The Big Green Tent (75 page)

From that moment on, she stopped washing, eating, dressing, and talking. She could hardly drag herself to the WC before returning to the divan with tiny, uncertain steps and turning her face again to the wall. Her clinical depression was so obvious, the symptoms so classic, that Mikha had no trouble diagnosing it himself. Even Maya's whimpering entreaties couldn't rouse Alyona from the divan. Mikha floundered in despair and helplessness. For several days he rushed to and fro like a madman, trying to balance work, domestic duties, and taking care of Alyona and the child. Zhenya Tolmacheva came to help. Alyona refused to talk to her as well, but she accepted the help without a murmur of thanks, as though she didn't notice it. Sanya showed up again, and Ilya came after Mikha's phone call.

Ilya looked around, raised his eyes to the heavens, searched for an answer in the invisible expanse of space, and called in a psychiatrist named Arkasha. Arkasha was also one of their own. He was active in dissident circles and had written letters of protest, exposing the judicial-psychiatric establishment. He had lost his job a year before, and was now working as an orderly in a hospital outside of town. He recommended immediate hospitalization, and getting a categorical refusal, he prescribed some strong psychotropic medication.

Maya hovered around Alyona, but she remained indifferent to everything, including her daughter. For a second week in a row, Mikha took his daughter to work with him. He missed his appointment with Safyanov, and he didn't bother to open the mailbox, where—he knew!—he would find another summons.

At the end of a second week lying on the divan, Alyona's mother, Valentina Ivanovna, suddenly arrived from the Ryazan countryside, where Sergei Borisovich had been exiled. Why she had had the sudden urge to come to her daughter was unclear—most likely maternal instinct. She was horrified at what she saw when she arrived. She kept trying to find out what had happened, but Alyona refused to speak to her, either, and turned her face to the wall again.

Valentina Ivanovna recalled some strange episodes from her daughter's childhood, so she didn't insist, but did the only thing that was in her power—she took Maya with her.

Mikha expected Maya to cry and resist, but his mother-in-law behaved very wisely: she whispered to the little girl that in the country she had a real live goat, a white cat, and a speckled hen. Maya, tempted by this domestic zoo, went happily and willingly with her grandmother. Alyona said good-bye to them sleepily and turned back toward the wall.

Mikha finally went to see Safyanov two weeks after their scheduled appointment. He told him that his wife was ill, and Safyanov believed him: Mikha looked completely haggard and miserable. He told him he wouldn't accept the invitation to leave, that his wife didn't want to go, and that he wasn't ready, either.

Safyanov was surprised. He frowned, and began rubbing his marked cheek, thinking hard.

He rang for a deputy, then went out. Forty minutes later he returned, seething with anger. He sent out the deputy, and changed his tack with Mikha. Now his threats were unconcealed and explicit.

“We have a mountain of evidence against you, Melamid. I'm not even talking about the Tatars. Things turned out fairly well for you in the past. This time, you won't get off so easy.”

He placed a pile of grayish paper in front of him.

“Casual conversation is over. We had our little talk, off the record. Now comes the interrogation. Under protocol.”

“I won't talk. Since you have so much evidence, what need is there for me to say anything?” Mikha said quietly, not looking at Safyanov. He kept his mouth shut for the next two and a half hours.

On the way home, twice he thought he glimpsed the purple mark on the cheek. Could Safyanov really be following him? It was impossible; but his face kept coming into view at the periphery of his vision.

It was late when he got home. He brought Alyona tea, and made a sandwich. She propped herself up on the pillow, and drank the tea. She didn't eat anything, and she didn't want to talk.

Ilya and Sanya arrived before midnight. The three of them sat around talking, just like old times. Mikha said that they had been shadowing him for the last several days, and he was afraid they would arrest him any day now. The telephone was, no doubt, being tapped.

He ran his fingers through his shock of hair, the only thing about him that still had volume. Except for his hair, he resembled a vertical plane, a profile, a cardboard cutout. Since Alyona had taken to her bed, he had stopped shaving.

He scratched his soft red beard with his bony fingers.

“What do you think?”

