The Cruellest Years | Paperbacks

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THE BLACK MARIA

Prologue: Moscow, 28 February 1992

Stepping out of the taxi into the weak February sun, I felt as though I’d been smacked in the face by the intensity of the cold.
‘So, this is where she lives,’ I said, as the battered Trabant sped away through the snow.
Caroline, wrapped in fake fur, pulled her hat down over her ears. She turned and smiled at me. ‘Poor Richard, your nose is red,’ she said, laughing. Around us, the snow fell, its flakes caught by the sun, glittering like gold dust.
It took some fifteen minutes before we were able to find the right entrance to the apartment block, by which time, my feet were becoming uncomfortably cold. Relieved to enter the warmth of the large lobby, we approached the concierge; a squared-jawed man sitting behind a desk, reading a newspaper, a damp cigarette clamped on his bottom lip. Caroline showed him the piece of paper that had the address written on it and spoke to him in what sounded, to my ignorant ears, like fluent Russian. The man eyed us suspiciously and responded in a dulled tone, the cigarette moving where the lips did not.
‘Fourth floor,’ said Caroline.
‘Spaseeba,’ I said enthusiastically, feeling slightly foolish by his lack of response.
In the lift, Caroline uncoiled her scarf. ‘Are you ready for this?’ she asked, as she removed her hat and shook her mane of bleached hair.
‘No, it’s going to be grim.’
‘Oh come on, Richard, don’t start that again. We’re here now and there’s nothing to worry about.’
‘But what happens if I find out something I don’t want to know?’
She sighed; we’d had this conversation before. ‘Like what exactly?’
‘I don’t know – something about my father.’
‘What, like he was a KGB agent? Look, all we’re going to find is some old lady wanting to reminisce about her life and put in place the missing pieces of her jigsaw. It’ll be fine.’
‘Thanks for coming, Caroline.’
‘Don’t be silly, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’ She leant forward and planted a kiss on my lips leaving behind the lingering taste of her lipstick. The lift doors opened and moments later, we were outside the apartment door. ‘Go on then, knock,’ whispered Caroline.
I held my breath – I was about to meet my only living relative and it was too late to turn around. My Russian ancestry was not something to which I’d ever given any thought. I’d been born thirty years ago in Russia but I was English, brought up in London and, as far as I was concerned, that was that. But now, I was about to come face to face with the Russian grandmother I had never known. Would she see her son in me? Would I see myself in her? Would she approve of me? Did it matter? No, not on the face of it – she hadn’t been part of my life. But having no parents now, I felt as if approval was the one thing I craved in my life.
The apartment door opened and there, in front of us, was a plump middle-aged woman with butcher-like arms. Caroline opened her mouth to speak but the woman, clearly expecting us, beckoned us in. She pointed to a coat-rack and, three short steps later, we found ourselves in the living room. Sitting in a red leather armchair, flanked by a large yucca plant, was my grandmother.
‘Come in, come in,’ she said in a heavy Russian accent, holding out her hand.
‘Hello…’ I hesitated, not sure how to address her. Her first name, I knew, was Maria, but that seemed too familiar and grandmother didn’t seem right somehow.
‘Maria, call me Maria. Please, sit down, sit down.’ I liked the way she sensed my dilemma and felt slightly more at ease. She was small and frail, as one might expect an 87-year-old woman to be, but her eyes were bright, her smile broad and her skin surprisingly smooth. The room, stiflingly hot and claustrophobic, smelt of cleaning polish. A large number of paintings adorned the walls, shelves stacked with paperbacks. Caroline and I sat down together on the settee and smiled inanely, wondering what to say.
Maria had a brief conversation with the woman who showed us in, who then vanished into another room. ‘My housekeeper Irina,’ said Maria by way of explanation. ‘She is half my age but oh, how she complains. Like an old hag. Not like me! But she will make us tea.’
Caroline and I laughed, and I felt an immediate warmth for this spirited old woman.
‘So, you found me all right, yes?’
She asked after our hotel, our flight, how we liked Moscow and how we were coping with the cold. She spoke quickly, finishing her sentences with a slight chortle. She seemed nervous, but then, so was I. She was dressed differently from what I’d seen of other old Russian women, wearing elegant clothes of vigorous colours and sporting a kingfisher brooch. She’d applied a hint of make-up and one could see the beauty of the woman beneath the years. I wondered how much the make-up and the elegant clothes were for our benefit.
