Denouncer (17 page)

In comparison to Katia’s stoicism stood Benjie, all mirth and merriment. He didn’t tutor Alya but he brought out her playful qualities, introducing her to card and board games, sharing his scrapbooks with pictures of movie stars, and making up stories. Galina frequently observed that Benjie would one day write fiction. Given the stories he told, Galina predicted he’d become a teller of fairy tales. One “word” story that both Galina and Alya liked concerned a beautiful firefly, Gloriana, who often misbehaved and refused to come home at a decent hour, wishing to spend the evening making dazzling loops and turns and flips and dives and dips. When her mother chided Gloriana and said that her behavior was sinful, Gloriana merely performed another trick and replied, “I want to sin till late.”

Everyone would laugh at the pun, but most of all Benjie.

✷

Galina had assigned each singer a solo part and, in some cases, divided the part so that every member of the choir would have the opportunity to sing. For their next concert, Benjie asked if he could sing a soprano aria from
The Marriage of Figaro
: “Dove sono I bei momenti di dolcezza e di piacer” (Where are the beautiful moments of sweetness and pleasure?). The aria, one of Mozart’s most poignant, seemed a strange choice—until his moment came. Then everything changed. In the opera, the countess is remembering the former happy days she spent with her husband, who is now running after other women. Benjie took a step forward on stage. The audience, composed mostly of students and townspeople, also included teachers, minor Soviet officials, school maintenance workers, Father Zossima, Sasha, Petr, and Alya. With the opening notes, Benjie dispelled Galina’s fear that he would sing flat. He was right on key. But instead of the famous Italian words “Dove sono . . . etc.” Benjie substituted the Russian words “Here sits my beautiful mother, who gives me pleasure and joy.” Before the audience could react, he continued and concluded in Italian. At the end, the audience sat stunned. Was it from Benjie’s audacity or the brilliant manner in which he had introduced Russian into the aria? In this moment of awe, Benjie bowed and stepped back into the chorus. Before the audience could respond, his fellow choral members, who knew never to applaud one of their own, clapped and stomped their feet. An instant later, the audience followed suit and demanded that Natalia Korsakova take a bow with her son. She slowly ascended the stage and embraced Benjie, both of them now in tears. The audience, equally moved, called for an encore. With his mother smiling and looking out over the heads of the audience, Benjie repeated his love song to his mother.

Sitting there, as affected as the others, if not more so, Sasha, thinking of his own mother, and perhaps all mothers, could not help but wonder at the Russian people’s great store of feeling. At that moment, political parties, personal jealousies, poseurs, Stalin’s paranoia—none of it mattered. What mattered was the music and Benjie, and Benjie was the music.

Although Brodsky kept up with news about the chorus—their performances and the music they’d sung—Sasha wished that Avram’s exilic life did not exclude concerts. They could talk about the Mozart tomorrow night, when Sasha planned to ask Brodsky about Bogdan Dolin. Except for an occasional walk in the woods and his Sunday chats in the square, Brodsky remained at home. It was his study and cell. An elderly woman from town brought him food. Where he found the money to pay her was anyone’s guess, but he never seemed short of food, drink, warm clothes, books, or cigarettes.

After the concert, Galina stayed behind to congratulate the students and to share some food and wine that Sasha had paid for out of pocket. Something about Benjie, other than his voice, had strangely moved him. He wanted time to think and volunteered to see Alya home—it was past her bedtime. Petr remained to help Galina. As Sasha and Alya tramped through the snow, he repeated to himself Shelley’s line: “If winter comes can spring be far behind.” Of course, Shelley had in mind more than the seasons. He was thinking of political change, as well. Perhaps Benjie’s wonderful moment would be a harbinger of better things to come. Among those better things, he knew not to count Lukashenko’s assassination. Sasha would have to dissuade Petr from abetting Viktor’s madness, which could lead only to a life of bitter, black years.

Alya, who had understood the reason for Benjie’s interpolation, asked whether other singers—professional ones—did the same. No, of course, they didn’t, but her question made him think of those innocent men and women brought before the bar who subsequently change their stories. An interpolation of sorts. I am not guilty; I am guilty. A difference of one word, but a word powerful enough to decide life and death. If only an aria had that much authority.

