It was not to be.
Early that morning, before they had finished their breakfast, they heard the sounds of thundering boots on the stairs leading up to their attic. Then there was a pounding on the parlor door.
Sonia looked with wide, wary eyes at Dmitri. "What... ?"
Dmitri shrugged, as if to say, Who knows?
But he did know. Oh, yes, he knew without any doubts whatsoever. He quietly set down his cup of black coffee, dabbed his lips with a napkin, then rose to his feet. His stomach was already twisted into a knot of fear, but he gave Sonia a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder as he passed her on his way to answer the door. A tight smile was fixed on his lips.
"What is it, Mama?" Misha asked.
"Nothing, Misha," Sonia answered. "Nothing at all. Eat your breakfast." She scooted her chair closer to his protectively, and tried to interest him in his food. His large, dark eyes, however, followed his father inquisitively.
Dmitri unlocked and swung the door open. There stood two official-looking bureaucrats in almost identical, cheaply tailored, dark gray suits under brown leather trench coats. They carried battered leather briefcases, and on their faces were the expressions of unrelentingly grim Soviet bureaucracy. They were, Dmitri thought, the sort of petty officials who enjoyed exercising their modicum of power. Behind the two men he saw four armed militiamen—boys, really—in ill-fitting uniforms. They stood waiting, their collective demeanor blank.
"May I—?" Dmitri began.
"Dmitri Levin?" barked one of the suits harshly. He flashed a red identity booklet, but Dmitri couldn't make out what it said before the man snapped it shut and replaced it in his jacket.
"Yes, I am Dmitri Levin," he responded, trying to keep the nervousness out of his voice. He was loath to let these minor functionaries hear the fear that he felt, but he was unable to control the cold sweat that suddenly broke out on his face or the slight tremor that made his hands appear to have a life of their own.
The men in suits, not waiting for an invitation, shoved their way past Dmitri into the room. The militiamen tromped in on their heels.
Dmitri slowly closed the door behind them, then turned to them, mustering up as much dignity as he could under the circumstances. "What do you want here?" he asked, knowing deep down inside what then- answer would be.
"I am comrade Vladimir Sergeyovich Kazakov," the larger of the two men announced. His face was beet red and vodka-bloated. "This is comrade Ivan Mikhailovich Kuznetzov." He nodded toward the other suit, whose eyes were flicking from wall to wall, ceiling to floor, from paintings to consoles, chairs to porcelain, rugs to chandeliers, taking in the room's ornate furnishings. Kuznetzov didn't bother acknowledging Dmitri.
Sonia watched them intently from the table. She noticed that the young militiamen with their badly shorn fair hair and pale eyes, so typical of the north, were ogling the room, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.
Such stupid expressions on their faces, she thought unkindly. They were nearly all farm boys, these militiamen. Suspicious and ignorant provincials. And that, she knew, was all the more reason to give them a wide berth. I must try to control my anger, she thought.
Then the one called Kazakov unceremoniously placed his briefcase on the grand piano with a loud thud. Sonia recoiled with distaste, and glaring, she practically jumped to her feet, her back to Misha, as if to hide him from their sight.
"What do you want here?" she asked in an imperious tone of voice.
"You are the wife? Sonia?" Comrade Kazakov asked, flipping through thin sheets of official-looking documents he had produced from his leather briefcase. He didn't look over at her.
"Yes," she replied. "Who wants to know?" She watched him as he continued to riffle through the documents. "What do you want here?" she repeated, more irritably this time.
Dmitri quietly crossed the Bessarabian rug to his wife's side and took one of her hands in his, but she didn't seem to be aware of him, staring at Kazakov as she was.
Comrade Kazakov locked eyes with her, a smug expression on his face.
Piggy eyes, Sonia was thinking. He's got little piggy eyes. Like so many of his sort. Little piggy eyes squinting out from between those ugly red folds of vodka fat.
"It is my duty to inform you," Kazakov said, "that the housing authority will be taking over your apartment. I have your papers here. You will be moving to new, more appropriate accommodations."
