Flash fiction: Solitude

 A Cold War memory

“Nikolai Ivanovich, it is time.”

Nikolai stood, steadying himself with a hand on the luggage rack; the they were still moving a little. There was a loud hiss from the engine, a carriage ahead; a cloud of steam passed the window, lit by the dim lights from the platform and the news kiosk. On the platform was a knot of men in valenki and ushanka hats, their heavy winter coats flecked with snow. They carried machine-pistols.

“Are those necessary?” he asked.

“Yes. The other side may try to trick us. Besides, we have no reason to trust you.”

Wikimedia Commons/Sealle

“No, I suppose you don’t.” He lifted his coat and valise from the luggage rack; he had nothing else.

“Why did you do it?”

“What?” He paused and looked the other in the face. “Alexander Pavlovich, we have talked of this for so long.”

They had. The long hours in the bleak interrogation room with its single bulb; the genuine puzzlement on his boss’s face. He asked again, for the last time: “I thought I knew you so well. And you had such a life of – of privilege. We all did. Because we defend the people. So why did you betray us?”

“I didn’t,” he said quietly. “The revolution was betrayed long ago.”

Alexander said nothing for a few seconds, then nodded briskly; he was back at work.

“Leave the car by the nearest door,” he said. “They know where to take you.”

As Nikolai opened the door to the car, Alexander called out:

“Nikolai Ivanovich, you will be alone over there. No-one will love you. No-one will trust you. It is not your own soil. You will know solitude as you have never known it before.”

Nikolai turned back for a moment, then turned away and stepped down onto the platform. The guards nodded to him and indicated that he should follow them; two walked behind. They passed the enormous engine, wreathed in steam, the low electric light gleaming off its green matt paintwork, the white-rimmed wheels standing out in the gloom. It was snowing – a thin, wet, bleak veil, as if the snow itself were tired of winter; it was nearly March.

I wonder what summer is like over there, he thought, I wonder what they do; and for a moment he was back beside the Baltic in the sunshine, the sand warm underfoot, and Ekaterina was throwing bits of driftwood for Viktor, and Viktor was charging around with little barks, and he called out: “Be careful! He is a running dog! He may be a traitor!”, and she laughed and called him a bloody idiot then chased after Viktor, leaving a long line of footprints in the sand. I wonder if I will ever see Ekaterina again. I am sorry, Katyusha. Now I wish I had told you. I wonder if there is someone like that for me over there. But it won’t be her, will it. He remembered her shock when they came for him, in the early evening; when the doorbell rang she thought it was the laundry. Why are they here? What has he done? He is a good man.

The station was only really manned when a train was to cross the border, and then the passengers would pile out with their baggage and would be there for hours. Tonight it was empty. They went through the archway into the forecourt and got into a black GAZ saloon. He noticed a dent in the door, then wondered why he had noticed it. They only went a few hundred metres, past several booths, and barriers that opened for them; then a last barrier opened, but they did not drive through.

“Get out.” He did, and stood uncertain by the car. He could see the shapes of several vehicles about 400 metres away. The driver flashed his headlights several times. One of the cars opposite did the same.

“Go now. Walk straight ahead until you reach them. Do not look back.”

He did not look back. He walked steadily – not too fast, and he made no sudden movement. This was not a time or a place to confuse anyone as to one’s intentions. He built up a sort of rhythm, feeling the snow beneath his feet; it was still scrunchy, but the falling snow was getting wetter, the west wind more bitter so it stung his face. He saw a figure approaching from the other side; walking deliberately, like him, so nothing would happen suddenly. He was a tall thin man, dressed in tweeds with a Homburg hat with a long wide woollen scarf below which a white collar and dark tie were just visible; like Nikolai he carried only a valise. As he drew closer Nikolai could see that he had an angular, thin face with prominent cheekbones that stood out in the sodium lights that lit him from above.

Diamond.

Wikimedia Commons/Dödel

He knew the face; from life – but they had only met once or twice – and a hundred grainy black-and-white prints shot with telephoto lenses at discreet meetings in whatever city Diamond had been stationed as he clawed his way up through the Foreign Office, gently encouraged by Nikolai, his handler. Poor Diamond, he thought. You never knew how much of the information you gave us was garbage because London made sure it was, because they knew what you were. Because I had told them. When I was unmasked, London knew they might as well finish with you too. Oh Diamond, you silly little Cambridge man dazzled by the man in your year who went to fight in Spain, shamed by Appeasement, with a vague nagging guilt that a College servant made up your fire. Have fun in Moscow, Diamond. Enjoy our winters. I suppose you’ll miss those summer days at Wimbledon, the strawberries and cream, a colleague’s fragrant wife as company. Those afternoons loafing in the British Museum. Dinners with Labour people at the Gay Hussar, probing their weak points, seeing what they’d give us; you enjoyed that, didn’t you. Don’t worry. They’ll look after you there. A nice flat and warm winter clothes and caviar and Georgian wine and trips to Leningrad to the Kirov and to the Crimea in the winter. But you will always be alone.

They passed each other without a glance.

He walked beneath the barrier. It dropped behind him with a clank of chains and squeal of metal. There were several vehicles. A man smiled and opened the back door of a white Mercedes saloon. “Get in, out of the cold,” he said. He climbed in; there were three others in the car. He couldn’t see their faces. The man in the front passenger seat looked over his shoulder.

