The Case of Comrade Tulayev (47 page)

What was strange about Xenia was her immobility. Her chin in one hand, “white as a shroud” (Madame Delaporte remarked later), her eyebrows raised, her eyes staring, she ought to have seen the cashier approaching, but she did not see her, did not see her set off hurriedly in the opposite direction, did not hear her say to the waiter: “Quick, quick, Martin, a Marie Brizard — no, better an anisette, but do hurry — she's out of her senses, my God!”… Madame Delaporte herself carried the anisette to the table and set it in front of Xenia, who did not stir … “Mademoiselle, my child, what is it?” A hand laid gently on her white beret and her hair recalled Xenia to present reality. She looked at Madame Delaporte, blinking back her tears; she bit her lips, she said something in Russian. (“What can I do? Oh, what can I do?”) There were affectionate questions on Madame Delaporte's lips: “Lovesick, child? Has he been cross to you? Is he unfaithful?” but that hard waxen face, with its concentrated bewilderment, did not look like lovesickness, it must be something much worse, something unheard of and incomprehensible … did one ever know with these Russians?

“Thank you,” said Xenia.

A wild smile disfigured her childish face. She swallowed the anisette, rose, her eyes dry again, and, without thinking of touching up her powder, left the café almost at a run, crossed the boulevard, dodging busses, and disappeared down the subway stairs … The open paper, the untouched coffee and croissants on the table, bore witness to some very unusual trouble. Monsieur Martin and Madame Delaporte bent over the paper together. “Without my glasses I can't see, Monsieur Martin — do you find anything? An accident, a crime?” After a moment Monsieur Martin answered: “All I see is the announcement of a trial in Moscow … You know, Madame Delaporte, they shoot people there in a wink, and for nothing at all …”

“A trial?” said Madame Delaporte incredulously. “Do you think that can be it? In any case, I pity the poor girl. I feel very strange, Monsieur Martin. Give me an anisette, please — or no, better a Marie Brizard. It is as if I had seen bad luck …”

In the luminous field of her consciousness Xenia saw but two clear ideas: “We cannot let Kiril Rublev be shot … Perhaps there is only a week left to save him, a week …” She let the train carry her, she let the crowd guide her through the subterranean corridors of St.-Lazare, she read the names of unknown stations. Her thought went no further than the idea that obsessed it. Suddenly, on the wall of a station, she saw a huge and monstrous advertisement representing a bull's head, black and wide-horned, with one eye alive and the other pierced by an enormous square wound in which the blood was as red as fire. A beast shot dead, an atrocious vision. Fleeing the picture, which reappeared in station after station, Xenia found herself on the sidewalk in front of the Trois Quartiers opposite the Madeleine, irresolutely talking to herself.

What was she to do? An elderly gentleman took off his hat to her, he had gold teeth, he was saying something in a honeyed voice, he seemed embarrassed. He said “graceful” and Xenia heard “grace.” To write instantly, to telegraph: Grace, grace for Kiril Rublev, grace! The gentleman saw her sharp, childish face light up, he was preparing to look ravished, but Xenia stamped her foot, she saw him, his thin but carefully parted hair, his piglike eyes, and she did what she used to do when she was a child, in her worst furies, she spat … The gentleman fled, Xenia entered a noisy café. “Letter paper, please … Yes, coffee, and quickly.” The waiter brought her a yellow envelope, a sheet of cross-ruled paper. Write to the Chief, only he would save Kiril Rublev. “You who are dear and great and just, our beloved Chief … Comrade!” Xenia's impulse failed. “Dear” — but was she not, even as she wrote, overcoming a sort of hatred? It was a terrible thought. “Great” — but what did he not permit? “Just” — and Rublev was going to be tried, to be killed, Rublev who was like a saint … and these trials are certainly decided on by the Political Bureau! She reflected. To save Rublev, why should she not humiliate herself, why should she not lie? Only, the letter would not arrive in time — and even if it arrived, would he read it,
He
who received thousands of letters a day, which were opened by a secretary? Whom could she beg to intervene? The Consul General, Nikifor Antonich, stupid, unfeeling, soulless coward that he was? The First Secretary of the Legation, Willi, who was teaching her bridge, took her to Tabarin, seeing in her only Popov's pretty daughter? He spied on the ambassador, he was the perfect climber, was Willi, and he too had no soul. Other faces came to her, and they all suddenly looked repulsive. That very evening, as soon as the newspaper paragraph was confirmed, the Party would meet, the secretary would propose telegraphing a unanimous resolution demanding the supreme penalty for Kiril Rublev, Erchov, Makeyev, traitors, assassins, enemies of the people, scum of humanity. Willi would vote Yes, Nikifor Antonich would vote Yes, the rest would all vote Yes … “May my hand wither if I raise it with yours, you wretches!” No one to beg for help, no one to whom she could talk, no one! The Rublevs perish alone, alone! What was she to do?

