Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [129]
Igor was an attractive man. Despite her objections that he had no background as a Communist, there was a special wartime dispensation for heroes of the Red Air Force. He was of the new legend. Wounded by gunfire, a man of great ingenuity and great courage, a hard-drinking Cossack surrounded by loyal officers. Perhaps it was Igor’s total indifference to Olga that awakened a challenge in her. He took her because he had reached the depths ... and her apartment was warm.
The marriage was not made in heaven. It was a convenient bargain on both parts to make the best of a miserable life.
Neither Igor’s patience or tenderness was able to penetrate Olga’s obsessed dedication. Sex life, such as it was, was dispatched with mechanical efficiency. It was always arranged so as not to interfere with a committee meeting or a lecture to factory workers.
Igor Karlovy, now a decorated major in the Red Air Force, strayed from his warm nest when springtime came and the thaw set in. He sought out his old comrades to drink with and soft and tender women to love.
Olga Shiminov was not without recourse. Igor was hauled before the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Leningrad. He was roundly admonished for his wild Cossack ways and warned that the husband of a leading functionary could not treat her as if she were a peasant woman. If rank and career meant anything to him, he had better stay home evenings. Finally, he was informed there were climates he could be sent to even colder than Leningrad.
Olga became pregnant between speeches. From her immensely practical point of view it was no time to have a child. Aside from room and food, a child would be a damned nuisance and interfere with her work. She made out a standard application for an abortion, against Igor’s wishes.
On this occasion the Central Committee took Igor’s point of view. The comrades “suggested” to Olga that it would be good for the morale of the masses if one of their leaders gave symbolic birth in the middle of the siege. Never a deviationist, Olga adhered to their “suggestion.” She presented her husband and the people of Leningrad a boy. Igor wished to name his son for his father, but the comrades “suggested” that the child be named Yuri after a young boy who had a martyred death at the hands of the SS early in the invasion.
The birth of his son gave Igor a reason to renew his desire to live. Slowly, he began to emerge from the great darkness ... until one day the shell of a siege gun hit Children’s Home #25.
When Igor awoke, the German girl, Lotte Böhm, was staring at him. He had seen such an expression of fulfillment in a woman’s eyes a long time ago when Natasha used to look at him that way.
“Why do you look at me so?” he asked.
“I did not know it could be like this.”
He closed his eyes and pressed her young body against him. Tears filled his eyes and ran down his cheeks. Oh Virgin Mother, he whispered, let me have a few moments of her again.
He washed and dressed silently and returned to his work in the next room. Lotte watched him from the doorway, her eyes riveted on him. At last he snapped his pencil in half, walked to the French windows and flung them open as if choking, and breathed in deeply.
“I wish to make an arrangement with you,” he said. “I shall see to your protection and that you are properly housed and fed.”
“You will not be sorry. I will make you very happy.”
Chapter Eight
COMMISSAR VASALI VLADIMAROVITCH AZOV drank a glass of white chalky medicine to soothe his burning ulcers, wiped droplets from his thick black moustache, belched, and munched the second half of his meal, crackers. A portrait of Lenin “Speaking to the Workers” hung behind his desk; and a portrait of Stalin was over the fireplace opposite