‘I am tired. But Ustin Bodian is dying.’
‘Hell. What of?’
‘Pneumonia.’
Tania did not know Bodian personally, but she had interviewed him, before he got into trouble. As well as being extraordinarily talented, he was a warm and kind-hearted man. A Soviet artist admired all over the world, he had lived a life of great privilege, but he was still able to get publicly angry about injustice done to people less fortunate than himself – which was why they had sent him to Siberia.
Vasili said: ‘Are they still making him work?’
Tania shook her head. ‘He can’t. But they won’t send him to hospital. He just lies on his bunk all day, getting worse.’
‘Did you see him?’
‘Hell, no. Asking about him was dangerous enough. If I’d gone to the prison camp they would have kept me there.’
Vasili handed her tea and sugar. ‘Is he getting any medical treatment at all?’
‘No.’
‘Did you get any idea of how long he might have to live?’
Tania shook her head. ‘You now know everything I know.’
‘We have to spread this news.’
Tania agreed. ‘The only way to save his life is to publicize his illness and hope that the government will have the grace to be embarrassed.’
‘Shall we put out a special edition?’
‘Yes,’ said Tania. ‘Today.’
Vasili and Tania together produced an illegal news-sheet called Dissidence. They reported on censorship, demonstrations, trials and political prisoners. In his office at Radio Moscow Vasili had his own stencil duplicator, normally used for making multiple copies of scripts. Secretly he printed fifty copies of each issue of Dissidence. Most of the people who received one made more copies on their own typewriters, or even by hand, and circulation mushroomed. This self-publishing system was called samizdat in Russian and was widespread: whole novels had been distributed the same way.
‘I’ll write it.’ Tania went to the cupboard and pulled out a large cardboard box full of dry cat food. Pushing her hands into the pellets, she drew out a typewriter in a cover. This was the one they used for Dissidence.
Typing was as unique as handwriting. Every machine had its own characteristics. The letters were never perfectly aligned: some were a little raised, some off centre. Individual letters became worn or damaged in distinctive ways. In consequence, police experts could match a typewriter to its product. If Dissidence had been typed on the same machine as Vasili’s scripts, someone might have noticed. So Vasili had stolen an old machine from the scheduling department, brought it home, and buried it in the cat’s food to hide it from casual observation. A determined search would find it, but if there should be a determined search Vasili would be finished anyway.
Also in the box were sheets of the special waxed paper used in the duplicating machine. The typewriter had no ribbon: instead, its letters pierced the paper, and the duplicator worked by forcing ink through the letter-shaped holes.
Tania wrote a report on Bodian, saying that General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev would be personally responsible if one of the USSR’s greatest tenors died in a prison camp. She recapitulated the main points of Bodian’s trial for anti-Soviet activity, including his impassioned defence of artistic freedom. To divert suspicion away from herself, she misleadingly credited the information about Bodian’s illness to an imaginary opera lover in the KGB.
When she had done, she handed two sheets of stencil paper to Vasili. ‘I’ve made it concise,’ she said.
‘Concision is the sister of talent. Chekhov said that.’ He read the report slowly, then nodded approval. ‘I’ll go in to Radio Moscow now and make copies,’ he said. ‘Then we should take them to Mayakovsky Square.’
Tania was not surprised, but she was uneasy. ‘Is it safe?’
‘Of course not. It’s a cultural event that isn’t organized by the government. Which is why it suits our purpose.’
Earlier in the year, young Muscovites had started to gather informally around the statue of Bolshevik poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. Some would read poems aloud, attracting more people. A permanent rolling poetry festival had come into being, and some of the works declaimed from the monument were obliquely critical of the government.
Such a phenomenon would have lasted ten minutes under Stalin, but Khrushchev was a reformer. His programme included a limited degree of cultural tolerance, and so far no action had been taken against the poetry readings. But liberalization proceeded by two steps forward and one back. Tania’s brother said it depended on whether Khrushchev was doing well, and felt strong politically, or was suffering setbacks, and feared a coup by his conservative enemies within the Kremlin. Whatever the reason, there was no predicting what the authorities would do.
Tania was too tired to think about this, and she guessed that any alternative location would be as dangerous. ‘While you’re at the radio station, I’m going to sleep.’
She went into the bedroom. The sheets were rumpled: she guessed Vasili and Varvara had spent the morning in bed. She pulled the coverlet over the top, removed her boots, and stretched out.
Her body was tired but her mind was busy. She was afraid, but she still wanted to go to Mayakovsky Square. Dissidence was an important publication, despite its amateurish production and small circulation. It proved the Communist government was not all-powerful. It showed dissidents that they were not alone. Religious leaders struggling against persecution read about folk singers arrested for protest songs, and vice versa. Instead of feeling like a single voice in a monolithic society, the dissident realized that he or she was part of a great network, thousands of people who wanted a government that was different and better.
And it could save the life of Ustin Bodian.
At last Tania fell asleep.
She was awakened by someone stroking her cheek. She opened her eyes to see Vasili stretched out beside her. ‘Get lost,’ she said.
‘It’s my bed.’
She sat upright. ‘I’m twenty-two – far too old to interest you.’
‘For you, I’ll make an exception.’
