‘She was just going out. She doesn’t know my name.’
‘But, if the KGB show her photographs of people arrested at Mayakovsky Square today, will she pick you out?’
Tania looked distraught. ‘She gave me a real up-and-down look, assuming I might be a rival. Yes, she would know my face again.’
‘Oh, God, then we have to get the typewriter. Without that, they’ll think Vasili is no more than a distributor of Dissidence, so they probably won’t track down his every casual girlfriend, especially as there seem to be a lot. You may get away with it. But if they find the typewriter, you’re finished.’
‘I’ll do it alone. You’re right, I can’t put you in this much danger.’
‘But I can’t leave you in this much danger,’ he said. ‘What’s the address?’
She told him.
‘Not too far,’ he said. ‘Get on the bike.’ He climbed on and kicked the engine into life.
Tania hesitated, then got on behind him.
Dimka switched on the headlight and they pulled away.
As he drove, he wondered if the KGB might already be at Vasili’s place, searching the apartment. It was a possibility, he decided, but unlikely. Assuming they had arrested forty or fifty people, it would take them most of the night to do initial interviews, get names and addresses, and decide whom to prioritize. All the same, it would be wise to be cautious.
When he reached the address Tania had given him he drove past it without slowing down. The street lights showed a grand nineteenth-century house. All such buildings were now either converted to government offices or divided into apartments. There were no cars parked outside and no leather-coated KGB men lurking at the entrance. He drove all around the block without seeing anything suspicious. Then he parked a couple of hundred yards from the door.
They got off the bike. A woman walking a dog said: ‘Good evening,’ and passed on. They went into the building.
Its lobby had once been an imposing hall. Now a lone electric bulb revealed a marble floor that was chipped and scratched, and a grand staircase with several balusters missing from the banister.
They went up the stairs. Tania took out a key and opened the apartment door. They stepped inside and closed the door.
Tania led the way into the living room. A grey cat observed them warily. Tania took a large box from a cupboard. It was half full of cat-food pellets. She rummaged inside and pulled out a typewriter in a cover. Then she withdrew some sheets of stencil paper.
She ripped up the sheets of paper, threw them in the fireplace, and put a match to them. Watching them burn, Dimka said angrily: ‘Why the hell do you risk everything for the sake of an empty protest?’
‘We live in a brutal tyranny,’ she said. ‘We have to do something to keep hope alive.’
‘We live in a society that is developing Communism,’ Dimka rejoined. ‘It’s difficult and we have problems. But you should help solve those problems instead of inflaming discontent.’
‘How can you have solutions if no one is allowed to talk about the problems?’
‘In the Kremlin we talk about the problems all the time.’
‘And the same few narrow-minded men always decide not to make any major changes.’
‘They’re not all narrow-minded. Some are working hard to change things. Give us time.’
‘The revolution was forty years ago. How much time do you need before you finally admit that Communism is a failure?’
The sheets in the fireplace had quickly burned to black ashes. Dimka turned away in frustration. ‘We’ve had this argument so many times. We need to get out of here.’ He picked up the typewriter.
Tania scooped up the cat and they went out.
As they were leaving, a man with a briefcase came into the lobby. He nodded as he passed them on the stairs. Dimka hoped the light was too dim for him to have seen their faces properly.
Outside the door, Tania put the cat down on the pavement. ‘You’re on your own now, Mademoiselle,’ she said.
The cat walked off disdainfully.
They hurried along the street to the corner, Dimka trying ineffectually to conceal the typewriter under his jacket. The moon had risen, to his dismay, and they were clearly visible. They reached the motorcycle.
Dimka handed her the typewriter. ‘How are we going to get rid of it?’ he whispered.
‘The river?’
He racked his brains, then recalled a spot on the river bank where he and some fellow students had gone, a couple of times, to stay up all night drinking vodka. ‘I know somewhere.’
They got on the bike and Dimka drove out of the city centre towards the south. The place he had in mind was on the outskirts of the city, but that was all to the good: they were less likely to be noticed.
He drove fast for twenty minutes and pulled up outside the Nikolo-Perervinsky Monastery.
The ancient institution, with its magnificent cathedral, was now a ruin, disused for decades and stripped of its treasures. It was located on a neck of land between the main southbound railway line and the Moskva river. The fields around it were being turned into building sites for new high-rise apartment buildings, but at night the neighbourhood was deserted. There was no one in sight.
Dimka wheeled the bike off the road into a clump of trees and parked it on its stand. Then he led Tania through the copse to the ruined monastery. The derelict buildings were eerily white in the moonlight. The onion domes of the cathedral were falling in, but the green tiled roofs of the monastery buildings were mostly intact. Dimka could not shake the feeling that the ghosts of generations of monks were watching him through the smashed windows.
He headed west across a swampy field to the river.
Tania said: ‘How do you know about this place?’
‘We came here when we were students. We used to get drunk and watch the sun rise over the water.’
They reached the edge of the river. This was a sluggish channel in a wide bend, and the water was placid in the moonlight. But Dimka knew it was deep enough for the purpose.
Tania hesitated. ‘What a waste,’ she said.
Dimka shrugged. ‘Typewriters are expensive.’
‘It’s not just money. It’s a dissident voice, an alternative view of the world, a different way of thinking. A typewriter is freedom of speech.’
‘Then you’re better off without it.’
She handed it to him.
He moved the roller rightwards to its maximum extension, giving himself a handle by which to hold the machine. ‘Here goes,’ he said. He swung his arm back, then with all his might he flung the typewriter out over the river. It did not go far, but it landed with a satisfying splash and immediately disappeared from sight.
They both stood and watched the ripples in the moonlight.
‘Thank you,’ said Tania. ‘Especially as you don’t believe in what I’m doing.’
He put his arm around her shoulders, and together they walked away.