The Russian Affair

SEVENTEEN



Anna didn’t call Rosa Khleb that night, or the following morning, either. As she did every day, she took the building combine’s special bus to Karacharovo, put on her work overalls, and together with her colleagues—all women—began her shift in the shell of the twelve-story building. She felt safe on the scaffolding. Here, there was no telephone; here nobody asked her to explain herself. Anna applied a coat of finegrained plaster to the ceiling. You have to call Rosa, her sense of duty reminded her; hesitating any longer would arouse Kamarovsky’s suspicions. Anna had no illusions about why she was stalling instead of following the usual procedure: She couldn’t decide how to report Lyushin’s drunken performance. Had he really given something away, or had it all been mere boasting? It seemed obvious that he was putting off the Ministry in order to gain more time and increased funding for his work. Fame and success were of great importance to him, and if he was withholding the results of his research, he must have reasons for doing so. Suppose Anna were to express her suppositions; who would benefit from that? Certainly not Nikolai Lyushin. Wouldn’t his conduct be classified as irresponsible and harmful to the State? It’s not your job to analyze information, she told herself. So why was she toying with the idea of portraying her date with Lyushin as an innocuous encounter? Basically, there was only one person toward whom she felt responsible: Alexey. As Lyushin’s superior, it was he, first and foremost, who was being traduced.

She spread the plaster over the ceiling with circular movements. Although droplets of the stuff were sticking her eyelids together, she worked on, lost in thought. At the end of her shift, she locked up her tools, changed into her street clothes, and was bused back to the center of Moscow.

After getting off at Durova Street, she took the subway for two stops and went into a small notions shop near Gorky Street. Anna wasn’t shopping for cotton or woolen fabrics, which was what most of the establishment’s customers required; she was on the lookout for synthetic material. Before long, she found what she wanted: a slick blue fabric, which though unpleasant to the touch was made entirely from a fiber described by its manufacturer in Omsk as indestructible. As Anna lifted out the bolt of material, she flinched from the discharge of static electricity. She asked for a length of twenty feet, chose a tape, paid, and left the shop.

When she got home, instead of climbing to her fourth-floor apartment she knocked at a door on the first. The door opened, slowly and hesitantly. “I’m glad you’re home, Avdotya,” Anna said, greeting the shape in the semidarkness.

“Ah, Anna, well, well. I thought you were the mailman!” Avdotya said, shouting because she was hard of hearing. Anna, who had no desire to listen to the Metsentsev story, strode briskly and purposefully into the apartment. “I have something for you.” She turned her head toward Avdotya so that the older woman could read her lips.

Next to the window stood the symbol of Avdotya’s craft, the pride of her life: her own sewing machine. At the end of her long and meritorious service in the garment industry, the company had rewarded its retiring forewoman with the gift of an obsolescent model. As a consequence, Avdotya had been the recipient of a virtually unbroken series of commissions ever since her retirement. Since Metsentsev, the Party secretary for that district of Moscow, was also one of her customers, things went smoothly for her.

Anna laid her packet of material on Avdotya’s table and said, “I need a curtain!”

“What?” Avdotya closed the door.

“A curtain, little mother!”

“I couldn’t possibly start making it before next week!”

“But this is only Tuesday!” Anna unrolled the fabric.

“I have to turn the cuffs on thirty shirts. Then Ryukhin on the fifth floor wants me to alter his suit, and the Perth family has ordered a wall hanging!”

“My Petya needs the curtain!” Anna acted distressed. “He’s sick, he’s really sick. He’s got some kind of nasty allergy. If I don’t keep everything that sets it off away from him, then my boy can’t get any air! This curtain will let him breathe freely!”

The old woman picked up the material and examined it with an expert eye. “Loosely woven,” she muttered. “I’ll need to make a double stitch.”

“But look how smooth.” Anna spread out the piece of fabric. “Three panels every six feet. How much work can that be?”

“What about the tape?”

Anna took it out of her bag. “It won’t take you even an hour, Mother! And you’ll be helping Petya breathe at night! Besides, the curtain will muffle Papa’s snoring.”

She negotiated the price in the same tone of voice, and Avdotya determined that Anna should check back with her in two days to see when the work would be finished. Relieved, Anna left the ground-floor apartment and mounted the stairs to her own. Halfway up, she stumbled and spent a few moments wondering about her lack of strength; then she realized she hadn’t had a thing to eat all day long. She closed her eyes and leaned against the banister. When she felt better, she walked up the rest of the way, took off her scarf as she entered the apartment, and hung her coat on the hook.

