Denouncer (24 page)

“I once saw Viktor do this with Mamma.”

“Do what?”

“Run his hand through her hair.”

“Well, he is, after all, a good friend.”

“I think he loves her.”

Sasha smiled at Alya but deliberately failed to respond. After a long pause, she added: “That’s why I stayed with the Baturins when she went to see him.”

“Oh?”

“She didn’t want me along. I know that.”

“Well, I get the impression they must have quarreled, because they’re not so friendly of late.”

Alya blurted, “Yes, they are!”

“When I see them at school,” Sasha lied, “they hardly speak.”

“I can sometimes hear them at night.”

“Talking?”

“One of the boards in the attic is loose.”

“Where? I must fix it.”

“Over our bedroom, near the closet. I sometimes crawl into the closet and listen. The time Benjie ate with us, he listened too.”

“Alya, you really shouldn’t . . . unless it’s important.”

She made no reply. They put away the brushes, swept up, and returned to the farmhouse. Alya said nothing more about it for the rest of the day; but on the following afternoon, after returning from her tutoring lesson, she coyly said to Sasha:

“My teacher taught us the meaning of the word ‘discreetness.’ She said discreetness is a kindness, and its opposite can hurt people. But she also said sometimes it’s right to report what we know.”

“Know what?”

“What you were talking about: important things.”

Galina’s untimely entrance put an end to the discussion, except for Alya telling her mother that she had learned several new words, and one of them was “discreetness.”

“It’s a good word to know, my dear Alya, and an even better one to put into practice,” Galina advised as she went to her room.

The child shook her head and ran off. Sasha sighed in relief, immensely glad she was not indiscreet.

A few minutes later, a loud click outside announced Viktor’s presence. He had made an appointment to see Galina and hoped that Sasha would excuse them while they talked.

“It’s about a memorial stone for my brother,” said Viktor.

Sasha started for the barn to find Alya. But he caught a glimpse of Goran and stopped at the photo lab. Goran had several wooden packing cases in which he was carefully loading his equipment.

“Are you moving?” asked a surprised Sasha.

“The rains have made the walls sweat and I see evidence of mold. So I plan to transfer the lab to Bogdan Dolin’s bungalow. He’s offered me a dry spot at the back of the house.”

“Do you plan to move in or will you continue to board with the Zeffins? She’s quite a storyteller,” said Sasha, hoping to dissuade Goran from leaving the Zeffins high and dry without a boarder.

“Oh, I have no intention of living elsewhere. It’s just the lab that I’m moving. But thank you for allowing me to use this space and disrupt the routine of your house. I have some good portraits of you and Galina and Alya. I’ll crop and frame them by May Day.”

“Can I give you a hand?”

“No thanks, I’ll be fine. I’ve even arranged for a car to transfer the cases.”

“A car?”

“My uncle.”

“Of course.”

They shook hands and Sasha continued into the barn. As expected, Alya was grooming her pony. Wordlessly, Sasha picked up a brush and joined her. After a temporary lull in the rain and a brief burst of sunshine, dark clouds moved in again. Several minutes had passed, and neither he nor Alya had spoken. He often felt that their silent times together were more affectionate than their spoken ones. Silence, he had concluded, speaks more fondly than words. Although it can serve ill, as when one person won’t speak to another owing to anger, it can also serve good, as when people are spellbound in the presence of some wondrous moment or thing; or when strong feelings render one mute. The examples were endless. Why, he asked himself, didn’t he write a treatise on the subject and root it in some historical event? Such a paper might advance his career. Too many teachers and academics with fruitful ideas never shared them in print. Why did so many in his profession find it hard to write? Their ideas, when spoken, often revealed first-rate minds, but their unwillingness to take up pen and paper argued . . . what? Lassitude? Indiscipline? A busy life? Fear of rejection? He had read enough scholarly papers in his young life to know that not all ideas or arguments were transcendent. Did self-doubts inhibit the profession?

“You’re not listening,” said Alya. “I just told you something.”

“Sorry, I was daydreaming.”

“Mamma tells me to pay attention and not go wool gathering.”

“She’s quite right. Now what were you saying?”

