Wood smoke poured down upon them as Letsukov hammered on the door.
“That you, Alexei?” a voice shouted from inside.
“It’s me, Volodya,” Letsukov said. The door was unlocked and Carole entered a long low room, its rafters and wall beams painted in gold-trimmed reds and blues, its floor of cracked flagstones, with walls a dull clay. Three lamps hung on chains above a long table. Six or seven men and women were seated round an equal number of vodka bottles. She saw beards, flushed faces, all welcoming.
The man at the door, Volodya, slammed it closed and began to unbutton Carole’s coat. “Your own fingers won’t do this,” he said, “not until you’ve warmed up.” He peeled the coat off her and propelled her toward the stove. “This is Kitty,” he said, tapping a dark-haired girl on the head, “and that’s Lavrenty, Clara, Peter, Lev, Maria and Simochka.”
Kitty got up and crossed to the stove carrying a glass of vodka. “What a walk you’ve had,” she said, handing Carole the glass. “But dinner won’t be long. Alexei,” she shouted over her shoulder, “if you prefer plum brandy there’s some in the cupboard.”
“Does he prefer plum brandy?” Carole asked.
“Well, you know Alexei…” She laughed. But of course Carole didn’t.
No special attention beyond the initial politeness was paid to Carole as they all sat round the table. Kitty and Volodya had put out some slices of garlic sausage and small bowls of onion rings and pickled gherkins. Dinner it seemed was forgotten in an exchange of argument, laughter, more discussion and jokes, some in Western terms amazingly crude and personal.
She was quickly aware that totally Russian as they were, none of them had a high regard for Soviet power.
“Are we then to live with it forever, Alexei?” Kitty asked vehemently.
“We’ll have to live with it. At least until we learn how to overthrow it,” Letsukov said.
Carole, sitting next to him, turned and stared at him in astonishment. He reached under the table and squeezed her hand.
“Would Americans be so supine?” Lev asked Carole, his black beard jerking toward her.
She shrugged, slightly intimidated. “How can I answer that?” she said. “If such things were imposed upon them today they’d strike, demonstrate. At least I hope they would. But all this began in Russia yesterday, when perhaps the world seemed more full of hope.”
Simochka, big as many men, clapped her on the shoulder and poured her more vodka.
“But Alexei says we must wait,” Lev persisted. “Why?”
“Because Alexei has seen the results of local efforts, of attempts to demonstrate in one city only. He’s the only one of us, furthermore, who has actually met Joseph Densky.”
“Who is Joseph Densky?” Carole asked Simochka next to her. But Letsukov touched her arm.
“Densky is a leader. The leader of the Free Trade Union Movement,” Letsukov said. “That is what first brought us together. We are all members.”
“And Joseph Densky?”
“He’s in prison in Leningrad. Or perhaps now in a camp somewhere.”
“An hour ago,” she said, “I didn’t know you belonged to an underground organization.”
He put his arm around her and pulled her toward him to roars of approval from Lev and Volodya, “It’s not too late to learn,” he said.
After they had eaten, Letsukov announced that it was time to work. Leaving dishes on the table, they rose. Volodya had gone to the corner of the room and, removing the straw mat, he pulled up a trap door. One by one they descended the narrow stairway.
Carole clambered down into the cellar, her hand on the shoulder of Letsukov, a step or two below her. At the bottom of the stairs she stopped. Before her was a large, earth-walled room. Three printing presses occupied most of the floor space. Rolls of newsprint were stacked in rough wooden shelving.
“It’s here that Iskra is produced,” Simochka said proudly. “Your Alexei is our new editor — and sometimes printer’s devil, too, it has to be admitted.”
Carole turned to Letsukov. “It’s you? Iskra is you?”
“And many others, darling,” he said, using the English word. “Thousands now who risk everything to distribute it throughout the Soviet Union.”
She held him tight. “I want to help,” she said.
“You will,” he smiled. “You can start by loading this machine.”
They worked among the clattering machines until well past midnight. And when the roughly printed single-sheet newspapers were stacked all round the walls, they climbed the stairs again and the vodka bottles were brought out.
Much later they lay on a thick straw mattress on top of the brick stove. They were both wildly drunk, exhausted after a night of work, drinking and singing.
That night a blizzard blew that slashed snow across the windows and tore at the tiled roof. The wind, howling like wolves, blasted snow through cracks in the doorframe and billowed smoke from the stove into the moonlit room.
They made love too drunk to be inhibited by the presence of the other pairs in the hut, laughing sometimes at the shouted encouragements from Lev and Simochka or at the rustling straw and the groans from other corners of the room.
In the morning they awoke, friends and lovers. Maria, in a blue track suit, was frying bacon. Plates rattled at the table as Simochka threw them carelessly down. Volodya, stripped to the waist, was washing in a bucket of boiled snow. Lev still lay in bed, smoking and jocularly complaining about being disturbed all night by the noise from above the stove.
Kitty came in carrying wood as Carole and Letsukov descended from their sleeping place over the stove. She dropped the logs in a corner and turned back to Carole. “Good,” she said, having completed her examination of Carole’s face. “Where I come from they’d say you’re glowing red as a well-poked stove.”
Carole found she could laugh with the others. She slipped her arm round Letsukov’s waist. “Good,” she mimicked Kitty. “And why not? I’ve every reason to be.”
It was a journey back heavily tinged with sadness. The wind had dropped very little and the snow, driving in their faces, made talking difficult. It had been already decided that they should part at the crossroad so that she could take the first bus into Podolsk, and he would wait the two hours for the next one. They had thought to have a little while together before the bus came. But the strength of the wind and their own misery had slowed their pace and when they arrived at the main road, the bus was already approaching.
They stood together struggling to ignore the lights of the bus piercing the driving snow.
“That word, ‘good-bye’” she said haltingly, “how can I say it to you now, Alex? How can I say it when I’m more in love than I ever imagined possible?”
She saw the pain tighten the muscles around his mouth.
On the road behind them the bus slithered to a halt.
“You remember in Gorky Park, Carole? You remember we agreed to take this risk? I never guessed…”
She was shaking from cold and misery. The bus driver’s horn blasted through the snow.
He ran his fingers across her lips. “Remember Russia,” he said.
“I’ll remember you,” her voice was a whisper. “All my life.” She turned away and stumbled toward the bus.
The last she saw of him was through the rear window as he stood at the empty crossroad, gradually fading from sight like a footprint in the still falling snow.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
A glance at the rail map of the Soviet Union makes the situation clear. Moscow is the point through which almost all east-west rail lines pass. It is also for most north-south movements the only connecting point. The transport of nearly 300,000 penals from the north and northeast would inevitably bring the majority to Moscow.