The Case of Comrade Tulayev (49 page)

At the St.-Michel subway station Xenia shook off the detective in the beige overcoat. She wandered on through Paris, stopping sometimes to look at her reflection in shopwindows: bedraggled silhouette, rumpled jacket, pale face and sunken eyes — it was not in order to feel sorry for herself, but to see that she was ugly, I want to be ugly, I must be ugly! The women she passed — self-centered, carefully dressed, pleased because they had chosen some hideous bauble to dangle from the lapel of a tailored jacket or the neck of a bodice — were merely human animals satisfied to breathe, but the sight of them made her want to stop living … At nightfall Xenia found herself on the edge of a brightly lit square. She was exhausted from walking. Cascades of electric light flowed over the dome of a huge movie theater, the flood of barbaric brilliance surrounded two enormous faces, joined in the most meaningless of kisses, as revolting in their beatitude as in their utter anonymity. The other corner of the square, flaming with red and gold, sent a love song pouring frantically out of loudspeakers, to an accompaniment of little strident cries and clicking heels. For Xenia the whole effect resolved itself into a long and insistent caterwauling whose human intonation made it a thing of shame. Men and women were drinking at the bar, and they suggested strange insects, cruel to their own kind, collected in an overheated vivarium. Between these two conflagrations — the theater and the café — a wide street mounted into a darkness starred with signs: HOTEL, HOTEL, HOTEL. Xenia started up it, turned in at the first door, and asked for a room for the night. The little old bespectacled man whom she woke from a drowse seemed inseparable from the keyboard and the counter between which his tobacco-reeking person was wedged. “It will be fifteen francs,” he said, laying his cloudy spectacles on the paper he had been reading. His staring rabbit eyes blinked. “Funny, I don't recognize you. Could you be Paula, from the Passage Clichy? Don't you always go to the Hotel du Morbihan? You're a foreigner? Just a minute …” He stooped, disappeared, popped out from under a board, disappeared again down the corridor … And the proprietor himself appeared, his shirt sleeves rolled up, exposing thick butcher's arms. He seemed to be surrounded by a greasy fog. He looked Xenia over, as if he were going to sell her, hunted for something under the counter, finally said: “All right, fill out the form. Have you your papers?” Xenia held out her diplomatic passport. “Alone? Right … I'll give you Number 11, it'll be thirty francs, the bathroom is right next door …” Huge, bull-necked, he preceded Xenia up the stairs, swinging a bunch of keys between his fat fingers. Cold, dimly lighted by two shaded lamps set on two night tables, Room No. 11 reminded Xenia of a detective story. In that corner over there was the ironbound chest in which the murdered girl's body was found, cut up in pieces. The corner smelled of phenol. After she put out the lamps, the blue neon signs in the street filled the room from mirror to ceiling with luminous arabesques. Among them Xenia quickly discovered visions familiar to her childhood: the wolf, the fish, the witch's spinning wheel, the profile of Ivan the Terrible, the enchanted tree. She was so tired from thinking and walking that she went to sleep immediately. The murdered girl timidly raised the lid of the chest, stood up, stretched her bruised limbs. “Don't be afraid,” Xenia said to her, “I know we are innocent.” She had hair like a naiad's, and calm eyes like wild daisies. “We'll read the story of the Golden Fish together, listen to that music …” Xenia took her into her bed to warm her … Downstairs, behind the desk, the proprietor of the Two Moons Hotel was conversing by telephone with Monsieur Lambert, assistant police commissioner of the district.

Life begins anew every morning. Too young to despair, Xenia felt that she had shaken off her nightmare. If there was no trial, Rublev would live. It was impossible that they should kill him — he was so great, so simple, so pure, and Popov knew it, the Chief must know it. Xenia felt happy, she dressed, she looked in the mirror and found herself pretty again. But where did I think the murder chest was yesterday? She was glad she had not felt afraid. There was a little knock, she opened the door. A broad-shouldered figure, a broad, sad face appeared in the half-light of the hall. Neither familiar nor unfamiliar, a vague fleshy face. The visitor introduced himself, in a thick, velvety voice:

“Krantz.”

He entered, looked the room over, took in everything. Xenia covered up the unmade bed.

