The Big Green Tent

by Ludmila Ulitskaya

  Ilya was the one who greeted her. He took Tamara’s raincoat and opened the door to the bedroom, where Olga was. The dog sat by the front door, like a stone carving.

  Tamara looked at Olga and gasped.

  “What happened?”

  “Oh, it’s Quincke’s edema,” Olga said casually. “Listen, Tamara, here’s the situation. This is the Kulakovs’ dog. You don’t know them? No? But you’ve heard of them, of course? You really haven’t? Valentin and Zina Kulakov? No, what does Red Square have to do with it? He’s a philosopher, a Marxist, and he published a magazine. It’s already been more than a year since they were both sent to prison, and their fifteen-year-old girl was left behind alone. Well, she’s sixteen now; but just imagine … Thank goodness she wasn’t thrown into an orphanage. At first they settled her with her aunt, but the girl has quite a temper. She ran away from her aunt after only a week, and started living by herself. We have some friends in common—not close friends, though. Since the girl was going to Leningrad for a week, our friends asked us if we would take care of the dog for a while. We agreed, naturally. Yesterday she showed up—right off the street. With the dog. And it turns out I’m allergic to dog hair. I guess it’s obvious. We could have taken the dog to the dacha, but my mother would never allow it, that’s for sure. Mother is from the country, you know, and a dog who lives indoors makes no sense to her. And outside—we don’t even have a doghouse! It would run away and get lost. And we’re supposed to be taking care of her.”

  Tamara didn’t say anything. She wasn’t from the country, and dogs living indoors made perfect sense to her—but she worked in a medical research laboratory, and she observed dogs either in cages, or in an enclosure and a vivarium. They had never kept any pets at home. Tamara’s mother was mortally afraid of dogs, and she didn’t like cats. When her grandmother was alive, she’d had an old cat named Marquise; but after her grandmother died, there were no more pets.

  “So, Tamara, if you’d keep her at your place for the time being—her owner will be back before you know it. The dog’s name is Hera.”

  “While Mama’s still at the sanatorium, I’ll keep her; but after she comes back, I really can’t, Olga,” Tamara said, surprisingly unequivocal about the matter.

  “But for how long? When is your mother getting back?”

  “In three days,” Tamara said firmly.

  Olga sniffed, and kissed Tamara’s tight little curls.

  “You’re so dependable, Tam. You and Galya—there’s no one else like you two. If you can just keep the dog until your mother gets back, we’ll think of something by then.”

  “Maybe you could ask Galya? Maybe she’ll take the dog?” Her eyes showed a glimmer of hope.

  “As if! It’s not just any old dog; it’s a dissident dog! You might even say a Marxist dog! Take a dog like that into a KGB agent’s den?” Olga laughed in what was almost her normal sonorous voice. “And besides, Galya’s on vacation.”

  Transporting the dog was problematic. Hera was determined not to get into Ilya’s car. She sat next to the open door with an imperturbable expression on her face, her translucent yellow eyes staring off into the distance. They were about to give up and take the metro when Tamara had an idea.

  “Ilya, get into the car first, then command her to get in.”

  “Clever!” Ilya said. He got behind the wheel and, patting the seat next to him, said: “Lie down!”

  The dog’s eyes expressed momentary hesitation, but she stood up, sprang lightly into the front seat, and lay down, extending her paws out in front of her. Then she sighed, just like a human. The dog clearly didn’t have enough room, but the look on her face showed only dignified submission.

  Tamara sat in the backseat, and they drove off.

  In the evening Tamara called Olga to say that the dog had run away. She had broken loose from Tamara’s grasp, leash and all, and taken off.

  Tamara had searched long and hard through the neighboring courtyards, asking all the dog owners whether they had seen the laika, to no avail. The next day they posted flyers around the neighborhood, and near the Molodezhnaya metro station. Then they waited. No one responded to their announcement.

  In the meantime, Ilya had met with the director of the foundation and asked whether they could help a girl whose parents were in the camps. The director promised to look into it.

  Three days later, early in the morning, Marina rang the doorbell.

