He’d taken to the road again, and had walked the coastlines of France, Portugal and Spain, through those small impoverished towns where fishermen scratched a living from the fruits of the sea. From there, he’d wandered the continent, and had found himself one day in Antwerp. He’d found lodgings in a room on the Rue du Sac, where he’d taken a fancy to the daughter of the owner – a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl, who’d spent most of her leisure time on a window seat with her nose in a book. Whenever her parents had called her, she’d raise her head slowly, as though she was waking from a deep dream. She’d had still green, unsmiling eyes, a mane of long black hair and a smattering of freckles over her nose and cheeks, and her most prized possession had been a narrow silver bracelet, which she’d never taken off her wrist.

  The Rue du Sac was situated opposite the docks, and Eggert had soon found himself frequenting the bars along the Scheldt, discussing communist ideas with the sailors. Somebody – working for the Comintern, Eggert assumed – must have noticed him, and had a word in somebody’s ear, because he’d been approached and offered a job with the KPD in Berlin. That’s where he had first met Margarita, shortly after the rally in the Sportplatz.

  He’d been expelled from the Party around the same time as Kai-Olaf.

  By now, he’d put enough distance between himself and the KPD to be able to interpret what had happened more objectively. The Communist Party was not so dissimilar to his old school in Maulbronn. At the heart of Marxist-Leninism was an elitism every bit as hierarchical and dictatorial as had prevailed there. Whilst it proclaimed the right of the millions to rule their own lives, in fact, the real power lay with a handful of men. It proclaimed freedom, but operated in an authoritarian manner. When had a despot every ruled democratically? What dogmatic ideology had ever allowed freedom of thought? Its raison d’être was to ensure happiness and freedom – but what makes people happy and free? How do you measure happiness? Or freedom? Can any human mind ever comprehend the whole meaning of life?

  The two left for the French border by moonlight.

  47.

  The French sky was so changeable. One minute, a bank of fat clouds rolled along the horizon, the next, there was nothing but blue sky and spring sunshine, winking through the branches of the poplars on either side of the tracks in an alternating pattern of light and shadows. Every now and again, one of the branches would brush against the carriage. Margarita poked her head out of the window, and her hair was whipped around madly in the breeze. Some lilac trees passed her eye in a moving blur of colour, and she managed to grab a couple of blossoms in her fist.

  When they reached their journey’s end in the early hours, the Gare de l’Est was noisy and bad-tempered, its cavernous space filled with the echoes of pistons and brakes competing with the shouting of the porters and the whistling of the guards.

  Outside, low clouds hung over the city and the early morning air was damp. Margarita and Eggert separated, promising to meet soon, and Margarita found herself on Rue de la Huchette, where she went in to the Café Saint Michel which had just opened its doors to ask for directions. A woman they called Eugénie was serving coffee and croissants to three or four early workers in her slippers, her legs bare. She had a blowsy look about her, and stank of cheap perfume, but she was friendly enough and took the piece of paper from her to ask the other customers if they knew where the street was. Margarita suddenly started to shake, though she wasn’t cold, and she wrapped her coat more tightly around her. Eugénie must have had a good heart, because she came back with a coffee, which she slapped down in front of Margarita, telling her she looked done in, and that it was on the house. Margarita drank it gratefully. The street wasn’t so far away – one of the men on the other table gave her directions. Thanking him and Eugénie for their kindness, Margarita set off feeling suddenly hopeful.

