Anna Alexandrovna’s death, sudden, easy, and completely spontaneous, could not be reconciled with life. Sanya awoke in the mornings, heard the unbearable sounds of alien everyday existence, and wanted to fall asleep again, in order to wake up in his normal, habitual home.
But that former home was gone; his grandmother was no longer there, and his mother had undergone some strange transformation, like children under spells in fairy tales. She had changed in a single moment into the opposite version of herself. Whereas before she had been soft and plump, now she was sharp and hard; before she had had light-brown hair mixed with gray, and now she had become a brunette. She began to use lipstick and wear a new astrakhan fur coat, black and unruly, instead of the ancient gray rabbit fur in which they had wrapped Sanya as a baby.
But most intolerable of all was the new voice of Nadezhda Borisovna: sonorous, fawning, with a giggle at the end of every phrase. No, even more unbearable than that were the nighttime sounds of coupling, of bedsprings, panting and groaning …
It was as though the janitor’s quarters on Potapovsky Lane had encroached on the very place where once Nuta had read her favorite Flaubert and Marcel Proust during sleepless nights.
He couldn’t sleep. He caught small snatches of slumber, but he would start awake and return to the obsessive thoughts: Nuta is gone. Nuta will never come back. Nuta is no more.
He slept at intervals. When he woke up for good, he would fall into his usual despondency. He washed and left the defiled house. If he didn’t have class, he went to see Mikha.
Mikha’s mood was no better. He still couldn’t find a job—no one would hire an ex-convict—and they were broke. Alyona tried to teach some classes. Their friends chipped in to help, and Mikha accepted these alms unwillingly. Marlen finally left for Israel—hurriedly, unexpectedly, and inexplicably—and wrote Mikha letters, trying to persuade him to follow him there. But Mikha rejected the idea of emigrating out of hand.
“Everyone keeps repeating the same thing: emigration, emigration. Everyone has an opinion on the subject—for or against it. I can’t even consider it, Sanya. I’d die there.”
Maya, who adored Sanya and still hadn’t come to trust her newfound father, climbed into Sanya’s lap and tickled him behind the ear. That was a little game they had.
“Mikha, we’re going to die anyway. And music and poetry are everywhere, not only in Russia,” Sanya said.
“Music, yes. But poetry—no. Poetry has its own language, and that language is Russian! I’m a poet—perhaps a bad one, but still a poet!” the usually gentle Mikha burst out. “I can’t live without Russia!”
Sanya was unable to counter this. He couldn’t say: yes, you’re a bad poet. And was it any better for the good ones? Khodasevich? Tsvetaeva? Even Nabokov, for God’s sake?
But Mikha, like a pendulum, kept returning to the same point: Russia, the mother tongue, Russian metaphysics … Russia, the Lethe, Lorelei …
* * *
Sanya attempted to lower the level.
“Well, my friend, leave Russia with your Lorelei, otherwise you’ll drown prematurely in our river Lethe…” And he frowned from the awkwardness of his own joke. “Leave, Mikha. It’s a lost cause. And Nuta is dead.”
He thought about Liza. She had left, abandoned her grandfather, who doted on her, and lived now on the other side of the looking glass. In Vienna, Mozart, Schubert, and the entire Viennese School promenaded along the Ringstrasse.
* * *
Going down the stairs, Sanya began composing in his mind a long, meandering phrase, words set to music—the strings resounded plaintively, the brass crashed, the alto saxophone crooned in a soulful voice. The words were almost lost, but still they surfaced, indistinct but indispensable.
Nuta left, died, flew away, poor thing, her thin fingers, the rings no longer ringing … even her smell is gone.
A short sprint through Mikha’s courtyard, past the corner house, from Chistoprudny Boulevard to Maroseyka.
Mikha, orphaned, kin, terrible childhood, the transparent Alyona, my God, it reeks of madness, it reeks of the mewling of the deaf and dumb, poor, poor everyone.
Woodwinds, advance! The clarinet sobs, and the flute weeps …
Crossing the streetcar rails, where an invisible monument to an underage hooligan, killed on this spot twenty years before, stood.
