Last Call for Blackford Oakes (3 page)

What work had he done before he was conscripted?

His face brightened sharply. “I served at the Bistro By-talso. Through the kindness of the great gentleman who played the accordion for the guests, I was myself learning to play. He would stay on after midnight with me for a half hour. I would slip him vodka and some beer—nobody ever noticed the next day—and he would teach me some tunes and show me the chords on the fingerboard.” Lutz held up his right hand. “If I had two fingers back maybe I could show you how to use them—I mean, how the fingers call up the chords.”

Ursina said that nothing would give her more pleasure than to learn something about accordions. “My father hired an accordionist to play on his fiftieth birthday, but the trouble was, he started playing some czarist music.”

Lutz looked over at the patient on his right, his bed eight inches removed. “That would not do,” he whispered, his smile brighter than ever.

“Though I guess,” Ursina smiled coquettishly, “you are not likely to grow back two fingers, Lutz.”

“No,” he said. “But I won't be hungry again, so why complain? And you—you are very young, I can see that, but you are already a skilled nurse. I wish you would look after me always, Miss Ursina.”

“I promise, I will,” she told him, leaning over to stroke the white hairs left on his head, and moving on to visit other patients, most of whom eagerly awaited their turn with “Babushka Nightingale.” That was what the legless lieutenant who had studied at the university dubbed her one day, explaining to the wounded man on his right why he called her that, and leaving it for him to pass the word, until many of them were calling her Babushka Nakteengill.

Ursina knew that her uncle, Dr. Roman Eskimov, was soon to retire from his work in the urology department of the Moscow University Medical School. Neither she nor her mother knew what this would do to her aunt and uncle's living arrangements. A few weeks before Dr. Eskimov's retirement, he was informed by the Citizens' Housing Authority that he and his wife, being childless, would have to take leave of their two-bedroom apartment, spacious quarters to which he would no longer be entitled once he left his employment at the university. The alternative to moving to a smaller apartment was to take in an approved tenant. Dr. Eskimov filed an application on behalf of his sister-in-law, Simona Chadinov.

The letter Simona received from her sister one Saturday morning was full of news. The application to the housing officials had been approved; the two sisters would soon be reunited. And Uncle Roman had secured a place for Ursina to study in the urology department of the medical school to which he had been attached for forty-five years.

Ursina did not go to Ward 14 to say goodbye. She would not say goodbye to Lutz, because she knew she would cry, and she reasoned that to do such a thing would only add to his pains. She thought to consult with her mother about it, but decided against even doing that, because she knew that tears would flow from the mere telling of her problem of leaving her afflicted friends. They would all be dead soon, was the only comfort she could take.

CHAPTER 4

Ursina Chadinov lived for two years with her mother and the Eskimovs, then moved to the university dormitory. At age twenty-four she was granted her medical degree and took up her work at the university hospital. As her career progressed, she applied for an apartment. After the usual delay, she was assigned to one on Pozharsky Street, to be shared with another young woman, Rufina Pukhov, an economist and editor. Rufina, two years Ursina's junior, was trim and efficient in manner and in life. She and Ursina became fast friends, and genial sparring partners.

Rufina was nearly thirty-eight when she met and fell in love with an Englishman living in Moscow. Now, a year later, they had finally received the necessary permission to marry. Rufina would soon be leaving her roommate.

“You have never told me, Ursina, why you prefer to read books in English.” They were having tea, late in the afternoon, before going together to the ballet.

“Rufina, dear, there are lots of things I haven't told you. For instance, I am not going to give you the details on the patients I treated this morning.”

“I don't want any such details. Well, maybe I would like to hear about some of them. Have they discovered a cure for erectile dysfunction?”

“Yes, but they won't publish it.”

“Why?”

“The Cold War. Why do you ask?”

“What does erectile dysfunction have to do with the Cold War?”

“Ah, Rufina, you are so naïve.”

“Me? I remind you I am affiliated with the Central Economics and Mathematics Institute.”

“What do they know about the effects of erectile dysfunction?”

