The Big Green Tent (4 page)

Aunt Genya bemoaned Mikha's broken glasses, Ilya's mother scolded him a bit for his scrappy belligerence, and Igor Chetverikov managed to hide his involvement in the event from his parents altogether.

From that day on, although Igor was never a full-fledged member of Trianon, he was acknowledged as a sympathizer. Subsequent events, stretching over a quarter of a century, would prove that nothing in the world happened without rhyme or reason. It wasn't just by chance that the two preternaturally farsighted little hooligans locked horns with this future dissident.

When all the talk about the brawl had been quashed for good through the principal's efforts, and everyone had left Mutyukin and Murygin alone, the two started to quarrel and fight with one another. The class split into two camps, and life grew interesting again. The world was full of enemy spies, deserters, negotiations, and skirmishes. The majority was gripped by the warrior spirit, allowing the minority to relax and grow soft.

*   *   *

Sanya returned to school three weeks later with a bandaged hand, made it through several days, then came down with tonsilitis, and disappeared until the fourth quarter. Ilya and Mikha visited him almost every day to give him his homework. Anna Alexandrovna served them tea with an apple pastry she called “pie.” This was the first word in English that Mikha learned. Sanya had studied English and French since he was little. In school they had to study that repulsive language, German, starting in fifth grade. But Anna Alexandrovna turned out to be a stickler when it came to studying German, and began giving Sanya extra lessons, inviting his friends to join in as well. Though Ilya begged off, Mikha attended the lessons as if they were a party.

At the same time, Anna Alexandrovna gave Mikha an old English primer as a present.

“Study it, Mikha. With your abilities you'll easily teach yourself. I'll give you a few lessons to help you with the pronunciation.”

And so, the rich fare from the master's table was shared and shared alike with Mikha.

Sanya was in a curious frame of mind. His two injured fingers didn't get in the way, and weren't even noticeable to others, since we all hold our fingers slightly tucked in, only rarely stretching them out completely. But the injury meant a complete transformation of his life, a total change of plans. He would listen to music all day and enjoy it as never before. It no longer disturbed him that he couldn't play like the great musicians; he was no longer plagued with uncertainty about his talent. The only one who understood was Liza.

“You're freer now than someone who tries to become a musician. I even envy you a little.”

“And I envy you,” Sanya said.

They would go to the Conservatory together, Anna Alexandrovna with Sanya, and Liza with her grandfather. One of Alexandra Alexandrovna's friends would sometimes join them, someone or other's niece or relative. Occasionally, when his workload permitted, Liza's father, Alexei Vasilievich, also a surgeon, like Vasily Innokentievich, would come along. They all shared a strong family resemblance: an elongated face, a high forehead, and a delicate aquiline nose. In those days it seemed that everyone who visited the Conservatory was related; they were certainly all acquainted. They were a particular subset of the huge metropolitan populace, like a religious order or a hidden caste, perhaps even a secret society.

The beginning of the year was an eventful time. Ilya's father, Isay Semenovich, came down from Leningrad. He usually visited once or twice a year, always loaded down with presents. The year before he had also brought a valuable gift—a set of German drawing instruments—but, apart from their beauty as objects, they were of no use to Ilya. This time he came with a FED-S camera, an exact replica of the German Leica. It was a prewar model manufactured by the boys at the Dzerzhinsky labor commune. His father prized the old camera. As a war correspondent, he had carried it with him wherever he went for three years. Now he was giving it to his only son, born of a romance with the homely and no-longer-young woman by the name of Masha (as Isay Semenovich called Maria Fedorovna). Masha had no expectations, made no demands, and quietly loved her son, Ilya. She rejoiced that Isay hadn't abandoned him, and would even give them money on occasion—at times it would be a lot, and then, for long stretches, nothing at all. Masha refused her former lover's advances, which was her strategy for keeping him interested. She would smile at him, offer him cake, make up his bed with starched linen sheets, and then go to bed herself on the sofa, sleeping head-to-toe with her son. Isay's fascination with her only grew, and he thought about her more and more.

