It was unjust; but injustice was everywhere, as Dimka had pointed out to Tania.
Dimka studied the photograph in the file. Yenkov looked like a movie star, with a sensual face, fleshy lips, black eyebrows, and thick dark hair. But there seemed more to him than that. A faint expression of wry amusement around the corners of his eyes suggested that he did not take himself too seriously. It would not be surprising if Tania were in love with this man, despite her denials.
Anyway, Dimka would try to get him released for her sake.
He would speak to Khrushchev about the case. However, he needed to wait until the boss was in a good mood. He put the file in his desk drawer.
He did not get an opportunity that afternoon. Khrushchev left early, and Dimka was getting ready to go home when Natalya put her head around his door. ‘Come for a drink,’ she said. ‘We need one after our horrible experience in the Central Market.’
Dimka hesitated. ‘I need to get home to Nina. Her time is near.’
‘Just a quick one.’
‘Okay.’ He screwed the cap on to his fountain pen and spoke to his secretary. ‘We can go, Vera.’
‘I’ve got a few more things to do,’ she said. She was conscientious.
The Riverside Bar was patronized by the young Kremlin elite, so it was not as dismal as the average Moscow drinking hole. The chairs were comfortable, the snacks were edible, and for the better-paid apparatchik with exotic tastes there were bottles of Scotch and bourbon behind the bar. Tonight it was crowded with people whom Dimka and Natalya knew, mostly aides like themselves. Someone thrust a glass of beer into Dimka’s hand and he drank gratefully. The mood was boisterous. Boris Kozlov, a Khrushchev aide like Dimka, told a risky joke. ‘Everybody! What will happen when Communism comes to Saudi Arabia?’
They all cheered and begged him to tell them.
‘After a while there will be a shortage of sand!’
Everyone laughed. The people in this group were keen workers for Soviet Communism, as Dimka was, but they were not blind to its faults. The gap between Party aspirations and Soviet reality bothered them all, and jokes released the tension.
Dimka finished his beer and got another.
Natalya raised her glass as if about to give a toast. ‘The best hope for world revolution is an American company called United Fruit,’ she said. The people around her laughed. ‘No, seriously,’ she said, though she was smiling. ‘They persuade the United States government to support brutal right-wing dictatorships all over Central and South America. If United Fruit had any sense, they would foster gradual progress towards bourgeois freedoms – the rule of law, freedom of speech, trade unions – but, happily for world Communism, they’re too dumb to see that. They stamp ruthlessly on reform movements, so the people have nowhere to turn but to Communism – just as Karl Marx predicted.’ She clinked glasses with the nearest person. ‘Long live United Fruit!’
Dimka laughed. Natalya was one of the smartest people in the Kremlin, as well as the prettiest. Flushed with gaiety, her wide mouth open in a laugh, she was enchanting. Dimka could not help comparing her with the weary, bulging, sex-averse woman at home, though he knew the thought was cruelly unjust.
Natalya went to the bar to order snacks. Dimka realized he had been here more than an hour: he had to leave. He went up to Natalya with the intention of saying goodbye. But the beer was just enough to make him incautious and, when Natalya smiled warmly at him, he kissed her.
She kissed him back, enthusiastically.
Dimka did not understand her. She had spent a night with him; then she yelled at him that she was married; then she asked him to go for a drink with her; then she kissed him. What next? But he hardly cared about her inconsistency when her warm mouth was on his and the tip of her tongue was teasing his lips.
She broke the embrace, and Dimka saw his secretary standing beside them.
Vera’s expression was severely judgemental. ‘I’ve been looking for you,’ she said with a note of accusation. ‘There was a phone call just after you left.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Dimka, not sure whether he was apologizing for being hard to find or for kissing Natalya.
Natalya took a plate of pickled cucumbers from the bartender and returned to the group.
‘Your mother-in-law called,’ Vera went on.
Dimka’s euphoria had now evaporated.
‘Your wife has gone into labour,’ Vera said. ‘All is well, but you should join her at the hospital.’
‘Thank you,’ said Dimka, feeling that he was the worst kind of faithless husband.
‘Goodnight,’ said Vera, and she left the bar.
Dimka followed her out. He stood breathing the cool night air for a moment. Then he got on his motorcycle and headed for the hospital. What a moment to be caught kissing a colleague. He deserved to feel humiliated: he had done something stupid.
He parked his bike in the hospital car park and went in. He found Nina in the maternity ward, sitting up in bed. Masha was on a chair beside the bed, holding a baby wrapped in a white shawl. ‘Congratulations,’ Masha said to Dimka. ‘It’s a boy.’
‘A boy,’ Dimka said. He looked at Nina. She smiled, weary but triumphant.
He looked at the baby. He had a lot of damp dark hair. His eyes were a shade of blue that made Dimka think of his grandfather, Grigori. All babies had blue eyes, he recalled. Was it his imagination that this baby seemed already to look at the world with Grandfather Grigori’s intense stare?
Masha held the baby out to Dimka. He took the little bundle as if handling a large eggshell. In the presence of this miracle, the day’s dramas faded to nothing.
I have a son, he thought, and tears came to his eyes.
‘He’s beautiful,’ Dimka said. ‘Let’s call him Grigor.’
