The Prince of the Soviets

32. JOURNEY TO BERLIN

The train from Moscow to Berlin only went as far as the border station of Negoreloye, where passengers had to change trains. Soviet and European railroads ran on tracks of different gauges. This had been a deliberate strategy of the Tsarist regime, intended to hamper enemy supplies in case of an attack from abroad.

Beyond the station lay terra incognita, unknown territory to the ordinary Soviet citizen. It was nothing short of a miracle even to be on board this train. Only a chosen, lucky few could sit in these clean railroad cars, full of excitement, making plans, hearts beating fast as they counted down the hours to the cherished border.

Nina’s baggage consisted of a single basket containing a change of linen and a clean bag of toiletries. Next to this bag stood a pot decorated with eyes and handles for ears and curls around the top. It was a present from Gloria, containing ashes from the Belovs’ stove. Nina was planning to tell the customs officers that these were her grandmother’s ashes, which she was taking to Germany to scatter there, according to the old woman’s wishes. Nina’s most valuable possession, Klim’s diary, was hidden inside the lid of the pot, which Nina had sculpted with her own hands.

All the way to Negoreloye, Nina’s heart was in her mouth. What if some sharp-eyed official noticed that the lid did not match the pot? Now, Nina was regretting the sentiment that had led her to expose herself to danger for the sake of a foolish notebook. But she could not bring herself to part with the “Book of the Dead.” It was the only tangible thread linking her to Klim.

When he had come out to Saltykovka for the last time, the two of them had sat together in Belov’s study for a long time, their arms around each other.

“I’ve decided how things are going to be,” Klim had said, kissing Nina on the side of her head. “If we save our Germans, our sins will be forgiven, and everything will be all right.”

There were times when Nina thought this impossible. People for whom “everything was all right” were not like them at all. She had had the opportunity to encounter several examples as she passed through the train: a Danish engineer on his way back from a work assignment, a young woman taking her children to see her husband who worked in the embassy in Berlin, and a noisy group of American tourists who had seen what the USSR had to offer and were now setting off to Czechoslovakia.

Nina shared a compartment with a group of artists who were on their way to an international exhibition of proletarian art. They downed one beer after another and talked about their trade.

“I’ve got a portrait of a woman in oils,” a young bearded artist said. “I wanted to sell it to the People’s Commissariat for Education, but they wouldn’t take it because it didn’t have an ideological title. It’s a nice picture, and I wouldn’t want it to go to waste. Breasts out to here!” he said, holding his hands out from his chest.

All speaking at once, his fellow artists began to suggest suitably ideological titles.

“You could call it ‘Proletarian Woman’ or ‘Worker’s Daughter.’”

“No, those won’t do. How about ‘The Flame of Communism Burns Inside Her Breast’?”

“But that’s just it—there’s no communism in the picture,” sighed the bearded artist.

“Well, you can’t see it, can you? It’s inside her breast!”

The artists all laughed.

These people have hopes and a future, thought Nina, looking at them from her upper berth.

The artists discussed how the famous painter, Isaac Brodsky, had received an order for sixty copies of his painting “The Execution of the Baku Commissars” for the government offices. Each of the artists dreamed of a similar stroke of unbelievably good fortune.

As for Nina, her own dreams were humbler and less realistic than that. She prayed only that she and Klim would avoid being arrested or killed.

For the entire eighteen-hour journey, Nina lay on the upper berth, watching the trunks of pine trees flash by the window like armies of giant yellow pencils. Patches of snow still lay in the gullies. Dark green forests, gray roofs, black kitchen gardens, and yet more forests.

At last, at five o’clock in the afternoon, the train arrived at Negoreloye. The passengers began to gather their belongings, but they had a long wait before their passports were checked by border control officers and they were allowed to leave the train and go to the station.

As the rules required, the passengers laid their baggage out on a horseshoe-shaped bench in the center of the waiting room, and grim-faced customs officers began the inspection.

They rummaged around in suitcases as if they were tossing salad. Every now and again, they pulled something out, yelling, “Contraband!”

This was the signal for a group of young men with scales and official ledgers to descend and begin weighing, measuring, and assessing the value of the contraband item. Then the dumbstruck passengers would be presented with a fine. They could choose to pay up or to jettison the dubious souvenir—to the delight of the customs officers. It was clear from their well-fed faces that nothing here went to waste.

Nina was trembling all over. Stop! she told herself. You’ll give yourself away! But in fact, all the other passengers were just as nervous as she was. Nobody was safe from the insolent, indiscriminate tyranny of the customs officers, and nobody breathed a word of complaint, not wishing to attract unwanted attention.

Anyone carrying foreign currency had to present a stamped form from an exchange bureau. Anyone taking cameras, typewriters, fur coats, watches, or other valuables across the border had to fill out a declaration.

A porter in a white apron wheeled in a trolley laden with neat packages and began calling out the names of the passengers, asking them to collect their property. In the packages were books, magazines, posters, and handwritten material that the censor had allowed to cross the border. A few weeks before their departure, passengers had handed all this over for the censors to read, rubber-stamp, and mail on to Negoreloye.

When the officers reached Nina’s basket, she was half-fainting with fear. The customs official, a great hulking lad, rummaged with distaste through her belongings and then pulled out the pot from the basket.

“What’s this?” he asked, peering inside.

“My grandmother’s ashes,” said Nina in a weak voice.

The lad put his hand into the pot and began fumbling about to check there was nothing hidden inside.

“Damn!” he swore suddenly. His great paw had become stuck inside the pot, and he was unable to pull it out.

