The Big Green Tent (40 page)

“Didn't Olga tell you? I told her about it as soon as I found out. My brother, Nikolay, God be with him”—here Galya crossed herself with a sweeping gesture—“took the typewriter and
The Gulag Archipelago
to the district branch of the KGB. He would never have done anything like that himself. Raika, his wife, God be with her, too”—again she crossed herself, but with less vigor—“she had always hated me, and she talked him into it. They showed Gennady the text of his letter. ‘To intercept an anti-Soviet conspiracy by enemies of the people and to evict my sister Galina Yurievna Polukhina from the apartment,' Nikolay wrote. The housing authorities were kicking them out of the basement and resettling them in a new apartment, and Raika thought they might end up with a bigger space if I was out of the picture. In the new apartment, they died in a fire that started when they were both drunk.” Again she crossed herself ceremoniously.

Apparently, the mutual shedding of tears softened the invisible crust around Tamara's heart. She, too, told Galya about what she had kept to herself for so long. After telling her these things, she beseeched, under her breath: “Lord, Lord, forgive me!”

After Marlen's departure for Israel, and perhaps even before, Tamara had come to love Jesus Christ deeply. This had changed her in many ways.

Why have I hated this unfortunate little fool for so long?

Galya would have liked another drink, but she was too shy to ask. For the first time, Olga's girlfriend, the clever Tamara, who had hardly paid the slightest bit of attention to her, was opening up to her.

It seems that Olga has brought us together
, Galya thought tenderly.

Then Tamara showed her their new, but already aging, apartment. Galya had been to their old room in the communal flat on Sobachaya Square several times, but she had never been invited here. All the furnishings were from their previous life: the piano, an armchair, bookshelves, and photographs. Only the pictures were missing. Galya asked about them, and Tamara laughed.

“You noticed? The paintings are gone.”

“I remember them. There was an angel with an enormous head, blue. Yes, Tamara, I was at your old house a few times. Olga took me with her. I remember the pictures, and I remember your grandmother.”

When it was already after one in the morning Tamara walked Galya out to the taxi. Both of them felt like milk bottles in the hands of a good housewife, ringing with cleanliness after a thorough wash. They didn't yet know—they still had a great deal to share with each other—what kinds of strange paths had led them to this evening: Tamara, a Jew and former Zionist, who never did leave for Israel, was now a Russian Orthodox Christian; and Galya, the wife of an official at the Russian compound in Jerusalem, occupying what appeared to be a minor post, but which was, in fact, very significant. Over the past few years she had grown to despise everything that had to do with “religious leaders,” priests, rabbis, and all other mullahs, and at the same time, the entire East, with all its stratagems, secrecy, and base insincerity. Still, she was steeped in a warm feeling for the person of Jesus Christ …

“Israel itself is a wonderful country. Too bad you never went there. If only it didn't have all those religions,” Galya concluded.

Tamara laughed.

“Why do you make the sign of the cross on your forehead, then? You've always been a silly girl, Galya, and you still are! How can you acknowledge Christ, but not Christianity?”

Galya composed her poor face into a stern expression, then answered back for the first time in her life:

“You just can, that's all!”

After so many years of animosity, their relations had become easy and familial.

Galya, in no way offended, said defiantly:

“You're the silly one, even if you do have a Ph.D. You've got your head on backwards!”

Galya and her husband were supposed to be posted to Israel for three more years, but misfortune struck; her husband became very ill, and she returned home for good—wilted, washed out, and covered with tiny wrinkles from the dry sunny heat. Now there were no closer friends in the world than Polushka and Brinchik.

Their story must be told to the end, however. Tamara Grigorievna Brin, a doctor and an esteemed member of the scientific community, managed to talk Galya into getting an endocrinological examination, not in a polyclinic but in a scientific research institute, where they had discovered a substance—a hormone or something of that ilk—that they injected directly into a vein. They did it one more time, and Galya got pregnant. At the age of forty-six, for the first time. If the baby had been a girl, they would have named her Olga. But it was a boy, and they called him Yury.

