The Big Green Tent

by Ludmila Ulitskaya

  Mikha introduced Sanya to Alyona. Sanya, conscious of her charm, felt a sense of alarm: a dangerous girl. Mikha’s anxious, nervous loving was not something he had any desire to try on for size. But Ilya’s easy confidence and success with women, which smacked of the dreadful storeroom, failed to inspire envy in him either. He was afraid of the female sex. At the Conservatory he socialized more often with the male students, although he never grew really close to anyone. Sanya was no less wary of the boys who looked meaningfully at him than of the women who threw themselves at him and reeked of the yardkeeper’s storeroom on Potapovsky Lane. The musical milieu that seethed behind the bronze back of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky was predisposed to the sin eschewed in the Bible. For that matter, it was even more inclined to the sins of envy and vanity. But they didn’t throw you in prison for those.

  Sanya was not affected by Conservatory passions. He was even more oblivious to what was going on outside it, in the larger world. Neither the Thaw, nor the new cold snap, had anything to do with him.

  Somewhere at the top, the powers-that-be had the jitters; but, luckily, Khrushchev had no interest in music, whether “sublime and superhuman” or “muddled and confused.” He was completely happy with the straightforward tune of “In the park, or in the garden.” Primitive, poorly educated, and drunk on power, he ruled the huge country as he saw fit. He raised his fist at Stalin, kicked his corpse out of the Mausoleum, released prisoners, cultivated virgin soil, sowed the Vologda region with corn, threw underground knitwear manufacturers, satirists, and parasites into prison, one after another, strangled Hungary, launched a satellite, and brought glory to the USSR through Gagarin. He destroyed churches and built Machine-Tractor Stations, merged some things, dismantled others, augmented this, downsized that. He inadvertently gave Crimea to Ukraine.

  He set the creative intelligentsia straight with language of the gutter, and almost barely learned to pronounce that strange foreign word intelligentsia, which twisted the tongue without mercy. At the same time, radio announcers changed their pronunciation to reflect Khrushchev’s—“communism” and “Communists” becoming “commonism” and “Commonists,” for example. Sensing degeneration, deception, and bourgeois influences everywhere, Khrushchev promoted Lysenko, with his easily accessible theories, and shunted aside geneticists, cyberneticists, and all those who fell outside the scope of his limited intelligence. An enemy of culture and freedom, religion and talent, he suppressed all those his ignorant, myopic vision could discern. He couldn’t discern his primary enemies, however: neither great literature, nor philosophy, nor art. He couldn’t touch Beethoven, Bach was beyond his reach, even Mozart slipped out of his grasp—his simplicity of soul prevented him from understanding that they were the ones who should have been banned!

  In 1964, Brezhnev came to power. The upper echelons of government were rearranged; one group of vampires changed places with another. Their mediocrity in matters of culture set a precedent for the entire country; it was dangerous to try to rise above the lowest common denominator. This diet of literary and artistic pablum was profoundly depressing. A handful of people, insignificant in all respects—surviving eggheads holed up in math and biology departments, some of them true scholars and respected academics, but far more of them marginals and eccentrics vegetating in low-level positions or languishing in third-rate research institutes, and one or two truly brilliant students of chemistry or physics or musical theory—these invisible, impractical people with spiritual needs existed illegally, outside the system.

  And how numerous could they have been, these strangers who crossed paths in the cloakroom of the library, or the coat check at the Philharmonic, or in the quiet recesses of museums? They did not constitute a party, a social circle, a secret society; they were not even a cohort of like-minded people. Perhaps the only thing that united all of them was a mutual hatred of Stalinism. And, of course, reading. Hungry, unrestrained, obsessive reading. Reading was a passion, a neurosis, a narcotic. For many, books became surrogates for life rather than mere teachers of life.