Although Isay was sorry to give his trusty, beloved camera away, the guilt he felt toward his neglected son outweighed his attachment to it. He had other, better cameras. He also had another, official, family, and two beloved daughters who had no interest whatsoever in photography. The boy trembled with excitement at the present, and his father felt annoyed with his life, which hadn't turned out as it should have. Instead of the gentle Masha, whose plainness gave way to flashes of prettiness, he ended up with the shrewish Sima. He no longer even remembered why or how he had become her henpecked husband.

He explained to his son what a
camera obscura
was, that a dark box with a small aperture and a plate covered in photosensitive chemicals was sufficient to capture an image, to stop a moment in time. Masha sat there with them, resting her cheek on her palm, smiling at her small measure of joy. She only needed a tiny crumb, like a chickadee. Isay saw this, and noticed, as well, how skilled and adept Ilya was, how nimble his hands were—like father, like son!

He went away with the firm intention of changing his life so that he could see his son more often. And Masha was more attractive to him now than she had been that summer of 1938, when he had taken her more out of a sense that he owed it to her as an able-bodied young man than out of a real affinity. It was too late to change his life completely, but he could make some minor adjustments, like finally coming clean to Sima about having a son, his prewar offspring. It might be nice to invite Ilya to stay with them and introduce him to his younger sisters. But this was to be the last time he would see his son: two months later, Isay Semenovich, having lost his job at the Leningrad Film Studios, died of a heart attack.

Ilya's father had stayed with them for two days on that final visit. After he left, Ilya's mother, as usual, wept quietly, and then stopped. His life now had been clearly divided into two parts: before the FED, and after. This clever little apparatus gradually awakened a hidden talent in him. He had always collected things right and left—almost anything that grabbed his attention or entered his field of vision. Back in second grade he'd had a feather collection; next it was matchbox labels and stamps. But those were passing phases. Now, once he'd mastered the technical process, from loading the film and choosing exposures to rolling the photo paper onto glass, he began collecting moments of existence. The true passion of a collector was ignited in him, never again to burn out.

By the time he finished school he had assembled a true photographic archive, and a rather sophisticated one at that. On the back of each photograph, in pencil, he noted the time, location, and subjects; all the negatives were arranged in envelopes. The camera changed his life in other ways as well. It turned out that besides the camera itself, he needed accessories, all of which cost a lot of money. Ilya applied himself to the problem and discovered another latent talent: he had a gift for enterprise. He never asked his mother for money; he learned to acquire it himself. The first initiative that spring was
rasshibalochka
*
—
winner take all. Ilya was the best player in school, and he branched out to other games, too. This started bringing in money.

Sanya Steklov didn't approve of Ilya's pursuit of lucre, but Ilya just shrugged it off.

“Do you know how much large-format photo paper costs? And developer? Where am I supposed to get it?”

And Sanya would fall silent. His money came from Mama and Grandmother, and he suspected that this wasn't the most honorable way to come by it.

The old camera turned Ilya into a photographer. Soon he realized that he needed his own darkroom. Amateur photographers usually set up their darkrooms in the bathroom, where there was running water for rinsing film and photo paper. But their communal apartment had no bathroom—just a sort of pantry or broom closet, where three families kept their washtubs of various sizes as well as necessities. The closet shared a wall with the WC, which did have running water, so Ilya started devising a plan to rig some pipes to feed water into the closet and then drain it out again. He didn't consider the neighbors, who had equal rights to the closet.

In their apartment, along with Ilya and his mother, lived a harmless old lady named Olga Matveevna, and a widow by the name of Granya Loshkareva, who had three children. Ilya's mother often took the younger two to the preschool where she worked, and she helped Granya in other ways, too.

