The Russian Affair (21 page)

He dropped off his passengers in the vicinity of the train station and parked his car in the neighborhood where the little eating and drinking places were. Unhurriedly, he entered the yurt-restaurant and drank a glass standing up. Then a table came free; Leonid ordered whale meat with rice and ate slowly, drinking tea between mouthfuls. When he stepped outside again, he found that an ice storm had swept through the streets and covered the pavement with a layer of reflective film. Amid pedestrians who were holding tightly to one another, falling, and laughing uproariously, Leonid groped his way up the hill. Eventually, he reached the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk Hospital, walked across the dimly lit lobby, and asked at the reception desk for the Department of Surgery.

“You’re in the Department of Surgery,” the nurse replied. She wore a cylindrical cap on her head.

“May I speak to Doctor Korff, please?”

“I’ll see if I can reach her,” the nurse said, picking up the telephone.

In excited anticipation, Leonid paced a little, careful not to make any noise. Placards in display cases urged compliance with the rules of good hygiene.

“Here at the front desk,” he heard the nurse whisper into the phone. “No, he’s alone.”

Not a minute later, a swaddled figure came barreling around the corner: blue lab coat, blue pants, hair confined under a bonnet, white surgical
mask covering mouth and nose. “You?” Galina Korff put her hands on her hips. “You’re scaring my girls!”

Leonid waved his arms in irritation. “How?”

“You come in here wearing your parade uniform, you march up and down. A person might think the army was occupying the hospital.”

“I wanted … no, please, I’m not here on duty,” he babbled, turning toward the nurse.

“So what do you want?” Galina’s eyes flashed up at him impatiently.

“I’ve been looking for you.”

“Are you ill?”

“No.”

“Lonely, then.” She smiled under her mask.

He didn’t want to have such a conversation in the nurse’s presence. “Any chance you might have a minute later?”

“Cases are waiting for me: one internal bleeding, one severed thumb.” She pointed to the row of benches that was screwed into the wall. “If you’re willing to wait that long …”

“How did the thumb accident happen?”

“Circular saw in the fish factory.”

He shook off the bloody image. “Won’t you be too tired after all that?”

“That depends on you.” She pushed her bonnet back and scratched her head. “See you later, then.”

Leonid nodded to her departing shape, and only then did he become aware of how weary that day had made him. I talked to my son on the telephone, he thought; I didn’t perform too hopelessly during the salvage operation, and I confiscated some dirty magazines. Now I’ll be happy to sit here without having to
undertake
anything. He watched Doctor Korff disappear through the next swinging door.

THIRTEEN

U
sually, Petya had long been asleep by now, but not this evening. Viktor Ipalyevich had turned on all the lights in the apartment and taken out the folders containing his work of the last many years. Table and sofa, shelves and windowsill were covered with pages of poetry, some typed on thin paper with the poet’s old typewriter, but most handwritten on sheets torn from pads of graph paper. As Anna dried the dishes, she cast an occasional glance at the show. Grandson and grandfather were shuffling around the room, pausing often to stand still and admire, like visitors gazing devoutly at the memorabilia in the Museum of the Revolution. They stopped in front of the radiator, and the old man pointed to a sheet. The boy read aloud,

Uncoil your march, my lads!
Up, Blue Shirts! Storm the ocean!

Viktor Ipalyevich clicked his tongue, as though he were tasting wine. “No, that’s not it,” he said. He pointed to another poem. Petya got up on tiptoe so that he could see it better. He read,

I can’t cast off the unmoored boat;
The shadow’s step eludes my hearing
.

“I like that one especially!” Anna called from the kitchen.

“You do?” Her father was already in the doorway. “Do you think it would be a good idea to open the cycle with it?”

Anna dried the carving knife. “No. Too mellow, too playful. For the beginning, you need something militant.”

“Just what I was thinking!” He disappeared. “Come on, Petya, the fighting poems are on the sofa.”

