The Russian Affair

by Michael Wallner

  Now she knelt at her mother’s grave. While casting hungry glances at her neighbors’ picnic, she’d dug little hollows in the soil and planted the forget-me-nots in a circle around the gravestone. Then she’d swept all the blackened leaves off the grave and polished its brass ornamentation, and as she was kneeling there quietly for a moment, a cloth pattern came into her field of vision—a summer dress that Anna recognized. It was the same woman she’d met during the cloudburst outside the bakery.

  “Anna?” the woman asked warily, as if she weren’t sure of the name.

  “Rosa!”

  “What a coincidence!” the woman said, laughing. Her hair shimmered in the midday sun.

  “Who do you have in here?” Anna asked, tamping down the earth around the forget-me-nots.

  “My paternal grandparents.” Rosa pointed to the cemetery’s main avenue.

  “My mother,” Anna said, pointing to the photograph.

  “You look like her.”

  “She died when I was seventeen.”

  “I’m doubly happy to see you again,” Rosa said, extracting her wallet from her purse.

  Anna remembered how embarrassed Rosa had been in the tearoom. She hadn’t had enough money, and she’d been unable to pay her share; Anna had even been obliged to lend her subway fare. “Forget it,” Anna said. “It was my treat.”

  Rosa insisted on immediate reciprocation. She accompanied Anna as she poured stale water out of a vase, carried the vase over to a faucet, and filled the vessel with fresh water. When she placed the spike broom blossoms behind her mother’s picture, flowers surrounded the gravestone like a yellow corona. Then Anna and Rosa strolled away together down the central avenue of the cemetery, followed by the curious eyes of the old couple.

  “Just a moment,” Rosa said, slowing her pace. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to …” She pointed to the little church that gave the cemetery its name, and Anna realized that the cross around Rosa’s neck was no mere adornment. They both covered their heads with scarves. It was cold in the chapel, and the space was filled with the singsong prayers of some old women. Rosa bought a candle, took out a small piece of paper, and wrote the names of her dead on it. After a short prayer, she laid the chit on a stack near the altar. Anna watched these proceedings with sympathy, which she was only later to understand was exactly what Rosa had wished to elicit. By performing a reactionary act in Anna’s sight, she was giving her friend a sign of trust.

  In the tearoom after the earlier cloudburst, Rosa had mentioned that she worked as a journalist for the English-language daily, the Moscow Times. Now, as they left the church, she told Anna of a telephone call to the newspaper that morning: During some demolition work in the Arbat quarter of Moscow, an old storeroom, unopened since the war, had been discovered. Her editor, Rosa said, had assigned her to report on this discovery, and she invited Anna to accompany her on the assignment.

  The building complex was on the boundary of the Arbat quarter. At first glance, the high fence surrounding the complex made it seem inaccessible. The photographer, a stout fellow with curly hair, was already waiting. He yanked two boards aside, allowing the women to enter the worksite. The converted lobby, its windows blacked out by decades of dust, was on the second floor. When the photographer opened the iron door, Anna just stood there, speechless. She felt as though she’d entered some monumental film like the ones that used to be shown to her and her fellow Pioneer Girls. The gray concrete ceiling was thickly hung with huge crystal chandeliers that sparkled in the light of a heavy-duty, upward-pointing halogen lamp. The sight before Anna’s eyes surpassed everything that she’d been taught about the wasteful extravagance of the feudal barons. Who had possessed the resources, not to mention the room, required to hang such luxury from their ceilings? For whom had workers’ hands suspended countless rhinestones from little wire hooks and assembled chandeliers as tall as two stories in a modern building? Hesitantly, as if she might be called to account for every step, Anna entered the scene, while Rosa questioned the worker who had come upon the hidden treasure. The photographer worried about the quality of the light and shot pictures from every possible angle.

  The report on “Stalin’s Lamp Shop” had never appeared. Those who knew about the collection had preferred to help themselves to it. With a smile, Rosa had assured the head of the demolition firm that he’d be compensated for his discovery if he conducted himself appropriately. Even so early on, it should have made Anna suspicious to see a young woman, a journalist, in a position to make such an offer. Blinded by the hanging splendor, Anna had looked on, and the question never crossed her mind.

  “Which one do you like?”

  Anna’s eyes had wandered to a wall chandelier with a gilt arm; Rosa had nodded in agreement. Once, some time later, Rosa had told Anna that the small lamps, the ones that could be carried off in a crate or a box, had disappeared soonest. For the middle-sized chandeliers, trucks with their tailgates down had pulled up in the parking area; the monsters, the largest of the treasures, had hung there for some time, and then someone had decided to dismantle them and sell their individual parts.

