A Question of Return

by Robert Carr

  “She hid it somewhere outside the house.”

  “Where? What you’re saying is that she went outside, hid the folder God knows where, came back in, climbed upstairs and then knocked herself unconscious so that she wouldn’t be suspected of theft.”

  “Maybe she had accomplices,” Ben said, “and she gave the folder to them while you were away.”

  He looked at his students in disbelief. “And after she handed over the excerpts, mission carried out, Audrey hurled herself head first against my worktable.”

  “Who else knew you had the bundle here?” Helen asked.

  “Besides me? Audrey. Ben, did I mention when we met on Thursday afternoon that I’d work at home on the Tsvetayeva bundle over the weekend?”

  “You did.”

  “Did you tell anyone else about it, Ben?” Helen asked.

  “No, of course not. I mean, who, on earth …”

  Laukhin shook his head. “Come on, it happened on Thursday night.”

  They looked at him puzzled.

  “She fell for me, as you put it,” Laukhin went on, “Thursday night, before she knew I had the folder in the house. Never mind that, before she knew about the folder period.”

  Helen laughed. “Then Ben did it. He snuck in while you took Audrey to the hospital and pinched the folder. He wanted to do last-minute corrections, didn’t you Ben?”

  Laukhin poured himself another drink. “There’s a bit I didn’t tell you. When I came home last night there were a few things wrong. The front door was unlocked, the landing light was on, the bedroom door was ajar. I’m now certain I locked the front door—I remember checking I had the key. I’m not entirely sure about the light outside the bedroom, but I think I switched it off. As for the bedroom door, I’m sure I closed it behind me, but Audrey may have gone to the bathroom while I was away. It’s the unlocked front door that troubles me.”

  “Are you saying that somebody got in while you were away?” Ben asked.

  ‘It seems that way,” Laukhin said.

  “And this person or persons took the green folder away.”

  “Likely.”

  “And Audrey got hurt while they were at it.”

  Laukhin nodded.

  “Who?”

  “That’s the question,” Laukhin said. Who? Who’d be interested in the bundle? The KGB, if we allow ourselves some wild guessing here, wants the whole journal, not just these excerpts about Tsvetayeva. Anyway, I think the KGB has other things to keep them busy right now, not my father’s journal. Five, ten years ago maybe, but nowadays they have much bigger fish to worry about. They don’t like the noises Comrade Gorbachev is making.”

  “Artyom Pavlovich, surely the KGB’s not happy with your father’s journal being published, and we shouldn’t dismiss—”

  Laukhin waved his glass. “Yes, well, never mind the mystery and the detective work for now. Let’s assess the damage.”

  “The damage?”

  “How long will it take to get the Tsvetayeva bundle ready given this new … situation? Ben, how long would it take you to prepare new translation drafts.”

  Ben said that the trip to Yelabuga was not in the computer, and neither was Pasternak’s visit to Bolshevo. It meant all those entries, six or seven of them, would have to be reconstructed. He sighed. “It shouldn’t take that long. After all, I’ve already done it once. Two weeks if I do nothing else. The morning at the hotel in Yelabuga and the train trip back—well, luckily, these should still be in your office. I slid the draft translations under your door Friday morning.”

  Laukhin sighed. “It’s gone too. I picked it up on Friday. I had it in the green folder.”

  “Well, they are short journal entries,” Ben said.

  “What if Paul and Helen helped?” Laukhin asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ben said. “I don’t think we’d gain much. For them it’s new material, a new translation. And, of course, there’ll be less unity of style.”

  “I’ll worry about the unity of style when I go over the first draft,” Laukhin said. “Two weeks for the first draft and at most a week for me. Less, three or four days.”

  “Will the New Yorker go along with a three week delay?”

  “I don’t know, Ben,” Laukhin said. He was back at the window. He thought he saw a cat in the falling darkness, near the shed, or a small raccoon. “We’ll see.”

  Helen said, “Shouldn’t you call the police, Artyom Pavlovich?”

  Laukhin turned and gazed at Helen, and then shook his head. “What for?”

  “Tell the police you had papers stolen from your room.”

