Denouncer (12 page)

B.F.

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Sasha had been denounced, his name now added to the millions of others in Moscow’s Archive of Denunciations. For safety’s sake, he knew from Brodsky that it was important to discover the betrayer. Most informers, Brodsky had told him, were cowards and, once confronted, usually desisted, but not until they had tried to justify themselves with feeble explanations. In this case, the denouncer seemed apparent: Goran Youzhny. But when Sasha accosted him, not at school, which Goran frequented to chat with Devora Berberova, but in the photo lab at the farmhouse, Goran swore his innocence, deplored the cowardice of the one who reported Sasha, and swore to find the informer. A moment’s reflection convinced Sasha that innumerable people knew about the priest’s flooring, from students to farmers to friends. Finding the guilty party would prove virtually impossible, a fact that Goran had to know.

Then, too, there was that other matter.

A growing number of people feared that Father Zossima, a defrocked priest, was courting imprisonment or exile. They whispered, without proof, that he had, in violation of Soviet law, given asylum to a runaway soldier. Although numerous such military personnel roamed the countryside, having been inducted into the Red Army against their will, Sasha’s fears led him to conclude that the man was Petr Selivanov. But whether he had come to Balyk to see Galina and Alya or to expose Sasha remained to be seen.

7

P
oking his head into Galina’s office, Sasha said, “Another day without my having to read a condemnation. Life is improving.”

He was referring to the spate of announcements that had appeared outside her office on the bulletin board, which she could see through the window next to her desk. In an attempt to liberalize the school, Sasha had introduced numerous changes, among them an opportunity for students to post unsigned complaints outside the main office.

“You must not have looked very closely,” she said. “There’s an accusation that Semen Sestrov is engaging in revisionist history, with an eye to ingratiating himself with the Bolsheviks.”

Sasha knew better than to ask who authored the statement. Galina had made it clear to him at the outset of the liberalized policy that she would never reveal a student’s name. She was, she had declared, “no denouncer.” “An admirable policy,” Sasha had thought at the time, not anticipating that other teachers and students would accuse Galina of collaboration, a charge that Sasha dismissed with the observation that Koba himself had deplored the eavesdropping and searches that he had endured as a seminarian in Georgia. To quote Stalin was politically astute even if the Boss had instituted a police state where nothing was private, including a person’s thoughts. In the public world of the Soviet state, one parroted the Party line; in the private world, the only safety was in silence.

Other reforms that Sasha instituted merely exacerbated the resentment that the faculty, all older than Sasha, felt at having been passed over for the directorship of the Michael School. Behind his back, they called him all manner of names: “upstart,” “climber,” “parvenu,” “ass kisser,” “bright boy,” “Filatov’s fellator,” “God’s gift to learning.” Accustomed to the authoritarianism of Tsarist and Soviet schools, the teachers balked at the idea of students having a say, either to them or to the director. Sasha’s open-door policy, which encouraged students to drop in and chat, was anathema to those who wanted their minions to remain strictly obedient. Most hated of all were Sasha’s frequent observations of classroom teaching. Heretofore, the teachers had ruled over their classes with complete license. The classroom was as sacrosanct as the marriage bed; and fearful were the punishments visited upon students who took their complaints outside of class.

The faculty therefore treated the freedom of students to post unsigned comments on the bulletin board as a violation of trust on Sasha’s part and a countenancing of public denunciations. Little wonder that Galina was besieged by faculty who insisted they tell her the name of the traitors. But having gained the students’ confidence, she was not about to betray it to dispel the discontent of teachers who enjoyed tenured sinecures. The new Soviet order called for change. Well, here was change. Unfortunately, it threatened to rend the fabric of a famous school. When the complaints reached Sasha’s ears, Filatov had already read them. They had come to him through denunciatory letters. No teacher would have risked posting a complaint on the bulletin board and having it seen by Galina, who was widely accepted as Sasha’s “woman.” Some even saw a resemblance between Alya and Sasha, and concluded that the child was a result of an earlier liaison, which would explain why Sasha gave her a position at the school. Other suppositions touched upon the child being the issue of Galina and Filatov, an indiscretion covered up by Sasha, for which he was amply rewarded.

Filatov’s letter to Sasha came right to the point.

