The Big Green Tent (63 page)

Mikha was appointed as a traveling salesman.

The first trips didn't take him very far afield. Stuffing his backpack with samizdat, he set out on the commuter train or the bus for a nearby station: Obninsk, Dubna, or Chernogolovka. He would meet other young research associates, hand over the literature, take the money in exchange, and return home on the same day.

Getting acquainted with them was strictly forbidden. Mikha introduced himself as Andrei, and the counteragent didn't introduce himself at all. He usually said something like: “Alexander Ivanovich sent me.”

From the money he received, Mikha would get five honestly earned rubles each time. The money stung his hand a little.

Working in the boarding school for the deaf-mute had been so much better. It had satisfied in some ideal way everything Mikha needed and wanted—a modest but sufficient income; absolute pleasure and satisfaction from the creative, useful work he did; a rare feeling of being in just the right place, at just the right time. That work, and the money he earned, had never stung his hand!

*   *   *

After two months, Mikha admitted to Ilya that he wanted more meaningful work than merely delivering goods in a backpack to different addresses. He was well versed in the ins and outs of samizdat, and he considered himself to be entitled to something more creative …

“Fine, all right. I knew this was bound to happen.” Ilya looked somewhat dissatisfied, though he usually swelled with pleasure when he could solve other people's problems. “Edik is the one you need. Edik! You know, the tall fellow,” Ilya said.

Mikha remembered. He had delivered some books to him. And he wasn't someone you could easily forget. He was nearly six feet six, and had a pink baby face with nothing growing on it but thick, bushy eyebrows.

Ilya took Mikha to meet Edik. Edik lived with his mother and his wife, Zhenya, in a separate two-room apartment. Looking around, Mikha again grew enamored of someone else's home, which didn't resemble anything he had seen before. Edik's mother was a specialist in Buddhism. The walls were covered with Eastern paintings and images, which were, as Edik explained to him, Buddhist icons. Edik's wife was an archaeologist, and she had left traces of her profession in their home: three unprepossessing earthenware pots. The women were not home at the moment.

Edik published the samizdat magazine
Gamayun.
It consisted of twenty pages of onionskin paper, crudely stitched together between two pieces of blue cardboard. It was a literary and social-commentary journal that thus far existed as one copy of the first issue. Mikha grabbed the magazine and examined it from cover to cover.

“Interesting! But why
Gamayun
?” he said.

“
Alkonost
and
Phoenix
were already taken; I don't like
Sirin. Gamayun
was just the thing.”

“Yet another bird from Slavic mythology?”

Edik explained:

“Sure. But this little bird is a great intellectual. It knows all the secrets of the universe. It also has the gift of prophecy. We initially thought we would call it
The Historical Project.
But we decided that was too dry. It's an educational journal. With modern poetry, naturally.”

Mikha was more than ready to take part in the publication of a journal that would open the eyes and ears of the unenlightened.

Ilya left Mikha at Edik's, and the new friends shared a dinner of grayish macaroni. After the macaroni they agreed fairly quickly that the magazine should concentrate on literary and social commentary, rather than political. That is, politics would be kept to a minimum. Edik was interested in historical prognostication, and the analysis of social trends, tastes, and preferences—sociological subjects, in other words.

“As far as literature goes, I am most interested in poetry and science fiction. Science fiction is able to generalize the processes under way in the world and offer interesting prognoses. Nowadays, Western science fiction functions as futurology, the philosophy of the future. I simply don't have time to take it on, though. If you would answer for it, it would be fantastic.”

Mikha thought about it: he had never been exposed to any science fiction. He promised to keep it in mind.

Right on the spot they decided on the contents of the poetry section for the next issue. There would be a large selection of works by one poet, and one or two poems each by five to eight other writers. Mikha suggested Brodsky as the featured poet, and began murmuring rapturously:

“General! Our maps are crap. I pass.

The north is not here at all, but at the North Pole.

And the equator is broader than the side stripes on your trousers.

Because the front, General, is in the south.