  Olga immediately told her about the missing dog. Marina sat down on the floor in the hall and put her face in her hands. Only when she took her hands away did Olga notice that her whole face was covered in red spots.

  “Good God, what’s wrong with you? Is it an allergy?” Olga said.

  “No. I need a bath. I shouldn’t have bothered going there. It’s caused nothing but trouble.” Marina sniffled, and rushed into the bathroom without taking off her raincoat.

  She ran the water a long time, until Kostya woke up. He had to brush his teeth and get ready for school. Olga knocked on the bathroom door; it opened right away. Skinny as a fish skeleton, her body covered with red marks, scratches, and bruises, Marina stood there in front of Olga in her wet bra and underwear. All her clothes were floating in the bathtub, and the surface of the water was full of small, dark red globs. Heavens above, they were bedbugs!

  Olga told Kostya to wash in the kitchen. She hurriedly fed him breakfast and sent him off to school. She found a nightgown for Marina to put on.

  “Let’s have some coffee.”

  Ilya was on a trip. If he had been home, they probably wouldn’t have been able to spend this time together. They were like sisters: Olga the elder one, and Marina, confused and nearly eaten alive by bedbugs, the younger one.

  “The first night was just an orgy of drunkenness. My friend was there, too—what a pig! He begged and begged for me to come, and then, in the middle of the night, he went off with some girl and left me alone with these complete strangers. In the morning I went out with them to walk around town in the cold and rain. We were drinking vodka in little dives and bars, and then we bought some kind of pastries to eat and just wandered around all day. No one invited me to stay overnight. My friend had disappeared altogether. I called him at home, and they told me they hadn’t seen him for a whole week. What could I do? I went to the train station, but they were completely out of tickets. I called another girl, a friend of a friend, and she invited me to hang out with her. I waited in the station for three hours before she showed up. She looked like an awful person, but I went with her anyway.

  “She took me to Saigon, some sort of café, like our Molodezhnaya. I liked it there, and I got to know another bunch of people. We went to Peterhof, outside the city, and wandered around there for two days. I ran out of money. Everyone sort of left one by one, until there were just two guys and me left. They took me to the university dormitories, which were empty, since it’s summer break, except for some sketchy types, petty thugs and all that. Well, we ended up crashing there, sharing a room. I’m going to skip the next part, since I don’t want to traumatize you. Right up until it happened, I didn’t realize what was going on; but I didn’t scream. Why should I scream? It was my own fault. I should have known I was just asking for trouble. And I got it. Well, I tried to struggle a bit, but those guys were hefty, they pinned me down. Then I just collapsed, like I was dead. To be honest, I was drunk. That night I woke up feeling like I had been scalded with boiling water. And it was light outside—those goddamn white nights and all that. It was so disorienting. And I love the nighttime. But there, it’s like there’s no real day or night, like some weird twilight, twenty-four/seven. And my whole body was burning, like it was on fire. And then my eyes almost popped out of my head—the walls were covered with polka dots, and the dots were moving toward me! I look down—and I’m covered in bedbugs! I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. It was a swarm of them, a whole army! There was no place to wash, just one small sink in the WC at the end of the hall. Somehow I managed to
get ready to go. I noticed that one of the guys had left, and the other was still passed out in the room. I went through his pockets and took all the money he had on him. I thought it would be enough for a ticket; and even for two. Surprised? Yeah. Well, that’s how it happened. Just like that. Which one of them screwed me, I wondered, this one or the other? Then I thought—both of them, most likely. I didn’t remember. Anyway, what’s the difference? So I split. Straight to the commuter train, then to the train station. There were no tickets, but I bribed the conductor, and she let me stay in her own little compartment in the front of the wagon. I slept the whole way. I kept scratching like a pig, though, I’ve got to admit. I only realized just now that the bedbugs had hidden in the lining of my raincoat, and crawled out on the sly to bite me. Don’t worry, though. I drowned all of them, poured scalding water over them. Olga, what’s wrong? Why are you crying? Don’t, please, or I’ll start crying, too. And now Hera’s gone!”