Citizen Parsky,

You have been accused of anti-Soviet behavior. As soon as possible please respond in writing to the following charges: laxity, indiscipline, formalism, subversion, bourgeois materialism, favoritism, wrecking, elitism, and Trotskyism.

B.F.

Ironically, these complaints served to strengthen the relationship between Sasha and Galina. If he had hoped to win Galina’s affections through Alya or his giving employment and housing to her, he was mistaken. She seemed skeptical of his many kindnesses, but the moment he came under attack, the old warrior spirit in her genes came to the fore. As they sat together at the kitchen table in the common cause of answering his critics, they shared ideas, compared feelings, and treated each other as equals. It was she who said that general answers would not suffice and that, since the Soviets loved dialectical arguments, Sasha should parse every charge and use the favored “Although” opening to allow that his detractors might have some justice on their side.

Together they composed the following reply, with Galina taking the lead.

Comrade Filatov,

Although you must, given your responsible position, investigate grave complaints that come before you, and although their authors are well meaning, let me assure you that the charges issue from nothing more than discontent with the numerous changes I’ve brought to the school, in conformity with all that you wished. To enter the forest, we Soviets say, one has to be prepared to shoot wolves. To bring about pedagogical reforms in an institution long-accustomed to conducting business in the “old way” requires stern measures. You yourself directed me to raise the school’s standards. I think that if you were to examine the students, you would find that their achievements currently surpass those of former classes.

As to the specific charges, permit me to observe that whether they refer to me or to the students is not at all clear; and yet the distinction is a vital one. Am I personally to blame, or are my policies creating an uncomfortable atmosphere in which the students are now demanding more of their teachers and taking control of their own learning? But since you have asked that I speak to each of the complaints, I shall do so.

Laxity
. Have I been lax? Yes. I have allowed the students to escape the iron collar of rote learning and silent obedience. They are now allowed to speak in class, post their complaints on the school bulletin board, speak to the director, and spend time, if they wish, in a choir that performs music of their own choosing. So I would distinguish between my laxity toward the students and toward the faculty. The latter admittedly chafe at the new regimen.

Indiscipline
. I suspect that this charge, like “laxity,” refers to the new freedoms granted students. Students are now asking questions that heretofore were unthinkable. The result: Teachers have to prepare for class with more thought and depth. My own behavior has, I believe, been beyond reproach. I do not carouse; I do not smoke; I rarely drink. I read all the new directives that come from the Party; I study the works of Marx, Lenin, Engels, and Comrade Stalin; and, as you requested, I have befriended Avram Brodsky to learn what I can. At his request, I am currently reading a collection of essays written by Karl Radek. Some of the ideas are clearly subversive and, frankly, offensive to me, but I realize they were written before he was restored to the bosom of the Party.

Formalism
. In all candor, I must admit that this term has never been entirely clear to me. The critics of formalism treat the term as synonymous with art for art’s sake. But even the “purest” work of art speaks to the age from which it issues. No subject matter can escape class, and no style can hide its intentions. A work by Rembrandt can just as easily inform the masses as a painting about the great October Revolution. Speaking personally, I readily admit that my own literary tastes run to Restoration drama, which can be condemned as a courtier’s literature, or it can be read for its insight into the pomposity and foibles of a class. I choose to do the latter.

Subversion
. Once again I must ask whether I or my educational reforms are at issue? That I am reading Radek, I have already admitted. That I have undermined the previous system of teaching at the Michael School, I plead guilty. Am I a member of any political group? No. Do I write for any underground journals? No. Have I allowed the writings of Trotsky to enter our classrooms? No. I must therefore conclude that the complaint, like most of the others, bears on the new pedagogy.

Bourgeois materialism
. Here, I suspect, the complaint has nothing to do with students and everything to do with me. Alya Selivanova wished for a pony. I arranged with one of our local farms for her to have one—on loan. In a year or two, the animal will be returned. I should observe that a number of students enjoy playing with the pony, which is the only pet at the school. If you wish me to return the animal, I will, of course, comply immediately.

Favoritism
. Yes, I employed Galina, found a tutor for Alya, and allowed Goran Youzhny to build a photography lab in the stables. The first two actions cost the school little or nothing. The third had your blessing and that of the Politburo. But if Comrade Filatov wishes, I can close the lab. Ah! There was one other instance of favoritism. When I attended Leonid Astafurov’s class in Latin, I praised the man for his cleverness. To help the students understand the peculiar syntax of Latin, he had them speak Russian in the same inverted way. Although I never learned Latin in that manner, I thought it effective, despite the carping of other teachers.

