.’

  ‘I’m sure she’s sincere. But she’s deluded. Whatever your girl may say to the contrary, Alexei, every society has to have an elite, even communist Russia. Think of Caesar’s bureaucrats in ancient Rome. Or the priesthood in the Egypt of the Pharaohs. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union is a religious sect, which exists in order to spread its own truth over the face of the world. It has its missionary wing, the Comintern, and its Inquisition, the OGPU, to hunt down and punish heretics. It has it gospels in the works of Marx and Engels, its holy texts from lesser scribes, and its saints, martyrs, and prophets. And, like all true religions, it demands unquestioning obedience from its acolytes, on pain of excommunication – or worse.’

  It wasn’t surprising that Ludwika thought like this, he thought. After all, she was still aristocratic, Polish and Catholic. She was of the opinion that there were two world views in conflict with each other in Europe: Christian Nationalism and International Marxism.

  ‘It will be a fight to the death. So many intelligent people are being tricked by Karl Marx’s hypocritical lies. Communism threatens every civilised country.’

  Alyosha listened carefully.

  ‘And equality?’

  ‘What about it?’ she asked after he’d lit her cigarette.

  ‘Isn’t that what International Marxism is offering everybody?’

  ‘That’s the noise coming from their propaganda.’

  ‘But will it ever be possible for us to realise the idea of social equality?’

  ‘What are you trying to ask? Will it ever be possible for us to legislate our way to a perfect world?’

  ‘Will it?’

  He was fascinated to hear her answer.

  ‘This idea of social equality has always had a sort of mystique over the centuries,’ was Ludwika’s response, ‘but as long as political freedom exists, economic inequality will exist. In order to establish some sort of economic equality among men, political equality would have to be completely stifled. That’s why such an order would be the worst kind of oppression. Which is what we see in the Soviet Union.’

  He told her that there was a sentence in The Communist Manifesto that had stuck in his mind. It said that everything that was established and solid today would vanish into thin air tomorrow. That had cut him to the quick, because it encapsulated his own experience of life. Where had the security of his childhood gone? The innocent fun of all those summer holidays? The long hours at his desk, waiting for lessons to end? The warmth and comfort of his home? A mother and father’s love? His homeland?

  By now, a new order had taken the place of the old. Could that really be a better way of life, as Vicky claimed? Or was Ludwika right?

  18.

  Kai-Olaf and Margarita were about to go to bed, when there was a low knocking on the door. Margarita darted a hurried look along his bookshelves. Marx, Engels, Kaustsky, Lenin, Bukharin and Trotsky, they had long since been removed, but she had a second of worry wondering if there was one she had overlooked, still sitting incriminatingly on the shelf. She went to open the door

  It was Vicky, but it took Margarita a second to register who it was, as she had cut her hair very short and dyed it a light blonde. She wore an old coat, the sleeves splattered with spots of paint, a thick scarf around her neck, and a pair of shoes which had been cut from the rubber of an old tyre. She’d battled her way to them through the heavy snow.

  Margarita gave her some tea. Vicky had been sleeping in a wooden hut on one of the allotments out in the suburbs for some weeks. She called the neighbourhood Little Moscow. She felt she was safer there than anywhere else. She slept on a bed of sacks, with a smelly old quilt which had seen better days to pull over her, and old clothes rolled under her head did for a pillow. It was alright, she could sleep anywhere, but she had to share the hut with the Strubbels and their little girl, Heidi. The family used to live in Nehringstrasse, but he’d been unemployed for three years, and, eventually, they’d been evicted for rent arrears. Members of his communist cell had built the wooden hut for them. There was no room to turn in there. They were like rabbits cowering in their warren, living in fear of being hunted down one night by the lamps of the SA.