Several folders were searched through and the collections
With Prometheus’ Hands
and
Spare Us the Eulogies!
taken out. The boy began to read one poem after the other, but his grandfather wasn’t satisfied. “Old-fashioned,” he growled. “The war was still going on when I wrote that.” He nervously ran his hands over the table. “We need … it should be … damn it, I ought to write a new one!”

Petya yawned and tried to turn the page, but the old man prevented him. Viktor Ipalyevich glanced at the poem skeptically, read it in silence, and laid the page on the table. In the kitchen, Anna listened to his voice:

Where does Russia begin?
In the Kurils, or on
Bering Island, or at
the Kamchatka Peninsula?
Russia begins in her goodness
,
her truth, her perseverance
.
There is the source, and it flows
not from her mountains
but from her great works
.
Friend, it flows from you!

Anna waited for his commentary, sure that he’d find something to criticize here, too, but silence reigned. Then she heard Petya jumping on the sofa. Curious, she turned the water off and stepped into the room, where she found her father standing with his hands on his hips and gazing down at the poem. “Not bad, I have to say. After so many years, still … not bad.” It had been a long time since Anna had last seen him smiling as he was at that moment. “Petyushka, this will be our first poem,” he said, nodding thoughtfully, as though his own judgment were not absolutely trustworthy. “Come on, we’ll put it in a new folder.”

He received no answer. The boy had curled up among the papers like a puppy and fallen asleep. Anna wiped her hands off, picked up Petya, carried him to the sleeping alcove, and undressed him.

“I’m going to see about getting a new curtain tomorrow,” she said, touching the place where the culpable curtain had formerly hung. Her father was sorry that he would soon have to put an end to all sound and movement in the living room. On tiptoe, he continued his journey through his own verse. The two of them, father and daughter, performed an odd ballet: Viktor Ipalyevich stepped mincingly to the radiator, while Anna dodged him in order to bring Petya to the bathroom. When they returned to the room, her father retreated from the sofa and let her pass on her way to put the boy to bed; then she went to the kitchen, where she turned off the light. Viktor Ipalyevich was going through a bundle of papers, his back to her, as she undressed and threw on her nightshirt. Then she slipped past him and sat down in the alcove.

“We did right to throw away that dusty thing. I believe Petya started sleeping better already last night.” She gazed at her son, who’d wasted no time falling asleep again; his head rested on a freshly washed towel, which Anna, in accordance with Doctor Shchedrin’s instructions, had spread over the boy’s pillow. “Would it bother you if I did a few more things in the kitchen?”

Viktor Ipalyevich didn’t lift his eyes from the pages before him. “Of
course not,” he said. Seeing him so happy and hopeful gave Anna a satisfaction she had long gone without. She glided barefoot over the floor.

It had been only a week since Dubna, but her impressions of the place were already fading away. The ice race on the Volga came into her mind. She thought about the fork-tongued orphanage director, and about Adamek and his pipe. Would Nadezhda and her Irkutskian ever hear from each other again? As for the scientific achievements she’d been granted the opportunity to marvel at, Anna scarcely gave them a thought. In retrospect, it was hard to comprehend the time and effort it must have cost Alexey to smuggle her into the atomic city. They had been together one evening and one drowsy afternoon; wouldn’t they have been able to accomplish that more comfortably in Moscow? And why doesn’t he get in touch with me, she thought fretfully. She had something of great importance to tell him. During the morning shift, while she was perched high up on her scaffolding, Anna had decided to make a full confession to Alexey; he must know everything. It would be up to him, and not to Kamarovsky, to decide how things would proceed. As she was loading a trowel with mortar, this solution had suddenly seemed utterly simple to her, and the freedom of her decision had made her completely euphoric.

