The Russian Affair

THIRTY-FOUR



How green, how splendid, how light, Anna thought, conscious of every breath she drew into her lungs. Why would she be happy at a time like this? Did it take so little to transform her feelings? Or was everything else simply too much, and too awful? She felt like a child who runs and plays and works herself up to such a pitch that she can’t stop laughing. “Where are we?” she asked, turning to Anton.

“We haven’t gone very far yet, Comrade. We’re not even to Volokolamsk.”

“So why is everything so beautiful here?”

“I take it you don’t leave Moscow very often.”

“You’re right. Not since before this past winter. And a terrible winter it was.” She clenched her fists in her lap.

“This is fertile country, with gentle hills and woods full of oaks and willows. Willows grow here, Comrade, because there’s so much ground-water. And the sky is always in motion.”

The road was patched in many places, and if Anton failed to dodge a pothole, his little car snapped and crackled. “We’re on the old Volokolamskoye Chaussée,” he informed her, answering her earlier question. “You might think the M9 would be faster, and you’d be right, except traffic’s always bottled up around Krasnogorsk at this time of day, so we avoided that. Once we’re past Volokolamsk, I’ll swing onto the main highway.”

Anna listened to him with only half an ear; she was almost wholly captivated by what she was seeing. They went through a village where only the utility poles revealed what century they were in; the wooden houses with their colorfully painted window frames, the meadow edges, the piles of firewood, birch and pine, depleted by the long winter—all these indicated a time that had passed and yet was obstinately holding on in this inconspicuous spot.

“It really blows hard out here,” she murmured, observing a tree bent diagonally by the west wind. Something was being hawked on the side of the road, but Anton was driving too fast for Anna to be able to make out what the offered wares were.

“The train would have been another possibility,” Anton said, resuming the small talk. “The Baltic Railroad, Moscow to Riga in one day.”

“Why didn’t we just take the train, then?”

“We still can if something goes wrong with the car. I’ve learned one thing from Alexey Maximovich: ‘In love and on the run, you must always have two ways out, Antosha.’ ” In sudden high spirits, Anton leaned on the horn. “Words to live by,” he said.

“He chose a single way this time,” Anna pointed out. “With no turning back.”

“I don’t know. You may well be right, Comrade.”

“Please call me Anna, like everyone else.”

“I can try.” He smiled. “But habit, Comrade, habit’s a big, strong horse that pulls in only one direction.”

Now that she was talking to him at some length for the first time, Anna realized that Anton was no urbanite; he was a country boy, and his years in Moscow hadn’t succeeded in driving that out of him.

They reached Volokolamsk and shortly thereafter left it behind. Anna saw the golden towers of a cathedral shining between houses, and then a swanky house, once a noble’s residence, that had been turned into a club building for the agricultural combine. Beyond the town limits, Anna admired the private vegetable gardens, where bean plants and lettuces were sending their first shoots up into the light. Anton took the feeder road to the big highway, and their pace increased substantially.

“Do you know what’s special about Volokolamsk? When the Nazi troops were advancing on Moscow, this was the farthest they got.”

“Here? I thought that was Yakhroma. On the trip to Dubna, we were told—”

“Yakhroma? Nonsense!” he said vehemently. “It was Volokolamsk, I can assure you. I know the history. Twenty-eight soldiers under General Panfilov managed to destroy dozens of Nazi tanks before they themselves were killed. There’s a monument to the twenty-eight heroes in Volokolamsk.” He gave Anna a penetrating look. “Here is where the Wehrmacht was brought to a standstill, not Yakhroma!”

They left the Moscow administrative division, crossed into the Tver oblast, and an hour later were nearing the town of Rzhev. Anna grew tired and even briefly fell asleep. A noise as loud as an ongoing explosion made her start awake in terror. “What is it?”

“Sukhoi Su-9,” he said, smiling at her and pointing skyward.

The sound faded away and came back. Another black fighter plane swept across the clear sky, leaving its noise far behind.

“Where are we?”

“There’s an air force base a few miles from here,” Anton said, shouting over the roar of the jet engines. “That one was a Tupolev.” He leaned forward and struck the dashboard. The temperature gauge needle bounced. “I think it could use a little drink,” Anton said. He patted the steering wheel. “It won’t be long, my thirsty friend.”

The town lay a little distance off the M9. Anton stopped in front of a simple house on the outskirts. A woman was outside, weeding her vegetable garden. “It’s better if you ask her for some water,” Anton said, handing Anna a jerrican.

