The Big Green Tent (71 page)

They shuffled awkwardly in the doorway. Zoya Vasilievna told them to take their coats off, and she prepared tea and cookies. They sat in the kitchen, both of them still in their blue caps, and didn't say a word. Zoya Vasilievna placed a heavy bundle on the table. The soft fabric parcel was wrapped with newspaper and tied up with string. She put the parcel in a homemade fabric grocery bag as they watched. Then she placed on the table a note, which read: “These are military decorations that need to be kept safe.” The girls read it and nodded amiably. Then Zoya took a match and set the note on fire. She put the remains of the paper under a stream of water, and threw it in the garbage pail.

The girls exchanged glances: this was serious.

They went out the main door, and looked around. Outside it was quiet and deserted, and a vacillating April ambiguity reigned. They walked to the metro, not talking. They arrived at Belorussky Station, and Tonya walked Sima to the metro entrance. Next to the entrance Sima held out the bag to her friend.

“Listen, I'm scared. What if Mama finds it? You take them home to your house, okay?”

“All right,” Tonya said agreeably. “But where should I hide them? Maybe in the broom closet? We have one under the stairs. Though the lock gets broken off pretty often, so people can steal firewood.”

“But what's the firewood for?” Sima said, surprised.

“Nothing. No one has stoves anymore, but the firewood's still there. And people steal it.”

“But it's almost summer now…”

“Yeah, that's true.”

Tonya took the trolleybus from Belorussky Station almost to her front door on Dzerzhinsky Square.

*   *   *

As if on cue, she arrived when there was no one home. Vitka, her nephew, was at the neighbor's; his mother, Valka, was out living it up; and her older brother, Tolya, was doing time.

Her mother wasn't home, either; she was working the night shift.

Pressing the parcel to her stomach, Tonya walked through the apartment. Should she put it in a box on top of the wardrobe? There were no empty boxes—only three, stuffed full. In the lower drawer of the wardrobe there were tools. Sometimes her mother opened it to get out a hammer or some nails. They were left over from her father. The underwear was all folded in little piles; only on the bottom shelf was there a messy clump of them. There were old underpants with a nap, at one time blue and peach-colored, and with faded, worn-out crotches. Her mother had cut pieces of fabric that was a bit sturdier, and, in multiple layers, from the inside, had patched the ones that still had some life in them with crude hand-stitching. Tonya took the most ragged pairs and wrapped them around the parcel, then stuffed them right up against the back wall of the wardrobe. The parcel took up almost half the drawer. She took the parcel out again and unwrapped it. There were eleven fancy boxes inside. They contained military decorations of enamel and gold, very lovely to look at, and surprisingly heavy. Tonya decided to get rid of the boxes, since they took up a lot of room. She removed the decorations, and hooked or pinned each piece to the fabric, then rolled it up into a large sausage and again stuffed it into the drawer, right up against the wall. She decided to store the boxes separately, in her own little corner on the top shelf. Empty boxes—what did they matter? The decorations were the important thing.

*   *   *

Early in the morning on May 9, Vitka, Tonya's pesky nephew, discovered the parcel in the wardrobe. The other kids in his courtyard had told him that moms hide money in the wardrobe, in the underwear. You just had to look hard for it. He started with the lower drawer. He didn't find any money there, but his hands felt the lumpy parcel by the wall right away. He pulled it out and unwrapped it—and what did he see there but decorations and medals pinned to his grandmother's old underpants! What a find! And it was just the right day for decorations and medals: Victory Day. He unfolded the underpants, full of amazement. There were lots of decorations and medals. He counted five; then five more. And there was still another one. They were pinned and hooked every which way, and he slowly and methodically freed them all from the worn-out rags. Then, not worried in the least about his own shirt, he began sticking them on both sides of it, from the shoulders down. Their weight pulled down the fabric, and they sparkled with gold and silver and Kremlin stars. He went out into the courtyard to show the other kids. He had forgotten all about the money he had promised to look for in the underwear in the wardrobe. But the kids had forgotten about it, too, and had already left. While he was wondering where to find them, three big boys appeared out of nowhere: Artur the Armenian, Sevka, and Timka the Stump. They immediately descended on him and started ripping off the decorations. Vitka hollered and made a dash for the gates.

