The Big Green Tent (78 page)

Like a character in a Sirin novel, Pierre's “feat” was to send the books of a small Brussels publishing house to Russia. They were, for the most part, religious books. This was his form of social activism, akin to Komsomol work. In 1963 Pierre spent five months in Moscow, at Moscow State University, studying Russian as a foreign language. He lived in a dormitory on Volgin Street, rambled around Moscow, explored the dark underside of the city with Ilya, attended remarkable concerts with his friend Sanya, and, once, even visited the deaf-mute boarding school with Mikha. He was researching his beloved Russia.

Five months later someone denounced Pierre—perhaps on account of the books he received through the diplomatic mail pouch for his Moscow friends—and he was deported from the country as a spy. They were very strict about these things at his Institute for Russian as a Foreign Language.

There was a scandal: an article appeared in a major newspaper alleging his involvement in subversive activities and spreading anti-Soviet literature, as well as spying. It was clear that besides the denunciation, they had no evidence against him—only overblown suspicions.

*   *   *

During these five months, Pierre managed to fall in love with a pretty girl named Alla, with light northern eyes and straw-colored hair. But they were not destined to be united, about which Alla grieved until her dotage. She had done a foolish thing. If she hadn't written the denunciation, perhaps she could have gotten him to marry her. They had pressured her, though, threatening to kick her out of the dormitory, to expose her as a prostitute, and to make her life generally miserable. The girl, who was not in the habit of trusting the Soviet authorities, believed them on this count.

*   *   *

Ultimately, being deported was far better than the Nabokovian prospect: “… and presently I'm led to a ravine, / to a ravine led to be killed.”

*   *   *

After departing from his beloved spiritual homeland within the three days allotted, Pierre spent the rest of his life yearning desperately to go back to Russia, as so many thousands yearned desperately to leave it. Some they wouldn't allow in, some they wouldn't allow out.

*   *   *

Life, however, led Pierre in the opposite geographical direction. He became a Slavist, and was invited to teach in a California university. Though his ties with his Moscow friends remained strong, communication became more sporadic. Still, this did not prevent him from receiving, in 1970, a book from Russia, soon after it had been published in samizdat. It was the strange novella
Moscow—Petushki
, by an unknown writer named Venedikt Erofeev.

*   *   *

Ilya had done his utmost. He had even written an accompanying letter, in which he explained to Pierre that the novel was the best thing that had come out of post-Revolutionary Russia. Pierre ardently agreed with his friend, and began translating it. Within three months, he realized that he couldn't manage. The task was too daunting, the text too unwieldy. The deeper he delved into the book, the more layers he uncovered.

Enormous cultural depths rested on the device linking the novel to the tradition of Sentimentalism. These were the notes of a Russian traveler. From his roots in Radishchev and Griboyedov, however, the newfangled author had strayed very far afield—lurching off in the direction of Dostoevsky and Blok, or into the deep recesses of folk idiom, crude and incorruptible. The text was full of citations: spurious and authentic, twisted, ridiculed. The book contained parody and mystification, true suffering, and genuine talent.

Pierre wrote a long article about it and sent it to a scholarly journal, where it was rejected. No one knew the author, and the editors considered the article to be too daring.

*   *   *

Pierre was deeply offended by this, and got very drunk, after which he started calling his Russian friends. He couldn't get hold of Ilya and Mikha. Sanya was home, however. Sanya told Pierre about the tragedy: Mikha was dead. He added a few incoherent phrases—along the lines of life having no meaning, what did it matter when the best people, and one's dearest, die anyway, or leave you. And even meaning has no meaning.

Pierre sobered up and said that he would think of a way out for Sanya. They had already talked through his two-week paycheck. He said that he needed to go back and drink what was left in the bottle. And that Sanya should be expecting a call from his friend Evgeny.

