The Russian Affair (26 page)

“He remained surprisingly calm.”

“He’s a politician,” Rosa said with a little smile. “Maintaining the facade—that’s what the gentlemen on the Central Committee are best at.” She clasped Anna’s hand. “Wait until the next time you’re alone with Alexey. I’m sure he won’t be so calm then.”

A noise made the two women turn around. A few feet away, a door opened, and Avdotya started shuffling toward the mailboxes. She noticed the other two only when she was right in front of them. “Good heavens! Who are you?” the old woman shouted.

“It’s all right, little mother! It’s me, Anna!”

“And who’s with you? Come out of there or I’ll call the police!”

“This is my friend Rosa,” Anna said. “And this is Avdotya, the seamstress.”

“We were just chatting,” Rosa said to the old woman. “Just chatting a little, that’s all.”

“In the dark?” Avdotya shook her head and turned toward the mailboxes.

Rosa led Anna outside, where they spoke a few minutes longer. In the end, Rosa seemed satisfied and with a brief embrace bade Anna farewell.

“We should do things like this more often!” Viktor Ipalyevich was standing in a part of the apartment where Anna had never seen him before, namely, in front of the mirror. He’d taken off his cap—a rare occurrence in itself—and was occupied with arranging his hair. With the years, it had retreated from the crown to the back of his head, but Viktor Ipalyevich was running his finger through it as if it were a thick mane.

“Do what, Papa?” Anna ascertained that Petya wasn’t back yet.

“People!” He twirled a pathetic little tuft sprouting from the middle of his bald spot and tried to give the strands a specific direction. “We should surround ourselves with people again, the way we used to. This reclusive life isn’t good for us.” He looked at his daughter in the mirror as though she were chiefly to blame for his hermitlike existence.

“Didn’t you say you were going through a phase that made it impossible for you to put up with the outside world?”

“How can you take my gloomy nattering seriously?” He laughed, displaying his high spirits. “It took a visit from your friend to remind me that Moscow is out there! What does she do, your friend?”

“She works for a newspaper.”

“A colleague! A fellow writer!” Viktor Ipalyevich shouted. “And she didn’t say a word about that! She talked about my work the whole time.” He turned his back to the mirror and twisted himself in an attempt to see how he looked from behind.

“Why isn’t Petya here? Why didn’t you go down and get him?”

“Do you know what I’m in the mood for? A party!” The poet pointed to his notebook. “Don’t I have a good reason to invite people over for a party?”

“What people?”

“Haven’t they been wondering for a long time what their friend Viktor Ipalyevich is doing? And I’ll tell them: He’s working on a volume of poems, and it’s almost finished! That’s why he wants you all to gather around him and celebrate this great event!” Overheated, he pulled off his woolen jacket and hung it over the back of his chair. “Of course, your lady friend will be among the invited guests.”

Anna interrupted his flight: “What about Petya?”

“It won’t hurt him to stay up a little later than usual one night.”

“I mean now!” She stepped in front of her father. “Do you want him to stay outside until he catches cold?”

“Right, I have to fetch Petya,” the old man said, nodding absently. “We’ll invite everybody, all right? Uyvary and Madame Akhmadulina and good old Lebedinsky and Vagrich …”

“Writers?” she asked, unable to believe her ears. “You want
writers
to set foot in this apartment?”

“But that’s what I’ve been talking about all this time.” He put his
hands on his hips. “Will you cook for us, Anna? Will you do that? I’ll pay for everything.”

“With what?”

“With this, my dear child.” All at once, he was holding a piece of crumpled paper on which there were some handwritten figures.

“They’ve paid you something?”

“For the first time in nine years.” He nodded without emotion. “A princely advance. I don’t know anyone they’ve ever paid so well.”

“Since when do you have this?” Anna held the check under the lamp.

“Two days now. I wanted to wait for the best opportunity to surprise you with it. Do you think your beautiful friend will accept my invitation?”

“Rosa?” Anna frowned. “If she knows that a bunch of banned writers will be gathering here, I think she’ll be only too happy to come.”

“Really?” He grinned without understanding what Anna was alluding to. “So the only question remaining is what you’ll prepare for our guests.”

“No.” She picked up her scarf again. “The only question is whether you’re going to fetch Petya home for dinner, or whether I’ll have to do it.”

