Olga began looking after her mother with great skill and devotion. It was a strange sensation—almost as though she were taking care of herself, since the same thing had so recently happened to her.
They had never been so close or so tender in their emotions with each other. Now Olga was glad she hadn’t left with Ilya, so that she could stroke her mother’s hand, boil bouillon for her, which she would most likely not be able to get down, smooth out her sheets, and wipe the corners of her mouth. Antonina Naumovna kept asking Olga to have her admitted to the hospital, but Olga just smiled and said:
“Mother, dear, only a healthy person can survive the hospital. Are you uncomfortable here at home? No? Then forget about the hospital.”
Antonina Naumovna’s mind was failing. She forgot huge swathes of her life. Other, more trivial details floated up out of nowhere. During her final days she remembered only the distant past: how all her grandmother’s chickens had died on the same day, one after the other; how a horse had bolted, throwing her mother and herself out of a sleigh; and, at last, how she and Afanasy had met at a Party-education meeting. All of her former life—meetings of the editorial board at the magazine, briefings at the regional Party committee meetings, presidiums, reports, conferences—was consigned to oblivion. Only random vestiges of her childhood remained.
“My goodness, something’s not right with my head, it’s all turned around,” she whispered, and struggled to recall something from the recent past. “It’s like everything fell right through a hole in the ground.”
In the room illuminated only by a green desk lamp, she died alone, easily and unaware, saying, quite audibly, “Mama, Mama, Papa…”
But no one was there to hear the words. In the morning, Olga discovered her mother, already cold. She immediately called the Union of Writers, where there was a special department of funeral services …
Everything was carried out in the most proper and dignified manner. She already had a gravesite marked out for her, next to the general in Vagankovo Cemetery.
The funeral was a sad and bitter affair. Not, however, due to tears and sobbing, loss and grief, or even, perhaps, regret accompanied by a sense of guilt. Rather the contrary. Not one of the mourners shed so much as a tear; there was no sadness, nor even sympathy. Their slightly benumbed faces expressed the decorum appropriate to the occasion. The absolute indifference to the death of the literary worker among those who attended the funeral did not go unnoticed by Ari Lvovich Bas, who officiated at these events of the Union of Writers.
Without much enthusiasm, Kostya returned to Moscow after his grandmother’s death, according to Olga’s wishes. Kostya was in his fourth year of university, and Lena in her third—she had taken a year of academic leave when the children were born.
They changed around the whole apartment, remapping the floor plan. On Olga’s insistence, Kostya took over his grandfather’s former room. It had a large, comfortable desk, and another smaller working space—a fold-down desk. This was the study. His grandmother’s old room became the bedroom. Kostya dubbed it the “Communist nook” because of its spartan government-issue furnishings, the green lampshade on the oaken table, and the picture of Lenin, with a log resting on his shoulder, looking down from the wall. Lena bought a foldout bed to replace the leather divan, and brought in pillows with flounces and frills. She replaced Lenin with some Van Gogh sunflowers.
Olga gave up her room to her grandchildren, and moved into the former dining room. The infamous bed with its fluted columns and cherubim migrated back to the antiques consignment store on Smolenskaya Embankment. They ate in the kitchen now, like ordinary Soviet citizens who by this time had managed to move from their communal apartments into private family apartments, but for whom bourgeois “studies” and “dining rooms” were still out of the question.
The quiet, competent Lena took the household into her own two hands, organized and took care of everything, cleaned and scrubbed, and prepared delicious meals. Every morning, Anna Antonovna, Lena’s mother, would arrive to feed the children, take them for walks, and put them down for their naps.
Her daughter Lena was a paragon. She rushed home from classes, saw her mother out, and took over the next shift. Olga wasn’t involved in taking care of the children, but Lena felt no resentment toward her mother-in-law for this failing. On the contrary, she was grateful. They had spent the first years of their family life in Opalikha, outside Moscow, where they had a small room with two windows and slanting floors; they had to prop up the children’s beds with wooden boards to keep them from sliding away. The four of them all shared a single room. There was no hot water in the dilapidated cottage, though running water and indoor plumbing had been installed two years before the children were born.
