Bill must have noticed; he excused himself and wandered away, while Natalie and Zoltan discussed bullfighting, and Billie Holiday, and then Mallarmé and Verlaine. Grigori listened without joining in. I ought to engage more, he told himself. I ought to go chat with Evelyn.
She stood not far from him, conversing with the new sociology professor, Adam somebody, athletic-looking and fair like Evelyn. There was a hole in her stocking where her toe had poked through. Even from here Grigori could see the toenail, painted a dark shiny purple color, like a bruise. And though Evelyn appeared to be enjoying the conversation, she held her arms across her midriff, hands over elbows, as if to comfort herself. Grigori felt a surge of tenderness for her. There were different ways to love a person, he told himself; there were different kinds of love. With a fresh drink in hand, he turned to make his way toward her.
MARCH 8, A holiday, though still a workday. Usually men give flowers, but Viktor has given Nina a tiny gold watch, the most delicately functional object she has ever seen. Swiss, bought on his visit to France. The band is a gold chain slinky as a water snake, the face of the timepiece a tiny shining thing Nina has to squint at to read. Its near inutility is the very embodiment of luxury.
Having removed the watch for rehearsal, she is now placing it back on her wrist, trying to catch the clasp at the end.
“There you are.” Breathless, Vera, already in her street clothes, has found Nina in her dressing room. “It’s Gersh. He had a call this morning—from Stalin’s secretary.” She pauses, as if unable to believe it. “Telling him to come to the Kremlin.”
Nina feels her eyes open wide. “What about?”
Vera just shakes her head. “It can’t be good news.” And with desperation, “Can it?”
“What time was the meeting? Has it happened yet?”
“This afternoon sometime. But I can’t go over there to wait for him, because Zoya might be home.”
“I’ll tell Viktor. If nothing else, he and I can be there when Gersh gets back. And I’ll tell you anything I find out, as soon as I can. I promise.”
And so Nina and Viktor are in Gersh’s apartment with Zoya that evening when Gersh returns from the Kremlin, his face tired but only somewhat drawn. Zoya, who has been pacing anxiously for hours, rushes to him. “What happened, what did they say? Did you meet him? Did you speak to him?” Her tone changes on the word “him,” reverent, eager.
“Just his secretary. But it wasn’t a conversation, really. He simply read a decree to me.”
“What decree?”
“Nothing new, really, same as always.” Gersh looks suddenly exhausted. “But then he handed me this.” He holds out a typed page.
Zoya quickly takes it from him, and Nina and Viktor read over her shoulder. It is a memorandum, from the deputy chairman of the Committee on the Arts. “Under the aegis of the Council of Ministers of the USSR,” Gersh has been expelled from the Composers’ Union.
Zoya’s curls quiver as she shakes her head. “It’s because of what you said about bel canto. That must be it.” To Nina and Viktor she explains, “He can’t help it—you know how he loves Rossini and all that.” Her voice is sad yet matter-of-fact. In a harsher, brisk tone directed at Gersh, she says, “I told you to get rid of those Donizetti records.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
But Zoya doesn’t look angry so much as galvanized. “It’s a misunderstanding. Don’t worry, it will just take some turning around.”
Amazing, that nothing seems to frighten her, that she never becomes disheartened. She rarely appears the least bit confused by the things happening around her. Nina, on the other hand, has felt puzzled by so many things recently. Not only this latest harsh treatment of Gersh. As much as Nina used to think she knew whom she could trust, lately it seems impossible to ever really truly know what other people are up to. What Polina told them, in Berlin last month, about being asked to inform…And the note from that woman in the junk shop. Was Nina supposed to pass the information along to Polina and Vera? Or was Nina singled out for some reason—because of how she looked, like a person who might need or want that information? Did her eyes say that? Did she look needy, or wise? For the hundredth time she wonders if Vera and Polina each received a little slip of paper, too. In the end Nina just rolled hers into a tiny pill and shoved it into the corner of one of the compartments of her makeup case, too scared to show anyone, especially after learning about Polina.
Not to mention that the woman following them turned out to be one of their assigned escorts, an East German named Bergit, who reported them to the Komsomol representative for having gone outside the designated bounds. All three of them were scolded harshly, in front of the rest of the troupe, for leaving their prescribed territory, and then the company manager gave another lecture, reminding them that there was nothing they could have needed to buy that was not available in the democratic sector, and that they might have been kidnapped by evil capitalists. And so Nina, Polina, and Vera were made to stand in front of the group and explain that they had been wickedly misdirected and were relieved to have been able to return safely within Soviet bounds, and that never again would they so much as risk finding themselves in the nondemocratic world.
The lie of it, the pettiness—after all that they saw just two subway stops away. Surely some of the others knew the truth. And yet, like Polina said, you would have to be crazy to leave, why even risk it? They find you and break your legs.
Now Zoya is telling Gersh he might write a letter of apology; that might do the trick. “I’ll of course help you and all that. I’m not a bad writer myself.” Glancing back at the memorandum, she says, “I wonder if Stalin himself saw this.”