“What do you think we think! They offered you the chance to emigrate, didn't they? Do it—you'll never survive here.” Sanya was convinced that he himself wouldn't survive here, either. But no one would send him, a Russian, an invitation to emigrate.

“Yes. It's the only way,” Ilya agreed.

Mikha gestured toward Alyona's back on the divan with his eyes.

“Don't you understand? I can't! I just can't. And Alyona can't, either.” His face looked like that of a hunted animal.

“Do you know what I think? Hear me out, now; don't get upset. You should go alone,” Ilya said.

“Have you lost your mind? Abandon my family? Do you have any idea what you're saying?”

“Alyona will come to her senses and follow you,” Ilya said, as confident as ever.

“We'll get her ready and send her off,” Sanya said, with less certainty.

“What the hell? That's rubbish! The situation is completely hopeless. It couldn't possibly get worse.”

Sanya embraced him like a child, pressed his cheek to Mikha's stubbly face, and pleaded:

“Mikha, I'm begging you. If you have no pity for yourself, at least think of Alyona and the child. Alyona will regain her health and follow you there. This is your chance! If I had even the remotest possibility to do the same, I'd jump at it in a second! I'd fly away like the wind! Please, go! That's what Nuta would have told you.”

It was already after two by the time they left Mikha. Sanya was tipsy, Ilya was sober.

“Listen to what I'm telling you, Sanya. You blamed me once for what happened to Mikha. For his imprisonment, I mean. Well, it's true, I am guilty; only not of what you accused me then.”

Sanya stopped in his tracks and shook his head, trying to regain his sobriety. He was not a drinker, and only did it under exceptional circumstances, out of necessity. Ilya went on:

“Everything's more complicated than it seems. But I want you to know that both you and Mikha are like family to me. Even more than that. Do you understand that I would never betray you under any circumstances?”

“Ilya, the thought never occurred to me. What I meant was that you got him mixed up in, you know, the magazine and all that. Lord, how do you guys drink this stuff? It's absolutely vile!”

Sanya stumbled against Ilya, who put his arm around him gently and led him through the Pokrovsky Gates toward home. Everyone felt miserable. Absolutely miserable.

*   *   *

Mikha was wrong about one thing: that things couldn't get any worse. The following day, they did. He went to work, and the personnel director called him in. He said that several parcels had gone missing, and showed him a packet of invoices.

“You see? There's your signature right there! You sent them off, but they never arrived. They were valuable samples; look here.”

The director had begun in a quiet, measured tone, but he quickly grew incensed, and three minutes later was cursing up a storm.

Mikha realized immediately what would follow—he would be asked to sign a resignation letter. And that is just what happened: either sign the letter of resignation or be taken to court.

Mikha signed the letter of voluntary resignation and didn't even bother going to the accounting office for his back pay. This was Safyanov's doing, no doubt.

*   *   *

That was Tuesday. On Thursday he was scheduled to see Safyanov again; but on Wednesday something unforeseen happened. And things got even worse. Without warning, Valentina Ivanovna arrived from Ryazan. She came in a car that she drove herself. This was, in itself, surprising. She hadn't known how to drive before. She must have gotten her driver's license. She came with Maya, but not to return her to her parents. She came to fetch Alyona.

It was all very strange. Alyona, who hadn't wanted to see her father at all since the trial, got up and began collecting her belongings submissively. Mikha had never seen this sort of submissiveness in her. She had always been independent to the point of insolence with her parents. Valentina Ivanovna helped her pack, coaxing her softly:

“We've fixed up a room for you, with windows onto the garden. Liza Efimova sent me some mohair, for hats. There's a whole box; twenty hanks. You could make a sweater. Look, I knitted a blue hat for Maya from it.”

“Yes, blue,” Alyona said, nodding.

Dumbfounded, Mikha watched them pack. The words caught in his throat before he could utter them. Valentina Ivanovna didn't turn her head in his direction, as though he weren't even there.

“You can't imagine what good friends Papa and Maya have become. She never leaves his side.”

“Yes, yes,” Alyona said in a soft, slow, completely alien voice.