It came to her: Father! Father, help me! You have known Rublev all your life, Father, you will save him, you can save him. You will go to the Chief, you will tell him … She lit a cigarette: the match flame was a star of good omen in her fingers. Almost radiant, Xenia began writing her telegram in a post office. The first word she put on paper extinguished her confidence. She tore up the first blank, and felt her face become tense. Above the desk a poster explained: “
By a monthly payment of 50 francs for twenty-five years, you can assure yourself of a peaceful old age
…” Xenia burst out laughing. Her fountain pen had run dry, she looked around. A magic hand held out a yellow pen with a gold band. Xenia wrote decisively:

Where had that absurd yellow fountain pen come from? Xenia did not know what to do with it, but a hand took it from her; a gentleman, of whom she saw nothing but his Charlie Chaplin mustache, said something agreeable to her which she did not hear. Go to the devil! At the counter the clerk, a young woman with thick lips heavily rouged, counted the words in Xenia's telegram. She looked straight into Xenia's eyes and said:

“I hope you will succeed, mademoiselle.”

A knot of sobs in her throat, Xenia answered:

“It is almost impossible.”

The brown, gold-flecked eyes on the other side of the counter looked at her in terror, but their expression enlightened Xenia — she recovered herself: “No, everything is possible, thank you, thank you.” The Boulevard Haussmann vibrated under a pale sun. At a corner a crowd had gathered to look up at a second-floor window in which slender, swaying manikins appeared one by one, displaying the season's dresses … Xenia knew that she would find Sukhov at the Marbeuf. Though she did not think about it, he inspired in her the physical confidence which a young woman has in the male who desires her. Poet, secretary of a section of the Poets' Syndicate, he wrote prosaic, impersonal poems which were printed in the newspapers and which the State Publishing House collected in small volumes:
Drums, Step by Step, Guard the Frontier
… He repeated Maiakovsky's epigrams: “Notre-Dame? It would make a magnificent movie theater.” Associated with Security, he visited the cells of young officials on missions abroad, recited them his verses in the virile voice of a town crier, and wrote confidential reports on the behavior of his auditors in their capitalist surroundings. When Sukhov and Xenia were alone in a garden, he put his arm around her. The grass, the smell of earth made him amorous, made him want to run, to gallop, Xenia said. She let him embrace her and was pleased, though she insisted to him that she felt no more than friendship for him, “and if you want to write to me, let it be in prose, please!” No — he was writing nothing. She refused him her lips, she refused to go to a hotel in the Porte Doré district with him to begin “an adventure
à la française
” — “which perhaps, Xeniuchka, would make me as lyrical as old Pushkin! You ought to love me for poetry's sake!” Sukhov kissed her hands. “You get prettier every day, you have a little Champs-Elysées air about you now that fascinates me, Xeniuchka … But you don't look well. Come closer.” He squeezed her into a corner of the bench, knee to knee, put his arm around her waist, looked her up and down with eyes that were like a fine stallion's. But what Xenia said froze him. He drew away. And, severely: “Xeniuchka, don't do anything foolish. Keep out of this business. If Rublev has been arrested, then he is guilty. If he has confessed, you cannot make a denial for him. If he is guilty, he no longer exists for anyone. That is my point of view, and there is no other.” Xenia was already looking for someone else to help her. Sukhov took her hand. The contact aroused such intense disgust in her that she suppressed it and remained inert. Was I mad that I thought of
him
to save a Rublev? “Are you leaving so soon, Xeniuchka, you're not angry, are you?”

“What an idea! I'm busy. No, don't come with me.”