After a while, she stopped talking, perhaps conscious of how much small talk she’d made in so little time. She stared at me with a slight inquisitiveness, taking in the image of her grandson, the lost piece of her jigsaw. I tried to hold her gaze, tried to smile, and found myself feeling awkward under her scrutiny and increasingly aware of how hot it was in her apartment.
‘We’ve brought you some souvenirs from England,’ I said, fishing around in my satchel. I passed her a heavy plastic bag full of things I’d bought in the supermarket – English tea, English mustard, golden syrup, chutney, marmalade, and other delicacies of the English palate. She looked at each one in turn, trying to read the labels and making appropriate noises of approval. Placing all the tins, jars and packets on the occasional table in front of her, she smiled, and tilting her head to one side, thanked Caroline and me for our generosity. That, I concluded with quiet satisfaction, was money well spent.
‘Richard, I must tell you now, your father – he die last year.’
‘Oh.’ I thought of my stepfather, dead at fifty, but of course, she meant the Russian father I never knew.
‘Yes, last year. A cancer. He was not old.’
‘Oh. I see.’ I felt my cheeks redden as I desperately searched for something appropriate to say. Who, I wondered, was meant to be consoling whom? Should I appear upset? I never knew the man, and news of his death registered nothing but an awkward awareness that perhaps I should be consoling my own grandmother on the death of her son. I glanced up at Caroline, hoping for a lifeline, some form of intervention.
‘He was not a good man.’
Maria’s stark verdict was the lifeline I was looking for and I smiled in relief. But then, realising that my grinning face was perhaps not the most fitting response, I tried to look grave and concerned. But my efforts were obvious and Caroline giggled.
‘I – I’m sorry,’ she blurted.
Maria snorted. ‘Poor boy, he doesn’t know how to think. But I can tell you because I can see you are not like your father.’ Well, that was something, I thought. ‘You have a kind face, a kind heart. This I know. Your father, he was not kind. He could not travel across the city to come see me, but you – you come from England, and with all these lovely things to eat.’
‘I wanted to… to….’ What had I wanted, what had made me come, almost on a whim? Was it to find a direction in my life? God, I needed one. I was thirty and still had no grounding. I’d spent years floating from place to place, from one job to another, and all my relationships seemed to have lasted less time than the lifecycle of a dragonfly. Caroline, I hoped, was different. I wanted stability; I needed a foundation. Is this why I’d come to Russia with Caroline, to find something that was missing from my life? Part of it, I think, was to find my father. Well, that was one avenue closed already but it hardly seemed to matter. What would I have said to him, what was I hoping to find? Somehow, with this old lady, it was different; here was a buffer zone, an extra generation between us.
‘Your father, he thinks he is Casanova, he thinks he can make things into gold,’ said Maria, slipping into the present tense. ‘Always looking ahead, never looking back. Some people might say that is a good thing, but each time he forgets his mistakes. He tries too hard, always too hard.’ I found her words strangely familiar, perhaps that was my problem – never assessing, never learning, always too eager to jump in feet first. There was a silence and I followed Maria’s gaze to a photograph on the sideboard. It was a coloured portrait of my father, wearing collar and tie in an official head-and-shoulders shot, with his long thin nose, his dark wavy hair carefully brushed and a slightly self-conscious smile. He was my father, all right – a neater version of myself.
Bursting in with a tray of tea and biscuits, Irina broke the uneasy silence. ‘Here we are,’ declared Maria. ‘Put it on the table here,’ she instructed Irina in English, gently pushing my gifts to one side of the table. Irina glared at her and said something in Russian, which, by its tone, sounded like, Where else would you have me put it? before disappearing again.
‘Karen, you pour,’ said Maria.
Caroline looked awkward but obliged.
‘Richard, please, take a look at my photographs and the pictures.’ I smiled and rose, self-consciously, to my feet. ‘Don’t be shy,’ she said with a hint of a laugh.
