The Russian Affair

TWENTY-SIX



The first month of spring brought snowstorms worse than any Leonid had ever experienced in Moscow in the dead of winter. The armored vehicles attached to his company dedicated the bulk of their time to such wintry duties as clearing the roads leading into the city. Yakutsk was almost cut off from the outside world, and food supplies were nearing exhaustion. At the hospital, Galina had the diesel generators running throughout every operation, because there was no counting on normal voltage levels. The storms piled up twenty-foot-tall snow cornices in many places; on some streets, residents had to leave their buildings from the third floor, because the ground was covered with snow two stories high.

Leonid and Galina spent more time together; however, the intense moments they’d experienced when their separation was imminent had been unique and did not come again. He’d thought that his transfer would bring tranquillity to their relationship, but Galina appeared to have her doubts about this unexpected togetherness. She figured her captain was just having a good time playing house with her, and she rejected any sentimental assessment of the matter, behaving as though she assumed that the arduous routine of daily life on the edge of the inhabited world would soon make Leonid reconsider his intention to sign on for five years’ duty in Yakutia. Did he really believe he could be at home here? And if he did, why didn’t he just sign the contract and be done with it? Why did he give such pathetic reasons for drawing out the process?

Leonid knew why. His sojourn in Moscow had left a sting in him, the pride of the formerly privileged man. What interesting lives Muscovites led, after all, what riches their city offered! Even though Leonid never visited a museum and went neither to concerts nor to the theater, he could have done so in Moscow, had he wanted to. If he lived there, he could participate in the big military reviews again, too; his former battalion of armored infantry traditionally formed the leading unit in the May Day parade through Red Square. Now May was near—spring in Moscow. The captain sighed, staring out into the driving snowstorm. He envied his comrades back home, polishing up the big machines, decorating the barrels of the guns, attaching the track protectors so as not to damage the streets of the capital. He’d always been happy on the days when they rolled the tanks off the base, drove the dozen miles into the city, and maneuvered into formation on the Leningrad Prospekt. As a young lieutenant, Leonid had scurried here and there among the steel treads with a tape measure in his hand, making sure the distances were correct to within a fraction of an inch. Then, when the tank command received the signal indicating that the fighters had taken off from Aerovokzal Airport, the armored unit would set out in a wide formation for the city center. Final alignments and adjustments would be made on Gorky Street, where they would already be surrounded by a sea of red flags. As they neared Pushkinskaya, the military music would begin to play, and then the convoy, its engines roaring, would roll into the square of all squares. The gunners stood in the open turrets, wearing their parade uniforms, while the drivers had to follow the spectacle through their observation slits. And for all, what an honor to be there! Leonid wasn’t a man to whom pomp and ceremony meant very much, but for anyone who had ever experienced the scene, even if only once, the joyous cries, the luminous flags flying along the way past the Historical Museum, fluttering toward St. Basil’s Cathedral, and up above, the comrades in their dark overcoats, standing on the platform in front of the Mausoleum and waving down, and then, at the beginning of the festivities, the bells pealing in the Spasskaya Tower and the fighter squadron thundering overhead—for anyone who’d witnessed that, patriotism had stopped being just a word, and the feeling of a common bond among all free men under the sign of socialism had become a reality.

One’s duty to society could be carried out anywhere in the country, no matter how remote the spot, and yet Leonid was starting to get the feeling that he’d been lucky to live close to the heartbeat of Soviet life, and that he’d gambled that good fortune away. The pay he’d received while stationed in Moscow was far lower than what he got in Yakutsk, but what was a man supposed to do with his money in an icy wasteland? In the beginning, he’d given Galina presents—a bracelet with glittering pendants, which she never wore because it got in her way at work, an electric samovar, a new mattress—until she’d admonished him, telling him he’d do better to save his money for his son’s future. Leonid had the impression, however, that Galina didn’t care at all about Petya; it was more as if she were preparing him for the day when he’d realize that their time together was nothing but a stage in his inevitable return journey to his son and Anna.

Maybe that was the reason why Leonid started writing the letter. He wanted to do something that would make his purpose irreversible. You didn’t reach a decision of these proportions and then overturn it because of a little misgiving. Leonid wanted to see himself as a man swept away from the fat life of the capital to the periphery of the Soviet world. Pioneers were needed here, men who were idealistic and serious. Deep inside, Leonid was aware that his idealism was a mere dream and his duties as an insignificant captain limited to office work. After the adventurous Sakhalin interlude, in Yakutsk his life had settled back into monotony. The sameness of the days was disrupted only by the weather and Galina’s whims.

