A Hero's Daughter

4

"He's called Wilfried Almendinner… No, not 'Almendinner,' what am I saying? Almendinger… There's a surname for you! A real tongue twister! We're going to take a great interest in him. Svetlana was supposed tq be looking after him. But she's on sick leave, you see. As to conversation, don't worry. To begin with, your German is perfectly adequate, and in any case he speaks Russian. He was here in the war. He was taken prisoner in the Ukraine and learned the language while they were rebuilding Leningrad. I'm telling you this, Olya, to give you a certain amount of background, so you can prepare yourself a little psychologically But when you're talking to him, of course, you're not supposed to know this. In any case you know your business and you don't need me to remind you of it."

Vitaly Ivanovich took a cigarette from the pack and lit it. He had a weary and disappointed air. Ever since the winter he had been looking forward to the blissful torpor that awaited him on the beach at the KGB's vacation home beside the Black Sea. And suddenly everything was turned upside down, the spring and summer vacations had been put back to the fall and the order had been given to prepare for the International Festival of Youth and Students.

"They're all going to be gathering here, the whole pro-Communist rabble," Vitaly Ivanovich swore internally. "And because of them, I'll have no vacation. What bizarre routines we're falling into. Almost every year there's something: one year it's the Olympic Games, then it's conferences, now this festival… They come here to make love. It's 'Workers of the world, copulate!' This festival's a farce! If only I could take my leave in September, at least I could go mushroom picking. But no! I'll get it around the new year…"

Vitaly Ivanovich pulled a face, stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, and went on with a sad smile: "That's right, Olya, we're going to take a great interest in him. He comes here as the representative of a firm of chemical products, but he has links with the secret services, we know that for certain. In fact, for a time he was an expert on military affairs, but that's just for your information. We think he's going to make a contact. So it's not impossible that someone may pass documents to him. It would be very helpful for us to be able to examine his briefcase. Clearly that can only be done at night, you understand. Of course, customs will check him with a fine-tooth comb when he leaves. But before they get to customs they generally have time to encode it or learn it by heart or even entrust it to the diplomatic pouch. So you see your role is crucial, Olya. He arrives on May the third and leaves on the seventh. He'll be staying at the Intourist."

Olya passed on the German's briefcase, a smart black attaché case, for inspection the very first night. It was an object of quality and price, like all the things this man used.

Olya waited until he was breathing regularly and slipped out of bed. She knew he would sleep deeply for at least two or three hours. The sleeping draft was added to the cocktail. At the table in the restaurant, as if she had just happened to think of it, Olya would exclaim: "Oh! I completely forgot! They do a cocktail here – you know, it's a rather… Russian-style combination – absolutely delicious."

If for any reason the "subject" refused, the waiter would bring exceptionally salty caviar. In the bedroom, after the delights of love had made him breathless, the foreigner would take eager drafts of the cool wine thoughtfully poured out by his attentive companion.

Olya took a large black plastic envelope out of her bag, put the German's briefcase into it and closed the zipper. Then she placed the envelope close to the door, gently withdrew the key from the lock and went over to the telephone. She dialed twice and, without waiting for the customary "Hello," murmured "Forty-six" and hung up. Two minutes later the lock clicked softly, the door opened slightly and a hand deftly seized the black envelope. To avoid falling asleep, Olya did not lie down – she sat in an armchair.

Almendinger was lying on his back, stretched out fully, his great bony hands crossed on his chest. The neon light from the street silvered his face. It was a face that resembled a mournful plaster mask. And it now seemed impossible that the petrified folds of this mouth should, only a few minutes ago, have sought and touched her lips, those hands held her body.

During dinner at the restaurant he had talked a good deal, joking and correcting her mistakes. He bore himself with such worldly ease and there was such precision in all his words and gestures that Olya had no need to act. It felt as if he knew the scenario quite as well as her, that the allocation of roles suited him and in no way discomfited him. It even felt as if it was all so familiar to him that he was intent on making the most of this May evening, the presence of this young escort, as unexpected as she was inevitable, and of the chance, possibly for the last time in his life, to assume the rewarding role of social lion.