On the sideboard, next to the portrait of my father, was a photograph of a soldier, tall with jet black hair, his arms folded, grinning at the camera. Framed pictures of Maria caught her at various stages of her life; her eyes always sparkling, her pose natural. Sometimes, by herself, sometimes with children and family. Sitting among the photos was a small golden bust of Lenin, with that permanent scowl etched on his face, and a curious little wooden bear, its paws clawing the air; quite fierce looking. The paintings on the walls were also framed – mostly small landscapes and churches. At the far end of the room, opposite the window, was a large painting, a proper work of art and, to my untrained eye, an original. It was a country scene, a small gathering of peasants crowding around a wooden table. The men all looked strong, their sleeves rolled up, the sweat glistening on their collective brow. The women poured and handed round pitchers of drink, their faces smiling, their cheeks full of country air. It was an impressive piece of work but let down by its ham-fisted propagandist message, its overt triumphalism. I was about to turn away when my attention was caught by the woman dominating the far right of the painting; holding a jug, wearing blue overalls, her hair tied back – I recognised the sparkling eyes.
Caroline handed Maria her cup of tea. ‘Thank you, Karen; you make a good Russian wife. So, Richard, you like the big painting?’
‘Yes,’ I said, noticing the flush in Caroline’s cheeks. ‘I was just admiring it. It’s good, very good.’
Her face froze for a few seconds and I feared I’d said the wrong thing. ‘Yes,’ she said slowly, ‘those were the very words my Petrov used.’
‘Petrov?’
‘Sit down, Richard, sit down.’ I liked the way she pronounced Richard, each syllable stretched so that it sounded like Reech-hard with a double ‘h’ in the middle. ‘Tell me now, you are an English boy, yes?’
‘Well, technically, I am partly Russian,’ I ventured nervously.
‘And what do you know of your Russian history?’
‘I… er, well, not that much really.’
‘I want to tell you a story, my story, and then you will know your Russian history.’ She paused and watched for my expression. Perhaps, I looked doubtful, for she seemed intent on justifying her claim, ‘Yes, you will know the history of Soviet Russia, for I have lived it. I was born before the Revolution and now it has gone – but I, I am still here. I think maybe I am the last. Not many can survive my life and live to my age. My story will tell you all you need to know about the Soviet Union. And then, you will know more about yourself. You understand?’
‘Yes, I think I do.’
Irina re-appeared with her coat on. The two women exchanged a few harsh-sounding words and then, without acknowledging us, Irina picked up a set of keys from the sideboard and left abruptly, slamming the front door behind her.
‘What age are you, Richard?’
‘Thirty.’
She sipped her tea. ‘Thirty, hmm. I was here in Moscow when I was your age in nineteen thirty-five. I was married, for my second time. I am suppose to envy your age, to be so young, to have one’s life before one. But I do not. My heart beats with fear when I think of myself as a young woman in those days. It was the year I fell in love. That should make me happy, no? But love in those days brought danger. Do you want me to tell you?’
Caroline and I exchanged glances. We knew we were in for a long haul but, at that moment, despite the overbearing warmth of the room, I knew there was nowhere else I could be. This was a story that preceded my own existence, a tale that might show the twists and turns that would, ultimately, lead to my own beginning. How could I not listen, how could I not know?
‘You must understand,’ said Maria, ‘never before have I told my story. You are my grandson but you know nothing of me or my country. It is not your fault, of course. But for you, Richard, and Karen, I will tell this story, and then you will know.’
‘OK, that sounds…’
‘Many times, I have remembered this story. Some facts, I do not know. But I imagine them so well, and so many times, they are as good as true to me. My story begins with a secret. But this is too terrible to tell. I know I will be damned when soon my time comes. This is the part I have not rehearsed – you must understand, it is too difficult for me. Perhaps, I tell you – another day, I do not know. I came to Moscow, with this secret inside of me. If anyone knows, I will be arrested and sent away to the prison camps, I cannot say a word. No one knows. In nineteen-thirty, I come to Moscow and meet a man, Petrov. We marry but I was not in love. No, that came later when I met Dmitry – such a handsome man. I was friends with his sister, Anna. I remember so well, I was with Anna in my apartment and she was telling me about her brother. She makes me a cup of tea, like this, and I remember her words exactly. She says to me – “I suppose he is quite good-looking. But as his sister, it is not something I think about”…’