Sanya immediately forgot about this conversation, as though he were the one who was drunk, and not Pierre. He had been gripped by despair, like a fever. He could do nothing but lie there on Nuta's divan, his unseeing, vacant gaze fixed on the tapestry fabric of a tattered pillow, and a few visual outliers of the dense weave of varicolored threads—light blue, pale yellow, lilac—which vibrated in front of the woven image of a flower basket and the bouquet crimped with serpentine ribbon.

*   *   *

When had he left home the last time? For Nuta's funeral? To go to the forty-day memorial service at the church? Yes, Mikha was at the church, too; he stood next to him, and Mikha was crying. Sanya was no longer able to cry. The very capacity of emotional response was already exhausted in him, and he had no feelings except a sense of terrible alienation from everything around him. Yes, first it was Nuta, and then Mikha. The only one left was Mama, whom he kept having to recognize anew, she was so changed. Rather, he guessed it was her. Every day before she went to work, Nadezhda Borisovna, her hair now dyed brunette, would tiptoe up to the sleeping Sanya and, tenderly, warily, leave him some tea with bread and cheese. In the evening she brought him a bowl of soup.

Sometimes Sanya ate his food without even noticing it. A gulp of liquid, a swallow of some chewed-up substance. That was all. He wanted strong, sweet tea with lemon. The kind his grandmother had brought him when he was ill.

Now it seemed that Nuta had died a beautiful death, and the memory of her was beautiful as well. Mikha's death had been horrific, lawless. Sanya was on his way home from the Kirovskaya metro station, and was passing Mikha's house. He turned toward the building as though he were going to stop in, out of habit, as he used to do during Mikha's absence. Sanya was the first of the family and friends to see Mikha there on the ground. He was lying on the stone border of a flower bed that had long since disappeared, his head smashed.

He was wearing an old plaid shirt that Nuta had bought him. Sanya had one just like it … For some reason he was wearing no shoes, only socks. A small crowd was already gathering around the body. They needed to hurry and remove it.

They covered the body with a sheet that had been snatched off a clothesline. It had a large patch in the middle.

He already knew that Alyona and Maya had gone to the Ryazan countryside. Mikha had told him, not even trying to hide his grief and confusion. Now he would have to find Alyona. How would he tell her?

Right after Mikha's funeral, Sanya took to his bed. He would sleep, then wake up, hear Lastochkin's muttering and his belching, or the nauseating grumble of the television—when Nuta was alive they had never had a television! At six in the morning, the anthem assaulted his ears, then there was a surge of coffee-making smells and activity—Mama prepared it in the room, over a spirit lamp, as Nuta had always done. Then everything would go quiet again. Sanya dozed off, woke up, got out of bed when nature called him to the WC, and went to lie down again. Nadezhda Borisovna grew alarmed and tried to ask him questions, which made no sense to him; and again he turned his face toward the wall.

People from the Conservatory stopped in to see him. And someone else—Ilya? Vasily Innokentievich? Then Kolosov came. He sat down in Nuta's chair. His visit signaled a truce after several conflicts. Sanya had gradually lost the support of his teacher, and had felt more and more distant from him. Now, rather than feeling glad about the visit, he felt indifferent.

It was difficult for Sanya to hold up his end of the conversation.

On the table, Kolosov placed a box of candies that he'd bought at the confectioner's store opposite the Conservatory, as well as an old book, a splendid German edition. As he was leaving, he said that he had arranged for him to take a month's leave. If he was sick, there was nothing like a little
WTC
for cleansing the soul and body, and for healing all one's ills.

“I brought you a very rare thing. You'll appreciate it.”

And Sanya did appreciate it. He reached for the volume two days later and discovered it was

The Well-Tempered Clavier,

or

preludes and fugues in all tones and semitones,

in the major as well as the minor modes,

for the benefit and use

of musical youth desirous of knowledge,

as well as those who are already advanced in this study.

For their especial diversion, composed and prepared by

Johann Sebastian Bach,

currently ducal chapelmaster in Anhalt Cöthen

and director of chamber music,

in the year 1722.

Nuta hadn't forced him to learn German for nothing. He was even able to read the ancient title.

