He was late for his lesson that day. There was a raid on black market traders, and there were roadblocks on all the surrounding roads manned by army trainees.
When Klim got to the Red Army Club, he saw a crowd of curious onlookers gathered around an ambulance. As he watched, two medical orderlies took a body covered with a sheet on board and pulled the doors shut.
“You just missed a domestic scene that turned nasty,” one of the driving students told Klim. “We were all in the garage, and all of a sudden, Nina’s husband came in, demanding to talk to her.”
“She just went for him with a crank handle,” piped up Andrei, who shared a desk with Nina in class. “Then we heard yelling.”
Klim looked toward the ambulance. “Did he kill her?”
“No. It was her who knocked him over the head. We come running, and there he was lying there all covered in blood with the crank handle next to him. Reckon he’s lucky to be alive.”
“And where’s Nina?”
“She ran off. She wasn’t going to hang around to get arrested.”
A policeman appeared on the porch, leading an enormous Alsatian.
“Go find it, Dinah. Go find it!” he urged, thrusting Nina’s white shawl under the dog’s nose.
The Alsatian made a sudden rush at Klim, who jumped back.
“What are you doing, Dinah?” the policeman cried, dragging the dog away. “It’s a woman we’re after!”
Klim walked away. So, Reich had tracked down Nina, and now the entire Moscow criminal investigation department was on her trail.
“Can I come in for a minute?” Zharkov put his head around the door of Alov’s office.
Alov sighed. He knew what was coming next. Zharkov would start tempting him with all sorts of foreign rubbish, and he would not be able to resist. He always bought something for Dunya.
Zharkov closed the door behind him.
“I’ve just come from the personnel department,” he said. “You know what I saw on the desk? Your work chart. And next to your name was a note: ‘From nobility.’”
Alov felt a familiar spasm in his lungs. “But many of our top brass are from the nobility… and that means—”
“Don’t argue with me and listen!” Zharkov cut him short. “Haven’t you read the latest directive? All the departmental bosses have been told to cut staff and get rid of idlers. We’re all on an economy drive right now, so you’d do well to weed out some of your coworkers. If not, they’ll give you hell for setting up a ‘nest of gentlefolk.’”
Alov was racked by an uncontrollable fit of coughing. Zharkov rummaged in the pockets of his voluminous trousers and brought out a small candy tin. “Here. Have a mint drop.”
Alov shook his head. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine….”
He folded his arms on the desk and put his head down on them. He felt a little better in that position.
Zharkov clapped him on the back sympathetically. “This purge has got me running scared too, you know. I asked Drachenblut to send me off to Europe while it’s going on, but he won’t hear of it. ‘The OGPU is founded on the principle of equality,’ he told me. ‘The purge has the potential to affect every one of us.’”
Alov, his head still hidden, smiled bitterly. There was no equality to speak of in the OGPU. Some stayed in their jobs, even though they were from the nobility while others lost their livelihoods for the same reason. Some worked like dogs while others were sent off to live abroad with full board and lodging and a salary of two hundred and fifty dollars a month. No endless meetings for them or “voluntary donations” to the aviation society, and no purges either.
“How about we have a drink in the canteen?” suggested Zharkov. “My treat.”
Alov nodded. He was not fool enough to refuse such a generous offer. The price of vodka had just gone up by 60 kopecks.
On his return from the canteen, Alov sat for some time at his desk, trying to gather his thoughts.
The purge was to take place on November 12th, and he had very little time left. Everyone would ask him about his achievements. What could he tell them?
Zharkov was right. Alov’s aristocratic roots might turn out very badly for him. He was bound to be accused of class-based cronyism and of trying to protect “socially similar elements.”
But which employees could he get rid of? All the staff members in his department were vital. Alov called Diana Mikhailovna into his office and asked her what members of staff she thought he should dismiss. She became agitated, talking about Anya the translator who had a young child and about Nikolai Petrovich who had bad knees.
“If he loses his job, it will be the end of him,” she fretted.
At that point, the telephone rang. “Off you go now,” said Alov, waving Diana Mikhailovna out of the room, but she refused to budge.
“Comrade Alov,” she said in a pitiful voice, “you’re not going to dismiss me, are you? I have children too.”
“If it was up to me, I wouldn’t get rid of anyone,” he told her. “You’re all too valuable to the organization for that.”
Diana Mikhailovna beamed. “Thank you!” she said and ran from the room.
Alov picked up the receiver. “Hello!”
It was Galina.
“I need to tell you something,” she said. “I’m not working for Klim Rogov anymore.”
“Did he throw you out?”
“No. It’s me. I don’t want to work for him.”
Alov was dumbstruck for a moment, amazed at Galina’s nerve.
“Listen, Pidge, you and I have got a job to do. What does it matter what you want or don’t want? You have your orders, and you follow them.”
But Galina did not seem to be listening. “If anything were to happen to me, would you look after Tata?”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“Why are you so jumpy? You know yourself anything could happen. I could be run over by a cab on the street tomorrow. I just want to know if you’d look after my child.”
“But Tata’s at boarding school now!”
“She didn’t like it there, and she came back.”
“You know as well as I do that I haven’t got space to put Tata up in my home.”
“Then she’ll have to go to an orphanage,” said Galina thoughtfully. “Just as I thought.”
“You’re fired!” Alov found himself blurting out to his own surprise. He slammed down the mouthpiece, not wishing to hear or say another word.
He was seething with rage. The cheek of it! A fine pair of princesses he had on his hands! One wouldn’t do her job, and the other thought she was too good for boarding school.
He called Diana Mikhailovna again.
“I’ve given the order for Comrade Dorina to be dismissed from her duties,” he told Diana Mikhailovna as she entered his office. “Take care of it for me, please, and ring the duty officers to let them know Dorina’s pass is no longer valid.”
Diana Mikhailovna gazed at Alov in wonder. She knew that Galina had once been his lover.
“So, you’re sacrificing her for our sake?”
Alov frowned. “I’m not sacrificing anybody. Off you go! Why are you breathing down my neck? Actually, wait a minute…. You don’t have a cigarette, do you?”
Diana Mikhailovna brought him a couple of her hand-rolled cigarettes, which she made herself using “medicinal” herbs.
Lighting one up, Alov immediately choked on the sweet, unfamiliar smoke.
He really had been a swine to dismiss Galina like that. But then again, he reasoned, she would have lost her job anyway on the 12th of November not only because of her gentry background and her nonpayment of trade union subscription fees but also because she was completely unfit for the job.