The Man Who Was Saturday Read online

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘So you’re trying to prove to him what a great place the Soviet Union is? Are you angling for my job?’

  ‘No chance,’ Katerina said. ‘I’m stuck with the Brigade.’ She finished her tea, slid the oblong of hard sugar into her bag. ‘Come on, let’s get a breath of spring.’

  But by eleven that night the air was chilled again. When Calder picked her up on Leningradsky he was wearing a top-coat and fur hat. Katerina’s face was framed in sable, a second-hand gift from Svetlana’s discarded pilot.

  He drove to Bolshaya Ordinka Street, a discreet thoroughfare with a roll-call of churches, small houses and lime trees. She took him to a small pink and gold church. A crowd was packed around it and through the open doors they could smell Easter.

  Spandarian’s phone rang at ten minutes past midnight.

  The girl beneath him swore.

  Rolling clear, he picked up the receiver and asked brusquely: ‘Well, are they there?’

  ‘Affirmative, Comrade Spandarian.’

  ‘Stay with them.’

  Spandarian returned to the girl, the Estonian to the entrance to the church pausing on his way to lock the battered cream Volga.

  Easter was mostly age. Burning candles smelling of the past and priests with grey beards and worshippers as fragile as autumn. But there was youth there, too, peering in from the godless outside and wondering.

  Calder and Katerina eased their way through the militia-ringed throng to the back of the church where, with the rest of the congregation standing in a nave bereft of pews, they were entombed in candlelight, cocooned in the chanting of priests and choirs.

  Time was the pendulum swings of censers, the diminishing of tallow-spitting candles lighting icons. The senses melted. The congregation was as one. Glowing, golden adoration filled this small House of God.

  Feeling her warmth through her shabby coat, Calder wondered if Katerina, great-grandchild of a Revolution that had invented its own religion, acknowledged the Resurrection of Christ. He wondered if he did.

  As the priests walked three times round the outside of the church, searching for the body of Christ in the Holy Sepulchre, Calder saw wistful young faces in the crowd.

  Walking back to the car, Katerina said: ‘It’s strange but that ceremony was more Russian than anything the Party has invented,’ and Calder thought how ironic it would be if, innocently, he was becoming the instrument of her doubt.

  Immediately she recanted. ‘To think that there are more than thirty million churchgoers in the Soviet Union. There aren’t as many accredited members of the Communist Party. Did you know that?’

  He did. He also knew that the Party tolerated the Church because it was the ancient heartbeat of Mother Russia. A heartbeat, they hoped, that would soon falter and allow the young to worship at the altars of Marx and Lenin without Christian distractions. Unfortunately for the Party religion was said to be undergoing a revival.

  One binge, one night of homage. What next? Sitting behind the wheel of the Zhiguli, Calder grinned into the night and didn’t think about Alfredo Bertoldi at all. He drove back to Leningradsky with a flourish.

  After the second phone call Spandarian lay, hands behind his head, staring at the reflections of himself and the dozing girl on the mirror on the ceiling. He decided he would make his move tomorrow, Easter Sunday.

  CHAPTER 7

  Resentfully, Katerina caught a bus to the Institute: it just wasn’t the Sunday morning to squander in that futile place. Budding plants had pushed through the wet soil overnight. River breezes fanned the late-sleeping streets. A tentative sun was finding the city’s fragile graces.

  Still, she only had to spend a couple of hours there preparing and allocating periodicals for the Monday return-to-work in the absence of the Study Supervisor who was recovering from a prolonged encounter with a crate of Ukrainian pepper vodka.

  And then? It was a day for the first visit to the river beaches at Serebriani Bor or an excursion into the forest to see if mushrooms had begun to sprout among the damp remains of winter or a trip to one of the villages outside Moscow. But for that you really needed a car.

  Calder had a car.

  The bus, proceeding at a measured speed along the broad reaches of Leningradsky, reached Byelorussia Square. Here Leningradsky became Gorky Street where Calder lived.

  The bus stopped outside the green and white stucco hulk of Byelorussia Railway Station. A young man carrying a shiny fawn suitcase climbed aboard and sat in. the seat in front of Katerina. His brown hair was stylishly barbered and he wore a new blue suit cut with a discreet elegance that few Soviet tailors could manage. As the station served the west Katerina assumed he had arrived from somewhere like Smolensk or Minsk.

