The Case of Comrade Tulayev (12 page)

In these rooms, Valentina liked to pass the days almost naked, wearing only the gauziest of materials. Always her body was as completely present as her eyes, her voice. Her big eyes looked as golden as the curls that tumbled over her forehead. She had full lips, prominent cheekbones, a clear pink complexion, a figure as supple and fresh as a good swimmer's. “You always look as if you had just come bounding out of cold water into the sun,” her husband said to her one day. She glanced into the mirror and answered with a proud little laugh: “That's what I am — cold and full of sunlight. Your little golden fish.”

Tonight she held out her beautiful bare arms to him:

“Why so late, darling? What is it?”

“Nothing,” Erchov said with a forced smile.

At that moment he became clearly aware that, on the contrary, there
was
something, something enormous; it was here, and it would be wherever he went — an infinite threat to himself and to this woman. Perhaps she was too beautiful, perhaps too privileged, perhaps … Footsteps measured the hall — the night guard going to check on the service entrance.

“Nothing. Two of my personal guards have been changed. It annoys me.”

“But you're the master, darling.” She stood there before him very straight, her peignoir half open over her breasts.

She finished filing a lacquered fingernail. Erchov knit his brow and stared dully at a fine firm breast, tipped with a lavender nipple. Still frowning, he met her untroubled eyes, beautiful as a field of flowers. She went on:

“… Don't you do as you please?”

Really, he must be very tired, or such a trifling phrase could never have produced such a strange effect on him … When he heard her casual words, Erchov became aware that actually he was master of nothing, that his will determined nothing, that any attempt he made to fight would fail. “Only lunatics do as they please,” he thought. Aloud he answered with a bitter smile:

“Only lunatics imagine that they do as they please.”

It came to her: “Something is up …” And she was so certain of it, and it made her so afraid, that her impulse to throw her arms around him died. She forced herself to be vivacious. “Isn't it time we kissed each other, Sima?” He picked her up, putting his hands under her elbows as he always did, and kissed her — not on the mouth, but between her mouth and her nose and on the corners of her lips, sniffing to catch the odor of her skin. “Nobody else kisses like that,” he had said to her when he was courting her — “just us.”

“Go take a bath,” she said.

If he did not believe in cleansing the soul — what old-fashioned jargon! — he believed in the blessing of a clean body — soaped, rinsed, doused with cold water after a warm bath, massaged with eau de cologne, admired in the mirror. “Damned if the human animal isn't a beautiful thing!” he would sometimes exclaim in the bathroom. “Valia, I'm beautiful too.” She would come running, and they would kiss in front of the mirror — he naked and solidly built, she half-naked, supple in some vividly striped peignoir … Those were dim memories now, dating from a distant past. In those days, as chief of secret operations in a district on the Far Eastern frontier, Erchov himself tracked down spies in the forest, directed silent man hunts, dealt with double-crossing agents, shuddered in sudden anticipation of the bullet that strikes you down from the brush, and no one ever finds out who fired it … He loved the life, not knowing that he was destined for the heights … The warm water showered over his shoulders. All he could see of himself in the mirror was a drawn face, with anxious eyes between puffy lids. “I look like a man who's just been arrested, damn it!” The bathroom door was open; in the next room Valia put on a Hawaiian record — steel guitar and a Negro or Polynesian voice: “I am fond of you …”

Erchov exploded.

“Valia, do me the favor of breaking that record this minute!”

The record cracked in two, the cold water came down on his neck like a solace.

“I broke it, Sima darling. And I'm tearing up the yellow cushion.”

“Thank you,” he said, straightening up. “You're as good as cold water.”

The cold water came from under the snow. Somewhere wolves quenched their thirst in it.