Fortissimo, percussion.
Brass, brass, brass … and the screech of brakes.
* * *
Unhappy boy in a padded cotton jacket, in a soldier’s cap with earflaps, running, running, cold metal clenched in his fist.
Turn left on Pokrovka, home to the Vanity Chest House.
* * *
Poor fingers, poor fingers, perished forever. For violin, viola, and clarinet, for bayan, accordion, for the baneful balalaika. Oh, piano!
Piano duet! For four hands! The right piano Liza, the left one me. Liza begins the piece, I join in.
And a right turn home to my building, to my side wing. String section. The violins begin. Tipsy, pianissimo. The piano theme builds and develops, attenuates in the string rendition. Rises. And everything concludes in the deep, sad voice of the cello.
Some carry skates in their hands, some shopping bags, briefcases, musical scores, boots from the shoemaker, repaired and repaired again. They carry illnesses, misfortunes, summonses, blood test results, garbage, a dog, a bottle.
* * *
And right in front of his door, his fingers already touching the only remaining bronze door handle in the whole building, he lifted all the music up, then dashed it with all his might to the ground, so that it shattered and rolled away.
If you exist, God, take me away from here and put me in another place. I can’t go on here. I can’t go on without Nuta …
He entered the building. He went up to the second floor. He went into the apartment, and paused. Lastochkin had wrapped Nuta’s blouse around the handle of a gigantic cast-iron frying pan filled with hash browns cooked in lard. He was carrying it from the communal kitchen to their room. It stank.
THE DECORATED UNDERPANTS
In 1961 Peter Petrovich Nichiporuk addressed a Party conference, saying exactly what was on his mind: Stalin’s personality cult had been exposed for what it was, and now, slowly but surely, a new cult was growing up around Khrushchev. Lenin’s precepts had been forgotten, and they had to return to them, to strengthen democracy and the responsibility of elected officials to the people. To achieve this they had to abolish the high salaries of government officials and introduce limited terms in office. He told them exactly what he thought.
He had already “rolled out” all these thoughts for his friend Afanasy Mikhailovich, one of his former college buddies from the General Staff Academy, where they had both studied before the war. Afanasy didn’t approve, though he shared all of his ideas. He didn’t approve, specifically, of the plan to introduce these ideas at a Party conference.
“It won’t have any positive effect, Peter; but the consequences could be dire,” Afanasy said of this harebrained plan.
Peter reproached Afanasy as a coward. Afanasy, usually restrained, suddenly flew into a rage and sent his friend to the place that the old friends were not in the habit of sending each other.
Then Peter Petrovich announced something very unpleasant to his friend’s ears: there is no greater coward than a soldier. And the higher the rank, the more cowardly they are.
Highly trained professionals who had gone through the war, fearing neither enemy fire nor the foe himself, never taking cover behind someone else’s back, were deathly afraid of the powers that be and were now defending, not the Motherland, but their own fat backsides and their own cushy armchairs.
Since this discussion was taking place at Afanasy Mikhailovich’s dacha, he showed his friend the door. Discord arose between them, of the kind recalling Nikolai Gogol’s two Ivans. In this case, however, it was not a “pig” or a “goose” that set it off, but Peter’s “coward,” which had offended Afanasy M
ikhailovich to the bottom of his soul.
Peter Petrovich was punished for his scandalous speech. They gave him a new job and transferred him to the Far East—basically sending him into exile—where he was less likely to cause trouble. At first he pined, and life in the remote provinces bored him; but then he resumed his activities. He organized a union of like-minded people who, like him, wanted to get the entire lopsided, meandering country back onto the straight and narrow (as Lenin had envisioned) again. This underground activity, with secret meetings, and even leaflets, didn’t last long. Peter Petrovich was arrested. First he was kicked out of the Party, then he was tried in a closed court and given a paltry three years. By way of additional punishment, he was demoted to the rank and file. The condemned general was stripped of his title, his military decorations, his pension, and all privileges conferred on him by dint of his former services, now rendered null and void.