  Laukhin laughed. “Yes, I can see myself explaining this. ‘Well, sergeant, it was a green folder, about this big, with some thirty or forty sheets containing the story of a dead poet. The value of the stolen object? Let’s see, now …’”

  “Tell them that they hurt Audrey.”

  He moved away from the window. “If I call the police, they’ll want to talk. Endless talk and endless details, the minutia about everything since I met Audrey. They’ll consider the possibility of an intruder coming in and surreptitiously removing the folder either at night, when I left to rescue Paul, or early in the morning, when I went to the hospital with Audrey. They’ll want an exact description of all my movements last night and this morning. And they’ll also wonder whether I hit Audrey on the head myself, or caused her fall, and whether I invented the story about the green folder to cover myself. I don’t have the time for it. They’d ask questions of Paul too, of course.”

  Helen’s eyes bulged. “You mean you’ll let it go? Just like that?”

  “Some burglary,” Ben said. “A stolen green folder.”

  “Ben,” Laukhin said, “listen, all the work must be done at Alumni Hall and entered into the word processor every day. Sleep there, if need be. You must—daily, you hear me, daily—make sure everything is saved in the computer. Either you enter it, or you give it to one of the secretaries to do it, whichever is faster.”

  Laukhin sat down with a heavy grunt, a signal that the important decisions had been made and there was nothing further to debate.

  Helen straightened herself up. “You’re taking it very well, Artyom Pavlovich.”

  “It can’t be helped, can it?”

  Ben said, “It would be wonderful publicity, though, wouldn’t it? I mean, in addition to the excerpts, think about the possible headline—‘Excerpts of Forthcoming Memoirs Stolen’. Or ‘Thieves Break into Famous Poet’s House’ and ‘Experts Convinced of Soviet Secret Service Involvement: What Was It That so Troubled Them?’ Afterward, of course.”

  “Afterward?” Helen asked.

  “After the excerpts and the first volume are published. Surely we could talk about it then, and give interviews. It’d spur sales and lead to great anticipation for the second volume.” Ben raised his hands. “It’s a thought, just a thought.”

  Laukhin saw them to the door. “I’ll see you both tomorrow morning. Eight o’clock sharp in my office. Ben, try to find Paul. Oh, God, I have to call Bart. And that soulless pedant at the New Yorker. I need another drink.”

  Friday and Saturday, 14 – 15 October 1955

  I slept poorly, if at all, tossing and turning. I dreamed of Cornilov and the other two henchmen. They were having dinner in our apartment on Lavrushinsky Lane, and I didn’t understand how they had ended up there. I was sweating and asking Varya who had invited them. Sasha Cornilov wouldn’t let his aunt answer. He shouted, “But it was you, Pavel Nikolayevich, it was you who told me to come, and to bring my friends with me.” I kept looking at Varya for an answer, but she seemed unable to hear me.

  I switched the bedside lamp on and picked up my notebook. My watch showed three o’clock. By the time I finished writing Brodelshchikova’s story it was quarter to six. I decided to go out for a walk. A walk would do me good, I thought. Passing by Boris Leonidovich’s room I wondered if Korotkova was still in there. She’d been there around eleven o’clock last night. I heard t
heir voices when I snuck into the corridor to confirm my suspicion. Well, it would not have been hard—Marietta was given a room right beside the poet’s.

  A uniformed policeman and a hotel clerk were whispering inside the front door. They seemed reluctant to move and let me pass, but eventually they did. It was still dark, and far-apart streetlamps cast dim cones of yellow light. The weather had turned cold and windy, and a thin rain was just beginning. I realized that my walk was not going to last long—maybe as far as the second light. I walked quickly but carefully because of the darkness and the uneven road. As I approached the second light, I noticed a couple. They had either been there all along or, more likely, had been walking like me and stopped within the hazy light. I thought at first they were lovers reluctant to part after a night together, and I slowed down. I was just about to turn around when I realized that they were not lovers, that they were involved in a heated discussion, and that I knew the woman—Korotkova. She was wearing her short fur coat, but I would have recognized her anyway. She was doing most of the talking. I didn’t know who the man was. For a second I thought it was Boris Leonidovich, and that the two of them had gone for an early walk, but the man was much younger than the poet. He was also taller and broader. It crossed my mind that he looked like Sasha Cornilov, but I dismissed the thought. I had not seen Varya’s nephew in years. My mind was still overwhelmed by the story I heard yesterday, and dreaming of him had somehow conjured his likeness here.