They had sandwiches and sparkling wine brought to the bedroom. His apprehension had faded … better not to think about it or it would come back. There was not much of tenderness between them; theirs was an intimacy of two very clean and intelligent bodies profoundly delighted by each other. “Want to go skiing tomorrow?” Valia asked, and her eyes opened wide, her nostrils opened wide. He almost knocked over the low table in front of them, so instantaneous was the reflex that carried him to the door. He flung it open — and a woman's voice in the hall cried: “What a fright you gave me, Comrade Chief!” He saw the chambermaid, bent over the carpet, picking up towels. “What are you doing here?” Erchov could hardly articulate for anger. “I was just going by, Comrade Chief. You frightened me …” He closed the door and came back to Valia, his face sullenly angry, his mustache bristling. “That bitch was listening at the keyhole!” This time Valia felt definitely frightened. “Impossible, darling, you're overtired, you don't know what you're saying.” He crouched on the floor at her feet. She took his head in both hands and rocked it on her lap. “Stop saying such foolish things, darling. Let's get some sleep.” He thought: “Do you think it's so easy to sleep?” and his hands moved up her thighs to her warm belly.

“Put on a record, Valia. Not Hawaiian, or Negro, or French … Something of our own …”

“How about ‘The Partisans'?”

He walked up and down the room while, from the phonograph, came the masculine chorus of Red Partisans riding across the taiga: “They conquered the Atamans — they conquered the Generals — they won their last victories — on the shores of the sea …” Columns of gray-cloaked, singing men marched through the streets of a small Asiatic city. It was late in the afternoon. Erchov stopped to watch them. A strapping fellow sang the first lines of each stanza alone, then they were repeated in well-disciplined chorus. The rhythmic tread of boots on the snow made a muffled accompaniment. Those conscious voices, those mingled and powerful voices, those voices with the strength of the earth in them — that is what we are … The song ended. Erchov said to himself: “I'll take a little gardenal …” and there was a knock at the door.

“Comrade Chief, Comrade Gordeyev wishes to speak to you on the telephone.”

And Gordeyev's calm voice came over the wire, announcing new leads on the assassination, discoveries only just made — “so I had to disturb you, please excuse me, Maxim Andreyevich. There is an important decision to be made … Very strong evidence pointing to the indirect complicity of K. K. Rublev.” Which would establish a curious connection between this case and the two previous trials … “As K. K. Rublev is on the special list of former members of the Central Committee, I did not wish to assume the responsibility …”

So you want me to take the responsibility of ordering his arrest or leaving him at liberty, you vermin … Erchov curtly asked:

“Biography?”

“I have it before me. In 1905, medical student at the University of Warsaw; Maximalist in 1906, fired two bullets from a revolver at Colonel Golubev, wounding him — escaped from military prison in 1907 … member of the Party, 1908. Intimate with Innokentii (Dubrovinsky), Rykov, Preobrazhensky, Bukharin” (and the names of these men, who had been shot as traitors after having been leaders of the Party, seemed enough to condemn Rublev). “Political Commissar with the Nth Army, special mission in the Baikal district, secret mission in Afghanistan, president of the Chemical Fertilizers Trust, instructor at Sverdlov University, member of the C.C. until … member of the Central Control Commission until … Censured and warned by the Moscow Control Commission for factional activity. Request for his expulsion on the grounds of Right Opportunism … Suspected of having read the criminal document drawn up by Riutin … Suspected of having attended the clandestine meeting in Zyelony Bor forest … Suspected of having helped Eysmont's family when Eysmont was imprisoned … Suspected of having translated a German article by Trotsky, which was found when the premises of his former pupil B. were searched.” (From all directions, suspicion pointed at the man who now supervised the general history section of a library.)

Erchov listened with increasing irritation. We knew all this before, you rat. Suspicions, denunciations, presumptions — we've had our fill of them! There is not a shadow of a connection between all this and the Tulayev case, and you're only trying to set a trap for me, you want me to arrest an old member of the C.C. If he has been let alone up to now, it must be because the Political Bureau wants him let alone. Erchov said:

“Very well. Wait till you hear from me. Good night.”

