The Wolves of Leninsky Prospekt Read online

  I looked at him. He was nervous. I wanted to phone David and say, he’s definitely not a spy. We’d never spoken about it, but the way David spoke about Kit’s job, I’d just thought he was putting speech marks around ‘secretary’.

  The car drove through a gateway, past a guard in a small security hut, and pulled up outside an apartment block.

  ‘This is us,’ said Kit.

  ‘Why is there a guard?’

  ‘A militiaman. For our security, of course,’ Kit said tersely.

  I should have waited with that question. I got out of the car. It was one tall, grey tower block of a group of three. Around us, other giant buildings were finished and some still being constructed from concrete slabs. Grey towers in their own empty spaces.

  ‘Not quite as impressed by this architecture?’ said Kit.

  ‘Um, no. What floor are we on?’

  ‘The eighteenth. Don’t worry, they have lifts.’

  Kit picked up the bags, said something to Pyotr, and led the way. The entrance hall felt airtight once the door had closed behind us and he called for the lift. It came straight away and we got in. I held my hand to my nose.

  ‘It always smells of cabbage, I’m afraid. You get used to it. But, to be honest, we struck lucky with the apartment. It belonged to an American journalist and he had a kitchen shipped over from Finland. Unfortunately, he sold the oven when he left. You’d be amazed at how many of the people here get by with little hot plates for years. And concrete floors instead of lino. But I warned you it was small.’

  ‘I remember.’ I was looking at the lights showing which floor we were on. The smell was more than cabbage, there was a vinegary element too. It was feeling real for the first time. A bit late, maybe. How long could we pretend we were married? Even friends fell out.

  The eighteenth floor. The doors slid open and Kit turned left along the corridor. Third door along.

  ‘Ready?’

  I nodded. He put one of the suitcases down, opened the door and gestured for me to go inside. I took a step forward. It was dark. He flicked a switch and a single bulb lit the hallway.

  ‘Two cupboards on your left,’ he said, ‘and then the bathroom and then the toilet. The kitchen is ahead.’ He put the suitcases down and closed the front door.

  I walked through and opened the door. The light streamed in and I finally breathed out. Ten-foot square, it had a fridge, an electric hot plate with two rings, and cupboards, as well as a small table by the window.

  ‘No oven, as I said, but you didn’t strike me as the cooking type. I tend to eat a big work lunch, so I’ve never needed to cook much in the evening. Natalya tends to leave me things I can heat up.’

  ‘God, Kit, I was beginning to think there were no windows. Why did you leave all the doors closed?’

  ‘That was Natalya. She always does that.’

  ‘Oh, she has a key?’

  ‘Of course. She’s the housekeeper. The other rooms are through here.’ He went back to the hall and opened another door. A large room, maybe fifteen-foot square, had been painted cream and I realised how brown the rest of the apartment was. There were books on shelves and a record player on a sideboard next to a rocket-shaped money box made of tin. A large poster on the back wall, over the dark green 1930s style sofa, showed a man and a dog in helmets, who both looked happily and confidently into space as a planet, an asteroid and Sputnik filled the darkness behind them. Two armchairs faced each other, and there was a small pine desk near the window.

  ‘This is lovely.’ I walked into the centre of the room. ‘And a balcony?’

  ‘Yes.’ He walked ahead and opened the door. ‘The height means we should be quite protected from the mosquitos. I hear they’re a bit of a problem in the summer. You can take the chair out here if you want to sit. It means that you can’t see anything.’ He crouched down, as if sitting. ‘But no one can see you either.’

  Behind our building was a large pond, and behind that, up a slope, a small wood, half birch and half fir. The view to the centre was obstructed by large apartment blocks and giant cranes. Some buildings were grey, some yellow; one looked as if they had run out of grey brick and continued with yellow. The building on the left was still being constructed. A group of other buildings to the west had words stretched out over their roofs.

  ‘What does that say?’

  ‘Workers of all countries unite.’ Kit smiled. ‘Comrade.’

  As we stood there, I heard the sound of glass breaking. I shivered.

