The Big Green Tent (68 page)

Late in the evenings, Sanya took out a musical score from a pile lying on the floor next to his bed. He lay down and leafed through it. Beauty and wonder. Mozart's Concerto no. 23 for piano and orchestra. Evgeniya Danilovna had once told him a story about this concerto.

Stalin heard a performance by Yudina on the radio and demanded the record. There was no recording of the concerto on the face of the earth. That very night, they roused Yudina, the conductor, and a dozen members of the orchestra, and took them to the House of Sound Recording, duly recorded it, and by morning the only copy of the record was ready. Stalin generously rewarded Yudina. It is said that he sent her an envelope containing 20,000 rubles. She answered the leader with a letter: she had sent the money to a church, and she would pray for him that God would spare him despite his evil deeds. Stalin forgave her. He said she was a Holy Fool …

Sanya studied the Mozart concerto, and happiness broke over him like a wave, from his head to his feet. Stalin wasn't the only one to have been overwhelmed on the spot by this piece. Sanya smiled, and closed the text. He turned out the light. Mozart himself was conversing with him. What more could he dream of? What better interlocutor, friend, confessor could he find? And he realized that he could endure Alyona after all.

*   *   *

Sadly, Sanya's relations with his grandmother were unraveling. She never asked any direct questions, and Sanya didn't consider it necessary to enter into explanations. Anna Alexandrovna was convinced that Alyona had lured her boy into an indecent romance with her, and was disappointed in her beloved grandson. At the same time, she saw the burden of care and responsiblity her spoiled Sanya had taken upon himself, and she admired his heroism. She suffered in the knowledge that Sanya was sinking ever deeper into the affairs of Mikha's family, and was bitterly jealous of the unhappy Alyona, for whom she had so little sympathy. And, however irrational and ridiculous, she was jealous on Mikha's behalf, considering him to be a deceived husband …

By virtue of the sins she ascribed to Sanya, Anna Alexandrovna felt a share in his guilt, and she didn't write Mikha a single letter in three years, but sent him food packets and greetings through Ilya. She knew exactly what one needed to send to the prison camps, and she even baked special cookies in which she secreted fat and bouillon cubes, and then wrapped them in paper from the official Privet baked-goods brand. They didn't allow anything homemade into the camps, but these fake Privet cookies contained an unheard-of number of calories. From time to time, she also sent money for Alyona.

She remembered very well how she had tenderly tried to dissuade Mikha from this marriage. And also: she was the only one who feared Mikha's return. She anticipated scandal, revelations, unmasking, indecency. No, even more than that, she feared a catastrophe. What did she know, and what was presentiment?

Mikha forbade himself to count the days until his release; but he couldn't help it. The fewer that remained, the stronger was his anxiety that they wouldn't let him go. His friends were also counting the days.

It was, of course, very silly of them to assume that Mikha would be released in precisely three years, at exactly midnight on the day he was scheduled to go free. They already knew that he had been brought under convoy to Moscow, and that he was in Lefortovo Prison. They assumed, not without reason, that this was connected with the arrest of Sergei Borisovich, who, as they also knew, was in Lefortovo as well.

Three of them arrived at Lefortovo toward midnight—Ilya, Sanya, and Victor Yulievich. Ilya had an old jacket and new jeans in his rucksack. Ilya also brought a new pair of shoes for Mikha—true, they were one size too big, but they were fine ones.

There were three places from which Mikha might have been released: through the central entrance, the investigative offices, or the service entrance. The friends kept watch at these doors throughout the night and morning, until noon the next day. Then they went to inquire. A militarized-looking woman at a small window told them that Melamid had already left.

They rushed to call Mikha at home. Alyona came to the phone, and said in a quiet, remote voice:

“He's home. Come.”