When Comrade Popov, of the Central Control Commission — a figure unknown to the general public but whose moral authority was of the highest (especially since the execution for treason of two or three men even more respected than himself) — when Comrade Popov sent in his name to the High Commissar, the latter had him ushered in immediately, and not without a decided feeling of curiosity. It was the first time Erchov had ever seen Popov. On very cold days Popov wore a cap over his thick dirty-gray head of hair — a workman's cap, for which he had paid six rubles at Moscow Ready-to-Wear. His faded leather overcoat had been new ten years ago. Popov had an aging, deeply-lined face, pimply from bad health, a thin faded beard, steel-rimmed spectacles. So he entered — the cap on his gray head, a bulging brief case under his arm, a strange little half-smile in his eyes. “Everything going well, I hope, my dear comrade?” he asked, as if he were an old friend; and, for a fraction of a second, Erchov was taken in by the old fox's guileless manner. “Very happy to meet you at last, Comrade Popov,” the High Commissar answered.

Popov unbuttoned his overcoat, dropped heavily into a chair, murmured: “I'm tired out, damn it! Nice place you have here — well designed, these new buildings,” and began filling his pipe. “It wasn't like this in my day. I was in the Cheka at the very beginning, you know — with Felix Edmundovich Djerzhinski. No, there was nothing like the comfort, the system you have today … The land of the Soviets is progressing by leaps and bounds, Comrade Erchov. You're lucky to be young …”

Erchov politely let him take his time. Popov raised a flabby, earth-colored hand with cracked and dirty nails.

“But to come to the point, my dear comrade. The Party has you in mind. It has us all in mind, the Party. You work long hours, you work hard, the Central Committee knows your worth. Of course you have had almost too much on your hands, what with straightening out the situation you inherited” (the allusion to his predecessors was discreet), “the period of plots through which we are passing — ”

What was he getting at?

“History proceeds by stages — during one period there are polemics, during another there are plots … To come to the point — you are obviously tired. This matter of the terrorist attack on Comrade Tulayev seems to have been a little beyond you … You will excuse me for saying this to you with my usual frankness, absolutely between ourselves, my dear comrade, and as man to man — just as once in 'eighteen Vladimir Ilich himself said to me … Well, because we know your worth …”

What Lenin may have said to him twenty years earlier, he had not the least intention of relating. It was his way of talking — a counterfeit vagueness, with a liberal sprinkling of “well nows,” a quavering voice — how old I'm getting, one of the oldest members of the Party, always in the breach …

“Well now, you must take a rest — just a couple of months in the country, under the Caucasian sun … Taking the waters, comrade — how I envy you! Ah — Matsesta, Kislovodsk, Sochi, Tikhes-Dziri, what wonderful country … You know Goethe's poem:

“… don't you know German, Comrade Erchov?”

A chill ran through the High Commissar. At last he was beginning to grasp the meaning of Popov's chatter.

“Excuse me, Comrade Popov, I am not sure that I quite understand you. Is this an order?”

“No, my dear comrade. We are simply giving you a word of advice. You are overtired — just as I am. Anyone can see it. We all belong to the Party, and we are responsible to the Party for our health. And the Party looks out for us. The old stalwarts have thought of you, your name has been mentioned in the Organization Bureau.” (He used the term to avoid naming the Political Bureau.) “It has been decided that Gordeyev shall replace you during your absence … We know how well you and he get on together … so it will be a colleague in whom you have complete confidence who … yes, two months … not a day more … the Party cannot give you longer, my dear comrade …”

Moving with exaggerated slowness, Popov uncrossed his legs and stood up: rancid smile, muddy complexion. Benevolently he held out his hand. “Ah — you aren't old enough yet to know what rheumatism is … Well, when will you be off?”

“Tomorrow evening — for Sukhum. I shall begin my leave of absence this afternoon.”

Popov seemed delighted.

“Good! That's what I like — military promptness in making decisions … Even I, old as I am … Yes, yes … Get a good rest, Comrade Erchov … A magnificent country the Caucasus — the jewel of the Union …
Kennst du das Land
…”

Erchov firmly shook a slimy hand, saw Popov to the door, shut the door, and stood helplessly in the center of his office. Nothing here was his any longer. A few minutes of hypocritical conversation had been enough to remove him from the controls. What did it mean? The telephone buzzed. Gordeyev asked at what time he should summon the department heads for the projected conference?