  That was the day when Anna accepted the first gift, the first time she associated herself with someone she barely knew in order to obtain some benefit. Much later, a good while after the two had become the closest of friends, Rosa admitted to Anna that no member of her family had ever been buried in the Vaganskovskoye Cemetery.

  “You look like an illegal street vendor,” Rosa Khleb said, snatching Anna out of her memories. “Why didn’t you wait inside?”

  “There’s … nothing there,” Anna said, pointing in the direction she’d come from.

  Rosa took her friend’s arm, and together they turned back to the man with the bundled twigs. She was a head taller than Anna, and she was wearing a fur-trimmed coat and black leather gloves. She bought two bundles, one oak and one birch, and entered the passage that led to the building’s inner courtyard. There was a cashier in one of the rear stairwells.

  “As a club member, I’m allowed to bring a guest,” Rosa said, paying for them both.

  “What kind of club is this?” Anna followed her inside through a normal apartment doorway.

  “You’ll like it. Every now and then, when I have more time than I do now, I stay here for a full three hours.”

  The dressing room smelled as though sweaty laundry were being boiled somewhere nearby. Rosa surrendered her watch, her briefcase, and a gold bracelet to a woman in a white smock. Anna hastened to put her own things in the woman’s hands. She received their coats and hats and handed them two tokens.

  “The second one is for the towels,” Rosa explained.

  They entered a room whose elegance had faded. A carved mantelpiece crowned the walled-up fireplace. A sleepy old woman was sitting in front of a massive mirror; a copy of the house rules was fastened to the mirror’s frame with thumbtacks. One of the regulations stated: “Anyone seen consuming alcohol must be reported at once.” The woman showed them to a changing room. The coat hangers, the benches, and the shoe racks, but above all the moist, warm air, made it clear to Anna what sort of place they were in. Rosa loosened her hair and began to get undressed; Anna admired her ivory-white underwear.

  “What are you waiting for?”

  Anna let her pants, sweater, and shirt fall to the floor. When she was naked, she covered herself with the bath towel.

  “I have to sweat out yesterday’s office party,” Rosa said, going ahead of her. “A couple of our correspondents were still going strong at dawn. Good thing we publish only twice a week—otherwise, there would have been no edition of the Moscow Times today.”

  Once they were through the next door, the temperature and the humidity rose sharply. Several women stood under showers and soaped themselves. For a long moment, Anna felt inhibited among strangers; at the washstands in the building combine, people rarely appeared unclothed.

  “I thought you didn’t have much time,” Rosa said to encourage her. Anna ste
pped under the jet of lukewarm water.

  “Prepare yourself for feudalism in its most horrible form!” Rosa said, indicating with an outstretched arm the steam bath’s inner sanctum.

  They entered a room whose contours could only be guessed, because it was full of steam. Along the wall, Anna could make out slabs of black marble for reclining, and in the middle of the room a bathtub that seemed to have been chiseled out of a single block of stone; two women were sitting in it, chatting. On the marble slabs, too, women were sitting and talking. Water and sweat ran along their shoulders and breasts and dripped onto the floor.

  “Are you ready for the gallery?” Rosa smiled in a way that made Anna curious. They approached the last door together. A wave of hot, moist air took Anna’s breath away and scorched her lungs. A lightbulb illuminated the square room, in which there were three tiers of benches, the highest tier right under the ceiling. In this chamber there was only one other person, a woman of extravagant proportions, snoring in her sleep. Anna and Rosa chose the middle tier and sat there for a while in silence, trying to get used to the climate.

  “So how are things going for you, Comrade?”

  Anna waited until the moisture on her nose formed a droplet and fell onto her knee. “I miss my husband.”

  “How much time does he have left?”

  “You say that as if he were serving a jail sentence.”

  Rosa lay down at full length on her stomach. “I say that because I know you know the exact day when his time is up.”

  “His year on Sakhalin ends in March. Then he gets a six-day vacation.” Anna leaned back against the stone wall. Her towel slipped off her breasts, and Anna spread it out under her.

  Rosa put a hand on Anna’s thigh. “Look at it this way: At that point, your situation will be settled. Leonid will get an official right of abode for Moscow, and you’ll finally be allocated an apartment.”

  “Papa will be happier than anybody else when we leave him in peace inside his own four walls.”

  “Without you, your father wouldn’t have any more walls at all. And furthermore, his books would be—”

  Knowing what was coming next, Anna interrupted her with a gesture. “Viktor Ipalyevich isn’t a nanny. He needs concentration for his work.”

  Rosa grinned. “Is there a selflessness medal? If there is, you ought to get nominated for it.”

  “I’m not selfless,” Anna replied. “I’m anything but that.”

