The Russian Affair (2 page)

Anna put a hand over her eyes. Once upon a time, she would have set out on this drive full of happy expectation; she would have gazed at her reflection in the passenger’s window and fixed her lipstick and adjusted her hair. Two years ago, when she was twenty-five, and after three years of marriage, her husband Leonid had finally been transferred to Moscow. To avoid having to live in a shared flat on the outskirts of the city, they had accepted Viktor Ipalyevich’s offer and, together with Petya, moved in with him. Anna had obtained a good position with the building combine, earning more than her husband, who drew a lieutenant’s pay; it was she who took on the chief financial burden of her four-person household.

Then, in April of that same year, her building combine had been ordered to paint the facades of several buildings along Kalinin Prospekt for the May Day celebrations. Yarov, her foreman, had opined that a new coat of paint made no sense if the rust on all metal surfaces were not removed first. There wasn’t enough time for that, he was informed, and he should use colors that guaranteed anti-rust protection. Anna had kept Yarov from gainsaying this instruction, and work had begun. The plaster was loose and dry rot had invaded many walls; nevertheless, the
building combine’s skilled workers covered the facades in friendly shades of yellow and light gray. In order to meet the deadline, they had worked in four shifts. On the afternoon of April 30, a committee that included the government’s Deputy Minister for Research Planning inspected the results. Anna didn’t know who the powerful man with the greasy hair was, but the fine fabric of his overcoat gave him away as a member of the nomenklatura. While scaffolding was being dismantled and hauled away on all sides, Anna gave the arch she was working on a final stroke of her brush. Alexey Maximovich Bulyagkov stepped under her ladder and praised her flawless brushwork as the other members of the committee formed a group behind him. The Deputy Minister wanted to know how long it took for a person to learn to make such a perfectly straight stroke.

“At twelve, I joined the Pioneer Girls,” Anna answered properly. “When I was sixteen, the combine offered me a trainee position. I received training to become a skilled worker, and two years ago, I passed my qualifying examination.” She straightened her headscarf; her work clothes were tight on her, because under them she was wearing her heavy sweater and a pair of pajama pants. While she was trying to remember some of her building combine’s outstanding accomplishments, Bulyagkov asked her name.

Anna came down the ladder. “My name is Anna Tsazukhina, and I’m twenty-seven years old.”

“Are you related to Tsazukhin, the poet?”

Anna could not have said why she’d introduced herself by her maiden name. “He’s my father.”

Two members of the committee put their heads together.

“I’m an admirer of his work,” Alexey Maximovich said, setting his foot on the ladder’s lowest rung. “Of some of his work.” He held out his hand; although her own was covered with flecks of paint, Anna laid her brush aside and clasped hands with the Deputy Minister.

“All the best, Anna Tsazukhina,” he said, gazing at her with merry eyes. Then he turned, and he and his colleagues moved on from the archway.

Six weeks later, Anna had accompanied her father to a poetry reading; after some brief resistance, Leonid had agreed to go along as well. They had taken the subway to the Pushkinskaya station and climbed up into the light of a bright June evening. Viktor Ipalyevich bit his lower lip and nervously chewed his beard, which he’d trimmed the previous day.

Viktor Tsazukhin was a veteran of Soviet literature; his early poems had evoked the Red Army’s battle for Berlin. He was known as a forerunner of the artistic generation produced by the Revolution, and his analytic, future-oriented style had served as a model for many later poets. In recent years, his publications had become rarer and their print runs smaller. The state publishing house no longer printed his volumes, which now appeared through the auspices of a small house dedicated to “special Soviet literature.” Since Viktor Ipalyevich lived a secluded life with his family, he had no idea whether or not he still had a following as a poet and, if he did, no idea how his descriptions of the present found their way into his readers’ hands.

When Viktor, Anna, and Leonid reached the area in front of the Conservatory building, the poet was overwhelmed. Countless young people were causing such a tumult that ushers and police were having great difficulty in keeping the entrance open to ticket holders only. Groups of female students, hoping they might still be able to secure tickets, gathered around latecomers. Automobiles were thickly parked up and down Gorky Street; drivers just arriving were waved on.

Someone recognized Tsazukhin, and within seconds, the crowd began to close in on him and Anna and Leonid in such numbers that the three were unable to take another step forward. People greeted the poet; those standing nearby asked him to take them with him into the auditorium. Helpless with happiness, Viktor groped for his daughter’s hand, while Leonid directed his efforts toward opening a passage for them. But they needed help from some of the policemen, who steered
them away from the colonnaded doorway to a smaller entrance nearby, where a door opened for a moment to admit them. The poet, his two companions, and a nimble student—a girl in a plastic raincoat—slipped inside; the door closed at once, separating them from the throng of people trying to press in behind them. Doctor Glem, the chairman of the artistic board, was waiting for Viktor Ipalyevich and his family on the stairs. The chairman exchanged hasty greetings with the poet and his family, in which, without many words, the student was included. While an assistant showed Tsazukhin’s companions to the box assigned to them, Doctor Glem escorted Viktor Ipalyevich backstage.

