‘If that is all, Comrade Stalin, I should return to headquarters and review the latest reports.’
‘Sit down, Alexander Mikhailovich.’
Vasilevsky did as he was told. This had never happened before.
‘You know my son Yakov is a prisoner of the Germans?’
‘If that is so, it must be hard for his father,’ said Vasilevsky. Of course he knew that Stalin’s eldest son from his first marriage, Yakov Djugashvili, whose gentle, self-deprecating nature irritated his father, had been captured. But with Stalin it was prudent to be extremely careful.
Stalin stared into the air, wilting visibly, haggard and grey-faced. ‘I am just one father amongst the millions who has lost someone. I’m not special.’
‘But they must wish to use him against you?’
‘Of course,’ replied Stalin. ‘I expect it every day. His surrender was a crime and I treated him no differently from any other soldier who let himself fall into enemy hands. His wife is under arrest.’
Vasilevsky was in no hurry to commit himself. Where was this going? he wondered.
‘He was always a spineless boy. I don’t know if he was a coward or just unlucky.’
‘I am sure he was unlucky, Comrade Stalin. We can’t be responsible for our children.’ Vasilevsky shrugged. ‘They are born with characters and we can’t always change them.’
‘Perhaps you’re right.’ Stalin blew the blueish smoke towards the ceiling where it billowed and washed back. ‘If he had betrayed us, they would have paraded him by now. Perhaps Stalin’s son is braver than we all thought.’
‘In this case, no news is good news.’
Stalin examined Vasilevsky searchingly: ‘I hear your father was a priest.’
A bombshell! Vasilevsky took a breath, aware he was sweating suddenly. ‘That is correct, though obviously such elements as clergy are class enemies. I broke off relations more than ten years ago and have had no contact since then. None at all, I promise.’
Stalin nodded. ‘I was trained as a priest.’
‘Yes, Comrade Stalin.’ Vasilevsky answered this with rigid neutrality.
‘It was a good training for politics. A training in how to judge men.’
‘I can imagine that.’
‘Alexander Mikhailovich, in a time of war, it seems a shame that a son does not contact his old father.’
‘Yes, Comrade Stalin.’
‘When you have time,’ said Stalin, ‘will you contact your father again? Don’t let days or even hours pass. Death takes the old so easily. Call him from my anteroom and let him know his son cares for him. Make sure he has the right rations. Will you do that?’
‘Yes… yes, I will do it.’
‘Tonight?’
‘Yes, tonight.’
‘Goodnight, General Vasilevsky.’ And Stalin stood up and walked out of the office towards his apartment.
He was filled with a sudden, and rather surprising, yearning to see Svetlana. But oddly, Svetlana was not home. He sat at the kitchen table for a moment. He was glad he had spoken to Vasilevsky. Beria had given him this information to use against Vasilevsky, but sometimes family was as essential as ideology. Perhaps this was something the seminary had taught him. Priests were sometimes more cunning than commissars. Yes, family had its place, he thought.
As if on cue, the door opened and Svetlana, her skin gleaming and eyes bright, burst in, wearing an evening gown with eyeshadow and lipstick and her hair curled. Stalin was momentarily shocked by how grown up she looked. His little girl was too young for this!
‘Sveta, you look so…’ He had the urge to shout at her: You’re overdressed, you look ridiculous. What do you think you look like? A whore! Who gave you permission to dress like this? But after the chat with Vasilevsky, he was enjoying the mellow thought of family and love, and he quelled his fury.
‘What do you think, Papa?’ She did a twirl for him.
‘You look so grown up, I hardly recognized you. You’re only sixteen. You surprised me, darling.’
‘But do you like it? Do I look good?’
She was radiating such glamour and joie de vivre that he did not know how to respond, something that didn’t happen very often. ‘My princess, my darling girl, has grown up,’ he said awkwardly and stiffly.
‘Oh, Papa,’ she said, smiling.
He hugged her as he used to but her perfume made him feel sick. ‘Good day at school? How’s the homework?’
Svetlana gave him such a dazzling smile that he shook his head: some people lived entirely in their own little worlds. But a Bolshevik has no time for family, he thought. The Party is his family. Sentiment and love are bourgeois indulgences, and the Revolution is everything. He remembered his first wife, Kato, who’d died young. That had been innocent first love but he had loved his second wife in a mature way: Nadya, Svetlana’s mother; Tatochka he called her. But she wasn’t strong and she listened to his enemies, and let him down. Then there were his sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law who moved in to take care of him after Nadya’s suicide. They chattered, they found out secrets, they interfered and got mixed up with enemies, and some were no longer amongst the living. He’d been forced to liquidate them. Yes, he’d sacrificed his own family too. Then there were his children. Yakov: he let me down, he told himself. Vasily too.
‘Where have you been?’ he asked Svetlana harshly.
She jumped. ‘At Zubalovo with Vasily.’
A bolt of anger struck Stalin. ‘That upstart behaves like a baron’s son. They bring me reports of his antics. The husband of Vasily’s mistress even wrote to me to complain. I don’t have time to deal with his crew of crooks and whores. When every family is bleeding – even ours, yes, even ours – he’s chasing actresses and playing the fool. Be careful, Svetlana, there’s trash out there who would like to worm their way into our family. Be vigilant. And I suppose it’s Vasya who got you all dolled up?’ Like a chorus girl, he wanted to say but he didn’t.
He looked up again at Svetlana. She was so young, all freckles and auburn hair, looking so like his mother Keke, smiling at him shyly even in the midst of this most terrible crisis. She’d been led astray by the runt Vasily, that’s what had happened.
Calm again, he kissed her forehead, something he did so rarely, and then he did it again. Even though he was the great Stalin, he was still a man, just a father. Family, he thought, as he left the kitchen, having bid her goodnight. Family!
Day Six
I
Fabiana was in her hospital tent, reading a book of Foscolo’s poetry while she waited for Patient Number One to wake up. It was early morning, and she had worked on her patient much of the night. After administering a light anaesthetic, she had removed the bullet from his shoulder that now lay on a tray, crumpled like a metallic bug. She had cleansed the wound and sewn it up again. Then she had undressed the man and washed him with a sponge. Now she sat watching him. She had worked alone, lifting him and turning him, and she was weary. Her patient would probably sleep for a while more.
She shook herself awake. The operation on her patient made her realize that she was herself, quite herself, in the way she had always been before she married. Sitting in the tent, she thought about her life: she remembered her school, run by the Nevers nuns, near her home in Venice, a school for rich girls and aristocrats. She had got a scholarship there, and a teacher had changed her life, a nun who’d been born in Russia and taught her history and Russian. After that, she’d trained as a nurse at the Hospital of SS Giovanni e Paolo with its monumental façade and shabby, poorly lit wards. Everything before Russia took place in that small part of Venice and yet it had all led here, to this moment in this war.