Her doubts also affected the passionate side of their relationship. As long as their time together was marked by the delirium of transience, Galina had been wild with desire; but now that Leonid treated her like “the woman at his side,” her intoxication was a thing of the past, and their erotic life had become predictable. He wanted her every night, but she’d been turning him down more and more frequently, claiming that her work at the hospital left her exhausted. Leonid, however, was thoroughly committed to having made the right decision; he wanted absolute validation. He’d chosen Yakutsk for his future, and he wasn’t about to let some initial difficulties push him into admitting defeat.

One afternoon when the sun was already going down outside and he was in the barracks, he began his letter to Anna. He placed his briefcase within easy reach so that he could slap it on top of the light gray letter paper quickly should his superior officer come in. The letter would close the door to Anna so irretrievably that Leonid would no longer have to fear his own fickleness.


Insensibly, the daily routine began to envelop Anna again. Petya’s next visit to the doctor was coming up, and even though you needed only to look at him to see how much improved he was, Anna was anxious about the appointment. She very much wanted to bring Doctor Shchedrin something as a sign of her deep gratitude; she’d bought a bundle of palm fronds from a street vendor, but upon arriving home, she’d discovered that the man had cheated her. The furry buds had frozen in transport, and once inside the apartment, they’d fallen dead from their stems.

Help came to Anna in the form of a small package. Viktor Ipalyevich received it from the postman, laid it on the table, and eyed it suspiciously. Anna, resting on the sofa before her afternoon shift, raised her head and asked, “Why don’t you open it?”

“Because I know what’s inside.” He stroked his beard.

“Who sent it?”

He held out the package, which was wrapped in brown paper. She was able to decipher the postmark: “State Publishing House of the Soviet Union.” “Is this … your book?” She was already on her feet.

“They’re not that far along yet. I think it must be the print proof.”

“Open it!” she cried impatiently.

“I don’t know …”

“What are you waiting for?”

“I’m feeling scared about the jacket design.” He ran his hand over the package, as if the reason for his fear could be felt through the paper. “Open it, daughter, and tell me what you see.”

With three steps, she was in the kitchen. She came back with a knife and leaned over the table.

“No, wait, I’ll do it,” Viktor Ipalyevich said. “I’ll open it myself.” Carefully, as though disarming a bomb, he stuck the knife into the package, drew the blade slowly through wrapping paper and glue, and exposed an inner package. He partially opened this one, too, saw something red inside, and hesitated. “You do it.” He handed her the knife.

Anna cut the package open at once. The cover of the book showed a black sun; bright red birds flew out of its center and turned into a girl’s hair. At first glance, the picture perplexed Anna, but she liked her father’s name, printed in large white letters and taking up the top third of the cover.

“No dust jacket?” The poet was standing behind her with a look of deep disappointment on his face.

“What do you think?” Her eyes moved back and forth between him and the book.

“They’re printing only a paperback edition.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He snatched the book and flexed it vehemently with both hands. “It’s cheap, don’t you see! It doesn’t lie snugly in the hand. It feels like some ephemeral periodical—like a magazine you flip through and throw away.”

“Nobody would treat a book of yours like a magazine.”

“It won’t even stand up properly on a shelf!” He thrust the book into an open space between two others. The little volume sagged laxly to one side and then fell over rearward. “There you go, that’s what my work’s worth!”

“Papa, it’s a volume of poetry. Of course it’s thinner and lighter than a three-hundred-page book.” She laid it in the center of the table.

“Precisely, and that’s why it has to have a solid cover! Poems are the compressed experience of life. They should be in books you can carry around with you and take out when you’re ready for them. But this thing … !” He opened it and immediately closed it again. “It looks like a map of the Moscow subway system!”

“You’re exaggerating. See how good the title looks? They made a real effort.” She pointed to the handsome, slanted script, the letters red against the black of the sun.

“The engraving’s by Khlebnikov,” he said, nodding gently. “I think he’s the right choice. His art’s harmonious with mine.”

“What does it mean—the birds, the girl’s hair?”