Leonid helped Anna out of her jacket. Enjoying her elevated vantage point, she let her eyes wander over the auditorium. Usually, the large hall was used for concerts, with room for seven or perhaps eight hundred people; tonight, there were surely a thousand, and more were still shoving their way inside. In the parquet section, she recognized Plissetskaya, the ballerina from the Bolshoi Ballet, and not far from her, the comedian Rodion; Brezhnev’s personal interpreter took a seat in the middle. Older gentlemen were standing in the aisles and ascertaining who had come besides themselves; above all, however, Anna saw sons and daughters. The moment touched her, and when she sat down next to her husband, her face was burning. There below her sat Moscow, not some small collection of admirers still loyal to a forgotten poet, but the citizenry, come to hear her father. When the lights dimmed and the applause began, Anna realized that her father had made his entrance onto the stage. Doctor Glem offered Viktor Ipalyevich the seat reserved for the guest of honor and stepped to the lectern. The audience, however, would not allow the chairman of the artistic board to speak; the clapping grew so unanimous that Tsazukhin had to get to his feet again and make another bow. Even now, his peaked cap remained on his head. Minutes passed before Doctor Glem could deliver his speech of greeting. It consisted of a patriotic profession of faith in the new Soviet lyric poetry, properly declared and congenially applauded. Glem thanked the audience, introduced Viktor
Ipalyevich, and left the stage. Anna’s father slowly walked forward. The folder he placed on the lectern remained closed. He pushed back his cap, which left a red stripe across his forehead. Wide-eyed, he peered into the darkness of the parquet and at the packed rows of seats beyond it.

“The weathercock rotates. That’s his line of work …” he began. The microphone sent his words all the way to the last row.

Anna leaned on the balustrade. Viktor Ipalyevich wasn’t like the young Moscow literati who looked upon the cat-and-mouse game with the Soviet state censors as good sport and were content to publish clandestinely. He wasn’t one of those writers whose works appeared as closely printed typescripts and got passed from hand to hand and whom neither jail sentences nor publication bans could intimidate. Viktor Ipalyevich Tsazukhin figured in official Soviet literature; the state had seen itself represented and embellished by his work. Anna knew the program for the reading. In accordance with the wishes of the literary committee, her father was to begin with the conformist verses of
Sling
and continue with some longer passages from
The Red Light
. Now, however, he was declaiming a poem, “The Weathercock,” that he’d only recently written. No one had ever heard these verses.

Tsazukhin’s voice rose as he spoke the last lines:

I do not hold
with the cock on the roof
,
yet I know which way the wind blows
.

The silence in the auditorium was palpable. He marked a pause, and then, when he opened the folder to begin the scheduled reading, spontaneous applause interrupted him. This time, he didn’t accept it, waving the plaudits away and reading the first lines while some in the audience were still clapping. The people understood: first a bit of provocation, followed by adherence to conventions. The official program was under way.

During the intermission, Anna and Leonid strolled around the upper foyer. Leonid wanted to get them something to drink, so he joined the line for the bar. Anna took a few steps with him and then stood still, listening to what the people around her were saying. “Viktor Ipalyevich challenges our feelings,” she heard someone say. “He elicits our humor.” A man quoted a passage in which the poet brought his irony to bear on the tactic employed by people who, while waiting in a line, jot down their place number on their wrist so as to keep pushy interlopers from getting ahead of them. Amused, Anna turned her head and saw a large, powerful man with a blue tie bearing down upon her.

“Are you enjoying the evening?” he asked.

She needed a few seconds to recognize him as the man who had stood under her ladder a few weeks earlier.

“Your father is an exceptional poet,” said Alexey Maximovich Bulyagkov.

“Do you like his poems?”

“I don’t think I do.” He examined the people around him. “But they touch me. Judge for yourself which is more important.”

At that moment, Anna felt as though a ray of light had gone through her. It came from the magnificent chandeliers, from the excited chatter of the large crowd, and, above all, from the marvelous experience she was sharing with her father. At the same time, she wondered how the Deputy Minister had recognized her without her work overalls on and with no scarf on her head; she was wearing the lime green dress she’d bought with a month’s salary.

“Are you here alone?”

“My husband’s over there.” She pointed to the commotion in front of the drinks bar.

“What does your husband do?”

“He’s an officer in the armored infantry, stationed in north Moscow.”

Bulyagkov bowed and walked over to a lady in a floor-length gown, who greeted him volubly.

Two weeks later, Anna received a small parcel in the mail, a copy of a volume called
My Beloved Does the Wash
, which was a collection of all her father’s love poems. When she deciphered the sender’s name, she hurried to the apartment and withdrew into the sleeping alcove. Leonid was sitting at the table with Petya, cutting his bread into bite-sized pieces; two arm’s lengths away, Anna read the Deputy Minister’s letter. He requested that her father write a personal dedication and sign the book, and he suggested that Anna look at the poem on page 106. Strangely excited, she turned to the page and read these verses:

Come see us tomorrow, uplift and gladden us!
Today’s rain refreshed us, and the forecast is glorious
.
And should we want stormy weather
,
We’ll make some together!

There was a handwritten note on the margin of the page: “Would you return this volume to me personally tomorrow evening at seven o’clock?”

Anna and Leonid had been married for three years; Petya had come into the world a few weeks after the wedding. Neither of them had ever made the other feel that their little boy was the only reason they were still together. Leonid behaved himself, drank little, and treated her father with respect. Anna didn’t dream about anything out of reach; she wanted a good education for her son, her own apartment, and perhaps, eventually, a car. And she had never, at least until that day, knowingly done anything wrong. She was forced to think about some of her colleagues, who reported on casual flings that apparently enlivened their marriages. Such accounts were accompanied by declarations that an affair didn’t mean that much these days; there was a real thirst for life in the city of Moscow. Anna resolved to take the Deputy Minister’s note as a joke and
his offer not very seriously. However, when she climbed out of the alcove, she avoided Leonid’s eyes and hid the book in her bag.

The following day, she worked the early shift and was home by three. At dinner with her family, she pushed the volume of poetry across the table to Viktor Ipalyevich and said, “A girlfriend from the site asked me to get your autograph.”