The Russian Affair

THIRTY-FIVE



The Kremlin stands above the city; above the Kremlin stands only God. The fortress was rebuilt eighteen times; why eighteen, the man in the pale blue hospital gown wondered. The first stone wall was erected in 1366; Ivan III’s architects put up twenty towers, a palace, their city’s first fortification. Kamarovsky was gratified to ascertain that his eyeglasses had been taken away from him; the unreliable things only stopped him from seeing connections properly. They were Italians, he thought; in those days, the Italians were the best builders. They put twenty streets and ten squares inside the Kremlin walls—a tour de force of fortification architecture. Why did Napoleon have all that burned down? Out of vexation, Kamarovsky thought, nodding. Who wouldn’t be vexed, after dismantling the biggest country on earth, to wait in vain for someone to come and submit to him? One of the people in the room giggled, and Kamarovsky looked around; that was no giggling matter. Napoleon must have felt like a spurned lover, sitting there in the Kremlin, with not a single Russian showing up for a rendezvous. While he let his capitaines plunder the city, he overlooked the fact that it was already the middle of September: time to start getting ready for winter. The fire he lit in Moscow wasn’t hot enough to warm his army. He who burns something down makes a site for reconstruction, Kamarovsky thought. Thicker walls this time, and then, later, they set shining, red-ruby-colored stars on the tops of the towers. “Ruby stars”—the words resounded in him. The sound evoked something like beauty, still incomprehensible, but it announced its presence. The beautiful, the great—it flowed into him like a stream, penetrating him. He took several deep breaths.

“In the past we had no fatherland, nor could we have one,” Kamarovsky said. “But now that power is in our hands, in the hands of the workers, we have a fatherland, and we will defend its independence.” The Colonel made a great effort to recall who’d said those words. Not Vladimir Ilyich, the patient was sure of that, but of course it had to do with him, as did everything else. Kamarovsky nodded: Everything else. No, those words came from the great speech given in the Grand Kremlin Palace to the graduates of the Red Army Academy on May 4, 1935. I was there, the patient thought. By that time, Vladimir Ilyich was long dead. I heard the speech, and I understood. Why was it so important to remember the Kremlin and the beautiful stars shining on its towers? Red stars, ruby stars, the Colonel thought; in the past, he’d sometimes called her Rosa, my ruby star. Whoever saw her today would hardly have been able to envision how bright this Russian soul, how beautiful this most beautiful of Soviet girls, had been.

He struggled to keep his thoughts from falling into confusion again; he dared not go back there, where they all became one. Kamarovsky propped himself on his elbows. The cathedral, he thought, built in 1457 under the direction of the Italians—here stood Ivan’s throne under the carved pavilion roof. The bell, the Tsar Bell! Remembering the bell was important. It was supposed to sound out from the Tsar’s Tower, but that never happened.

“It never happened!” he shouted into the room, trying to avert another collapse. “Right from the start, the master founders struggled with difficulties in the casting. Who would build such a monstrosity? Over twenty feet in diameter, just imagine, to this day the biggest bell in the world!”

The bell meant—he sank back down onto the pillows—the bell meant a certain place. Not the Kremlin, not the pit where it was cast, not the pedestal where it still stood. The bell meant … the library! Of course, the library. Kamarovsky had been there and observed a young woman who knew all about the Kremlin Bell, who’d studied it closely.

Now the Colonel was waking up and calming down. The multiple ideas in his head fell together and made room for the one idea that he could grasp. He let the calm sink into him more and more deeply, and behind it he could feel himself reviving. A. I. Kamarovsky looked around. His vision was still blurred, obviously, because he didn’t have his glasses. It wasn’t about the bell, he realized, nor was it about the young woman in the library that bore Vladimir Ilyich’s name. But in its halls, yes, Kamarovsky had seen someone. His memory came back slowly, gradually, and in the end he knew that the person he’d seen had been Rosa, his ruby star. After he was sure he’d identified all the connections properly, he rang for the nurse and had her call Doctor Shchedrin.

“I want my car,” he told his old friend.

“Some other time, my dear Antip Iosifovich,” the doctor said. “You can go for a drive some other time. Not today.”

“On the contrary,” the Colonel said with a smile. “Some other time, you’ll keep me here, maybe forever, if it comes to that, because I surely can’t take many more attacks like this last one. But today, my friend, even with the best will in the world, I can’t stay.”

“And where do you want to go, Antip?” the doctor asked, looking at him earnestly.

“What’s today?” Kamarovsky thrust his hands behind his back, trying to reach the strings of his hospital gown.

“Wait, I’ll help you. Today’s Tuesday.”

“If today’s Tuesday …” Unceremoniously, the Colonel allowed his friend to undress him and watched as the nurse, at Shchedrin’s behest, fetched the green suit from the closet. “If it’s Tuesday, I don’t need a car, I need a helicopter. I have to get to Riga as quickly as possible.”