She sounds almost awestruck. After all, she is a vocal devotee of the great leader. On the wall where previously there was only a very small oval mirror, she has hung a framed section of a Pravda article from last year:
If, encountering difficulties, you should doubt your own strength, think about him, about Stalin, and you’ll find the necessary confidence. If you feel tired at a time when you should not, think about him, about Stalin, and your fatigue will leave you…. If you have planned something big, think about him, about Stalin, and the work will be a success…. If you are seeking a solution, think about him, about Stalin, and you will find it.
“I’m sorry,” Nina says, awkwardly, “but I have an engagement, I have to go now. Viktor, I’ll find you back at home.”
She leaves the room with an exhale of relief. But her heart drops again when she thinks of the news she has to pass along to Vera.
FIRST THING MONDAY morning, Grigori went to find Drew.
She looked up smiling, came out from behind her desk to shake Grigori’s hand in that confident, professional way of hers. “Nice to see you.”
“Likewise. I see you took some sun over your vacation.”
“Oh, good, I thought whatever tan I’d managed had already faded.” That easy smile. “The catalogs have just gone out. You should be getting yours in the mail, today or tomorrow.”
So it was happening, events were now in motion, the auction would truly take place. Perhaps when he received the catalog Grigori would fully believe it.
Drew was shuffling through her big leather bag. “Thank you for lending me your book.”
“Thank you for reading it. It’s rare that my translations have much of an audience.”
“I’m impressed. The poems feel perfectly natural in English. If I didn’t know they were originally in another language…”
Feeling somehow humbled, Grigori heard himself say, “I suppose they’ve been a good bit of my life’s work. So far.”
Drew nodded as if she already knew this. “I love them. Not just the poems on their own. Also knowing about Viktor Elsin. I’ve been thinking about some of them, just imagining. I was wondering about the later ones. His style changed so drastically.”
Grigori nodded. “I’ve written papers about that. It’s the sort of thing we academics seize on, for lack of
more meaningful occupations.”
Again, her laughing smile. “And…what conclusions have you come to?”
“Oh, you don’t want to get me started.”
“Yes, I do.” She was looking him straight in the eye.
“Well, I think his stylistic changes had to do with changes in his personal and professional life. That new subject matter dictated a change in approach. Not that the poems say any of this explicitly. But you know he was arrested shortly after those last poems were written. There’s been speculation that he might somehow have been involved in some sort of subversive activities.”
Musingly, Drew said, “I suppose Nina Revskaya would know.”
“Yes, well…perhaps. She hasn’t ever said so.”
Drew flipped to the back of the book. “This last poem especially. It’s so haunting.”
“Riverside,” the least typical of all, no metrical scheme, no attempt at all to rhyme. It was Viktor Elsin’s final poem.
RIVERSIDE
I.
These woods contain glorious secrets.
Pitiless wind, its message garbled
by wood smoke at summer’s end. A rattling
hazelnut tree: Encore, encore! Time
lifts into air. Shoreline runnels. Revenant.
Black empty sky, no snarl of stars,
no indefatigable moon. The pines weep.
Restless branches give faint signals…
II.
Distant stars: tiny drops of dew
on a giant spider’s web.
III.
Under spruce-cover, a colony
of mushrooms hides from that bright
jewel the sun, smiting the wind.
Ancient tears, like hearts, harden.
One can never be prepared.
Over roads dust hovers.
Astonished faces of flowers.
“He must have written it quickly,” Drew said. “Or maybe it just feels rushed.”
Grigori nodded. Particularly that third stanza, the way it so rapidly diminished, as if running out of words, out of time. Saying so, he pointed at it and felt the pleasant sensation of his arm brushing Drew’s.
“And that second section,” she said. “It’s almost a haiku.” She looked up at him. “A big overpowering net.”
“Or maybe the spider allusion,” Grigori said, “represents some all-powerful, menacing evil.”
Drew said, “The dew, right after the weeping pines, makes me see teardrops. And then those tears again in the final section.” She paused, thinking. “Do you think the censors maybe found it subversive, somehow?”
“I haven’t been able to find any documentation of that precise charge. But if one looks for subversion one can find it here. This line here, for instance. Be prepared, that was the Young Pioneers slogan. The Communist youth group all children were supposed to join.”
“Like the Boy Scouts. It’s the same slogan.”
“Exactly. So to say, ‘One can never be prepared’—”
“Might be in reference to—”
“Or not. But he tucked it in there.” Grigori felt himself nodding again, so glad to have an ally. Was that it, was that the feeling he sought but found so elusive? Even with Zoltan, who understood his work as well as his background, Grigori did not necessarily feel a closeness; never had he told Zoltan anything terribly personal, nor had he wanted to. And with Evelyn he felt friendship but not the closeness of a companion. What a failure he had been at the party on Saturday, unable to rally; dropping Evelyn at her building afterwards, he had given just a quick, guarded kiss.
“The penultimate poem, too,” Drew said now. “‘Night Swimming.’” She turned the page back. “It seems to be mourning some loss of…innocence, maybe, or faith in…goodness.”
