Her happiness was not romantic. It had nothing to do with the rapturous start to a love affair-those days and weeks before the first tiny tear-clouds appear on the horizon. It was the quiet, settled happiness of security, of being able to look forward with confidence to the future, heightened by the immediate4 things, a word of praise she had had that afternoon from Professor Denikin, the smell of a good supper cooking on the electric stove, her favourite prelude5 to Boris Goudonov being played by the Moscow State Orchestra on the radio, and, over all, the beauty of the fact that the long winter and short spring were past and it was June.
The room was a tiny box in the huge modern apartment building on the Sadovaya-Chernogriazskay Ulitza that is the women's barracks of the State Security Departments. Built by prison labour, and finished in 1939, the fine eight-storey building contains two thousand rooms, some, like hers on the third floor, nothing but square boxes with a telephone, hot and cold water, a single electric light and a share of the central bathrooms and lavatories6, others, on the two top floors, consisting of two- and three-room flats with bathrooms. These were for high-ranking women. Graduation up the building was strictly7 by rank, and Corporal Romanova had to rise through Sergeant8, Lieutenant9, Captain, Major and Lieutenant-Colonel before she would reach the paradise of the eighth and Colonels' floor.
But heaven knew she was content enough with her present lot. A salary of 1200 roubles a month (thirty per cent more than she could have earned in any other Ministry10), a room to herself; cheap food and clothes from the `closed shops' on the ground floor of the building; a monthly allocation of at least two Ministry tickets to the Ballet or the Opera; a full two weeks' paid holiday a year. And, above all, a steady job with good prospects11 in Moscow-not in one of those dreary12 provincial13 towns where nothing happened month after month, and where the arrival of a new film or the visit of a travelling circus was the only thing to keep one out of bed in the evening.
Of course, you had to pay for being in the M.G.B. The uniform put you apart from the world. People were afraid, which didn't suit the nature of most girls, and you were confined to the society of other M.G.B. girls and men, one of whom, when the time came, you would have to marry in order to stay with the Ministry. And they worked like the devil-eight to six, five and a half days a week, and only forty minutes off for lunch in the canteen. But it was a good lunch, a real meal, and you could do with little supper and save up for the sable14 coat that would one day take the place of the well-worn Siberian fox.
At the thought of her supper, Corporal Romanova left her chair by the window and went to examine the pot of thick soup, with a few shreds15 of meat and some powdered mushroom, that was to be her supper. It was nearly done and smelled delicious. She turned off the electricity and let the pot simmer while she washed and tidied, as, years before, she had been taught to do before meals.
While she dried her hands, she examined herself in the big oval looking-glass over the washstand.
One of her early boy-friends had said she looked like the young Greta Garbo. What nonsense! And yet tonight she did look rather well. Fine dark brown silken hair brushed straight back from a tall brow and falling heavily down almost to the shoulders, there to curl slightly up at the ends (Garbo had once done her hair like that and Corporal Romanova admitted to herself that she had copied it), a good, soft pale skin with an ivory sheen at the cheek-bones; wide apart, level eyes of the deepest blue under straight natural brows (she closed one eye after the other. Yes, her lashes16 were certainly long enough!) a straight, rather imperious nose-and then the mouth. What about the mouth? Was it too broad? It must look terribly wide when she smiled. She smiled at herself in the mirror. Yes, it was wide; but then so had Garbo's been. At least the lips were full and finely etched. There was the hint of a smile at the corners. No one could say it was a cold mouth! And the oval of her face. Was that too long? Was her chin a shade too sharp? She swung her head sideways to see it in profile. The heavy curtain of hair swung forward and across her right eye so that she had to brush it back. Well, the chin was pointed17, but at least it wasn't sharp. She faced the mirror again and picked up a brush and started on the long, heavy hair. Greta Garbo! She was all right, or so many men wouldn't tell her that she was-let alone the girls who were always coming to her for advice about their faces. But a film star-a famous one! She made a face at herself in the glass and went to eat her supper.
In fact Corporal Tatiana Romanova was a very beautiful girl indeed. Apart from her face, the tall, firm body moved particularly well. She had been a year in the ballet school in Leningrad and had abandoned dancing as a career only when she grew an inch over the prescribed limit of five feet six. The school had taught her to hold herself well and to walk well. And she looked wonderfully healthy, thanks to her passion for figure-skating, which she practised all through the year at the Dynamo ice-stadium and which had already earned her a place on the first Dynamo women's team. Her arms and breasts were faultless. A purist would have disapproved18 of her behind. Its muscles were so hardened with exercise that it had lost the smooth downward feminine sweep, and now, round at the back and flat and hard at the sides, it jutted19 like a man's.
Corporal Romanova was admired far beyond the confines of the English translation section of the M.G.B. Central Index. Everyone agreed that it would not be long before one of the senior officers came across her and peremptorily20 hauled her out of her modest section to make her his mistress, or if absolutely necessary, his wife.
The girl poured the thick soup into a small china bowl, decorated with wolves chasing a galloping21 sleigh round the rim22, broke some black bread into it and went and sat in her chair by the window and ate it slowly with a nice shiny spoon she had slipped into her bag not many weeks before after a gay evening at the Hotel Moskwa.
