The Russian Affair

TEN



In the morning, mother and son snuggled behind the curtain for a long time. Petya told her about a new teacher who was in the habit of sitting on her desk; when she did so, you could see under her skirt. Anna listened to the sounds he made when he breathed, checked his eyes for redness, and asked when the last time he’d taken his temperature was. Eventually, she made breakfast. The boy liked having a holiday from school; he got dressed cheerfully and was eager to go outside.

They reached the building across from the Lenin Library right on time. The policeman on duty told Anna how to get to Doctor Shchedrin’s Institute for Histamine Determination. The receptionist there explained that the doctor was with another patient and suggested that she and Petya have a seat. With every minute that passed in the pretty waiting room, Anna’s fears grew. She let Petya play with a toy tank.

“I’m sorry, my treatment room is still occupied,” Shchedrin said by way of greeting. His white coat was buttoned up, and he’d been to the barber since their last consultation.

“Does Petya have to go to the hospital?” Anna blurted out.

“Only for the adjustment,” the doctor said, nodding. “Please follow me.”

“What adjustment?” Taking Petya’s hand, Anna went with Shchedrin into the little kitchen that adjoined the waiting room.

“As you see, we’re overbooked.” He closed the door. The windowless room gave Anna the impression that she was about to receive some news of a particularly confidential nature.

“Your son has asthma,” the doctor said. “The original cause may have been the carbon monoxide pollution in the capital, but that alone wouldn’t account for his most recent symptoms. Petya’s suffering from a very strong reaction to a particular allergen.”

Since the muscular structure of the bronchi in children is not yet fully developed, Shchedrin explained, asthmatic symptoms can arise, and he would give Petya medicine to remedy those; it was more important, however, to identify what was triggering the boy’s attacks. “In your son’s case, it’s a question of dust allergens, so it may be difficult to restrict his contact with them.”

“How do you mean?” Anna asked. She was sitting on a stool and holding Petya on her lap.

“Dust is an integral part of daily life.” Having searched the cabinet in vain for a clean glass, Shchedrin rinsed out a used one and poured himself some tea. “Do you have rugs on the wall at home?” he asked. Anna nodded. “Take them down,” he said, wrapping his aristocratic-looking fingers around the hot glass. “Pictures, knickknacks, mementos are all dust collectors. Keep them away from Petya. How about books?”

“My father …” She interrupted herself, thinking it unnecessary to mention that she lived with a writer. “We have many books.”

“Put them in the cellar. Along with stacks of newspapers, decorative cushions, horsehair mattresses, embroidered tablecloths, and woolen blankets.”

She was surprised to hear him describe her apartment so precisely.

“Even if it means a big change for you, get yourself some smooth, synthetic materials. They aren’t very popular with dust mites.” Shchedrin drank and grimaced. “When will they finally learn to make tea in this place?”

Anna considered how she ought to inform her father that his four walls, the very walls within which he’d so generously welcomed her and her family, were partly responsible for Petya’s illness.

“Still, there has to be something else,” Shchedrin said, pouring the rest of his tea into the sink. “You told me that Petya’s condition gets worse when he’s asleep. There must be an allergen source in the immediate vicinity of his bed. Do you have down pillows or duvets?”

What he meant was suddenly clear to her. “A year ago, we … my father, Petya, and I sleep in the same room. For the sake of privacy, we’ve hung a velvet curtain in front of the sleeping alcove.”

“Velvet!” Shchedrin exclaimed, laughing. “The dust mite’s paradise, the allergy sufferer’s hell!”

Petya understood that the conversation was about him but gradually lost interest in it; Anna looked around for something he could play with. Shchedrin showed the boy into the children’s waiting room and stepped out into the corridor with Anna. He announced that he would start treating Petya’s asthma with medication to dilate his respiratory passages. No medicine could cure the dust allergy itself, he explained, and therefore a gradual desensitization would be necessary, which Shchedrin would initiate with allergen injections.

While he was explaining his diagnosis and the treatment he proposed, Anna became increasingly aware of a nagging discrepancy. On the one hand, merely gaining access to such methods had to be considered practically miraculous; on the other, it entailed a new dependence. “Doctor,” she began. Through the open door, she could see her son. “I don’t know how I can pay for all these things.”

“That’s the least of your problems.” He nodded to a nurse who was calling him to the telephone.

“What does that mean?”

“It’s already taken care of.” The nurse held out the receiver to him. “Everything’s been arranged.”

Observing the doctor’s composure as he spoke on the telephone, Anna wondered what kind of agreement Kamarovsky and Shchedrin had reached. A little later, as she and Petya were heading for the exit, she had the Colonel’s image before her eyes. Despite Anna’s confidence in the physician, Kamarovsky’s involvement in Petya’s recovery filled her with anxiety.

On the way home, she considered how she should reveal to her sensitive father the special privilege Kamarovsky was granting him. Father and daughter’s pact of silence, Viktor Ipalyevich’s resolute overlooking of the obvious, required a complex ritual, with whose help he was able to justify to himself his double way of thinking. Anna bought meat, vegetables, and—even though it exceeded her household budget—a can of peaches in syrup.

“I have a pork shank for us,” she called out when she entered the apartment. “I’m going to cook it to celebrate this day.” She went into the kitchen and set about putting her words into action.