10

“M
agnificent, Avram! You should have heard the boy.”

“I did.”

“Where?”

“At the concert. I was standing at the back of the room next to the bookcase.”

A skeptical Sasha looked at Avram in the dim light of the cottage and asked, “If you were there, then tell me wha
t Benjie’s mother was wearing in her hair?” Sasha knew that given Brodsky’s contact or contacts, someone might have already told him in detail about the concert, but was unlikely to have described Natalia’s headdress.

Avram had answered the door lipping a cigarette. He now lit it. “She was wearing two ribbons, one red and one yellow, which hung down her back, peasant style.” He inhaled, and on the exhale said, “You would have no way of knowing, Sasha, but Natalia Korsakova was once a beautiful woman. In fact, she trained for the opera, until a botched tonsillectomy, which ought to have been routine, ruined her voice.”

It wasn’t until that epiphanic moment that Sasha realized what it was about Benjie that he had found so strange. Benjie resembled Brodsky, especially around the eyes. Of course, it all made sense. The beautiful mother had worked for Brodsky. They had had an affair. Natalia became pregnant. Brodsky somehow arranged a marriage between Natalia and Ivan Korsakov and promised to support the family. Hence the money for Ivan’s tobacco and Benjie’s schooling. It was Natalia who had fared the worst. She had to supplement the family’s meager sums with housework and midwifery. Why had Brodsky not taken care of her? After all, she figuratively had him by the throat and could easily have exposed him. So why didn’t she? Countless reasons ran through Sasha’s head. If Brodsky had lost his job, which in fact occurred later, he couldn’t have given the family any money. If Brodsky had married Natalia . . . impossible. The poor woman was barely literate, though she could read music. Perhaps, just perhaps, Brodsky had advised an abortion, and she had refused. That would certainly explain his selective support of Mr. Korsakov and Benjie. He thought again of Shakespeare’s tangled web.

After his last visit to Brodsky, Sasha had intended to write to Filatov. He was now glad that he hadn’t because further visits would give him reason to ask the OGPU officer for information about Brodsky’s background. That Avram might still be secretly working with the Left Opposition meant precious little to Sasha. But by sharing with Filatov a few innocuous tidbits, he hoped to elicit a fuller understanding of this enigmatic Brodsky fellow: savant, pedagogue, enemy of the people, political prisoner (Kolyma), exile, nicotine addict, seducer (perhaps), and recipient of funds from some unknown source.

As usual, Brodsky invited Sasha to sit and share his vodka. But first he had to revive the fire. The dying one in the grate had already turned to embers. Stacking the kindling and logs, Brodsky proudly declared that he had a new idea, and that he wanted to run it by Sasha. He promised that his idea would not endanger Sasha, like the ones that had led to his own incarceration at Kolyma. Once the flames started leaping, Brodsky started explaining what he called the theory of exaggerated differences. Dressed in a woolen shirt that came to his knees and was belted at the waist, he also wore a pair of black flaring Cossack pants and high boots. He looked as if he were preparing to take part in a Hopak dance, though Sasha knew that the fifty-six-year-old Brodsky no longer had the stamina, strength, or knees to perform the Ukrainian national dance.

“My theory,” he croaked, “is simple but elegant, the stamp of all good theories.” He cleared his throat. “People poles apart in their thinking, without any chance of agreeing, present no threat to one another. Never the twain shall meet. But those people who belong to offshoots of political parties or churches, for example, religious sects, are just close enough to the core beliefs to represent a problem. A Left Bolshevik or a Right Bolshevik . . . they are both Bolsheviks. But they are just different enough from the prevailing orthodoxy that they need to be expunged, lest they draw others to their cause or corrupt the fixed orthodoxy. In addition, the sects have to exaggerate their differences from all the other sects to establish their identity; otherwise people are likely to say, ‘I don’t see any difference between you and them.’ Among Protestants, you have Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, Seventh-Day Adventists, and so on. How is one to tell the difference between them? Therefore they have to exaggerate their differences. But in fact between them there is little space. So the question becomes are we better off running around propounding our small differences or are we better off rallying around a single belief, a single church, a single political party that will be all the stronger for our allegiance and alliance? Differences invite comparisons, and comparisons lead to division. What do you think?”