When she had finished, she washed up and went back to her chair and lit the first cigarette of the day (no respectable girl in Russia smokes in public, except in a restaurant, and it would have meant instant dismissal if she had smoked at her work) and listened impatiently to the whimpering discords23 of an orchestra from Turkmenistan. This dreadful oriental stuff they were always putting on to please the kulaks of one of those barbaric outlying states! Why couldn't they play something kulturny? Some of that modern jazz music, or something classical. This stuff was hideous24. Worse, it was old fashioned.
The telephone rang harshly. She walked over and turned down the radio and picked up the receiver.
`Corporal Romanova?'
It was the voice of her dear Professor Denikin. But out of office hours he always called her Tatiana or even Tania. What did this mean?
The girl was wide-eyed and tense. `Yes, Comrade Professor.'
The voice at the other end sounded strange and cold. `In fifteen minutes, at 8.30, you are required for interview by Comrade Colonel Klebb, of Otdyel II. You will call on her in her apartment, No. 1875, on the eighth floor of your building. Is that clear?'
`But, Comrade, why? What is ... What is . . .?'
The odd, strained voice of her beloved Professor cut her short.
`That is all, Comrade Corporal.'
The girl held the receiver away from her face. She stared at it with frenzied25 eyes as if she could wring26 more words out of the circle of little holes in the black ear-piece. `Hullo! Hullo!' The empty mouthpiece yawned at her. She realized that her hand and her forearm were aching with the strength of her grip. She bent27 slowly forward and put the receiver down on the cradle.
She stood for a moment, frozen, gazing blindly at the black machine. Should she call him back? No, that was out of the question. He had spoken as he had because he knew, and she knew, that every call, in and out of the building, was listened to or recorded. That was why he had not wasted a word. This was a State matter. With a message of this sort, you got rid of it as quickly as you could, in as few words as possible, and wiped your hands of it. You had got the dreadful card out of your hand. You had passed the Queen of Spades to someone else. Your hands were clean again.
The girl put her knuckles28 up to her open mouth and bit on them, staring at the telephone. What did they want her for? What had she done? Desperately29 she cast her mind back, scrabbling through the days, the months, the years. Had she made some terrible mistake in her work and they had just discovered it? Had she made some remark against the State, some joke that had been reported back? That was always possible. But which remark? When? If it had been a bad remark, she would have felt a twinge of guilt30 or fear at the time. Her conscience was clear. Or was it? Suddenly she remembered. What about the spoon she had stolen? Was it that? Government property! She would throw it out of the window, now, far to one side or the other. But no, it couldn't be that. That was too small. She shrugged31 her shoulders resignedly and her hand dropped to her side. She got up and moved towards the clothes cupboard to get out her best uniform, and her eyes were misty32 with the tears of fright and bewilderment of a child. It could be none of those things. SMERSH didn't send for one for that sort of thing. It must be something much, much worse.
The girl glanced through her wet eyes at the cheap watch on her wrist. Only seven minutes to go! A new panic seized her. She brushed her forearm across her eyes and grabbed down her parade uniform. On top of it all, whatever it was, to be late! She tore at the buttons of her white cotton blouse.
As she dressed and washed her face and brushed her hair, her mind went on probing at the evil mystery like an inquisitive33 child poking34 into a snake's hole with a stick. From whatever angle she explored the hole, there came an angry hiss35.
Leaving out the nature of her guilt, contact with any tentacle36 of SMERSH was unspeakable. The very name of the organization was abhorred37 and avoided. SMERSH, `Smiert Spionam', `Death to Spies'. It was an obscene word, a word from the tomb, the very whisper of death, a word never mentioned even in secret office gossip among friends. Worst of all, within this horrible organization, Otdyel II, the Department of Torture and Death, was the central horror.
And the Head of Otdyel II, the woman, Rosa Klebb! Unbelievable things were whispered about this woman, things that came to Tatiana in her nightmares, things she forgot again during the day, but that she now paraded.
It was said that Rosa Klebb would let no torturing take place without her. There was a blood-spattered smock in her office, and a low camp-stool, and they said that when she was seen scurrying38 through the basement passages dressed in the smock and with the stool in her hand, the word would go round, and even the workers in SMERSH would hush39 their words and bend low over their papers-perhaps even cross their fingers in their pockets-until she was reported back in her room.