  He turned and smiled. ‘This time two days ago I was in Paris.’ Paris! ‘But I’m glad to be back.’ That saved him, as far as she was concerned.

  ‘Oh, really?’ She stared out of the window. She was wearing her new lemon costume bought defitsitny in the Arbat and she knew she looked attractive enough; the young man was probably making a pass and she didn’t object to that – the time to worry was when they didn’t – but her mind was on Calder.

  The bus headed down Gorky Street. Through the arcades to the right stood a huddle of old streets. Chekhov had lived there, and so had Chaliapin. She would like to show the house to Calder.

  She tried to analyse her feelings about the big American. He was a challenge. She wanted to prove to him his wisdom in coming to Russia. Or his weakness. She wasn’t sure which. Until she had met him she had been sure of her values. Now they were presenting themselves for inspection. She wished he hadn’t eaten those redcurrants at Kreiber’s funeral.

  ‘And where are you going to so early on a Sunday morning?’ the young man asked.

  ‘To work.’

  ‘Really?’ He considered this. His features were Slavonic but warm, peasant or intellectual, whatever way you chose to regard him. They were also vaguely familiar. ‘And what sort of work is that?’

  Her work was difficult to label: it invited elaboration. ‘A waitress,’ she said. Good enough for her mother, good enough for her.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The Centralny.’

  ‘Then I shall come and eat there.’

  So he was making a pass. She tried to put a label to him. Paris … carried himself with unobtrusive style … accent, pure Moscow … son of some Kremlin nachalstvo? If so, why hadn’t there been a Chaika at the station to meet him?

  The bus passed the arch through which Calder lived. It had occurred to her that she might glimpse him but there was no sign of him, the sidewalk outside the arch occupied by a group of tourists trooping patiently towards Red Square behind their Intourist leader.

  She picked up her handbag and prepared to alight at the National Hotel corner of Manezhnaya Square.

  The young man took a card from a slim wallet and handed it to her. ‘If you feel like coming along anytime ….’ She slipped the card into her wallet without looking at it. As she made her way to the exit he called after her: ‘By the way, you’ve gone past the Centralny.’

  The atmosphere at the Institute closed in upon her. Furniture polish and cheap paper and the baked paintwork of the radiators. The bad breath of wasted endeavour.

  Footsteps echoing, she walked past the empty, book-lined chambers to the spacious office of the Study Supervisor. Outside stood sheaves of newspapers and magazines tied with coarse string.

  She began to sort them into nationalities on a trestle table in the study. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Le Monde, De Telegraff, Bild, La Stampa …. As always what astonished her was not the content of the papers but their freedom to print what they pleased. Editorials actually criticising the Government. Vistas of freedom beckoned slyly through screens of newsprint.

  ‘But don’t close your eyes,’ she had been warned before she got the job, ‘to the decadence you will find on those pages. ‘As if she could.
Corruption, child abuse, rape, racism, industrial injustice … you name it. ‘All encouraged by circulation-crazed newspapers and magazines.’

  But don’t we get our fair share of most of these evils in the Soviet Union?

  Treason!

  The biggest pile of papers was from the United States. A skyscraper of them. Calder was in charge of that section, analysing and indexing with a team of six other American defectors.

  The Study Supervisor’s phone rang. Katerina picked up the receiver, at the same time pulling out a drawer in the table. It was filled with cuttings from glossy magazines. The Study Supervisor apparently reserved the right to analyse the female anatomy of the West.

  Katerina shut the drawer. She spoke into the receiver, giving the number of the Institute. ‘Katerina Ilyina speaking.’

  ‘My name’s Spandarian,’ said the voice on the other end of the line. ‘It’s about time we met.’

  Although his fingernails were polished, although his hair was carefully waved and his moustache was a topiarist’s dream, although his brown eyes were soulful and his brilliantine smelled of spices, Spandarian was a gangster. Katerina sensed this instantly. He was also a born interrogator, bandit brain and veneer, the hot/cold of the third degree.