  In those years, the mania for reading—of a very particular kind—infected Sanya, too. He threw himself into reading musical scores, and spent all his free time in the music library. Unfortunately, borrowing privileges did not extend to many of the scores. His crippled hand limited him so drastically that now and then he was visited by compensatory dreams, one of which had recurred no fewer than five times in the past decade. In the dream, he was playing, and he experienced intense physiological gratification from this activity. His very body was transformed into a musical instrument, like some sort of multistemmed flute. From the tips of his fingers he filled up with music; it traveled through the marrow of his bones and collected in the resonator of his skull. His powers grew limitless. The instrument on which he played resembled a special, very complex kind of piano that produced unearthly sounds. He was aware of hearing music that was at the same time very familiar and completely unprecedented. The music was original, of the moment, freshly minted—but it was simultaneously also his, Sanya’s, own.

  Sight-reading allowed him to grasp a musical text, and even came with some advantages. “Reading” with his eyes turned out to be a more ideally refined activity, and technical difficulties ceased to exist. The music poured directly from the page into his consciousness.

  Sanya derived enormous pleasure from analyzing the scores. He delighted in the art of instrumentation, the vast opportunities for interpretation. The visual—and, through it, cognitive—perception of music offered him an added dimension of pleasure: sound and sign merged into one, and an exciting picture emerged, an amalgam that contained, possibly, its own indecipherable, illegible content. Even before he had read the notes he vaguely discerned some sort of textual-semantic formula, an interweaving of textual levels or planes, and it seemed to him that the key to the very secret of music was just within reach.

  It seemed to him that music, too, was subject to the laws of evolution, the same ones that governed the self-organization of the world, arising from the simplest forms and becoming ever more complex. This evolution could be traced not only in sound, but even in musical notation, the semiotic reflection of the musical thought of an era. He discovered—though this was not a great discovery, since it had been made long before, by others—that musical notation, albeit belatedly, followed the changes that occurred in musical cognition through the ages. This insight led him logically to the attempt to find the laws of development of this cognition—in other words, the evolutionary law of systems of pitch.

  When Sanya began, very cautiously, to set forth to Kolosov his ideas about the evolution of music, he stopped him in the middle of his halting explanation, and, with a brusque movement, pulled an American music journal out of a pile of sheet music lying under the table. He turned right to the page he was looking for. This was an article about the composer Earle Brown. The journal had reproduced the score of a piece called “December 1952.” It was a page of white paper covered with a multitude of black rectangles. While Sanya was examining this page in astonishment, Kolosov, chuckling, told him that this wasn’t the end of the story. Subsequently, Earle Brown had written a composition titled “Twenty-five Pages,” and this was, literally, twenty-five pages covered in drawings that could be performed in any order, by any number of musicians. In light of this article, the picture that Sanya was trying to develop acquired staggering potential, according to Kolosov.

  If only Yury Andreevich hadn’t been emitting caustic little snorts and coughs under his breath. When Sanya realized that his teacher was mocking him and not taking him seriously, he grew upset and stopped talking altogether.

  But the murky evolutionary ideas didn’t abandon him. He experienced a surge of unprecedented boldness and began pursuing in secret the creation of a single law, a kind of general theory of musical systems. The only thing comparable in scope and ambition would have been the Grand Unified Theory. Like a silkworm tirelessly drawing a precious thread from its own being, h
e fashioned a shining cocoon around himself, and was on the verge of withdrawing into it completely, passing over into a purely speculative, but more authentic, world. This was dangerous; if he had let himself go, it would have been easy to descend into a world of pure madness.

  When Sanya graduated from the Conservatory, Kolosov, with whom he still spent a great deal of time, managed to land him a position as an assistant professor in the department of the history of foreign music. (There were no openings in the department of music theory.) In the fall, Sanya began teaching, but he was still preoccupied with his theoretical constructs. Relations between Kolosov and Sanya began to unravel. Sanya wanted Kolosov’s support and approval, but he was met with a skeptical grin. This hurt him.

  From time to time, a sense of alarm stole over Anna Alexandrovna’s heart: had her boy, perhaps, chosen too high a register in life?