And so began Peter Petrovich’s new biography. He gradually shed, along with extra pounds, his ramshackle, down-at-heel notions about life. He spent three years in prison, was released, and was thrown in prison again. He recalled his former, “academic” life, as he now mockingly termed it, and deemed it juvenile.
The general had a good head on his shoulders. It was not for nothing he had once headed the Department of Military Tactics at the academy. But he had entered into an unequal battle with the authorities, which fought not with brains, but by brute strength. What use were tactics, not to mention strategy, here? Wherever the authorities, humiliated and scorned by a former general, sent him—prison, the labor camps, exile, a psychiatric institution—he always emerged from the ordeal and picked up where he had left off.
In the spring of 1972, he was given a little respite—he was freed. By this time, he was no longer part of the rank and file, but had become a true general of the small army of dissidents. Some people are born generals.
Nichiporuk knew that the authorities never forgave domestic enemies, and realized that he didn’t have long to kick up his heels in freedom. He enjoyed to the hilt his home life, socializing with people, even a little stroll through the city. Freedom! Sweet freedom!
But this freedom was an illusion. All the while his telephone was tapped, and the shadowing had never stopped. Peter Petrovich decided to go to Minsk. He had business to attend to there. He didn’t tell his wife, Zoya, what kind of business it was—and she, an experienced friend, didn’t ask.
He bought a ticket for the evening train, came home, and packed a few things—a change of underwear, shaving kit, the two last issues of Novy Mir, already dog-eared, and a stuffed animal for the granddaughter of a friend.
They had just sat down to dinner when the doorbell rang. It was Zoya’s friend Svetlana, dear to both of them. She came bearing news: yesterday there had been a search at Kharchenko’s, and at Vasilisa Travnikova’s. They had taken Kharchenko away but left Vasilisa behind.
Peter Petrovich shrugged; there was nothing at home to incriminate them.
“They don’t know that. They’ll come and turn the whole place upside down,” Svetlana said.
“Oh, wait!” Peter Petrovich had just remembered something. “My decorations! They stripped me of them on paper, but all the medals are still here. I don’t want to give them away. We’ll have to do something about it, Zoya. Could you get them out of here, Svetlana?”
“We’ll get rid of them. But I’d rather send my girls. It’s safer. This evening.”
And, true to her word, that evening, after Peter Petrovich had already left to catch his train, two girls, both of them about fifteen, arrived. One was called Tonya. She was plump and had chubby cheeks. The other was called Sima, and she was very plain. Both of them were wearing identical caps and scarves. Svetlana was a teacher, and these were her pupils.
They shuffled awkwardly in the doorway. Zoya Vasilievna told them to take their coats off, and she prepared tea and cookies. They sat in the kitchen, both of them still in their blue caps, and didn’t say a word. Zoya Vasilievna placed a heavy bundle on the table. The soft fabric parcel was wrapped with newspaper and tied up with string. She put the parcel in a homemade fabric grocery bag as they watched. Then she placed on the table a note, which read: “These are military decorations that need to be kept safe.” The girls read it and nodded amiably. Then Zoya took a match and set the note on fire. She put the remains of the paper under a stream of water, and threw it in the garbage pail.
The girls exchanged glances: this was serious.
They went out the main door, and looked around. Outside it was quiet and deserted, and a vacillating April ambiguity reigned. They walked to the metro, not talking. They arrived at Belorussky Station, and Tonya walked Sima to the metro entrance. Next to the entrance Sima held out the bag to her friend.
“Listen, I’m scared. What if Mama finds it? You take them home to your house, okay?”
“All right,” Tonya said agreeably. “But where should I hide them? Maybe in the broom closet? We have one under the stairs. Though the lock gets broken off pretty often, so people can steal firewood.”
“But what’s the firewood for?” Sima said, surprised.
“Nothing. No one has stoves anymore, but the firewood’s still there. And people steal it.”
“But it’s almost summer now…”
“Yeah, that’s true.”
Tonya took the trolleybus from Belorussky Station almost to her front door on Dzerzhinsky Square.
* * *
As if on cue, she arrived when there was no one home. Vitka, her nephew, was at the neighbor’s; his mother, Valka, was out living it up; and her older brother, Tolya, was doing time.