It turned out that they had released him at eight in the morning through the investigative offices, and his waiting friends had simply missed him. They got a taxi, and twenty minutes later they all tumbled into Mikha's front entrance. The elevator was out of order. Sanya and Ilya flew up to the sixth floor via the stairs, and an aging Victor Yulievich, panting from exertion, followed, two floors behind. They waited until he caught up with them, then rang the doorbell. Mikha himself opened the door. Rather, it was a gaunt, colorless ghost of Mikha … Ilya lost no time remarking on this, trying to avoid any outburst of feeling the situation might otherwise have inspired.

“Well, you're nothing more than a shadow!”

And Mikha laughed, suddenly himself again.

“I'm no shadow! I'm the skeleton of a shadow!”

Victor Yulievich raised his hand in a gesture familiar to them since childhood, and said:

“This to me

In dreadful secrecy impart they did;

And I with them the third night kept the watch;

Where, as they had delivered, both in time,

Form of the thing, each word made true and good,

The apparition comes…”

And everything seemed to fall back into place. They slapped one another on the back, pestered Mikha, and barged into the living room in a tumult. In spite of the former ideals of severity and asceticism, it was crammed with knickknacks and junk—a chair, a child's bed, and even a curtain that partitioned the child's sleeping corner from the rest of the room. The place was fast reverting to the appearance it had had during Aunt Genya's time.

Maya, who had just been put down for her nap, woke up and began to howl. Alyona darted into the sleeping nook to comfort her, then brought the little girl out to see the guests. Maya stretched out her arms toward Sanya, the only one of the guests familiar to her. Sanya took her in his arms, and jiggled her gently up and down. She threw her arms around his neck, hugging him.

“What did you bring me?” she asked in a voice raspy from sleep.

Then he murmured something in her ear, and she smiled.

“Where?”

Sanya took a bright glass marble out of his pocket, and rolled it around on the palm of his hand. The girl snatched it like a little monkey.

Mikha watched the two of them jealously. The girl didn't recognize her shy father. He was seeing her for the first time in her life, and he couldn't yet grasp that this small creature, a living being with curly hair, big eyes, and busy little fingers, had come from him, from his great love for Alyona. It was still not completely comprehensible to him how these two things, the most important things in his life, were connected.

Mikha had already taken a bath before they arrived. He scrubbed the three years of vileness off his skin. He wanted to wash himself from inside out, to clean the prison air out of his nose, his throat, and his lungs, to purge the foul prison food and water from his mouth, his intestines, his stomach …

Seven years! It would take seven years. In seven years, all the cells in the human organism are renewed. Who had told him that? But how long would it take to cleanse the soul of prison filth? Oh, if he could only wash his brain in liquid nitrogen, in hydrochloric acid, in lye, to expunge those three years from his memory! Let it all be washed away, so that he would forget everything that he knew and loved, everything he revered, as long as all trace of these three years would vanish.

His friends stayed a short while, less than an hour, then left. The three of them, their small family, remained. There was a lot they had to talk about. The little girl clung to her mother, pushing her father away. Mikha frowned and wrinkled his nose; she was afraid, and turned away from him.

What a high price to pay. The child doesn't recognize me, she'll never recognize me.
Mikha didn't feel things by halves, and he suffered from an acute sense of rejection.

“Let's all go for a walk. Maya, want to go swing?”

“Yes. With you,” she said, and took her mother by the hand.

“We'll take Papa with us, too.” And they went outside together.

Maya sat down on the swings, and Alyona pushed her gently.

“They dragged me back here under armed guard five weeks before my release was scheduled, and I realized that they were planning to pin something else on me. It turned out to be the case of Chernopyatov and Kushchenko,” he told Alyona, through Maya's interruptions. “They didn't let us meet face-to-face for a confrontation for a long time, but they let me read their testimony. The testimony was dreadful; I didn't believe a word of it. I thought they were just planting false evidence cooked up by some agents. They named more than thirty names, including that of Edik Tolmachev. But this case wasn't about
Gamayun
, but about the
Chronicle
, about all possible human rights cases. The protocols ran the gamut—sincere confessions, repentance, you name it.”

“I know all of this already,” Alyona said drily, nodding.

