The Russian Affair (27 page)

“Now does my power gather to a head,” he recited through his tears. His partner replied, “You did say so when first you raised the tempest, sir. How fares the King and his followers?” Anna gathered from someone’s whispered remark that what she was hearing was Shakespeare. Without a struggle, the acting couple had let themselves be persuaded to present
a sample of their art, and the scene, in their performance, was filled with pain and hopelessness. They dashed around the sofa, hauling and mauling each other, until the actor, in indescribable affliction, uttered the words “And deeper than did ever plummet sound I’ll drown my book,” and pitched forward onto the actress’s lap.

During the vehement applause, and while the audience was breaking up and beginning to discuss Shakespeare, “their contemporary,” Anna noticed that her father was standing in a corner, looking gray and bitter. She couldn’t figure out why until she spotted the folded manuscript pages in his hand. The poet had suffered a crushing insult. No one had asked him to read from his recent work; instead, the actors had put on their own show, and in his very home. Anna would have liked to bring the guests’ discourtesy to their attention, but she didn’t intervene.

The level of sound in the apartment rose. The radio was playing loudly, and Anna was glad that both the upstairs and downstairs neighbors were among the guests and thus prevented from complaining about their disturbed rest. The supply of Five-Star Tsazukhin was exhausted, and Anna brought out the store-bought vodka.

“Has Alexey contacted you yet?” Rosa asked behind Anna’s back.

Anna looked around cautiously to make sure that nobody was listening to them.

“These stars of the poetical firmament orbit only around themselves,” Rosa said with a smile. “They don’t even notice us.”

“So far, I haven’t been able to meet him.”

“You should. Star-Eyes won’t like it if your brief evening with Lyushin has damaged your relationship with Alexey.”

Anna nodded. “I’ll make it up to him.”

“Lyushin was granted the funding he wanted,” Rosa went on. “When he left for Dubna, he was quite satisfied.”

Anna was trying to fathom the meaning of this remark when she heard a familiar, drunken voice coming from someone in the crowd milling around the sideboard. “It’s been years since the last time I read
a Soviet author! I find you all so tame and domesticated I prefer to immerse myself in the works of the nineteenth century!”

It was Viktor Ipalyevich, getting even with his colleagues for not having asked to hear a sample of his poetry. “As I look around,” he cried, “I remember how much more revealing the compositions of our classical authors are than anything any of you dare to write.” He took a step toward the bookshelf. “All the Yevtushenkos, Voznesenskys, and Kozhevnikovs amount to but one thing: a dreary farewell to Russian literature!” With no less effect than the actors had produced, Viktor Ipalyevich flung out an arm and swept the topmost row of volumes from the shelf. They flew through the room, struck several persons, and landed with cracked spines at the writers’ feet. Anna expected expressions of dismay or protests, but she was wrong. As though at the end of a successful performance, the playwrights and poets, the essayists and novelists burst into unanimous applause, praised Viktor for his revolutionary gesture, and received him cordially into their midst again. More surprising than his fellows’ thick skins was Viktor Ipalyevich’s own reaction: His face beaming, he snatched the cap off his head—his sweaty hair stood up in all directions—and bowed around the room. “And now, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, compelling his listeners to fall silent. “I shall demonstrate to you what contemporary Soviet verse is!”

He took out the crumpled pages and, without waiting for his guests to settle down, began at once:
“On Good Fortune.”
Approving whispers indicated that the subject was a welcome one.

Why pull the wool over your eyes?
I didn’t leave my union card at home;
I threw it in the trash bin on the Petrovka
.

A calm set in, a sign that the guests weren’t at some ordinary party, but in the home of Viktor Ipalyevich Tsazukhin, the poet, who was still capable of snapping in all directions while others had long since
grown toothless. He read without emotion and yet vibrantly; his verses enfolded his audience. He ended his poem on good luck with these lines:

All things pass. Even our Star will go out
.
But human grief is as deep as eternity
.

No one ventured to say anything until Rosa asked, in a refreshingly matter-of-fact tone, “And you got that past the Glavlit? I admire your courage, Viktor Ipalyevich.”