“The last time I hid in the closet I could hear Mamma snipping at Uncle Viktor. She told him to find another place to live.”

“Really?”

“Aren’t you glad?” She smiled devilishly. “I am.”

“I know what you mean.”

“She also was mad at him because of someone called C.C. Those were the letters she used, C.C.”

“And what did he say?”

“That he had been teasing.”

Sasha weighed the wisdom of asking what he wanted to know most. After a few false starts, he said, “Does the floor creak a lot? I mean the loose board. Does it sound as if I should fix the floor so the bed doesn’t fall through?”

Alya shrugged. She no longer had any interest in the subject.

Returning to the house, Sasha heard Viktor’s familiar click as he left. Asking Galina to join him for tea at the kitchen table, Sasha filled the kettle and waited for it to boil. Touching her hand, he slowly gave voice to his fears.

“I have a feeling—mind you, it’s only a feeling—that Viktor would like to see me replaced as director of the school.”

“Replaced by whom?”

The water boiled. As Galina mutely watched, Sasha filled their cups and spooned in generous portions of honey.

“By Olga or Vera.”

“You must be mad!”

“I can’t prove it, but I feel it.”

“Since when have you put so much reliance in feelings? You’re always advising your staff to think before acting.”

“I’m not acting on my feeling, I am simply sharing it with you to get your reaction.”

“Well, you have it. You’re letting your dislike of Viktor lead you astray.”

“You’re probably right,” he replied and slowly stirred his tea. Galina looked off into the distance and only occasionally let her eyes settle on Sasha.

“He’s a difficult man, I know, but he’s not a bad man. After the murders, we became very close.”

“Even closer than before?”

“What does that mean?”

“Galina,” he said, with as much sincerity as he could command, “I gather that before you’d been told that Petr had died, you and Viktor were lovers.”

She impaled him with her eyes, which began to tear. Without uttering a word, she left the table, entered her bedroom, and quietly closed the door. A minute later, Alya came bounding into the farmhouse. Sasha, with a bent finger, summoned her to his side and whispered that her mamma was ill and not to be disturbed. The child made no response. Sasha hugged her, slipped a few coins into her hand, and told her to buy some candy at the country store in Balyk. He even helped her into her raincoat and galoshes, and gave her his black umbrella. At the window, he watched as she opened it and splashed through some puddles. Her free spirit made him think that only a child’s resilience could save the world.

He waited several minutes before he knocked on Galina’s door. No response. He looked at his watch and told himself he would wait five minutes and then knock again. But Galina’s door slowly opened and she appeared red-faced and disheveled. Her tears were no longer in evidence, but her uncombed and wild hair bespoke her emotional state. She wordlessly made her way to the kitchen table, where she rejoined Sasha. He waited for her to speak first. When she did, it felt to Sasha as if an age had elapsed.

Galina said simply, “We were lovers once, yes, but now it is over.” She paused. “I told him about us, and said that I wanted to make a life with you.” With undisguised derision, she added, “Comrade Click or C.C., as he’s taken to calling himself, told me that he had found another.”

“Vera Chernikova.”

“Then you know.”

“I didn’t until you said C.C.”

“It’s all part of his cloak-and-dagger posturing,” she said in a tone of weary resignation. “That’s Viktor through and through.”

“And yet you don’t believe he wants to discredit me.”

“I do admit that he’s a capable slanderer. But once he’s achieved his end, which is usually to ruin some person or group, he moves on. Most likely, he would like to see Vera Chernikova take over.” Pause. “What he sees in that string bean is anybody’s guess.”

That night Sasha and Galina made love. But this time it was different from anything they’d ever experienced. The sexual heat was there, as well as the gentleness, but in addition there was a genuine affection. In the morning, Sasha had the strange sensation that he was married, and that everything between him and Galina was understood. They were no longer tense, and they behaved as if they had been relieved of some burden. An unfortunate side effect was that Sasha now felt fiercely protective of Galina and became aggressively jealous if some man even paid her an innocent compliment. His chemical reaction was similar to the day of the murders. He acted instinctively, a throwback to primitive hominids.

