The Russian Affair

TWENTY-EIGHT



In the following days, the duty to carry out her mission for Kamarovsky merged, for Anna, with her need to talk to someone she could feel understood by. She thought about the mad coincidence that had made her and Alexey fellows in misery. Here was the jilted house painter, whose captain preferred his Siberian love, and there was the Deputy Minister, living on his own now that the influential cultural secretary wanted nothing to do with him. Had the consequences of all this turmoil not been so unsettling, Anna could have laughed at it. But they were, and so, one morning, heedless of her usual caution, she dialed the number of the telephone in the Drezhnevskaya Street apartment. The receiver was picked up on the second ring, and a muffled voice said hello.

“Have I … Is this Alexey Maximovich’s apartment?”

“Anna?” said the voice on the other end.

“Yes. I apologize for disturbing you at this … you sound strange.”

“I’m brushing my teeth,” he mumbled. Various sounds followed: the receiver being laid down, footsteps, running water. “All done,” he said cheerfully.

“I apologize.”

“No, I’m glad to hear your voice. If you only knew how glad, Annushka.” Before she could reply, he suggested a meeting. “When do you have time? This evening? Tomorrow? Don’t say no. Should we meet here … no, that’s not a good idea. Somewhere else, some magical place … Hello, Anna, are you still there?”

Now that the meeting she’d wanted to engineer was going to take place without any effort on her part, Anna became wary.

“Let me arrange something for tomorrow,” he insisted. “Let me surprise you.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“Of course it isn’t necessary,” he said with a laugh, “but it will make me happy. I’ll send Anton to you. Shall we say around seven?”

Anna agreed, said good-bye, and hung up.

Bulyagkov buttoned his shirt, tied his tie in front of the mirror, and noted that his double chin was becoming more unsightly every day. He gazed nervously at the telephone; he was expecting a call and had purposefully kept the conversation with Anna short. His cheeks burned from the shaving; he went back into the bathroom and applied the French cream. As he was rubbing it in, the telephone rang again. Bulyagkov took a deep breath and answered the phone.

“Alexey Maximovich?” said an unpleasant voice on the other end of the line.

“Yes.”

“Something’s come up. How soon can you be in the Ministry building?”

He named a time and hung up. The caller’s unwillingness to say anything more made Bulyagkov confident that the something that had come up was what he’d hoped it would be. He left his apartment, watched the black ZIL pull up at the curb, and climbed in. Anton drove out of the narrow street and onto the Chaussée.

At the Ministry, Bulyagkov was welcomed by a hastily formed committee and informed that the Minister had fallen ill overnight with a severe case of intestinal flu. His physician had made an initial diagnosis of food poisoning, but the Minister couldn’t remember eating anything he shouldn’t have. The exact cause of his condition was still to be determined, but in any case, he was confined to his bed and, according to the doctor’s report, in no condition to travel to Stockholm.

“Cancel” was the Deputy Minister’s response. Without the top man, he said, the excursion made no sense; an international research exchange without the Minister for Research was an absurdity.

The committee granted Bulyagkov’s point but objected that preparations for the trip had already consumed a considerable amount of funding, and that moreover the members of the scientific delegation had all arrived in Moscow already; how great their disappointment would be if they were now sent back to their research stations. Finally, they weren’t going to Sweden merely to present their own science; in return, they expected to receive interesting information about various Western technologies.

Bulyagkov remained adamant. He’d only seen to the organization of the visit to Sweden, he said; he was unprepared in the science of the various fields and considered himself incapable of giving a proper speech of greeting.

The committee resorted to flattery. It declared emphatically that the Deputy Minister, with his background in the natural sciences, was the only person versed in all the department’s interests. And even should he be compelled to improvise, he knew a lot more about chemistry, mathematics, or nuclear physics than any other official in the Ministry. Without naming the Minister, Bulyagkov’s colleagues evoked his relative competence and made clear their belief that, when it came to science, the chief couldn’t hold a candle to his deputy. Their adulation reached such a level that Bulyagkov stood up, walked pensively around the conference room, and stopped at the big window. He looked down to the street, his view of it already blocked here and there by a canopy of leaves. Alexey knew what his colleagues feared above all: They feared that his refusal could result in their being deprived of the amenities offered by a trip to the West. They weren’t interested in science; they kept their eyes fixed on their privileges as Soviet representatives.

“What about the speech to the Swedish Academy?” he asked, acting hesitant again.

“Why not give the speech that was written for the Minister?”

“I can do that only if I do it in his name.”

“Of course! Good idea! Respectful gesture!” some of the officials cried. They saw a ray of hope, but Bulyagkov announced that he would accept the mission only on condition of a unanimous resolution of the Chamber. This proviso was met with agitated objections: The scheduled departure was only forty-eight hours away, and it would be impossible to convene the entire Chamber in such a short time. The Deputy Minister appreciated that, but he insisted that there be a memorandum recording the proceedings in detail and ratified in writing by the members of the Politburo. His colleagues, feeling that success was near, promised to provide him with such a document, and then someone remembered that two of the high-ranking comrades had profited from the spring weather and taken a jaunt to the Black Sea.

While the committee was discussing how the required memorandum could be ratified “telegraphically,” Bulyagkov was overcome by a serenity that he’d long had to do without. He’d assessed the men around him correctly and laid so many obstacles in their way that his departure would arouse no suspicion. These Russians, with their panicked need to shed the most flattering light on their performances in the little positions they’d striven so doggedly to occupy, would do everything to persuade him to agree to something that had been his plan from the very beginning. In these minutes, he saw the future in a larger dimension, and despite pangs of anxiety before the unknown, he felt that he was simultaneously at the end and at the beginning of something. He thought warmly about Anna’s call, shook off a brief moment of suspicion about her motives, and considered the possibilities for the following evening. He wanted their date to be splendid and affectionate, impressive and intimate. When he thought of the right place, he cracked a narrow smile. He announced to his colleagues that he would await further developments in his office. By way of precaution, he would have the Minister’s twenty-six-page speech of greeting sent to him, but he especially wanted to contact the Minister by telephone and offer him his sympathy and best wishes for a speedy recovery. The comrades in the conference room hailed this gesture.