The Russian Affair

by Michael Wallner

  Leonid helped Anna out of her jacket. Enjoying her elevated vantage point, she let her eyes wander over the auditorium. Usually, the large hall was used for concerts, with room for seven or perhaps eight hundred people; tonight, there were surely a thousand, and more were still shoving their way inside. In the parquet section, she recognized Plissetskaya, the ballerina from the Bolshoi Ballet, and not far from her, the comedian Rodion; Brezhnev’s personal interpreter took a seat in the middle. Older gentlemen were standing in the aisles and ascertaining who had come besides themselves; above all, however, Anna saw sons and daughters. The moment touched her, and when she sat down next to her husband, her face was burning. There below her sat Moscow, not some small collection of admirers still loyal to a forgotten poet, but the citizenry, come to hear her father. When the lights dimmed and the applause began, Anna realized that her father had made his entrance onto the stage. Doctor Glem offered Viktor Ipalyevich the seat reserved for the guest of honor and stepped to the lectern. The audience, however, would not allow the chairman of the artistic board to speak; the clapping grew so unanimous that Tsazukhin had to get to his feet again and make another bow. Even now, his peaked cap remained on his head. Minutes passed before Doctor Glem could deliver his speech of greeting. It consisted of a patriotic profession of faith in the new Soviet lyric poetry, properly declared and congenially applauded. Glem thanked the audience, introduced Viktor Ipalyevich, and left the stage. Anna’s father slowly walked forward. The folder he placed on the lectern remained closed. He pushed back his cap, which left a red stripe across his forehead. Wide-eyed, he peered into the darkness of the parquet and at the packed rows of seats beyond it.

  “The weathercock rotates. That’s his line of work …” he began. The microphone sent his words all the way to the last row.

  Anna leaned on the balustrade. Viktor Ipalyevich wasn’t like the young Moscow literati who looked upon the cat-and-mouse game with the Soviet state censors as good sport and were content to publish clandestinely. He wasn’t one of those writers whose works appeared as closely printed typescripts and got passed from hand to hand and whom neither jail sentences nor publication bans could intimidate. Viktor Ipalyevich Tsazukhin figured in official Soviet literature; the state had seen itself represented and embellished by his work. Anna knew the program for the reading. In accordance with the wishes of the literary committee, her father was to begin with the conformist verses of Sling and continue with some longer passages from The Red Light. Now, however, he was declaiming a poem, “The Weathercock,” that he’d only recently written. No one had ever heard these verses.

  Tsazukhin’s voice rose as he spoke the last lines:

  I do not hold

  with the cock on the roof,

  yet I know which way the wind blows.

  The silence in the auditorium was palpable. He marked a pause, and then, when he opened the folder to begin the scheduled reading, spontaneous applause interrupted him. This time, he didn’t accept it, waving the plaudits away and reading the first lines while some in the audience were still clapping. The people understood: first a bit of provocation, followed by adherence to conventions. The official program was under way.

  During the intermission, Anna and Leonid strolled around the upper foyer. Leonid wanted to get them something to drink, so he joined the line for the bar. Anna took a few steps with him and then stood still, listening to what the people around her were saying. “Viktor Ipalyevich challenges our feelings,” she heard someone say. “He elicits our humor.” A man quoted a passage in which the poet brought his irony to bear on the tactic employed by people who, while waiting in a line, jot down their place number on their wrist so as to keep pushy interlopers from getting ahead of them. Amused, Anna turned her head and saw a large, powerful man with a blue tie bearing down upon her.

  “Are you enjoying the evening?” he asked.

  She needed a few seconds to recognize him as the man who had stood under her ladder a few weeks earlier.

  “Your father is an exceptional poet,” said Alexey Maximovich Bulyagkov.

  “Do you like his poems?”

  “I don’t think I do.” He examined the people around him. “But they touch me. Judge for yourself which is more important.”

  At that moment, Anna felt as though a ray of light had gone through her. It came from the magnificent chandeliers, from the excited chatter of the large crowd, and, above all, from the marvelous experience she was sharing with her father. At the same time, she wondered how the Deputy Minister had recognized her without her work overalls on and with no scarf on her head; she was wearing the lime green dress she’d bought with a month’s salary.

  “Are you here alone?”

  “My husband’s over there.” She pointed to the commotion in front of the drinks bar.

  “What does your husband do?”

  “He’s an officer in the armored infantry, stationed in north Moscow.”

  Bulyagkov bowed and walked over to a lady in a floor-length gown, who greeted him volubly.

  Two weeks later, Anna received a small parcel in the mail, a copy of a volume called My Beloved Does the Wash, which was a collection of all her father’s love poems. When she deciphered the sender’s name, she hurried to the apartment and withdrew into the sleeping alcove. Leonid was sitting at the table with Petya, cutting his bread into bite-sized pieces; two arm’s lengths away, Anna read the Deputy Minister’s letter. He requested that her father write a personal dedication and sign the book, and he suggested that Anna look at the poem on page 106. Strangely excited, she turned to the page and read these verses:

  Come see us tomorrow, uplift and gladden us!