From an inner corner of the sleeping alcove, Anna watched the poet as he gathered his folders together, made sure that he was also bringing tobacco and liquor, and disappeared through the kitchen door. With the velvet curtain gone, Anna could hear all too clearly every sound coming from the kitchen. Her father banged open the ashtray’s metal lid. When he struck a match, it was like a whiplash. She turned off the light and got under the covers. Since Petya was taking up most of the bed, she lay on her side. Was she just telling herself that he was breathing more freely, or was it actually the case? Tomorrow, she’d continue the cleaning operation. Now that she knew the cause of Petya’s suffering, she saw dust traps everywhere, in every cushion, in the window curtains, in the tablecloths.
From now on, she’d sweep the floors and wipe off the windowsills every day and dust the radiators once a week. How wonderful it was that her boy was not terribly sick but only allergic; she felt capable of overcoming his affliction by dint of her own efforts, and it was a good feeling. She curled up her legs and intertwined them with Petya’s little calves. From the kitchen came the breathy murmur of her father’s whispering:

He ended up a thousand versts deep into foreign territory
,
Where a bullet struck him down
.

Anna was surprised at how much there was to know about dust. For example, she’d discovered that dust wasn’t as dry as it was reputed to be; in fact, dust mite larvae throve best in a moist atmosphere. She’d learned that dust was indifferent as to whether it lay on cheap or costly material, but that expensive velvet welcomed dust and therefore dust mites, whereas cheaper synthetic fabrics hindered the proliferation of the little beasts. Leather was an enemy of dust, and wool offered itself as a hatchery. In winter, the mites procreated more slowly, because the air was so dry. Soon, however, when the temperatures were rising and water returning to its liquid form everywhere, breeding season for the dust creatures would begin.

The next afternoon, Anna incurred her father’s displeasure by opening the window in the living room for several minutes. “Stale air can lead to mildew formation,” she declared, repeating a principle enunciated in the book that Doctor Shchedrin had given her.

Not for the first time, Viktor Ipalyevich watched loose pages of his poetry fluttering around the room and sent Petya chasing after them. He was putting up with the dismantling of his familiar surroundings, but in his view, the comfortable living room had already been stripped bare. At the moment, his daughter was cleaning the back side of the radiator; she’d tied a brush to a long stick and was on her knees, stubbornly
scrubbing away. After her return from the early shift, she’d taken an old toothbrush to the spaces between the floorboards, removed the newspaper from the broken window panes, and covered them with plastic film. Now, as she was about to take down the wall rug, he voiced his objection: “That’s enough!”

“I’m going to put it in the cellar.”

He pointed to the homely piece and asked, “How long does it have to stay in exile?”

“Until Petya moves out of here,” she answered vaguely.

“I gave you that rug as a wedding present. The pattern of interlocking circles was supposed to be a symbol of your enduring love.” Viktor Ipalyevich insisted that the rug should remain where it was until a substitute wall adornment could be found.

Showing that she was ready to discuss the matter, Anna asked, “A picture, a map, a poster?”

“Something beautiful! There’s nothing left in this apartment worth looking at!” With outspread arms, he gestured toward the dust-free wasteland around him.

“I’ll think of something,” Anna said. Then she turned her attention to pulling out the first of the nails that fastened the rug to the wall.

“The rug stays there.”

“For Petya’s health!” she cried out.

“Petya’s temperature is back to normal, and his eyes are clear.” Anna’s father took up a position in front of the wall rug, as though he meant to defend it. “By the time the spring’s over, he’ll be playing soccer!”

Anna decided not to defy his prohibition. After all, he was right: Shchedrin’s diagnosis was proving to be accurate, the medicine was starting to work; she simply couldn’t believe in Petya’s miraculous transformation, not yet. She’d become cautious insofar as good luck was concerned. Anna put her tools in a box and stowed it under the kitchen sink. In the living room, her father turned on the television.

“… The crucial aspect of matter is not its materiality, but the fact
that it consists of a number of miniature processes that stand in mutual reciprocity with one another.”

Anna straightened herself and pricked up her ears; she knew that voice.

“Matter does not ‘be’—it
happens.
”

Where had she heard that sneering inflection before? She was in the living room in two steps—and she hadn’t been wrong. The program was
The Open Ear
, the woman who hosted the show was moving slips of paper about, and across from her sat Nikolai Lyushin, casually dressed in a suit but no tie. Anna stretched out her hand in surprise.