Her mother wasn’t home, either; she was working the night shift.
Pressing the parcel to her stomach, Tonya walked through the apartment. Should she put it in a box on top of the wardrobe? There were no empty boxes—only three, stuffed full. In the lower drawer of the wardrobe there were tools. Sometimes her mother opened it to get out a hammer or some nails. They were left over from her father. The underwear was all folded in little piles; only on the bottom shelf was there a messy clump of them. There were old underpants with a nap, at one time blue and peach-colored, and with faded, worn-out crotches. Her mother had cut pieces of fabric that was a bit sturdier, and, in multiple layers, from the inside, had patched the ones that still had some life in them with crude hand-stitching. Tonya took the most ragged pairs and wrapped them around the parcel, then stuffed them right up against the back wall of the wardrobe. The parcel took up almost half the drawer. She took the parcel out again and unwrapped it. There were eleven fancy boxes inside. They contained military decorations of enamel and gold, very lovely to look at, and surprisingly heavy. Tonya decided to get rid of the boxes, since they took up a lot of room. She removed the decorations, and hooked or pinned each piece to the fabric, then rolled it up into a large sausage and again stuffed it into the drawer, right up against the wall. She decided to store the boxes separately, in her own little corner on the top shelf. Empty boxes—what did they matter? The decorations were the important thing.
* * *
Early in the morning on May 9, Vitka, Tonya’s pesky nephew, discovered the parcel in the wardrobe. The other kids in his courtyard had told him that moms hide money in the wardrobe, in the underwear. You just had to look hard for it. He started with the lower drawer. He didn’t find any money there, but his hands felt the lumpy parcel by the wall right away. He pulled it out and unwrapped it—and what did he see there but decorations and medals pinned to his grandmother’s old underpants! What a find! And it was just the right day for decorations and medals: Victory Day. He unfolded the underpants, full of amazement. There were lots of decorations and medals. He counted five; then five more. And there was still another one. They were pinned and hooked every which way, and he slowly and methodically freed them all from the worn-out rags. Then, not worried in the least about his own shirt, he began sticking them on both sides of it, from the shoulders down. Their we
ight pulled down the fabric, and they sparkled with gold and silver and Kremlin stars. He went out into the courtyard to show the other kids. He had forgotten all about the money he had promised to look for in the underwear in the wardrobe. But the kids had forgotten about it, too, and had already left. While he was wondering where to find them, three big boys appeared out of nowhere: Artur the Armenian, Sevka, and Timka the Stump. They immediately descended on him and started ripping off the decorations. Vitka hollered and made a dash for the gates.
* * *
The fortieth day after Anna Alexandrovna’s death fell on May 9, and Vasily Innokentievich, retired colonel of the Medical Corps, rather than meeting with his fellow officers from the regiment, went to attend a memorial service at the Church of Peter and Paul by the Yauza Gates. There was still a whole hour before the service was scheduled to begin, and he decided to go on foot from Dzerzhinsky Square. He walked along the western wall of the Polytechnical Museum, but on the opposite side of Serov Passage. A bevy of boys rolled out from under a gate and collapsed in a thrashing, kicking heap at his feet. One of them, the one being pursued, and the smallest, screamed loudly. The old man picked him up off the ground. The boy looked like he was about seven, with crooked teeth, and large gaps where they hadn’t grown in yet. The three older boys scrambled back under the gate, and spied on them from around the corner. The little boy squirmed in Vasily’s arms like a fish on a hook. His shirt was clanking with brightly shining metal … military decorations.
Vasily Innokentievich set the little fellow down on the ground. Holding him by the shoulders, he examined the military iconostasis. In addition to the ordinary decorations being paraded about by elderly veterans on this holiday, on their old uniform jackets or new suit coats, Vasily Innokentievich noticed some very special ones: For the Defense of the Soviet Polar Circle; For the Capture of Königsberg; and, very rare indeed, an American one, on which there was a laurel wreath, stars, and rays of light. This was the Legion of Merit. The American Allies had conferred this medal on the highest-ranking Soviet officers after the fall of Berlin, in 1945.
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