“Petya, yes, right, he must be frozen stiff!” The old man jammed his cap onto his head, put on his coat, and headed for the door. “Ah, Anna, I’m so glad, this is really a brilliant idea. We’ll put some life in this musty old place!” As he was about to go out, he turned around again and said,

Come see us tomorrow, uplift and gladden us!
Today’s rain refreshed us, and the forecast is glorious
.
And should we want stormy weather
,
We’ll make some together!

And with that, he ran out of the apartment.

EIGHTEEN

O
ver the following days, Anna tried in vain to get in touch with Alexey. Only after a week had passed did he contact her and suggest a meeting. It was the first time she’d ever been obliged to turn him down; the date he proposed was the very evening on which Viktor Ipalyevich planned to throw his party.

Anna’s father used the occasion as an excuse to resume his distilling operations. Turning a deaf ear to all her warnings, he took to leaving home early in the morning, scouring the city for the cheapest potatoes, and returning laden with twenty-pound bags. Then he’d peel and chop the tubers and place them in the boiling apparatus. The resulting mash would go through several distillations, at the end of which a stream of clear liquid flowed into Viktor Ipalyevich’s funnel. The smell of liquor wafted through the apartment and the stairwell and even drifted into the inner courtyard. Anna searched the faces of her fellow residents in the building, trying to discern whether they found her father’s illegal distillery a nuisance and were likely to denounce him to the authorities. But when even Secretary Metsentsev, who was picking up his laundry from Avdotya, ascended to the fourth floor to taste the Four-Star Tsazukhin, Anna abandoned her protest and let her father have his way.

“Now, that’s what I call booze!” he called out as he emerged from the kitchen. “This batch gets five stars!”

During the same period of time, in addition to distilling, Viktor Ipalyevich had submitted the repeatedly revised manuscript of his poems to the publisher and was awaiting the first proofs. He confidently hoped to have them in hand by the day of the party, so that he could offer his colleagues evidence in black and white of his return to the literary scene.

Viktor Ipalyevich had expressed no particular wishes concerning the provision of food and drink for the occasion; he’d simply pressed a high-denomination ruble note into Anna’s hand. She spent three days devising and refining a menu, but in the end, she rejected the whole thing and opted for a mixed buffet. She set out with a long shopping list, and to her surprise, she needed only two days to acquire every item on it. After that, the distillery was thrust into a corner and all work surfaces cleared for the preparation of the tomato aspic, the herring zakuski, and Anna’s baked potato dumplings. When Viktor Ipalyevich saw the refined little morsels that resulted from his daughter’s labors, he cautiously asked her to consider that a crowd of Russian writers resembled a swarm of hungry grasshoppers and suggested that she prepare something more substantial for their guests. Accordingly, Anna steamed leeks and yellow beets in salted water for an entire day, pressed them through a sieve, thickened the purée with a roux, and, aided by Petya, seasoned the whole concoction. Meanwhile, she pressured Avdotya in vain to produce the new curtain; the seamstress hunkered down behind allusions to commissions for high-ranking customers and postponed the time of delivery. The party would have to take place with the sleeping alcove exposed to view.

A few minutes before the arrival of the first guests, as Anna was putting on her green dress, she realized that she usually wore it only when she went to meet Alexey. The thought of spending an evening with him briefly awakened her longing, but joy soon returned, because Viktor Ipalyevich, at least for one night, was forswearing his reclusive habits,
and the two of them, father and daughter, were really and truly giving a party.

“I slept with my censor,” said the writer Akhmadulina, the first guest to enter the apartment. Her male companion uttered a brief, ironic laugh, to which her response was, “If I thought it would change anything, I’d really do it.” She threw her scarf over a chair. “But when they’re going to put you to work for the Censorship Department, I presume they cut off your dick first.” She embraced Viktor Ipalyevich.

“I have no doubt you’re right,” the poet said, laughing. He’d buttoned his Russian shirt all the way up; instead of his customary suspenders, a belt was holding up his trousers; and he’d trimmed his beard and his eyebrows.

The younger Strupatsky brother arrived. “You made it all the way to the All Unions Ministry?” he asked Akhmadulina incredulously. “They rejected me even from the Cultural Committee of the Russian Republic.” With his chestnut brown hair, amber eyes, and long eyelashes, Strupatsky was an extremely handsome man. Wherever he went, he nourished the hope that Moscow writers could be not only interesting but also good-looking.

