The Russian Affair

FOURTEEN



Anna’s patience was tried for six days before the Deputy Minister contacted her. During that period, she cast aside her decision several times, mostly at night, when the reasons for her proposed course of action seemed dubious. She told herself that Alexey would repudiate her as soon as she revealed the whole truth to him. But by day, her plan regained strength. Alexey was a tactician—wouldn’t the possibility of a double game appeal to him? Deceiving Kamarovsky was what frightened Anna the most. He gave her the inexplicable impression that he was omniscient. Hadn’t he expressed his benevolence toward her by the pardon—no other word would do—he’d procured for her father? Anna had the impression of moving through a minefield. The feeling that had gradually come to predominate in her was revulsion at her double-dealing. Alexey treated her obligingly, affectionately, and he seemed sad and sometimes lost. There was nothing in his character that justified Anna’s betrayal of his trust.

Surprisingly, the location he chose for their next appointment was not his apartment but the Proletarskaya subway station, near a busy marketplace and the bustling Volgogradsky Prospekt. Alexey’s message was so spontaneous that there was no time for Anton to pick her up; Anna had to take the subway.

“Things are difficult at the moment,” Bulyagkov informed her by way of greeting. He was wearing his jacket open, a rare thing for him to do, as he was always fearful of getting a cold. “The Twenty-fourth Party Congress is pure chaos.” He pointed to a narrow passage behind the station, and they went toward it.

“The leadership opened Pandora’s box when they raised the minimum wage. If they institute the new rate in Central Asia, the comrades in the Far East will want the same thing. If we yield to them, then we’ll have the Kazakhs and the West Siberian raions on our necks.” He took Anna’s arm. “Kosygin knows that, of course, but he’s ready to screw everything up for the sake of his pretty balance sheets. And so he appeals to every department to see whether it can make still more cuts and save still more money!”

The unusual location of their rendezvous and the short notice she’d been given unsettled Anna, and so did the Deputy Minister’s chattiness. He seemed merry and nervous at the same time. Before they reached the market, they passed a group of young men who were standing around a monument. Each of them was looking in a different direction.

“Shall we?” Alexey guided Anna toward the group. As he’d expected, they were selling books, which were spread out on the monument’s pedestal. While Anna merely glanced at the covers of the books, Alexey rummaged around in them with obvious pleasure. For the most part, they were works of tsarist literature, their ornate leather bindings inscribed with golden letters, along with books by ostracized authors.

“Well, what do you know …” Alexey said, brandishing a small, well-thumbed volume: Freedom Comes Naked. Grinning with pleasure, he opened the book and showed Anna a photograph of a considerably younger Viktor Ipalyevich. “These people act as though they think your father’s some kind of forbidden, esoteric figure.” He handed the book to her. “Here, it’s a gift.”

She accepted, letting him have the pleasure. He complained about the price to the vendor but was unable to reduce it by so much as a kopeck. When he reached for his wallet, he discovered that he’d forgotten it and waved to Anton, who was hovering about unobtrusively.

“I don’t much like taking you to such a place,” Alexey said. “But believe me, Annushka, this is the only way we could see each other.”

A furious hissing interrupted him, and he leaped aside in fright. Anna laughed; a gander was flapping around the Deputy Minister. The fowl, attached by one leg, was yanked back in midflight and landed on its belly. It screamed and stuck out its pointy tongue. Suddenly, as though some magic had transported them to another world, Anna found herself surrounded by hundreds of animals. Just ahead of them was the cat section: predominantly newborn kittens curled up in cardboard boxes.

A boy noticed Bulyagkov’s searching look and sprang over to him. “These are all house-trained,” he declared, opening the sales dialogue. He lifted up a cat’s tail with one finger and proudly pointed out that the animal was a first-class tomcat. Bulyagkov waved him off. “Black cats with white checks are rare,” the boy said, determined to hold on to his potential customer.

“I don’t need a cat.” Alexey declined the invitation to pet the animal and pointed over to the market’s main alley. “There,” he said to Anna.

First they had to walk past hundreds of dogs. A litter of Ovcharka puppies was crawling around the sawdust-covered bottom of a crate; only their drooping ears bore any resemblance to the full-grown sheep guardian. Black terriers barked. Smiling, Bulyagkov indicated a basket with Tsvetnaya Bolonkas, which were on offer in four different colors. Their owners extolled the value of their wares: “The tsar’s lapdog,” they said.

The air was filled with puling and whimpering, and the vendors’ stands were surrounded by Muscovite women on the point of yielding to temptation. Every cardboard box belonged to a cute little girl who swore she’d let her darling puppies go only if they found a good new home. In the next section, ornamental fish stared out of plastic bags, and a mountain of squirming worms awaited the next fishhook. In the end, when Anna and Alexey were simply surrounded by howls, whimpers, and the frantic beating of wings, he explained to her the reason for this visit to the market.

“Isn’t that more like a gift for a child?” Anna asked.

