It’s a strange, inexplicable law that the most innocent people among us are the ones predisposed to the greatest sense of guilt.
FIRST IN LINE
It was completely natural that the powerful musical ideas that preoccupied Sanya rendered him completely oblivious to domestic political events, large and small. They seemed as distant from him as revolutions in Latin America, crop failures in Africa, or tsunamis in Japan. Even Anna Alexandrovna, who was apt to admire her son uncritically, would sometimes remark, with a tinge of perplexity:
“Sanya, dear, we live here. It’s our country, after all. But you’re almost like a foreigner in your own country.”
Early one morning in January 1969, Alyona rushed over to see him and to tell him about Mikha’s arrest. It was Sanya’s first personal contact with politics. It left him shaken and crushed. Mikha had shown him his magazine, and it was amusing. But it was impossible that a self-published collection on onionskin paper, consisting half of news that was usually heard on Western radio broadcasts, and half of poetry—some good, some indifferent, but still just poetry—could land someone in prison. It wasn’t The Bell, not at all. It was homegrown. Sanya didn’t know about all Mikha’s activities, however. He was unaware of the Tatar connection in Mikha’s life.
Ilya was exceedingly well informed about the progress of the investigation and trial; they summoned him to the KGB headquarters about the case of Edik Tolmachev. They didn’t ask a single question about Mikha, and this surprised Ilya. He was even more surprised when Mikha was arrested three months after Edik.
Alyona came down with strep throat just after Mikha’s arrest. Then and there she chose Sanya as her “girlfriend,” and, somehow, all the responsibility for taking care of her fell on his shoulders. Alyona had never been overfond of Ilya, and she avoided having any dealings with him.
Alyona had all but broken off relations with her father. She suspected him of some kind of foul play, and once she even burst out with the accusation that he was to blame for all their misfortune. She rarely allowed her mother to visit her at home, as though she were trying to punish her for something. Alyona wept a lot at first, and didn’t want to see anyone but Sanya.
Sanya was the first to know about her pregnancy. He had agreed to accompany her to the gynecologist who was supposed to carry out the Soviet woman’s favorite operation. Halfway to the doctor, who was ready to perform the procedure, they turned back, after he persuaded her not to go through with it. Alyona was often offended by something Sanya said or did. She sent him away, made scenes, and kicked up a fuss; and he put up with everything patiently. Alyona rarely left the house all winter—either she was sick or simply didn’t feel up to it.
She’s so cantankerous and bad-tempered! he would think. But he couldn’t resist her capricious charms. Up to a predictable point.
Ilya brought Sanya money to give to Alyona regularly. Alyona didn’t refuse the money, but she didn’t particularly need it. Anna Alexandrovna put together care packages and sent them to her through Ilya. Throughout her pregnancy, Alyona either lay in bed or drew her enigmatic ornamental patterns. During the final months she learned how to draw lying prone on the bed.
When the time came, Sanya took Alyona to the maternity home, then fetched her, now with her newborn daughter in her arms. With a bouquet of carnations in hand, he played the role of husband and father for the nurses. This set a precedent, and afterward he accompanied Alyona and her daughter to consultations at the polyclinic, bathed the baby, fed her … He even liked this intimate bustling and pottering about. At the same time, however, he felt uneasy for his own safety and well-being. The whole time that Mikha was in prison, Alyona was half-unconsciously trying to seduce Sanya. He would adopt a high guard, like a boxer; or simply let the feminine signals pass over him, like air or steam; or quickly make himself scarce, like water running down a drain. Occasionally, Alyona had hysterics, or went into a sulk with him. Several times she even chased him out of the house; but either she would start missing him and call him up, or he would come over without warning with a toy for the little girl, or pastry eclairs for Alyona. In fact, she ate almost nothing the whole three years that Mikha was gone. It was some sort of metabolical hunger strike. She was able to drink tea with bread or sweets, but she couldn’t stomach meat, or cheese, or even soup. It was strange that the more emaciated she became, the more beautiful and ethereal she seemed. Sanya felt this, and feared her morbid attractiveness. It was Sanya who had taken her to see Mikha, before he was transferred to a prison camp. Sanya was the only one who wrote Mikha long letters. Alyona wrote short letters, very beautiful, sometimes even with little drawings. Mikha would write Alyona an open letter once a month—one for everyone, but with a specific message for each person individually. All the people who corresponded with him would gather at Alyona’s for the reading. Alyona usually sat in an armchair with the sleeping baby on her lap, and Sanya set out tea with cookies. He gave the impression of being Mikha’s replacement. This occasioned rumors about a romance between Alyona and the friend of her imprisoned husband. There was no romance. But a tension hung in the air nevertheless.