At such a distance a walkie-talkie turns any command

Into boogie-woogie.”

“Who are you going to surprise with Brodsky? Listen, there are new poets, nearly unknown:

‘Memory is an armless equestrian statue

You gallop wildly, but

You have no arms

Today you shout loudly in the empty corridor

You flicker at the corridor's end

It was evening and tea swirled aromatically

Ancient trees of steam grew out of the cups

In silence, each admired his life

And a girl in yellow admired it most of all…'”

“Yes, it's really good. Who wrote it?”

“Who? A nobody. Young fellow from Kharkov. Came to Moscow not long ago. No one knows him. But in five years they will. Like everyone knows Brodsky now. I'm willing to bet on it. He's the one we need to publish.”

“I'm not so sure. I think we should take Khvostenko,” Mikha said.

“I love Khvost, but what is he without his guitar? This other fellow will make a stronger impression…”

“What's his name?”

“What does it matter? I'm telling you—everyone will know him in five years. And you want Khvostenko?” Edik was getting angry, and the good-natured Mikha began feeling uncomfortable.

“This is absurd! We haven't even started working together, and we're already quarreling.”

Edik laughed. “That's what always happens. I'm constantly falling out with my friends. It's just my character.”

“What idiots we are!” Mikha said. “Gorbanevskaya! Natalia Gorbanevskaya! She's the one we need! She'd be ideal.” And, his voice full of pathos, he began to recite:

“It will not perish in our wake—

The dry grass smolders.

It will not perish in our wake—

The millstones are still.

In our wake not a step, not a sigh,

no blood, no blood-soaked sweat,

No blood-sealed debt,

will perish in our wake.

The fire runs through the grass,

The fire presses to the trees,

And for those reclining in the foliage

A day of reckoning will come…”

“Done! There can be no objections to Gorbanevskaya! We just have to ask her,” Edik said.

“But it's samizdat! Why ask permission? We'll take these three poems, addressed to Brodsky.”

With his passion for the literary classics—the poetic correspondence between Pushkin and Vyazemsky, or the epistolary exchange of Herzen and Turgenev, Turgenev and Dostoevsky, or Gogol and his chosen friends—he wanted to elaborate on the subject immediately.

“It would be good to find poems of Brodsky's addressed to Gorbanevskaya, or, for example, poems of Gorbanevskaya addressed to someone else!”

“To Pushkin, for instance! Go ahead, commission her to do it!” Edik said sarcastically.

But Mikha was supremely serious.

“No, that's not what I mean. You know, it's a good idea to look for poems addressed to friends. A poetic conversation between fellow poets. This one, for instance:

‘In the madhouse

Crush your palms,

Smash your forehead against the wall,

Like smashing your face in a snowbank…'”

“I remember that one. It's to Galanskov,” Edik said.

“Here's another one. Listen.

‘Brush the bliss of half-sleep from your cheek

And open your eyes until the eyelids cry in pain.

The filth and whitewash of the hospital—

A volunteer's flag of your captivity.'”

“I know that one, too. It's to Dimka Borisov. How do you know her poems so well?”

“I heard her read her poems twice at my father-in-law's house. And I memorized them. She seems rather gloomy and unapproachable; but her poems are full of tenderness. I can't say I liked her as a person. But she writes the kinds of poems I would like to have written myself.”

*   *   *

They decided that Mikha would go to Natalia and ask her for some new poems.

Then Edik remembered about some high-flying intellectual from the philosophy department at Moscow State University. He could write an article about contemporary American science fiction.

The third part of the magazine was a large section entitled “News.” And there was plenty of it. A large number of independently thinking people first whispered in corners among themselves, then spoke half out loud, and, finally, went out and joined demonstrations, protesting ever more boldly and conscientiously. They were detained, tried, sentenced to prison, and set free again, and life was full of daily events that people found out about from one another, or from Western radio stations: everyone picked up some bit of news or other.