  Today’s rain refreshed us, and the forecast is glorious.

  And should we want stormy weather,

  We’ll make some together!

  There was a handwritten note on the margin of the page: “Would you return this volume to me personally tomorrow evening at seven o’clock?”

  Anna and Leonid had been married for three years; Petya had come into the world a few weeks after the wedding. Neither of them had ever made the other feel that their little boy was the only reason they were still together. Leonid behaved himself, drank little, and treated her father with respect. Anna didn’t dream about anything out of reach; she wanted a good education for her son, her own apartment, and perhaps, eventually, a car. And she had never, at least until that day, knowingly done anything wrong. She was forced to think about some of her colleagues, who reported on casual flings that apparently enlivened their marriages. Such accounts were accompanied by declarations that an affair didn’t mean that much these days; there was a real thirst for life in the city of Moscow. Anna resolved to take the Deputy Minister’s note as a joke and his offer not very seriously. However, when she climbed out of the alcove, she avoided Leonid’s eyes and hid the book in her bag.

  The following day, she worked the early shift and was home by three. At dinner with her family, she pushed the volume of poetry across the table to Viktor Ipalyevich and said, “A girlfriend from the site asked me to get your autograph.”

  Still chewing, her father took his fountain pen out of his breast pocket. “For whom shall I sign it?”

  “Just your name’s good enough. It’s going to be a gift.” Anna held the book open to the first page to avoid the possibility that he’d flip through it to the telltale note.

  “Even on worksites, people are reading my poems,” he said. Smiling, he wrote, “With Best Wishes, Viktor Ipalyevich Tsazukhin.” Anna blew on the ink, closed the volume, and laid it on the bookshelf.

  Leonid helped her do the dishes. “Maneuvers start tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll probably sleep in the barracks tonight.”

  “I’ve got another combine meeting,” Anna replied, running water into the sink.

  While Leonid lit up his evening cigarette, while her father got the chessboard out and shoved a pair of cushions under Petya, Anna changed into her summer dress with the brown dots, put on a
jacket over the dress, and took leave of her family. As she went down the stairs, she felt incomprehensible relief at the thought that she wouldn’t have to see her husband again later that night.

  The return address on the parcel indicated a street on the opposite side of the city center. Anna took the wrong bus and missed the appointed time. She hurried along the avenue and turned into a side street. The dimly lit sign read DREZHNEVSKAYA ST. The secluded place, the unprepossessing buildings threw her into confusion: It wasn’t conceivable that the Deputy Minister lived here. There was no café, there weren’t even any shops; where had he invited her to go? Anna reached the address she was looking for and stepped back. On this bright July evening, not a single window showed a light. She hoped that there had been some misunderstanding, considered once again the possibility that she was the victim of a practical joke—the big shot from the Ministry, she thought, had allowed himself a laugh at her expense.

  “You’re too late, Anna Tsazukhina.” Bulyagkov, wearing a light summer suit, was coming toward her from the other end of the narrow street. “Of all bad habits, tardiness is the worst,” he said, looking at her so merrily that her confusion only grew.

  Without further explanation, he unlocked the door and went in ahead of her. Anna followed him to a nondescript staircase, which he went up three steps at a time. At the door of an apartment with no nameplate, he used his key again. The opening door revealed an elegantly furnished flat; stray beams of sunlight greeted Anna as she entered. Bulyagkov tried to help her out of her jacket, but she kept it on.

  As her host made no effort to begin the conversation, Anna said, “Here’s the book.”

  “How is our poet?” Bulyagkov said, glancing at the dedication before laying the volume aside.

  “Since his reading, my father has been interrogated several times in the headquarters of the Writers’ Association.”

  “Were there accusations?” The Deputy Minister stepped over to the sideboard in the living room.

  “He was asked to review the political usefulness of his poems.”

  “What did you expect?” Bulyagkov uncorked a bottle of wine. “Your father behaved like a bull in a china shop. Now he’s got to bare his bottom and sit on the shards.”

  The crude image startled her. “Do you think his poems are ‘unidealistic’ and ‘morally inadequate,’ too?”

  “I don’t understand a thing about poetry,” he said, pouring himself some wine. “Nobody gets upset about a little sideswipe.” His light eyes measured her. “But what Viktor Tsazukhin did was deliberate provocation. And so now he has to take a couple of raps on the knuckles.” He took a sip and held the glass high. “I should have opened the bottle earlier. And you, Anna, how are you?” He gestured, offering her a corner seat on the sofa.

  “Why does that interest you?”

  “I like your dress. Did you make it yourself?”

  “I can’t sew.”

  Bulyagkov skirted the coffee table, sat on the sofa, and leaned back. “This light makes your hair look red.”

  She didn’t like the way he was looking at her as she slipped into her seat. He placed a full glass in front of her and, without waiting for her to pick it up, clinked it with his own. “Tell me about yourself.”

  “You know most of what there is to tell.”

  “Far from it. For example, I wonder why your father didn’t see to it that you received some other kind of education.”

  “I’m satisfied.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  After a pause, she said, “Viktor Ipalyevich is a poet.”