Sanya, perhaps more than Alyona, was anxious for Mikha’s return. He sensed her psychological volatility and was afraid—what if her strength gave out suddenly before he came back or his own well-trained resistance failed him? Alyona was perhaps the most attractive of all the women he had ever known: she seemed nearly disembodied, with the long, slow turns of her swanlike neck and head, to the point of conclusion made by her chin, upraised. Or the slow, gentle sweep of the fingers that grazed her temples, and the fingertips coming to rest at the edge of her hairline, pulling slightly at her almond-shaped eyes. It was almost as though her head were hanging on her fingertips, frozen in midair.
Mikha’s family took up a great deal of Sanya’s time, and cut into his musical activities. He suffered over this, and had difficulty concentrating. Preoccupied with household worries and chores, he was forced to find a time and place in which to seclude himself with his beloved music, fleeing his family obligations.
He taught at the Conservatory. He didn’t have a heavy teaching load—it never exceeded twelve hours a week.
Thanks to Alyona, he had stopped being a foreigner in his own country. In any case, now he knew the address of the infant feeding center, and all the surrounding pharmacies and polyclinics. He began his mornings with a run to the infant feeding center, and the evening closed with a scheduled visit to Alyona. He knew he had to force her to swallow at least a spoonful of some sort of nourishment. Without Sanya she never sat down at the table at all. She spent the greater part of the day in bed, with her daughter. When the baby, Maya, got a bit older, Alyona, who was afraid of the people and noise out on the streets, began going out into the more secluded courtyard to walk with her, but only if Sanya accompanied them.
Late in the evenings, Sanya took out a musical score from a pile lying on the floor next to his bed. He lay down and leafed through it. Beauty and wonder. Mozart’s Concerto no. 23 for piano and orchestra. Evgeniya Danilovna had once told him a story about this concerto.
Stalin heard a performance by Yudina on the radio and demanded the record. There was no recording of the concerto on the face of the earth. That very night, they roused Yudina, the conductor, and a dozen members of the orchestra, and took them to the House of Sound Recording, duly recorded it, and by morning the only copy of the record was ready. Stalin generously rewarded Yudina. It is said that he sent her an envelope containing 20,000 rubles. She answered the leader with a letter: she had sent the money to a church, and she would pray for him that God would spare him despite his evil deeds. Stalin forgave her. He said she was a Holy Fool …
Sanya studied the Mozart concerto, and happiness broke over him like a wave, from his head to his feet. Stalin wasn’t the only one to have been overwhelmed on the spot by this piece. Sanya smiled, and closed the text. He turned out the light. Mozart himself was conversing with him. What more could he dream
of? What better interlocutor, friend, confessor could he find? And he realized that he could endure Alyona after all.
* * *
Sadly, Sanya’s relations with his grandmother were unraveling. She never asked any direct questions, and Sanya didn’t consider it necessary to enter into explanations. Anna Alexandrovna was convinced that Alyona had lured her boy into an indecent romance with her, and was disappointed in her beloved grandson. At the same time, she saw the burden of care and responsiblity her spoiled Sanya had taken upon himself, and she admired his heroism. She suffered in the knowledge that Sanya was sinking ever deeper into the affairs of Mikha’s family, and was bitterly jealous of the unhappy Alyona, for whom she had so little sympathy. And, however irrational and ridiculous, she was jealous on Mikha’s behalf, considering him to be a deceived husband …
By virtue of the sins she ascribed to Sanya, Anna Alexandrovna felt a share in his guilt, and she didn’t write Mikha a single letter in three years, but sent him food packets and greetings through Ilya. She knew exactly what one needed to send to the prison camps, and she even baked special cookies in which she secreted fat and bouillon cubes, and then wrapped them in paper from the official Privet baked-goods brand. They didn’t allow anything homemade into the camps, but these fake Privet cookies contained an unheard-of number of calories. From time to time, she also sent money for Alyona.
