The Lieutenant’s Lover. Harry Bingham

or as good as.’

      ‘But the change came four months ago, didn’t it, Antonina Kirylovna?’

      Tonya swallowed. Rodyon was creeping around to the real subject and she felt her mouth go strangely dry. Though she wanted to blame it on other things – the endless day outside, the light glittering from the city’s roofs and cupolas, the heat of the stove – she knew it was none of those things.

      ‘Maybe,’ she admitted.

      ‘Mikhail Ivanovich Malevich. Son of Ivan Ilyich Malevich. Ivan Ilyich was one of the country’s richest men. Not in the top fifty perhaps, but not so far outside either. Coal mines. Iron works. Land.’

      ‘They have none of that now.’

      ‘No.’

      Rodyon stopped as though he’d finished. He finished his tea and pushed his cup away from him.

      ‘More?’ said Tonya.

      ‘Please.’

      ‘The sugar doesn’t come from father’s coal-stealing. It comes from Misha. The soup things too. He trades his family’s last few possessions. He is generous.’

      ‘Bourgeois sugar, eh?’

      ‘That’s one way to put it.’

      ‘Then I’ll have another spoonful.’

      Tonya poured the tea and pushed it back at Rodyon. Her movement contained an ounce or two of anger and tea slopped over the rim of the cup. He ignored both the anger and the spillage.

      ‘His family’s last few possessions. What a piteous-sounding phrase!’

      ‘There’s no pity. It’s a simple fact.’

      ‘Is it? Really? That’s another insight of Marx’s. Facts aren’t necessarily simple, even the simplest ones. His father accumulated possessions by exploiting his workers. Each year, every year, men died underground in his coal mines. Others were cut to pieces in industrial accidents at his iron works. And he reaped the profit.’

      ‘He employed them. I don’t suppose conditions in his mines were worse than elsewhere.’

      ‘He gave them the lowest wage he could possibly pay them, you mean. Yes. And that wage wasn’t always enough to give his workers enough food, fuel, medicine or housing. Look at this rat-hole you live in. You have always counted yourself lucky to have it. How does it compare with Kuletsky Prospekt, eh? How does it compare with that? So: you say his family’s last few possessions, but if he stole the labour that allowed him to acquire them, then to whom, really, do those things belong?’

      Tonya shrugged. ‘Who cares? In a few months, they’ll have nothing.’

      Rodyon nodded, as though he agreed. He stood up. All at once, the lean tigerishness of his energy seemed to come rushing back. When before he had looked tired, now again, as usual, his face radiated an intense, challenging handsomeness, spoiled and completed by his broken nose. He paced the tiny apartment as though he felt cooped up in it. He leaned out of the open window, traced a line on a cupboard with the tip of his finger as though to check for dust, then came over to the stove and felt it for heat.

      ‘Good soup.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘The smell is almost the best part.’

      ‘Maybe.’

      ‘A meat bone?’

      ‘Beef.’

      ‘You’re lucky.’

      ‘If it’s luck that we’ve been talking about, then yes.’

      ‘Hmm.’

      Rodyon paced again. Back to the window, behind Kiryl’s armchair, which he rocked to and fro on its back legs, then to the table and the carrot ends and onion skins left over from Tonya’s cooking. He took some carrot ends and began to munch.

      ‘Babba Varvara’s all right, is she?’

      ‘She’s fine. No different from ever.’

      ‘No. You do well with her. If she weren’t your responsibility she would be mine. Thank you.’

      Tonya shrugged. Then he turned abruptly around, and faced Tonya. She found herself fixed in the sudden glare of his intensity.

      ‘Listen, Antonina, this boy of yours, Mikhail Ivanovich. He is a danger to you. You must stop seeing him.’

      Tonya opened her mouth to protest. The anxiety that she’d felt since Rodyon’s entry had been pointing all along to this one inevitable moment. She felt fiercely, passionately protective of Misha. But Rodyon didn’t let her speak. He waved down anything she might have had to say.

      ‘You’ll protest of course. But hear me out. At the heart of the Communist Party lies the understanding that the interests of Malevich’s class are irreconcilable with the interests of the workers. It isn’t any longer a question of living space or property or anything like that. But Malevich knows that the Party is his enemy. The Party knows that Malevich is its enemy. If you align yourself with Malevich, you align yourself against the Party. That’s dangerous. It’s inconceivably foolish, if I may say so.’

      Tonya moved her tongue inside her mouth. She found only glue and ash. She couldn’t have spoken if she’d wanted to, but Rodyon hadn’t finished.

      ‘The second thing is this. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee is about to issue a new set of decrees. Malevich and his kind will be sent into internal exile all over Russia. It’s no use having these people crawling over the seats of power in Petrograd and Moscow. They’ll be given work to do. They will work of their own accord, or they will be made to work in a labour camp. We find it helps to keep the alternatives fairly simple. The decrees will be published any day now. They will have immediate effect.’

      Tonya felt the blood rushing in her head. She wanted to find some way to block the sound of Rodyon’s words, but couldn’t. The words had already smashed aside any possible barrier and were roaring forwards in their destructive progress. Only time could tell what wreckage would be left behind.

      ‘And one last thing. I think I’ve handled things badly. I should have acted sooner or perhaps later. I kept putting things off. But in the end I realise that the only important thing is that I should act. Antonina – Tonya – I am – I have always been your greatest friend and admirer. I know that this isn’t the time – there’s Malevich in your thoughts I know. But you will put him aside. You’ll have to. And when you do, please know that I’m here. I have loved you for a long time. For ever, so it seems. I would like to be – if you’ll let me – I know it’ll take time – more than just your friend and your cousin. Don’t give me an answer now. The timing is all wrong, I know. Forgive me. But some day. I shan’t go away.’

      Rodyon took a step or two forwards as though intending to grasp Tonya’s hands or kiss her. Then, realising any such movement would be profoundly unwelcome, he simply nodded his head, briefly looked around the room, then strode briskly away.

      5

      Tonya told Misha of Rodyon’s visit. She didn’t tell him about the first part of what he’d had to say, nor the last part either. But she told him about the decrees, the awful fact of impending banishment.

      Misha had listened in silence, then nodded thoughtfully.

      ‘I’d expected something like that,’ he said, ‘only I’d hoped it wouldn’t come so soon. All the same, there’s no reason to change plans. We’ll just have to work a little faster.’

      And work they did. Misha barely slept for working. He finished building a false wall into the back of one of the grain hoppers and got three of the six wagons workable. He couldn’t do more.

      Nor was Tonya idle.

      It