Tamara had him baptized with the silent consent of the KGB-agent family. Every Sunday Tamara visited Galya to take her godson on an outing. He was a sweet boy, the offspring of two plumbers—fair of hair and blue-eyed. Tamara took him to church and to museums. He called her Godmama.

When they returned from their outings, Tamara would drink tea with Gennady. Just as Ilya had predicted. He had been, of course, the Rodent, and so he would remain. Never mind. God bless him. After his heart attack, he suffered a stroke and emerged from it only half-alive. His healthy side continued to drag his paralyzed side along. Poor Galya. But now Tamara would just murmur:
Lord, grant me the ability to see my own errors and not to judge my brother …

And Tamara felt relieved.

 

THE DRAGNET

Getting out of the taxi, Ilya glanced at his watch—three minutes past five.

Being late by three minutes is not being late
, he said to himself.

By the hotel entrance he slowed down his pace. It was drizzling rain, and the air felt stuffy.

I've gone nuts! Since when did I ever worry about being late?
He stopped directly in front of the doorman, who looked like an opera singer, with his double-barreled chest and muscular neck. The doorman eyed him suspiciously.

After the search, Ilya had been detained at Malaya Lubyanka for eighteen hours. The three interrogators took turns. First, two of them tried to confuse him, then the third crudely but convincingly tried to win him over to their side, to persuade him to become an informer. They parted with the understanding that they would meet again. Now, a week later, they called him on the phone and set a time to meet in a public building: Hotel Moscow, seventh floor, room 724.

Now Ilya bemoaned his own stupidity. He didn't have to answer the phone, he didn't have to show up for the appointment, he could have insisted they send a summons. And he definitely didn't have to show up right on time.

I don't owe them anything
, Ilya thought, reasoning with himself.
They'll throw me in prison anyway, if they want to. I have to stop being afraid. It's essential. I'm carefree and unconcerned, I'm flighty, I'm lighter than air … and a bit thick in the head. Pardon me? What was that you said? No! It can't be! Really? I never would have guessed!
Ilya prepped himself for the meeting.

The doorman admitted him, but another person, a beanpole in a gray suit, bounded up to him.

“Excuse me, whom are you here to see?”

“Room 724.”

“This way, please,” he said too quickly, then grinned, baring his teeth.

Ilya, practicing being an idiot, replied jovially:

“Good day to you!”

There were two Frenchwomen in the elevator with him. One, a real
grande dame
, was wearing a luxuriant fur of some unknown kind that was inappropriate for the season. The other was younger, with a pale, narrow little face, also inappropriately dressed in some sort of white muslin raincoat. They chattered animatedly with each other, and every other word was
très bien, très bien.
Meanwhile, the younger one kept looking at Ilya with mild feminine interest. And he got so carried away by these glances that he forgot why he was going up to the seventh floor.

When he got to the door, he looked at his watch. He was ten minutes late, and now this fact buoyed him up:
Yes, what of it? I'm always late, and this is no exception. Or do you consider yourself to be more deserving than others?

He knocked and opened the door to enter.

“Come in, come in. Good afternoon … or evening.”

The man was sitting at a desk with his back to the light, his face a shadow.

“You're late, Ilya Isayevich, you're late. Like a debutante for a rendezvous,” the man said patronizingly.

“I know, I know,” Ilya said, smiling. “It's a bad habit of mine; I'm always late.” He sensed that he had struck the right tone, one that betrayed no fear or servility.

“Well, a free spirit and artist can allow himself that luxury. I have an official position. I'm beholden to both time and circumstance.” He spoke with irony and decorum, in an old Moscow manner rare in a KGB agent. “Please, take a seat. Let's sit here, otherwise it's all too formal.” And he came out from behind his desk and pulled up an armchair.

The room was known as a “semideluxe” variety; a Soviet invention, which featured two connecting rooms. The door to the bedroom was slightly ajar. A stiff tapestry curtain hung in the doorway.