Rufina looked pained. She often did when conversing with Ursina. “The Institute is engaged in important research projects that touch down very heavily on the behavior of the bourgeois world.”

“Does your Institute predict the birth rate in the enemy nations?”

“Of course.”

“Well, can you not figure it out? The birth rate, which is a national concern, is influenced by erectile health.”

Rufina decided not to play along. Ursina liked to tease, but she could carry it on longer than Rufina, sometimes, was inclined to do. So, “Never mind, Ursina, never mind. Are all your patients men?”

“Most of them. I have some female patients.”

“What is
their
trouble?”

“Their lovers' erectile dysfunctions.”

“Oh shut up, Ursina. I don't think I will encourage you to meet my fiancé. He is too delicate.”

Ursina laughed. “Too delicate to do what? To work?”

“He does not … work, in the sense you are using the word. He does teach one seminar. Apart from that he is, well, retired.”

“Retired from what? From work?”

“You have a way of twisting things around. Anyway, Andrei Fyodorovich doesn't talk about his former work.”

“Oh, he too was a urologist?”

Rufina noisily closed her book. “Get back to the question I asked you. Why do you like reading in English?”

“Because Mark Twain does not read convincingly in Russian.”

“Why not?”

“‘Dey's two gals flyin' 'bout you in yo' life. One uv 'em's light en t'other one is dark. One is rich en t'other is po'. You's gwyne to marry de po' one fust en de rich one by en by.' Is that enough for you, Rufina? Or shall I read more from
Tom Sawyer?
”

Rufina raised her hand in surrender. “Surely some Russian has tried translating Twain?”

“Yes. Dina Volokhonsky tried, and she failed. Maybe your Andrei will try his hand at translating Mark Twain?”

“I know of course that Mark Twain was an eloquent historian of the depravity of the American South.” Rufina, the economist, thought something serious and productive should be said in this conversation with Ursina.

“Uh-huh.”

“That is correct, isn't it?”

“No.”

“How is it incorrect?”

“Mark Twain simply recorded what life was like. He was a portraitist, not an ideologue.”

“Artists, we are amply informed, need to serve the truth.”

“Mark Twain did that.”

“How?”

“He spoke about young Negro Americans, and all of America listened, and learned.”

“You can hardly say that. Mark Twain was when?”

“1835 to 1910.”

“They did not have civil rights until … until they felt the pressure from us to treat people equally.”

“Yes. Yes. They learned about human equality from Josef Stalin.”

“Ursina!”

“Just teasing. Can your fiancé read American English? Or just English English?”

Rufina paused. “Yes. Yes, he knows American quite well.”

“Well, ask him, dear. Ask him about Mark Twain.”

“You ask him, dear. Andrei is very approachable.”

CHAPTER 5

Ursina Chadinov looked down lasciviously at the telephone. A private telephone! After years of having to walk downstairs to the building concierge to make a call, or receive a call. “If that phone wanted to make love to me,” she said to Rufina the first time she used it, “I would happily cooperate.”

Rufina was also pleased. She felt herself entitled to a private phone, as an employee of the Economics Institute, but gave credit to Ursina for prevailing over the Soviet bureaucracy. “There are perquisites in being named professor of urology at the University of Moscow, on top of having published a book on urological research,” Rufina acknowledged, fondling the telephone.

“Yes, dear Rufina. And one of those perquisites is the party you are giving for me on Wednesday. I am really looking forward to it.”

“It's hardly a party. There'll be just six of us at dinner.”

“I prefer to think of it as a party. And I will get to meet your mysterious fiancé, Andrei Fyodorovich Martins.”

“Of course. Only please, Ursina, don't start teasing Andrei about his past. It's this simple: He does not talk about it.

“Now, we've invited two students he's especially taken with in his senior seminar. They are the Gromovs, Maxsim—Maks—and Irina. They are very attractive, and, by the way, you can speak with them in English—they are thoroughly schooled.”

“Does Andrei Fyodorovich lecture to his seminar in English?”

“Yes, it is a part of the school discipline.”