  GIRLFRIENDS

  Galya Polukhina, nicknamed Polushka, and Tamara Brin, whom Olga affectionately called Brinchik, had always felt a bit constrained in Olga’s presence. She was the only friend either one of them had. They felt they should avoid saying too much. But not for any other reason than that they loved her, and didn’t want to disappoint their girlfriend with insufficiently high-minded, or even downright vulgar, thoughts and opinions.

  Both girlfriends were devoted to Olga, and apart from the irrational aspect of their love, which it was senseless to question, each of them had her own reasons, and very clear-cut ones, for admiring her.

  Galina Polukhina came from a poor family. She lived in a semibasement apartment in Olga’s venerable building. She wasn’t particularly pretty, and was an average student—and even that took some effort. In the third grade, Olga was appointed to the task of “pulling up” Galya to improve her grades, and Olga was full of sympathy for her. Olga’s magnanimity was selfless. There was no condescension of the rich and beautiful to the poor and mediocre; this poor and mediocre creature wound around the thick stem like a vine, clinging with its aerial rootlets and sucking gently. Olga, with her superabundant gifts and talents, didn’t notice this.

  Polushka was a placid soul. She didn’t know the meaning of envy, she had no insight into the dynamics of human interrelationship, and she was filled with grateful adoration.

  Things were different with Tamara Brin. In contrast to Olga, who was diligent and disciplined, Tamara was an “effortless” A student. She appraised the scholastic wisdom on offer with a single glance of her dark eyes, and imbibed it, with a flutter of the sad wings of her eyelashes. Her appearance was striking and strange. She looked like an Assyrian king from the textbook of ancient history; except that the crimped beard of the king, which descended below his lower lip, changed places on Tamara. She had a bush of hair that rose straight up from the top of her forehead. She was, in her own way, a beauty. A beauty for the connoisseur. As a Jew she inhabited a cocoon of untouchability and bore the universal repudiation bitterly but with dignity. Toward Olga she felt a certain kind of rapturous gratitude. In the winter of 1953, when the terrible word was constantly whispered behind the back of the nine-year-old Tamara, Olga was the only one in the class who rushed to the defense of the ideal of internationalism and multiculturalism, and in particular, to the defense of Tamara. When she heard the word kike thrown at Tamara, she cried out through hot tears:

  “You’re Fascists! Monsters! Soviet people don’t act that way! You should be ashamed of yourselves. In our country, all cultures and nations are equal!”

  Tamara never forgot Olga’s characteristic unadulterated fury, and only due to the righteous wrath of the best girl in the class was she able to come to terms with the horrible school, with the world of enmity and humiliation.

  As the years passed, Tamara valued Olga’s independence of spirit and her courage more and more. Olga never lied, and she said what she thought. What she thought was almost always right, and it was what she had been taught at home. Tamara, because of her origins, her family history, and her not entirely Soviet upbringing, couldn’t share Olga’s convictions, or her enthusiasm and emotion. But Tamara would never have dared contradict her by even a single word, for fear of losing her friend, and because she didn’t want anyone—Olga above all—to be moved by her tragic alienness.

  The friendship among the three of them continued all through their years at school. It was strong, but very lopsided: Olga talked, and her girlfriends listened and kept silent; one in rapture but without understanding, the other restrained and skeptical.

  Tamara allowed herself to voice her thoughts—independently and compellingly—only in discussions about theater and literature, and about the trivial but fascinating goings-on at school: the history teacher’s new shoes, or the insidious behavior of Zinka Shchipakhina, a traitor and a cheat. Galya and Tamara tolerated each other for Olga’s sake.

  In the fifth grade, Galya entered a class where her own true talent emerged: She was an athlete. She trained as a gymnast, and after the sixth grade she joined a team, first in the second-class division, and soon in the first. In the eighth grade she began training to receive the title of Master of Athletics. She had fulfilled all the requirements by the time she was fifteen, but she had to wait six months to receive the title officially, as it was only awarded to sixteen-year-olds. She became a school celebrity, though her grades were too poor for her to enjoy real renown. She was still a mediocre student, always looking over Olga’s shoulder.