Sanya grew more animated when he opened the volume. It was a marvel—the Urtext, the author's original. The fourteenth volume of the first complete works of Bach, published at the end of the nineteenth century. All the publications that he had seen up till then had been redacted and edited. They had inserted accents, tempos, even fingerings. Now he was seeing the “bare” text, and this made an astounding impression on him, as though he had suddenly found himself face-to-face with the genius who composed it. Without intermediaries. Like all theoreticians, he had studied
The Well-Tempered Clavier
, marveling at the transparent simplicity of its construction, in ascending keys from C major, to C minor, to C-sharp major. The third prelude, Sanya recalled, was first written in C major. Then Bach corrected it—he added seven sharps, and it was finished. And so on, with all twenty-four keys. Simplicity itself! A children's exercise. He had written it for his adolescent son, and said: I trained him in the musical alphabet. No author's notations, no directions—play it as you wish, musician! Utter freedom …

Modern notation, rectified and regularized by editors, undermined this freedom.

Sanya's curiosity burned: he knew a number of renditions of
The Well-Tempered Clavier
, and now he couldn't wait to listen to them and compare. They had records at home—a wonderful recording by Samuil Feinberg, bought by Nuta ages ago, with all forty-eight preludes and fugues. They also had a recording by Richter, which was marvelous, but the recording was badly scratched and it skipped a lot.

Sanya found the Feinberg and put it on. Kolosov was right—they were purifying, cleansing sounds. He let his entire being pour through the music, or the music pour through him.

For a whole week he either listened, or studied the notes. Feinberg was absolutely magical. Opinions about him differed. Some people extolled Glenn Gould for his
Preludes and Fugues
; but for others, Richter was king. In Feinberg there was such sorrow, delicacy, and refinement. One sensed that life had already passed, and the only thing that remained were these modulations, the breaths of air under a butterfly's wings; not the flesh, but the soul of music.

He wasn't a magnificent man, but an ordinary one with a goatee, who, until recently, had still walked the Conservatory corridors, where people never whispered in his wake: Look, there goes Samuil Feinberg.

Neihaus and Richter were quite another thing. Throughout their lives, wherever they went, people would whisper: Look, there goes …

And Sanya listened to Bach over and over again, until, by the end of the second week, he was completely healed.

On the final prelude and fugue in B minor, Bach had written the words:
Ende gut, alles gut
.

“Good,” Sanya said. He trusted Bach.

He scrubbed the bathtub, filled it with water, as hot as he could tolerate, and soaked himself for a long time. He trimmed his nails, shaved his stubble (which already qualified as a beard), then put on a new shirt. He had no idea where he was planning to go. He looked at himself in Nuta's mirror. He had become thinner. He had an interesting pallor, and two nicks on his chin. The telephone rang.

“I'm Evgeny, Pierre's friend. Finally, I've managed to reach you! I want to see you. At the usual spot.”

Sanya had almost forgotten about the usual spot, where Pierre sent all his couriers—with books, jeans, records …

*   *   *

They met next to the beer garden in Gorky Park. Evgeny turned out to be Eugene, an accredited correspondent for an American newspaper in Moscow. Prompted by Pierre, he offered to arrange a fictitious marriage for Sanya. Sanya, who had barely recovered from his depression, was unenthusiastic: Was that even possible? Eugene assured him that they would have to try, and that Pierre was already sifting through the candidates.

“A blonde or a brunette?” And Sanya laughed for the first time since Mikha's death.

*   *   *

The January frosts, which are supposed to arrive either at Christmas or at Epiphany, took hold in the interim, between the two holidays. Eugene Michaels and Sanya Steklov arrived by different routes at the airport: Eugene took the metro to Rechnoi Station, and from there took a taxi. Sanya came on the shuttle van. There weren't many people there to meet the flight from New York, and Sanya and Eugene pretended not to notice each other.

The plane was an hour late. Finally, they announced that it had landed. The people waiting to meet it surged up to the sacred space where the official state border was about to open up and let through a narrow stream of foreign citizens and a few Russian passengers, diplomats and their KGB brothers-in-arms.