And the veteran LORLs were the best possible guides for Petya, with his nostalgia for a place he had never seen before.
At Trekhprudny Lane, by a small wooden house, Ilya stopped and said:
“Marina Tsvetaeva lived somewhere around here.”
Pierre seemed to melt and go soft, and all but wept, saying:
“My mother knew Marina Tsvetaeva well, in Paris. They won’t publish her here…”
“Tsvetaeva may not be published here, but we all know her,” Mikha said:
“Some are of stone, some are of clay,
But I am silver and sparkle!
My crime is betrayal, my name is Marina.
I am the ephemeral foam of the sea.”
“Actually, I like Akhmatova more. As for Ilya, he’s obsessed with the Futurists.”
* * *
But never mind their preferences. What was astounding was the fact that they were standing there with a real person, their own age, whose mother had known Marina Tsvetaeva in real life. For them, Pierre himself represented a vast, already nonexistent country that had gone into exile. While they were walking, he told them about his family, about that former Russia, which to his interlocutors seemed as insubstantial and distant as Brussels or Paris. And how bitterly Pierre hated the Bolsheviks!
* * *
Mikha and Ilya, who had often discussed the shortcomings of socialism, had for the first time met a person who didn’t talk about the shortcomings of the Communist regime—rather, he raked it over the coals, condemning it as satanic, dark, and bloody. He saw no fundamental difference between communism and fascism. In some unaccountable way, Pierre was able to unite a love for Russia with a hatred of its system.
For the next two weeks, they were almost inseparable. Thanks to Pierre, they all managed to cram themselves into a Belgian bus and get into the opening of the festival at Luzhniki Stadium. More than three thousand of the finest athletes bloomed in formation as a single flower, or spread themselves out in geometric patterns, hands, feet, and heads rising up or descending in perfect unison. It was a thrilling spectacle.
“They did this sort of thing at Hitler’s rallies, too,” whispered Pierre. “Leni Riefenstahl’s films were shown all over the world. The great power of mass hypnosis. But it really is powerful to witness it! And amazing!” Pierre sighed and pressed the button on his camera. Ilya did the same.
Then there was a jazz concert, a mass relay race with torches, some water ballet, along with countless song-and-dance ensembles of the Soviet Army and Navy, industry and trade groups, and cooks’ and hairdressers’ labor unions.
Pierre had absolutely no interest in the Egyptians chanting “Nasser! Nasser!,” the black citizens of newly independent Ghana, or the Israelis, who were also very popular among Soviet citizens branded with the same ethnicity in the “fifth line” of their passports.
On the third day of the festival, after he had recovered from another case of tonsillitis, Sanya joined them. For two more weeks they reveled, rushing around from one place to another and having fun. Mikha didn’t have time to dwell on Minna.
Nor did Ilya think about his unrealized attempt to enroll in the cinema engineering program, or Sanya his thwarted career as a professional musician. All of them were enamored with Pierre, whom they nicknamed “Pierrechik,” and not one of them contemplated how the foreign friend might influence their fates.
They learned that Pierre had been sent to the festival as a representative of a young people’s newspaper on an assignment to photograph life in Moscow. His photographs of Moscow were superb, in large part thanks to his new friends. He photographed the bread store when fresh bread was being delivered; the river port, with its tall cranes and stevedores; kindergartens; inner courtyards, with clotheslines and sheds; girls reading in the metro; old folks standing in lines; grown men kissing and hugging; and myriad other joys and pleasures.
Fast-forward, and the photographs were rejected by the editor of the newspaper. They were deemed to be inauthentic—mere Soviet propaganda. Pierre, who could never have been accused of sympathy for the Communist regime, accused the editor of bias, and they quarreled.
On the day before Pierre’s departure, they all went to Gorky Park together to drink beer. There was a wonderful Czech beer garden, masquerading as a restaurant. The line stretched all the way around the place, like foam around the rim of a beer mug, but they obediently went to stand at the tail end of it—they were in no hurry.