“I didn't believe it until the very end. Actually, I still can't believe it. But we met face-to-face. And what I heard was an echo of the protocols. What they did to them I don't know. Maybe they beat the confessions out of them. I denied everything. Except that Sergei Borisovich was your father and my father-in-law. I was sure they were going to tack this case on me, too. Until the last day I couldn't believe they would set me free. I still can't believe it, really.”

Alyona didn't raise her eyes to him. The expression on her face didn't even seem to register his presence. Mikha put his hand on top of hers.

“I just can't wrap my head around it, Alyona. Sergei Borisovich couldn't possibly have said all that. But I heard him say it with my own ears. Don't think that I love him any less, Alyona. I'm just terribly, terribly sorry for him.”

“I don't know, Mikha. I don't think I am. Since childhood, I always believed I had a hero for a father.” Alyona did lift her eyes, but stared at one place under the swing, at the confused shadows made by the seat that carried her daughter back and forth, back and forth.

“You're not swinging me right, Mama!” the little girl said sternly. Mikha grabbed hold of the chain of the swing.

“Don't touch it!” she said even more sternly.

Toward evening Zhenya Tolmacheva and an acquaintance from Alyona's institute stopped over and stayed for a long time. They sent them away at nine, saying the little girl needed a bath.

In the communal bathroom, they placed the children's tub on a stool, filled it with warm water, and placed Maya in it. She washed her dolly and her rubber dog diligently, then just splashed around. Mikha watched from the doorway and was filled with an unparalleled new love for the wet child, her darkened curls sticking to her forehead.

“Get the towel,” Alyona said, and he took the fragile back into the large towel. It was the first time he had held his own child in his arms. She was very light, but weighty. Small, but enormous; bigger than Mikha, bigger than the whole world. And that's what she was—the whole world.

My little world, my giant world,

A world all eyes, light-brown, and moist,

One sleepy green eye, shade unfurled,

Ta-dum, ta-dum, ta-dum, ta-dum …

The little girl had fallen asleep. Mikha embraced his wife. She covered his lips with her hand and said:

“You haven't told me anything I wasn't already aware of. I know everything. I spoke to his lawyer. You don't know her, Natalia Kirillovna. She's wonderful. I asked her to tell him I didn't ever want to see him again.”

She didn't say the word
father
. She said “him.” Mikha took her hand away.

“Alyona, that's crazy. You can't do that to him. He deserves only pity…”

*   *   *

Everything was just as it had been before—the courtyard, the neighbors, the broken floorboard in the corridor, the poplar trees outside the window, the ancient curbstones that marked out what had once been a flower bed, the former skating rink … the saleswomen in the bakery and the fish store, the building manager. Yet it seemed as though thirty years had passed, and not just three. One false move and everything might split open with a resounding crash—the house, the courtyard, his little daughter, his wife, the whole city. And April, so warm and welcoming this year.

Anna Alexandrovna was the first person Mikha visited after his release, in the evening on his second day of freedom. She was the one he told, on that same day, that Alyona's father was giving evidence and that he was afraid it would land him back in prison.

Anna Alexandrovna had prepared for Mikha's arrival: she had spent the whole day before his visit in the kitchen.

“You know, Mikha, there's nothing new under the sun. My husband's own brother sent him to prison. They both perished. It's fate that decides, and not our own actions or behavior, whether good or bad. Please eat, I made it for you.”

Three years in prison camps had changed him beyond recognition: a dark, haggard face, thinning hair, eyes faded almost to yellow. And the way he thought about everything seemed to have somehow shifted.

Anna Alexandrovna had not changed in the least. Her face was overlaid with a dense, fine net of wrinkles, as though carved with a burin. It had appeared very early and had frozen in place, without disfiguring her in the least. Now, when she was nearing eighty, she appeared to be very youthful. Looking at her, pondering her enigmatic words, Mikha realized that Anna Alexandrovna was a strikingly beautiful woman. And much more than beautiful. Through the veil of wrinkles, through the abyss of years, he saw her face suffused with light and loveliness.

“Anna Alexandrovna, I've so missed your home … If you only knew how much I love you…”