“What does it mean? Don’t have a clue,” the poet growled. “Khlebnikov always was a pretty woolly-headed artist.” Viktor Ipalyevich picked up the book a third time, as if it were gradually gaining in value. “They’ve used high-quality paper.” He ran his eyes over the imprint, the title, and the foreword, which had been written by the director of the Conservatory.

Viktor Ipalyevich Tsazukhin’s legacy comprises thirty years of Soviet lyric poetry and is the expression of an epoch rich in hard-won victories as well as painful losses. Tsazukhin is a man produced by the Revolution; his striving toward the Soviet ideal, the longing in his work for justice and moral perfection, his fraught thought processes, which reflect his heart’s joys and sorrows, and above all, the melody of his verses, which are attuned to harmonize with the times …





“When will the fellow finally learn how to construct sentences that make sense?” Viktor Ipalyevich flipped past the foreword, came to the first poem, read it in silence, and in the end held the book out at arm’s length away from him. He said, “I don’t know how much it’s worth, but it must be worth something.”

“Of course it is! My compliments.” Anna removed the packing paper and as she did so discovered a second copy of her father’s poetry volume. “Papa …,” she said, taking up this second volume. “You could do me a great favor.”

Viktor Ipalyevich gladly accepted the idea of giving his poems to the physician who’d cured Petya. “I’ll write a dedication, of course. I’ll think it over tonight and inscribe the book tomorrow.”


Satisfied with the happy solution to her gift problem, Anna departed for the afternoon shift. Interior work on the building in Karacharovo should have been completed long since, but nondelivery of materials had caused delays, and now there was an additional impediment: the impending ceremony to inaugurate the building. Since the date of the opening festivities couldn’t be postponed, it was decreed that the workers would concentrate all their efforts on finishing the section of the building that bore the official memorial plaque, which was to be unveiled by the Party secretary for Moscow. In order to avoid detracting from the visual effect of this ceremonial act, all scaffolding had to be dismantled, removed, and then, immediately after the event, put up again—a piece of stupidity that was the subject of lively discussion on the workers’ bus.

“Couldn’t we just hang white tarps over the scaffolding?” a worker cried.

Another comrade answered her: “Where are we going to get white tarps from?”

“And would someone please tell me where we’re supposed to hide the scaffolding so the Secretary won’t trip over it?” said a third. Several of the women laughed.

The bus turned into the briskly moving traffic of the Garden Ring near Taganskaya Square, the city gradually sank behind them, and the suburbs came into view. Anna was sitting next to a male colleague, a friend of hers, reading over his shoulder as he perused his copy of Izvestia. When he came to the foreign affairs section, her interest was sparked, and she sat up straight. She’d spotted a picture of the Minister for Research Planning, surrounded by a group of smiling male and female comrades; Alexey was not among them. LEADERS OF SOVIET SCIENCE TRAVELING TO STOCKHOLM, the headline read. When Anna’s friend started to turn the page, she asked him to let her finish the article. It declared that the Swedish Academy of Sciences was most eager to learn about the recent successes of its Soviet colleagues. Scientists from the fields of chemistry, medicine, and mathematics would form the main contingent, the article stated; the group of researchers would be completed by leading physicists from the atomic cities of Dubna and Novosibirsk. Anna tried a second time to find Alexey’s face among all the strange heads. Hadn’t he hinted at his travel destination? “A city where it’s never hot, not even in summer.” Wasn’t that an allusion to Stockholm? Maybe, she told herself, the original plan had been that Bulyagkov would make the trip to Sweden as the leader of the scientific delegation, and then that plan had been changed. She read the next article, which described the icebreaker Kalinin as she sailed out on her maiden voyage. Anna imagined the ship on its long journey east and thought of Leonid, who was serving in the Siberian wasteland. After her friend turned the page, Anna raised her eyes and looked out at the impressive series of residential developments that had been produced in recent years, living space for some fifteen thousand comrades.

The bus’s hydraulic doors opened with a hiss, discharging Anna and the others, who went to complex number 215 and took up their work. Why would Alexey announce that he was traveling to Stockholm and then not do it? During the past minutes, the question had kept itself hidden, but now it surfaced again and filled Anna with an uneasiness that wouldn’t go away, not even when she bent over the bucket and stirred the thickened paint.