The Russian Affair

TWENTY-FIVE



The most sensible thing she could do would be to hang the curtain. Avdotya had finally finished the job, and now Anna spread the blue fabric over the table to attach the hooks. The tape had been stitched across the top part of the curtain in an impeccably straight line, and the border, too, had been neatly executed. While she busied herself with the hooks, Anna became aware of an interior stillness; she wouldn’t have called it calm. It wasn’t the inner harmony that the performance of simple tasks sometimes produces, nor was it the peace of mind she longed for, but a void, like the grayness of the days that lay before her. Anna could do nothing but wait in anxious expectation for Leonid’s decision, nothing but hang up the curtain.

She laid the fabric aside and sat on the sofa in her small apartment. Viktor Ipalyevich had gone off in search of cheap potatoes, Petya was in school, Alexey was probably being driven to some meeting, and Leonid was back on duty in the East. Suddenly, Anna couldn’t help envisioning the whole country, like an enormous map, where people worked, argued, grew stronger, suffered pain. In many regions of the Soviet Union, spring had already arrived; in others, one couldn’t yet begin to hope for it. The mental image of her dynamic homeland left Anna feeling empty and alone. She’d made the beds, and tomorrow she’d do so again. She was cooking something for Petya to eat, and she’d be cooking again that evening. She’d do the shopping and cleaning, as she did every day; she’d board the combine’s special bus and start her shift. She did all this to feed her family, to go on living, to keep the whole thing running.

Leonid had gone back a day early. Forced to depart in advance because of weather conditions, he’d declared; spring cyclones were moving from the Sea of Okhotsk toward Sakhalin, and there was a good chance that landing an airplane there would soon be impossible. Strangely enough, Anna was convinced that he’d welcomed his early departure. He’d promised to give more consideration to his notion of getting a transfer to Siberia, but she had the impression he’d said that just to placate her so he wouldn’t have to talk about it anymore. Five years, she’d thought in despair as she watched her husband going down the stairs with his bag slung over his shoulder. They hadn’t told Petya that his father was leaving a day sooner than planned; Leonid had put him to bed with particular tenderness and held him in his arms during the night. Still half asleep, the boy had gone off to school in the belief that his father would be there to greet him when he came back home.

Now Anna was sitting there, on an afternoon like many others, and she didn’t know how much time would pass before she’d see her husband again. Until very recently, she’d believed her life was safeguarded by a solid structure, which was now volatizing into an atmosphere of wan pointlessness. Hanging a curtain was the only thing to do. She adjusted the hooks and lifted up one corner of the fabric in front of the sleeping niche.


While Anna Viktorovna Nechayevna was inserting the hooks, one after another, into the rings on the curtain rod, the majority of those present at a meeting of the Central Committee’s Department of Research were voting to accept the invitation of the Swedish Science Council. Even though the invitation came from a Western nation, the department was of the opinion that a scientific exchange would be advantageous in that it would demonstrate the open, international aspect of Soviet research. After this fundamental decision, the meeting proceeded to determine not which scientists would travel to Stockholm, but which Party officials would accompany them. The proposal that the Minister in person should head the delegation found general acceptance; Deputy Minister Alexey Bulyagkov would remain in Moscow for the duration of the visit. As the next order of business, the Minister instructed the Deputy Minister to draw up a list of eminent scientists, from among whom those most appropriate for the delegation would subsequently be chosen. It went without saying that a copy of the list would be submitted to the Committee for State Security, and that the Research Department would then have to wait and see whether the names on the list met with any objections from the KGB. There being no further business, the minutes of the assembly were turned over for transcription, and the Minister adjourned the meeting. The comrades made their way back to their offices or betook themselves to an early lunch. Although Alexey was hungry, he distrusted the special of the day—meat loaf—and limited himself to a portion of caramel custard and a bottle of lemonade. After lunch, he went to his office and made telephone calls for half an hour, dictated a few letters, and rejected his secretary’s undrinkable coffee. He met with a ministerial colleague to finalize the wording of an obituary for a recently deceased cosmonaut and chatted in the corridor with a couple of old companions. Eventually, he sent word to Anton to pick him up at the rear exit.

The weather had cleared up, and the afternoon was inviting. Enjoying the drive, Alexey leaned back in his seat and gazed out the window. The melting of the last snow and the awakening of the buds went hand in hand, and water was gurgling in the roof gutters. Puddles stood in green spaces where the ground was still frozen.

All at once, Alexey changed his mind: “Let me out here.”

Anton pulled over near Obukha Lane, so Bulyagkov could take a walk along a branch of the Moskva River. He liked to make decisions while out walking; in this case, he was thinking over the impending Stockholm trip and the task assigned to him in that regard. The accomplishments of Soviet scientific research could be seen most clearly in the chemical industry; therefore, chemists should form the main contingent of the visiting delegation: the ammonia experts from Severodonetsk and the synthetic-fiber developers from Nevinnomyssk. The distinguished collective of bone marrow specialists from Krasnoyarsk could be brought along to represent Soviet medical science. Of course, the Swedes were most interested in exchanges in the field of nuclear research, but here the Soviets would exercise prudence. There would be no risk in allowing Comrade Budker to go to Stockholm and present his work in aerophysics. Soviet study of laser–plasma interaction was old hat, Alexey thought; the Americans had long since outstripped everyone in that field. The delegation should include at least three scientists from the atomic cities of Novosibirsk and Dubna; Nikolai Lyushin had announced his interest, but sending him was out of the question. The man was too impulsive, unable to control his tongue, and inclined to boasting. Bulyagkov decided to anticipate the Committee’s selection criteria and nominate only scientists who had families. Besides, everything had to move quickly; when it came to issuing visas, the folks in the Lubyanka wouldn’t let themselves be hurried, and the trip was already set for May.