The general’s apartment was always full of commotion. The furniture that had been acquired and lovingly refurbished by Kostya’s grandfather was not spared, and was constantly being pushed around from place to place. The two-year-old Mishka and Verochka clutched and poked at the Karelian birch with their little paws, and Mishka developed a passion for trying to pry off the birds’ heads adorning the living room furniture. Finally, Kostya decided to take the entire set back to the antiques dealer’s. The manager, who was by now an old acquaintance, offered an unusually large sum of money in exchange.
The loyal Tamara stopped in fairly regularly. But the stronger Olga’s health became, the more things fell into their old pattern: Olga gave orders, Tamara carried them out. Their friend Galya was preparing for a transition in life. She studied a foreign language at night school and rarely had time to socialize. Besides, Galya’s husband, Gennady, was opposed to their friendship—Olga was bad news!
It was almost as though Olga had forgotten about Ilya. Tamara was glad that the delusion had fled, and was surprised at how closely bound up with the illness it had been …
But there were things Tamara didn’t know. Olga was keeping an eye on Ilya from a distance. Although their communications had seemed to break off again after his farewell letter, she now knew that Ilya had made a life-changing decision and it was just a matter of time before the final victory. Olga knew that Kostya continued to correspond with his stepfather. She saw the signs of their interaction—unusual children’s toys and foreign-made clothes kept appearing out of nowhere. Now, however, this didn’t exasperate her. Rather, it offered proof that change was in the offing.
In addition, Olga had a secret informer who told her that Ilya’s wife had taken to drink, and that she embarrassed him. He never wanted to be seen with her in public, and from time to time he sent her away from Munich, back to Paris. She was an albatross around his neck.
This information was a great comfort to Olga. She kept to herself and waited; soon, very soon, Ilya would show up. That was enough.
Olga’s health had stabilized completely, and she was again inundated with work. She spent long hours with her dictionaries and papers, and worked with even more enthusiasm and enjoyment than before. At night she listened to Radio Liberty, eager to catch Ilya’s voice over the sound waves. She was sure that now everything would end well … She was still receptive to “opposition to the Soviet regime,” but her former indignation and outrage had cooled significantly since Ilya’s departure.
Olga was now translating technology patents, and the pay was excellent. Before her illness, she had attended courses to receive the proper qualifications. From time to time she mustered up the energy to go to the Central Telegraph Office and book a prepaid call to Paris. Sometimes there was no answer, but often she heard a woman’s voice on the other end. The later the hour, the more slurred her speech was: “J’écoute! Allô! J’écoute!” Olga would hang up immediately. Ilya never once came to the telephone. It was obvious they had divorced or, at the very least, separated.
Thus, working hard and anticipating the imminent fulfillment of her fate, Olga remained absolutely certain that everything would resolve itself soon, and that she and Ilya would again be together.
The
day came when Ilya himself called from Munich. The voice was recognizable, but sounded weak with exhaustion.
“Olga! I think about you all the time! I love you. You are my whole life! I’ve caught up, and even overtaken you. I have kidney cancer, they’re operating next week.”
“How do you know it’s cancer? Nothing is certain until they do a biopsy! I know everything about it. You know that I recovered! On my own!” She screamed into the phone, but he remained silent and didn’t even try to interrupt her. “The main thing is not to let them operate!”
But the main thing was something else entirely: he loved her, only her, and would love her forever.
The second time he called was from the clinic after the operation. Now they spoke nearly every day. He read her the results of the tests, and she replied with a long list of the medicinal herbs he should be taking. She bought them in Moscow from her herbalists and apothecaries, and sent them through friends traveling to Munich. She sent him ointments and creams, with detailed explanations about when and where to apply them. When they began giving him chemotherapy, she flew into a rage and screamed into the receiver that he was destroying himself, that the drugs were always far more damaging than the cancer itself.
