The Big Green Tent (18 page)

The bed, with all its whimsical splendor, made a strong impression; but it didn't get in the way of business—his grandson Konstantin was born exactly ten lunar months after the wedding day.

But the general, after that first visit to the antiques store, had begun frequenting it. To the surprise of Antonina Naumovna, he gradually started exchanging their sturdy, Stalin-era furniture for intricate, inspired pieces of ancient vintage that he would refurbish himself.

Afanasy Mikhailovich was older than his wife by ten years. She had long begun to sense the approach of old age in him, and she viewed this new passion of his as an old man's eccentricity—albeit a fairly harmless one. He fitted out a workshop for himself at the dacha, and puttered around in it happily; meanwhile, his military bravura and political acumen, which his wife had always admired, diminished by the day.

Antonina Naumovna was not particularly thrilled about the birth of a child so early in the marriage. Olga was not yet nineteen when they brought the bundle, wrapped up in a blue silk receiving blanket tied with a blue ribbon, home with them from the maternity hospital. The little bundle turned out to be exemplary, just like its parents: it ate, slept, and pooped like clockwork, made everyone smile, and permitted Olga to continue her literary studies without even taking maternity leave until the child learned to walk.

Faina Ivanovna, who had worked in the family since the war ended and had raised Olga from infancy, had planned to leave after the birth of the child—to work for another family of only two people, who had long been courting her, and where there would be less work—but the baby, Kostya, so captured her heart that she stayed with him until her own death.

Toward the end of her university studies, in which Olga excelled, something happened that would shatter the family's world. Olga, herself so pure and good, had succumbed to a degenerate influence at the university. One of her teachers, secretly anti-Soviet and an enemy, it went without saying, of the people, was arrested for libel published abroad. Olga and some fellow students, misguided fools, signed a letter in his defense.

As a consequence, she and the other signees were kicked out of the university. Antonina Naumovna repented of ever having sent her daughter to the university, but it was already too late. If he had known that her venerable education would turn out this way, Olga's courageous and manly father would doubtless have quoted, if only loosely: “Who increases his knowledge, increases his sorrows.” He didn't know Ecclesiastes, however, and for that reason, when the pernicious influence of a university education affected his daughter so dramatically, he told his wife with bitterness:

“This is what all your university nonsense leads to. I told you that we should live more simply, closer to the people. The girl's brains have been warped … if we had enrolled her in an engineering school, she wouldn't have picked up any of that rot … they would have left the girl alone.”

And Afanasy Mikhailovich was most likely right about this. From time immemorial, the university had been a source of intellectual ferment, and the general condemned this not out of his sense of duty to the Party, but from personal conviction.

“Everyone is such a know-it-all,” he said angrily, each time he was faced with something he didn't understand. And he was more and more baffled by his own daughter. She spoke about even the simplest of matters in such a way that it sounded like nonsense, just to confuse him, it seemed. His son-in-law, to give him credit, did not share Olga's views. They quarreled now and then—about politics, since there was nothing else to complain about. They had everything they could possibly need: a nanny, a country house, grocery delivery service … and yet the situation got so bad that Vova slammed the door behind him one day, and left to go live with his parents.

If Olga had listened to her parents, if she had repented at the university meeting, cried, and signed a recantation, which is what they had demanded, her expulsion could have been avoided. However, as we know, she had been raised to be honest and principled—her parents had instilled this in her since childhood—and for this reason she refused outright to repent, to admit her mistakes, and to denounce that scum of a teacher, who was also her thesis adviser.

The teacher was arrested at the beginning of September, and Olga was summoned for the first interrogation at the end of the month. The honest girl told the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. What else could she have done? Her truth consisted in the fact that the teacher was, indeed, an outstanding scholar; that he was critical of many aspects of Soviet life, and his criticism was warranted; and that she, as his student, fully shared his views on literature and life.

