The Russian Affair

THIRTY



At the same time, and yet eight hours later, Leonid detached himself from Galina after a long embrace. He couldn’t use the dawn as an indication of how early or late it was; at that time of year in the North, dawn lasted half a day. She’d been sad the previous night; with greater detail than usual, she’d described her efforts to save an old man’s life. He was a nomad by birth and a day laborer out of necessity, he had no place to stay, and the approach of the warmer season was his only prospect. But the nine months of winter had so consumed his strength that when the police picked him up in a tractor hangar, he’d collapsed and lost consciousness. When they brought him to the hospital, the police lieutenant had snidely remarked that it didn’t look as though there was much to be done for him. Galina had given him a cardiotonic injection, put him in a clean hospital bed, and hooked him up to an intravenous drip. He was given chicken broth and bread. During the night, however, he’d undergone a remarkable transformation. Instead of drawing new courage to face life from the care and security he was receiving, the man had relaxed his grip on the last bands that held his existence together and, in the truest sense, surrendered. Combed and fed, and closely observed by the nurses, he’d appeared like a man resolved on his own death. His heartbeat and breathing slowing down, the man had lain there with a queer smile on his face and looked first at the worried night nurse and then at Galina. She’d cried out to him, begging him to stop acting like that and go on living. When his breathing stopped, Galina had considered a tracheotomy, but a comment made by the most senior station nurse had tipped the scales in favor of letting him go. He knows his time has come, the nurse had said. He’d died around eleven o’clock in the evening; his death was registered, and barely an hour later, his body had been transferred to the crematorium.

Leonid quietly rolled out of bed. It must be around five in the morning, he thought; he was supposed to muster the men for roll call at six. That didn’t leave him much time, because the road to the base wasn’t snow-free yet.

While he dressed, his eye fell on a cartoon in a magazine: A man, hanging over a pit where predatory teeth snap up at him, feels the branch he’s clinging to breaking and remarks, “Good thing everything in life is temporary.” As he left the house, Leonid wondered whether that wasn’t exactly the situation he was in: unstable and temporary. Everything could change completely again at any time. Or could he start to look upon his hours with Galina, their nights in Yakutsk, as the beginning of a new future?

Anna’s silence regarding his letter relieved him. At the same time, he found it unfathomable that she hadn’t called or sent him a telegram or written. It wasn’t in her nature to let things slide.

While Leonid waited in front of the house for the transport vehicle to pick him up, he was annoyed at both the women to whom he’d given control of his fate. Hadn’t it been because of pressure from Anna that he’d moved away from Moscow, where he could have had a good life in an agreeable division? Didn’t she bear the chief responsibility for the confusion that everybody—including, unfortunately, Petya—now had to deal with? And what about Galina’s obstinacy in wanting to live here, of all places, here where her roots were and nowhere else? A good surgeon could find a position anywhere, including Moscow. Leonid had shaped a future for himself, but in reality, didn’t it look as though he was letting the women make the decisions he should have been dictating to them? Was he a weak man, “henpecked,” as in the old Yakutian fairy tale?

The captain stood still. The sense of being trapped and the shock of realizing how deep his doubts ran had made him shiver. He’d read and reread a great many fairy tales of late; of the three books in Galina’s library, two were medical books, and the third was a collection of Siberian legends and fairy tales. In “The Tale of the Henpecked King,” the king of the birds—the eagle—obeys his domineering wife’s command to build her a special nest for her brooding time. He summons the birds of every kind, has a hole drilled in the beak of each one, and binds them together, so that Madam Eagle can brood comfortably on their plumage. When he counts the bound birds, he ascertains that one, the owl, is missing; he sends out messengers and has the owl brought before him. The owl excuses his absence by explaining that his eyes aren’t fit for flying in daylight, and that night travel takes a great deal of time. However, he declares, on his way, he’s had a chance to look around and see what’s going on in the world. This makes the eagle curious; he wants to know whether the dead outnumber the living on the earth.

“If you count those who are asleep as dead,” the owl replies, “the dead are in the majority.”

“Is it more often day than night?” the eagle asks, and the owl replies, “If you count the dark Siberian days as nights, it’s more often night than day.”

“And now, tell me,” the eagle continues. “Are there more men or more women on our earth?”

The owl thinks for a moment and answers, “If you count the henpecked men as women, there are more women on the earth.”

The king of the birds starts, realizing that in order to be of service to his wife, he has tortured his fellows. Without hesitation, he sets all the birds free; in all their variety, they soar heavenward. And so it is that the owl, alone among birds, has no holes in its beak.

Leonid stamped his booted feet. Where was the damned car? It was almost time to sound the assembly, and here he was, walking up and down on the outskirts of this faceless city. I must take things into my own hands, he thought; I must find a way to stand my ground. Either I travel to Moscow and try to bring about a reconciliation with Anna, or I inform Galina that she can’t count on me unless we relocate to the capital. Did I break my back trying to get a right of abode in Moscow for nothing? Did I make sacrifices for Anna so I could rot out here? A captain in exile isn’t any better off than an ordinary soldier.

Leonid turned around. He’d walked some distance, and now an army vehicle was parked in front of building number 119 with the motor running. The driver wasn’t looking out past the hood of his engine; instead, he was taking advantage of the officer’s absence to have a smoke.

“Hey, soldier!” Leonid shouted, so loudly that an echo ran up and down the street. The driver clenched the cigarette between his lips and drove toward the captain.

Maybe, if we both make an effort, going on with Anna isn’t hopeless, Leonid thought, but at the same time, he felt the impossibility of doing without Galina’s warmth, her humor, her lustiness. He remembered the tension and gloom that had characterized the days he’d spent on leave in Moscow. Things can’t remain as they are, he thought. He climbed into the vehicle and looked disapprovingly at the driver. I can’t go back, and I don’t know where I’m going if I go on.

“Go on,” he growled to the corporal.

The latter kept his eyes ahead of him and steered around a wall of ice that the snow plow had shoved to one side of the road.