“Check out of the hospital immediately and come back! I know all about this! I’ll pull you out of it, I pulled myself through all on my own!”
There was something in the air, and Olga, although she had completely distanced herself from her former dissident friends, could feel it. The eighties, heavy and moribund, were in decline, staggering to a halt, and her urgent cry for Ilya to return no longer seemed like complete madness. He gave her the answer she most wanted to hear:
“No, Olga, it’s not possible just now. If I get out of this alive, we’ll arrange for you to come here to me.”
He continued to call her, but his voice became ever weaker, and the calls more and more infrequent. Then came the last call, sounding as though it came from the bowels of the earth:
“Olga, I’m calling you on a mobile phone! My friend brought it right to my bedside. Imagine, things have come that far! That’s what you call progress. And I’m covered in tubes and wires, like a cosmonaut. The countdown has started, and I’m ready for takeoff…”
And he laughed quietly, the same choking, slightly shrill laugh.
Two days later, Olga received a call from Munich informing her that Ilya had died.
“Oh, so that’s how it is,” Olga said enigmatically, and fell silent.
In the evening, Tamara came over. In silence, they each drank a glass of vodka to his memory. Kostya officiated, pouring the vodka and serving them a plate of cheese and sausage.
Several days afterward, Olga discovered some strange growths on her head, like little balls of fat. They rolled around painlessly under her skin. Under her armpits, too, she found these little balls, attached somewhere like a cluster of grapes.
The news of Ilya’s death sapped Olga of all her strength. She lay down and didn’t get up again. Tamara stopped in every evening and sat with her until late at night, trying all the while to persuade her to see a doctor. But Olga just smiled vaguely and shrugged. Although she had studied endocrinology her whole life, and had a Ph.D., Tamara had never practiced medicine, never treated the sick or examined patients. Still, she understood that a violent metastasis was under way, and that Olga urgently needed chemotherapy. But Olga merely smiled her beatific smile, stroking Tamara’s hand and whispering brightly, “Brinchik, you still don’t understand.”
One evening, Olga told Tamara about a dream she had had the night before. In the middle of an enormous carpet of meadow, a large green marquee rose up into the air. It was like a huge tent, and there was a long line of people waiting to get in, ever so many people. Olga went to stand at the back of the line, because she just had to get into the tent.
Tamara, her burgeoning mystical sensibilities on the alert, froze:
“A marquee?”
“Well, sort of—like a circus tent, a big-top canopy, but much larger. I look around and see that all the people in the line are people I know—girls from Pioneer camp that I haven’t seen since we were kids, teachers from school, friends from college, our professor … it was like a demonstration!”
“Was Antonina Naumovna there?”
“Yes, Mama was there, of course, and my grandmother, whom I never once laid eyes on, and all the other familiar faces—Mikha, with some little kids, and Sanya was there, too, and Galya, with that creep of hers.”
“You mean the dead and the living were there together?”
“Well, yes, of course. And some little dog kept getting underfoot, and seemed to be smiling. And there was a sweet young girl named Marina. I’ve forgotten the name of the dog … Hera! Yes, the dog’s name was Hera! And there were many, many other people … And suddenly, just imagine, in the distance, right by the entrance, I see Ilya, and he waves to me from the very front of the line and calls out: ‘Olga! Olga! Come here! I’ve saved you a place!’
“And then I start to push my way toward him, and everyone gets upset because I’m going out of turn, and Mama asks me why I’m budging in line ahead of everyone else. Then a big old man with a beard appeared, he had a wonderful face, and I understood that this was my own grandfather, Naum. He waved his hand over the crowd to disperse them, and I ran up to the marquee. But it wasn’t a green marquee at all, it was a pavilion, all shining and golden. I look—and there’s Ilya, smiling, and waiting for me. He looks fine, very healthy and still young. He pulls me into the line next to him, placing his hand on my shoulder. And then Oksana appears, and she keeps trying to wriggle her way up to him, but he seems not to see her. And there was not really a door at all, but a thick piece of cloth, like a curtain, and then this curtain folds back, and there’s music coming from inside—I can’t describe it, and there’s a particular scent, something you can’t even imagine, and everything is shining.”
