The Big Green Tent (61 page)

“You have it good, Maria Moiseevna. You are a bona fide Jew, and there is no need to unmask you. Half my life I feared being taken for a Jew, and now I live in fear that they will unmask me as a German. And all the while, you and I are just ordinary Russian intellectuals.”

*   *   *

“Who are these people you're taking on as graduate students this year, Yakov Petrovich?” Korobtsov said, not offering him a seat.

How sick I am of him, how sick I am of him, how sick I am of all of them …

“Are you lacking some documents, Igor Stepanovich? There's a student named Sasha Rubin, and an in absentia student—one Mikha Melamid. They're good kids, both graduates of our institute.”

“Sit down, sit down, Yakov Petrovich. We have some things to talk about. Sasha Rubin is fine—good recommendations, he's a Komsomol organizer. But how well do you know this Melamid?”

It was plain as day. They didn't like Melamid. There was something about him that gave them pause. Maria Moiseevna had been right: he shouldn't have allowed Jews to take two spots in the program. They'd seize upon it. There was one young man from Moldavia, but he didn't have a very strong academic background. They would have accepted him, but he hadn't passed his entrance exams …

“He just published a very interesting article. He's already working in the field. Well-read. Keen on his subject. He has all the makings of a scholar,” said Yakov Petrovich.

“Um-hmm…” Korobtsov paused. “And why him in particular? Other kids took the entrance exams, too. Take a look…” He rifled through some papers, and read out a name syllable by syllable: “Pe-re-po-pes-cu, Ne-do-po-pes-cu, something along those lines. From Moldavia, an ordinary fellow. And you give us these Melamids, Rabinoviches…”

How I hate you, how I hate you, how I hate you …

“Melamid is one of our own graduates, and he has a job we recommended him for. He's a talented and serious young man!”

“Umm. Well, Yakov Petrovich, you tell this serious young man that the first section wouldn't let him in. If he has any questions, he can come to me, and I'll explain.”

“Do you mean to say that you won't okay the application?”

“Exactly. Why are you looking at me that way? We're looking out for your interests, the interests of the institute, and the country as a whole! Are you willing to answer for him, Yakov Petrovich, if he gets mixed up in some sort of trouble? Personally vouch for him?”

Go to the devil, go to the devil, you can all go straight to the devil …

“I'll think about it, Igor Stepanovich. I'll think about it.”

*   *   *

In fact, there was nothing to think about. Financial backing for the laboratory, Maria Moiseevna's doctoral dissertation, which she hadn't been able to defend since 1953, the opening of the learning center, colleagues and associates, students and graduate students—Yakov Petrovich couldn't afford to beat his head against a brick wall.

*   *   *

In the fall, so many things happened in Mikha's life, both good and bad, almost simultaneously, that they all blended into one patchy, vibrant mass. Alyona's behavior toward him suddenly changed, and their nervous relationship, with its thaws and its cold snaps, accompanied by Alyona's constant emotional fireworks, suddenly grew calm and close. Mikha didn't understand why the change had occurred; Alyona didn't consider it necessary to explain to him that she had broken off with a married man she had been in love with since the age of sixteen. She put him out to pasture and decided to marry Mikha. Mikha was overjoyed.

He hadn't yet managed to come to terms with all the implications of this imminent change in his life, to think through the myriad quotidian issues it raised, and to which Alyona was oblivious, when things were resolved in a very unexpected way: Aunt Genya died suddenly and without any fanfare.

She had planned on living a long time, and getting properly sick before the end. She had already accumulated a sizable list of illnesses; but she was deceived. She went to bed in the evening and died in her sleep, thus magnanimously resolving, in a way completely uncharacteristic of her, Mikha's greatest worry—where to live.

*   *   *

It so happened that on the day of Aunt Genya's death, Mikha didn't spend the night at home. He and Alyona had gone to the dacha of a girlfriend of Ilya's. It was a small gathering of friends against the backdrop of nature. When Mikha returned home late in the evening of the following day, Aunt Genya didn't greet him with her usual reproaches or complaints. She was, rather, completely cold and calm.