With Viktor out of the farmhouse and Goran’s photo lab now removed, Sasha, Galina, and Alya fell into a domestic rhythm that pleased them all. Even the weather seemed to shine on them. The rains abated, the sun shone, Alya rode Scout in the paddock and along a short trail that circled the farmhouse, and birdsong and blossoms were a harbinger of spring. Among the religious farmers, preparations began in earnest to celebrate Easter, which Father Zossima would celebrate in some hidden cellar. The Three Musketeers, as Sasha called Bogdan, Viktor, and Goran, seemed to spend most of their time in the walled bungalow. Did they present a danger? Avram, whom Sasha still visited and watched, was the person who could best advise him. When Sasha knocked and identified himself, Avram shouted that the door was unlocked. A cigarette dangled from his mouth, and a writing board rested on his lap. He was putting away writing materials, and papers peeked out of a black leather folder. Sasha quickly came to the point, and Avram prophesied that no good would come from the Three Musketeers.

“Men with grievances feed on filth,” he warned.

“Tell me about Vera Chernikova.”

A wry smile suffused Avram’s face. He clearly knew a great deal about the chemistry teacher. “So you think she and Viktor . . .”

“I do.”

“She has an engine.”

“How so?”

Brodsky explained that Vera had prospered under the Soviets. A good student from a poor family, she was given a college scholarship and showed great promise as a chemist. She came to teaching late, after working in a lab trying to increase plant growth. She knew that the genes regulating growth were found in the cell walls of plants, but she could never gain enough knowledge to manipulate them. She had hoped to win a state prize, like the Order of Lenin or the Red Banner of Labor, but the only prize she won was a teaching position at the Michael School.

“As you know,” Brodsky mused, “she’s an attractive woman, albeit a skinny one with an unduly small head perched on a thin stem of neck. Men are drawn to her. Glinski liked her. So did one or two others.”

“It appears that Viktor fancies her.”

“She’s no fool, and once she gets the bit in her mouth, she never lets go. I warn you, she’s relentless.”

“Relentless is one thing, ruthless another. Which is it?”

“Definitely the first and occasionally the second.”

“If she wanted the directorship . . .”

“I’d watch my back. I suspect she was one of the teachers who denounced me, and when she was passed over for the directorship, I know for a fact she was outraged. Before you arrived, she was sharpening her knife.”

That evening, after school hours, Sasha pulled Vera’s files. They confirmed Brodsky’s word. She came from a background of want. Her father had worked in the shipyards at Archangel until an industrial accident left him lame. Her mother took in sewing. Two brothers never returned from the Great War, and a sister died of diphtheria. On graduating from a technical college, Vera had been assigned to an agro-factory, dedicated to increasing food output through fertilizers and plant mutation. The cellular walls of plants proved her undoing. She could not crack the genetic code, though she tried every conceivable means to tease it out. Had she not made exaggerated claims, she might have remained at the factory lab, but when her work could not be duplicated, she was pointed toward the Michael School. In her estimation, teaching was a demotion, and she, like the last leaf of fall, hung on, using the school lab to continue her research, until she finally admitted defeat. To sweeten the bitter pill of secondary teaching, she apparently hoped to rise to the role of director.

“I know you say she’s relentless,” Sasha said at his next encounter with Avram, “but she’s not young any
more.”

“With an admirer as a goad, she’s twenty again.”

The two men were drinking apple-flavored vodka. “I know what you’re going to say next,” Sasha replied with a wave of his hand. “I should denounce her.”

“You can be sure that if she hasn’t already, she’ll denounce you by Easter or May Day. It’s a Russian tradition to enliven those holidays.”

Brodsky’s grim irony was not lost on Sasha.

“I’d prefer a colorful Easter egg or
kulich
or
pashka
.”

“For May Day,” Avram added, “the locals will put together a ragtag march waving red banners and photographs of Stalin. They’ll congregate in the town square and sing patriotic songs. It’s not Red Square, with the Boss and his cronies standing atop the Lenin Mausoleum, but it’s the best that Balyk can do.”

Fearing the worst, Sasha asked whether Vera might be working for the secret police.

Avram’s sardonic reply was unhelpful. “Why not? All of Russia reports to the police.”