‘Finally,’ she said. ‘Now can I have what I came for?’
‘In return for a diamond,’ Jaba said.
‘What do you want to know?’
Jaba’s smile was dazzling when he wanted it to be. ‘Something about your friend.’
‘All right, Batono Jaba,’ and, using the Georgian for ‘Lord Jaba’, she whispered in his ear for a while.
‘Thank you Atamansha,’ said Jaba.
She got up. Jaba rose too. She turned back to Benya.
‘I have a feeling we’ll meet again,’ he said, surprising himself. The gangsters snorted at his impertinence.
‘I doubt it,’ replied the Atamansha, showing her teeth, one of them gold. ‘We break fresh ponies where I come from. Go back to your books!’
Jaba stood up and bowed, every bit the mock Georgian nobleman. Deathless led the way out, followed by Jaba. The Atamansha looked at Nyushka, held out her arm and Nyushka took it, eyes cast down like a bashful bride. Finally the Atamansha and Nyushka proceeded slowly down the aisle as if they were at a gypsy wedding.
‘You want to fuck the Atamansha?’ sneered Smiley, husky breath on Benya’s ear. ‘Careful! She wanted to play for your blue eyes but had to make do with Poxy’s finger.’
Benya swallowed hard, finally understanding what had been going on.
‘You know how she killed her lovers in Rostov?’ Smiley said. ‘She cut them while they fucked her, throat to groin, like you gut a fish.’
‘What was that she said about her friend and the diamond?’
‘She’s the mistress of Shpigelglas, the Zone Commandant, and a diamond is a priceless piece of information that can be used against someone.’
The Atamansha had reached the door – but she hesitated and then looked over at the young man on the last bunk. The new arrival.
‘Is it you, Mikhail Cherkin?’ she said.
The man looked up in surprise. ‘Yes, but I don’t think…’
‘No, we haven’t met,’ she said cheerfully. ‘But I hope you like your new home here?’ Before he could agree, she added, ‘Did you watch the game?’
‘Yes.’ He was sitting up now, nervously. ‘What were you playing for?’
She gave a piratical smile, a flash of gold. ‘You,’ she said.
Cherkin’s face was still swinging between uneasiness and bewilderment when Deathless lifted a board that was hanging on the wall by the door and in one unbroken movement of intense force smashed it on to the top of Cherkin’s head and removed it with the same gusto, hanging it back where it came from. It happened so fast that Benya had scarcely processed the popping sound, but he knew there was a long nail in the middle of the board. Cherkin, without altering his uncertain expression, raised his hands to his temples as if trying on a hat that did not quite fit, then two neat lines of blood began to run like treacle down his forehead. The men in the bunks stared for a moment and then started to look away as, very slowly, Cherkin toppled sideways on his bunk and began to twitch in his death throes.
The Atamansha guided Nyushka out of the door and into the night, which was when Benya realized she’d also won some time with the nurse.
He felt Jaba’s hand squeeze his neck. ‘In case you’re wondering, that man disobeyed an order from the Atamansha. We never forget that. Sit down.’ Benya sat. ‘I hear you volunteered for the army?’ Jaba asked this as if nothing of any significance had occurred, as if a man’s body was not being lunked out of the barracks by his men with much falsetto swearing from Little Mametka.
‘You heard?’
‘Why would you do such a crazy thing, Benya?’
‘To fight the Fascists.’
‘And you think the Red Army can’t cope without your warlike ardour?’
‘It’s something I have to do. Boss, I am a Russian, a Jew. The Nazis are my enemies.’
Jaba shook his head. ‘In our code of Brigands, we don’t work for the state and we don’t fight for the state. None of us will volunteer. Aren’t you missing something, writer-in-residence?’
Benya hesitated. Smiley, Deathless and Mametka were back now, watching their master, like guard dogs waiting for a whistle. ‘What?’
‘To survive here a man needs two things. The spirit of life; you have it. But he also needs luck, not once but many times. Golden, I am your luck. Don’t I look after you?’ A pause. He was still grinning but the almond-shaped eyes were slate-cold.
‘I apologize, Batono Jaba,’ answered Benya, who sensed this was the moment for antique Georgian courtesy. ‘I was ungrateful. I will never go to the war… Yes, you saved my life. I belong to you.’
III
‘He’s here, just back from the front,’ said her brother, Vasily Stalin. ‘Let’s find him!’ Wearing his air force uniform with a colonel’s pips, he led Svetlana through the carousers in the white stucco dacha with its Grecian pillars. ‘Zubalovo’s made for parties, isn’t it? Shame Papa never enjoyed it.’
Svetlana had almost not come. The revelation about her mother had so upset her. Why had her mother abandoned her? She had been tricked all these years only to discover the truth in a newspaper. She wanted to discuss it with Vasya but he was so frivolous and so soused that this was obviously not the moment. Instead she took a glass of champagne and downed it and felt a little better. If it hadn’t been for the possibility of meeting Shapiro, she would have missed the party, but she sensed that this opportunity might not come again.
The rooms of the villa were filled with officers in boots and tunics and tall glamorous Russian Veronica Lakes and Ingrid Bergmans with curled hair, bare shoulders and vertiginous décolletage. Svetlana was wearing her first dress, copied from Vogue magazine, and flat shoes, and she felt awkward amongst so many of Moscow’s beautiful women and dashing men, the Stiliagi – the Stylish Ones. She recognized many of them: there was the poet Simonov and his wife the film star Valentina Serova; over there, the movie director Roman Carmen with his wife Nina, another actress. Svetlana knew all the gossip: her brother Vasily was in love with Nina; Vasily had moved Nina into his house, kicking out his wife Galina. Nina’s husband was so furious that he’d written to Stalin to complain!
Vasily was pulling her by the hand, a sour-faced imp whispering horrible things to her: ‘I fucked that one with her husband in the next-door room,’ he was saying. ‘And that one…’
‘Stop telling me, or I’ll block my ears,’ said Svetlana – but he didn’t. Making love couldn’t be as ugly as he made it seem, she thought, surely it must be exquisite when you’re in love? Women danced to the gramophone. The foxtrot was the new dance, so fast, so close – and Svetlana longed to be able to do it. Sometimes a girl wrapped herself around Vasily snickering and dancing and he was lost and she was left standing apart, watching like a prim spectator.
‘Oh, wait, Sveta, I’ll be right back,’ he’d say, and she had to wait like a fool. But soon he was back, and pulling her onwards. ‘Why do you want to meet him?’
‘Just to talk about his articles.’
‘Ugh, don’t bullshit your brother. You’re in love with him!’
‘No! You’re wrong.’
‘You’re just a girl. It’s a schoolgirl crush then. But do you want to kiss him, do you want to get naked—’
‘Shut up, Vasya, don’t be disgusting. Not everything’s about that…’