  ‘They break a lot of glass,’ said Kit. ‘They make it as thin as possible to save money and then it breaks. When it does get fixed in,’ he pointed to the balcony door, ‘it’s very efficient. A double layer of glass keeps the heat in. And the sound.’

  Until then, I’d forgotten the warnings and now all I could think of was people listening, and all the things I could say wrong.

  ‘And the bedroom?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll show you that later. Right now, you choose a record to put on and I’ll make some tea.’

  I relaxed again. We could talk when the music was on. Kit had given me many instructions but I was feeling so tense and foreign that they were only coming back gradually. I flicked through his records and realised that, if I really knew him, I wouldn’t have been surprised that they were all classical. I vaguely recalled liking Pachelbel at one point, and put that on. Ciacona in F minor. I closed my eyes and was instantly in a dark, cool church. I was reminded of Harriet. She had played this for me. It was too much.

  I sat in one of the armchairs and pressed my fingers together in front of my mouth. Kit came in with two teacups.

  ‘Are you praying?’

  ‘Not yet. Is this a terrible mistake? You look so settled here. I don’t think you need me at all.’

  ‘I didn’t think you were just coming for me.’ He handed me a cup. ‘I thought you wanted to come.’

  ‘I did. I’m probably just a bit anxious.’

  ‘You’re overthinking things. As far as I’m concerned, we’re good friends doing each other a favour while we do what we want to do.’

  I drank my tea. ‘You’re right. So, what’s the deal with the bedroom?’

  ‘It’s up to you. I had this wall put up to make one.’ He pointed to the poster wall. ‘There’s no window, so it’s a little like a monk’s cell, and there’s the sofa. I thought it would make more sense for you to have the bedroom as I’m out more, but it would work either way.’

  ‘You can’t sleep in here,’ I said, and pointed at the windows. ‘The light will keep you awake.’

  ‘Ah, you can’t buy curtains in Russia,’ he said. ‘There’s a two-year waiting list, I heard. That’s why my suitcase is mostly full of curtains with blackout powers.’

  ‘You could make a fortune selling curtains.’

  ‘I couldn’t. No one can sell anything without being arrested for profiteering. You can get some excess crops from special markets, but that’s it.’

  ‘And I won’t need any more money?’

  ‘There’s nothing to buy, darling.’ Kit came over and knelt next to me. ‘If I found a nice man, I couldn’t bring him here, so you won’t be getting in the way. The people at work want to meet you, and that’s the limit of their interest. You get to spend some time here, you can go back to England whenever you like. Some wives just don’t get on with Russia, and it won’t surprise anyone. This will work for as long as it does, and then we’ll both do something else. OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘So, you take the bedroom, put your clothes in the drawers, have a nap or a bath or whatever, and we’ll go out for dinner.’

  I threw my arms around his neck and he hugged me back.

  ‘It’s all right to feel different here. It has a funny effect on people. I like it. Some don’t. It’s not the end of the world either way.’

  ‘OK. So, what is the guard really for?’ I whispered.

  ‘Oh, to stop Russians coming in and to keep track of us. Nothing terrible.’r />
  I let go of his neck. A bath and a rest and it would all be exciting again.

  I woke up in the dark with panic gripping me. I didn’t know if it was day or night, where I was or where I should be. I heard a noise from behind the wall and started to remember. It’s Kit. I’m in Moscow. It’s OK.

  I pulled the blanket from me and edged my legs out of the bed. They felt leaden, as if I’d run all the way here. I rubbed my face and stood up, then edged my way to the handle and opened the door. Now I could see the room, I remembered that I had thought the chest wasn’t going to fit. The bed was pushed along the wall which ran along the hallway outside the apartment, next to the drawers which held a mirror and a lamp. A further, taller set of drawers was hidden behind the door when it was opened. There was hardly room to walk to the bed. Maybe we could use the chest for a coffee table, I thought, and yawned.

  Kit was drinking tea in the kitchen.

  ‘There’s enough water for you,’ he said. He pointed at what looked like a silver trophy.

  ‘Thank you. What is it?’

