“Who are these people?” Tata hissed angrily at her mother. “Why have you brought them here? They have servants who sleep on sacks of money!”

Galina put her hand over Tata’s mouth. “Quiet, for pity’s sake! It’s nonsense about the sacks. Kitty’s making it up!”

“Really? And why doesn’t she know who Lenin is?”

“They’ve only just come here from China. If Uncle Klim had told Kitty about Lenin, she might have said something in public, and it could have got them arrested.”

Tata looked thoughtful. She knew all about the outrages committed by the Chinese police.

“All right,” she agreed at last. “Let’s go back in.”

4

Tata taught Kitty to play political exiles—they perched on the windowsill and pretended they were on their way to Siberia. The cactus plants were the gendarmes who were standing guard over them.

Galina poured Klim some tea and got out some biscuits bought at a ridiculously high price from one of the other tenants. Everything seemed to be going well.

“I expect you’re at the Lubyanka now and again, are you?” asked Klim suddenly in English.

Galina stopped with her teacup halfway to her mouth. “What makes you say that?”

Klim pointed to a letter stuck behind the wire for the light switch. “OGPU Trade Union. Overdue membership fees: final notice.”

Galina’s hands began to shake. That fool of a girl Tata! Galina had told her a hundred times to hide the mail.

There was no point in denying it now.

“I don’t tell them anything bad about you,” she said hurriedly. “You can see my reports if you like. I don’t—”

Klim shook his head. “Don’t worry. I’ve nothing to hide. But could I ask you a favor? I want to know if the OGPU has a file on a woman called Nina Kupina.”

“Who’s that?” Galina frowned.

“A friend of mine.”

“Very well. I can find out.”

Klim leaned forward and touched Galina’s wrist, sending shivers through her body.

“Just don’t tell anybody I asked you. Do you promise?”

Galina nodded.

5

More than anything else, Tata Dorina wanted to join the Young Pioneers, the organization of young builders of communism. But to do this, besides having an excellent school record, she needed to “harden herself up” physically, help workers in other countries, and organize other children to carry out socially useful work. More importantly still, she needed a recommendation from somebody who was a member of the Young Pioneers.

Tata had problems with all of these conditions: she did not enjoy schoolwork, cold showers made her ill, and she could not organize other children because they never listened to her.

Once, she had tried to help workers in other countries by bringing in a big roasting dish for scrap metal. As a result, she had received a thrashing from her mother for her efforts.

“But they gave me twenty-five kopecks!” she shouted, trying to avoid her mother’s belt. “I gave it to the worker’s fund!”

“And now I’m going to give you what for!” threatened her mother.

Tata found even simple tasks difficult, such as talking to older people about why they shouldn’t believe in God.

“Mother, just remember,” Tata said, “God doesn’t exist. If you ever feel you need to make the sign of the cross, raise your hand to your forehead and give a Pioneer salute instead.”

“What if I find it easier to live with God than without?” asked her mother.

This remark angered Tata. “You shouldn’t think only of your own enjoyment. We need to put all our strength into the fight.”

“I’m doing that already,” her mother sighed. “And I feel as if I have no strength left.”

Tata despised her mother for her degenerate morals, but she was scared of her all the same. Not so much because of her beatings but because of her tears and her long, dreary spells of melancholy. Sometimes, when her mother got back from work, she would lie straight down on the bench without having supper and turn her face to the wall.

“What’s the matter, Mommy?” Tata would ask, alarmed.

“Nothing.”

Tata felt sure that her mother was upset because of something she had done, and Tata was always doing the wrong thing.

Once, she had been sitting at the window when she had spotted her archenemy from school, Julia—a dark-haired girl with a heavy face, pale skin, and unhealthy-looking swollen eyelids. She had an urge to throw something at Julia, and as ill luck would have it, the first thing that fell to hand was a tray of eggs that Tata’s mother had bought at the market. Tata had subjected Julia to such a bombardment that she had been forced to retreat in disgrace.

But Tata’s mother chose that moment to come in with a basin of wet washing.