Anna greeted Vadim Kozhevnikov, whom her father had designated as a materialistic, corrupt hack ever since his war novels and spy stories had made him a ruble millionaire. “Well, well, my friend, where have you parked your new car?” Viktor Ipalyevich asked mockingly, standing at the window and pretending to search the street.

“Good evening, my dear Viktor. How lovely to see you after such a long time,” said the easygoing Kozhevnikov, ignoring his host’s jab. The two men sported the same style of beard, but Kozhevnikov was portly, and his little goatee capped a double chin.

“Have you delivered another irrelevant, blood-soaked volume to the Glavlit?” Viktor Ipalyevich asked, needling his colleague even as he embraced him.

“These days, no one but you has the nerve to propose dissident poems,”
the bestselling author said, accepting a glass of Five-Star Tsazukhin. Chattering away, the two men retreated to the sleeping nook.

After eight o’clock, the apartment filled up quickly. The toothless Vagrich brought news of the person who’d been named editor in chief of
Novy Mir
. Amid general disappointment, the writers speculated that the new editor would toe the Party line even more assiduously than his predecessors. One of the younger authors said, “The days of Aleksandr Tvardovsky are gone forever.”

“True,” Akhmadulina agreed. “The magazine’s been worthless ever since Tvardovsky got the ax. They don’t dare attack anybody now, except the Chinese and the junta in Chile.”

While Anna was rearranging some dishes, she identified the sensation she had—she felt like a stranger—and realized that she’d felt that way whenever her father had invited his literary colleagues into the Tsazukhin home. This time, too, was like being in the midst of a race of people who communicated in their own coded language. As for her, she hardly spoke during the party, except to respond to requests for her recipes or to describe her ongoing battle against Petya’s allergies; she limited herself to providing fresh supplies of food and drink. This limitation didn’t spoil the party for her, but it helped her see even more clearly that the man with whom she lived under one roof, day in and day out, belonged to a rare species. Tonight, among people of his own kind, he blossomed.

Rosa Khleb appeared, accompanied by a couple who were both actors. Anna had conveyed her father’s invitation to Rosa halfheartedly and had secretly hoped that her friend wouldn’t have time to attend the party, but there she was. Her companions were part of the Taganka Theater Company and had starring roles in Yuri Lyubimov’s currently acclaimed production of
The Tempest
. Even though Viktor Ipalyevich evinced a lively interest in the arrival of these two artists, he was particularly electrified by the coming of the Khleb. “We meet again, sooner than expected!” he cried over the others’ heads, pushed his way through the crowd, and kissed Rosa’s hand. She’d chosen to wear her sailor outfit, which gave
her (as many of her clothes did) the air of an adolescent angel. Anna was amazed at how young Rosa could look when she set her mind to it.

Word went round the gathering that a reporter for the
Moscow Times
had come to pay her respects to the poet, and soon the writers were crowding around Rosa. She’d read Strupatsky’s latest collection of short stories and asked him some critical questions. The author gave evasive answers that were supposed to be funny, but Rosa laid him low with a few sentences: “Your ambivalent attitude toward the present is reflected in your book, Comrade. When I read it, I wasn’t completely sure, because you’re such a skilled craftsman. Unfortunately, meeting you in person has confirmed the impression of emptiness I got from your texts.”

Anna admired Rosa for giving Strupatsky her frank opinion and inwardly agreed with her. In the course of the evening, Anna had heard nothing but self-adulation and general wound licking from her father’s colleagues. They complained about the oppressive censorship, which made it impossible for them to write “the Truth.” The experimental philosopher Vagrich even let himself go so far as to say that his work should be judged not by what it contained but by what it did
not
contain.

Returning from a brief stint in the kitchen, Anna found that a new energy had suddenly seized the company, with the result that the table and the sideboard had been shoved against the wall near the window and a half circle formed around the sofa. The guests in the front row were lounging on the floor; behind them sat those who’d managed to get a hold of chairs. Petya was perched atop the living-room cabinet, where someone had placed him. The actress assumed a feline attitude near the sofa, and her partner stood with his face to the wall and bowed his back. He was shaking, portraying a man racked by heavy sobs.