She remembered very well how she had tenderly tried to dissuade Mikha from this marriage. And also: she was the only one who feared Mikha’s return. She anticipated scandal, revelations, unmasking, indecency. No, even more than that, she feared a catastrophe. What did she know, and what was presentiment?
Mikha forbade himself to count the days until his release; but he couldn’t help it. The fewer that remained, the stronger was his anxiety that they wouldn’t let him go. His friends were also counting the days.
It was, of course, very silly of them to assume that Mikha would be released in precisely three years, at exactly midnight on the day he was scheduled to go free. They already knew that he had been brought under convoy to Moscow, and that he was in Lefortovo Prison. They assumed, not without reason, that this was connected with the arrest of Sergei Borisovich, who, as they also knew, was in Lefortovo as well.
Three of them arrived at Lefortovo toward midnight—Ilya, Sanya, and Victor Yulievich. Ilya had an old jacket and new jeans in his rucksack. Ilya also brought a new pair of shoes for Mikha—true, they were one size too big, but they were fine ones.
There were three places from which Mikha might have been released: through the central entrance, the investigative offices, or the service entrance. The friends kept watch at these doors throughout the night and morning, until noon the next day. Then they went to inquire. A militarized-looking woman at a small window told them that Melamid had already left.
They rushed to call Mikha at home. Alyona came to the phone, and said in a quiet, remote voice:
“He’s home. Come.”
It turned out that they had released him at eight in the morning through the investigative offices, and his waiting friends had simply missed him. They got a taxi, and twenty minutes later they all tumbled into Mikha’s front entrance. The elevator was out of order. Sanya and Ilya flew up to the sixth floor via the stairs, and an aging Victor Yulievich, panting from exertion, followed, two floors behind. They waited until he caught up with them, then rang the doorbell. Mikha himself opened the door. Rather, it was a gaunt, colorless ghost of Mikha … Ilya lost no time remarking on this, trying to avoid any outburst of feeling the situation might otherwise have inspired.
“Well, you’re nothing more than a shadow!”
And Mikha laughed, suddenly himself again.
“I’m no shadow! I’m the skeleton of a shadow!”
Victor Yulievich raised his hand in a gesture familiar to them since childhood, and said:
“This to me
In dreadful secrecy impart they did;
And I with them the third night kept the watch;
Where, as they had delivered, both in time,
Form of the thing, each word made true and good,
The apparition comes…”
And everything seemed to fall back into place. They slapped one another on the back, pestered Mikha, and barged into the living room in a tumult. In spite of the former ideals of severity and asceticism, it was crammed with knickknacks and junk—a chair, a child’s bed, and even a curtain that partitioned the child’s sleeping corner from the rest of the room. The place was fast reverting to the appearance it had had during Aunt Genya’s time.
Maya, who had just been put down for her nap, woke up and began to howl. Alyona darted into the sleeping nook to comfort her, then brought the little girl out to see the guests. Maya stretched out her arms toward Sanya, the only one of the guests familiar to her. Sanya took her in his arms, and jiggled her gently up and down. She threw her arms around his neck, hugging him.
“What did you bring me?” she asked in a voice raspy from sleep.
Then he murmured something in her ear, and she smiled.
“Where?”
Sanya took a bright glass marble out of his pocket, and rolled it around on the palm of his hand. The girl snatched it like a little monkey.