  “A man of intellect,” said the Deputy Minister, nodding in agreement. “So why would his daughter become a house painter?”

  “He’s a poet—and nothing else.” Anna gripped the stem of her wineglass with two fingers. “Until my mother got sick, she worked for us all. Then she died. Man cannot live on poetry alone.”

  He looked toward the window. “It’s hard when you can’t do what you have the talent to do.”

  “I’m not talented,” she replied, “and I like my work. It’s well paid.” She drank, tasting the heavy wine all the way down. “Why not tell me about yourself, Comrade?”

  “Oh, how boring,” he sighed. “I’m originally Ukrainian. I came to Moscow when I was fifteen, and I’ve gotten about as far as a non-Russian can.”

  “Your Ministry is responsible for research planning. That can’t be boring.”

  He shook his head and said, “Administrative work. Our office makes money available. In the laboratories, in the big science cities—that’s where the meaningful work takes place. We’re just puffed-up bureaucrats.” He looked at her. “What about your husband? What’s he doing this evening?”

  “He’s taking care of Petya.” She straightened her upper body. “No, I’m wrong. He has to go on maneuvers.”

  “Does he like his unit?” Bulyagkov drained his glass.

  “He’s stationed in Moscow, and that counts for a lot.”

  “It’s hard to obtain a right of abode for Moscow.”

  Throughout the following hours, Anna found the Deputy Minister attentive and calm, and possessed of a charm the likes of which she’d never known. Usually, when men became confiding, they made jokes and accompanied a bit of flattery with some harmless touching. Anna had never before encountered such seriousness in a man, an almost intimidating interest that seemed to require her to show her best side. It was an effort for her to be this interesting Anna, the exertion weakened her, and she was afraid that she didn’t deserve such an elevated level of attention. She would have liked their get-together to be more relaxed, but at the same time, Bulyagkov’s steady pressure made the encounter unique. She envied his travels—not only did he know Kiev, Vladivostok, and Prague, but he’d also seen Havana and Helsinki; he liked reminiscing, and he answered her questions at length. During the conversation, he went into the kitchen and returned with an already-prepared platter—little liver pâté sandwiches, bread, and ham. Between them, they emptied the bottle of wine. Only once, in the midst of an animated description, did he lay his hand on hers; otherwise, he didn’t make the slightest attempt to touch her.

  Physically, he wasn’t Anna’s type; the men she found attractive were wiry, with long limbs and thick hair. The Deputy Minister was a brawny man with a pronounced paunch; his face might have been angular once, but now it looked puffy. She liked his eyes, which had something of the Arctic wolf about them. Was it shyness that prevented her from asking him what he expected from her? As for Bulyagkov, he acted as though he thought it a natural thing for a high state official and a house painter to spend an evening together. They conversed some more, followed the zakuski with a few glasses of vodka, and darkness fell, which at that time of year meant that the midnight hour was approaching. Without explanation, Bulyagkov stood up and disappeared into an adjoining room, which Anna presumed was the bedroom. She figured that the next item on the program was at hand, but before she could work out what her own behavior was going to be, he came back. His damp temples indicated that he’d merely gone to comb his hair. He hated to say it, he said, but the time had come for her to go. He answered her surprised look with an invitation to name a wish—the first wish that came into her mind.

  “Faucet washers,” she said, and then she had to laugh at herself. “The faucets in our apartment drip. They take standard washers, but I can’t find them anywhere.”

  “Washers.” Bulyagkov escorted her to the door. “I’ll see if my influence extends that far.” He took her by the shoulders and gave her a brotherly kiss. Anna started down the stairs. On the way home, she realized that the granting of her wish would mean that this wouldn’t be their last meeting. The thought of the Deputy Minister’s clever move made her smile.

  Two weeks had passed, and Anna assumed the matter had been forgotten. But one afternoon, a black ZIL parked in front of her building. An inconspicuous man got out, presented himself as a messenger, and, when Anna came down, handed her a small p
ackage no larger than a bar of soap. The man was Anton, whom she saw from the front for the first time.

  “That’s from Alexey Maximovich,” he said, stony-faced. “If you have time this evening, he would be delighted to receive a visit from you.”

  Anna wondered whether Bulyagkov had chosen the date at random or knew that she was working the early shift that week. “How long do I have to think it over?”

  “Come to Gospitya Street at eight,” Anton replied. “I’ll wait for you there.”

  “If I can’t make it, how can I reach you?”

  “Don’t worry, Comrade. Gospitya Street, right off the little square.” He got back in the car and drove away. Anna opened the package while she was still on the street. Upstairs in the apartment, she announced that she’d finally been able to scare up some of those confounded washers. Viktor Ipalyevich congratulated her and got out the pliers.

  That had been the evening when Anna was Anton’s passenger for the first time. He took a surprisingly short route to Drezhnevskaya Street. She admired how smoothly he weaved in and out of traffic without making use of the privileged status accorded to government vehicles. In front of the now-familiar building, she got out of the car and told him good-bye, but Anton indicated that they’d see each other when she was ready to go home.