The Lieutenant’s Lover. Harry Bingham

neither of them were able to think about making love while Emma and Yevgeny’s fate was so uncertain. Not just that, but the idea of undressing completely and being wholly naked with the other seemed sudden and rather shocking – although they had made love frequently, it had always been outdoors and always at least half-clothed. So for those first two days and nights, they spent time together, cooked and ate together, then sat by the empty stove, holding hands and thinking about the rattle of train wheels in the dark. When they slept they kept their underclothes on, covered only by a thin sheet in the sweltering night.

      Then, by the third day, things seemed brighter. The arrangement was that, if the escape was successful, Emma would contact a Helsinki lawyer named Dr Pakkinen, who in turn would write to a Petrograd lawyer named Kamenev, an old friend of the family. The code for ‘all went well’ would be a request to pass on greetings to Misha. It might take weeks for the letter to get through. On the other hand, if the escape had been detected, then Misha’s own arrest would follow with swift and bloody certainty. No news was good news of the best possible sort.

      So Misha started to hope. But it was Tonya, as ever more careful than him, who urged him to proceed with care. They were upstairs in the apartment, sitting in front of the wide open windows, basking in the warm air and golden light.

      ‘You have to make a declaration to someone,’ she said. ‘If you don’t do it now, and they find out that you’ve said nothing, you’ll be held responsible.’

      Misha frowned. ‘You’re right, only not yet. I don’t want to risk being too soon.’

      ‘And I don’t want to risk you being too late,’ said Tonya, sharply. ‘It’s not only you to think of now.’

      ‘No. Perhaps you’re right. What do you think? Maybe the house committee?’

      ‘Of course the house committee. I’m not saying you need to go to the Cheka.’ The Cheka were the new, much-feared, secret police.

      They stood up. He was perhaps eight or nine inches taller than she was and the difference in that little room seemed suddenly huge. Tonya, as always, wore her hair tied and pinned at the back. He had never seen it otherwise. Putting his hands gently to the back of her head, he began pulling at the pins. She did nothing to help him except turn her head as he wanted, and she stood silently breathing, feeling the warmth of his hands on her neck. Then he was done. Her hair fell free in a dark curtain, framing her face and softening it. Misha ran his hands through her hair, then dropped them. The two of them stood in silence. It felt like the most intimate thing they’d ever done.

      ‘Well?’ said Tonya.

      ‘Well?’

      ‘What do you think?’

      ‘I think you look beautiful.’

      ‘Really?’

      Misha was about to answer light-heartedly, before seeing that Tonya had been genuinely anxious.

      ‘Really. You should wear it like that all the time.’

      ‘I always wanted curly hair. I used to see all these pictures of the ladies at court—’

      ‘I like your hair just as it is. Besides, most of those court ladies wore wigs.’

      ‘Really?’

      ‘Most of them were bald underneath. Or hairy like a bear.’

      ‘Idiot!’

      She pushed him and he pushed her back. But they both knew that they needed to go downstairs to see the old woman of the house committee before she retired for the night. Tonya was about to start putting her hair up again, when Misha stopped her.

      ‘Don’t do that. Go as you are.’

      ‘I can’t go like this. I look like—’

      She stopped and blushed. They fought for a moment, then compromised. Tonya tied her hair at the back, but only loosely, so it still fell like a soft halo around her face. They went downstairs and knocked on the basement door, where the comrade chairwoman of the house committee had her room. The old lady was ready for bed, dressed in some voluminous white nightgown which could have served for somebody five times larger. She cackled when she saw the two of them together and Tonya felt sure that she was staring at her hair and drawing conclusions. Misha explained why they had come. He said that his mother and Yevgeny had gone out to visit friends the previous evening and not come back. He said he was very worried.

      ‘Worried? You should be, comrade. In this city, disappearance is a bad thing. It’s not the right thing from a political perspective. If a comrade worker vanished that would be one thing, but for a member of the propertied classes – well! That’s a serious business.’

      The old woman seemed caught between two emotions. The first and strongest one was fear and anger that Misha had brought her this problem. But the other emotion was delight at the scope for gossip and interference. When her chatter turned to the latter subject, her voice became suddenly italicised, full of leering innuendo.

      ‘Oh yes, and you will need to inform the Bureau of Labour. If the disappeared ones don’t turn up soon, then you’d do well to send their papers along to the foodstuff distribution committee. You wouldn’t want to be found profiting from excess distributions – not someone in your position. Not even if you can think of other young people who might enjoy the food. Oh yes, I’m sure you have ideas on how to use the living space. Perhaps you already have done. Eh? That would be something, wouldn’t it, comrade? Your mother missing, maybe killed for all you know, and only one thought on your mind.’

      They burst away from the old woman as soon as they could. Going upstairs, they hugged each other tightly. The future seemed suddenly very close, unknown and dangerous. Almost without speaking, by common assent, they stripped silently off and made love, naked and in bed together for the very first time.

      7

      The decrees were published. Internal exile for the ‘propertied classes’, an old Tsarist tool turned to new uses by the Bolsheviks.

      Misha was relocated, but not far. The Petrograd railway authorities didn’t want to lose Misha’s services, so he was shifted just a hundred miles to Petrozavodsk, on the line north towards Murmansk. Misha was employed as a railway engineer there as part of a small team of four, one of whom was also an ex-bourgeois like himself. The job was pleasant, his fellow workers positively cordial. Meantime, the old lawyer Kamenev had passed on greetings from Doctor Pakkinen in Helsinki.

      Misha felt a fierce kind of joy at the news. His mother was safe. His brother was safe. He had done his duty to his father and his family.

      Best of all, it wasn’t hard for Tonya to come out to see him, often once a week. She’d come sometimes on her own, sometimes with Pavel, and the three of them would go out, looking for mushrooms in the woods, or swimming or boating on Lake Onezhskoye. They got on well. Misha took a liking to Pavel and taught the boy metalwork and how to bait a fishing line. Pavel still hero-worshipped Rodyon, but seemed to have a place in his affections for Misha too.

      Then, one late November afternoon, Tonya was in the yard below her apartment. The family’s fuel allocation had just arrived and she wanted to get the logs upstairs before they were stolen. She had just taken one load up and had her arms full with another, when she observed, in the growing gloom, somebody bending over the pile and helping themselves to as much as they could carry.

      Tonya threw a log at the stooping figure.

      ‘Hey! Get out of there!’

      The figure straightened.

      ‘Well, comrade, that’s not very friendly.’

      It was Misha.

      Tonya dropped her logs, and ran over to him, apologising and, in the same breath, telling him that he shouldn’t have come here to Petrograd, it was too dangerous for him to break the terms of his exile.

      ‘Lensky,