really been up to? Consorting with decadent foreigners?’
When Katerina told her Svetlana was uncharacteristically solemn. ‘Take care. It’s always struck me as odd that we weren’t prosecuted over that fire.’
‘I don’t see the connection,’ Katerina said.
‘Nor do I, but I suspect one.’ Svetlana sipped her tea. ‘Perhaps I’ve been reading too many spy novels. Too many videos …. Why not give the American a miss?’
‘He’s a Soviet citizen. I’m not doing anything wrong. Merely showing him the real Moscow. He bothers me,’ Katerina added. ‘He’s not weak like the others. Just ….’
‘… misguided?’
‘Maybe.’
‘So you’re trying to prove to him what a great place the Soviet Union is? Are you angling for my job?’
‘No chance,’ Katerina said. ‘I’m stuck with the Brigade.’ She finished her tea, slid the oblong of hard sugar into her bag. ‘Come on, let’s get a breath of spring.’
But by eleven that night the air was chilled again. When Calder picked her up on Leningradsky he was wearing a top-coat and fur hat. Katerina’s face was framed in sable, a second-hand gift from Svetlana’s discarded pilot.
He drove to Bolshaya Ordinka Street, a discreet thoroughfare with a roll-call of churches, small houses and lime trees. She took him to a small pink and gold church. A crowd was packed around it and through the open doors they could smell Easter.
Spandarian’s phone rang at ten minutes past midnight.
The girl beneath him swore.
Rolling clear, he picked up the receiver and asked brusquely: ‘Well, are they there?’
‘Affirmative, Comrade Spandarian.’
‘Stay with them.’
Spandarian returned to the girl, the Estonian to the entrance to the church pausing on his way to lock the battered cream Volga.
Easter was mostly age. Burning candles smelling of the past and priests with grey beards and worshippers as fragile as autumn. But there was youth there, too, peering in from the godless outside and wondering.
Calder and Katerina eased their way through the militia-ringed throng to the back of the church where, with the rest of the congregation standing in a nave bereft of pews, they were entombed in candlelight, cocooned in the chanting of priests and choirs.
Time was the pendulum swings of censers, the diminishing of tallow-spitting candles lighting icons. The senses melted. The congregation was as one. Glowing, golden adoration filled this small House of God.
Feeling her warmth through her shabby coat, Calder wondered if Katerina, great-grandchild of a Revolution that had invented its own religion, acknowledged the Resurrection of Christ. He wondered if he did.
As the priests walked three times round the outside of the church, searching for the body of Christ in the Holy Sepulchre, Calder saw wistful young faces in the crowd.
Walking back to the car, Katerina said: ‘It’s strange but that ceremony was more Russian than anything the Party has invented,’ and Calder thought how ironic it would be if, innocently, he was becoming the instrument of her doubt.
Immediately she recanted. ‘To think that there are more than thirty million churchgoers in the Soviet Union. There aren’t as many accredited members of the Communist Party. Did you know that?’
He did. He also knew that the Party tolerated the Church because it was the ancient heartbeat of Mother Russia. A heartbeat, they hoped, that would soon falter and allow the young to worship at the altars of Marx and Lenin without Christian distractions. Unfortunately for the Party religion was said to be undergoing a revival.
One binge, one night of homage. What next? Sitting behind the wheel of the Zhiguli, Calder grinned into the night and didn’t think about Alfredo Bertoldi at all. He drove back to Leningradsky with a flourish.
After the second phone call Spandarian lay, hands behind his head, staring at the reflections of himself and the dozing girl on the mirror on the ceiling. He decided he would make his move tomorrow, Easter Sunday.
Resentfully, Katerina caught a bus to the Institute: it just wasn’t the Sunday morning to squander in that futile place. Budding plants had pushed through the wet soil overnight. River breezes fanned the late-sleeping streets. A tentative sun was finding the city’s fragile graces.
Still, she only had to spend a couple of hours there preparing and allocating periodicals for the Monday return-to-work in the absence of the Study Supervisor who was recovering from a prolonged encounter with a crate of Ukrainian pepper vodka.
And then? It was a day for the first visit to the river beaches at Serebriani Bor or an excursion into the forest to see if mushrooms had begun to sprout among the damp remains of winter or a trip to one of the villages outside Moscow. But for that you really needed a car.
Calder had a car.
The bus, proceeding at a measured speed along the broad reaches of Leningradsky, reached Byelorussia Square. Here Leningradsky became Gorky Street where Calder lived.
The bus stopped outside the green and white stucco hulk of Byelorussia Railway Station. A young man carrying a shiny fawn suitcase climbed aboard and sat in. the seat in front of Katerina. His brown hair was stylishly barbered and he wore a new blue suit cut with a discreet elegance that few Soviet tailors could manage. As the station served the west Katerina assumed he had arrived from somewhere like Smolensk or Minsk.
He turned and smiled. ‘This time two days ago I was in Paris.’ Paris! ‘But I’m glad to be back.’ That saved him, as far as she was concerned.
‘Oh, really?’ She stared out of the window. She was wearing her new lemon costume bought defitsitny in the Arbat and she knew she looked attractive enough; the young man was probably making a pass and she didn’t object to that – the time to worry was when they didn’t – but her mind was on Calder.
The bus headed down Gorky Street. Through the arcades to the right stood a huddle of old streets. Chekhov had lived there, and so had Chaliapin. She would like to show the house to Calder.
She tried to analyse her feelings about the big American. He was a challenge. She wanted to prove to him his wisdom in coming to Russia. Or his weakness. She wasn’t sure which. Until she had met him she had been sure of her values. Now they were presenting themselves for inspection. She wished he hadn’t eaten those redcurrants at Kreiber’s funeral.
‘And where are you going to so early on a Sunday morning?’ the young man asked.
‘To work.’
‘Really?’ He considered this. His features were Slavonic but warm, peasant or intellectual, whatever way you chose to regard him. They were also vaguely familiar. ‘And what sort of work is that?’
Her work was difficult to label: it invited elaboration. ‘A waitress,’ she