Sasha wanted Brodsky to talk about Bogdan Dolin. So he tried to segue into his subject. “Did you figure out this theory in Kolyma?”

“The idea came to me when I was housed with a group of Christian missionaries. They fought among themselves more fiercely than the camp’s criminal population.”

“Then you were segregated at Kolyma?” he asked, knowing full well that the two groups were housed in different buildings, but hoping to wend his way to Bogdan Dolin.

“The usual separation was between the politicals and the criminals. And I can tell you, the criminals preyed terribly on the politicals, people like me. For one thing the criminals hated intellectuals, because they regarded all politicals as thinkers. For another, the criminals may have been moral cowards, but they were physical bullies, and the politicals had no stomach for a fistfight. For a third thing, the criminals regarded themselves as patriots. Oh yes, they had broken the law, stolen this or thieved that, but they were Stalin’s true believers. The politicals detested the Vozhd, which was as good as telling the criminals they supported a madman.”

“Why were you arrested?”

“I thought you knew of my outspokenness and my participation in the Left Opposition movement. My tongue and opinions cost me my job and earned me a year in Siberia.”

“With Bogdan Dolin.”

Brodsky scoffed. “My only convert. He used to come to the school auditorium to hear me speak. At one lecture, after I had been critical of the government confiscating farmland, he said, ‘I agree with you.’ That—and his other misdeeds—landed him in Kolyma. The government didn’t take kindly to his forgeries and counterfeiting. His farm and fields were expropriated. They became part of the collective on the outskirts of Balyk. When Bogdan returned from Kolyma, he’d sit at the edge of the road and look at his lost land. People thought he had gone crazy, which I suppose in a way was true. Eventually he acquired the small cottage he now occupies. It was a bungalow belonging to a larger house. For a long time, it was boarded up. But Bogdan somehow managed to gain control of the place and has lived there ever since. Some people say he did a favor for a Soviet official, and in return was given the bungalow. I don’t know.”

“Why does he dislike you so?”

“He was housed with the politicals and suffered the tortures meted out by the criminals. He blamed me for introducing him to subversive ideas.”

Sardonically, Sasha observed, “He’s obviously clever enough to realize that ideas can be dangerous.”

“He goes one step further. He tells anyone who will listen that a school is a dangerous place. Of course, he has in mind the auditorium, where he used to listen to my orations, as I immodestly call them.” Brodsky refilled both glasses and threw back a shot of vodka. Sasha paused. No one spoke for a moment. Brodsky downed another. “Why do you think,” he asked rhetorically, “Filatov or some other OGPU agent checks in here regularly? Unconventional ideas may surface and, as Bogdan says, inspire students to question the world around them. That’s why I originally came here. I wanted to bring about change; I wanted to introduce new ideas, fresh ones. But most Soviet teachers are trained to be obedient and are expected to pass the lessons of obedience on to their students. But for yourself and perhaps Galina Selivanova, your entire staff has been schooled in obedience. You know it, and I know it, but they don’t. Sadly, they have no idea that obedience is deadly. No matter what new idea, fact, or theory you share with your staff, they will ask themselves if it accords with Bolshevism. Why? Because of obedience. And if the idea is at odds with Bolshevism, it will fall on deaf ears. When I was director, I tried to speak to the staff about a liberal Bolshevism, the opposite of Stalinism. They patiently listened. Some of them I could tell even tried to understand me, but in the end, they adhered to what they’d been taught. They obeyed. The result: Your colleagues are automatons. They do not exist; they only obey.”

Avram’s discourse offended Sasha. He wanted to defend his staff, some of whom seemed to be trying to “modernize” their teaching methods. His reply was intended to counter Avram’s pessimism. “Even when we obey, we continue to exist. And as long as we exist . . .”

Brodsky interrupted. “Yes, we exist as numbers and moving parts in a larger machine.”