*   *   *

Now he was the only registered person in that home, master of a 150-square-foot room in the center of town. Marlen had been registered at his wife's address for a long time already. The room was supposed to have been left to Minna, and Mikha, according to the same strategic family plan, was supposed to receive a job appointment and go live somewhere else.

Marlen was a pragmatic man. Three years before he might have been distressed about losing the room and not carrying out the family plan, but at this point everything in his life had changed. He had taken the plunge into Judaism. He had started studying Hebrew, reading the Torah, corresponding with Zionists, and preparing himself for a long struggle for the right to be repatriated to Israel. The biggest obstacle for him on the path of his journey was his mother. Aunt Genya hated Israel, which, according to her, was the cause of all Jewish suffering. She had already informed her son that she had no intention of leaving her homeland and would never grant him permission to leave himself.

The death of his mother hastened Marlen's reunion with Zion.

When Mikha asked Marlen what to do with Aunt Genya's belongings, he merely shrugged:

“Ask the other aunts. They can take what they want. Throw everything else away.”

But by this time the aunts had already taken everything that was worth anything.

Alyona came to Mikha's house for the first time after Aunt Genya had died. She walked through the door, paused on the threshold, and looked around her. She saw a crystal chandelier with missing baubles, and other luxuries amid poverty: broken vases; two paintings in thick, gilded plaster frames; a potted geranium; an aloe plant; and a three-quart jar with a Japanese mushroom purported to aid digestion sitting on the windowsill. There was a photograph of a fairly pretty woman with a permanent wave and two children—an intelligent-looking adolescent boy and a plump, smiling little girl. The girl looked about three, and her fat tongue was protruding from her mouth.

“Is that Aunt Genya and her children?” Alyona asked.

Mikha nodded. He suddenly felt ashamed of the squalor of his home, and, at the same time, uncomfortable that he was betraying his poor aunt by feeling this shame.

“Was the little girl sick?” She indicated with her eyes that she meant little Minna.

“Yes, she had Down syndrome. It was only when I went to the institute that I understood. Aunt Genya was told it was some kind of endocrinological disorder. She died.”

Alyona nodded, and remained silent for several minutes. Then she said:

“What a sad, awful home. This was just how I imagined it. Well, not exactly, but almost.”

She entered the room, sat down at the table covered with maroon-colored plush. She ran her finger over the dusty nap and said plaintively:

“Mikha, this is no place to live.”

“It will be fine, Alyona. I'll renovate it. The other guys will help me.”

“No, it's not about the condition of the room…” Alyona sighed, and sank into a heavy despondency that covered her like a rain cloud.

Her married lover had received her in just such a room. The same round table with a plush tablecloth, the same kind of chandelier with missing crystal baubles hanging above it, the same photograph of a pretty woman with a permanent wave—but in that one she had been holding a fan. Alyona looked at the two shelves with books. Even the books were the same, though the married man had had far more of them. And that room had been three times bigger than this, and partitioned with a curtain.

Mikha wanted with all his heart and soul to reach out to her, but he was afraid to touch her. He couldn't summon up the courage, and he waited for a sign from her. She came to him, and ran her fingers through his thick red locks. And he took heart; because just a moment before he had been certain that he was such a blockhead, that with all his shortcomings and disadvantages he was no match for Alyona, and that not only would she never agree to marry him, she wouldn't even want to look at such a nonentity anymore.

Something of the sort had occurred to her; but she stroked his hair, and said over and over again:

“Mikha, you're so good. You're too good for me, you know.”

She already knew in advance that all these qualms, these second thoughts, would disappear, that Mikha was not only a sweet and pure human being, but also the most reliable, and loyal, and the finest of the lovers she had known till then. The married man, though, always a bit tipsy and coolly relaxed—she couldn't quite shake him. What was it that bound her to him? She had an inkling, but she was unable to express it, to fathom it completely.

