The Russian Affair

TWENTY-FOUR



Two things perplexed A. I. Kamarovsky. The first was that the reports concerning Alexey Maximovich Bulyagkov had become so innocuous. Apparent normalcy was, in the Colonel’s view, a sign that something extraordinary lay ahead. The commotion over the Lyushin project had died down. The Minister for Research had succeeded in embellishing the disappointing results in his report by correcting the date of Lyushin’s expected breakthrough. After this cosmetic application, it seemed only logical that the Ministry should place additional funds at the disposal of the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Dubna. The Minister had signed the authorization, and Lyushin had returned satisfied to his backwater north of Moscow.

After the successful adoption of the Five-Year Plan, the hectic pace of bureaucracy had slowed down, and Bulyagkov once again applied himself to his usual work, shuttling between the Ministry and the Central Committee, receiving the representatives of the various oblasts, and giving them the opportunity to present their assessment of the technological progress achieved in their region. He commended the improved performance in pesticide development and labored in vain on promoting the field of petrochemistry. The newly opened oil fields along the lower course of the Ob River were ready for exploitation, but the physicists in Murmansk were still unable to deliver the desired capacities by means of bigger power blocks. The refining of crude oil remained the problem child of the Soviet economy, and even though research funding had increased enormously, there was still no breakthrough in sight.

In his private life, Bulyagkov moved between his residence in Arbat, where he and his wife, Medea, customarily stayed out of each other’s way, and the scene of his erotic adventures on Drezhnevskaya Street. Although formerly the women booked to appear there had changed every few months, in the past two years Kamarovsky had learned of Bulyagkov’s involvement in no amorous affair other than the one he was conducting with Anna Viktorovna Nechayevna, the daughter of the poet Tsazukhin. Anna’s reports were unspectacular; however, Kamarovsky appreciated her collaboration. Unlike others, when she had no suspicious moments to describe, she didn’t make up any. He often had to deal with reports turned in by ambitious agents who invented anti-Soviet activities for the persons they had under observation in order to further their own careers. During all their time together, Alexey and Anna’s affair had remained an unruffled relationship.

Kamarovsky found all the more interesting, therefore, the fact that Bulyagkov’s wife, Medea, who was Moscow’s cultural secretary and above all suspicion, had now sued for divorce. For years, she and her husband had lived such loosely connected lives that the Colonel couldn’t imagine any disruption that would explain such a step. The petition had been filed only a short time ago, but given the influence of both parties, it seemed likely that the case would be quickly settled. Yesterday, the practical first step had followed the official one. While Medea remained in the main residence, Bulyagkov had had some of his things brought to the Drezhnevskaya Street apartment, which was currently serving as his home. Kamarovsky found it difficult to believe in the so-called insurmountable antipathy that was supposed to have sprung up between the couple, but what he chiefly wondered about was why this was happening precisely now. As he saw no possibility of directly questioning Medea Bulyagkova, he awaited all the more eagerly a visit from Rosa Khleb. She’d asked the cultural secretary for an interview. There was no reason to doubt the journalistic motives behind the request; after all, Mrs. Bulyagkova was a person of public interest, she coordinated every guest performance that came to Moscow from the Soviet provinces, and her picture was often in the newspapers. Rosa had announced that she was doing a feature for the Moscow Times and called on Medea in her office in the Cultural Center.

Kamarovsky was expecting the Khleb woman to arrive in ten minutes. It seemed improper to spend the intervening time idly, but he’d cleared off his desk so meticulously that he didn’t know what to do during the rest of his wait. He sat down at the piano, played the five bars he’d mastered, and came to grief with the sixth. He improvised a little, letting his thoughts drift, remembering how smoothly his female trolley conductor had taken in the passengers’ fares and returned their tickets and change, in spite of the lurching car. The mute Kremlin Bell, the biggest in the world, crossed his mind, and that sixteenth-century bronze cannon no one had ever dared to fire, for fear that it might explode. Kamarovsky strung together some melancholy chords, reducing the melody to the span of an octave. He wanted to play something more cheerful, something he could jiggle his knee to, but nothing of the sort occurred to him. At night, when everybody in the building was asleep, he’d sometimes sit at the keyboard and start banging away; he found it amusing that his neighbors in the adjacent apartments, who’d lived next door to him for decades and in that time had figured out what he was, didn’t dare call the police. You’re a fossil, Kamarovsky thought, born out of the fratricidal struggle between the Whites and the Reds; you think in terms of the old, long-outdated hierarchies. Look at the young people, how easily they move among our great accomplishments, how they take them for granted. They display no reverence for the privations that were the cost of every victory; they take the whole and shape it for themselves.

“The big Kremlin Bell,” the Colonel murmured, lifting his fingers from the keyboard. The silence did him good. He knew what the true meaning of his words was, but instead of occupying himself with that, he returned to Comrade Bulyagkova’s divorce. It was a private matter, so what was there to fathom?

Bulyagkov’s career was the kind of success story you read about in books. After breaking off his physics studies, Alexey, a talented Ukrainian with dubious relatives, had met the pretty daughter of a good Moscow family. Through the girl, he’d gained admittance to the right circles; since her family recognized that she was going to marry Alexey in spite of all opposition, they decided not to exclude him, but to appropriate him. Medea’s grandfather, the senior serving member of the Central Committee, had Alexey Bulyagkov’s biography rewritten and his father recast as a staunch fighter against counterrevolution. After the wedding, important doors had opened to Medea’s young husband, who wasn’t shy about striding through them. His preparation in the natural sciences had predestined him for assignment to the research sphere. He’d climbed up the hierarchical ladder, step by step, until he’d reached the second rung, from which there was no further ascent. In addition to being an alcoholic, the Minister was lazy and erratic, and it had cost Kamarovsky a great deal of effort to suppress the evidence of his weakness for minors. Nonetheless, the Minister had the best connections; from now until his retirement, nobody would ever contest his position. Since the opening of the Bulyagkov dossier, the Colonel had sought to prove that Alexey Maximovich found his lot as Deputy Minister intolerable and would therefore engage in some maneuver to unseat the Minister. So far, Kamarovsky’s efforts had failed.