Mikha took the things out and put them in the trunk of the blue Moskvich. Maya waved to him vigorously. Alyona nodded good-bye as though he were just a chance acquaintance. Mikha didn't dare even kiss her.

The next day he would have to go see Safyanov again and listen to all his threats, all that garbage. He realized he was on the edge.

*   *   *

In the morning Mikha got up early, as usual, though he had no need to go to work. The emptiness was so pressing that his ears rang with it. Or perhaps his blood pressure was up? He spent two hours revising his old poems.

Terrible poems. Terrible
, Mikha thought, without any particular rancor or disappointment. He wanted to throw some of them away. He made a whole pile of them to get rid of. But he couldn't bring himself to do it.

*   *   *

He arrived at Captain Safyanov's on time. The captain had a formal air about him, as if it were the eve of a holiday.
Maybe it's some sort of holiday for them?
Mikha wondered. No, the November holidays were still two weeks away.

“We've tried to do everything we could for you, Mr. Melamid. We even offered you something we resort to only in exceptional cases—letting you go abroad.”

Mikha shook his head, and waved his hand dismissively. He didn't even notice himself doing this.

“Look here,” Safyanov said, and showed Mikha a piece a paper that read, “Arrest Warrant.” “It isn't dated. We can sign it today, or tomorrow. And here is your testimony.” He waved several densely covered pages. “You yourself didn't give us this testimony. No, you didn't give it. Here, take a look.”

Mikha took the standard protocol form. It was a new kind, printed on large-format paper and folded in half. Written in blunt words, with grammatical errors, in a woman's handwriting, a secretary's, with a thick line for the spine of each letter, it was a denunciation of various people, most of whom he had never laid eyes on.

“This is my final offer. You put your signature here, and I'll rip up…” And he shoved the arrest warrant under Mikha's nose.

It's a risk, but maybe it will buy me another day of freedom?
Mikha thought.
What was it Ilya had said about that hypnotist, what was his name? Yes, Messing. He could make anyone think or do whatever he wanted them to do. Even Lavrenty Beria … Had he signed something? Or, no; it was what he didn't sign. He just showed them a blank piece of paper, and they thought they saw a signature there.

He picked up the protocol from the table and began to put his signature to it. He was a teacher, and during the years that he had to sign his pupils' homework assignments and the roll call, he had elaborated a streamlined signature, like Victor Yulievich—first, “M. Mela…” followed by a long tail that soared upward.

He took the pen, wrote an “N” that resembled an “M,” and put a period after it. Then he wrote “Ofuckingway,” and sent the tail soaring upward. The likeness was uncanny …

“Here you are. But now I have to run home to my wife. She's very ill. Please sign my pass so I can leave,” Mikha said in an importunate voice, at the same time tensing the part of his head just under the frontal bone, in the very center.

Safyanov caressed the paper with the surprisingly elegant signature, which looked like it hadn't been written by Mikha's hand at all, and called someone on the phone. A sergeant with a pass entered.

Sign it, sign it
, Mikha commanded Safyanov silently.

The captain signed the pass, and Mikha walked backward toward the door, without removing his gaze from the captain. He exited the room with the sergeant. Now he didn't care when they would notice his little joke. He had time!

He walked to Chistoprudny Boulevard at a brisk pace. He went into his house, feeling light, almost weightless, not thinking about anything. He went up to the sixth floor on foot. It was just after four o'clock. The elevator was out of order again.

He sat down at the table. He wanted to reread his poems again, but he suddenly felt that there was no time for that. He pushed the whole pile aside. Childish, childish poems. Soon he would be thirty-four. And still his poems were childish. And they would never be grown-up poems.
Because I never grew up. But now the time has come for me to take my first step as a grown man. To liberate myself from my own absurdity, my lack of substance. To liberate Alyona and Maya from myself, from the utter failure of my existence, from my inability to live like a normal, full-grown man.

What a simple and certain choice! Why had this way out never before occurred to him? How perfect it was that he had not yet turned thirty-four. Thirty-three was the age when Jesus had committed the deed that proved his absolute maturity: he had willingly given his own life for an idea that didn't inspire any sympathy in Mikha whatsoever—the sins of others.