You are nothing but a brute, Sukhov, just fit to turn out poems for rotary presses. Your loud linen waistcoat is grotesque, your double crepe-rubber soles give me the horrors. Xenia was refreshed by her irritation. “Taxi … Anywhere … Bois de Boulogne … No, Buttes-Chaumont …” The Buttes-Chaumont floated in a green haze. On fine summer mornings the trees and shrubs in Petrovsky Park look like that. Xenia looked at the leaves. Leaves, calm me. Leaning over the pool, she saw that she looked as if she had been crying for a long time. Absurd ducklings came running toward her … An insane nightmare — there had been nothing in that accursed paper, it was impossible. She powdered her face, rouged her lips, took a deep breath. What a frightful dream! The next instant her distress overpowered her again — but she remembered a name: Passereau. How could she have failed to remember it sooner? Passereau is a great man. Passereau had an audience with the Chief. Together, Passereau and Father will save Rublev.

It was about three o'clock when Xenia called on Professor Passereau, famous in two hemispheres, President of the Congress for the Defense of Culture, corresponding member of the Moscow Academy of Sciences, whom even Popov did not refuse to visit when he made an inspection trip to Paris. A servant took in her name, the door of the drawing room opened at once (Xenia had a glimpse of provincial furniture, walls decorated with water colors), and Professor Passereau advanced to take her most affectionately by the shoulders. “Mademoiselle! How happy I am to see you! In Paris for a while? Do you know, mademoiselle, that you are adorable? The daughter of my old friend will forgive the compliment, I am sure … Come in, come in!” He took her arm, seated her on the sofa in his study, smiled at her with every inch of his frank, military-looking face. None of the city's noises penetrated here. Various pieces of precision apparatus, under glass bells, occupied the corners of the room. A cluster of green leaves filled the door that gave on the garden. A large portrait in a gold frame appeared to attract Xenia's attention. The professor explained: “Count Montessus de Ballore, mademoiselle, the man of genius who deciphered the enigma of earthquakes …”

“But you too,” said Xenia enthusiastically, “you have …”

“Oh, I — that was much easier. Once the trail has been blazed in scientific matters, all one has to do is to follow it…”

Xenia allowed herself to be distracted, because she shrank from her problem. “Yours is a magnificent and mysterious science, is it not?” The professor laughed: “Magnificent, if you insist, like all science. But not mysterious. We are hot on the track of mystery, mademoiselle, and it will not elude us!” The professor opened a file. “See — here are the co-ordinates for the Messina earthquake of 1908; no more mystery there. When I demonstrated them before the Tokio Congress …” But he saw that Xenia's lips were trembling. “Mademoiselle … What is it? Bad news of your father? … Are you in trouble? Tell me …”

“Kiril Rublev,” Xenia stammered.

“Rublev, the historian? … The Rublev of the Communist Academy, you mean? I've heard of him, I believe I even met him once … at a banquet … a friend of your father, is he not?”

Xenia felt ashamed of the tears she was holding back, ashamed of her absurd feeling of humiliation, ashamed perhaps of what was about to take place. Her throat became dry, she felt that she was an enemy here.

“Kiril Rublev will be shot before the week is over if we do not intervene instantly.”

Professor Passereau appeared to shrink into his chair. She saw that he had a potbelly, old-fashioned ornaments dangling from his watch chain, an old-fashioned waistcoat. “Ah,” he said. “Ah, what you tell me is terrible …” Xenia explained the dispatch from Moscow, published that morning, the abominable phrase concerning the “complete confessions,” the assassination of Tulayev a year since … The professor stressed the point: “There was an assassination?” — “Yes, but to make Rublev responsible for it is as mad as …” — “I understand, I understand …” She had nothing more to say. The glittering and preposterous seismographic machines occupied an inordinate space in the silence. There was no earthquake anywhere.

“Well, mademoiselle, I beg you to believe that you have my deepest sympathy … I assure you … It is terrible … Revolutions devour their children — we French have learned that only too well… the Girondins, Danton, Hébert, Robespierre, Babeuf … It is the implacable movement of history …” Xenia heard only fragments of what he was saying. Her mind distilled the essence of his sentences, the fragments fitted together to compose a different discourse for her. “A sort of fatality, mademoiselle … I am an old materialist myself, and yet, in the presence of these trials, I think of the fatality of antique tragedy …” (“Hurry up and get it over,” Xenia thought sternly.) “… before which we are powerless …