The Russian Affair

TWENTY-ONE



There were two new movies showing in the big cinema on Pushkinskaya Square: The Seventh Bullet and a drama entitled Without Fear. Leonid and Anna were looking for lighter fare, so they moved on to two other theaters without finding a film they wanted to see. Dusk was already falling as they strolled past the Operetta Theater. The poster in front announced the comedian Yuri Nikulin’s show Attack on the Laugh Muscles. The two turned away from the display cases.

Anna was exhausted. Although the family had helped with the cleanup operation, she’d wound up doing most of the work. The broken chair could probably be glued back together, but she’d had to throw away the floor lamp and the charred tablecloth. Eventually, the apartment had been returned to its former state, more or less, but as far as Anna was concerned, a kind of contamination remained, as if the place now bore a wound of indiscretion, inflicted on it by the Moscow literary world. Anna had put together an evening meal from the remains of the buffet. Viktor Ipalyevich, suffering the consequences of too much alcohol, had sought to regain control of his weakened body by moving very slowly and with great concentration. The poet was sincerely overjoyed at Leonid’s return and curious to observe the affection between the father and son. When Petya learned that his parents were going out that evening, he’d started to whine, but he’d been consoled by Leonid’s promise of a visit to the Red Army Museum.

As they walked down a winding street not far from the wall of the Kremlin, Anna and Leonid discovered a dimly illuminated sign for CINEMA UNDER THE ROOF and a poster that proposed A Long Night: Sergei Bondarchuk’s War and Peace. A starstruck look came over Leonid’s face. “Do you remember?” he said, as though speaking to himself.

The film was several years old but still popular, and Anna knew that Leonid had taken part in it—along with ten thousand other soldiers in the Red Army. They exchanged looks, and the decision was made. Since the showing had already begun, they had to ring a bell for the cashier, who graciously sold them two tickets. Every seat in the screening room, a reconstructed attic, seemed to be occupied; not wishing to disturb anyone by searching for their places, Anna and Leonid sat on the steps in the aisle. Leaning against each other, they let themselves be carried away by the large, colorful images.

Every hour of procrastination, every hour when he didn’t say what he had to say, increased Leonid’s discomfort. At the same time, he admitted to himself that the many long months he’d spent living in barracks had made him almost forget the comforts of family life. With Galina, passion had swum into his ken; now he was thinking that he’d also earned a bit of tranquillity. Accordingly, he’d wait for the right time to make his disclosure. It might, he knew, cause the edifice of his former life to come tumbling down, but even so, the upheaval should not occur wantonly or before its time. And until then, who could deny him the right to play the home-comer, the welcome husband and father?

Leonid loved Bondarchuk’s War and Peace. On the screen, the first meeting between Prince Andrei and Natasha was taking place. The very young and beautiful actress Ludmila Savelyeva, in the part that made her famous, played Natasha. Then the director appeared, playing the central role of the noble Pierre. Leonid nudged Anna. “I know him.”

She snuggled closer to him, knowing that she’d soon hear the old story. Even though the final decisions were made at the highest level, the soldiers from the chosen garrisons had scrambled to take part in the filming. The epic of their homeland, the mightiest novel of all time, was to be turned into a movie seven hours long—a prospect that made every Russian heart beat harder. Strictly according to regulations, the enlisted men had to play the foot soldiers, while Soviet officers were given costumes corresponding to their rank and identifying them as members of the staff of General Kutuzov, Napoleon’s conqueror. Other Russian officers were assigned to wear uniforms of the French Grande Armée, but they refused and had to be replaced by actors.

Leonid had very much admired the director, Sergei Bondarchuk. With the help of dozens of assistants, he had made army groups move on cue, coordinated advancing cavalry units and pyrotechnics so that the trained horses would fall right in front of the camera, and in the end sent a thousand men marching into Napoleon’s cannon fire. Leonid had played a Russian adjutant; his uniform was too tight, and the boots were missing altogether, but he’d been assured that the camera was going to shoot him only from the chest up. With a resolute look on his face, Leonid had harkened to his general’s command and marched out of the frame a yard behind Bondarchuk.

He’d surely told this story a hundred times and seen the film a dozen. Nevertheless, the flickering images once again carried him away into the past, to the time when he’d met Anna, when they still had bold dreams. For the rest of his stay in the theater, Galina, icy Yakutia, and the great change hanging over him were forgotten.