‘When I want to join a harem, I’ll let you know.’
‘I’d give up all the others for you.’
‘Would you, hell.’
‘I would, really.’
‘For five minutes, maybe.’
‘For ever.’
‘Do it for six months, and I’ll reconsider.’
‘Six months?’
‘See? If you can’t be chaste for half a year, how can you promise for ever? What the hell time is it?’
‘You slept all afternoon. Don’t get up. I’ll just take off my clothes and slip into bed with you.’
Tania stood up. ‘We have to leave now.’
Vasili gave up. He probably had not been serious. He felt compelled to proposition young women. Having gone through the motions he would now forget about it, for a while at least. He handed her a small bundle of about twenty-five sheets of paper, printed on both sides with slightly blurred letters: copies of the new issue of Dissidence. He wound a red cotton scarf around his neck, despite the fine weather. It made him look artistic. ‘Let’s go, then,’ he said.
Tania made him wait while she went to the bathroom. The face in the mirror looked at her with an intense blue-eyed stare framed by pale-blonde hair in a short gamine crop. She put on sunglasses to hide her eyes and tied a nondescript brown scarf around her hair. Now she could have been any youngish woman.
She went into the kitchen, ignoring Vasili’s impatient foot-tapping, and drew a glass of water from the tap. She drank it all then said: ‘I’m ready.’
They walked to the Metro station. The train was crowded with workers heading home. They went to Mayakovsky Station on the Garden Ring orbital road. They would not linger here: as soon as they had given out all fifty copies of their news-sheet they would leave. ‘If there should be any trouble,’ Vasili said, ‘just remember, we don’t know each other.’ They separated and emerged above ground a minute apart. The sun was low and the summer day was cooling.
Vladimir Mayakovsky had been a poet of international stature as well as a Bolshevik, and the Soviet Union was proud of him. His heroic statue stood twenty feet high in the middle of the square named after him. Several hundred people milled about on the grass, mostly young, some dressed in vaguely Western fashions, blue jeans and roll-neck sweaters. A boy in a cap was selling his own novel, carbon-copy pages hole-punched and tied with string. It was called Growing Up Backwards. A long-haired girl carried a guitar but made no attempt to play it: perhaps it was an accessory, like a handbag. There was only one uniformed cop, but the secret policemen were comically obvious, wearing leather jackets in the mild air to conceal their guns. Tania avoided their eyes, though: they were not that funny.
People were taking turns to stand up and speak one or two poems each. Most were men but there was a sprinkling of women. A boy with an impish grin read a piece about a clumsy farmer trying to herd a flock of geese, which the crowd quickly realized was a metaphor for the Communist party organizing the nation. Soon everyone was roaring with laughter except the KGB men, who just looked puzzled.
Tania drifted inconspicuously through the crowd, half listening to a poem of adolescent angst in Mayakovsky’s futurist style, drawing the sheets of paper one at a time from her pocket and discreetly slipping them to anyone who looked friendly. She kept an eye on Vasili as he did the same. Right away she heard exclamations of shock and concern as people started to talk about Bodian: in a crowd such as this, most people would know who he was and why he had been imprisoned. She gave the sheets away as fast as she could, eager to get rid of them all before the police got wind of what was going on.
A man with short hair, who looked ex-army, stood at the front and, instead of reciting a poem, began to read aloud Tania’s article about Bodian. Tania was pleased: the news was getting around even faster than she had hoped. There were shouts of indignation as he got to the part about Bodian not getting medical attention. But the men in the leather jackets noticed the change in atmosphere and looked more alert. She spotted one speaking urgently into a walkie-talkie.
She had five sheets left and they were burning a hole in her pocket.
The secret police had been on the edges of the crowd, but now they moved in, converging on the speaker. He waved his copy of Dissidence defiantly, shouting about Bodian as the cops came closer. Some in the audience crowded the plinth, making it difficult for the police to get near. In response, the KGB men got rough, shoving people out of the way. This was how riots started. Tania nervously backed away towards the fringe of the crowd. She had one more copy of Dissidence. She dropped it on the ground.
Suddenly half a dozen uniformed police arrived. Wondering fearfully where they had come from, Tania looked across the road to the nearest building and saw more running out through its door: they must have been concealed within, waiting in case they were needed. They drew their nightsticks and pushed through the crowd, hitting people indiscriminately. Tania saw Vasili turn and walk away, moving through the throng as fast as he could, and she did the same. Then a panicking teenager cannoned into her, and she fell to the ground.
She was dazed for a moment. When her vision cleared, she saw more people running. She got to her knees, but she felt dizzy. Someone tripped over her, knocking her flat again. Then suddenly Vasili was there, grabbing her with both hands, lifting her to her feet. She had a moment of surprise: she would not have expected him to risk his own safety to help her.
Then a cop hit Vasili over the head with a truncheon and he fell. The cop knelt down, pulled Vasili’s arms behind his back and handcuffed him with swift, practised movements. Vasili looked up, caught Tania’s eye, and mouthed: ‘Run!’
She turned and ran but, an instant later, she collided with a uniformed policeman. He grabbed her by the arm. She tried to pull away, screaming: ‘Let me go!’
He tightened his grip and said: ‘You’re under arrest, bitch.’