  He spoke melodiously but with a strong Georgian accent, fashioning flowers from some of his phrases. ‘So, Katerina Ilyina, you want to save Soviet women. Has it ever occurred to you that they don’t want to be saved? That, like Mother Russia herself, they merely want to endure?’ He lit a yellow cigarette packed with black tobacco and blew acrid smoke across his desk.

  ‘That’s what the Russian male would like to think, Comrade Spandarian.’ Her defiance pleased her: although few had seen him, the ruthlessness of the shadowy mentor of the Twilight Brigade was common knowledge.

  ‘The Russian male? I am not a Russian, Katerina Ilyina, I am a Georgian. In Tbilisi we know how to treat women. We flatter them, court them, love them. But they know their place just the same and they are happy.’

  Katerina had been to the Georgian capital once. And what Spandarian said was true. Up to a point. Women were treated extravagantly. But they were chattels just the same. Georgia would be a challenge. But first Mother Russia.

  Spandarian said: ‘Russian men are pigs.’

  Katerina regarded him with astonishment, then found herself saying defensively: ‘Some of the younger ones are learning; they are more considerate.’ The young man on the bus, for instance.

  ‘You are a true Slav, Katerina Ilyina. Already you are confounding yourself. If the young men are improving what is the point of your Cause?’

  ‘Only some of them, the sons of the privileged.’ Privileged! What was she saying? ‘As for the rest … goats. And as for the Cause – equality, that’s what it’s all about. Just like Communism,’ she heard herself saying. ‘How many women are there in the Politburo, Comrade Spandarian?’

  He didn’t answer. Instead he picked up a light blue folder, finger and thumb feeling one corner as though he were rubbing an insect to death. He recited from it:

  ‘Unlawfully convening a meeting; incitement to violence; incitement to treason; hooligan behaviour; indecency in a public place; arson. That lot,’ Spandarian said mildly, ‘could put you away for the rest of your life. Or put you in front of a firing squad. Dissidents have been shot for less.’

  Reeling, she queried ‘Indecency in public?’

  Spandarian extracted a typewritten sheet of paper from the folder and read the exchanges with the woman in the red shawl. ‘Goloshes,’ he said. ‘Really!’

  ‘I can’t help what harridans in the audience say.’

  ‘Your friend Svetlana Rozonova wasn’t exactly reticent.’

  ‘You wouldn’t ….’

  ‘We might.’

  Spandarian stood up, walked to the window and stared in the direction of the Kremlin. ‘Strange, isn’t it, that the fount of Communism should look more like the ultimate altar of religion. All those cathedrals and churches …. The contradictions of revolution. Especially on Easter Sunday.’

  Hot/cold. Her courage was trickling away. ‘What do you want, Comrade Spandarian?’

  The angular woman from the outer office brought them tea and biscuits. When she had gone Spandarian sat down and said in between sips of tea: ‘You’re a very patriotic girl, Katerina Ilyina.’ She wondered about Spandarian’s brand of patriotism. ‘The spirit that won the Great Patriotic War.’

  Katerina nibbled a biscuit; it tasted of aniseed; she sipped lemon-sharp tea to disperse the flavour.

  Spandarian went on: ‘You are very fortunate – you are in a position to help your country.’ He dunked his biscuit in his tea and bit off the soggy tip.

  Warily, Katerina asked him how.

  He finished his tea and biscuit, dabbed the corners of his mouth with a red silk handkerchief and told her.

  She had struck up a friendship with an American defector, Robert Calder. Nothing wrong with that. In fact the friendship must have been arranged in heaven – ‘or whatever Arcadia awaits a good Communist’ – because that was what provided the opportunity for Katerina to be of service to the Soviet Union.

  All she had to do was observe Calder. Report on his moods, his thinking – party-line or otherwise – his habits. Encourage him to talk about the past – and the future.

  Touch his soul.

  ‘No!’

  Spandarian lit another of his terrible cigarettes. ‘When I was talking about the penalties involved in that disastrous affair on Women’s Day I omitted one. You would be expelled from the Soviet Union. I would see to that.’ The words rolled from his mouth in smoke.

  So this was patriotism. Her beliefs shrank, tarnished.