*   *   *

The fortieth day after Anna Alexandrovna's death fell on May 9, and Vasily Innokentievich, retired colonel of the Medical Corps, rather than meeting with his fellow officers from the regiment, went to attend a memorial service at the Church of Peter and Paul by the Yauza Gates. There was still a whole hour before the service was scheduled to begin, and he decided to go on foot from Dzerzhinsky Square. He walked along the western wall of the Polytechnical Museum, but on the opposite side of Serov Passage. A bevy of boys rolled out from under a gate and collapsed in a thrashing, kicking heap at his feet. One of them, the one being pursued, and the smallest, screamed loudly. The old man picked him up off the ground. The boy looked like he was about seven, with crooked teeth, and large gaps where they hadn't grown in yet. The three older boys scrambled back under the gate, and spied on them from around the corner. The little boy squirmed in Vasily's arms like a fish on a hook. His shirt was clanking with brightly shining metal … military decorations.

Vasily Innokentievich set the little fellow down on the ground. Holding him by the shoulders, he examined the military iconostasis. In addition to the ordinary decorations being paraded about by elderly veterans on this holiday, on their old uniform jackets or new suit coats, Vasily Innokentievich noticed some very special ones: For the Defense of the Soviet Polar Circle; For the Capture of Königsberg; and, very rare indeed, an American one, on which there was a laurel wreath, stars, and rays of light. This was the Legion of Merit. The American Allies had conferred this medal on the highest-ranking Soviet officers after the fall of Berlin, in 1945.

Vasily Innokentievich knew only one person who had received this honor. General Nichiporuk had lain in his hospital in 1945. In the evenings the hospital head had visited the general. Several times they had drunk and conversed together. The general had gone straight from the hospital to get his decoration, and they drank to the honor together the same evening. There was no doubt in his mind that these decorations belonged to General Nichiporuk—the proof of this were the others, much more common, for Königsberg and the Arctic Circle. This geography corresponded exactly to the war biography of Peter Petrovich.

Were these stolen?
Vasily Innokentievich wondered, and immediately remembered that someone had told him General Nichiporuk had lost his mind, or was in prison for anti-Soviet activities. Vasily Innokentievich didn't remember the details.

“What's your grandfather's name?” he asked the boy sternly, gripping his bony little shoulders.

“I don't have any grandfather! Let me go!” the boy shouted.

“Where did you get these medals?” The old man shook him by the collar.

“I found them in the wardrobe, at my grandmother's! My grandmother gave them to me!” He was an energetic little fellow. He twisted and turned, trying to slip out of the old man's grasp.

When he finally wriggled free, he bit Vasily Innokentievich's hand.

“You little stinker!” the old man said angrily. “Let's go see your grandma!”

“She's not there! There's no one home!” he said, turning to go.

“Well, take me to your mother, then. Come on, let's go!” the old man insisted, clutching the little boy by the back of the neck with his steely grip.

“No! I won't go! I won't take you there!” little Vitka screamed.

Then he fell silent, and, in a grown-up, serious voice, offered him a deal. “You might as well take them; the big boys will take them away from me, anyway. Only I don't want to go home.” He could just imagine how his grandma would shout at him, what a whipping his mother would give him. It was better just to surrender now.

“Take off your shirt,” the old man commanded.

He had intended to take the decorations and medals off the faded blue shirt and return it to its rightful owner. But as soon as Vasily Innokentievich held the shirt with the decorations and medals in his hands, the boy slipped away, like a bar of soap, and disappeared under the gate.

It was stolen—there's no doubt about it. Stolen
, Vasily thought. He folded up the child's shirt without unpinning the medals, and stuffed the whole thing in the pocket of his suit jacket, not without difficulty. His jacket was sagging, weighted down on one side.

Strange, strange incident—funny, in a curious way.