“You’re late.” Viktor Ipalyevich looked up from the table. “I couldn’t give your lady friend any information about when you might come home.” With a movement of his head, he indicated the sofa. In front of the wall hanging sat Rosa Khleb. A stack of Anna’s father’s poetry collections lay on Rosa’s lap, and the top volume was open.

“Good evening,” she said. “With Comrade Tsazukhin’s poems to read, the time flew by.”

Speechless at this “house call,” Anna looked from one of them to the other.

“She didn’t want anything to drink,” said Viktor Ipalyevich, by way of excusing himself for the fact that he had a cup of tea in front of him while Rosa had nothing.

Anna turned her head toward the sleeping alcove. “Petya’s playing in the courtyard with the others,” his grandfather explained.

“I never tire of reading the poems in The Red Light,” Rosa said, holding up the battered volume.

“May I offer it to you as a gift?”

“What have I done to deserve such an honor?”

“I rarely meet any of Anna’s friends.” He looked at his daughter. “You usually get home at five.”

“I bought the material for Petya’s curtain. Avdotya’s going to sew it for us.”

During this innocuous conversation, Anna tried to grasp the urgency that lay behind Rosa’s unusual visit. Was Anna’s delay in reporting really that serious? Should she have called Rosa last night, after all?

“Will you have dinner with us?” Anna asked, in an attempt to clarify her visitor’s plans.

“I’m afraid I don’t have enough time. I just wanted a chance to chat with you, Anna.” Rosa briefly arched her eyebrows. “I waited so I could at least tell you hello, but now I must be off.” She put aside Viktor Ipalyevich’s books, except for The Red Light. “I accept this with humble gratitude,” she said.

“Wait a moment, I’ll write something in it.” He unscrewed his fountain pen and formulated a dedication. Rosa watched him, smiling as she did so, but Anna could detect her impatience.

“I’ll walk you to the bus,” Anna said as her friend was putting on her cap.

“That would be nice of you.”

“Will you go and call Petya in?” Anna asked her father as she slipped into her overcoat. “I’ll fix dinner as soon as I get back.”

Rosa exchanged farewells with Viktor Ipalyevich; then she and Anna left the apartment together and went wordlessly down the stairs. At last, Rosa broke the silence. “Your father’s a very pleasant man,” she said.

“He can turn his charm on and off, whenever he wants. Did you meet Petya, too?”

“Viktor Ipalyevich pointed him out to me from the kitchen window. A sweet boy.”

The preliminary banter was over. “I couldn’t call you last night,” Anna said. “Petya was still awake, and Papa was working on his poems.”

When they reached the second floor, Rosa stopped. “Where can we go?”

“I don’t know. There isn’t anyplace around here.”

Rosa pointed downstairs. At the turning between the ground floor and the cellar, there was a sort of niche, an element of fanciful building design left over from tsarist times. “Let’s sit down there. The place would appeal to Star-Eyes.” Rosa began to descend again. “You know his fondness for architecture.”

The mention of Kamarovsky made it painfully clear to Anna that the time for her to reach a decision had arrived. Rosa’s coming all the way to Filyovsky Park meant that the department must be particularly interested in Anna’s report.

They came to the narrow recess, in which residents of the apartment building used to sit and chat during the summer months. The built-in wooden benches were worn smooth, and innumerable steps had scratched the stone floor.

Rosa sat down. “Lyushin left the Ministry only a little while ago. The meeting lasted longer than expected.”

Anna dropped down onto the bench beside her.

“How was your evening?” Rosa asked. “What was his reason for calling you up?”

“What you suspected. He wanted female company.” Anna was speaking softly, and yet she thought she could hear her whispered syllables wandering around in the stairwell like ghosts. She reported what the physicist had eaten and how much he’d drunk, and she even related the stupid incident of the fiddler who’d gotten something in his eye.

“Did Lyushin mention his work?” Rosa cocked her head so that she could better see Anna’s face. “Did he talk about why he’d be paying the Minister a visit?”

“He wants increased funding for his research. I’ve already given Kamarovsky a report on that.”

“Considering Lyushin’s vanity, I’m surprised he didn’t try to impress you with his accomplishments. He made no reference—none at all—to his research project?”

I have brought the moment to a halt, Anna thought, remembering Lyushin’s words. And I needed no Mephistopheles to help me. “He probably didn’t have time to bring it up before Alexey’s unexpected arrival,” she answered.

Rosa Khleb nodded. “The meeting was arranged between the two of them.”

“And you sent me to the Ukraina even though you knew that?”

“I didn’t know it yesterday. We got a tip today from someone in the Ministry. How did Bulyagkov behave? Like a jealous bear?”