*   *   *

The springs in the lumpy divan creaked wildly, but it held out the entire night and half the following day. All the oppressive, alien thoughts fled from their young heads, and when they awoke, both of them felt giddy, weightless, and empty, and basked in the triumph of a battle won.

Mikha's happiness knew no bounds. He felt it would last him the rest of his life. In the daytime, when Alyona was with Mikha, she felt fine, but she dreaded the evenings. She would fall asleep instantly, but an hour later she would wake up in unendurable nocturnal torment. Toward morning she would fall asleep again, and when she woke up, her pain would leave her, and she would even marvel at the depth of the anguish she had felt the night before.

They had to do something about this, and one day, after a typically sad and exhausting night, she and Mikha went to file for a marriage certificate. Then they went back to Mikha's, on Chistoprudny Boulevard, and threw out all that remained of Aunt Genya's junk, which even her sisters had rejected. It was the sad dust and clutter of an ordinary life: plates held together with yellowing glue, pots and pans with missing handles, half-used lipstick tubes, old newspapers, tatters, rags, and scraps, half a porcelain bear, and a little May Day flag.

In the evening Ilya and Sanya came by to help Mikha drag out the heavy furniture: the buffet, cupboard, wardrobe, and Aunt Genya's divan.

Alyona washed the floors and felt that in this empty room she would be able to live. They slept on the floor for several nights on a spread-out sleeping bag. Alyona slept deeply and soundly, without dreaming, in Mikha's embrace, and it seemed to her that he would hold her safely in his arms forever.

While the renovations were in progress, they went to stay with the Chernopyatovs for a few nights. Sergei Borisovich, who adored his daughter, grieved that she planned to move away from home. Valentina even started talking about an apartment exchange—their two rooms and Mikha's one room for a three-room apartment where they could all live together. But Alyona didn't want this.

She wanted to move into Mikha's renovated room as soon as it was ready. When the smell of paint had finally dissipated, they moved into the clean, empty room, which already seemed to have no past, except the view from the window: a littered courtyard, visually transfigured by the sixth-floor vantage point.

All that remained of the past were two cardboard boxes, a pile of books, and bundles of old letters that had been discovered at the bottom of the listing old wardrobe. Marlen had asked that they be saved; he intended to come by to fetch them. Alyona moved her easel into the room, which stood by the window and gave the place an artistic air. They also moved in a drafting table that Sergei Borisovich himself had made for her, and five large portfolios with old (which meant three years ago) work, almost all ornate, abstract designs.

The young couple didn't have a wedding celebration, but they received presents from Marlen, from Alyona's parents, and from an aunt—in the much-maligned but much-needed form of money. After her classes Alyona would scour the stores, buying new plates and pillows, taking quiet delight in her new life. Under the influence of Mikha's inexhaustible tenderness and active passion, her heartsickness began to retreat, if not altogether heal.

And at that very moment their luck ended. Yakov Petrovich called Mikha in to inform him that his graduate studies were not going to work out. The personnel office had blocked his application. Their collaborative work would continue, however.

“We won't abandon the dissertation, but, frankly speaking, the road ahead will be a long and fraught one.” Thus the discussion ended not with a period, but with an ellipsis.

At the end of the same month, upon the request of the director, Mikha resigned from the boarding school. She begged forgiveness, she wept, and she tried to justify her actions by saying that her first priority was to keep the boarding school open and not to put the forty-some children in jeopardy.

Mikha, who had caught the drift, said: “They called?”

Margarita Avetisovna nodded.

There was only one possible explanation: he was now in the crosshairs. Mikha resigned “for personal reasons.” Since he needed to give them two weeks' notice of his resignation, obligatory in this case, the director suggested he spend the time looking for a new job. Two weeks later, he returned to pick up his employment records and to say good-bye to his colleagues. Everyone looked dispirited and upset. Gleb Ivanovich wasn't there.

When Mikha asked about him, he was told that Gleb Ivanovich had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital.

Mikha felt an enormous void opening before him. He sensed a great change coming in his life: something completely new would now take root and grow out of this emptiness.