The Big Green Tent (26 page)

 

KING ARTHUR'S WEDDING

Even as a child, Olga had known that people were reassuringly predictable. She already knew beforehand what her girlfriend, her teacher, or her mother would say. Her mother in particular. Very early on, Antonina Naumovna began schooling her daughter in the rare virtue of sacrificing one's own interests for those of society. The girl seemed to have had an innate sense of justice. When one of the children came out to play bearing a precious piece of bread and butter sprinkled with sugar, Olga was the one (and the only one) entrusted with the task of doling it out among all the mouths present in the courtyard. If the piece of bread was misshapen and hard to divide into even pieces, only Olga knew how to add a piece here, and take away a piece there, so that everyone got the same amount. She didn't know what bread rations were—she had been born at the end of the war—much less labor camp rations. But the instinct for them was bred in the bone.

Antonina Naumovna admired her belated offspring—she was made of the right stuff! She had inherited all her parents' good qualities. From her mother: integrity and firmness of character. From her father: kindheartedness and good looks, with fair skin and hair. The Greek strain, the black hair and prominent nose from her mother's side of the family, was nowhere in evidence. Nor did she exhibit any of Afanasy Mikhailovich's fleshiness, a trait that had been noticeable in him since childhood.

During Olga's childhood, Antonina Naumovna was the editor in chief of a magazine for youth, and she put her pedagogical and child-rearing theories into practice in her own life, with her own daughter. Her observations and experiences, in turn, became fodder for her articles. After watching her little one at play in the sandbox—pouring water on the sand and building a clumsy sandcastle—she even resorted to artistic imagery: the sand represented disparate individual personalities, and water was the ideology that served to mix and knead the dough. Out of this substance a great building was created. She used this metaphor in both her editorials and her reports. Her speeches were always distinguished by their imagery, especially when she had occasion to speak at official Party events. She had studied at the Literary Institute, which was a rarity in such circles. The writers were unimpressed; they all had a way with words. She had other means at her disposal for them. But in Party circles she was regarded as having a golden tongue.

Still, Antonina Naumovna had never felt as comfortable in the collective as her daughter. With her hand on her heart, Antonina Naumovna had to admit: they envied her! However sad she was to have to acknowledge it, there were still petty people who were jealous of her position, her authority, and the respect she commanded among the higher-ups.

But Olga, as a small child, had always enjoyed the collective experience. The collective of children was healthier, Antonina Naumovna mistakenly concluded. But that had nothing to do with it. In fact, Olga was a born leader, and knew how to use her gifts without being aware of it herself. She employed them without any coercion on her part, and both girls and boys were prepared to go to the ends of the earth for her. Pretty, good-natured, and endowed with cheerful vivacity, she always had a string of girlfriends trailing in her wake. She liked joining in the main current of activity, sometimes heading it up; she liked the feeling of togetherness and unity, which reached its apotheosis during the annual May Day celebrations.

One day her mother had taken her daughter to witness the parade from the guest viewing balcony of Lenin's Mausoleum. Olga was entranced by the spectacle from the very first moment, but she later remarked:

“Yes, it was really great! But when you're walking together with everyone else, it's better still.”

Oh, the sweet sense of togetherness and unity! The equality and interchangeability of grains of sand, their ability to blend into a single, powerful current that sweeps away everything in its path! And the joy of being a tiny particle in it. Beloved Mayakovsky! Beloved Vladimir Vladimirovich!

But Ilya had opened her eyes. Everything that Olga knew, he knew otherwise. The early Mayakovsky was the most valuable part of Ilya's collection. On fragile yellow newsprint, crumbling, ancient, fiery Mayakovsky … And Ilya had told her so much that she never learned from her textbooks! The Mouthpiece of the Revolution—with his fear of infection, his childish braggadocio, his lifelong love of a woman involved with the secret police—he was far more intriguing and complex than Olga, or millions of her compatriots and peers, had ever imagined. But Ilya himself was most interesting of all. When she was with him, everything seemed different, extraordinary—even the weather seemed unprecedented. And his photographs! Rain, for instance: trees viewed through a window, distorted through the traces of drops along the glass, a fur collar with beads of water stranded in it … a puddle, in the middle of which is a newspaper, with the word
Communist
sinking under the watery surface.