“Xenia, I have come for you on your father's behalf. A car is waiting at the door for you. Come.”

“And if I don't wish to?”

“I give you my word that you shall do as you please. You have not been a traitor, you will never be a traitor, I am not here to use force on you. The Party trusts in you as it trusts in me. Come.”

In the car Xenia rebelled. Half facing her and pretending to be busy with his pipe, Krantz felt the storm coming. The car was going down the Rue de Rivoli. Jeanne d'Arc, with her gilt dull and peeling off, but still very beautiful, brandished a childish sword on her little pedestal. “I want to get out,” Xenia said firmly, and she half rose. Krantz caught her arm and forced her to sit down.

“You shall get out if you wish, Xenia Vassilievna, I promise you; but not as simply as that.”

He lowered the window on Xenia's side. The Vendôme Column disappeared down a perspective of arches, in the pale light.

“Do not be impulsive, I beg of you. Whatever you do, do it deliberately. We shall pass a number of policemen on the way. We are not going fast. You can call out if you wish, I will not stop you. You, a Soviet citizen, will put yourself under the protection of the French police … I will be asked for my papers. You will go your way. Afternoon extras will announce your escape — that is, your treason. Throw your little handful of mud on the embassy, on your father, on our Party, on our country. I will take Wednesday's plane alone and I will pay for you — with Popov. You know the law: close relatives of traitors must at least be deported to the most distant parts of the Union.”

He drew away a little, admired the white meerschaum mermaid which formed the bowl of his handsome pipe, opened his tobacco pouch, said to the driver:

“Fedia, be so good as to slow down whenever you pass a policeman.”

“At your orders, Comrade Chief.”

Xenia's hands clenched painfully. She looked at the policemen's short capes almost with hatred. She said:

“How strong you are, Comrade Krantz, and how despicable!”

“Neither as strong nor as despicable as you think. I am loyal. And you too, Xenia Vassilievna, you must be loyal, no matter what happens.”

They took Wednesday's plane from Le Bourget together. The Eiffel Tower dwindled, glued to the earth, the severe design of the gardens opened around it, the Arc de Triomphe was only a block of stone at the center of radiating avenues. The marvel of Paris vanished under clouds, leaving Xenia regretting a world which she had scarcely touched and had not understood, which perhaps she would never understand. “I have accomplished nothing toward saving Rublev, I will fight for him in Moscow, if only we arrive in time! I will make my father act, I will ask for an audience with the Chief. He has known us for so many years that he will not refuse to listen to me, and if he listens to me, Rublev will be saved.” In her waking dream Xenia imagined her interview with the Chief. Confidently, without fear and without humility, well knowing that she was nothing and he the incarnation of the Party for which we must all live and die, she would be brief and direct, for his minutes were precious. He had all the problems of a sixth of the world to solve every day; she must speak to him with her whole soul, that she might convince him in a few moments … Krantz considerately left her to her thoughts. He occupied his time reading, alternating between stupid magazines and military reviews in several languages. The poem of the clouds unrolled above the moving earth. Rivers flowing from their distant springs enchanted the eye. — They dined almost gaily in Warsaw. It seemed an even more elegant and luxurious city than Paris, but from the sky you saw that it was surrounded and, as it were, menaced by a poverty-stricken terrain. Presently, through rents in the clouds, appeared great somber forests … “We are nearly home,” Xenia murmured, flooded with a joy so poignant that she felt a momentary sympathy for her traveling companion. Krantz leaned toward the porthole; he looked tired. With gloomy satisfaction he said: “We're already over kolkhoze land — see, there are no more small strips …” Infinite fields of an indefinable color, something between ocher and grayish brown. “We shall reach Minsk in twenty minutes …” From under the
French Infantry Review
he drew a copy of
Vogue
and turned the glossy pages.

“Xenia Vassilievna, I must ask you to excuse me. My instructions are definite. I request you to regard yourself as under arrest. From Minsk on, your journey will be managed by Security … Don't be too uneasy, I hope that it will all come out all right.”