They had planned a rendezvous there with someone—a distant relative of Pierre’s, the second or third cousin of his mother, who was working in Moscow in the French embassy. Standing in line was not in the least dull; exciting things kept happening all around them. First a group of people on stilts galloped past, followed by a procession of Scottish bagpipers, Mexicans with maracas in their hands, and costumed Ukrainians.
Sanya and Mikha saved their place in line, while Ilya and Pierre kept darting off to get a good shot of something or other. They managed to capture a fight that broke out between a powerful, stocky black man and a Scot wearing a green-and-white kilt from some obscure clan. The fighters were surrounded by a crowd of boisterous people egging them on:
“Kill the blackie!”
“Nail the faggot!”
In short, the people amused themselves in the ancient and time-honored tradition of gladiatorial fights. Strains of Soloviev-Sedoy’s ubiquitous “Moscow Nights” were heard in the background as they battled—it was a song you heard everywhere you went that summer.
The black man threw the deciding blow, and the Scotsman crumpled into his skirt.
The music changed. “The youth will strike up a song of friendship, you cannot strangle it, you cannot kill it…”
The Scot stirred. “You cannot kill it, you cannot kill it,” the loudspeaker blared.
Two hours later, when the boys had already entered the pub, Pierre’s uncle found them. He was a Frenchman by the name of Nikolay Ivanovich, with the Russian surname Orlov. He was aging, pink, and rotund, reminiscent of the merry little pig Nif-Nif. He spoke in the Petersburg slang of another age. His clothes were funny—a straw hat and a Ukrainian peasant blouse with an embroidered collar—like Khrushchev’s. No one would ever have suspected that he was a foreigner. He resembled a provincial accountant with a small, tattered briefcase.
As soon as Pierre set eyes on him, he roared with laughter.
“What a getup!”
Pierre introduced the boys to his uncle so that they could keep in touch through him.
They didn’t trust the postal system. They exchanged phone numbers. It went without saying that they could make calls to him only from public pay phones. They agreed that they would continue to rendezvous at this same place by the Czech restaurant so that they wouldn’t have to risk saying anything over the phone.
So began their illicit dealings with a foreigner.
* * *
The famous Czech beer was a pilsener served in sweaty mugs, evidence that it was the ideal temperature. Of course, those mugs were on the neighboring tables. By the time their little group had entered the pub, the Czech beer had run out. The sausages were also gone. The waiters were serving Zhigulevskoe beer, a local brand, with salted pretzels, a hitherto unknown treat. At the adjacent table, they had smuggled in dried fish, which they were picking at like lint, and pouring vodka into their beer—under the table.
The friends wanted to take photographs, but it was, first, too risky, and, second, too dark.
Mysteriously, the Czech beer suddenly reappeared, and they had to drink another two mugs each. They left sated and happy. As a parting gift Pierre gave Ilya his Hasselblad. Actually, he had first offered to exchange it for Ilya’s Fedya, but Ilya wouldn’t think of it.
“It was a gift from my father; it’s not a thing, but a part of my life.”
Then Pierre removed the strap from around his neck, and said:
“I understand. Here. It’s yours.”
* * *
Uncl
e Orlov gave them his accountant’s briefcase. It was laden with books. By the metro they parted ways, in different directions. Ilya and Pierre had decided to go on foot to the center of town. Orlov also went on foot, but in the opposite direction. He lived on Oktyabrskaya Square.
Mikha was carrying Orlov’s briefcase full of books. He and Sanya went down into the metro. The revels were still in full swing, though the festival had formally ended.
Happy, drunken crowds, somewhat the worse for wear after two weeks of festivities, were spending their last evening together.
The foreigners, who had temporarily brightened up the Moscow cityscape, were few. They had most likely gone to pack their suitcases, sleep, exchange their last gifts, sell the remainder of their hard currency, and give and receive their final kisses from the Soviet girls who had discovered the wonders of an affair with an Austrian, a Swede, or a citizen of independent Ghana.
The friendship of the peoples had triumphed. In spite of years of inculcation of the opposite view, it turned out that foreigners were decent people—they weren’t capitalists at all, but Communists and their sympathizers. Like Picasso the dove painter, and the progressive Federico Fellini.
