Submitting to the Billionaire

We drive through and stop in front of a huge, gray building. I’ll never forget the sight of that building. It is so big and imposing. All the windows have bars. It looks like a prison. We are pulled out of the car and forced up the stone steps.

A skeletal man with a thin, long face opens the thick black door. He does not look at Pavel or me. Merely nods gravely and opens the door wider. The stench that greets us is hard to define. I have never smelt it before. It seems to be coming from the dank walls and the stone floor. I can even smell it on the thin man. It smells like stale urine, and boiling cabbages, but something else too. Something that makes me afraid.

It is colder inside the house than it was outside. There is a huge bust of Lenin to the left of us. Ahead is a long, dark corridor. There are posters on the walls showing children praising Stalin with the caption: Thank You, Dear Comrade Stalin, for a Happy Childhood.

We follow him down the corridor.

An elderly woman is furiously mopping the floor. Her mop is gray and the water in the bucket is also gray with a few soap suds floating on top. She does not look at us.

We pass empty classrooms on either side of us. There are no sounds of children from within the house. Further down the corridor a boy, much older than me, passes us. He has dark eyes and he stares at me with a sneer.

We reach a door and the tall man knocks politely. Someone calls ‘enter’ and the man pushes open the door and steps back. A bald, fat man stands from behind a big desk with many papers on it.

“Have you brought more littlest enemies of the people for me to plant in my garden?” he asks cheerfully. He would have made a good clown or buffoon, but there is something sinister in his bulging brown eyes. They slide over me like oil, but when they move to Pavel they become sticky and stay. He smiles and licks his lips. “And who do we have here?”

“The older one is Nikolai and the little one is Pavel,” the man who brought us says. There is a note in his voice that wasn’t there before. Scorn and derision. He doesn’t respect the fat man.

“I am Konstantin Razumovsky, and I am the director of this institution,” the fat man announces proudly. “We opened in 1918 and we have had many successes to be proud of here. More than 7000 children have come through our doors and many of them are now fine, upstanding graduates with their own children.”

“I need to phone my uncle,” I say loudly.

The director smiles. “Phone calls must be earned with good behavior. If you are good you will be allowed to use the phone.” He lets his eyes travel down to the ropes around my wrist. “Are you going to be a good little boy for me?”

“Yes,” I say immediately. I have already understood that I must do everything in my power to earn that phone call to Uncle Oksana. I might be able to, but little Pavel cannot climb those glass embedded walls. They will cut him to ribbons.

The Director’s smile widens as he regards us benevolently. “Good. You will like it here, there are many boys of your age.”

We are passed on to another man called Igor. He has a thin, unsmiling face and he takes us to a dank room where my ropes are cut and we are ordered to strip and change into shapeless clothes made of thick, coarse material. He opens a cupboard and extracts two pairs of striped pajamas and two toothbrushes. They don’t look new. The bristles are curved.

“The toilets are over there,” he says, waving down a dank corridor, “but they are all not functioning at the moment. You’ll have to use the latrines outside. Do you need to use them?”

Both Pavel and I nod.

With a long-suffering sigh, he leads us outside and waits for us while we use the toilets. The toilets are freezing cold. We use them as quickly as we can and join Igor.

Shivering with cold, we follow him upstairs to a long room full of cots. The smell of urine is much stronger here. There are shelves on the walls and there are neat little piles of clothes, soap and toothbrushes on them. No toys, books, photos of family, or any kind of personal possessions.

Igor tries to give us cots in different parts of the room, but I insist that I want to stay with my brother. Something flashes in his eyes. A secret smile. As if he knows something I don’t.

“I’m hungry,” Pavel says in a soft voice.

“You’ve missed supper time. You’ll have to wait until the morning for breakfast. It’ll be lights out in twenty minutes, so you boys might as well stay here.”

As soon as he goes away, Pavel turns to me, his eyes filling with tears. “Are Mama and Papa really dead?”

“I don’t think so.”

“So why have they brought us here?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s a mistake. I need to call Uncle Oksana. He will come and take us back,” I mutter.

“Are we really the littlest enemies?”

I grab both his hands. “No, we’re not. We didn’t do anything wrong and neither did Papa and Mama. It’s all a mistake. A terrible mistake,” I say fiercely.

He nods and I let go of his small hands.

“I’m afraid,” he whispers, his beautiful eyes filling with tears.

“Don’t be afraid. I’m here. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“Do I have to sleep alone?”

“No. I’ll sleep with you.”

He frowns. “But you don’t like sleeping with me.”

“I’ll sleep with you tonight.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Thank you.” His small hand goes around my back. “Who will sleep with Lyubov tonight?” he asks.

That is the moment I get really scared. In my head Papa is saying, “Now walk to the shop together. Hold Pavel’s hand. Don’t ever let go. You are in charge of your little brother.” Pavel is still too small. How am I going to protect him in this vast place?

“Will Lyubov be alone?” Pavel asks again.

“No,” I say softly. “Duscha will take him with her.”

His lips wobble. “That’s good. I wouldn’t want him to be alone. You don’t think she’ll put him in the washing machine, do you?”

“Why would she do that?”

“She’s always threatening to.”

“She doesn’t really mean it. She only says that when you don’t pick your toys up, or eat your food.”

For a while he is silent.

“Where do you think Mama and Papa are?”

I look at him seriously. “I’m going to tell you a secret, but you can never tell anyone, okay?”

“Okay,” he whispers, his eyes huge.

I lean close to his ear and say, “I think they’ve gone to America to find a home for us.”

“How do you know?” he whispers back in my ear.

“Because I heard them talking. They said they were going to find a home, and then we were all going to move to America. We can all go to a drive-in, eat burgers and fries, and drink Coca Cola.”

“Really?” His eyes are shining.

“Really. But you can’t tell anyone.”

He shakes his head solemnly. “No. I won’t. Wolves can tear away my heart, but I won’t tell anyone.”

I smile. “T

hat’s what Mama says.”

“And I agree with her.”

“It’s going to be fine. I’ll take care of you.”

“I want Mama,” he says, and begins to cry.

“Shhh …” I say, and holding his small body close to me, rock him the way I have seen Mama and Duscha do to him when he has a fever.

We huddle together on the cot in that cold room and stare at the blank gray walls. Both of us are in a state of profound shock. We can hardly believe we have somehow gone from our warm study room, a little bored with doing homework and the smells of Duscha preparing a hearty stew, to one of the most dreaded and hostile places imaginable for a child in Russia.

A dyetskii dom (A children’s home)

Chapter Twenty-Five

Star

I wake up early and check my new phone. No calls or messages. I go into the beautiful marble bathroom and take a shower. Wrapped up in a fluffy robe, I sit on my bed, and call Nan. She asks how I am and I tell her that I am better, and that I will be going to see my dad tomorrow.

“Yes, that would be good. He was asking about you yesterday.”

“I’ll see him tomorrow,” I repeat.

“What are you and Nigel up to today?”

I close my eyes. This part is even more painful. “Not much. We’ll probably stay in today.”

“Probably best. You stay indoors until you feel completely better.”

“Yeah, I will.”

“If you want I’ll make you some soup and your grandad can take it around to you.”

“No, don’t do that. I’m almost better.”

“Are you sure, Love? Cause it’s no trouble.”

“No need. Rosa said she’ll bring something around.”

“All right then.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow.”

I hang up with a sigh, and call Rosa.

“About bloody time,” she says. “How’s it going?”