They stayed until the end of the third part of War and Peace; it was already after midnight. Feeling good because of what she saw as the growing closeness between her and her husband, Anna strolled beside him to the subway and, soon thereafter, along the Mozhaisk Chaussée. When they arrived home, they tiptoed past the sleeping Viktor Ipalyevich, climbed into the sleeping alcove, and put Petya between them without waking him up.


The following afternoon, as Anna was returning home from work, she started in alarm. Anton was in the ZIL, waiting for her. That could mean but one thing: Alexey wanted to propose a meeting. A hundred thoughts flashed across her brain. Her dearest wish was to make a clean break, and that would entail leaving Alexey. Leonid’s presence positively compelled a separation! She’d give him a farewell gift, Anna decided, as she walked toward the ZIL; she’d tell him what she knew about Lyushin. Yes, that was how she’d do it: She’d go to Drezhnevskaya Street one last time, sit in the corner seat on the sofa, next to her dear old wolf, drink a little wine, and tell him the truth. Anna exchanged greetings with Anton and agreed to an appointment the following evening.

“Tomorrow I’m meeting that man for the last time,” she began without prelude when she found Leonid alone in the apartment. She didn’t carry her groceries into the kitchen; she had an irresistible urge to start talking honestly and immediately.

Leonid kept his eyes on the sheet of paper in front of him, scribbled a few more lines, and looked up. “Man? What man?”

Anna put out a hand to stop the bag of potatoes from falling off the table and answered that she was talking about the man from the Central Committee.

Leonid almost blurted out a question: Was he the reason she was meeting this fellow? He was downright fearful of the idea that Anna’s CC contacts had something to do with him.

When he remained silent, Anna said, “It’s the last time. I can’t do it anymore, and I don’t want to, either. I don’t care what privileges come with it!”

She was in front of him again, Anna, who was filled with the highest ideals and at the same time caught in the web of necessity; Anna, who surrendered what she could to rescue her family’s happiness. He laid an envelope over his sheet of paper. “Are you sure this is the right time to do that?”

His dispassion irritated her. Was he insulted to hear that the affair was still going on? Didn’t he understand from her behavior that his homecoming had changed everything? Anna wasn’t used to talking about feelings with Leonid. The signals between them had always been sent by other means—a good meal, a song on the radio, a smiling gaze at their son. Alexey, not Leonid, was the man who’d encouraged Anna to name her wishes and her fears. And now she was standing before her husband, unsure of how to proceed. She said, “I’ve decided, Leonid, and I know everything’s going to be all right.”

She moved toward him, the potato bag toppled over, and the first tuber spilled out, followed by several more. With his foot, Leonid prevented a potato from rolling under the cupboard. Anna knelt down. He didn’t want to see his wife scooting around on the floor and bent to help her. They met in front of the sofa, still gathering up potatoes. Holding one in each hand, she crawled to his side, embraced him, sought his mouth, and pressed him against the sofa.

She couldn’t understand why she was now wild for the very same man she’d scarcely desired during the course of the previous five years. What tricks emotions play on people, she thought; the Party was right to demand that individual passion be placed in the service of society as a whole. While Anna was considering what ideal she subordinated her own passion to and concluding that her attitude vis-à-vis politics was deficient, Leonid pulled his sweater off and unbuttoned his shirt. How simple it had been to live right when she was a Pioneer Girl: a camp filled with girls, a well-regulated daily routine, political instruction every morning and evening. Anna had known since those days that the Party’s directives were like so many bridges and handrails that could assist a person in negotiating the complexities of daily life. The simplification of the data helped one to keep the goal in sight, to overcome setbacks, and to learn to deal with one’s own demons. Meanwhile, things had progressed to the point where Leonid was sitting beside her on the sofa, half-naked, and she clambered over him. Despite her excitement, she couldn’t ignore the musty old man’s smell that emanated from the sofa cushions. It was as if Viktor Ipalyevich were there with them. Anna shut her eyes and caressed her husband.