In the living room, besides the desk, there was a round table, two chairs, and a painting. Ilya glanced at the painting. It was crude Soviet art, with thick swathes of oil paint and a gilded frame, depicting two boys up to their knees in water pulling a dragnet.

“Let's get to know each other,” the KGB agent said, extending his hand. “Anatoly Alexandrovich Chibikov.”

Ilya shook the hand offered to him, sensing that he was beginning to lose this game. He had not intended to shake anyone's hand.

Chibikov was thin, but his face was bloated, and he had bags under his eyes. He grabbed an already opened pack of Bulgarian Suns. His forefinger and middle finger were stained yellow with nicotine.

He's a smoker, and he smokes my brand
, Ilya thought.
He doesn't look Russian—black hair, shiny, falling onto his forehead; a cowlick on his crown. His eyes look a bit Asian. It's an interesting face, as though it's been washed and shrunk like a wool sweater. And he has some sort of pouch, maybe a goiter, under his chin.

“You and I share a common interest, Ilya Isayevich.” Anatoly Alexandrovich said this perfunctorily, without any preamble. He paused, assuming, apparently, that Ilya would be intrigued by this.

Ilya took the bait, but was quick to spit it out.

“I don't think so.”

“Oh, but we do. Collecting. I'm not referring to your collection of Futurism, a valuable collection, indeed. I'm talking about the field of history. Yes, yes, modern history. I'm a historian by training, and I have my favorite subjects, including those which exceed the bounds of modern history. In the field of current trends, if you will!”

Ilya felt his head growing heavy. Something pulsed at the back of his head, and his eyes seemed to tense up in their sockets. This had to be about Mikha, or about the magazine they published with Edik. Or maybe it was about the
Chronicle
?

He forgot instantly about his intention to play the fool. They both lit up their unfiltered Suns simultaneously.

“Common interests, common tastes.” Chibikov grinned, placing his pack of cigarettes next to Ilya's.

“As for tastes, that's open to debate,” Ilya parried, and felt himself relax a bit. He felt satisfied with himself: it was a noncommittal, even bold reply.

“Have it your way,” the KGB man said with a sigh. “You see, I occupy a position in my profession in which routine operations fall outside the purview of my interests. Nevertheless, the materials confiscated from you ended up on my desk.”

He's a colonel, at least
, Ilya decided.

“I read your juvenilia with great interest. I must admit, the history of the LORLs touched me. In a way, you're fortunate that times have changed, and that your preoccupation with literature didn't lead you to a deep place where one works with pickaxe and shovel instead of a fountain pen or quill.

“But these minutes of the LORLs' meetings from 1955 to 1957, the photographs, the reports, the essays—this is the work of a professional historian and archivist, and I can't help but admire the fact that it was all done by a child, a schoolboy. Remarkable! And your teacher—what a striking figure! I knew him slightly in my own youth. Do you continue to see him, to see your former classmates?”

“Almost never,” he said, not so much warding off a blow as returning a ball.
Now he'll start in on Mikha.

“It's actually very interesting to observe how the fates of people unfold. Even those who were in the same class at school, or lived in the same courtyard…”

He's definitely working his way around to Mikha. Or to Victor Yulievich
, Ilya surmised.
Naturally, correspondence with a prisoner and packages sent in a prisoner's name
 … but the agent continued to hold forth, never coming around to the subject of Mikha.

“All through 1956, your club studied the Decembrists. You boys wrote brilliant essays. Everything depends on the teacher, of course. My daughter is now in her junior year of high school. Their teacher is an old woman who doesn't really have a grasp of these things. As a result, the kids don't have the slightest interest in the subject.”

“Yes, a great deal depends on the teacher,” Ilya agreed.

“But you were lucky with your teacher!”

Pause. Take a deep breath. Maybe I should ask about the typewriter? All the same, they'll never give it back.

The “colonel” looked pensive.

“In my time I also had a keen interest in the Decembrists. I was primarily interested in the investigation. The notes of the investigative committee are fascinating.