Her testimony did no great harm to the arrested man, but her parents paid dearly for their daughter's mistakes. Afanasy Mikhailovich was summoned to a secret place for a very serious conversation, where they put the screws on him (figuratively speaking). Soon afterward, he submitted his resignation and moved to the dacha. In his heart of hearts, he even felt glad about the changes. He liked living outside of town, where he could carry on the tradition of his family craft. While he nursed a quiet hurt and resentment toward his daughter, he didn't allow his domestic troubles to poison his mood or elevate his blood pressure. What's more, he had another diversion.

Antonina Naumovna, on the other hand, struck a preemptive blow. Even before the higher-ups could get together to shake their collective fingers at her for the way she had raised her child, she managed to publish a vicious article about the former teacher's libelous book, and offered to testify as a citizen prosecutor at the trial of the miscreant. After this, her relationship with her daughter foundered once and for all.

Olga felt like a stranger in her own home. She never told anyone anything about herself; she came and went, sometimes taking Kostya out for a walk, sometimes disappearing altogether for a day or two. In February the trial of the teacher and his friend, also a frustrated writer, who had sent their manuscripts to the West for publication, got under way.

Olga would go to the Krasnopresnensky District Courthouse to assume her place in the crowd of young men and women, whose faces all bore intelligent and daring expressions. They all seemed to know one another. Sometimes someone would take a bottle out of his briefcase, or a flask out of his pocket, and pass it around. At these moments Olga felt lonely and unhappy: they never offered it to her. One day, when she stepped into an eatery next to the courthouse, more for the warmth than from hunger, she found herself at a table with this group of people. They accepted her as one of their own when she told them that the accused was her teacher and adviser, and that she had been kicked out of the university because of it.

A tall young man whom she had noticed before in the crowd—because, despite the bitter frost, his head was bare and his curls were dusted with snow, and he pulled out a camera now and then, and thrust pieces of paper at someone occasionally, and had once been packed into a paddy wagon and taken away right in front of their eyes—this very same young man handed her a glass of vodka directly underneath a warning sign that said bringing in and drinking alcoholic beverages on the premises was strictly forbidden. She drank almost half the glass.

And happiness arrived at that very moment. Happiness smelled like overcooked dumplings and damp fur coats and hats, with a slight tinge of chlorine and a whiff of stale alcohol. It smelled of danger and daring; and Olga felt that the group of sympathizers with the accused had finally accepted her. The feeling reminded her of the collective childhood joy of Young Pioneer gatherings, sparks floating above a campfire under electric blue skies, Komsomol trips to harvest potatoes, and singing songs there and back on the commuter train. Only it was clear that all she had experienced in her childhood had just been a substitute, a prelude, to this genuine unity of intelligent, serious, and courageous people. They looked like true comrades, and they clapped one another on the shoulders, sometimes exploding with laughter, but more often whispering something in secret. The most attractive person at the table was the tall, curly-haired one. They called him Ilya. He was also the one in charge of the vodka.

And so it happened that Olga's family continued to live its former life, and Olga found herself in a completely new one. The trial ended, the anti-Soviets received the prison sentences they had earned and were sent off to serve their terms. And the group of people that had gathered in the courtyard of the Krasnopresnensky District Courthouse grew even closer.

The word
dissident
had still not entered the Russian language, and the term “men of the sixties” was still associated only with the followers of Chernyshevsky in the previous century; but inside astute and reflective minds, thoughts—quiet as worms and dangerous as spirochetes—were taking shape. Ilya expounded on them to Olga in a form she could grasp during the intervals between their embraces, which took place in the room on Arkhipov Street. This was where Ilya had lived with his mother before he had gotten married; and even afterward, he never completely moved out. He took Olga there from time to time, only during the early hours of the day, as his mother worked as a kindergarten nurse from eight to three.