  Upon graduating from school, the unexpected happened: all three girlfriends got into college. Olga was accepted at the university (which in itself was completely predictable). Tamara, with her silver honors medal, was accepted at the Institute of Medicine. This was an exceptional achievement in the prevailing circumstances of the time. Galya, who had joined the Moscow youth team in artistic gymnastics, but still had a strained relationship with grammar, had been accepted at the Institute of Physical Education and Sports.

  To celebrate this triple victory, a party was organized for their classmates at Olga’s home. Antonina Naumovna ordered all kinds of delicacies from the buffet of the House of Writers—pies, tarts, and canapés (only they would have known what these were!)—and nobly retreated to the dacha. Olga’s faithful knight Rifat, who had graduated two years before, volunteered to supply real pilaf. At exactly eight in the evening, he delivered it to the apartment in an enormous cauldron, hired from a restaurant at the Exposition of National Economic Achievements. His father was an Azerbaijani government official, with connections from the very highest to the very lowest levels.

  The party was a complete success. Two boys and one girl got completely smashed. Vika Travina and Boris Ivanov finally went all the way, an achievement that had eluded them for a year and a half, despite wholehearted attempts. Another couple quarreled and broke up, which both of them regretted for the rest of their lives. And Raya Kozina broke out in hives for the first time—a malady that would beset her until her death.

  Many, many things of great significance took place that night, but only one person, the hostess herself, failed to notice them. That night, she realized for the first time that she had been lucky from birth—whether endowed by nature, by the stars in the heavens, or by her genes. Until this day she had never been aware of her enviable lot. Now she was absolutely certain that there were many achievements in store for her, many victories, even triumphs. And the three handsomest boys—Rifat, the Persian prince, his mustache bracketing his mouth; his friend Vova, a student at the Moscow Aviation Institute, broad-shouldered and tallish, with a blond wave of hair above his eyes, like the popular poet Sergei Esenin in the early photographs where he is wearing a peasant blouse, but no jacket and tie; and Vitya Bodyagin, who had been stationed on a submarine for four years, newly discharged, with a striped sailor’s jersey under his dress shirt, in funny trousers with children’s clasps at the sides, and who would soon be starting at the faculty of philology with Olga—all of them looked at Olga with the hungry eyes of men, and with various shades of meaning: demanding, beseeching,
searching, bold. With love, with propositions, with promises.

  That would be something else! To think that I could just up and marry any one of them. Anyone I want! Olga was intoxicated with success and made a bet with herself that she would marry the one who would ask her for the next dance. She danced better than anyone else—both rock and roll and tango. And her waist was the slenderest, and her hair was the longest—though she had cut off the long braid she had grown tired of. But her hair, which still reached nearly to her waist, was reddish, with sparkling highlights. She looked at herself from the side and very much liked what she saw. Everyone liked her, the boys, and the girls, and the neighbors, and even the mothers on the parents’ committee.

  They put on “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and the Comets—Rifat had brought the record. And everyone went wild. They soared to the music as if they were being carried off by the wind. The driving sounds and rhythms seeped into them. It wasn’t about gentle touching, but about collisions, outbursts, and yet more collisions, and the broad-shouldered Vova seemed to be throwing her from arm to arm. But had he asked her to dance? Four months later she would marry him.

  They danced and drank, smoked on the balcony and in the kitchen. Then everyone got tired. Some people left late at night, others stayed till morning. Vika and Boris fell asleep in the parents’ bedroom, stunned by the earth-shattering event—their coitus, in other words. A long and happy marriage lay ahead of them, though they didn’t know this, not yet. On the rug in the living room there was a pile of people, about five of them, who hadn’t been as lucky. It reeked slightly of vomit.

  Finally, everyone cleared out except the reliable Tamara and Galya. The girlfriends helped clean up all the traces of youthful reveling. They made coffee. They drank it like grown-ups out of the best tiny cups, but they still felt like they were just playing house, especially Galya. Toward evening, the two girlfriends left to go home, planning to get together again the following week. But the next time they saw each other was at the beginning of the following year. After graduation, life began spinning by at a breathless pace.