  Her tears streamed down her cheeks to her little chin. Olga and Marina grabbed hold of each other and cried in each other’s arms. Their tears were as heady and salty as blood.

  “Never mind, never mind, everything will turn out all right,” Olga whispered. “We’ll find Hera. Your parents will be released. Everything will be fine…”

  Marina, who had quieted down a bit, began howling again.

  “Fine? What could be fine about it? Those idiots will come back, and everything will start all over again. They’re crazy, they belong in the loony bin, not in prison! The only good thing about my life is that they’re not in it. I was ten years old the first time I ran away from home. I couldn’t have told you why back then. But now I know why. They don’t need me! I only get in their way. All the other kids had normal lives, but all I had were endless meetings and conversations in the kitchen. Marx, Lenin, Lenin, Marx! I hate them. I don’t know how I’m going to survive now. But when they get out of prison, it will be the end…”

  The coffee had long since grown cold.

  “Warm it up, okay?” Marina said.

  “I’ll put on a fresh pot.”

  “Are you nuts? Just warm up this one. Have you got any cigarettes?”

  Olga didn’t smoke. Even after all her years together with Ilya, she had never taken up smoking. She looked around to see whether Ilya had left any behind. They drank the old, warmed-up coffee, then put on another pot. Olga wanted to keep Marina at home with her, but she couldn’t. Her mother was going to spend the night at home, since she had scheduled some medical tests at the Writers’ Union polyclinic that morning.

  “I’ll go home with you,” Olga said. They got on the number 15 trolleybus and took it to Tsvetnoy Boulevard, where the Kulakov family lived on the first floor of a three-story building in the courtyard of the former Trubnaya Square.

  The misfortunes didn’t end there that day. When they arrived at Marina’s, they found there was no electricity in the building. It was plunged in darkness, and there was a powerful stench. The wooden floor was full of puddles. When they entered the building, the door slammed shut with a bang.

  “Olga, hold the door open, I can’t see a thing.”

  Marina peered into the darkness: the door to her apartment had been forced, and a notice was stuck to the door frame.

  “The KGB has been here again, Olga.”

  They went inside. Marina flicked the light switch—nothing. The whole apartment was underwater. It was clear that the flood had occurred several days ago already, because they could see where the water level had receded. Swollen books floated like victims of drowning. And the stench was commensurate with a disaster area.

  Quite unexpectedly, Marina started laughing. Olga looked up in alarm: Had the girl suddenly lost her mind?

  “Look, Olga! The four lower shelves of books are soaked! The water came all the way up to here! The divan is soaking wet—so are the pillows and the blanket! What a stroke of luck! Too bad it wasn’t a fire! No, a deluge is way better! Olga, we’re going to toss everything out right this minute. Get rid of everything! Everything the KGB didn’t take! Plato! Aristotle! Hegel! And everything in German, too! And Karly-Marly! And Engels!”

  She rushed over to the shelves and started pulling everything off, both the wet and the completely dry volumes, and they fell into the shallow, fetid water with a weighty plop, joining scraps of pictures, pieces of wallpaper, and little vases …

  “‘Over the gray expanse of sea, wind gathers the storm clouds. / Between the storm clouds and the sea the stormy petrel soars like black lightning! / Now with his wing he grazes the whitecaps, now like an arrow surges toward the clouds. / He screeches, and the storm clouds hear the joy of the bird’s bold cries!’”

  In clothes that were not her own (Olga’s black sweater and trousers held up by Ilya’s belt), given to her after the bedbug death bath, Marina swept through the apartment like a fury, throwing books from the shelves and yelling:

  “‘In his cries is the storm’s wild thirst! In his cries the storm clouds hear / the power of his rage, the flame of passion, and sure victory! / Let the tempest rage and roil!’ Fuck it, Olga, I’m a Wunderkind! Didn’t you know? I’ve read every one of these books. I’ve even read Plato’s Republic! I read Aristotle at fourteen! I never read Hegel, but I read the Communist Manifesto! Fuck it! It’s the deluge! Finally, the flood has come! I’m going to throw everything out and renovate the whole apartment. All by myself! I’ll scrub everything down, I’ll whitewash it! Everything will be just like new, white and clean!”