“Ah, Antip Iosifovich, that’s not good for you.” The doctor put together the necessary medications for his friend and in the end gave him back his spectacles.


As they approached Novosokolniki, the darkness became definitive. Anna couldn’t have said whether the incessant rolling and thumping and rumbling was caused by the road or by the throbbing pressure in her head. The distance they’d come seemed immeasurable, the distance yet to go endless. She stopped looking at the odometer; it was too disappointing to see how slowly they were approaching their goal. Stupid fantasies fluttered through her brain, probably because of an offhand remark Anton had made. As they were leaving the metropolis behind, he’d called the provinces west of Moscow “the Land of the Old Believers” and told her that the people here made no distinction between life and death and would secretly keep their dead loved ones in their homes.

In the smoke from his cigarettes, with visibility limited to the small stretch of road directly in front of the headlights, Anna passed into a kind of comatose state, swinging between waking, dozing, sleeping, and reviving. A long, interminable sleep was something devoutly to be wished, a sleep between this world and the next, and so it didn’t seem particularly surprising when she recognized Alexey in the darkness, lying there in state. The wolf’s eyes were closed, but his ears were pricked up, as if he could hear, even in death, what was going on around him. A veiled woman, the widow, stepped to the bier; Anna pictured Medea, stony-faced, under the veil. At the head of the casket stood Colonel Kamarovsky, not in a dark green suit, but in the sumptuous regalia of a metropolitan, black and gold, with which his steel-rimmed spectacles seemed out of place. In the next moment, the nameless place turned into Anna’s own sleeping alcove, but bigger, as though it were a deep, deep cave in which the wolf, an old hero in fabulous leather clothing, lay dead. It was obvious to her that traitors had assassinated him, but that he could still escape his end if only someone would bring him the water of life. In these familiar surroundings, Anna looked for herself in vain, but there was the television set, and here was Viktor Ipalyevich, bent over his notebooks. The metropolitan said a prayer and recalled the hero’s accomplishments in the service of science. When Anna tried to take a better look, she realized that it wasn’t Medea who was wearing the veil, it was she. How amazing, to be the old wolf’s widow, and yet it was only logical, because only a young person with a fighting spirit could give him the water of life. Anna was alert, excited, and happy until she suddenly noticed that Anton, without warning, was turning off the M9.

“Where are you going?” she asked from under the veil.

“Those two are a little too inconspicuous for my taste,” he said, leaning into the steering wheel and holding on. The turnoff road was haphazardly paved, and the Zhiguli skidded uncomfortably.

“Who?” Anna asked, wide awake.

“Two Volgas, for the last six miles.” He looked in the rearview mirror and nodded. “Just as I thought.”

Anna, too, could see two pairs of headlights follow them onto the side road. “Now what do we do? Should we talk to them?”

“That would take time.” He stepped on the gas. For the time being, the headlights disappeared behind a curve in the road. “We can talk later.”

“If they’re already following us here, then they’re surely waiting for us at the border!” Anna said, her voice growing hysterical and her breath short.

Without answering, Anton drove still faster, jerking the car from one side of the road to the other and avoiding the worst holes.

“You’ll never shake them off!”

“In love and on the run, you need two ways out,” Anton said. There was no trace of nervousness in his deep bass. He forced the car along so fast that Anna could do little but hold on tight. The Zhiguli bounded over bumps, slid sideways, and lurched dangerously, but it always righted itself and found the middle of the road again. The trees became shapes flashing past them. Anton maintained one hand on the gearshift, kept the engine turning at its top rotation speed, and reacted to curves and rising ground before Anna became aware of them.

“There.” He took one hand off the steering wheel and pointed at the forest. “We’re driving parallel to the railroad. A few minutes through the woods, and you’ll reach the tracks.”

She was listening to him breathlessly. “Walk along the tracks, and after a few miles, you should see the town of Maevo. Do you have money?”

She reached into her bag. “And where are we going to meet?”

“We won’t meet again.” Anton drove around a pothole. “The train will be safer and more comfortable.”

He braked hard, and the car came to a lunging stop close to the edge of the forest. “We’re about an hour ahead of the night train.”

While he looked in the rearview mirror, Anna opened the door. “Just a moment, Comrade,” Anton said. “How do you expect to find Alexey Maximovich?”

The pursuing headlights flashed above the top of the hill behind them. In the seconds that remained, Anton gave Anna the name of a hotel. Then he closed the passenger’s door and drove off, without a word of encouragement or farewell.

Anna stood at the side of the road, facing the woods. Then, not looking back, she began to put one foot in front of the other, stepped among the trees, and fell, somehow ducking as she did so. Before long, the lights were there, the noise of the engine even with her, then already past. She raised her head, turned, and saw the brake lights flicker, go out, and flash again before disappearing into the terrain. Almost as if lost in thought, she faced forward again. The forest looked so thick that there seemed to be no way through it.