Bulyagkov left the embankment promenade and turned into the quarter that included, on its other end, Drezhnevskaya Street. The bushes were bright green, and he bent over to examine a twig. It’s the most audacious leap of my life, he thought; I don’t know anyone who’d take such a risk at my age. Above his head, some black and white birds kicked up a racket, zipping from branch to branch and celebrating the warmer weather. He looked up into the still-bare crowns of the trees and saw the sky through them, so brilliantly blue that it made his heart leap.

He thought about his last gift to Medea, the two canaries. In a queer way, the birds had now acquired a deeper significance: Only the cage had made them a couple; if you opened the door of the cage, each of them would fly off in a different direction. The separation from Medea was the most difficult ordeal on Alexey’s chosen path. Respect and admiration had bound them to each other for half a lifetime. Everything he had been able to attain, he owed to her. The divorce hearing would take place in a week; Alexey wished it were over now. When the big guns started firing, Medea would already be a safe distance away.

Deep in thought, he reached the little street with the illegible sign. Entering the apartment house as the owner of a clandestine hideaway adjusted to suit the wishes of a succession of female visitors was different from entering it as a simple resident, walking up the washed-concrete stairs, and opening the heavily scratched door in order to spend the night here alone. In the foyer, Bulyagkov threw off his sports jacket. After his long walk, the apartment seemed overheated. Only then did he realize that he’d had scarcely anything to eat in the cafeteria at lunch and nothing since, and suddenly he was starving. He pivoted around toward the door, but the thought of the dismal neighborhood, where there was hardly a restaurant, made him change his mind. He’d eat at home.

During the moving-in process, Anton had seen to it that the refrigerator was filled with the bare essentials; a glance inside revealed to Alexey that he’d already eaten most of them. He found eggs, a moldy onion, and half a jar of sour cream. He disliked cooking and wasn’t good at it, but he surrendered to necessity, grabbed the skillet, poured in some oil, and lit the stove. Then he cut the onion into thin slices. Alexey hated the life he was leading. His profession had turned out to be the opposite of what he’d had in mind many years previously, when he’d seized the opportunity to become an administrator of scientific research. He accomplished nothing more meaningful than the paperweight on his desk did. His contempt for the pencil pushers in his department struck him as increasingly pathetic with each passing day; he’d long since become one of them. The tool of his trade wasn’t the microscope or the scalpel or the slide rule, but the rubber stamp.

Bulyagkov focused his mind’s eye on the Minister, whose tactical shrewdness was exceeded only by his incompetence. He obediently distributed the funds in his budget in exact accordance with the capricious wishes of the Central Committee. Nobody thought in wide-ranging terms or made allowances for the decades-long continuity that was a necessity in complicated research work. Today the pharmacologists got the biggest chunks; tomorrow it would be the biochemists. Had the Minister not had Bulyagkov at his side, the cases of unwarranted favoritism, haphazardness, and corruption would have been past counting. At the same time, Alexey was aware of being merely tolerated: He was the troubleshooter for his clueless boss, the fixer for the Minister’s mistakes. Despite his advancement, Bulyagkov had remained the fellow who did the dirty work, a second-class person, a man whose background barred him from ever really entering the nomenklatura. He’d always be the Deputy, surrounded by envy for his abilities and condescension regarding his past.

A crackling sound came from the frying pan, and the smell of hot oil rose to his nostrils. He quickly dumped in the onion slices and jumped away from the sputtering grease. Without Medea, I would never have come even this far, he thought, rolling up his shirt sleeves. The determining factor wasn’t my qualifications, it was her contacts. If I hadn’t let myself be blinded in my youth, if I’d gone ahead and finished my degree after all, maybe I would have been able to make the transition back into science. I could have returned to Kharkov and worked as a biophysicist; I would have had a real position in life. But for a young guy in Moscow, the allure of making a career there, Medea’s charms, and the open-mindedness of her family were too tempting. In those days, Alexey had severed his roots; instead of the son of a Ukrainian renegade, he preferred being an up-and-coming nobody in the capital.

Bulyagkov stirred the sizzling onions, removed the skillet from the fire, added paprika and sour cream, and then broke a couple of eggs into the mixture. As he placed the pan in the oven, he tried to remember the last time Anna had fixed this for him. He’d explained that it was a dish from his homeland, and then she’d wanted to know what he’d been like as a boy. Happy, he’d told her. Yes, in spite of the war, he’d been happy back then. When the front moved near Smolensk, Alexey’s father had taken them to Vyshnivets, a village deep in the forest, where one could hope that neither Germans nor Ukrainians would arrive. The land surveyor’s family found welcome and shelter there for many months—indeed, for almost a year. Alexey’s memories were of full days and protected nights. It was only after the victory that the hard times had begun, the stripping of his family’s assets, his withdrawal from the university, the flight to Russia. He bent down and looked through the little window to see if the eggs had set yet. Too impatient to wait any longer, he snatched the pan out of the oven. Even through the potholder, the skillet was too hot, and he had to run the last few feet to the table, drop the pan on it, and blow on his fingers. He didn’t really want to drink any alcohol, but he opened the bottle from simple force of habit and poured himself a glass. After fetching salt, pepper, a knife, and a fork, he sat down and ate from the pan. Never before in these rooms had he thought of himself as a single man, depressed, solitary, unable to cope with the silence. With the first hot forkful still in his mouth, he stood up again and turned on the radio. The music was pretty. Still chewing, he walked over to the window—daylight lasted so long this time of year! He would have liked to send Anton off to pick up Anna, yet he knew his longing was only an expression of his loneliness. He was going to lose not only Medea, but also Anna. He swallowed morosely, took in the next forkful while still standing up, and considered how he might get through the interminable evening.