  Nearly everybody on the KPD central committee had been arrested. Vicky had been within a hair’s breadth of being caught more than once. Only a couple of nights ago, she’d been spotted painting a slogan on a canal bridge, and had narrowly escaped arrest, taking to her heels under the gas lamps of the dark March night, running until she was gasping for breath, her chest tight and her heart pounding. It had been a close shave, and she felt that her luck was wearing thin. It was a hard struggle to live like this, constantly on the alert for danger, like an animal. There were black days ahead, but it was important not to despair, to keep the rebellion alive. They had to continue to resist, but how? Strikes, pamphlets, slogans on the walls of Berlin – and what else? What could withstand the flood of Nazi propaganda being churned out so relentlessly on the wireless, in cinemas and in the press?

  Vicky eventually told them why she’d come. They’d heard that there were to be fresh arrests when the men went to claim their dole the next day. Margarita needed to spread the word to as many as possible to keep away.

  ‘Have you heard about Paul?’ she asked them then.

  ‘What about him?’ asked Margarita, and looked at Kai-Olaf, who shook his head. Paul and Franz had been delivering pamphlets in an area where many government clerks and minor civil servants lived, in Wilhelmsdorf. They’d noticed a man with a dark complexion appear from somewhere, but after hesitating for a moment or two, he’d disappeared. They’d carried on with their work, though Franz had felt increasingly nervous, and had wanted them to get out of there. True to character, Paul had insisted that they finish the work. Afterwards, Franz had still felt as though they were being watched, so they’d split up, and walked on either side of the street until they’d reached a row of shops. In order to check whether he was being followed, Paul had slipped into a dairy, where a queue of women had been waiting. From the other side of the street, Franz had seen the man with the dark complexion rush past, followed by four members of the SA. Paul hadn’t seen them, Franz had been convinced of that. He’d been unable to cross the street to warn his friend of the danger without being caught himself. The SA had come back and began to question people. Paul must have panicked, because he’d tried to make a run for it out of the front of the shop, but he’d run straight into more of the SA.

  ‘Where is he now?’ asked Kai-Olaf.

  ‘Under lock and key in the Vlasich Pesotski barracks.’

  The three of them fell silent. After a while, Vicky asked if was alright for her to stay the night.

  ‘I’ve nowhere else to go.’

  ‘Why don’t you turn to your own people?’ was Kai-Olaf’s quiet suggestion.

  Margarita frowned at him.

  ‘Where are the KPD that they can’t help you tonight?’

  He was finding it difficult to disguise his anger, and added, ‘Why come to class enemies like us for help?’

  Margarita scolded him softly, ‘Not tonight, don’t…’

  ‘Why not tonight? This one was more than ready to throw me out of the KPD less than six months ago. I didn’t hear her speak up in my defence then, when I was dragged in front of the Disciplinary Committee. She was happy to throw me to the dogs…’

  Even now, Vicky couldn’t stop herself from saying, ‘Because you deserved to be thrown out.’

  ‘Did I really?’

  ‘You know you did. The things you were saying.’

  ‘It was high time somebody said them.’

  ‘It’s perfectly clear to me what kind of a man you are. By ridding itself of rubbish like you, the Communist Party can only become stronger. Stalin himself said so.’

  ‘Every time there’s a revolution, some third class becomes more powerful,’ Kai-Olaf replied. ‘When the slaves rebelled against their masters, who won? The feudal class. And when the peasants rose up against their lords, who won the day? The bourgeoisie. And when the proletariat rose up against the bourgeoisie and created the Soviet Union, there it is again: a bureaucratic party-state, like a ton of lead over everybody, and Stalin the tyrant at its head. Why does it always have to be like this?’

  Margarita hissed at Kai-Olaf to keep his voice down.

  ‘He’s acting in the name of the working class and for the interests of the working class,’ Vicky answered back, ‘That’s what Stalin is doing! And that’s what we’re doing in the KPD.’

  ‘Oh really?’ Kai-Olaf snapped, ‘So you still think the KPD line was correct do you? In spite of who is Chancellor today. How many thousands of you has he thrown into prison by now?’

  ‘We won over seven million votes in the election back in November last year.’

  ‘And how many voted for Hitler’s lot?’

  ‘Over seven million people voted for us.’

  ‘Against the eleven million who voted for him. And on the fifth of March this year, which was the biggest party? Hitler’s party. 196 seats in the Reichstag.’