With smiling grace he talked about trips he had made, knowing that for his young companion the names of Venice or Naples had the same exotic ring as that of Eldorado. Generally in such recitals Olya used to detect a note of superiority, be it open or covert, on the part of those who lived on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Almendinger's stories were different. For example, in Italy he had for the first time in his life heard a cats' concert. A sadistic Neapolitan had gathered up a dozen cats, had arranged them according to their voices, putting them into tiny cages fitted inside a piano. He had inserted needles into the felt on the hammers so that every time the keys were struck they pricked the cats' tails. The wretched animals each emitted a different sound and their wailing blended into a horrible and pitiful symphony. The sadistic pianist had almost been lynched by the members of the local branch of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

After telling, this story Almendinger threw Olya a somewhat sheepish glance.

"I shouldn't be telling you about such horrible things. After all, we Germans have the reputation among you as a people somewhat lacking in humanity. Yes, that war… When I think that in '41 I could see the Kremlin towers through my binoculars! And now I can see them from my bedroom window. It truly is as the Bible says: 'Die Wege Gottes sind unergrundlich.' God's ways are unfathomable. Have you ever come across that expression?"

He fell silent, his gaze lost somewhere among the cups and plates. Remembering the part she had to play, Olya suggested with exaggerated animation: "Oh listen, Wilfried! I'd completely forgotten. They have an absolutely delicious cocktail here…"

Never before had those words seemed so loathsome to her. It was just at the moment when they brought the cocktail that he began to talk about the Germany of his childhood.

"You know children these days have a great many toys. But all these toys are too cold, too – how can I put it? – technological. When I was a child I had a collection of miniature lighthouses. The top of each one unscrewed and inside there was sand. Each contained a different kind of sand that came from a different beach in Europe…"

Almendinger lay there, his arms folded, his face motionless, now and then emitting a sigh, a brief moan. He knew he would have to remain lying there like that for an hour, or maybe two. He had heard Olya standing stock-still above him, listening to his breathing, then telephoning. He had also heard the door open and close again. He somewhat regretted having chosen to remain stretched out on his back. On his side, with his face hidden in the pillow, it would have been easier. On the other hand, by slightly opening his eyes he could observe what was happening in the room. But even this was of little interest to him. Within his attaché case, a few pages of anodyne disinformation had been slipped with professional dexterity into the middle of a wad of scientific documents. This should smooth the path for his successor as he made a start in Moscow. What Almendinger was preparing to take away with him boiled down to four columns of figures learned by heart.

While he was talking about his childhood collection of lighthouses and their sand, he had been slowly bending the straw in his cocktail glass with his thumb. The glass stood behind the bottle of champagne and the carafe of water. Olya could not see it. He drew gently on the straw and slipped the end of it into an empty glass.

"And then," Almendinger went on, "my cloudless childhood came to an end, alas. I turned into a clumsy great oaf, a nasty little monster. One day I poured out all the sand into one small heap on the lawn. I mixed it ah up."

Olya, who was listening attentively and dreamily, asked in surprise in German: "Warum?"

Almendinger smiled. She suddenly seemed so young to him!

"Und warum sind die Bananen krumm?" he asked her, laughing. "Why are bananas bent?" After that he remarked: "This cocktail is quite excellent. I must remember its name. What did you say? ' Moscow Bouquet'? Ah! A very good name for it…"

He put the straw to his lips. The last drops of delicate pink foam were disappearing from the bottom of the glass.

And now, lying there in the darkness of his bedroom, he reflected that everything in this world was strangely linked. That mixing of the sands had come back to him one night in a trench near Moscow. It was appallingly cold. The soldiers crowded round the stove. The red-hot metal burned their hands, while their backs grew hard and stiff like bark under the piercing snow squalls. Above their heads the icy stars twinkled. And close by, in similar trenches, crouched their enemies, the Russians. But these men, savages that they were, did not even have a stove.

"Tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow," he was thinking, "we'll be in Moscow. We'll have dealt with Russia. It'll be warm and clean. I'll get a medal…" A solitary flare went up, momentarily eclipsing the starry sky. Then their eyes had adjusted to the dark once more. And once more the stars began to shine and the deep black of the sky was restored. Trying to think of nothing, he reached out toward the stove, mentally repeating: "Tomorrow we'll be in Moscow. It'll be warm, and clean…" But the thought he was trying to keep at bay returned. It returned not in words but in a vivid, instinctive flash: this snow-filled ditch dug in the earth, floating away into the dark of the night, among the stars. And all of them in this ditch, who have already seen death, who have already killed. And over there in a similar ditch, covered in hoarfrost, those whom they will have to kill. And this stove into which all the heat in the universe is concentrated that night. And the grains of sand from all the shores of Europe mixed up together in a little grayish mound on the lawn in a German town that has recently come to know the whistle of falling bombs…

In the bedroom the silence of the night reigned. Only from time to time the hiss of a car disappearing up Gorky Street and apart from that, somewhere up on another floor, the short, sharp creak of a floorboard. From the Kremlin tower came the airborne melody of the chimes, then three solemn and measured strokes.

Olya was comfortable in her armchair. She observed the German as he slept and with difficulty restrained an incomprehensible impulse – to approach the bed on tiptoe and run her hand lightly over that plaster mask and bring it back to life.

Almendinger was automatically counting the vibrant strokes from the chiming clock in the tower: "One, two, three. Three o'clock… They're spending a long time searching. They're testing it by radio, they're listening with a stethoscope. No, it's better not to think about it. Once you focus your mind on it for a minute you realize the totally phantasmagoric nature of everything around us. The night… and them. They've put their gloves on and now they're fingering, reading, taking photos. Red-eyed, yawning, their shirt sleeves rolled up. And I'm lying here stupidly motionless. I who, forty years ago, lay on the frozen earth, dreaming of warmth and rest in Moscow… And her. She's still so young; I have a daughter older than her. She sits there in her armchair, waiting for that idiotic briefcase. Absurd!"

Once more he remembered how, as a prisoner, he had been led through the streets of Moscow in that interminable column with other German prisoners. On both sides of the road, the people of Moscow stood on the sidewalk, staring at the gray tide of soldiers with somewhat wary curiosity. After them, following in their footsteps, came a slow-moving water cart, more or less symbolically washing the streets of the capital clean of the "Fascist plague." It suddenly seemed to Almendinger that he was starting to picture the faces of the Muscovites standing in the street, to hear snatches of their conversation…

The door lock clicked softly He realized he had fallen asleep for a moment. Furtive footsteps glided over the carpet, the attaché case returned to its place beside the desk. As he fell asleep Almendinger felt the coolness of a light palm upon his face. But he was already so engulfed in his sleep that all he could do was to turn his face with closed eyes toward this hand, and smile, already dreaming, and murmur a few words in German.

By noon it was very hot in the colorful streets, awash with people and sunlight. You could already smell the summer, the scent of hot dusty asphalt.

Ivan walked along slowly, dazed by the noise from the streets, the scorching sun, the red patches of the slogans, flags, and banners. The words of the passersby the honking of the cars and, above all, the blinding glare of the sun caused him acute pain. It seemed to him that it would take only a word, or a little laugh, and his head would explode. He tried not to look at the bustling pedestrians. He had an impulse to stop and shout at them: "Shut up, won't you?" or to hit someone, so that for a moment, at least, the noise splitting his brain might cease.

In his suit and raincoat he was horribly hot. He felt his shirt and pants sticking to his skin and his throat smarted from a dry tickle. But he walked on like an automaton, without taking off his raincoat, in the hope that at the next turning a cool breeze would at last be blowing and these noisy outbursts of merriment would fade away.

The night came back to him in confused snatches, with the hallucinatory insistence of that bare bulb at the ceiling. As soon as he began to remember, the light from it swelled, became ever brighter, even harsher, and burned his eyes even more than the May sunshine. With his eyes half closed, Ivan pressed on.

He remembered how, after returning to Semyonov's room the night before, they had pulled out the suitcase, with its store of liquor, from under the bed and begun to drink. Ivan drank without saying a word, ferociously, constantly fixing Semyonov with his heavy, hate-filled stare. This look frightened Semyonov, who blurted out in a low voice: "What do you expect, Vanya…? We've been taken for a ride like filthy pigs in a farmyard! Good God! They stuck all those medals on our chests and we were complete assholes. We were happy. Hero! Just you try showing your face in that bar where the Fritzes drink. They'll sweep you away with a yard broom. Even if you were a Hero three times over…"