“Medea wants a living creature in the house.” Alexey stood in the midst of innumerable cages and looked around. “As I said, I know I’m not being very gracious, taking you along with me to buy a birthday present for my wife. She wants someone to be glad when she comes home. Since that someone’s obviously not me …” He was drawn to the bright, colorful parrots. “Medea’s afraid of dogs, rabbits shit everywhere, and so I was thinking about a bird, maybe one like this.” He waved a finger at a red bird with a black beak, which bent down from its perch and snapped at him.

“And who’s going to take care of it, then? Animals need attention.” An affectionately mocking look from Bulyagkov spurred Anna to defend her point of view. “If you’re never home and neither is Medea, that’s animal abuse.”

“Then I’ll get a pair.” He took a few steps to where the songbirds were. Green, yellow, and white, many with raised crests, they sat in their cages.

“I’ve heard those are illness-prone.”

“So why are they singing in the cold?” Bulyagkov inquired about the price of a pair of young woodcocks, but in the end he opted for two nondescript canaries because the vendor threw in five packages of birdseed. Anton paid, picked up the cage, and followed Anna and Alexey as they continued to stroll around the enormous market. They passed paddocks with sheep and goats; a young elk was on display as an attraction. Anna was beginning to fear that she’d never have a chance to speak about the real reason for their meeting when Alexey took her hand. “How much time do you have?” he asked. “Shall we get something to eat?” He turned to Anton: “Do you know a restaurant around here?”

“I’d like to speak to you in peace,” Anna said.

“You can’t do that while we eat?”

“Couldn’t we sit in the car?”

“Then Anton will have to pick up something for us,” Alexey said, grumpily complying with her request. “Where did we leave the car?”

Anton went ahead of them, clasping the birdcage to his chest. The black ZIL was parked in a side street.

“Make sure you get some shashlik,” Alexey said to Anton as Anna climbed into the limousine. “And beer would be a good idea, too.”

Anton put the birdcage on the front passenger’s seat. Suddenly plunged into semidarkness, the birds fell silent. The Deputy Minister sank down on the seat next to Anna, and the door closed. “These Central Committee sessions are killing me,” he muttered. “I never used to be affected like this. I could work night and day when we were preparing a Five-Year Plan.” He turned his head. “Can you tell me why I’m so tired?”

“You eat the wrong things.” She noticed how heavily he was perspiring and pulled the scarf off his neck.

“I’ve done that forever. It’s never hurt me.”

“When the Party Congress is over, you should go out to the dacha and take some time off.” Anna was nervous; one ill-judged word in the beginning could ruin everything. “Spring’s coming,” she said, stroking his temples. “Maybe what you’ve got is springtime lethargy.”

“In March? That would be strange.”

Anna made a first, oblique attempt to steer the conversation: “Have you ever hinted to Medea that you see other women?”

“Why should I?”

“You mean you’ve never had the urge to tell her the truth?”

He raised his head. “And who’d be served if I did that?”

“Isn’t the truth desirable in itself?”

“In most cases, the truth hurts. It can only benefit the person who tells it.”

His sober tone unsettled her, as did the way he suddenly started scrutinizing her.

“It takes strength to keep quiet, Anna.” He drew her to him; her head sank against his shoulder. “Maybe keeping your mouth shut is a stupid male virtue, but it’s a virtue all the same.”

She was tempted to leave it at that. Why did she want to ease her conscience? Because she was hoping for Alexey’s forgiveness. Would she actually be telling him anything new? Of what use would it be to him to know that Anna reported their conversations to the KGB? And yet, it didn’t make very much sense to keep up a lie just because the truth was unattractive.

She tried another tack: “The only person I ever see around you is Anton,” she observed. “Don’t you have any protection besides your driver?”

“How do you mean?” He smiled, but she could sense the alertness in his gaze.

“I never see any security people around you.”

“Do you have the impression that I’m in danger?”

In the long silence that followed this question, Anna realized that the time for innocent chatter had passed, and that she couldn’t go back. “After all, you’re … you’re an official of the Soviet Union, a bearer of state secrets.”

“I was in danger once upon a time, many years ago now. And ever since then, everything that’s come afterward has seemed harmless.” He undid the top button of his shirt. “I’ve never told you about my family.”

His offer to talk about himself was so unexpected and direct that Anna could muster only a mute nod.

“My father was a civil servant in Kharkov, in Ukraine. He carried out the land surveying for the kolkhozes in an enormous area between the Donets and the Don. His frequent travels and his influence as a survey official made him a prominent person. He was a veteran member of the Party and presided over the provincial government.” Alexey looked outside, where a group of young people was strolling toward the limousine. Not imagining that they were being observed through the window, the youths stopped right in front of Bulyagkov.

“Then came the time when Vradiyev’s show trial was being prepared. He’d been relieved of his positions as premier of the Ukrainian SSR and chairman of the Economic Affairs Council, accused of nationalistic deviation and factional activity, and called upon to perform unsparing self-criticism. Our family had the bad luck to be related to Vradiyev on my mother’s side. At every show trial, care was taken to produce a series of subordinate accomplices who were prepared to testify against the main defendant. My father was assured that the Party was aware of his achievements and that the court would declare a verdict in appearance only; as soon as the dust settled, he would be granted a pardon. When my father declined to take part in the deception, he was arrested.”

