Miriam by Vic Evans

Author:Vic Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783754113
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2014-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

MOSCOW

Chapter Seventeen

Moscow, January 1939

Miriam entered the immense openness of Red Square. Facing her through the thin freezing fog loured the Kremlin wall, and before it the crouching bulk of the Lenin Mausoleum. As she turned to her left she could just make out GUM, the famous department store, and on the south-eastern end of the square Saint Basil’s Cathedral appeared through the haze. People crossed her vision like spectres or emerged out of the icy vapour as they came towards her, ghostly figures hunched in the cold air. The muffled clop-clopping of hooves marked the passing of one of the many horse-drawn vehicles still to be seen on the streets, with their pneumatic tyres slicking over the smooth granite sets. As she neared the great entrance to GUM she could see the leafless plane trees along the front of the incongruous stuccoed arches, encrusted with ice and forming a delicate tracery. Guttering paraffin flares were struggling against the failing afternoon light at the junction of Ulitsa Ilinka, and the flames in the oil drums at the traffic police posts were adding a sulphurous yellow glow to the murk. It all reflected her morose mood, probably due to tiredness and overwork, she told herself. Things would look different in bright sunlight.

This would be the first time she’d seen Esther since they had been sent to their separate quarters on their arrival two weeks ago. Given a few hours out of the NKVD barracks in the granite-walled building on the northern end of Lubyanka Square, housing the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs and the newly built NKVD underground prison, she was going to meet her at GUM where Esther’s postcard told her there was a café where they could take tea. It was a relief to be free of the intense atmosphere of the induction course, eighteen hours a day of lectures, interrogation training, weapons practice, and tightly structured debates ,with meals being taken without a break.

The café was in the dimly lit entrance hall and Esther was sitting at a table waiting for her. ‘Do you feel as exhausted as you look?’ She drew up a chair.

Miriam collapsed onto it, nodding weakly. She suddenly realised how tired she was. The feeling that she could just sit down for an hour or two without having to do anything or think about anything in particular or respond to questions with an immediate and appropriate answer was overwhelming and it made her head swim. She mustn’t get used to it, she cautioned herself: it’s only a momentary pause.

‘Let’s speak Russian, especially in public like this.’ She spoke in English. ‘We might as well now and when we write postcards to each other it may be unwise if we didn’t use it as well.’

‘Postcards! It’s always postcards, never letters.’

‘And quite right. There are still spies and counter-revolutionaries about. Everything has to be kept above board. There can be no private correspondence. No sealed envelopes containing private thoughts.’

Esther took a sip of her tea. ‘Tell

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