*
Two things kept Dimka awake that night. One was guilt: just when his wife was giving birth in bloodshed and agony, he had been kissing Natalya. The other was rage at the way he had been outwitted and humiliated by Max and Josef. It was not he but Natalya who had been robbed, but he felt no less indignant and resentful.
Next morning, on the way to work, he drove his motorcycle to the Central Market. For half the night he had rehearsed what he would say to Max. ‘My name is Dmitriy Ilich Dvorkin. Check who I am. Check who I work for. Check who my uncle is and who my father was. Then meet me here tomorrow with Natalya’s money, and beg me not to take the revenge you deserve.’ He wondered whether he had the nerve to say all that; whether Max would be impressed or scornful; whether the speech would be threatening enough to retrieve Natalya’s money and Dimka’s pride.
Max was not sitting at the pine table. He was not in the room. Dimka did not know whether to be disappointed or relieved.
Josef was standing by the door to the back room. Dimka wondered whether to unleash his speech on the youngster. He probably did not have the power to get the money back, but it might relieve Dimka’s feelings. While Dimka hesitated he noticed that Josef had lost the threatening arrogance he had displayed yesterday. To Dimka’s astonishment, before he had a chance to open his mouth, Josef backed away from him, looking scared. ‘I’m sorry!’ Josef said. ‘I’m sorry!’
Dimka could not account for this transformation. If Josef had found out, overnight, that Dimka worked in the Kremlin and came from a politically powerful family, he might be apologetic and conciliatory, and he might even give the money back, but he would not look as if he were afraid for his life. ‘I just want Natalya’s money,’ Dimka said.
‘We gave it back! We already did!’
Dimka was puzzled. Had Natalya been here before him? ‘Who did you give it to?’
‘Those two men.’
Dimka could not make sense of this. ‘Where is Max?’ he said.
‘In the hospital,’ said Josef. ‘They broke both his arms, isn’t that enough for you?’
Dimka reflected for a moment. Unless this was all some charade, it seemed that two unknown men had beaten Max severely and forced him to give them the money he had taken from Natalya. Who were they? And why had they done this?
Clearly Josef knew no more. Bemused, Dimka turned and left the store.
It was not the police who had done this, he reasoned as he walked back to his bike, nor the army nor the KGB. Anyone official would have arrested Max and taken him to prison and broken his arms in private. Someone unofficial, then.
Unofficial meant gangland. So there were nasty criminals among Natalya’s friends or family.
No wonder she never said much about her private life.
Dimka drove fast to the Kremlin but still he was dismayed to find that Khrushchev had got there before him. However, the boss was in a good mood: Dimka could hear him laughing. Perhaps this was the moment to mention Vasili Yenkov. He opened his desk drawer and took out Yenkov’s KGB file. He picked up a folder of documents for Khrushchev to sign, then he hesitated. He was a fool to do this, even for his beloved sister. But he suppressed his anxiety and went into the main office.
The First Secretary sat behind a big desk speaking on the telephone. He did not much like the phone, preferring face-to-face contact: that way, he said, he could tell when people were lying. However, this conversation was jovial. Dimka put the letters in front of him, and he began to sign while continuing to talk and laugh into the mouthpiece.
When he hung up, Khrushchev said: ‘What’s that in your hand? Looks like a KGB file.’
‘Vasili Yenkov. Sentenced to two years in a labour camp for possessing a leaflet about Ustin Bodian, the dissident singer. He’s served his time, but they’re keeping him there.’
Khrushchev stopped signing and looked up. ‘Do you have some personal interest?’
Dimka felt a chill of fear. ‘None whatsoever,’ he lied, managing to keep the anxiety out of his voice. If he revealed his sister’s link to a convicted subversive it could end his career and hers.
Khrushchev narrowed his eyes. ‘So why should we let him come home?’
Dimka wished he had refused Tania. He should have known Khrushchev would see through him: a man did not become leader of the Soviet Union without being suspicious to the point of paranoia. Dimka backpedalled desperately. ‘I don’t say we should bring him home,’ he said as calmly as he could. ‘I just thought you might like to know about him. His crime was trivial, he has suffered his punishment, and for you to grant justice to a minor dissident would accord with your general policy of cautious liberalization.’
Khrushchev was not fooled. ‘Someone has asked you for a favour.’ Dimka opened his mouth to protest his innocence, but Khrushchev held up a hand to silence him. ‘Don’t deny it, I don’t mind. Influence is your reward for hard work.’
Dimka felt as if a death sentence had been lifted. ‘Thank you,’ he said, sounding more pathetically grateful than he wished.
‘What job is Yenkov doing in Siberia?’ Khrushchev asked.
Dimka realized that the hand holding the file was trembling. He pressed his arm against his side to stop it. ‘He’s an electrician in a power station. He’s not qualified, but he used to work in radio.’
‘What was his job in Moscow?’
‘He was a script editor.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ Khrushchev threw down his pen. ‘A script editor? What the hell use is a script editor? They’re desperate for electricians in Siberia. Leave him there. He’s doing something useful.’
Dimka stared at him in dismay. He did not know what to say.
Khrushchev picked up his pen and resumed signing. ‘A script editor,’ he muttered. ‘My arse.’