And now, this unexpected divorce. What advantage would Medea gain from altering her status? She wasn’t seeking to liberate herself so that she could be with some “other man”; culture had always been her only passion. In the course of the decades, Alexey had never eschewed cheating on Medea, but he’d always arranged matters so tastefully that she wasn’t compromised. Bulyagkov was fifty-one, his wife marginally younger; what could either of them, at their age, do with their new freedom?

The big Kremlin Bell, the Tsar Bell, weighs two hundred tons, the Colonel thought. It had barely been hung when it developed an inner crack and had never sounded, not even once. Kamarovsky had had his daughter’s graduation thesis, an essay on the Kremlin Bell, sent to his office and had read the document as though it were one of the many that constantly passed over his desk. The text, at once precise and patriotic, was written in a flowing style; with such a thesis, obtaining her diploma would be a mere formality. And so his daughter would complete her studies at the Polytechnic Institute a year early and begin working toward a degree in architecture at the university in the fall. Kamarovsky hadn’t been in his daughter’s company for eight years, nor did she attach any importance to a possible future meeting. Twenty years previously, her mother had informed him by post of the child’s birth. How odd, to receive such a letter in the center of the state security apparatus. He’d offered his support, but the woman had never taken anything from him. She and, later, her daughter had been clever enough to keep themselves clear of power, knowing that it could be helpful in many instances, but that its bonds could eventually become too tight to shake off.

Now she lives with a fellow from Okhotsk, the Colonel thought glumly; he wished his daughter would get over this Greater Soviet flirtation and embark upon a relationship with someone from Russia proper. Then he smiled at his own chauvinism. It would have suited him to help her get assigned to a nice apartment. As it was, she and her friend were living with four other people in a low-rent pad in the suburbs. Kamarovsky had once driven past it. He’d wanted to arrange a little graduation party for her, but she hadn’t even answered his letter. Sometimes, unbeknownst to her, he watched her from a distance; the library where she did her cramming was only a few blocks away. She’s inherited my delicate bones, he’d say to himself, with crazy pride; she’ll never have wide hips like her mother. Occasionally he’d dare to get a little closer to her, and he’d believe he recognized a kindred expression in her eyes.

Kamarovsky’s head sank onto his chest. He jumped in fright. No, he couldn’t have a seizure now, Rosa was arriving any minute! But the sudden release of his neck muscles was a sure sign. It must be the excitement, he thought as he stood up. The reflections on his daughter, the certainty that he’d never be more than an observer of her career—that had all contributed to putting him in the kind of emotional state he hated. He knew he wouldn’t be able to stay upright long enough to make it to his desk, so he dropped to his knees and began to propel himself forward, a few inches at a time. If he could concentrate on something, however glassily, he might still be able to stave off the atony. However, it was a surer thing to … He raised his hand to the top drawer, where the little envelope with the tablets was always ready. He’d recently ordered some new ones; only two hours after his call to Doctor Shchedrin, a messenger had brought him what he wanted. On his knees, leaning his head against the cool wood of the desk, Kamarovsky pressed a tablet out of its packaging. The hand that was supposed to bring the medication to his mouth refused its duty and slid onto the floor. The Colonel stared at the useless hand. How ugly it was as it lay there; he didn’t know how he could get it back. And then he let himself fall. A cheek and an ear slid across the drawer handle on their way down, and his head struck the parquet floor. Kamarovsky couldn’t tell whether his hand was still holding the tablet; half fainting, he shoved his head to what seemed like the right spot. Seen from close up, the grooves between the floorboards spread out like lines of perspective and went on into infinity. He wondered why the technique for representing spatial situations, already in place by the time of the Romans’ wall frescoes, had for centuries undergone no further development and had instead been displaced by symbolic perspective. The longer he jerked his head around, the smaller were his chances of coming upon the tablet. Then his ear felt, as though through wads of cotton, a small obstacle. Kamarovsky raised his head so far that his nose and mouth came to rest on the floor. Only with the help of his lips was he able to move forward. How heavy your skull could be when your neck muscles wouldn’t play along. Kamarovsky pushed his open mouth over the pill. His tongue protruded and dropped downward, very slowly, until it felt the rounded shape, licked it, and gently raised it toward his mouth. The Colonel tasted dust and crumbs; when he closed his lips, his teeth grated on particles. He forced himself to bite down hard and worked his jaws to produce saliva. Then he swallowed and gagged until he was sure he’d managed to get all the medication down his gullet. Now there was nothing to do but wait. He could smell a faint scent of varnish, with which the floor had been sealed years before. He even thought he could smell his own sweat, the odor left in this spot by his feet.

By the time the doorbell rang, Kamarovsky was already capable of standing again. Groaning, though feeling steadily stronger, he rose to his feet and dropped into the chair. After the second ring, he stretched out his hand, just a little, and pressed the buzzer. Shortly thereafter, he heard the staccato sound of steps coming upstairs and entering the apartment. The Colonel made an effort to straighten his crooked spine. Rosa was wearing black; he nodded to her and motioned toward the chair across from him. She thanked him and took a seat, opening her portfolio on the way down.