  Spandarian explained. ‘To serve one’s country one has to carry out acts that are sometimes distasteful. It’s unfortunate but when you’re dealing with unscrupulous enemies there isn’t any alternative. Always remember that these acts are a means to an end – the survival of the Soviet Union.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘And is what I’m asking so distasteful? I can assure you that at the head offices of State Security in Dzerzhinsky Square and on the Outer Ring, they would be far more unpleasant. My duties are more … delicate. Perhaps that’s why I am permitted such pleasant offices away from harsh realities.’

  No. But this time she didn’t speak.

  ‘And don’t forget Svetlana Rozonova,’ he said.

  Bastard.

  ‘I’m not asking you to betray anyone. Just to keep a defector under observation.’

  ‘Why is he so important?’

  ‘That needn’t concern you.’

  She thought: So that’s why I’ve been allowed to stay active in the women’s movement and keep my job. Blackmail.

  She felt soiled.

  ‘Will you do it?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ she said. Give me time to think of a way out.

  ‘Think well, Katerina Ilyina.’ Stroking his moustache, he stood up and bowed. For the time being it was over.

  From 25th October Street she walked into Krasnaya Ploschad, Beautiful Square in old Russian, better known as Red Square. To her left the windows of GUM and, farther away, the barley-sugar baubles of St Basil’s; in front of her the Kremlin walls and the red-granite block of Lenin’s Mausoleum where, in a glass sarcophagus, the father of the Revolution lay in peace. What would he have thought of the choice facing her?

  She walked past the queue waiting on the cobblestones to pay homage to the embalmed spirit of Bolshevism and past the main entrance to the Kremlin, the Redeemer’s Gate.

  She was arrested three days later.

  A bald man and a woman with a pale face slit by bright lipstick, both in plainclothes, called at the apartment on Leningradsky and took her in a black Volga to the women’s section of the prison at 38, Petrovka.

  They were courteous but uncommunicative. Katerina conducted herself with dignity but she wanted to weep.

  The cell was painted
dark green. It contained two bunks, one above the other, a scrubbed deal table and two chairs, a washbasin, a slice of red soap and a galvanised bucket.

  The door shut with jarring finality.

  She sat on the bed. Concentrate on the logic of it, she thought, otherwise you’ll break. Humiliation. Question: why? Three days ago I was useful to them; suddenly I’m disposable, garbage.

  A shiny cockroach as big as a thumb made a run across the wall opposite her.

  She wondered if she would be expelled from the Soviet Union.

  A key turned in the lock and Svetlana was pushed through the door.

  She held out her arms and they embraced. Katerina felt courage pass between them.

  Svetlana said: ‘Let’s call room service and have a drink.’ She wore an emerald two-piece, a leftover from the reign of the pilot, and looked stunning. ‘Are you looking forward to life in New York?’

  ‘You think they’ll throw us out?’

  ‘We had one yellow card. This is the red.’ She sat beside Katerina and put her arm round her.

  From the corridor they heard scuffling. A woman with a Ukranian accent shouting: ‘Get in there, you fucked-out old iron.’ A cell door slammed.

  ‘One of the girls,’ Svetlana remarked. ‘Railway station material by the sound of it. We’re in good company Katerina Ilyina.’

  The key turned in the lock. Katerina smelled spicy brilliantine. Spandarian came in carrying a document headed MINISTRY OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS.

  He handed it to Katerina. ‘Your expulsion order,’ he said.

  ‘But you said ….’

  ‘That was three days ago, this is now.’

  Svetlana stood up, a little taller than Spandarian. ‘And mine?’

  ‘Yours? Who said anything about you being kicked out?’

  Katerina froze. To be expelled without Svetlana, that was worse than a death sentence.

  Svetlana said: ‘Listen you Georgian prick, if Katerina goes I go.’

  Spandarian hit her across the face with the back of his hand but before she could throw herself at him an immense wardress invaded the cell and pinioned her arms.

  ‘If you don’t behave yourself,’ Spandarian said mildly, ‘we’ll have to lock you up with the old whore next door.’ He bowed to Katerina. ‘Read this document and digest it. If there’s anything you don’t understand I’ll be happy to explain. As we cross the border,’ he added. He lit one of his yellow cigarettes. ‘And now the contents of your handbag. A formality, you understand.’