man in the Great Patriotic War when twenty million souls had perished. ‘The point is that your goals must be achieved with subtlety. Nothing wrong with feminine wiles, is there?’
Katerina said: ‘Do you really believe that we are better off than we were?’
‘You must know that. Your life-style for instance. Clothes, entertainment, your relations with young men …. Why in my day we would have been shot for less.’
‘Then why,’ Katerina demanded, ‘can’t we speak our minds in public if we have such liberty? Why do the police have to be called in?’ She could still smell onions on her fingers.
‘I am merely advising you, nothing more. Just as an elder of your family might warn you.’ She smiled wistfully. ‘A maiden aunt?’ She touched Katerina’s arm. ‘I do hope you’ll take my advice, my dear.’ Apparently Svetlana was beyond redemption. ‘If not ….’
She didn’t finish the sentence. They all smelled smoke at the same time.
The fire was behind the stove. A tongue of flame snaked out from behind it, licked the stripped pine wall, fell back and returned to gain a hold. Resin crackled and spat.
The ‘maiden aunt’ took command. ‘Quick, the sand buckets.’
But the buckets were empty.
The flames leaped onto another wall. Smoke rolled towards the platform.
‘You,’ to Katerina, ‘call the fire brigade. You,’ to Svetlana, ‘get water from the rest-rooms.’ Grabbing a twig broom she jumped from the platform and advanced on the flames.
Katerina ran into the street. There, thank God, was a telephone kiosk. But when she reached it she discovered it had been vandalised. She ran around an apartment block, found another, dialled 01, fire emergency.
By the time she got back to the hall it was a bonfire. A crowd had collected and Svetlana and the ‘maiden aunt’ stood among them, snow melting at their feet. Sparks and ash spiralled into the grey sky. As the roof caved in the crowd sighed.
‘Happy Women’s Day,’ Svetlana said to Katerina.
‘So, what did you make of the maiden aunt?’ Katerina asked as they made their way to Vernadskogo metro station.
They had answered questions from a fresh detachment of militia, signed statements and finally been allowed to leave the smouldering wreckage.
Svetlana said: ‘She showed us the yellow card.’ Her pilot was a soccer fanatic, Moscow Torpedo. ‘Beware the red card next time. That means we’ll be sent off,’ she explained in case Katerina didn’t share her new wisdom. ‘Be warned, Kata.’
‘But why wasn’t she tougher with us? Why aren’t we locked up? After all we’ll be held responsible for burning the place down.’
Svetlana, hair escaping from her red and white woollen hat, glanced at her wristwatch and lengthened her stride, long thighs pushing at the wolfskin; she was hours late for a date with the pilot. ‘Odd, isn’t it? Let’s count our blessings.’
They passed a snow-patched playground in front of a new pink apartment block. Children were playing at war, Soviets against Germans. The Soviets were winning again.
‘What do you think will happen now?’ Katerina asked.
‘God knows. But take care, pussycat, take to your lair for a while.’
‘I can’t, it would deny everything the Movement stands for.’
‘Then get ready to spread the good word in a labour camp. Or outside the Soviet Union.’
Katerina thrust her hands into the pockets of her old grey coat, even shabbier than usual beside the wolfskin. ‘You forget things have changed since Tatyana Mamonova and the other two were expelled. There are letters about the plight of women every day in the newspapers.’
‘Whining letters, vetted letters. We’re inciting revolution. The Russians have had one of those and they don’t want another. If the Kremlin thinks we really pose a threat we’ll be hustled into exile and there won’t be a whisper about it in the media.’
‘But there would be in the West.’
‘So? Far less harmful than a forest-fire of protest in the Soviet Union.’
Katerina knew she was right and the knowledge saddened her. She was a patriot, didn’t they understand that? Of course they did, the final deterrent. The Motherland, don’t betray her. That’s why we put up with so much: it was something foreigners, confusing Country and Party, would never understand.
A man passed carrying a bunch of tulips, holding them like a baby to protect them from the breeze.
‘But,’ Katerina protested, ‘we’re doing this for Russia, for her women ….’
She remembered the old joke. Four men sitting in a bar nipping vodka. ‘Where are your women?’ asks a Western journalist. ‘The working classes aren’t allowed in here,’ replies one of the tipplers.
Things were changing, it was true. Five hundred of the toughest job categories had been designated Men Only and unmarried mothers were getting more money per child. But equality? It was light years away.
As they approached the metro station Katerina said anxiously to her friend: ‘But surely you aren’t thinking of quitting?’ It was unthinkable.
‘Why not? We won’t get anywhere.’
‘Not you!’
Svetlana turned and faced Katerina. ‘Well, not until they do something about those goloshes.’
Laughing, they slid five-kopek pieces into the slot in the turnstile and ran down the warm throat of the metro station.
Katerina had worked at the weekend updating the files on the defectors so she had a free day. In view of events that morning she thought it might be her last free day for a long time.
On the way home she broke her journey to pick up some Caspian caviar that Lev Koslov, her boss, had promised to supply for the party that evening.
Koslov was a past master at obtaining defitsitny goods. The only drawback was that he expected rewards – a pinch here, a fumble there. So far she had eluded his inquisitive fingers but a two-kilo tin of glistening black pearls, as rare these days as swallows in winter, that would take some evasion. At least he wouldn’t be able to come to the party: today being what it was he would have to dance attendance on his wife.
When she entered the tiny office she shared with Sonya Ivanovna the first thing she noticed on her desk was a vase of mimosa, a cloud of powdery yellow blossom that smelled of almonds. Koslov making his play! Under the vase was an envelope.
Katerina slit it with a paper-knife. The note inside said: ‘Enjoy your day.’ It was signed Robert Calder.
Katerina leaned back in her chair and stared at an avuncular Lenin on the wall. Since she had seen Calder at Kreiber’s funeral she had wondered about him.
Like the rest of her flock at