"What—?" Dmitri gasped. He felt Soma's hand squeeze his, as if trying to draw strength from him. He knew she was making a great effort to control her temper.
"These militiamen here," Comrade Kazakov continued, indicating the young men behind him, "will remain here to make certain that you finish packing today."
"Today!" Sonia burst out, unable to remain silent any longer. "That's ...that's impossible!"
Despite the anger in her voice, Dmitri recognized the sound of defeat underlying it. He glanced at her and saw the sudden look of fear, of dread and loss, that appeared on her face as the realization of what was happening dawned in all its horror. He could see that she, too, finally knew what this was all about. Her words, he knew, were mere posturing.
Dmitri pressed her hand reassuringly, then put an arm around her shoulders.
"Papa, what—?" Misha began. He looked as if he might burst into tears at any moment. The boy didn't understand what was happening, but he knew that something was very wrong.
"Shhh," Dmitri whispered. He took his son's plump little hand in his free one. "Quiet now," he said, forcing a smile to his lips. "We have to hear what our visitors have to say."
He turned and directed his gaze at Comrade Kazakov. "We haven't been informed of any of this," Dmitri protested. "We—"
"You are being informed now," Comrade Kazakov snapped. "You are to begin packing immediately, and you are to finish by this evening. This apartment will be sealed off tonight. New tenants will be moving in tomorrow."
"This is criminal," Sonia spat. "Criminal! You don't know what you're doing! I'll go to the union with this!"
"It is your union which has taken this apartment," Comrade Kazakov said evenly. "For someone else." A smile revealed tobacco-stained teeth. He obviously relished his role. "So you can discuss it with whomever you choose, but it will do you no good."
With these words Sonia and Dmitri saw the futility of any further protests. Circumstances doubtless were even more serious than they had at first imagined. They had always been protected by their union membership and high- level teaching and performing careers. It appeared that now all of that was for nought. Their security had vanished in one fell swoop.
"You are to pack your clothing and other personal possessions," Comrade Kazakov went on. "You are to leave all furnishings as they are."
"You must be crazy!" Sonia shouted. "You can't do this! All of these things belong to us!" As she said them, she realized her words would have no effect, but she couldn't stop herself.
"You can see for yourself," Comrade Kazakov said, dramatically slapping one of his documents down on their breakfast table.
Sonia and Dmitri both glanced at the official-looking document, but there was no point in reading it. They knew what it said.
"The piano!" Dmitri suddenly protested. "It is our livelihood! We—?"
"You are to pack whatever you can in suitcases and boxes and get out," Kazakov interrupted. "There is a truck downstairs, and the militiamen will help you load it. They will take you to your new home." He nodded at his partner, who was examining a small porphyry urn decorated with ormolu, an avaricious gleam in his eye. "Comrade Kuznetzov will accompany you."
Sonia thought for a moment that she wouldn't be able to stop the tears that threatened to spill from her eyes, but she could not let these brutes see her cry. She simply stared at Comrade Kazakov, her eyes filled with pure, unadulterated hatred.
"But where are we to go?" Dmitri asked. "What will we do?" He despised the emasculated, helpless sound of his own voice in his ears.
"Your new a
ddress is listed on page three. There." Kazakov pointed at the document he had placed on the breakfast table, then turned his attention to Comrade Kuznetzov. "Ivan Mikhailovich."
His partner looked up at him and set down the porphyry urn, a guilty expression on his face. "Yes?"
"See that this move is completed tonight," Comrade Kazakov said. Without another word he turned and strode toward the door.
Dmitri had taken Misha in his arms. The boy watched over his father's shoulder as the stranger opened the
door and let himself out, leaving the door ajar. Misha had never before been confronted with evil, and he didn't understand it. His eyes filled with tears, however, because he knew instinctively that their lives had been changed.