“What exactly does he teach, in his senior seminar?”

“That is another forbidden topic.”

“I understand. Anyway, I'm to talk to Andrei in English. That is a part of
his
discipline.”

“When he and I are alone together we use both languages. My English is quite advanced, as you well know. In fact, you have my permission to converse with me in English from now on, Ursina, if you wish.”

“Can I use the language of Mark Twain?”

“Or switch back to the language of Aleksandr Pushkin. Suit yourself.”

“What can I bring to the party?”

“Bring along a sedative, Ursina, something that will keep you non-argumentative for a couple of hours. Urologists use sedatives, don't they?”

“They certainly do when I am operating on them.”

Ursina would bring, as her guest, Vladimir Kirov, a senior professor in the urology department. He had studied under Ursina's uncle and had in turn taught Ursina at the medical school. She knew him as teacher, colleague, and devoted friend.

Kirov happily pursued studies in non-medical fields and was now taking courses in English literature at the university. He had introduced Ursina to works by Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and Malcolm Muggeridge. “The first two are Roman Catholics, but even so, they write very well. Muggeridge was once an admirer of the Soviet Union, though he turned against us. But he is a very witty writer. Evelyn Waugh is a critic of manners, and Graham Greene writes mostly about the soul.”

“The what?”

“The soul. If you said ‘the soul of man,' you'd be talking about the noncorporeal side of man.”

“You don't have to explain that, Volodya. For instance, you could say, ‘Lenin caught the soul of Marxism,' couldn't you?”

Kirov chuckled, and confirmed the time of the party on Wednesday. “I'll come by in a cab at 1930.”

Ursina had only once before visited Andrei's flat, shown it by Rufina one afternoon when he was away. Ursina had described it to Kirov. “It is on Uspensky Street, just off Pushkin Square. From the apartment there is a view to the west, east, and south. Rufina tells me that at sunset you can watch, from the kitchen window, the sunlight sliding down the spire of one of those hideous Stalin skyscrapers.”

The one-legged doorman admitted them, and they walked up the narrow staircase adorned with colored prints of work by modern Russian artists.

Rufina was smart looking in early middle age. She wore a jabot blouse, a red rose pinned to one side, and greeted them at the door. They followed her to the little salon, which seemed at first to be simply a burgeoning library. And indeed it served as such—as a study for Andrei—and also as a makeshift dining room.

The dining table was covered with a white tablecloth. Two candles flanked a photograph of Ursina and Rufina, taken the day they both moved into the apartment on Pozharsky Street. Spread on the table were drinking glasses, what seemed a glass manufacturing company's total output. Ursina, teasingly, began to count them. “Rufina, did the czar lay on more glasses than you have done, at a party for, oh, a friendly count? Liqueur glasses, wine glasses, water glasses—Andrei, are Dr. Kirov and I, as practicing urologists, required also to drink water?”

Andrei, thirty-seven years older than his fiancée, his hair thick but completely gray, his shoulders square, was seated in an easy chair, a book open on his lap. He looked up, taking pains to participate in Ursina's jocular opening. “Ah, professor. Tell me. Is water a strain on the … system?”

Rufina stepped into the exchange. She said testily, “Too much vodka, Andrei Fyodorovich, is
certainly
a strain on the system. And you are not to use the wine glasses when pouring out vodka, or”—she laughed—“you will damage not only the body but also the Marxist cause. You will remember, I hope, that Comrade Khrushchev cautioned many years ago against the excessive use of vodka?”

“Yes, Rufina,” Andrei stretched out his hand as he might have done to silence a student exhibiting his ignorance, “but he was talking about the peasantry. It is they who drink too much.”

The hearty knock on the door interrupted the banter. Rufina went to the door and brought in the Gromovs.

Andrei rose from his easy chair. Those fat folk, Ursina thought, will need to enter the room one at a time. And, true, Maksim Gromov's girth was enormous, his wife's torso equally so. “Ah, Maksim, Irina, how nice to welcome you other than in a classroom setting. Have a drink of vodka before Rufina consumes it all.”