Mikha watched the two of them jealously. The girl didn’t recognize her shy father. He was seeing her for the first time in her life, and he couldn’t yet grasp that this small creature, a living being with curly hair, big eyes, and busy little fingers, had come from him, from his great love for Alyona. It was still not completely comprehensible to him how these two things, the most important things in his life, were connected.
Mikha had already taken a bath before they arrived. He scrubbed the three years of vileness off his skin. He wanted to wash himself from inside out, to clean the prison air out of his nose, his throat, and his lungs, to purge the foul prison food and water from his mouth, his intestines, his stomach …
Seven years! It would take seven years. In seven years, all the cells in the human organism are renewed. Who had told him that? But how long would it take to cleanse the soul of prison filth? Oh, if he could only wash his brain in liquid nitrogen, in hydrochloric acid, in lye, to expunge those three years from his memory! Let it all be washed away, so that he would forget everything that he knew and loved, everything he revered, as long as all trace of these three years would vanish.
His friends stayed a short while, less than an hour, then left. The three of them, their small family, remained. There was a lot they had to talk about. The little girl clung to her mother, pushing her father away. Mikha frowned and wrinkled his nose; she was afraid, and turned away from him.
What a high price to pay. The child doesn’t recognize me, she’ll never recognize me. Mikha didn’t feel things by halves, and he suffered from an acute sense of rejection.
“Let’s all go for a walk. Maya, want to go swing?”
“Yes. With you,” she said, and took her mother by the hand.
“We’ll take Papa with us, too.” And they went outside together.
Maya sat down on the swings, and Alyona pushed her gently.
“They dragged me back here under armed guard five weeks before my release was scheduled, and I realized that they were planning to pin something else on me. It turned out to be the case of Chernopyatov and Kushchenko,” he told Alyona, through Maya’s interruptions. “They didn’t let us meet face-to-face for a confrontation for a long time, but they let me read their testimony. The testimony was dreadful; I didn’t believe a word of it. I thought they were just planting false evidence cooked up by some agents. They named more than thirty names, including that of Edik Tolmachev. But this case wasn’t about Gamayun, but about the Chronicle, about all possible human rights cases. The protocols ran the gamut—sincere confessions, repentance, you name it.”
“I know all of this already,” Alyona said drily, nodding.
“I didn’t believe it until the very end. Actually, I still can’t believe
it. But we met face-to-face. And what I heard was an echo of the protocols. What they did to them I don’t know. Maybe they beat the confessions out of them. I denied everything. Except that Sergei Borisovich was your father and my father-in-law. I was sure they were going to tack this case on me, too. Until the last day I couldn’t believe they would set me free. I still can’t believe it, really.”
Alyona didn’t raise her eyes to him. The expression on her face didn’t even seem to register his presence. Mikha put his hand on top of hers.
“I just can’t wrap my head around it, Alyona. Sergei Borisovich couldn’t possibly have said all that. But I heard him say it with my own ears. Don’t think that I love him any less, Alyona. I’m just terribly, terribly sorry for him.”
“I don’t know, Mikha. I don’t think I am. Since childhood, I always believed I had a hero for a father.” Alyona did lift her eyes, but stared at one place under the swing, at the confused shadows made by the seat that carried her daughter back and forth, back and forth.
“You’re not swinging me right, Mama!” the little girl said sternly. Mikha grabbed hold of the chain of the swing.
“Don’t touch it!” she said even more sternly.
Toward evening Zhenya Tolmacheva and an acquaintance from Alyona’s institute stopped over and stayed for a long time. They sent them away at nine, saying the little girl needed a bath.
In the communal bathroom, they placed the children’s tub on a stool, filled it with warm water, and placed Maya in it. She washed her dolly and her rubber dog diligently, then just splashed around. Mikha watched from the doorway and was filled with an unparalleled new love for the wet child, her darkened curls sticking to her forehead.
“Get the towel,” Alyona said, and he took the fragile back into the large towel. It was the first time he had held his own child in his arms. She was very light, but weighty. Small, but enormous; bigger than Mikha, bigger than the whole world. And that’s what she was—the whole world.
The Big Green Tent Page 52