happened. Anyway, you must be on your way. You have work to do. All those hooligans on the street and you standing around talking to old women.”
Outside the air was fresh in the early light and his breath came out in a fog as thick as cigarette smoke. The temperature made him feel awake and strangely cheerful. He was glad he had his greatcoat to keep the chill off and that his feet were warm inside his valenki and, most of all, that there was no one else on the streets as yet. The only sounds as he walked along were the soft crunch of snow underfoot and an occasional early-morning voice from an open courtyard. He found himself humming the tune from the “March of the Happy-Go-Lucky Guys,” and the humming soon turned into quiet singing.
“We’ll grasp, discover and attain it all,
The cold North Pole and the clear blue sky.
When our country demands that we be heroes,
Then heroes we will become.”
As he sang, his feet swung to its rhythm. He looked quickly at his watch—he had to pick up the report for Gregorin from Petrovka Street and he decided, having plenty of time, to walk past the Kremlin and see it in its first snowy coat since the spring.
In the end, the lecture went well. Colonel Gregorin met him inside the surprisingly plain entrance to the NKVD training school—there was no furniture apart from a metal table, and paintings of Dzerzhinsky and Stalin were the only decorations on the white walls, apart from the mandatory Red Flag. One of the two burly-looking sentries had given him a speculative look that had seemed more than a little hostile, so he was pleased Gregorin had been prompt in receiving him. He followed the colonel through a pair of large wooden swing doors into a wide corridor, along which hung revolutionary slogans on black canvas banners. “Catch up and overtake the West!”; “Defend against the enemy within!” and “Make way for women!” although he noticed that in fact there were very few women among the students flowing back and forth from room to room, in an unhurried but purposeful rhythm that made it seem as though walking along the corridor was all they did all day.
The high-ceilinged lecture room itself was a little disorientating. He had to lean backward to see the students on the highest level of the wooden semi-circles, which reached up almost to the light fittings. At each desk a young face sat, scrubbed and grave above a spotless cadet uniform. He turned to Gregorin, who pointed him toward a wooden lectern, where, after taking a moment to open his notes and a further nod from the colonel, he began to speak.
He started slowly, perhaps because one of the banners at the side of the lecture room read “Remain ever vigilant. Enemies surround you at all times!” which seemed, for a second or two, to be addressed to him personally, but he recovered and found himself moving through the presentation at a steady pace. Soon the scratch of the students’ pens was the only noise, and he took breaks to allow them to catch up before he started a new point. The pauses also allowed him to observe his audience, and there was something in their concentration that put him in mind of the wolves that had hunted behind his column on that long winter retreat in nineteen. It was not a comfortable feeling. There were some memories you wished you could leave behind you forever, like the corpses that had marked each kilometer on that terrible march.
Afterward, however, when Gregorin had thanked him on their behalf, the young men and women’s applause had seemed genuine enough. Perhaps he was just imagining they had the eyes of prowling predators.
“A keen-looking bunch, aren’t they? Comrade Ezhov wants their course cut in half; he says they can learn on the job. Every day we discover a new conspiracy and he wants us to strike back—and hard.”
The colonel led the way into another corridor, this time narrow and empty.
“Incidentally, Captain, I think I may have something of interest for
Outside the air was fresh in the early light and his breath came out in a fog as thick as cigarette smoke. The temperature made him feel awake and strangely cheerful. He was glad he had his greatcoat to keep the chill off and that his feet were warm inside his valenki and, most of all, that there was no one else on the streets as yet. The only sounds as he walked along were the soft crunch of snow underfoot and an occasional early-morning voice from an open courtyard. He found himself humming the tune from the “March of the Happy-Go-Lucky Guys,” and the humming soon turned into quiet singing.
“We’ll grasp, discover and attain it all,
The cold North Pole and the clear blue sky.
When our country demands that we be heroes,
Then heroes we will become.”
As he sang, his feet swung to its rhythm. He looked quickly at his watch—he had to pick up the report for Gregorin from Petrovka Street and he decided, having plenty of time, to walk past the Kremlin and see it in its first snowy coat since the spring.
In the end, the lecture went well. Colonel Gregorin met him inside the surprisingly plain entrance to the NKVD training school—there was no furniture apart from a metal table, and paintings of Dzerzhinsky and Stalin were the only decorations on the white walls, apart from the mandatory Red Flag. One of the two burly-looking sentries had given him a speculative look that had seemed more than a little hostile, so he was pleased Gregorin had been prompt in receiving him. He followed the colonel through a pair of large wooden swing doors into a wide corridor, along which hung revolutionary slogans on black canvas banners. “Catch up and overtake the West!”; “Defend against the enemy within!” and “Make way for women!” although he noticed that in fact there were very few women among the students flowing back and forth from room to room, in an unhurried but purposeful rhythm that made it seem as though walking along the corridor was all they did all day.
The high-ceilinged lecture room itself was a little disorientating. He had to lean backward to see the students on the highest level of the wooden semi-circles, which reached up almost to the light fittings. At each desk a young face sat, scrubbed and grave above a spotless cadet uniform. He turned to Gregorin, who pointed him toward a wooden lectern, where, after taking a moment to open his notes and a further nod from the colonel, he began to speak.
He started slowly, perhaps because one of the banners at the side of the lecture room read “Remain ever vigilant. Enemies surround you at all times!” which seemed, for a second or two, to be addressed to him personally, but he recovered and found himself moving through the presentation at a steady pace. Soon the scratch of the students’ pens was the only noise, and he took breaks to allow them to catch up before he started a new point. The pauses also allowed him to observe his audience, and there was something in their concentration that put him in mind of the wolves that had hunted behind his column on that long winter retreat in nineteen. It was not a comfortable feeling. There were some memories you wished you could leave behind you forever, like the corpses that had marked each kilometer on that terrible march.
Afterward, however, when Gregorin had thanked him on their behalf, the young men and women’s applause had seemed genuine enough. Perhaps he was just imagining they had the eyes of prowling predators.
“A keen-looking bunch, aren’t they? Comrade Ezhov wants their course cut in half; he says they can learn on the job. Every day we discover a new conspiracy and he wants us to strike back—and hard.”
The colonel led the way into another corridor, this time narrow and empty.
“Incidentally, Captain, I think I may have something of interest for
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