She got out, stretched, and walked toward the fence. “Excuse me, Comrade …”

The woman, bending to her work, hadn’t heard Anna coming and jerked herself upright. As a sign of her innocuous wish, Anna held up the container. “Could you give us some water?”

“Water? How about a glass of lemonade?” She stuck her little knife into her pocket and opened the garden gate for Anna.

After a brief glance at Anton, Anna followed the woman into the house and entered a living room where her eye was struck by something she would never have expected to find in such a place: silver-gray wallpaper with a white pattern, perfectly hung and cleanly finished at the top, a hand’s width below the ceiling. Light, freshly washed curtains were suspended from gleaming, gold-colored rods, meticulously aligned with the top line of the wallpaper, and alongside them hung drapes with a dark brown pattern. Anna noticed a television set, a house plant, and even central heating.

“You’ve got a lovely place here,” Anna said. “How did you get ahold of this first-class wallpaper?”

“My brother’s the local priest,” the woman explained. “I’m his housekeeper.”

Behind her, Anna spotted a cross and some pictures of martyrs. “Your brother?”

“Our members spend generously,” she said, plucking at the lace tablecloth until it lay smooth. “Are you hungry, my girl? I’ve stuffed some hardboiled eggs.”

“Thanks, but we’re in a hurry.” Anna turned toward the kitchen.

“The wallpaper was a gift from God’s children in our kolkhoz,” she said. Then she laid her hand on the samovar. “But surely you’ll drink some tea, won’t you?”

“Many thanks, but no. Maybe on the way back.” Anna pointed to the jerrican.

“We could have filled that in the garden,” the woman said, clearly irritated by the rejection of her hospitality. She gruffly ran her hand over the cherrywood sideboard, as if she’d discovered a speck of dust on it. Then she accompanied Anna outside again, turned on the water faucet at one corner of the house, and, while the container was filling up, peered at Anton. “Yours?” she said, meaning the man.

“His,” Anna answered, pointing at the automobile. Just then, Anton lifted the hood.

“Where are you headed?” The woman tried to decipher the license number.

“To visit some friends.”

When Anna brought the water, Anton thanked the woman with a nod. Apparently forgetting her garden work, she went back inside the house.

“What took you so long?” Anton asked, closing the hood.

“She has beautiful wallpaper on her walls.”

By the time they passed Rzhev, the day was drawing to its close. Anna tried to sleep, but the road had become worse, and she was constantly shaken awake. Anton looked at his watch. “We won’t reach the border before midnight,” he said.

The landscape turned monotonous; Anna’s happy feeling had vanished. She thought about the hours that lay before her; she’d see Alexey again, but she wasn’t expected this time, and the circumstances were thoroughly transformed.

“Didn’t you say you’d taken delivery of some documents for Alexey?” Anton nodded. “And so you turned those documents over to him?”

“When I drove him to the airport.”

“But then …” She sat upright as though jolted. “Then you had time to warn him in Moscow!”

“No,” he said softly.

“I don’t understand.” A pothole made Anna’s chin bounce off her chest. “You knew Kamarovsky saw you. Why didn’t you tell Alexey before he got on the plane?”

“Unfortunately, I didn’t know that.” He clicked his tongue. “She didn’t call me until later, when Alexey Maximovich was gone. She told me about Kamarovsky.”

“Who?”

And so Anna learned that the agent for internal security, Rosa Khleb, whom Anna liked to think of as a modern witch, was capable of even more artfulness than she’d imagined. Anna listened in amazement as she learned that the Khleb and Bulyagkov had been in contact for at least a year, and that it was she who had worked out his escape plan via Stockholm. Anton was even able to report that an untimely overlap had taken place the last time Anna visited the Deputy Minister in the Drezhnevskaya apartment: The mysterious visitor was Rosa; she was the one who’d brought Bulyagkov the little parcel, and it was her footsteps that Anna had heard sounding in the stairwell.

They passed villages and little towns; the sun shone red in their faces and finally disappeared; Anton began to smoke, which was the only hint he gave that he might be getting tired; and while all this was going on, Anna was arriving at the realization that she, who had considered herself so clever and calculating, who had even reproached herself for her great cunning, was nothing but a beginner. The game had gone on without any participation from her. She hadn’t even known the rules—she was just a piece that had fit in. She’d done exactly what she’d been expected to do. And at this moment, Anna saw that as her greatest defeat.