  ‘Which couldn’t please a Trotskyist like you more.’

  ‘The Nazis will go after the trade unions next, you’ll see. Leipart, Grassman, Wissel; and after that it will be the SPD’s turn. Think how marvellous it will be for you all; you’ll be able to quarrel about what went wrong all day long, in Dachau, more than likely.’

  ‘That’s enough! Be quiet!’ Margarita hissed.

  Kai-Olaf stomped back to bed, and Vicky made a bed for herself on the sofa with the blankets Margarita had fetched for her.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, squeezing Margarita’s hand. ‘If I can ever pay the favour back…’

  ‘Sleep.’

  Margarita turned out the lights.

  ‘Margarita?’

  She turned.

  Vicky swore that she wouldn’t rest until Die Rote Fahne was back in circulation. That would have been Paul’s dearest wish. Somehow or other, she was determined to put the newspaper back on its feet, so that the truth could be read once more on the streets of Berlin. Without that, there was no hope.

  19.

  In the bliss of her company, every other worry disappeared, and the days trickled by. As Alyosha spent more and more of his time with Ludwika, Amelia’s language lessons became shorter and shorter, until her mother found another tutor to teach her.

  Every minute he wasn’t driving Captain Malinowski, he spent with her, much of it in her room in the Hotel Kaiserhof. He was spending most of his nights with her now, too. They always slept together naked, and, in the warmth of the room, the languid smell of their lovemaking was salty on their tongues. In the morning, nothing gave him more pleasure than waking up to see her face next to him on the pillow. He’d stroke her cheek, very lightly, so as not to wake her, and smooth her hair back from her face.When she woke, Ludwika loved to have breakfast in bed with him. Then, she’d have her bath, which Alyosha would run for her. Through the open door, he’d listen to her humming to herself as droplets ran from her skin into the water, and even with the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung in front of his nose, his mind was still on her. He’d usually end up going over to the bathroom door to look at her. But though she was happy to share her bed with him, she wasn’t willing to share her bath. Alyosha’s only comfort would be to kneel down, and lean his head on his arm at the side of the bath, his other hand in the water searching for her thighs.

  Or he’d soap her back for her: that fragile nape and her soft shoulders. Then, he’d hold out a towel for her to step into, wrap it around her like a child, and watch her again as she sat at her little dressing table, dabbing perfume behind her ears and between her breasts, and putting her make-up on.

  But his enjoyment would darken when the past would insist on intruding on his thoughts. He’d remember that night, when they’d gone to the fair in Montparnasse and she’d told him about her engagement to Mateusz Kołodziejski. He’d remember how he’d felt when she’d told him his family’s estate was near her grandmother’s. Most of all, he’d remember her coming out of the cabin.

  Over and over in his head, that image of her would torment him, filling him with angst. He’d be transported back to that corridor, surrounded by the smell of oil and polish, with the engine purring under his feet, and he’d be back in an instant outside the door of her cabin. He’d be gazing again at the deep velvety sky above the Baltic, at its scudding, heavy clouds, and he’d be overwhelmed by every sadness and longing he’d ever felt in his life. And that other image of her being driven from the port in Gdynia in her family’s Rolls-Royce, leaving him shouting for her on the asphalt. And then, across everything, that communist, the girl from Lvov, forced to drink her own boiling piss…

  ‘It wasn’t you I wanted to hurt, it was my own family…’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I wasn’t brave enough to stand up to them.’

  ‘And that’s why you slept with that officer?’

  ‘I understand it’s a difficult thing for you to understand. When I left you in Le Havre, I knew they’d never let me come back to Paris. My instincts were right: my father wasn’t even ill – that was a ruse to get me to go home. He’d heard about the two of us – how, I don’t know to this day – but somebody in Paris snitched. Of course, he wasn’t happy that I was having anything to do with a boy like you. My mother thought it was just some girlish romantic nonsense, and she tried to persuade my father that’s all it was, but he wouldn’t have it. He thought I was starting to see myself as some second Ludwika.’