Ilya had known the imprisoned teacher well. He knew almost all the people who had gathered in front of the court. Moreover, he knew everything there was to know, period; and especially what was written in the fine print. He even created the impression that the smaller the print, the more interesting it was for him. He was especially knowledgeable about what was left out of college textbooks. He gleaned his information from the libraries where he buried himself during his school years and after. To Olga's great surprise, the erudite Ilya did not even have a college degree. He had graduated from high school, but hadn't wanted to work for the government; and to avoid being persecuted by the state for “parasitism,” he began to work as a secretary for some professor (a job that existed only on paper).

Olga and Ilya's romance unfolded for the most on foot, during strolls through the sacred sites of Moscow's literary past, which Ilya knew well. He would stop in front of a crooked little house with a lopsided porch and tell her: “This house survived the great fire of 1812. Vyazemsky used to frequent it … And here, Mandelstam stayed, with his brother … Bulgakov's wife, Elena Sergeevna, use to stop by this pharmacy to get medicines for her husband…”

But the subject he knew most about was the Futurists, and the whole Russian avant-garde. He used to spend hours at the counters of antiquarian booksellers, where he also knew everyone, and they knew him, paging through thin volumes printed on damp gray paper. Sometimes he bought them, sometimes he would only smack his lips in delight. Once he made Olga run home to borrow a hundred rubles from her parents so he could buy a rare edition of Khlebnikov.

Thus the year passed, and they continued to stroll through the streets and lanes, drinking with friends of Ilya's, all of whom were special, like a select group: one a music historian, another a jockey, a third a park ranger whom they went to visit on the Oka River, and yet another, a real Orthodox priest. The sweetest one was a redheaded teacher of deaf-and-dumb children. Olga had never realized how many interesting people there were in the world, and how different they were from one another, all of them with their distinctive philosophies and religions. There was even a Buddhist! Olga read books, and it was like getting a second university education, but much more interesting; and the books Ilya gave her to read were either antique or had been smuggled in from abroad. Once he even asked Olga to translate a book from French—a Catholic book, about miracles at Lourdes.

They were so happy together that Olga found it hard to believe he had a wife somewhere, to whom he would return late in the evening. Then something changed in his family life. He went to see his wife in Timiryazevka less and less often, until he finally moved back into his mother's communal apartment for good. He introduced Olga to the quiet Maria Fedorovna.

The more distant Olga grew from her parents, the closer Vova grew to them. He would visit on Sundays, and Faina Ivanovna, the nanny, would deliver his son, all dressed to go out and play, into his safekeeping. They would spend the afternoon together, then return in time for dinner. Vova fed his son himself, put him to bed, and then had a meal with his parents-in-law. They pressed him to stay for the meal each time, and each time he made as if to refuse, wanting them to know that he didn't visit because of the special (though not extravagant) Sunday meal; and it wasn't Faina Ivanovna's plump, undersalted pies that kept him coming week after week, but family.

Olga was absent on Sundays, and they usually didn't mention her. She was a sore spot for all of them, and they shared the same sense of injury, bewilderment, and inexplicable betrayal. The abandoned husband also suffered from a young man's wounded pride. To his honor, it must be said that he only took his first lover two years after their separation, when Olga demanded a divorce. Until that moment he had felt himself to be a married man, away on an exceedingly long business trip. He maintained a senseless fidelity and paid forty rubles in alimony each month, which no one had asked him for. He kept thinking that Olga would come to her senses and they would pick up their married life where they had left off, when their conjugal life had faltered …

When she found out that Olga had filed for divorce, Antonina Naumovna fell into a quiet rage. But she knew how to restrain herself; her passion seethed in the deepest part of her. The more she restrained herself, the tighter her jaw clamped shut, and the more her pale eyes seemed to bulge in their sockets. She didn't say a word to Olga, and she didn't let off steam at home; she knew how to unleash her fury at the editorial office. Her subordinates quaked: one of them resigned from fright, and the secretary, who was devoted to Antonina Naumovna heart and soul, suffered a ministroke.