  I turned around and went back to the hotel. I doubted they saw me. I wasn’t sure what I saw, but just as a precaution, I said to the two men who were still there, at the door, that it was too cold and dark for a walk. And I added that it was getting wet too.

  Korotkova took a midday train to Yaroslavl.

  In the afternoon, as we boarded the train back to Moscow, Boris Leonidovich was unusually quiet, although he mumbled that, all things considered, he was glad Korotkova had been urgently called home.

  A few comments sprang to mind, but I didn’t say anything.

  Later, much later, after dinner, in our pyjamas and lying on our couchettes with the lights off, Boris Leonidovich said he loved sleeping on trains. It was one place he felt at ease and safe. It was the rhythmic sound of the wheels over the tracks and the slight rocking motion of the coach. Likely, an unconscious recall of being an infant, lulled to sleep in a cradle; or of being in the womb, the thuds of the wheels imitating his mother’s heartbeat. He had heard a doctor once talk about such associations.

  I couldn’t hold back anymore and I asked him why Korotkova had to go home all of a sudden. He seemed startled by my question—he wasn’t used to trite interruptions while his mind was in poetic ascent. Maybe he was embarrassed too. Why was I asking? I lied—nothing, simple curiosity. He said that one of her children was sick, and that she had seemed troubled when she told him that she couldn’t wait for her husband in Yelabuga after all. I asked him what time that was. He paused and asked whether I wanted to know what time she’d learned about her daughter’s sickness or what time she’d told him about it. I said both. I also asked how she found out about her daughter’s sickness. He didn’t understand my curiosity (and sounded annoyed), but he answered. Her parents had called her around ten thirty, just before she knocked on his door to tell him. She’d said the line had been poor, and she had not understood exactly what was wrong with her daughter. From what she gathered, her daughter had returned home with a high fever, after only one hour of school, but that was all she knew.

  I probably slept for a while but woke when Boris Leonidovich switched the bedside light on and complained of chest pains. He looked white. It might have been indigestion because the few morsels of meat in the stew at dinner had tasted a bit off. On the other hand, who knew what exertions beguiling Marietta had required of him. I gave him some water, told him a good night’s sleep would help, and that he’d feel better in the morning. I wanted to ask him how long Korotkova had stayed in his room, but I didn’t. He’d ask me why I wanted to know, and I wasn’t sure what to say.

  Boris Leonidovich switched his light off and said he’d try but he doubted he’d be able to sleep. After a while, he added, “That thing with the money and the sign to mark Tsvetayeva’s tomb, that was brilliant, Pavel Nikolayevich. Thanks.”

  I said Brodelshchikova would have probably told us the story anyway. Her husband would have made her.

  He said he wasn’t sure about that.

  He moans in his sleep. Moans and snores, and now and then a combination. This is the first time I’ve been in such close quarters with him. I have switched my light on and picked up my notebook again. It’s close to three o’clock in the morning.

  Listening to his sounds, and to the rhythmic thuds of the wheels on the rails, I think of Korotkova and the odd scene I witnessed early the day before. There is only one explanation, if I discard the unlikely possibility of Korotkova leaving Boris Leonidovich’s room sometime in the middle of the night to slide into another man’s bed. There is only one logical explanation. And it is terrible, although, in our world, not unexpected.

  I wonder how much Boris Leonidovich told Korotkova. He promised the Brodelshchikovs to keep mum for a while, but once you share a pillow …

  Should I ask him tomorrow morning? Should I tell him what I saw yesterday? What good will it do? It will make the old man’s heart palpitate, undoubtedly, but otherwise? The damage has been done already.

  Maybe I should tell him, though. What if she visits him in Moscow in the future?

  Who is she, Korotkova? She seemed to be a genuine lover of poetry and literature. Passionate about it, knowledgeable too. Is her real name Korotkova? Is she really the captain’s wife? The crew of the boat seemed to know her. Does she double as an informer for the police, without her husband’s knowledge? The captain did not seem concerned by his wife’s libertine ways with the famous, old poet.