For, or so they whispered, she would take the camp-stool and draw it up close below the face of the man or woman that hung down over the edge of the interrogation table. Then she would squat40 down on the stool and look into the face and quietly say `No. 1' or `No. 10' or `No. 25' and the inquisitors would know what she meant and they would begin. And she would watch the eyes in the face a few inches away from hers and breathe in the screams as if they were perfume. And, depending on the eyes, she would quietly change the torture, and say `Now No. 36' or `Now No. 64' and the inquisitors would do something else. As the courage and resistance seeped41 out of the eyes, and they began to weaken and beseech42, she would start cooing softly. `There, there my dove. Talk to me, my pretty one, and it will stop. It hurts. Ah me, it hurts so, my child. And one is so tired of the pain. One would like it to stop, and to be able to lie down in peace, and for it never to begin again. Your mother is here beside you, only waiting to stop the pain. She has a nice soft cosy43 bed all ready for you to sleep on and forget, forget, forget. Speak,' she would whisper lovingly. `You have only to speak and you will have peace and no more pain.' If the eyes still resisted, the cooing would start again. `But you are foolish, my pretty one. Oh so foolish. This pain is nothing. Nothing! You don't believe me, my little dove? Well then, your mother must try a little, but only a very little, of No. 87.' And the interrogators would hear and change their instruments and their aim, and she would squat there and watch the life slowly ebbing44 from the eyes until she had to speak loudly into the ear of the person or the words would not reach the brain.
But it was seldom, so they said, that the person had the will to travel far along SMERSH'S road of pain, let alone to the end, and, when the soft voice promised peace, it nearly always won, for somehow Rosa Klebb knew from the eyes the moment when the adult had been broken down into a child crying for its mother. And she provided the image of the mother and melted the spirit where the harsh words of a man would have toughened it.
Then, after yet another suspect had been broken, Rosa Klebb would go back down the passage with her camp-stool and take off her newly soiled smock and get back to her work and the word would go round that all was over and normal activity would come back to the basement.
Tatiana, frozen by her thoughts, looked again at her watch. Four minutes to go. She ran her hands down her uniform and gazed once more at her white face in the glass. She turned and said farewell to the dear, familiar little room. Would she ever see it again?
She walked straight down the long corridor and rang for the lift.
When it came, she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin and walked into the lift as if it was the platform of the guillotine.
`Eighth,' she said to the girl operator. She stood facing the doors. Inside her, remembering a word she had not used since childhood, she repeated over and over `My God-My God-My God.'
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1
serene
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| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
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2
spire
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| n.(教堂)尖顶，尖塔，高点 | |
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3
ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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4
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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5
prelude
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| n.序言，前兆，序曲 | |
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6
lavatories
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| n.厕所( lavatory的名词复数 )；抽水马桶；公共厕所（或卫生间、洗手间、盥洗室）；浴室水池 | |
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7
strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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8
sergeant
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| n.警官，中士 | |
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9
lieutenant
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| n.陆军中尉，海军上尉；代理官员，副职官员 | |
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10
ministry
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| n.(政府的)部；牧师 | |
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11
prospects
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| n.希望，前途(恒为复数) | |
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12
dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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provincial
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| adj.省的，地方的；n．外省人，乡下人 | |
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14
sable
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| n.黑貂；adj.黑色的 | |
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15
shreds
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| v.撕碎，切碎( shred的第三人称单数 )；用撕毁机撕毁（文件） | |
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16
lashes
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| n.鞭挞( lash的名词复数 )；鞭子；突然猛烈的一击；急速挥动v.鞭打( lash的第三人称单数 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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17
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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18
disapproved
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| v.不赞成( disapprove的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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19
jutted
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| v.（使）突出( jut的过去式和过去分词 )；伸出；（从…）突出；高出 | |
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20
peremptorily
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| adv.紧急地，不容分说地，专横地 | |
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21
galloping
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| adj. 飞驰的, 急性的 动词gallop的现在分词形式 | |
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22
rim
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| n.(圆物的)边，轮缘；边界 | |
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23
discords
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| 不和（discord的复数形式） | |
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24
hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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25
frenzied
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| a.激怒的；疯狂的 | |
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26
wring
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| n.扭绞；v.拧，绞出，扭 | |
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27
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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28
knuckles
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| n.（指人）指关节( knuckle的名词复数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝v.（指人）指关节( knuckle的第三人称单数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝 | |
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29
desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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30
guilt
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| n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责 | |
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31
shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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32
misty
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| adj.雾蒙蒙的，有雾的 | |
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33
inquisitive
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| adj.求知欲强的，好奇的，好寻根究底的 | |
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34
poking
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| n. 刺，戳，袋 vt. 拨开，刺，戳 vi. 戳，刺，捅，搜索，伸出，行动散慢 | |
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35
hiss
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| v.发出嘶嘶声；发嘘声表示不满 | |
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36
tentacle
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| n.触角，触须，触手 | |
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37
abhorred
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| v.憎恶( abhor的过去式和过去分词 )；（厌恶地）回避；拒绝；淘汰 | |
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38
scurrying
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| v.急匆匆地走( scurry的现在分词 ) | |
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39
hush
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| int.嘘，别出声；n.沉默，静寂；v.使安静 | |
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40
squat
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| v.蹲坐，蹲下；n.蹲下；adj.矮胖的，粗矮的 | |
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41
seeped
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| v.（液体）渗( seep的过去式和过去分词 )；渗透；渗出；漏出 | |
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42
beseech
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| v.祈求，恳求 | |
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43
cosy
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| adj.温暖而舒适的，安逸的 | |
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44
ebbing
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| （指潮水）退( ebb的现在分词 )； 落； 减少； 衰落 | |
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