In short, when Maria Federovna talked the matter over with her neighbors, they didn't object. They dragged their unwieldy washtubs out of the closet—and the rest was up to Ilya. He was just in time to write a letter to his father requesting his help in setting up shop. His father was deeply touched, and wired him 150 rubles. A two-line message accompanied the telegram: “I'll come down for the May holidays, and we'll do everything together.” That was his last letter—he didn't live till May.

Although he couldn't hook up the water to the closet for another year and a half, Ilya now had his own private nook where he spent a great deal of time. He salvaged a bookcase he found in the trash and used it for storing all his equipment.

Fifth grade seemed endless. It was the thirteenth year of their lives. The boys had slowly filled up with testosterone. The early bloomers had grown hair in secluded places and pimples on their faces. They itched and ached all over, more fights and arguments broke out, and they yearned to touch themselves to relieve the vague longings of the flesh.

Mikha exhausted himself skating. As a result of his secret early-morning training sessions, he became a good skater. He also became a passionate reader. Even before that he would read anything he could get his hands on, but now Anna Alexandrovna was supplying him with wonderful books: Dickens, Jack London, and many others.

At ten o'clock sharp, Aunt Genya would emit a single, high-decibel snort, after which she snored gently and steadily till morning. Minna turned in still earlier, and fell asleep quickly, after a bit of restless stirring about. Then Mikha slipped down to the kitchen to read to his heart's content by the light of the communal lamp. He never got caught. He would sit there scratching at his pimples, reading a young-adult book that had nothing whatever to do with the aggravations of his body.

Sanya lagged behind his friends, not just in height, but in other ways, too: smooth face, clean collar—he was a gentle fellow. But he was also in the process of maturing. He announced to his mother and grandmother that he no longer intended to continue his physical therapy. It was obvious that his hand wasn't going to heal and that he would never become a pianist. His mother and grandmother were both musicians of the homespun variety. In their youth they had dreamed of becoming professionals, only to be forced to abandon their musical training because of the entirely unmusical times, when blaring horns, thundering timpani, and marches and battle hymns were disguised as street songs.

The two solitary women had pinned all their hopes on Sanya. He had promise as a pianist, and everything was going beautifully—he had an excellent teacher, his future was shaping up. After the accident with the knife, however, Sanya had dropped out of music school. Anna Alexandrovna and Sanya's mother, Nadezhda Borisovna, prepared themselves for a serious talk about his future. Anna Alexandrovna said that with his musical talent, it would be a waste to cut all his ties to music completely. Of course, he would never be a professional performer, but what could prevent him from playing at home? There was a certain charm in being an amateur. Sanya stubbornly resisted at first, then gave in after two weeks. He began taking private lessons with his grandmother's friend Evgenia Danilovna.

Sanya played on their beloved Karelian-birch upright piano with his futureless, maimed hands. He would go weak at the knees for Chopin's waltzes the way his peers did when girls from the neighborhood would brush against them in the mad chaos of a street game. He read, played, and sometimes did what normal boys his age did only as a form of punishment: he took long walks with his grandmother.

Evgenia Danilovna continued to give him lessons for about two years, but then the lessons faltered. This was partly due to Liza: her progress was so great, and his so minor, that he began shirking.

Anna Alexandrovna was a teacher of Russian, but with special qualifications—she taught Russian to foreigners.

And what foreigners they were! Her students were young men from Communist China who had come to study at the military academy. This was Anna Alexandrovna's eighth or ninth job since finishing high school, and everything about it suited her. She liked how she was treated by the administrators. The short hours, her salary, and the various bonuses and benefits, including the excellent military sanatorium where she was allowed to stay for free once a year, were all very much to her liking.

Nadezhda Borisovna was an X-ray technician. It was an unusual profession, harmful to her health, but she got short hours and free milk to boost her strength.

Even though the small family was relatively well-off, their life was not without problems. There was too much secret dissatisfaction pent up in both mother and daughter. They were single, having both lost bona fide husbands, and husbands-to-be. No one raised the tactless question of where their men were. Those who needed to know, knew, and everyone else left them alone.