  ‘It’s an electric samovar, but it’s basically a kettle.’ He got a cup, put a teabag in and turned the small tap on the front of the samovar to pour the water.

  ‘That’s so clever.’

  I joined him at the window, looking out into the dusk. The forest looked thick with night already. I remembered his little phrase from before, at home.

  ‘Between dog and wolf,’ I said. ‘Or wolf and dog.’

  ‘Let’s go out with the wolves.’

  I noticed that he had changed and looked fresh. I looked down at my creased skirt and blouse. Ma had persuaded me to ‘dress like a respectable grown up for a change’, in case there were any upgrades going. There weren’t.

  ‘Do I need to get dressed?’

  ‘No, you’re fine.’

  I drank my tea and he finished his.

  ‘Pyotr should be there,’ he said.

  ‘So, whenever we go out, the car takes us?’

  ‘We pay, of course. They like to know where we are, and it makes life easier. It’s all arranged through the embassy, and the foreigners’ service, UPDK, like Natalya.’

  Natalya, the housekeeper, whom I would meet the next day. The thought made me nervous. I expected her to see right through our pretence and tell everyone. She must have got to know Kit a bit, even if it was just by going through his things. Three days a week, she bought the shopping with the coupons foreigners got to spend in special foreigners’ shops, took the sheets to wash, and cooked small meals for him to reheat. With such a small fridge, it wasn’t possible to go just once a week, or maybe she didn’t want to carry too much.

  Kit put the cup down. ‘Let’s go.’

  The Metropol was a strange introduction to Moscow, full of talkative foreigners and silent Russians. I hadn’t believed Kit when he told me you could see the difference, but you could. The Russian men were all slightly the wrong shape for their rumpled jackets, or vice versa. The Russian women wore muted dresses: dark blue, brown and grey; and sometimes dark skirts with white blouses. They all looked like the same shapeless pattern, just with variations on sleeve length, and skirts just above the knee. When they lifted their faces, their make-up was bright and child-like, blue eyeshadow and red lipstick, red cheeks, like dolls.

  The clothes of foreigners were too bright and their voices too loud, their faces plain.

  The waiter escorted us to a small table for two and presented us with large menus. I hung my jacket on the back of the chair, then flicked through. ‘Four languages?’

  ‘There are a lot of foreigners here,’ said Kit. ‘I was here until I got allocated an apartment. Each floor has its own dezhurnaya, like a little old lady minder, and a small shop for the long-term residents. I met some interesting people.’

  I looked around. The tables weren’t so close that it would be easy to listen to us, but each of them had people talking to each other. ‘So, we’re OK here? To talk?’

  ‘Martha, you’re going to drive yourself mad if you keep thinking about things like that. That’s for me to worry about.’ He smiled. ‘What signal would you like me to give if we need to be careful?’

  ‘Just kick me,’ I said. ‘Don’t try to be subtle.’

  ‘Trial run?’ he said. He put his menu on the table and leaned back.

  ‘No, I’ll wait.’

  He was right. I was overthinking things again. Everything I’d ever heard about Russia, without even being aware of it, had been circling in my head. Parades of guns and rockets, the tales of Siberia and starvation and murder.

  ‘What do you usually have?’ I asked.

  ‘When the waiter comes back, I’ll ask him to point out what they actually have in. Whenever I choose from the menu, they don’t have it. I started to take it personally until I realised that the menu is more of a wish list. It can take an hour for them to take the order, and then half an hour later you’ll find they don’t have what you ordered. Quite maddening.’

  ‘Ah.’ I put my menu down too and began to look around the bright room. The stained glass ceiling was two storeys high, lit by enormous upside-down chandeliers mounted on slender pillars, an extravagance I’d assumed had been destroyed in the revolution. I gazed at the green and grey floor-to-ceiling stained glass window and wondered how it would look in the daytime. I’d assumed that old Russia had been erased and replaced with utilitarian concrete blocks, so I was struck, for the second time today, by the playful beauty of Moscow, enhanced by the sense that it was clearly fading like a great lady. The gold paint had peeled off the sweeping coving, and the fabric of the chairs had worn through. The chandeliers, created with rings of different sized bulbs, had some which needed replacing. But the height and the swell of the room was still there, right over the marble fountain in the centre, and the colour of the glass canopy was clear, even at night.