“A palace,” Tamara said breathlessly.
“Oh, Brinchik! What the hell kind of palace could it be?”
“Olga, don’t say hell!” Tamara said, horrified.
“Oh, all right, calm down. Have it your way—a palace, then. Words can’t describe it, in any case. So we went inside together.”
“And what did you see there, inside?” Tamara could hardly get the words out.
“Nothing. That’s when I woke up. A good dream, don’t you think?”
Olga died on the fortieth day after Ilya’s death.
LOVE IN RETIREMENT
Once a month, Afanasy Mikhailovich rose at five in the morning instead of the usual seven, shaved with special care, and changed his underclothes. He ate his bread with tea, pulled a woolen overcoat over the old army uniform jacket, and donned a hat with earflaps. In civilian attire he felt like someone wearing a crown at a masquerade. And, it was true, no one recognized him; even the guard who stood sentry at the entrance to the dacha settlement failed to greet him.
After yesterday’s snowfall, everything was as clean and fresh as it was after a spring cleaning. Afanasy Mikhailovich walked to the bus stop. The schedule was illegible, encrusted with a thick layer of snow, so he couldn’t tell when the next bus would come. He waited under the overhang at the stop. Two women were waiting for the bus, too—one a nurse, who didn’t recognize him, and the other a stranger. She also seemed to be a local, though. He turned away and began looking in the other direction.
He was on his way to a secret rendezvous with his sweetheart, Sophia, to grumble about things and mull over them, pouring out his heart—or whatever a general had in its stead, for there was certainly something—and listen to what she had to say about why he was suffering so.
She had a gift for getting to the heart of his troubles, and putting it into words. From that first day in 1936, when he was working in the department of construction at the People’s Commissariat of Defense and she showed up to work as his secretary, she had known how to find just the right words for all those things he couldn�
��t express himself.
She had never been wrong. Not once. She said just what needed to be said. Nothing more, nothing less. What was better left unsaid stayed that way. That’s how it was right up to 1949, with a break during the war. After the war, when Afanasy Mikhailovich was appointed head of the Military Construction School, he sought out his former secretary, and she rushed to his side again. They were like Aaron and Moses. He would mutter some incoherent, garbled words, and his subordinates would rush off to find Sophia for an explanation.
She was tactful, and had had a good upbringing. She received her upbringing in the girls’ gymnasium, which she attended until she was fifteen, at which time the gymnasium was shut down because of the Revolution. Her tact was a natural gift. Nature had also endowed her with copious beauty. She had thick brows and large eyes. Her regal head tilted back slightly from the weight of her luxuriant braid, twisted into a simple knot until 1949. After that she cut it off. Although Sophia was small in stature, her ample bosom inside her sizable blue and green dresses, her plump hands with their long red fingernails, and her broadly curving gestures gave the impression of a large woman. Oh, what largesse she had—not only in the salient points of her figure, but in her whole character. Her nickname was the Cow. And she really did resemble one—Europa the cow. But the general didn’t know this. He only knew she was a goddess. And he worshipped her. He was never plagued by the trifling thought that he might be betraying his wife. His wife was one thing; Sophia was another. Completely other. And if she hadn’t turned up in Afanasy Mikhailovich’s life, he would never have known that love was sweet, or what a woman was, and what profound solace she could bring to the troubled life of a builder.
In all those years she worked for him, right up till 1949, there was only one time, just at the end, that she put him in an awkward position. She knelt before him and buried her head in his gabardine jodhpurs, leaving a trace of red lipstick in an immodest spot. But what could he have done? No, don’t talk to me about your brother, he had said.
The Big Green Tent Page 17