On the cover of the magazine, elegant faces, eyeless under wide hatbrims, displayed lips rouged in different shades to match their complexions. Fifteen hundred feet below, between newly plowed fields, peasants dressed in earth-colored rags followed a heavily loaded cart. You could see them urging on the exhausted horse, pushing at the cart when the wheels sank into the mud.

“So I can do nothing for Rublev,” thought Xenia desolately. They could do nothing for anyone in the world, those peasants with their bogged wagon, and no one in the world could do anything for them. They disappeared, the bare ground gradually approached.

Since he had received his daughter's criminally insane telegram, Comrade Popov had been in a state between uneasiness and prostration, besides being really tortured by his rheumatism. There was no mistaking the coldness people showed him. The new Prosecutor, Atkin, who was investigating his predecessor's activities, carried his veiled insolence to the point of twice excusing himself when Popov invited him or went to call on him. Stopping in at the General Secretariat to test the atmosphere, Popov found only preoccupied faces which gave him an impression of hypocrisy. No one came hurrying to meet him. Gordeyev, who usually consulted him on current matters, did not show himself for several days. But he came on the fourth day, about six in the evening, having learned that Popov was not well and was staying at home. The Popovs lived in a C.C. villa in Bykovo Forest. Gordeyev arrived in uniform. Popov received him in a dressing gown; he walked across the room to meet him, supporting himself on a cane. Gordeyev began by asking about his rheumatism, offered to send him a doctor who was said to be exceptionally good, did not insist, accepted a glass of brandy. The furniture, the carpets, everything in the quiet room, which gave the impression of being dusty without being so, was slightly antiquated. Gordeyev coughed to clear his throat.

“I have news of your daughter for you. She is very well … She … She is under arrest. She did some foolish things in Paris — have you heard about it?”

“Yes, yes,” said Popov, utterly crushed. “I can imagine, it's possible … I received a telegram, but is it serious, do you think?”

Coward that he was, what he most wanted to know was whether it was serious for himself.

Gordeyev looked doubtfully at his fingernails, then at the faded half-tints of the room, the black firs outside the window. “What shall I say? I do not know yet. Everything will depend on the inquiry. Theoretically it can be quite serious: attempted desertion in a foreign country, during a mission, activities contrary to the interests of the Union … Those are the terms of the law, but I certainly hope that, in actual fact, it is only a matter of ill-advised, or let us say unconsidered, acts, which are reprehensible rather than culpable …”

Shivering into himself, Popov became so old that he lost all substance.

“The difficulty, er, Comrade Popov, is that … I find it most awkward to explain it to you … Help me …”

He wanted help, the creature!

“It puts you, Comrade Popov, in a delicate situation. Aside from the fact that the relevant articles of the Code — which, of course, we shall not apply in all their rigor, without definite orders from above — that the law provides for … for measures … concerning the relatives of guilty parties, you certainly know that Comrade Atkin has opened an inquiry… which is being kept secret … into the case of Rachevsky. We have established that Rachevsky — it is incredible, but it is a fact — Rachevsky destroyed the dossier on the Aktyubinsk sabotage affair … We have sought for the source of the most unfortunate indiscretion which caused the announcement abroad of a new trial … We even thought it might be a maneuver on the part of foreign agents! Rachevsky, with whom it is very difficult to talk since he appears to be always drunk, admits that he ordered the preparation of a dispatch on the subject, but he claims that he acted on verbal instructions from you … As soon as he is arrested, I shall question him myself, you may be sure, and I shall not allow him to elude his responsibilities … The coincidence between this fact and the charge that hangs over your daughter remains, however — how shall I put it? — most unfortunate …”

Popov answered nothing. Twinges of pain shot through his limbs. Gordeyev tried to read him: a man at his last gasp, or an old fox who would still find a way out? Difficult to decide, but the former hypothesis seemed more likely. Popov's silence invited him to come to a conclusion. Popov was looking at him with the piercing eyes of a beast tracked to its lair.

“You can have no doubt, Comrade Popov, of my personal feelings …”

The other did not flinch: Either he doubted them or he didn't give a damn for them, or else he felt too badly to consider them of the slightest importance. What his feelings were, Gordeyev did not feel called upon to say.

“It has been decided … provisionally … to ask you to remain at home and to make no telephone calls …”