The sight of the letter on the table a few feet away made Leonid feel ashamed. He’d hardly begun to write an amorous note to Galina, and now he was betraying his lover with his wife. Although he’d wanted to give his letter a simple opening, the first few sentences had turned out unusually ardent; Leonid didn’t recognize himself as the author of such lines and couldn’t imagine what had become of his vocabulary. The revival of his married life distressed him, and he’d felt the need to write straight from the heart, to cry out to Galina and implore her to return his love. If he didn’t receive some sign from her, and very soon, he’d lose himself completely in his old life, and his psychological homecoming would be allowed to follow the physical one. Sex with Anna was unavoidable, but even after their long separation, sleeping with her brought him nothing more than ordinary pleasure. They’d never introduced much variety into their lovemaking; in the afternoon, the sofa had always been their chosen venue, so as not to rumple the freshly made bed. Leonid listened to the pitiful springs, doing their duty, and watched the lovely breasts, soft and full, bouncing up and down before his eyes. He tried to force himself not to think of Galina, as decency required, but his efforts failed. The images, the smell stole upon him, the inadvertence with which he’d thrown himself into her embrace, the intoxication that had sprung from it. He longed for Galina, right then, and his longing shamed him.

The sound came from just outside the door, and in the next moment someone entered the apartment. Before Leonid could snatch up his pants or Anna climb off of him, Viktor Ipalyevich was in the living room. Reflexively, with the movement of a character in an animated cartoon, he pivoted on his heel; the look of embarrassed surprise crossed his face only after his body had already reacted. He vanished as he’d appeared, with spectral swiftness.

“It’s such beautiful weather,” they heard him say in the foyer. “Why should we come back to this stuffy apartment so soon?”

“I’m hungry,” the child’s voice said.

“Is that a reason to stay inside?” There was a sound of rustling fabric, followed by the jingle of keys. “What do you say we go to the old Antler bakery and get some blini?”

“Blini?” the two on the sofa heard their son say. His grandfather’s answer was overlaid by the closing of the door.

Leonid had a sudden mad desire to top off the already ludicrous situation. “So you’re going to see that CC member,” he said. “Where is it that you two meet?”

Anna, who’d been holding her breath, exhaled with a gasp. “Stop it, Leo,” she said, jerking his head down to her chest.

“But it interests me.” Now, he thought, I’ve got to ask some questions that have been unspoken for a year and a half. “How often have you two been together? All told, I mean.”

Her upper body sagged. “I don’t know how often.” Like so many questions, this one couldn’t be answered.

“Only once a week, or more than that?”

“Stop it! Stop it!”

“Would you say every three days?”

“He doesn’t have much time,” she let herself be coaxed into saying. “And he’s married.”

“So … once a month?” Why am I tormenting her? Leonid thought. Wouldn’t this be the time for him to say, “I’m no better than you, I was lonely, and now there’s this woman, and I want her. Unlike you, I can’t say I’ll never see her again, because I will. She’s the reason why I applied for this new transfer”? Sensing that the interruption had incapacitated him, Leonid pushed Anna gently aside, stood up, and adjusted his clothing. She’d torn a button off his shirt; reproachfully, he showed her the spot.

She was as unhappy as she could be. Why couldn’t she manage to convince him of her good intentions? From now on, all her efforts would be dedicated to the family; why wouldn’t he believe that? She found the button and presented it to him as if it were a symbol of her honesty. Leonid gave her a fleeting kiss and sat down to his writing again.

“You must be hungry.” She was concerned about reestablishing the good mood. “I’m hungry, in any case,” she said with a laugh, gathered up the bag of potatoes, and sprang into the kitchen.

Leonid pulled out his partly written letter from under the envelope, read what he’d written, and felt the impossibility of writing anything more with Anna in the kitchen, just a few steps away. He folded the sheet of paper, slipped on his shoes, and announced that he was going out for cigarettes. On the way downstairs, he met his disgruntled son, who in the end had rejected all his grandfather’s proposals and insisted on returning home. Leonid evaded the old man’s knowing, fellow-male look, set the fidgety child on his shoulder, and brought him along on his cigarette-buying mission; Viktor Ipalyevich continued up the stairs to the apartment while father and son went galloping down. Petya squealed and dug his fingers into Leonid’s hair. They ran outside into the bright daylight and reached the tobacco shop on the corner. When Leonid tore open the packet and put a cigarette between his lips, he remembered that what he’d actually set out to do was to finish writing his letter to Galina. He decided to put it off until that evening and offered Petya his hand. Smoking, he strolled with his son down the Mozhaisk Chaussée.