One Night in Winter

This morning, she is woken by the oompah rhythms of the military bands practising their Glinka down the street, the rumble of tank engines, the clip of cavalry hooves on pavements, and she gets out of bed with the bruised feeling that she has scarcely slept.

Her father, Constantin Romashkin, knocks on her door. ‘You’re awake already? You’re excited about the parade?’

She goes to the window. ‘Oh no, it’s raining.’

‘It’ll stop for the parade.’ But it doesn’t. ‘Shall we wake your mother?’

Serafima walks along the parqueted, chandeliered corridor to her parents’ room, past the framed poster advertising the movie Katyusha, which is dominated by a statuesque woman in army uniform, toting a machine-gun against a military background. She has jet-black hair and smudges of gun oil on her cheeks like a Cherokee brave. Dramatic letters declare that the movie stars ‘SOPHIA ZEITLIN’ (Serafima’s mother); and its script is written ‘BY CONSTANTIN ROMASHKIN’ (Serafima’s father). Katyusha is the Soviet soldiers’ favourite film by Stalin’s top scriptwriter. Serafima has a strong impression that it was through such scripts that her papa had romanced her mama – it’s certainly the way he has kept her.

The bedroom. A heap of silk sheets. There lies ‘Katyusha’ herself. Long black hair, a bare plump arm. Serafima smells her mother’s familiar aura of French scent, French cigarettes, French face cream.

‘Mama, wake up!’

‘God! What time is it? I have to look good today – I have to look good every day. Light me a cigarette, Serafimochka.’

Sophia sits up; she’s naked; her breasts are full. Somehow though, she is already holding a cigarette in an ivory holder. Her father, anxious and fastidious, is pacing up and down.

HE We mustn’t be late.

SHE Stop bothering me!

HE You’re always late. We can’t be late this time.

SHE If you don’t like it, divorce me!

Finally, they’re dressed and ready. Serafima unlocks the front door just as the doors of all the capacious parquet-floored, high-ceilinged apartments are opening in the pink wedding cake of the Granovsky building (otherwise known as the Fifth House of the Soviets). The other élite families are coming downstairs too.

In the stairway: the voices of children tremulous with excitement; the creak of well-polished leather, the clip of boot-heels; the jiggling of medals, pistols clinking against belts with starred buckles. First, her parents greet the smug Molotovs – he’s in a black suit like a bourgeois undertaker, pince-nez on a head round as a cannonball, his tomahawk-faced wife Polina in mink. Just ahead of them: Marshal Budyonny of the waxed moustaches as wide as bicycle handlebars is singing a Cossack ditty (soused? At 8 a.m.?), a pretty new wife preening behind him.

On the first landing: Hercules Satinov is in his general’s dress uniform, red-striped trousers and scarlet shoulderboards with golden stars. Her mother embraces Hercules – a family friend since before the Revolution. The Satinov children nod at Serafima with the complicity of school conspirators. ‘What’s news?’ asks George Satinov eagerly. He always says that. She saw them last night at the Aragvi Restaurant and this afternoon they are going to do what they always do. They’re going to play the Game.

‘Communist greetings, Serafimochka,’ says Comrade Satinov. Serafima nods back. To her, he’s a chilly, passionless statue, typical of the leaders. Granite and ice – and hair gel. She knows he’ll soon be standing beside Stalin atop Lenin’s Mausoleum.

‘I think the rain will stop for Comrade Stalin,’ says Mariko, the Satinovs’ six-year-old daughter. She has braided hair and a toy dog under her arm.

‘Probably,’ laughs Tamara, Comrade Satinov’s wife.

Out into the car park. Warm summer rain. The air pregnant with the closeness of thunder, the sticky aromas of lilac and apple blossom. Serafima worries that in the dampness, her hair is curling into a frizz of fair corkscrews, and her powder-blue dress with its white collar is losing its shape. For all the high heels, bell-shaped hats and the men’s scarlet-visored caps, she can already smell the staleness of sweat and waterlogged satin.

Uniformed bodyguards wait, bearing opened umbrellas. The armoured limousines, headlights as big as planets, curves like showgirls, speed forward, one by one, to ferry them the short distance to the Great Kremlin Palace. A traffic jam curls almost twice around its red walls.

SERAFIMA Why are we driving?

PAPA It’s only a hundred metres.

MAMA You try walking anywhere in such high heels! You don’t know anything about women, Constantin!

Serafima thinks of her lover. ‘Missing you, loving you, wanting you,’ she whispers. Somewhere not too far away, is he doing the same?