“Hallo, Tie-Rack,” he said. “You know who I am.” They shook hands.

“Yes," said Nikolai. “Hallo, Cobbler. We know each other well, don’t we?”

“Oh yes,” he said. “We will look after you.”

But Nikolai knew he would never know the man’s real name. And it was then that he did feel alone.

More flash fiction:

Cold
Everything is cold here

Homecoming
A sort of love story

Rhodri Hactonby's Maps
A question of social geography

Hiraeth
A yearning…

Strange Places
A spirit in the sky 

A Sideways Journey
Things might have been different

Displaced
Encounter on E94th Street

Belonging
Do you? Where?

Leaving Home
A house has memories

Mike Robbins’s latest book, On the Rim of the Sea, is now 

available as a paperback or ebook. More details here.

Flash fiction: Displaced

A short story

Grandpa’s 90. He doesn’t move much anymore. He sits in his dressing-gown by the window and looks out on the street. He used to read but he finds it hard now. We have the TV on but he likes the sound turned down. My kids treat him like a piece of furniture mostly but he doesn’t mind, he looks down at them, and now and then when he doesn’t know I’m looking I see him smile at them.

This month’s been cold. Really cold. It set in the day after Christmas. It’s the 15th now. The cops just went round the subway and rounded up all the bums. You stay here, you’re gonna die, they tell them. You’re coming to the shelter. Right now. And today it’s snowing heavy, early lunchtime, and Grandpa’s looking out the window at the cars going up and down East 94th Street and the new snow building on the heaps already there by the side of the road.

“I ordered pizza for lunch,” I called.

“Yeah pizza!” The kids beat the carpets with their hands. The youngest starts jumping around. “Pizza! Pizza!”

US Customs and Border Protection

Grandpa just smiles. He’s looking at the TV. Then he looks less happy. I go in there wiping my hands on a dishcloth and I see he’s watching a news program and first it’s from the border and there’s this reporter and there’s the Rio Grande behind her and there’s these people getting onto pickup trucks and these guys in uniform, from Border Patrol I guess, and the strap reads ‘500 more cross river in last three days’, then there’s a Congressman being interviewed. I know who he is, he’s young and he has this bouffant hair and a check jacket and the sourest face you ever saw, and the DoJ just questioned him on suspicion of sex trafficking.

“You want I turn the sound up?” I ask.

“Nah,” says Grandpa. “I know what he’s sayin’. He wants them all shot in the water.” He’s bellowing. Grandpa always speaks loud because he can’t hear so well now. Says, “That guy’s creepy, you hear me? That guy’s a major-league creep.”

“Take it easy, Grandpa,” I say. I look over his shoulder into the street. There’s this guy coming up it on a bike, one of those wrecks the pizza parlours use, with all the tape stuck round them make them less worth stealing. He’s a short and squat with a dark complexion and he wears a parka with a baseball cap worn back-to-front. On his back he has a big square box. The guy’s nearly at our door when he skids on the snow, must have been some ice beneath it. Over he goes and lies there a moment and a yellow cab brakes behind him and skids a little and blasts him with its horn and steers round him. Then he picks himself up and brushes the snow off and he’s coming up the stairs and I open the apartment door and his face is a mask. “Mrs Blaskowitz,” he says.

“Yep. One 12-inch cheese, and an 8-inch Meat Feast.”

“You got it.” He slides the hot pizza boxes out the satchel and hands them over. Then I hear Grandpa bellow, “Hey son. You OK? Saw you took a fall off that bike of yours.”

“Sir, I’m fine.” He isn’t really. His face is grazed. I reach in my pocket for a $5 tip. I add one online but I know the pizza joints don’t always pass them on.

“Where you from?” asks Grandpa.

The man hesitates. You don’t ask these guys questions like that. Undocumented, I guess.

“Guatemala, sir.”

“How are things down there, son?”

“They’re not too good, sir. No rain, no corn. And trouble. Gangs. Narcotraficantes. Everywhere trouble.”

Grandad nods slowly. He reaches in his dressing-gown pocket and pulls out three $5 bills. He starts to get up but I take them and I give them to the pizza guy. “Thank you, sir,” says pizza and turns to go and then Grandad bellows out:

“I came from a shithole too, son.”

The guy blinks.

“A real shithole. The houses were wood and the roads were mud and they hated Jews.”

There’s silence for a moment then Grandpa bellows:

“You hang on in there, son. You’re gonna make it here. You’re gonna make it.”

The guy gives a sort of bow and mutters, “You take care, sir.” And he turns and goes down the stairs, he’s still got snow on his sneakers and he leaves a trail of moisture on the steps and I catch sight of his face and I think his eyes are glistening a bit. Then I pull the door shut and Grandpa’s sitting at his table with his chin on his hands and his sleeves have slipped down and I can just make out the number on his forearm. 

More flash fiction:

Cold
Everything is cold here

Homecoming
A sort of love story

Solitude
A Cold War story

Rhodri Hactonby's Maps
A question of human geography

Hiraeth
A yearning…

Strange Places
A spirit in the sky 

A Sideways Journey
Things might have been different

Belonging
Do you? Where?

Leaving Home
A house has memories

Mike Robbins’s latest book, On the Rim of the Sea, is now 

available as a paperback or ebook. More details here.