  She waited for the messenger boy on his bike to peddle past before crossing the road. Already, the last few weeks seemed to be fading away, as if they had happened a long time ago. The streets were becoming busier now, and she started to pass people hurrying along, on their way to work. She was suddenly engulfed in a cloud of soapy-smelling steam which had escaped through the open doors of a laundry as she walked by, and then found herself smiling at a waiter in a long white apron, smoking a cigarette contemplatively by the entrance of a café. She turned the corner at the bottom of the street into a much wider street, where men and women were busy setting up their stalls for a fruit and vegetable market. Further on down, she started counting the numbers until she reached the correct building. She stepped through the wide double doors into a cobbled courtyard, and climbed the stairs to the first landing. She found the right door, and knocked. In a minute or two, a woman with tousled hair, still in her nightdress, opened it. Tatyana’s sleepy expression turned to sheer astonishment when she saw Margarita on her doorstep. Margarita apologised for the early hour, but was given a warm hug and told to come in. Over tea and bread, she told Stanislav and Tatyana briefly about her journey. There was nothing very new in it; they were all familiar with such journeys. She was far more concerned with telling them about the accusations made against her in the Czech press. Stanislav listened to her carefully, smoking his pipe.

  ‘You know better than anybody that I wasn’t working for the Gestapo,’ Margarita said and he nodded. ‘But what worries me more than anything is Larissa’s situation in Moscow.’

  ‘I quite understand,’ Stanislav said, and told her there was no need to worry.

  ‘But I am worried. That’s why I came straight here. I know from experience how these things get back to the Kremlin. And I don’t want my sister to suffer.’

  ‘I’ll explain everything.’

  ‘Do you promise?’

  He nodded then asked, ‘What are you going to do in Paris?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘If you need anything, you know where we are.’

  ‘Thank you. And thank you for saving me back in Berlin.’

  ‘You can thank Tatyana,’ answered Stanislav.

  Margarita smiled, knowing full well he was behind it all.

  She didn’t have far to walk – just down Rue des Deux-Ponts, and then she was in Rue Saint-Séverin. The concierge opened the door and told her where to find Kai-Olaf’s room.

  She climbed the narrow stairs, then knocked the door, and heard a fumbling from the other side.

  The door opened.

  It was Kai-Olaf standing there, staring at her in disbelief.

  They hugged, holding on to each other for dear life.

  Margarita felt, at last, that she was home.

  Acknowledgements

  Both the author and translator would like to thank English PEN for the financial and promotional support they have provided towards the publication of this title.

  Wiliam Owen Roberts was born in 1960 and educated at the University of Wales Aberystwyth. He worked for various theatre companies before joining HTV as a script editor in 1984. Since 1989 he has been a full-time writer and has written extensively for theatre, television, radio and film. His first novel Bingo! (1985) was described as the first postmodernist novel in Welsh. His second novel Y Pla (Pestilence; 1987) won the Welsh Arts Council Literature prize in 1988 and was subsequently translated into 10 languages. His third novel Paradwys (Paradise; 2001 was set on an imaginary Carribean island on the eve of the French Revolution and was short-listed for the Welsh Book of the Year Award in 2002. Petrograd (2008) won the Welsh Book of the Year Award and the ITV Wales Readers Choice Award in 2009. He is a Fellow of the Welsh Academy.

  Elisabeth Roberts was born in Cardiff and educated at Oxford University. She has been a freelance translator and editor for many years. She is married to Wiliam Owen Roberts and has translated three of his novels into English: Pestilence, Petrograd and Paris.

  Also by Wiliam Owen Roberts

  “…an epic novel… you can almost smell Russia.”

  BBC Arts

  PETROGRAD

  It’s the summer of 1916 and the Alexandrov family prepare to embark on their annual holiday, accompanied by an army of staff primed to cater to their needs.

  Teenage, precocious Alyosha Alexandrov has never known anything but a life of privilege. He spends his days avoiding study and pursuing pretty young maids. But Russia is poised on the brink of epochal political upheaval and within a year Alyosha is separated from family, security, and the innocence of youth.

  Set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath, spanning the turbulent years from 1916 to 1924, Petrograd is a vast, ambitious novel from an award-winning writer. The first in a trilogy, and winner of the Wales Book of the Year Award (Welsh Language), it tells the compelling, convincing story of the Alexandrov family as they each struggle to adapt to the ravages of war and revolution.

  “This is a novel with a huge international appeal.”

  BBC Cymru

  978-1-909844-56-8 • £8.99 • eBook also available

 

 

  William Roberts, Paris

 

 

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