  No, she’s more than just a common, run-of-the-mill informer. She’s a trained agent, who superbly play-acted her way into the old poet’s heart and bed.

  13

  Monday morning he was in his office on St. Joseph Street before six. He needed to ponder the awkward talk he’d have later with Bart. He’d slept poorly, berating himself for not thinking only of Audrey in her distress at the hospital. Helen’s wary questions repeatedly came back to him: “And then she fell for you all of a sudden?” and “How well do you know her?” Poisoned questions. He recalled too his father’s last line in the Tsvetaeva bundle, an affected last sentence he had read just before Audrey’s phone call on Saturday. “She’s a trained agent, who superbly play-acted her way into the old poet’s heart and bed.”

  He was in love with Audrey, yet he allowed such dark thoughts. He didn’t deserve her. Such stupidity. He wasn’t old, or not a sixty-five doddering old like Pasternak had been in 1955. And Audrey hadn’t play-acted her way into his heart and bed. She had not encouraged him at all, in fact. Anyway, an agent for whom? She’d been much keener than him to dig into Lezzard’s illicit trade in confiscated art, and he felt certain that behind Lezzard there were people connected with the very organization she’d be an agent for. Furthermore, why would they bump her off just as she had successfully carried out her task?

  * * *

  Audrey called his office just after his students left and he was about to dial Bart’s number.

  “What are you doing right now?” she asked. Her voice was weak.

  “I was going to ring my agent in New York. I’m dreading this call. How are you feeling?”

  “So-so. I had a sleepless night. Come to see me, Art.”

  “I will. Not right now, later. I’m in deep shit, Audrey, an ocean of it. Something bad, something terrible has happened. The entire Tsvetayeva bundle is gone. It just disappeared. Gone, I can’t find it.”

  “I know.”

  “You know?”

  “I know what happened, Art. I know what happened to me Saturday night.”

  “You stumbled and fell. You hurt yo
ur head.”

  “I didn’t stumble. I’m not clumsy. Never was, even as a child.”

  “What happened, then?”

  “I’ll tell you. Come here and I’ll tell you. I can’t do it over the phone. I know how the green folder disappeared.”

  “You know where the green folder is?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Oh.” Most likely, he reasoned, she had dreamed something, and now her tired mind thought it had actually happened. “I’ll be there.”

  He bought flowers before he went up. Audrey thanked him for them, and said that Russian poets were famous for their manners around invalids. She smiled, but looked pale and tired. Her voice was weak, and she still had a headache. “Maybe it’s because I didn’t sleep at all last night,” she said. “Couldn’t. My mind kept returning to the night before, like somebody who had lost an important object and revisits obsessively images of the time and place she last still had it.”

  A nurse came into the room, and Laukhin thought she looked disapprovingly at him. Taking Audrey’s pulse, she said, “The neurosurgeon will see you at ten thirty.” She gave her some water and a couple of pills, raised the upper part of the bed, and left shaking her head.

  Audrey glanced after her and then turned to Laukhin and smiled. “I remembered. I remembered what happened to me Saturday night. What a relief.” There was tired satisfaction in her voice.

  Laukhin took her left hand in his own. It was moist and limp. He sat on a chair near her bed. She talked mainly looking at Laukhin, but sometimes at the ceiling, as if she was still trying to recall details of what had happened.

  She remembered taking a cab to Laukhin’s house on Saturday night, and sitting with him in the kitchen, eating the sushi and drinking the wine she had brought with her, and then being in bed upstairs, together with him. She didn’t remember his proposal to her—and now believed he’d invented it to make her feel better—but she did remember Laukhin asking her to move in with him, and his promise to write poems about her.

  But then she hit a wall, remembered nothing further, save for waking up in the ambulance, and finding Laukhin next to her. She had a bird’s eye view of what she remembered, and could move forward and backward along all the images associated with the memories she had recovered. She could see them clearly lined up along a time axis, but whenever she attempted to inch forward, past the image of being in bed with him, she hit that wall. It was not exactly a wall, more like a giant box of smoky glass hiding several hours of Saturday night.