Wrecking
. Have I wrecked the former way of doing things? Yes. Even Brodsky complains. As the former school director, he told me that he saw no reason to change a system that had stood the test of time. But that treasured past of his, as I explained to him, included Imperial Russia, Tsars, and serfs. Some would say that I wrecked the farmhouse by partitioning and renovating it to make two quarters from one. My view is that I improved the property—by means of barter. I admitted two students to the school free of cost because they did the work for nothing. Did I wreck the school by admitting the two marginal students? They are children of the proletariat and can only improve the education of the masses.

Elitism
. From its very founding, the school was dedicated to providing a first-rate education. By definition, then, it is elitist, especially when we compare the school to those others in nearby oblasts. Are the students selected on the basis of money or pull? No. We give preferential treatment to the children of poor, working-class parents. Are those students high achievers? Absolutely! Which only goes to prove that proletarian children are as gifted as the children of the privileged, even if the former take some remedial work to bring them up to speed.

Trotskyism
. Having already admitted to reading the early essays of Radek, I would also include among my sins the belief that the world would be better served if the working classes in other countries took control of their governments. Surrounded as we are by Western hostility, and seeing the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany (which are not socialist countries, though they say they are), I worry for the safety of Russia, which would be less precarious if we had sympathetic neighbors and not warlike ones.

S. Parsky

After reading aloud a draft of the letter, Sasha sadly turned to Galina and observed that his colleagues had not taken kindly to his reforms, and that most of the complaints could be organized under a one-word heading: “Change” or “Reform.”

“You can now understand,” she said, “why progress requires constant struggle. The conservative, the self-satisfied, the inertial will always outnumber those who want change, particularly if the change means having to act in a different way. We are all creatures of habit, and once we get set in our ways, we don’t want to trade the familiar for the foreign. To some people change is tantamount to learning a new language. In the Michael School, you have asked your faculty to speak a new tongue. Of course, they’re unhappy. In a well-run capitalist society, they simply give the workers more money or additional inducements; in Soviet society, we appeal to the greater good. Material rewards are usually more effective than abstract ones, so if you can think of a way to bribe your faculty, I’m sure the complaints will end.”

Mulling over Galina’s advice, Sasha asked, “What if I introduced a sabbatical system? Every X number of years, a teacher receives a term off at full pay. Perhaps, then, vital saplings will grow from dead wood.”

“Give me a day to think it over,” said Galina.

The next evening they were sitting at the kitchen table, where most of their serious conversations occurred; and as always, they were sipping tea and nibbling black bread with honey. Sasha had come to depend on Galina’s intuitive sense and reasoned advice. Not only intelligent, she was also cunning. He, less practical, still believed in the power of ideas to persuade. She knew better. Even the early church fathers learned quickly that homilies on good behavior meant nothing unless you could promise the faithful a reward: an eternal life spent in a celestial paradise. How the Jews managed to keep their people in line without the promise of heaven remained an enigma. Perhaps the absence of a bribe explained their fractiousness and their constant striving, although the Old Testament did make clear that God’s rewards and punishments were visited upon one here and now, and not in some future Eden.

Galina opined she would have to ask Brodsky about Jews, though Avram rarely ever mentioned religion. He probably found it safer to say nothing, buried, as he was, in a Greek Catholic community, and serving a term of internal exile. Galina had met him only a few times, and always in the town square. She found his reminiscences of Kolyma captivating but felt uncomfortable when Bogdan Dolin would sourly ask him a question like, “What was the daily ration of bread?” The source of Dolin’s skepticism remained a mystery, but Brodsky’s ability to turn a Dolin question into a Brodsky one was undoubted. “The daily ration of bread, you ask? Are we talking about a political prisoner or a criminal, a man with or without contacts, a woman with or without her skirt pulled up?” Dolin would grumble and walk off. On the few occasions that Galina remained to listen to Brodsky chat with his “faithful,” she detected a keen analytic intelligence. He had even graced her with his well-known wit when she asked him whether he thought that the astounding number of people accused of being “wreckers” were mostly innocent? His reply: “Has the government ever been wrong? Not to my knowledge.” Everyone had laughed.