  The waiter returned. Kit spoke to him in Russian, and translated for me.

  ‘Beef fillet or sturgeon?’

  ‘The fish please.’

  ‘And wine or vodka?’

  I laughed. ‘Wine tonight, I think.’

  The waiter left.

  ‘I’m going to have to learn some Russian,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, they speak English here, but I asked him to speak Russian as I need the practice. I’ve already asked UPDK to sort a teacher out for you.’

  ‘So, whatever services you want, they’ll find something? It’s a great idea.’

  ‘It just matches people like us up with the right people.’ Kit raised his eyebrows.

  I leaned across to whisper. ‘I thought you said it was OK to talk here.’

  Kit whispered back. ‘It is, but you’re so jumpy and you don’t even have anything to feel guilty about. I thought if I said “spy on us”, you’d be weird.’

  I immediately looked at our neighbouring tables.

  ‘See?’ Kit rolled his eyes. ‘Listen, we might have to wait an hour for our food. Let’s talk about good old England and drink some wine, yeah?’

  I rolled my shoulders to relax them. ‘Sorry. I had no idea I was so uncool.’

  ‘It’s no surprise to me, darling.’

  I kicked his leg.

  ‘Don’t abuse the secret code.’

  Kit looked around. ‘There are so many people who were on the same aeroplane as us.’

  I looked. I recognised nobody. I needed to be much more observant.

  Dinner was OK. I’d had better, but I’d never spent so long eating. After the cabbage soup, there were cheeses, then the main course, the sturgeon having been cooked in mushrooms and sour cream, and then stewed fruit and coffee. All of it just slightly overcooked. The wine was good, though, and I’d relaxed a little too much. The food, wine, flight, fierce lighting and tension had all done their work.

  ‘You didn’t warn me to pace myself. It’s the size of a Christmas dinner.’

  ‘I suppose. There’s a lovely Chinese restaurant at the Peking Hotel. We can go there another time,
but they do Russian sizes too.’

  Kit had spotted a colleague dining with his wife earlier, and told me their names, which I promptly forgot. They came past our table as they were leaving and I tried to hide how drunk I was, resolving to keep my mouth shut.

  ‘Charlie,’ the man said as he shook my hand. He pressed a little too hard on my palm with his thumb, like a message. ‘This is my wife, Alison. We’ve been dying to meet you.’

  ‘And now I’m here,’ I said, smiling too much and killing the conversation dead.

  Charlie turned to speak quietly to Kit, and Alison drifted just out of earshot. She looked pale and tired, at the end of a long night. I forced myself to stop staring at her and looked around at the other tables. It was gone ten, and most of them had emptied. There was a lone woman dining at a nearby table, and she seemed to defy my nationality guessing. She wore a simple brown dress (Russian) but with a purple felt hat with ribbons on (British). She was older, maybe sixty, and reading a book as she ate with the free hand.

  I thought, if I went to the toilet, I might get a glimpse at the book, but the route would have been so obviously to do that, I might as well have just asked her.

  Charlie and Kit had finished talking. They both looked at the woman in the purple hat, and then Kit nodded. I turned back to her. She seemed to be smiling at her book.

  ‘So, we’ll see you next week, then,’ Charlie said to me. We shook hands again and they left. I slumped back in my chair.

  ‘I’m knackered,’ I said. ‘Where am I seeing them?’

  ‘We’re going to dinner at their apartment.’

  I yawned. ‘Do all the foreigners eat here?’

  ‘No, there are lot of restaurants.’

  ‘That was a coincidence then, bumping into them.’

  Kit put on a Russian accent and said, ‘In Russia, there is no such thing as a coincidence.’

  ‘Is that from the Moscow rules?’

  He looked at me strangely. ‘Where did you hear about those?’

  I thought. ‘From Russia with Love, maybe.’