Sonia slumped down onto a chair, her head in her hands. It's all my fault, she thought, engulfed in self- hatred, its poison washing over her in bilious waves, threatening to make her sick. All my fault. I should have been content to let Misha study here. I should have been content with what we've got. But, no. I had to apply for exit visas, didn't I? She choked back tears. The exit visas. That's why they're doing this. Now they'll never leave us alone. We'll never have any peace.
She looked up and saw Misha, still in his father's arms, his large, dark eyes observing her worriedly. For an instant she wanted to scream, to tear her hair out, but instead she put all of her considerable resources into smiling up at her son. Then, she quickly got to her feet and kissed his cheek.
"Dmitri," she said, "we must hurry. We must take everything we can."
Chapter Nine
"Mama? What is it?" Misha looked at his mother, an anxious expression in his large, dark eyes. "Are you sad, Mama?"
Sonia was all choked up. For a moment she could not speak. Then she turned away, surreptitiously wiped a tear from her eye and squared her narrow shoulders, and turned back around. She smiled bravely.
The child has endured more than any child ever should, she thought.
"No, of course I'm not sad, Misha," she lied, distressed that she should cause her son worry.
He can read me like a book, she thought. It was perplexing to her, this ability of his to sense her every mood.
"I was simply thinking. Wondering when your father would be back, that's all."
"You shouldn't worry, Mama," he said in an effort to cheer her. "Probably the shop lines are long today."
Sonia and Dmitri took turns doing the shopping, and today it was Dmitri's turn to wait in the interminable lines for groceries.
"You're right." Sonia forced a smile onto her lips. "Now then, let me listen to your Chopin. Start with the nocturnes."
Misha sat down at the piano and adjusted the seat. He put his head down and closed his eyes, as if in prayer. It was a moment of mental preparation Sonia knew very well. She had seen it countless times in the last two years. He was clearing his mind for the music and the music alone.
She watched him as he began to practice, but after a few minutes she turned her head and gazed out through the rain-streaked window. She listened to the beautiful but melancholy music of Chopin wafting from behind her. What a contrast it was, this beautiful music, to the bleak landscape that greeted her eyes.
Cement and asphalt, she thought. Nothing but desolate expanses of concrete and asphalt, nearly as far as the eye can see. There was hardly a tree in sight, and the precious few there were had been mutilated by vandals, stripped of their lower branches, defaced by graffiti.
It was a numbing sight, this postapocalyptic landscape. Virtually barren, even now in spring, it was of a drab, uniform grayness, punctuated here and there by high- rises of dirty, weathered cement, parking lots with pathetically maintained cars—no fancy Zils or Chaikas here—and cheerless playgrounds. Stolen or abandoned cars, many of them stripped down to mere shells, sat on the streets, as if they were caught in some dreadful limbo.
Like us, she thought grimly. Two years in limbo.
She drew her gaze in, glancing at the buckets and basins she'd placed under leaks in the ceiling. The spring rains, which she'd always welcomed in the past, nourishing the city's plants and flowers as they did, were now no more than a dreaded nuisance. There were no plants or flowers in this district, none to speak of anyway, and the rain simply meant more work for her.
She sighed aloud. That's certainly the least of it What was a leaking roof compared with the rest of the endless stream of problems that had confronted them in the two years since being forced to leave their beloved attic apartment in central Moscow?
It was like a palace in the sky, she thought wistfully.
There, she had never minded climbing the old, rickety stairs to their grand, but homey, rooms. Here, she begrudged every single step she had to take to reach the small, seventh-floor room the three of them shared. There was an elevator, but it rarely functioned. It had been broken down nearly every day since the week they had moved in. When it did work, it invariably stank of urine, and its walls were smeared with the vilest obscenities, sometimes in excrement.
Even the mailboxes downstairs didn't escape desecration. They were blackened from the fires that vandals regularly set to them. And the security! It's a joke, she thought. In a project such as this, where security was vital, the door locks to the lobby were nearly always broken. If not, no matter: the security code was scratched neatly on the door for all to see.