Amused by the incident, passengers glanced meaningfully in his direction.

He ran to his colleagues. “Hey, men, help me get this thing off!”

Each officer, in turn, tried to pull the pot off his hand but without success. Meanwhile, the ashes of “Nina’s grandmother” were scattered in all directions.

The crowd did not know whether to laugh or to be indignant at the mess that was being made of their baggage.

“To hell with it!” the officer shouted. He brought the pot hard down onto the bench with a crash, smashing it into a hundred pieces.

Nina gasped.

“You’re free to go!” he barked. “Next time, use a bigger pot.”

Nina took the basket and the pot lid and went out to the platform where the Berlin train was waiting.

When I die, she thought, I think they should scatter my ashes around some waiting room too. It would be a perfect metaphor for my life.

Eastern Poland looked much the same as Belorussia: the same little towns, the same fields of black earth, and the same poor country roads with puddles of rainwater in the ruts.

There were few people about; only a couple of peasants waiting with their wagon at the level crossings for the train to pass.

Now and again, Nina saw rows of old trenches and forests of dead trees with peeling bark and twisted stumps for branches. These were areas in which chemical weapons had been used during the Great War.

The train arrived in Warsaw at night, and Nina slept the whole way through western Poland. And when they arrived in Germany, everything outside the train looked different.

“Good god, take a look at that!” gasped the artists, pressing in close to the windows.

Vast building sites, factory chimneys, and the small, neat houses of workers’ districts slid by outside. Even in the smaller towns, the station buildings were as large and fine as cathedrals, and beyond them, elegant, red-tiled turrets clustered beside the green spires of town halls.

“Holy shit!” the artists swore in amazement. “Look at that signalman with the peaked cap! He looks like an army general.”

“Look at that cart! It has tires like a motor car!”

The bearded artist was already making hasty sketches in a book with an oil-cloth cover, a third of which was already filled with landscapes, portraits, and notes in the margin.

Nina watched the scene outside the window with mixed emotions. She knew from the papers that the last ten years had not been easy for the Germans, yet there had been no talk of an economic slump. It looked as if Germany had managed to recover after the war. Russia, on the other hand, had suffered from “complications” in the shape of the Soviet regime. Good god, how unfair it all was!

The sun came out for a moment, lighting up sidings, railcars, depots, and signs written in an incomprehensible Gothic script.

“Next stop, Berlin!” sung out the attendant.

The train was slowing down now as it passed through the city. For a moment, the sunlight vanished in the shadow of a viaduct, and then they entered the station building.

Nina was the last to get out on the platform. Berlin swallowed her up immediately, a little foreigner in a quaint peasant’s sheepskin coat and a headscarf.

Here, all the colors seemed brighter and the sounds louder. She was stunned by the sight of the crowd; there were so many well-dressed men and women in elegant coats! And they had umbrellas!

A group of workers went by carrying a large pipe, and every one of them looked smart and well-fed. Even a crippled beggar in the station was wearing a freshly ironed uniform with a medal.

Nina looked around at all the splendor in confusion, overwhelmed with an acute sense of loneliness and alienation. Nobody was waiting for her in Berlin.

“Hilda Schultz?” she heard a voice behind her.

Nina turned and saw a small, broad-shouldered gentleman in a bowler hat. It was Heinrich Seibert.

Seibert was doing his best to give the impression that fortune had favored him no worse in his own country than in Moscow. But in fact, he was deeply unhappy.

On the surface of it, he had little reason to be dissatisfied. Germany was a much better developed country than the USSR. Since the Emperor had abdicated and new, far more liberal laws had been passed, Berlin had become the creative capital of Europe. However, the stylish cabarets and shops full of incredible products did nothing to lift Seibert’s mood. In Moscow, he had been at the top of the heap thanks to his German citizenship and his position in society; in Berlin, he was just another struggling journalist.

Seibert could not afford to live in the center of town, so he was renting an apartment near the end of the metro line at Thielplatz and had bought a stylish little Mercedes car on credit for extra kudos.

His debts were mounting up, and it looked as if he would soon be forced to sell some of the icons and paintings he had brought back from Russia. The idea was unthinkable to Seibert, and this was why he had decided to do a secret deal with the OGPU—he felt it was the only way out of his situation. But Oscar Reich had not come to Berlin as expected, and Seibert had never received the money he had been promised.

As a last resort, Seibert was banking on getting a sensational interview with a young woman called Hilda Schultz who had escaped from the clutches of Soviet satraps. Here, too, however, he was destined to be disappointed. Instead of the German heroine Seibert had been expecting, Klim had sent a Russian woman, Nina Kupina, who did not know a word of German.

“Have you brought the money to charter the ship?” Seibert asked. He was thinking that he could borrow some to cover his debts.

“Elkin has the money,” said Nina with a charming smile. “You know him, don’t you? He’s coming to Berlin in the next few days. We have to meet up with him.”

Seibert gazed at her as if she had lost her mind. “I think that your Elkin is probably drinking cocktails on the Cote d’Azur as we speak,” said Seibert gloomily.

Lieschen had had a good expression for people like Klim and this girlfriend of his, thought Seibert. She used to say, “Get a fool to do a job, and he’ll make double the work.”

“Elkin is an honest man—” Nina began.

But Seibert interrupted her. “Do you have a place to stay?”

“No. It’s my first time in Berlin, and I—”

“All right then,” said Seibert with a sigh. “Let’s go back to my place.”

I’ll wring Klim’s neck when he arrives, he thought. How could he have made such a mess of everything?