He couldn’t have received a finer compliment. The poet went down on one knee in front of Rosa and kissed the hem of her skirt. With some effort, and surrounded by laughter, he rose to his feet again. Kozhevnikov, profoundly moved, embraced him. “You are our most precious diamond,” the million-selling author said before blowing his nose.

When two a.m. came and went and apparently no one had yet given any thought to leaving, Anna asked her neighbor if she could take Petya downstairs to her apartment and put him to bed. He protested, even though his eyelids were rapidly getting heavier, and he fell asleep on his mother’s shoulder while they were still on the stairs. She laid him on the neighbor’s sofa, covered him with a blanket, savored a few peaceful moments at his side, and went back upstairs.

Things gradually started to break up, including the apartment furniture. A chair was reduced to its component parts; five guests lay unmoving in the sleeping alcove. In the kitchen, the pall of cigarette smoke was so heavy that people had to sit on the floor in order to breathe. Anna pondered what method she could use to initiate the process of departure and settled on tidying up. This plan faltered because of the impenetrable juxtaposition of legs, bottles, and food scraps. An hour later, a place was freed up on the sofa; she sat down and closed her eyes. Words and sounds reached her from farther and farther away. She prepared herself to remain in that position until daybreak.

When she heard the steps on the stairs, she started awake immediately.
Surely no partygoers could be arriving at this late hour; the fun would never end. She must prevent them from entering! With leaden limbs, she rose to her feet and saw her father lounging against the windowsill; one of his hands was caressing the back of Akhmadulina’s neck. Anna climbed over a group of guests who were spinning bottles and reached the apartment door. Someone really was coming up the stairs. She put on her most resolute face and slipped outside. The newcomer hadn’t turned on the lights and seemed familiar with the steps. He climbed up slowly, like someone carrying a heavy burden.

At the next turning, his shock of hair appeared, as well as his brown overcoat. When he saw the woman standing one floor above him, he dropped his pack and charged up the last flight of stairs.

“Anna, you’re still up!” Leonid said joyfully.

Without a moment’s hesitation, she threw her arms around his neck.

NINETEEN

L
eonid’s memory of his first night with Galina—it had been, in fact, a morning—remained fixed in his mind. He’d waited five hours for her in the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk hospital. During that time, several emergency cases had been admitted, and the friendly nurse had informed him repeatedly that Doctor Korff wouldn’t be free for a while yet; wouldn’t he prefer to come back another day? But Leonid had traveled to the capital city precisely in order to see the woman in question, Galina the severe, Galina with the scornful eyes. After midnight, when the ambulance sirens had finally fallen silent and the bustle in the hospital corridors gave way to an unreal calm, Leonid had stretched out on the row of three screwed-down chairs and fallen asleep.

When the scent of her perfume awakened him and he looked up, Galina Korff was standing over him. “Is this your idea of performing night duty, Comrade Captain?”

Leonid tried to leap to his feet, but his smooth boot soles slid on the synthetic floor covering; he barely stood up, and then he was lying down again.

“If one were to gauge the condition of our armed forces by your appearance, I should think the estimate of our military strength would be distinctly low.”

He didn’t know anyone who expressed herself the way Galina did. Leonid was used to the barking of the men in his battalion, who spoke a good deal but hardly ever said anything. Sometimes he even forgot that there were other ways of speaking Russian besides soldiers’ slang.

“Well, what shall I do with you now, my stalwart drum major?”

He was upright again, but his head was still heavy with sleep. “So you were very busy?” It was all he could think of to say.

“Two premature births brought on by the mothers’ overwork.” She started toward the exit. “I was able to save one of the babies.” She waited for him to push open the swinging door. “Then there was a thumb amputation, followed by a case I’d rather not describe to you if we’re going to get something to eat.”

They stepped outside. The streets of the capital were empty.

“Two-thirty,” Galina said, looking up at the illuminated hospital clock. “We won’t find anything open.” Pensively, as if there were a range of possibilities, she peered down the street. “What do you say to the following option? I invite you to my place.”