In his spinning mind, Sasha pondered the interchangeable parts the Soviets had put in place. With central planning, all a manager had to do when a person or part was needed was request a replacement. Someone on the other end of the telephone checked the rosters for each section of the country to see who was available. Ironically, because of the inefficiency of Soviet factories, people were easier to replace than mechanical items. He snickered to himself thinking that Russia had become a warehouse of human drones who could be sent through nine time zones to meet a need. They were the wheels and cogs and gauges and dials. If a plant or factory manager actually wished to see everything in working order—and not all of them did—broken machinery often required the presence of die makers and welders and skilled mechanics. But without a competent manager, the factories ground to a halt, sometimes simply for want of a gear or a flywheel or a washer.

If what Brodsky said about teachers and obedience was true, then were the government so disposed, everyone at the Michael School could be replaced by a compliant and complaisant cog from another area or school. No one was indispensable. Did this mean that Sasha had put his colleagues at risk by insisting on changes? Filatov had asked for modernization, but Filatov himself could be purged in a minute. Given that fact, a practical person could arrive at only one conclusion: better safe than sorry, better obedient than banished.

“You never said, Avram, whether you shared my opinion about Benjie’s performance. Brilliant or not?”

“In voice, yes.”

“Then I take it you disapproved of the homage to his mother?”

A large red handkerchief materialized out of Brodsky’s pocket. He blew his nose loudly and stuffed the dirty linen back into his pants. Lighting a cigarette, he went to the bookcase. How he could see anything in the poor light was a mystery. But his hand knowingly reached above his head to a shelf with volumes of English works. He removed an enormous tome in Moroccan leather, Robert Burton’s
The Anatomy of Melancholy
.

“The man was a genius. What he calls melancholy we call depression. You do read English, don’t you?” Sasha nodded. “Good. Every educated Russian should know French, German, and English.”

“Are you giving me this book because you think I’m depressed?”

“No, because if you want to understand the inner workings of Avram Brodsky, read Burton. We both use melancholy as the lens through which to view emotion and thought.”

Sasha took the book and admired its leather binding. “I’ve never thought of you as melancholy or depressed, in fact, the opposite: irrepressible, committed, passionate, intellectually energetic.”

“Since you arrived at the school, Sasha, we have become close, I would dare say good friends, and yet you don’t know me. You don’t know, for example, that I still retain a master key to the school, which I have kept among my belongings through thick and thin . . . kept it safe even in Kolyma. Just as we hold some memories dear, so too we treat some material things as talismans. The key to the school symbolizes to me the key to the world. It represents all that human beings are capable of achieving. But to achieve we must change. If our students leave the school the way they come—bigoted, provincial, superstitious—they will have accomplished nothing. The underlying assumption of education, the unstated premise, is that change is possible and desirable. To see a young man grow from sapling to tree is a miracle. In that sense, I regarded myself as a tiller of soil and a sower of seeds.

“I liked being a school director. I liked teaching classes. It’s exhilarating to have an audience, particularly when you wish to share an idea. Actors play a role; teachers analyze ideas and argue points of view. I prefer the latter, even though I used to write radio plays.” He paused for a moment, as if remembering something. “Some of the classrooms in the Michael School have a distinctive smell that comes from the desks and chalkboards and books. No two rooms are exactly alike. Blindfolded, I could tell you which one I was in. Occasionally, I make a nocturnal visit to the school, unlock the door, and just walk the halls and inhale the classrooms. The school floorboards are like maps. Without looking, I know which have soft spots and which are splintered. I know every creak. I even know the idiosyncrasies of the office typewriters, Devora Berberova’s and Galina’s. By the way, Galina dropped by here the other day and borrowed my French edition of Zola’s
Nana
. We chatted briefly. She seemed interested in which of my opinions had earned me a trip to Siberia. I told her nothing. In this country, trust is impossible. But without trust we are alone. I have observed you closely and liked what I have seen.” Then Brodsky made the most amazing request. “Let me put my life in your care.”

Sasha held up his hands defensively and said, “I want no privileged glimpses into your heart.”

In a deliberate and sober voice, Brodsky replied, “It is the only way I can make you my guardian, my judge and jury. If I die, so too does a part of you.”