Sanya and Mikha sat till deep in the night on a bench in the yard of the Vanity Chest house on Chernyshevsky Street, talking about the improving social mores and habits of Russia, praising Khrushchev, who had “opened” the iron curtain. Then they began talking about more personal matters: Mikha informed Sanya about what he had explained in so many words to the mocking Ilya—about poor Minna, about their impure relations, about the bitter aftertaste he would now have to suffer his entire life.
Sanya nodded in silence. He had always imagined this secret between men and women to be dirty and at the same time vulgarly attractive. He couldn’t fathom it—there were no words for it.
The two friends grieved, grumbled, and moaned, and then parted ways.
Outside, echoes of “Moscow Nights” still hovered in the air: “Not a whisper is heard in the garden, all grows still till morn, if you only knew how dear they are to me, these Moscow nights…”
Mikha forgot about the brown briefcase with the books under the bench. Sanya didn’t remember it, either.
Uncle Fedor, the street sweeper, immortalized subsequently by Yuly Kim, sobered up suddenly and went out to sweep the yard. He found the briefcase—there was nothing interesting in it. Just some books. He turned them in to the local police.
* * *
The parents of the stout Orlov’s former wife considered him to be a complete dolt, and they were very disturbed by his appointment to the diplomatic mission in Moscow. He was the first one in their family to cross the border of the Motherland in the wrong direction after 1918.
The briefcase contained a priceless gift—six volumes of The Journal of the Russian Christian Student Movement, and Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four, which had just been translated into Russian and published by Posev. It was unfortunate that the boys would read the book with a five-year delay, and only in a poor copy. The real misfortune, however, was that in a side compartment of the briefcase there was a letter from Masha, the wife who had left him. It had been sent in the diplomatic mail pouch. Orlov’s name was on the envelope, and it proved to be no problem to hunt him down.
The festival was over. The girls who were pregnant with brown-skinned babies had not had time to realize it, but Orlov was already in trouble. Luckily, they didn’t throw him in prison; but he was expelled from the country forthwith. His diplomatic career was over. His ex-wife and her parents now had indisputable proof that Nikolay Ivanovich was an absolute dolt, and that so he would remain.
But the boys came off unscathed.
THE BIG GREEN TENT
Dear little Olga, like a lovely pinkish-yellow onion bulb, slightly plump in her silky transparent skin, unmarked and smooth, was pleasing to men and women, cats and dogs alike. How was it that she, so healthy and cheerful, with her dimpled smile, had been born to such dour, aging parents, career Party officials whose services to the state were both significant and highly confidential, and who enjoyed all the outward signs of official favor: medals and decorations, private automobiles, a dacha in the Generals’ Compound, and groceries delivered to their door in brown paper bags and cardboard boxes through a closed distribution network?
Even more remarkable was how credulously, in what good faith, she absorbed all the good things they told her, and failed to notice the bad things they did. She grew up honest and principled, always putting collective concerns first, and personal concerns second. From her parents she inherited a hatred for the rich (where were they, anyway?), as well as respect for the working man (or woman)—Faina Ivanovna, their housekeeper, for example, or Nikolai Ignatievich, who chauffeured her father’s official Volga automobile, not to mention Evgeny Borisovich, the chauffeur of her mother’s gray one.
How joyfully easy it was to be a good Soviet girl! The Artek Pioneer Camp, with its blue nights and red bandanas, was perfectly in keeping with the closed grocery distributor; and her parents’ private cars, which dropped her off at the dacha on Saturdays, were not in the least incompatible with equality and brotherhood. She was guilty of nothing, before no one, and she loved Lenin-Stalin-Khrushchev-Brezhnev, the Motherland, and the Party, with a love both joyous and serene. She was morally stable and highly politically aware, as was noted in her letter of recommendation upon entering the Komsomol in seventh grade.
Afanasy Mikhailovich, Olga’s father, worked in the Army Construction Corps, and her mother was the editor of a magazine that had more to do with upbringing than with literature.