Along with the human rights activists, there were also the Crimean Tatars who had been expelled from Crimea twenty years before and now wished to return; Jews who demanded the right to emigrate to Israel, from which they had been expelled two thousand years before; adherents to many kinds of religions; nationalists, from Lithuanians to Russians; and many others. All of them were at odds with the Soviet authorities. And things were happening at every turn.

Edik was not a member of any particular group. He considered himself to be an objective journalist, and his point of departure was that society had to be informed about what was going on. Mikha was prepared to facilitate this in every way he could.

Suddenly, they realized it was already past one in the morning.

“Where's Zhenya, I wonder?” Edik said. They were not in the habit of keeping tabs on each other, but they usually told each other of their whereabouts.

Mikha gasped, then set out for home in haste. It was too late to get public transport. A chance trolleybus took him to Rachmanovsky Lane, where a herd of trolleybuses converged to spend the night. He ran the last twenty minutes home. Alyona was asleep, and didn't ask Mikha to account for himself.

*   *   *

Life rolled along steadily and pleasantly. After Aunt Genya's death, her old room crammed with dusty junk and bric-a-brac seemed to have dissolved into oblivion. In the new room that took its place, everything was clean, white, and new. Alyona's drafting table, with Whatman paper clipped to it, stood next to the window. She was about to graduate from the graphic arts department, and her graduation project was to illustrate Hoffman's fairy tales. A wide, intricate border with Masonic motifs wound about the margins of every page.

Instead of the weekly watch at the boarding school, Mikha's days, from morning till night, were now filled with any number of activities. He was surrounded by new acquaintances. Their most frequent visitors were Edik and Zhenya. Although Zhenya was plain, her mouth was full of infectious laughter (though not many teeth), and she was an attractive, sweet person. Alyona, to Mikha's delight, would smile weakly at Zhenya's straightforward jokes. The four of them became good friends, and often spent time at one another's houses, talking and drinking tea and wine.

Alyona seemed to come to life, to awaken. Her usual expression—like a child just getting up from a nap who hasn't quite decided whether to laugh or cry—became more defined: not yet laughing, but certainly not crying. She even became more responsive to Mikha's conjugal expectations. Since they had gotten married, Alyona had seemed even more unavailable than before, when she would now and then come to him in Milyaevo without being asked, and stay overnight, tender and complaisant.

In their married state, things seemed to get in the way, each obstacle more awkward and absurd than the one before. Either their sexual activity wound her up so much that she couldn't sleep afterward, or, on the contrary, it wearied her so much that she couldn't get up in the morning and would have to sleep the entire day.

It was, most likely, a slight sexual pathology—perhaps a consequence of traumatic premarital experiences. Feeling desirable, sought after, an unattainable object—this was for her the epitome of pleasure in sexual relations. She hungered perpetually for affirmation of Mikha's ready desire, and was adept in the subtle art of keeping her husband interested and aroused, but avoiding sexual contact. The less frequently Mikha was able to indulge in the full-fledged conjugal rite, the sharper and giddier were his feelings for her.

As Alyona became more inaccessible to him, love raised him to unprecedented heights of feeling. In a secluded nook of his consciousness, he was constantly at work writing poems. He had long before stopped sending her love poetry, which Alyona had greeted with a set mouth. That didn't prevent him from writing it, however.

Love is the work of the spirit.

Still, the body

Does not hold itself aloof from it.

A hand resting in a hand—

What joy!

For degrees of spiritual fire

And the white heat of corporeal passion

There is a single scale of measure.

Among the new friends who were always coming around to their “grown-up home”
sans
parents, which was moreover in the center of town, were admirers of Alyona. When men would show up, she grew animated, sitting up straight and smiling vaguely. Mikha felt fresh pangs of male jealousy; Alyona experienced a complex satisfaction. Their home began to exhibit all the hallmarks of a literary salon: the canonically prescribed love for the hostess, tea drinking, cakes and cookies, conversation about art, reciting the latest poetry, and guest lecturers on intellectually stimulating topics. In this way Alyona reproduced (with allowances for another generation) her parents' home, but with more refined tastes.