Sonia shivered and clasped her arms around herself, as if to give herself warmth and comfort. It is disgusting, she thought. Utterly disgusting, this place. But what else could you expect? she asked herself. The people here— the very dregs of humanity, most of them—are cooped up in such an execrable, soulless place that it only reinforces their basest, most animalistic instincts.
Their neighbors were no exception. There were three other families on their floor, and they shared a communal kitchen. The kitchen always reeked with the stench of boiled cabbage, an odor that permeated the entire building, seeping into their clothes, as did the strong, foul- smelling tobacco of the papirosy, the tube cigarettes that everybody in the building, young and old alike, seemed to chain-smoke. Sonia had quickly determined that she would have to get a minuscule refrigerator to keep in their room, but it wasn't only the unpleasant odors of the kitchen that had driven her to it. Their food in the communal refrigerator vanished as quickly as she put it there—more than once—with denials all around, of course. She could put a container of her borscht—the simplest, cheapest concoction!—in it to cool, and it would disappear before it even had a chance to lose its warmth. She had finally resorted to cooking on a hot plate in their room, inconvenient as it was, so as to avoid the kitchen and their neighbors as much as possible.
Pavel and Nyushka, their neighbors on one side, fought like wild animals, often arguing long into the night. Pavel frequently beat up his wife in drunken rages. Sonia didn't think she'd ever seen Nyushka without bruises, but when she tried to come to her aid, she was rebuffed, met with furious hostility, in fact. Old Ivan, on the other side, was a zakhleba, a guzzler. He reeked of cheap vodka day in and day out, sweating it from his very pores. He was often slumped downstairs, sometimes outside in deadly, freezing weather, incoherent, if not passed out, unable to climb to his room. Like so many of the men around these projects—even some of the women—he would swallow anything he could get his hands on to render himself unconscious. Paint thinner, she had discovered, was a popular alternative to vodka, and airplane glue and other inhalants—she didn't know what most of them were—were a staple as well.
The youngsters in these dreary environs had already learned all too well how to cope with such violent, unloving families and their gloomy prospects for the future. They emulated their elders, drinking, sniffing, snorting, smoking—anything they managed to find. Their youthful energies, when not focused on sex and fights, were used to defile every conceivable surface in their midst, rendering an already hideous world even more so. Nothing was spared, not even their own bodies, which they desecrated with abandon. Many of them proudly wore th
e scars of gang warfare and various initiation rites and ugly homemade tattoos.
Sometimes Sonia felt that she understood their utter hopelessness, their desire to simply abandon this awful world, slowly but surely killing themselves, leaving their problems behind them.
She had heard of this other Moscow when they had lived in the cushioned opulence of their attic, but she had never actually encountered it firsthand. She had often visited friends in the monstrous, sterile projects that housed most of Moscow, but they had been well kept, constantly patrolled, and more modern.
We have been relegated to a gulag right here in the city, she told herself. Thank God I've been able to protect Misha from the worst of it.
She turned, her dark eyes alighting on his long, slender, six-year-old body. So much like mine and his father's, she mused with pride. He was going to be a strapping, handsome man one day.
He sat erect now, a look of control on his still childlike face. It was certainly not a look that was always there, especially when he was having difficulty with a piece of music, struggling to make it his own. But he was still playing Chopin—music that seemed to be second nature to him—and was having no such difficulty. As she listened, he switched from the melancholy and relatively easy nocturnes to the Piano Concerto no. 1, op. 11, in E Minor, a more challenging piece.
He was unaware of the smile that suddenly lit up Soma's olive-complexioned features, the warmth that suffused her heart with so much love that sometimes she thought it would surely break, that it simply couldn't contain the love she felt for this brilliant prodigy she and Dmitri had brought into the world. The struggle, the hardships, the daily unpleasantness—all of it came to nothing when she looked upon her son.
We have been blessed with him, she thought. And if truth be told, we've had our share of luck since that dreadful day two years ago when we lost our home. We've got a lot to be thankful for. Why, I could make a whole list of mercies!
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