Antonina Naumovna, her mother (the descendant of Orthodox believers who named their children after the calendar of saints, and not in the least Jewish), had graduated from the Institute of Philosophy and Literature, and was thus practically a writer. Olga was being equipped, according to her parents’ wishes, to study in the philology department at Moscow State University.
The first year of university did not portend any ill. The girl eagerly carried out her mandatory stint of social volunteer work, was elected to the Komsomol committee board, studied zealously and with fine results, and acquired a fiancé—an upstanding young man. He was from a military family—a smart fellow, not a philologist, but a student at the Aviation Institute. Senior year. Antonina Naumovna liked Vova, as he was called—he was broad-shouldered, tallish, with fair hair that fell in a wave on his forehead. He was always immaculately clean and wore a hand-knitted reindeer sweater; but in winter he wore a leather bomber jacket, the epitome of chic in the 1930s, which made a strong impression on Antonina Naumovna.
The wedding took place after Olga had completed her first year of study, at the beginning of June so that Olga wouldn’t eventually “rue the day” by marrying in May, as Faina Ivanovna, the housekeeper—a true fountain of folk wisdom—warned.
Vova moved into the general’s apartment, into Olga’s room. The apartment easily accommodated one more person, though they did invest in another, wider bed. Strange as it might seem, it was the general who bought it. Olga refused point-blank to take part in such an ambiguous shopping expedition, and Antonina Naumovna was up to her ears in preparations for yet another congress of Soviet teachers; or was it Soviet doctors? Afanasy Mikhailovich recalled that he had seen a furniture store on Smolenskaya Embankment, and told his wife that he would buy the bed. He went there after work. The store turned out to specialize in antiques. The general wandered among the pieces of furniture of all times and nations, and thought about his grandfather, a mahogany carver. He hadn’t thought about him for some fifty years, and, suddenly, amid the flimsy bamboo whatnots, the monumental writing desks with their secret drawers, the new forest growth of white-and-gold empire chairs and love seats, a scraggly old man, small of stature, with massive blackish brown hands, and sharp eyes with delicate, watery pouches underneath, came back to life. And the smell of his grandfather’s workshop struck his nostrils—turpentine, spirits, lacquer—so thick
and palpable he could almost taste it. He remembered how his grandfather had taught him, still a little tyke, to sand, to strip, and polish …
Afanasy Mikhailovich walked and walked, forgetting why he had come. Then he remembered, and bought a Karelian birch double bed, the work of a peasant craftsman with an imaginative bent, not thinking for a minute about the two young Komsomol members, who loved sleeping under the stars in tents and would now have to labor for the future between ornate little scrolls and columns, watched over by four cherubs.
The bed, with all its whimsical splendor, made a strong impression; but it didn’t get in the way of business—his grandson Konstantin was born exactly ten lunar months after the wedding day.
But the general, after that first visit to the antiques store, had begun frequenting it. To the surprise of Antonina Naumovna, he gradually started exchanging their sturdy, Stalin-era furniture for intricate, inspired pieces of ancient vintage that he would refurbish himself.
Afanasy Mikhailovich was older than his wife by ten years. She had long begun to sense the approach of old age in him, and she viewed this new passion of his as an old man’s eccentricity—albeit a fairly harmless one. He fitted out a workshop for himself at the dacha, and puttered around in it happily; meanwhile, his military bravura and political acumen, which his wife had always admired, diminished by the day.
Antonina Naumovna was not particularly thrilled about the birth of a child so early in the marriage. Olga was not yet nineteen when they brought the bundle, wrapped up in a blue silk receiving blanket tied with a blue ribbon, home with them from the maternity hospital. The little bundle turned out to be exemplary, just like its parents: it ate, slept, and pooped like clockwork, made everyone smile, and permitted Olga to continue her literary studies without even taking maternity leave until the child learned to walk.
Faina Ivanovna, who had worked in the family since the war ended and had raised Olga from infancy, had planned to leave after the birth of the child—to work for another family of only two people, who had long been courting her, and where there would be less work—but the baby, Kostya, so captured her heart that she stayed with him until her own death.
The Big Green Tent Page 13