Then through the mists of the alcohol, without being able to hear himself any more, Ivan was shouting something at Semyonov and thumping on the table with his fist. This thumping was suddenly echoed by a furious banging on the door and the shrill voice of the woman in the next room: "Semyonov! I'm going to phone the militia. They'll take you away, you and your drunken pal! You're waking the whole house with your din…"

Semyonov went out into the corridor to do some explaining. Ivan remained alone. There was complete silence now. From the ceiling the lemon-yellow bulb threw stark shadows: the bottles on the table, Semyonov's crutches at the head of the bed. Somewhere above the rooftops the strokes of three o'clock rang out…

Coming toward Ivan were retired army officers who had put on their full dress uniforms in honor of the celebrations. They were decked out in the armor plating of their decorations. Ivan stared almost in horror at their swollen necks, their cheeks pink from shaving, their monumental torsos, tightly swathed in belts and cross straps. From a gigantic banner a soldier, a sailor, and an airman beamed formidable smiles beneath a fluorescent inscription: "Long live the fortieth anniversary of the Great Victory!" Ivan wanted to stop and to shout out: "This is all rubbish. It's a great big con!" He'd have liked one of the passersby to shove him or insult him, or a fat army officer to puff out his scarlet neck and start spitting out something threatening at him. Oh, how he would have responded to them! Reminded them of how all these bloated ex-officers had been lurking to the rear of the lines, pointed out the American trademarks sported by the arrogant young whippersnappers walking past him.

But no one shoved him. On the contrary, at the sight of his Star shining on the lapel of his jacket, people stepped aside to let him pass. Indeed, when Ivan crossed the road where it was not allowed, the militiaman refrained from blowing his whistle, averted his head and looked the other way With his energy flagging, Ivan turned down an alley and saw a cluster of trees at the bottom of it. But when he got to the end he found himself in a noisy and cheerfully animated avenue. Once again a vivid banner caught his eye:

"1945-1985. Glory to the Victorious Soviet People!" Ivan stopped, screwed up his eyes, and groaned. His brow and eyelids became damp, he felt weak at the knees. A water cart drove by, enveloping him in a smell of wet dust: a huge Intourist coach sailed past with smoked-glass windows, behind which well-groomed ladies with silvery hair could be seen. Ivan retraced his footsteps.

At that moment above the glass door of a store he sensed, rather than read, in bulbous black lettering: "Beriozka." Without thinking, guided by an intuition about what would happen and anticipating it with spiteful glee, he went in.

A pleasant half light prevailed in the store. The cool temperature produced by the air conditioning was disorientating. Lightly clad tourists were talking among themselves beside a counter. A shower of shrill, discordant notes rang out, followed by a shout of laughter: one of them was buying a balalaika.

Ivan stopped near the counter. His gaze, scarcely taking in objects, slid over Palekh lacquer boxes, bottles of scotch whiskey, brightly colored album covers. Two salesclerks watched him attentively. Finally one of them, unable to hold back, said softly but very distinctly and without even looking in his direction: "This store, Citizen, is reserved for foreign visitors. Payment here is only in hard currency." And to show him that the conversation was at an end and that he had no more business there, she said to her colleague: "I think those Swedes have made their choice. Stay here, I'll go serve them."

Ivan knew very well that it was a Beriozka. He also knew what a despicable peasant he was in the eyes of these two dolls in their elegant makeup. But that, precisely, was fine. Yes it was fine that his head was exploding, his shirt sticking to his skin, that the foreigners – these extraterrestrials in their light T-shirts – should be buying things, laughing, their blue eyes staring straight through him into the distance.

"Go ahead, my girl. Go and serve them," mocked Ivan. "That's all we're good for. Serving them. Some in bed, some behind the counter…"

The salesclerk stopped, exchanged brief glances with her colleague and rapped out: "I repeat: rubles are not accepted here. Vacate the premises or I'll call the militia. And take your hands off that glass case." And in a lower voice she added: "Any old country bumpkin thinks he can come in here. And then we have to wash the glass."

Ivan clenched his teeth and leaned with ll his weight on the glass of the counter. There was a sound of the glass breaking and at the same time the sales-clerk's cry: "Lyuda, call the duty militiaman!"