“Yes. In the world as a good and honest place.” Now was the moment. Grigori willed himself to be brave, to dare to show her what he had once shown awful, condescending Big Ears. He cleared his throat. “I have some letters.”
Drew looked up, eyes wide, pools of brown flecked with green.
Grigori’s heart punched at his ribs. “If at some point you find time to read them,” he added, turning to remove the folded letters and the typed translations from his briefcase, his heart still punching, “now that you’ve read these poems, you might find some similarities of phrasing.”
He gave her the original letters first. She touched them as if they might crumble in her fingers. “Who wrote them?”
“They’re signed, ‘Yours always,’ and this one, ‘Yours and yours only.’ But I have reason to believe that the author is Viktor Elsin.”
“Really?” Her eyes opened even wider. She flipped back to the top of the first letter. “And do you know whom they’re addressed to?”
Big Ears shaking his head, that horrible condescending face. That Grigori had dared to do this much, already, dared to suggest…Not to mention how Drew might react to his possessing Nina Revskaya’s mail. “It simply says ‘my dear.’”
“Have you shown them to Nina Revskaya?”
A deep breath. “I tried to. She didn’t want to see them.” Grigori found himself using those same phrases as always, It could be painful for her to look back…no interest in the past…
But it felt wrong, this time, wrong not to be telling Drew the truth. “A long time ago,” Grigori allowed himself to admit, “I tried to show them to her. She wanted nothing to do with them. Or me. It took me another year to get up the nerve to write her. I wrote her a letter, trying to explain.” It was too much, he could not say much more. “She didn’t answer.”
Drew looked perplexed. “But why wouldn’t she?” And then, “Oh, I see.”
“See what?”
“They’re love letters, is that it? To someone else—”
“Oh, no, no, that’s not it, I don’t think so. Well, yes, one is a love letter, in fact, but, well, that’s why the necklace, the amber…” But it was easier to simply show her, let her see for herself. “I brought you these translations of them.”
Drew was looking back at the originals, flipping them over, squinting at the handwriting. Grigori could see her frustration at not understanding, at not having learned from that Russian class. “If they’re her husband’s letters…” She looked up, took the translations from him. “You’re saying that some of what’s in the letters matches up with these poems?”
“One of the letters, a section of it. I think.” His courage faltered. “Don’t worry, I don’t mean to force my own obsession on you. I just thought it might be of interest to you, if and when you have time. Not now, of course. I—I see how you busy you are.”
She put the translations down beside her on her desk. “I’ll have time tonight. You’ve made me very curious. Maybe between the two of us—” She stopped, seemed to be thinking. “Maybe together we can figure it out.”
Grigori wanted to tell her that she was very kind to take an interest, and that she had brightened his day. Instead he did something, it seemed just to happen, to occur, his hand lifting slightly, reaching for her hand. He touched her long fingers, enfolded them in his palm. She was looking at him calmly, and now with his other hand he reached up, toward her hair, touched the skin of her temple. Lightly he traced the side of her face.
A long flat beep—the telephone. Drew pulled away.
Grigori said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“I don’t need to answer it.” But she hurried to her desk and grabbed the receiver, said “Drew Brooks,” in a rushed way. “Oh, hi, yes, sure, just one moment, I’m just finishing up here.” She looked shaken.
I’ve done something awful, Grigori thought to himself. I must explain, I must apologize. But he did not understand, himself. As soon as Drew replaced the receiver, he said, “Please excuse me—”
“That was Lenore, I’m supposed to be at a meeting. I completely forgot. I’m sorry to…run off.” She swallowed visibly, her eyes shifting away as she added, “I’ll have to—get back to you.”
LOT 71
Baltic Amber Bracelet, c. 1880. Five ½ in. cabochons, each with inclusion: fungus gnat (Diptera: Mycetophilidae); dark-winged fungus gnat (Diptera: Sciaridae); moth, with bleaching; sand fly (Diptera: Psychodidae); unidentified insect. Colors range from butterscotch to honey. Each cabochon bezel-set in 14kt yellow gold braided frame with the 56 zolotnik gold standard hallmark and maker’s mark AS in Cyrillic (Anton Samoilov, Moscow) partially obscured, 63 × 55 mm with clasp and safety chain. $2,000–3,000
LOT 72
Baltic Amber Ear Pendants, c. 1880. Two ½ in. cabochons, each with inclusion: fungus gnats (Diptera: Mycetophilidae), good clarity. Each cabochon bezel-set in oval 14kt yellow gold braided frame with the 56 zolotnik gold standard hallmark and maker’s mark AS in Cyrillic (Anton Samoilov, Moscow). $1,000–1,500
LOT 72A
Baltic Amber Pendant,* c. 1880. 2 in. cabochon with inclusion: arachnid (Archaea absurda) with egg pouch. Exceptional clarity. Bezel-set in oval 14kt yellow gold braided frame with the 56 zolotnik gold standard hallmark and maker’s mark AS in Cyrillic (Anton Samoilov, Moscow). Braided chain, lg. 30 in., closes with secure working spring ring clasp. $20,000–30,000
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