Vasily Innokentievich hadn't seen General Nichiporuk since the war. After that, it was rumored that Nichiporuk was teaching at the Military Academy. He was no longer in touch with the general, but finding him would be easy enough—through Nefudov or Golubeva.

Pondering all of this, he walked to the church. Nadezhda was standing by the door. She looked like a forty-year-old Nuta, though completely ordinary. Nuta, of course, had been magnificent, incomparable, peerless. There was no one like her.

Two old women he didn't know, and two young men—Sanya and his friend, the red-haired, bearded Mikha—were chatting with Nadezhda.

Anna Alexandrovna's friend Elena ran up and stood next to him—her face was scarlet, and she was out of breath. She was a witness, a trusted companion, nearly a participant in their lives.

High blood pressure
, Vasily Innokentievich noted to himself. He kissed Elena, but didn't mention her blood pressure. What would be the point?

A church attendant came out.

“Father is calling you inside to the service.”

Vasily Innokentievich stood between Nadezhda and Elena, the old women he didn't know stood at the sides, and behind them, Sanya and his friend.

From a side door a small, desiccated priest came out, swinging a smoking censer.

Vasily Innokentievich was in a church again for the second time in two months: first for Anna Alexandrovna's funeral service, and now for the forty-days memorial service. Before this he hadn't set foot in a church for about forty years. He had to admit, it stirred something in his soul that had stayed with him since childhood. How strange … Perhaps he was feeling his age. The elderly women sang magnificently, and he suddenly recollected all the words. Some men's voices from behind joined in. He turned around to look. Sanya, Nuta's grandson, a sweet boy, was singing: “O Thou, Who with wisdom profound order all things with love, and Who give to all what is needful, O only Creator, give rest, O Lord, to the souls of Thy servants, for on Thee have they set their hope, our Maker and Builder, and our God.”

How can he know this music?
Vasily Innokentievich wondered.

In truth, forty days before, Sanya had not known it at all. But now he did.

Sanya's red-haired friend was weeping like a child. Both of them were holding burning candles.

Vasily Innokentievich felt an indeterminate sense of guilt, longing, and sadness. Nuta, his second cousin, his first love and the love of his life, a romance that had lasted, with interruptions, since childhood—a parallel life, flickering, fading in and out, and most precious. How pitiless fate was … Her whole life she had tried to fend him off, but he pursued her insistently, stubbornly, making his presence known almost by force. She responded reluctantly, it seemed … and said with a smile, mysterious and melancholy, that had an air of the early twentieth century about it:

“Vasily, you always appear in my life when it is falling to pieces; you are my rescuer. But, forgive me, you are also the sign and the embodiment of my failure and misfortune…”

This is what Vasily Innokentievich recalled in the midst of the wondrous chorus of voices. He didn't give a single thought to the military decorations belonging to someone else that were weighing down his pocket. He had completely forgotten about them.

*   *   *

Peter Petrovich was arrested in Minsk on the day after his departure. On the same day they came to his house and searched it. There was nothing in the house, but they ransacked it, nevertheless, turning everything upside down. They took away some small tokens—autographed books from experts in his field from before the war, lecture notes.

Zoya was glad that the military decorations had been removed from the house. In fact, the medals were not really even valid. It had been one thing after another: the general had been reduced to the ranks, stripped of his military honors, he was an ex-con, and had been pronounced insane. She knew, of course, that there was nothing wrong with Peter—it was the country that was insane.

*   *   *

As for Tonya Mutyukin, it was a long time before she realized that she was only keeping watch over empty boxes in her house, and that the decorations had disappeared. This was revealed when her older brother, Tolya, came back from doing time with a pile of money, bought everyone presents, and gave the rest of the money to his mother. His mother bought a new wardrobe with it. She began throwing out junk from the old one, and that was when Tonya realized that the military decorations were missing. She was beside herself. First she suspected Tolya, since she knew that those medals were worth a lot of money.

But Tolya had had nothing to do with it.

Anyway, why even bring him into it—two months later he was picked up again, because the money for the presents was stolen after all.