  Olga realized that this was exactly what would happen, and she started taking all the sodden books down to the garbage heap. The blue Lenin, and the red Stalin, and all the historical materialism, and the dialectical materialism, and the political economy … everything.

  “Along with the bedbugs! We have them, too, you know! Not as many as in Peterhof—but plenty of them!” Marina shouted.

  And Olga grew suddenly happy herself. This is it, the real Fathers and Sons! The Kulakovs would be released—Valentin in two years, Zina in a year. Then they would have three years of exile, and return home. And their lives would be pure and white.

  Just one thing remained unclear—how she would survive all those years, this passionate, bold, desperate girl, covered with bedbug bites, raped by a pair of alcoholics, pitiless toward herself, pitiless toward her parents … a tender girl-child.

  On her third run down to the garbage, a huge bin hammered together any which way out of rough boards, Olga discovered a medium-size dog sitting there. It was Hera. She had come back home, all the way from Molodezhnaya Station to Tsvetnoy Boulevard. A true dissident dog.

  HAMLET’S GHOST

  Ilya brought home a pass for the dress rehearsal a day before the opening night. Alik, a lighting technician at the theater and a longtime friend of Ilya’s, got it for him. Getting a ticket for the premiere was out of the question—there wasn’t a single seat left. The pass was for one person only. For Olga. Olga was beaming with delight.

  The performance was for close friends and family, and the hall was filled to the rafters; people even crammed into the aisles. But the first two rows were nearly empty. They were reserved for the creators: Lyubimov, as magnificent as a commander going into battle, who was himself cut out for the role of a bold king, or a dastardly villain, or even the Lord Almighty; the gloomy artist with a wide, froglike mouth; the wiry young composer; the assistant director; and several other people of indeterminate function or position.

  As she entered the hall, Olga felt a cold thrill of ecstasy, as though she were about to sit for an important examination. Everything seemed magnified, writ large with capital letters: Theater, Director, Hamlet, Shakespeare, and Vysotsky himself. She sat down in the next to the last row, on the side, and she swiveled her head around, craning her neck, because watching the audience was an integral part of the event—the spectators were personalities in their own right, and appeared almost beautiful on those grounds alone. Suddenly, she felt a hand on her shoulder, and heard a
thick, pleasant voice say her name, half-questioning:

  “Olga?”

  She turned around. There was something familiar about the portly figure with an Eastern countenance.

  “Karik? Mirzoyan?” She felt glad to see her former classmate, forgetting for the first moment that he was responsible for getting her expelled first from the Komsomol, and then from the university. Yes, in precisely that order.

  He seemed to melt from happiness, and Olga understood immediately: He thinks I’ve forgotten. And so I had, at first. Oh, what does it matter!

  Just then, the earth-brown curtain began to sway, then floated upward, raising a cloud of dust. Everything went still, and, suddenly, there was Vysotsky-Hamlet, a smallish figure wearing what looked like a black leotard. From the depths of the stage, not looking at the audience, he spoke, as though to himself:

  “The din dies down. I enter from the wings…”

  She felt goose bumps along her arms, her spine. And that’s how it was until the very close, everything unfolded as though in a single breath, and the words of Pasternak’s translation seemed newly fledged, as though they were being heard for the first time.

  Olga completely forgot about Karik, and when she ran into him in the crush at the coat check, she was again taken by surprise to see him.

  “Olga, you haven’t changed a bit,” said the heavyset, Eastern-looking man with a bald pate, smiling at her. He had liked Olga very much during their student days. He had even wanted to ask her out, but back then she had been completely out of his league. His fortunes had risen considerably, however. Now he found her even more attractive than he had in his youth. Her face was mottled with tears, her eyes were shining. She seemed as fragile as a young girl. In his youth he had preferred shapely women; the wife he had chosen was as spherical as a snowman. But recently Karik had developed an interest in just this kind of woman—fragile and shining. Very rare birds.