  The pipe behind them roared and steam, coming from the opening in bursts, enveloped them. The fat woman heaved a noisy sigh, rolled off her bench, and disappeared outside. The bath attendant passed with a small bucket and sprinkled water on the hot stones.

  “And how is the Deputy Minister?”

  Anna watched the attendant until she was out of sight. Then she said, “Alexey is wrestling with his ghosts.”

  “Which ones this time?”

  “The demons of the Five-Year Plan. The Deputy Minister finds the figures that the CC plans to publish …” Anna waved one hand, slowly. “Too optimistic.”

  “Who believes figures? Everybody knows they’re a fetish with Kosygin. He’ll just give a pretty speech.” She leaned forward, spread her legs, and slid to the step below her. “If that’s all Bulyagkov has to worry about, he’s in an enviable position.”

  Anna said softly, “He hates his job.”

  This remark made Rosa sit up and take notice. “What makes you think so?”

  “He’s never told me a single pleasant story about the Ministry. You know, the sort of thing you hear on the news. He’s got the power to influence the scientific life of our country, and it doesn’t seem to mean anything to him.”

  Rosa sat in pensive silence for a few seconds. Then she said, “He’s like all men.” She smiled. “When they go home in the evening, they like to gripe to their wives about their work. Bulyagkov, apparently, does the same thing with his lover.”

  Anna shrugged her shoulders.

  “I think you’re just about hard-boiled now, my dear. When I came here for the first time, I couldn’t take more than five minutes in the gallery.”

  Rosa was dripping out of every pore, Anna noticed, while her own skin seemed only a little damp. She said, “Those of us in construction are used to tougher conditions than you in your chic editorial offices. In summer, I often have to work for hours in attics and dormers where the temperature must be one hundred and twenty degrees.”

  Rosa took up one of the bundles of twigs, signaled to Anna to turn over, and struck her, first gently, then harder and harder, on her back and her legs. Anna flinched at the initial blow but quickly began to feel an agreeable tingling and closed her eyes. After a while, she rolled onto her back, and Rosa continued the procedure. It didn’t bother Anna to feel her friend’s eyes on her body. Eventually, Rosa dropped the twigs and lay down on the stone herself. Anna seized the bundle of oak twigs and brought them down sharply on Rosa’s posterior.

  “Harder.”

  Anna struck harder. A while passed in which the only audible sounds were Rosa’s quickened breathing and soft groans. Anna brushed the twigs over her friend’s flat belly, over her muscular thighs and calves.

  “Star-Eyes wants to see you,” Rosa said. The bundle of oak switches stopped in midair, shivering. “I was going to call you today. You beat me to it.”

  “About what?”

  “Your report.”

  “But just last week …” Anna laid the twigs aside.

  “He has questions.” Rosa sat up. “You behave like somebody afraid of failing an exam. Star-Eyes is satisfied with you.”

  “Where?”

  “You’ll learn that later.” Rosa licked her lips. “We should have brought something to drink. They sell bread and chicken in the foyer.” She stood up and wrapped the towel around her chest. “How would you like a bottle of beer?”

  “Isn’t alcohol prohibited?”

  “For a Russian, you know surprisingly little about the difference between utopia and reality. They sell vodka in half-liter bottles, too, and with any luck there will even be some lemons.”

  Anna watched Rosa disappear into the steam and then followed her, as though walking into clouds.

  THREE

  Anna stopped in front of the Pushkin monument. During the day, the sun had melted the snow on the pedestal, and now the stone looked clean. She sat down. She still had errands to run, soon the shops would close, and yet she lingered on the dark stone. She couldn’t yet bring herself to enter the building on the quay and go up to that eighth-floor apartment where everything appeared normal and logical and was in fact the opposite. Anna needed more time.

  Suddenly, she heard a woman’s voice: “My sweetheart, you poor little thing, you must be all worn out, and so tired, so sad. Come on up.”

  Pushkin’s bronze trouser legs concealed the speaker. Anna leaned over, propping herself on her elbows, and saw a heavily dressed woman with a knitted scarf on her head. She was bending forward and helping someone to climb up beside her. Anna thought she might be a grandmother on an outing with her grandson, but in the next moment a mongrel dog leaped into sight, his hind legs slipping helplessly on the smooth stone.

  “That’s too high for you, all stiff and frozen as you are.” The woman grasped the dog’s chest with both hands and pulled him up. “I’m helping you, look, I’m helping you, my little friend.” Befuddled by his new vantage point, so high above the ground, the dog shook himself and looked at the old woman. She stroked his head between his shaggy ears, opened her cloth bag, and took out some food scraps. Anna watched as the woman, chattering nonstop, fed the dog bread and cold potatoes.