One Night in Winter by Simon Sebag Montefiore Read Free Book Online Page A

Pushkin in a duel.
Our favourite teacher: Teacher Golden
     
    A knock on the bathroom door made Andrei jump. He had forgotten where he was. The book showed that something, perhaps the war, perhaps their privilege, had changed these children, and allowed them the freedom to take a risk.
    ‘Are you going to be long?’
    It was Kozamin the bus conductor.
    Andrei gave a bovine groan, one of the repertoire of noises essential to communal living. ‘Five minutes. Aaaagh!’
    ‘Take your time,’ said Kozamin.
     
    We declare:
     
We suffocate in a philistine world of science and planning, ruled by the cold machine of history.
We live for love and romance.
If we cannot live with love, we choose death.
    This is why we conduct our secret rites; this is why we play the Game.
     
    The Game! Andrei smiled to himself but he narrowed his eyes and reread it. Could this have been written with a hint of cunning to conceal its real spirit? These days, everything – from the government announcements in the newspapers to the tedious ramblings of teachers – was in a hieroglyphic code. Nothing quite meant what it said – and sometimes it meant the exact opposite. But Nikolasha’s target was obvious.
Science and planning.
That was the Communist Party.
The cold machine of history.
Communism.
Love and romance.
That was what Communists called ‘bourgeois sentimentalism’.
    Andrei put down the book. In the adult world, in a more oppressive time like 1937, this might have been dangerous anti-Soviet talk. But things had become much more easy-going in the war. No one could take Nikolasha’s silly writings seriously, could they? Still, he remembered the wisdom of his father and his mother’s warnings. These children were not of his world, and yet he longed to know them better.

4
     
    ‘ MAY I HAVE a word?’ Andrei said to George. They were in school a few days later, and the bell for lunch had just rung.
    ‘A word?’ George turned round as he followed Nikolasha and Vlad out of the classroom.
    ‘It’s private.’
    ‘Private? How can it be?’
    No grand duke of the old days, thought Andrei, could equal the sneering haughtiness of a Communist prince.
    ‘You’ve lost something and I’ve found it.’
    George frowned. ‘Something containing mysterious scribbles?’
    Andrei nodded.
    ‘I’ll be with you in a second,’ George called over to Minka and Serafima, who were waiting for him, sandwich boxes in hand. ‘Come with me.’ And he pulled Andrei through the washrooms into the room where sports equipment was stowed, and school mischief hatched.
    ‘Thank God you’ve got it,’ George said, looking a good deal less confident than he had a minute earlier. ‘Nikolasha makes such a big thing of it. He keeps asking for it back, but I keep telling him I’m still studying it with sacred passion.’
    ‘Well, here it is,’ said Andrei, drawing the book out of his satchel.
    ‘You’ve rescued me,’ said George. Andrei held out the book and George put his hands on it and turned breezily to go – but when he tried to take it, he found that Andrei was still gripping it. ‘What are you doing?’ asked George.
    ‘Have you read it?’
    ‘No, I didn’t have time – but you obviously have. Are you offering to brief me?’
    ‘It’s a romantic manifesto that could be described as bourgeois sentimentalism . . .’
    George hesitated for a moment. ‘Thanks for the warning – but Pushkin is the Party’s favourite poet. I’m just worried about Nikolasha finding out I lost it.’ He waved it away genially. ‘So let’s keep this between ourselves and I’ll find a way to say thank you. I’ll see if I can get you into the Fatal Romantics’ Club.’
    ‘I would like that,’ replied Andrei, letting go of the book as it disappeared into George’s satchel.
    ‘It won’t be easy to get you in,’ George continued. ‘Nikolasha’s a fanatic. But you really should be a member – you know your Pushkin better than any of us.’
    Andrei opened