Before Ilya, Olga was completely unaware of how many interesting people there were living on the earth, how different they all were, with their various philosophies and religions. During her entire life, Olga had met only one absolutely remarkable person, perhaps even a genius. This was the university teacher, her academic adviser, an underground writer who published his books abroad, on whose account she was expelled from the university. Everyone who surrounded Ilya was remarkable, however. Not every person was a writer, of course; but each of them was an outstanding personality with eccentric interests, rare knowledge, or expertise in every imaginable and unimaginable field, and all of it absolutely superfluous to ordinary life.

There was an older woman with kimberlite pipe diamonds, a lame expert in nonexistent (banned) forms of theater, an artist from the outskirts of town who painted garbage dumps and fences, a scholar on UFOs, an astrologer, and a Tibetan translator … and all of them, except the woman with the diamonds, worked as security guards, elevator operators, truckers, fictitious research assistants, were spongers living off their wives or mothers, creative layabouts who never lifted a finger, parasites, pariahs, and outcasts, all of them equally dangerous and fascinating. It was never completely clear whether they refused to work for the state, or the state refused to have anything to do with them.

The first of these people Ilya took Olga to meet was Artur Korolev (Arthur Kingsley, in English—hence his nickname: King Arthur). He was a retired sailor. He lived in Tarasovka in a large, dilapidated old house with a wood-burning stove, a well by the gate, and an old wooden outhouse in the far corner of the property. The gate was affixed with a rusty lock, and Ilya had to knock for a long time on the metal sheeting that backed the gate and propped it up. At last Artur appeared on the porch—an enormous bald man in an officer's black uniform jacket. He sauntered leisurely up to the gate with a sailor's rolling gait and flipped a latch with one of his fingers. It swung open easily. He thrust his giant hand, which resembled a shovel, at Ilya. His fingers were like large carrots, and they were rosy yellow, as though they had just been hard at work in a laundry tub. Olga had never in her life seen such a person. She peered at him closely—and saw something that took her aback: he had no eyebrows. He was florid, like a peasant; even his bald head was sunburned. His voice was a booming bass, stentorian—but he laughed softly, as though the sound came from another body. He didn't give Olga a second glance after they were introduced. He hadn't even told her his name. Olga was flustered: what a boor! And he was a former naval officer, too!

The host led the way up to the house. She noticed he was wearing flip-flops—in the snow! What an oddball. And the house was par for the course: dusty, full of clutter. They stood by the door and heard rustling all around them: the fire in the big peasant stove, mice between the walls, old books piled up everywhere in small hillocks, bales, and bundles. There were books on the floor, on the table, and on the workbench, which stood right inside the room.

Ilya shrugged off his big camping backpack and took out a bottle of vodka. The host sat down in an armchair with patched armrests, and looked at the bottle disapprovingly. Ilya caught his glance.

“Your highness, you don't have to drink it if you don't want to.”

The King snorted:

“Well, what are we going to do with it, then? Go set the table, beautiful. The silverware is out there. Everything you need. I'm the first to admit that I don't like domestic chores.”

Olga gasped with indignation. Of all the nerve! What impudence! “Beautiful”! What next, “sweetheart”?

She shot Ilya a look of fury, but he seemed to be either laughing or just winking at her.

Unable to elicit the sympathy she was seeking, Olga smiled, flashing her famous dimples. Looking directly at the King, she said simply:

“I'm the first to admit I don't like domestic chores, either. Especially in someone else's house.”

“Got it,” the host said with a nod, and walked out to get the tableware. It was all very natural.

“Touché, Olga!” Ilya whispered. And Olga felt a rush of happiness, pride, and vindication.