“He remained surprisingly calm.”

“He’s a politician,” Rosa said with a little smile. “Maintaining the facade—that’s what the gentlemen on the Central Committee are best at.” She clasped Anna’s hand. “Wait until the next time you’re alone with Alexey. I’m sure he won’t be so calm then.”

A noise made the two women turn around. A few feet away, a door opened, and Avdotya started shuffling toward the mailboxes. She noticed the other two only when she was right in front of them. “Good heavens! Who are you?” the old woman shouted.

“It’s all right, little mother! It’s me, Anna!”

“And who’s with you? Come out of there or I’ll call the police!”

“This is my friend Rosa,” Anna said. “And this is Avdotya, the seamstress.”

“We were just chatting,” Rosa said to the old woman. “Just chatting a little, that’s all.”

“In the dark?” Avdotya shook her head and turned toward the mailboxes.

Rosa led Anna outside, where they spoke a few minutes longer. In the end, Rosa seemed satisfied and with a brief embrace bade Anna farewell.


“We should do things like this more often!” Viktor Ipalyevich was standing in a part of the apartment where Anna had never seen him before, namely, in front of the mirror. He’d taken off his cap—a rare occurrence in itself—and was occupied with arranging his hair. With the years, it had retreated from the crown to the back of his head, but Viktor Ipalyevich was running his finger through it as if it were a thick mane.

“Do what, Papa?” Anna ascertained that Petya wasn’t back yet.

“People!” He twirled a pathetic little tuft sprouting from the middle of his bald spot and tried to give the strands a specific direction. “We should surround ourselves with people again, the way we used to. This reclusive life isn’t good for us.” He looked at his daughter in the mirror as though she were chiefly to blame for his hermitlike existence.

“Didn’t you say you were going through a phase that made it impossible for you to put up with the outside world?”

“How can you take my gloomy nattering seriously?” He laughed, displaying his high spirits. “It took a visit from your friend to remind me that Moscow is out there! What does she do, your friend?”

“She works for a newspaper.”

“A colleague! A fellow writer!” Viktor Ipalyevich shouted. “And she didn’t say a word about that! She talked about my work the whole time.” He turned his back to the mirror and twisted himself in an attempt to see how he looked from behind.

“Why isn’t Petya here? Why didn’t you go down and get him?”

“Do you know what I’m in the mood for? A party!” The poet pointed to his notebook. “Don’t I have a good reason to invite people over for a party?”

“What people?”

“Haven’t they been wondering for a long time what their friend Viktor Ipalyevich is doing? And I’ll tell them: He’s working on a volume of poems, and it’s almost finished! That’s why he wants you all to gather around him and celebrate this great event!” Overheated, he pulled off his woolen jacket and hung it over the back of his chair. “Of course, your lady friend will be among the invited guests.”

Anna interrupted his flight: “What about Petya?”

“It won’t hurt him to stay up a little later than usual one night.”

“I mean now!” She stepped in front of her father. “Do you want him to stay outside until he catches cold?”

“Right, I have to fetch Petya,” the old man said, nodding absently. “We’ll invite everybody, all right? Uyvary and Madame Akhmadulina and good old Lebedinsky and Vagrich …”

“Writers?” she asked, unable to believe her ears. “You want writers to set foot in this apartment?”

“But that’s what I’ve been talking about all this time.” He put his hands on his hips. “Will you cook for us, Anna? Will you do that? I’ll pay for everything.”

“With what?”

“With this, my dear child.” All at once, he was holding a piece of crumpled paper on which there were some handwritten figures.

“They’ve paid you something?”

“For the first time in nine years.” He nodded without emotion. “A princely advance. I don’t know anyone they’ve ever paid so well.”

“Since when do you have this?” Anna held the check under the lamp.

“Two days now. I wanted to wait for the best opportunity to surprise you with it. Do you think your beautiful friend will accept my invitation?”

“Rosa?” Anna frowned. “If she knows that a bunch of banned writers will be gathering here, I think she’ll be only too happy to come.”

“Really?” He grinned without understanding what Anna was alluding to. “So the only question remaining is what you’ll prepare for our guests.”

“No.” She picked up her scarf again. “The only question is whether you’re going to fetch Petya home for dinner, or whether I’ll have to do it.”

“Petya, yes, right, he must be frozen stiff!” The old man jammed his cap onto his head, put on his coat, and headed for the door. “Ah, Anna, I’m so glad, this is really a brilliant idea. We’ll put some life in this musty old place!” As he was about to go out, he turned around again and said,

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!





And with that, he ran out of the apartment.