The night had turned a murky gray that the streetlights made even murkier. An icy half hour later, they were sitting at the cozy table in Galina’s apartment, which would not have been out of place in a novel from before the Russian Revolution. The double windows had been handmade by joiners who’d skillfully fitted the component parts together without using either nails or screws. Leonid marveled at the construction of the inner sashes, into which a tiny, rectangular opening had been set for purposes of ventilation. The living room was paneled in a way he’d never seen outside of a museum. Within minutes, the small, coal-burning stove had diffused so much heat that Leonid removed his uniform jacket. “How did you find this jewel?” he asked.

“Find it? I rescued it.” She brought beer, some green liquid, and water to the table. “The housing combine was just about to tear out all this junk, as they called it, and replace it with modern materials. I had to sign a statement in which I agreed to accept various anachronistic items.”
She poured him a drink. “It breaks my heart to give up this apartment. I won’t find anything like it in Yakutia.”

“When’s your duty here over?” He watched as she diluted the green liquor.

“In four days,” Galina sighed. Noticing his curious gaze, she held her glass against the light. “The green fairy in absinthe. Have you never tried it?”

He took a sip and grimaced in surprise. The thought that this was probably their last meeting made him gloomy. “Where did you learn to talk like that?” he asked. “I don’t know anybody who gets so much out of our language. Who taught you that?”

“My head.” Galina sank back in her chair. The strain of a long day fell away from her.

“Your head may be the tool, but who sharpened it?”

“A dangerous counterrevolutionary,” she said with a smile. “At the time, he was already a very old man, and I was just a tiny little thing. My grandfather, the former governor-general. I learned everything about poetry and about our writers from him. My outlawed dyedushka even taught me the little I know about playing the piano.” She threw two lumps of coal into the stove. “I was born in Yakutia. By that time, my family had already come to the end of their odyssey. It had led them through several prisons and an eastern Siberian penal camp that must have been truly awful, because not one of my people ever told me anything about it. In the end, since my family had accepted everything without protest and Grandfather had affirmed from the bottom of his heart that the epoch-making, revolutionary changes that had taken place in our country were nothing short of fantastic, the powers that be apparently grew tired of punishing us for having been born with silver spoons in our mouths. My father was banished to the most desolate corner of the world and given an underpaid job, and there, finally, my grandparents were allowed to live in peace. Soon, however, the war broke out. It probably would have gone unnoticed in Siberia if the demand
for coal hadn’t doubled. And not long afterward, I came into the world.”

She went to the kitchen to prepare some soup. Leonid stretched out his legs; it had been a long time since he’d felt so comfortable. The fog outside, the noiseless night, the woman busy at the stove—he got up and went to her, hugged her from behind, and clasped her breasts. She stood still for a moment before returning to her culinary activities. A little later, the barley soup was on the table. Galina put a spoonful of sour cream on each portion.

She stood beside his chair. “Well? That was all?”

He pulled her down on his lap, the spoon fell to the floor, sour cream spattered the floorboards. Galina kissed more wildly, more playfully than Anna; her mouth seemed to be everywhere at once. Her pelvis never stopped moving the whole time she was sitting on him, so he lifted her up and tried to carry her into the next room. But Galina insisted that they eat first; she wanted him to appreciate her soup.

“Take that off,” she said, pointing to his wedding ring.

Their embrace was wonderful, weightless; their bodies intertwined in total intimacy and remained entangled long after they collapsed and lay panting. He’d often wished that something of the sort would happen with Anna, but it had seemed an empty fantasy, and he’d told himself that he wasn’t capable of transporting a woman to such a height of passion. With Galina, everything had happened effortlessly. He couldn’t stop caressing her; he’d had to travel five thousand miles from home in order to meet someone like this. Everything felt warm to him; it was as if he’d seen the pattern in this carpet or his toes at the end of this bed a hundred times before; even the way to the toilet seemed familiar. When Galina fell asleep in his arms and her breathing grew regular, he gave no consideration whatever to leaving and thought only briefly about the excuse he’d offer for having missed the morning roll call. Then, gently, he woke Galina up, and they made love again. When the inexorable brightness of dawn appeared, she pulled the thick curtains closed and
announced with a sigh that now she must sleep for a few hours. Leonid got up. As he put on his uniform, he found every movement difficult, and the prospect of saying good-bye to her seemed impossibly daunting.