King Arthur brought back a black pot, three stacked bowls that served as a cover, and on top of them, in a mound like a pyramid, a large pickle, a loaf of roughly sliced bread, and three shot glasses. The forks jangled in the pocket of his jacket. He moved with the slow grace and precision of an athlete or a dancer—small objects stuck to his hands like magnets. Nothing lost its balance and fell; everything stood upright, as though anchored to the spot on which he had placed it. He fished around in his pocket and pulled out an onion and a large clasp knife. He cut off the end, then sliced it into quarters, not bothering to peel off the skin. The onion lay in the middle of a wooden cutting board, its insides exposed, arranged like the petals of a white water lily. He put a plate in front of each of them—the pot contained potatoes, still in their jackets and steaming hot. He reached behind him without looking, then swung his long arm back around and placed a silver salt bowl in the shape of a swan on the table. Everything was just as it should be. Happiness was spreading inside Olga like yeast; she felt she was rising like leavened dough.

“Well, open it,” Artur said gently to Ilya, who tore off the tin cap from the greenish bottle.

Ah, that's why they call vodka the “green wine”—the flasks are green
, Olga mused.

Olga covered her glass with her palm.

“No thank you. I don't want vodka.”

“Cognac?” the host asked.

“No thank you. Not in the middle of the day.”

He nodded.

He cut the pickle into thin slices, took a potato and stripped its jacket off, and then cut it into pieces, too. He and Ilya drank. Pinching the salt from the small bowl with his fingertips, he salted the pieces and ate them with his hands; but his mannerisms seemed elegant, even aristocratic.

“How's Lisa?” Ilya asked. He had already told Olga on the way there that Artur's lovely wife had recently left him.

“She's still around. She came by a few days ago.”

“Is she begging you to take her back?”

“No, Ilya, she's not coming back. But she can't stay away, either. She filed for a divorce, she's planning to marry someone else—but she doesn't have the guts to leave. We'll see what happens. We've been together for fifteen years. She wants to get out of the country, to go abroad. She found herself a Finn.”

“Really? I thought there was some guy from Iraq.”

“There was. He was loaded. But she got rid of him. Said that a European woman like herself couldn't survive in the Middle East. The Finn is from Lapland. Lisa's used to the cold—she grew up in the Far East. She actually had her heart set on Italy, but no Italians have turned up.”

Olga sat wide-eyed listening to their conversation. What kind of girl was this, who had her pick of foreigners? Was she some sort of prostitute? She would have to ask Ilya about it later.

Afterward they drank tea. Artur brewed it slowly, enacting a ceremonial ritual around the teapot. The teapot was, it must be said, unlike anything she had ever seen. It was made of enameled metal and adorned with dragons and tongues of blue flame.

“Chinese,” King Arthur said tenderly, stroking its convex flank. He caressed it with his eyes just as tenderly, like a man caressing a woman. “I bought it in Singapore. A real beauty!”

That's what Ilya had told her—that Artur had worked on a merchant marine vessel and had sailed all the oceans and seas. Olga's eyes were already growing used to this unusual fellow. She liked him more and more. Although, upon closer inspection, his hairlessness had something strange about it—as though no hair had ever grown upon his head, or on his childishly soft face. And something else—his hands trembled ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly.

The King removed the plates in the same manner he had brought them in, piling them on top of the black pot. He wiped off the table, and Ilya put down a large bundle of typed pages. The thin paper rustled.

“I don't have any fitting material, only chintz,” Artur said.

“Just so long as it's not floral.”

“It will be a dark blue binding,” the King said, nodding.

Then, with an even more solemn expression, he went into the other room. When he came back, he was carrying an ancient book in a dark leather binding. He passed it fastidiously to Ilya.

“Unbelievable! Eighteenth century—1799!
The Compleat Distiller.
Everything you ever wanted to know about moonshine? I'm floored!” Ilya sighed, then laughed out loud.

“That's not the point. Look at the title page. Then you can ooh and aah!” And King Arthur opened the cover of the book.

Ilya whistled under his breath.

“This beats all … From the paper collection center? It was trashed?”