Alexey kept his eyes fixed on the window, so that he seemed to be telling his story to the young people outside.

“My father was chained hand and foot and put in an underground cell. His jailers pumped in cold water through the ventilation flaps and threatened to drown him. There were other tortures, and he held out against them all for three months before he signed the first confession. In the meantime, we had no news of him. My mother asked all his old Party friends for help; they either remained silent or pretended they were out. She received a single letter from the prison. The handwriting was my father’s, and the letter stated that he wasn’t afraid. He was a true communist, he wrote, and as such had nothing to fear from the state security agency, which was the iron fist of the people’s democracy and struck only its enemies. When she read that letter, my mother knew he was lost. She sent my sister and me to an uncle who lived outside Ukraine. Because my uncle forbade me to show myself in public until everything was over, I had to break off my pursuit of a degree in physics.” Alexey turned to Anna. “For a whole year, I did nothing but wait.”

“What happened to your father?”

“He had to go through the whole procedure. Right on cue, before the trial began, the state security headquarters turned into a convalescent home; the accused were given medical care and nursed back to health. In the meantime, a committee of experts had underpinned the vague accusations against Vradiyev with technical details. He was now accused of economic sabotage. The defendants who’d been selected for the show trial were assigned teachers, with whose help they learned question-and-answer texts and—above all—their confessions, verbatim and by heart. The same scripts were distributed to the judges. The trial took place in the Great Hall of the People’s Army Retirement Home in Kharkov. The only spectators allowed in were dependable factory delegates, people from the kolkhozes, and some selected journalists. The proceedings were broadcast on the radio.”

Outside, one of the young people inadvertently bumped against the window. His friends suggested that he should watch what he was doing and pulled him away in the direction of the market. Meanwhile the impact had awakened the birds, which ventured a duet of tentative peeping.

“First, Vradiyev’s prestige was dragged through the mud,” Bulyagkov went on. “He was ‘convicted’ of being a separatist of long standing who’d collaborated with fascist stool pigeons in the early forties. But before he admitted his guilt and requested the severest penalty, the squad of co-defendants had to perform. My father spluttered during his confession and lost his power of speech. The court was obliged to have the confession that had been tortured out of him read aloud.”

The two birds were now merrily chirping away; inside the automobile, their singing sounded unusually loud.

“Vradiyev was sentenced to death by hanging. Many of the others received a sentence of life imprisonment. My father got twenty years of forced labor.” Bulyagkov leaned toward the cage and tapped its bars with one finger.

“And then?” Anna gazed at the white nape of his neck.

“It was a good year, nineteen hundred and fifty-three,” he said, smiling and turning around. She didn’t grasp his meaning right away. “On the fifth of March, nineteen hundred and fifty-three, Stalin died. The following December, my father was rehabilitated. Not long after that, in an anti–show trial, the Ukrainian chief prosecutor, as well as the head of the secret police, was condemned and executed.”

“And how about you?” she asked, touching his shoulder. “Did you go back to Kharkov?”

“I went to Moscow with my uncle.”

“Why? I don’t understand … When did you see your father again?”

“We buried him a month after he was set free.”

The birds had fallen silent; tilting their little heads, they stared at the big human finger that was stroking the bars of their cage.

“His back was completely crooked, he had a broken thigh bone that never healed right, and he couldn’t digest solid food anymore. He died from a rapidly spreading deterioration of his mucous membranes. Soon after his funeral, my mother and sister left Kharkov, never to return.”

Anna removed her hand from his shoulder and leaned against the car door. “Why are you telling me this, Alexey?” She examined the man beside her: bent forward, sweat running down his temples.

“To make it clear to you how much better everything is these days. Up until the end, my father remained a fervent member of the Party, because he believed in its self-healing powers. Today, things like what happened to him don’t happen anymore. Checks on governmental entities are strict and correctly applied. Such an arbitrary power apparatus would be impossible in our Soviet Union.”

Anna nodded, but the situation made her uneasy. She’d wanted to make a confession and unexpectedly found herself listening to his. The shadowy, enclosed space, the frightened birds, and Alexey, divulging incidents that, in current practice, remained unmentioned … Why this sudden openness? What was his purpose in revealing himself to be the son of a convicted enemy of the people? Back at their first appointment, Alexey had suggested that he’d climbed as high in the nomenklatura as a non-Russian could. Didn’t his story throw a different light on his career? Anna sat there, rigid with concentration, while a silhouette approached the car.

The front door opened and Anton climbed in. He was balancing two paper plates of shashlik in one hand.

“No beer?” Bulyagkov asked.

Anton handed them the food and then pulled two bottles out of his overcoat pockets. “There aren’t any glasses.”

The Deputy Minister thanked Anton and told him to drive off; they’d eat on the way, he said.

“Careful, hot,” said Anton, then he closed the door and started the engine.