Although Viktor Ipalyevich had contempt for the economy of privilege in a state whose foundation was equality, he accepted Anna’s privileges, through which he lived a comfortable life free from material cares. He smoked cigars that couldn’t be found in any ordinary Moscow shop, and he wore arch supports in his shoes; under normal circumstances, he would have had to wait until his splayfeet became chronic before his application for such a luxury as shoe lifts would have been approved. The box of pills that Anna had obtained from Shchedrin’s private dispensary was not a mere convenience, it was a distinction; such a gift couldn’t be dismissed as a bribe, like real coffee or cotton towels. Her little boy’s life was about to undergo a vast improvement.

Now Viktor Ipalyevich started trying to figure things out: It was an ordinary weekday, and in a few hours, his daughter’s afternoon shift would begin. There had been nothing in the mail that could explain Anna’s words. What reason was there to celebrate? He went through the family birthdays; none of them fell in March. “So what’s the occasion?” he asked, as mildly as possible.

“Be patient!” Anna called out, relieved to find that he was playing along without resistance, but still searching her imagination for a way to avoid bruising his class warrior’s pride. She boned the meat, tied it around a bundle of herbs and vegetables, seasoned it, browned it with garlic and onions, and put it all in the oven. After scrubbing the onion smell off her hands, she took the bottle of Soviet Champagne out of her shopping bag and gathered up two large glasses and a shot glass for Petya.

“That’s all for today,” she said by way of inviting her father to remove his writing materials from the table, which she then began to set.

“Smells great,” Viktor Ipalyevich declared. He went to the sofa, sat down, and paged through his notes, all without looking at her. After she returned to the kitchen, he followed her movements through the open door. She added tomato puree and caraway seeds to the roasting meat, cuddled with Petya, who had come running into the kitchen, sat him on the work surface, and let him watch as she cut up the pork. After arranging it on the porcelain dish with the violet pattern, she called to her father to open the Champagne. Viktor Ipalyevich popped the cork. The wine spilled over the rim of Petya’s little glass, and the boy contorted himself to lick it.

“To the health of a distinguished poet—my father.”

“I’m not going to respond to you until you explain the reason for this mysterious announcement.”

She served father, son, and herself some meat, put the rest on the stove to keep warm, and came back into the room with one hand behind her back.

“You’ve got mail, Papa.” She laid the Glavlit decision on the table next to his plate.

For a moment, he considered challenging her lie—he knew their mailbox had been empty—but his curiosity was too great, and it was followed by disbelieving amazement. With his fork in one raised hand and the document in the other, the poet read the news of his pardon.

“This is almost three weeks old,” he said, pointing to the issuance date and trying to cover up his emotion by being gruff.

Anna, too, had noticed that Kamarovsky had apparently held on to this reward for her work until he thought the proper time had come to reveal it. “You know how bureaucrats are,” she said.

“Good God,” her father murmured. He pressed his lips together, but his agitation, hot and irrepressible, overcame him. He stood up, laid the document on the middle of the table, and took off his cap. Gray, frizzy hairs stuck up in all directions, and his white pate contrasted with the brown skin of his forehead. Shaken, his shoulders slumping, the poet stood over the table, supporting himself on its top and muttering while a thread of saliva dripped from his mouth. His grandson gave Anna a perplexed look as his own small lips began to tremble. Happy though she was, Anna wouldn’t give in to sentimentality; instead she cried, “But that doesn’t mean the food should get cold!”

Viktor Ipalyevich sank down onto his chair as though a hand had been laid on his shoulder. He cut himself a bit of pork and took a bite. Tears ran down his cheeks. After a while, he spoke. “I must … before anything else, I have to …” he said. “The proper sequence!” He raised his head. “The proper sequence is very important. Will you help me, Petya?”

“With what, Dyedushka?”

“We have to get our poems out. We’ll look at every single one of them—no, even better, you’ll read them to me. What do you think? And after that, we’ll decide which one should come first, which one second, and so on. And in the end—you understand, Petya?—we’ll have a whole book full of poems.”

The boy nodded and said, “I’ll read them.” Then, to give himself strength, he said it again: “Yes, I’ll read them. When do I start?”

“This very evening!” His incredulity mingling with the recognition of what a profound and thorough change that piece of paper signified for him, Viktor Ipalyevich renewed his assault on the pork, chewed a mouthful, and emptied his glass in one gulp. In his excitement, he dunked one corner of the Glavlit document in tomato sauce.

Anna recalled that there was something else she’d intended to do that evening. The reason behind her intention lay in the last question Shchedrin had asked her: “Has there been any family incident that might have distressed Petya?” As she sat there in confused silence, the doctor had explained his query: “Allergy sufferers need a calm, secure environment. Distress or anger can intensify their allergies or even cause allergies to break out. Have you and yours undergone some sort of change that has disturbed Petya? It could be something that happened months ago.”

Anna had begun to perspire, and the floor had seemed to be shaking beneath her. “My husband’s a soldier,” she’d answered. “He was transferred out of Moscow almost a year ago.”

“Did father and son have a good relationship?”

Anna had done some mental reckoning: Petya’s symptoms had manifested themselves after Leonid’s departure. The relationship between the two of them was not merely good, but intimate, playful, filled with deep trust. One heart and one soul—that’s what they actually were. A telephone call is expensive, Anna thought, basically beyond our means, but this evening, she would call Leonid and tell him about Petya’s illness. She’d put the boy on the telephone and let them chat with each other. It was the least she could do.