“You awful girl!” she wailed, grabbing a wet towel and starting to thrash Tata with it. “I was going to make you a birthday cake!”

Tata kept apologizing and told her mother that the Young Pioneers would definitely correct her bad character. They had managed to reform even worse offenders than herself.

“Nothing will change you!” her mother spat at her. “How did you turn out to be such an idiot? Where did you get it from?”

Tata really did feel stupid. A little later, she found out that Julia was a member of the Young Pioneers and was now doing all she could to prevent Tata from being accepted.

There was nobody to stick up for Tata as she had no friends.

6

Tata enjoyed playing with Kitty. That little girl was pretty and amusing just like a doll, and Tata had never had a doll.

Kitty looked at her with adoring eyes. “Can I come play with you again? We could play we’re running away from the jond… the jor… from the cactus plants.”

It was a pity that Kitty’s father had such bourgeois habits. Tata understood that he had to wear those dreadful ties and fancy ribbed socks for work, but why did he have to go about dressed up like a bourgeois on the weekend? He probably just wanted to show off in front of other people. It was very antisocial and immature of him, she thought.

When Uncle Klim and Kitty left, the tenants gathered in the kitchen and asked Tata about her guests. Tata could not help adding some extra details of her own to Klim’s biography.

“He’s a progressive journalist from Shanghai. He fought on the barricades there and saved wounded Red Army soldiers.”

The tenants exchanged respectful glances.

“Well, I hope you and your mother don’t get too big for your boots now,” said Mitrofanych. “You know the sort of thing. That foreigner gives you a stamp from one of his letters, and the next thing, you’re too proud to say hello to us.”

“Why should we care about his stamps?” Tata snorted, and immediately the thought struck her—maybe she should ask Klim for some old envelopes? Foreign stamps were worth their weight in gold at school. You could swap them for anything, even radio parts.

When Tata went back to their room, her mother had already gone to bed. Tata crawled into her sleeping quarters and stretched out. At last, she had grown tall enough for her head and feet to touch the opposite sides of the wardrobe.

The bench creaked, and her mother suddenly asked in an uncharacteristically affectionate voice, “How were things at school today?”

That was strange. She never asked questions like this. She would even sign Tata’s report without looking at it.

Tata told her that they had all played a game called “The Privilege Catcher.”

“They gave us balls that had things written on them: ‘union budget,’ ‘tax relief,’ and ‘electoral rights.’ We had to throw them to one another so that the churchman representative didn’t catch them. And guess who was the churchman? Julia!”

Tata climbed out of the wardrobe and began to run excitedly around the room in the dark.

“I’m a priest. I’m the enemy of the Soviet system!” she growled in a threatening voice, playing at being Julia. “I want to get the same privileges as the workers!”

“So, what happened?” asked her mother. “Did she get them?”

“Of course not!”

Actually, Julia had managed to get her hands on all the “privileges”—she had been chosen as the churchman as she was faster and nimbler on her feet than all the other girls in the class.

After the game, the Young Pioneer leader Vadik had made the panting children line up and told them that the real enemy was just as cunning and clever as this and that the privileges that had been given to the working class needed to be guarded fiercely.

“I hit Julia on the head with ‘tax relief,’ and she got nothing!” fibbed Tata. “They even praised me for being vigilant.”

There was a sigh in the darkness, and Tata fell silent, unsure if her mother felt proud or angry at her for her fight against the church.

“Did you like Kitty?” asked her mother.

“You bet!” said Tata. “I wish I had a sister like her.”

“I’m so glad,” said her mother and laughed a quiet and happy laugh that Tata had not heard for a long time.

9. COCAINE

1

Magda discovered a new way to get access to the Comintern hostel: she registered as a student on the Russian language courses for foreigners that had recently opened there.

The hostel was home to communists of all nationalities, from Norwegians to Indians. They shaved their heads, wore traditional Russian shirts, and spoke in a strange jargon of their own, peppered with the words “Lenin,” “communism,” and “primus.” The Kremlin thought these foreigners were potentially useful—come the world revolution, new governments all over the world would be formed from their ranks.