"You see these hands," shouted Ivan. "I loaded a whole mountain of shells into the guns with them. With these hands…"

He said nothing more and erupted into laughter like a barking dog. The agony tore at his eyes. But through the morass of his confusion suddenly everything became clear to him: "All this is bullshit. To them I'm just a Neanderthal. Why am I telling them about those goddamned shells?" And, still laughing, he yelled out to the bemused foreigners: "Now just you listen to me! I spilled gallons of blood for you, you bastards! I saved you from the brown plague, ha! ha! ha…!"

The militiaman came in. Thickset, a dull face, a damp red mark on his forehead left by his cap.

"Your papers, please, Citizen."

"Here are my papers."

Ivan tapped on his Gold Star. There was a smear of blood on his raincoat. The palm of his hand had been cut by a fragment of glass.

The militiaman tried to grasp him by the elbow.

"You'll have to come to the station."

Ivan jerked his arm free with a sudden movement. The militiaman stumbled; the crunch of glass could be heard beneath his shoes. The balalaika slipped from the grasp of one of the Swedes, who were watching the scene in amazement. It fell onto the marble paving and emitted a pitiful groan. Everyone was rooted to the spot in a mute, uncertain pose.

"Just a minute, Lyosha," the sales assistant murmured to the militiaman. "First let me show the foreign visitors out."

At this moment two Japanese men came into the Beriozka, almost identically dressed. Had not one of them been slightly taller, they could have been taken for twins. Dark official suits, ties that glittered slightly

Smiling, they walked up to the counter and, as if they noticed neither the broken glass nor the militiaman, nor even the old man with a bloodied hand, they began speaking in melodious English. Pulling herself together, the salesclerk offered them a long black leather case. Ivan stared at them, almost spellbound. He sensed that life, like duckweed displaced by a stone, was about to settle back into the well-ordered equilibrium that was so alien to him.

The Japanese, having made their purchase, headed for the exit; the militiaman took a step toward Ivan, crunching a fragment of glass underfoot. Then Ivan seized a statuette that was standing on the counter and hurled himself, in pursuit of them. The Japanese turned. One of them had time to dodge the blow. The other, hit by Ivan, collapsed onto the pavement.

Ivan lashed out blindly, without really managing to harm them. What was more alarming was his yell and his bloodstained raincoat. The Swedes scurried toward the door, yelping and pushing one another. As Ivan's fingers struck out, they knocked over a bronze figurine of a bear cub, an Olympic souvenir, which shattered the glass storefront into fragments. Commemorative items of this kind had not sold well at the time of the Games, no one wanted to weigh themselves down with such a burden. The whole series had been shipped out to the provinces: only this one had remained. The salesclerks kept it on the counter as a paperweight…

Almendinger came to the Beriozka shortly before closing time. He was glad he knew Moscow so well that he could make his way there not along Gorky Street but following little shady alleys. One of them pleased him particularly. It was quiet, almost deserted. You walked along beside the old brick building of a tobacco factory. Behind its walls could be heard the low, regular hum of machinery. The slightly bitter smell of tobacco hovered all along the alley

"Little by little I'm going to forget it all," thought Almendinger. "All those figures, all those Moscow telephone numbers, all these winding alleys… And this smell, too. Now that's something to keep me busy until I die – forgetting…"

The side window at the Beriozka store was cordoned off with a rope stretched between two chairs. The sales-clerks were talking in whispers. All Almendinger could hear was: "Mad… completely mad…" A glazier was at work behind the counter. Bowed over the table, he scored a long groove with his diamond, making a dry, grinding sound. Then with a brief musical tinkling, he snapped the glass.

Almendinger smiled and asked the salesclerk to show him a small gold watch for a woman. "Or maybe it would be better to buy a necklace or a bracelet, this silver one with amethysts and emeralds? Of course, it would be much simpler to ask her what she would prefer. But what can you do? I'm getting old… It's tempting to play Santa Claus – or rather the Count of Monte Cristo of the third age…"

After a fine morning the sun was in hiding and the evening was gray, but, as always at that time of year, luminous and strangely airy. When he emerged, Almendinger turned left and entered a well-tended square in an open space that was rather provincial in style. At the center of the square a huge bronze column towered upward, covered with a tracery of writing in Russian and Georgian – the monument in honor of the friendship between the two peoples. He sat down on a bench, and, with a pleasure he could not quite understand, began watching the people and the long buses that drove around the square with weary dexterity. He caught gestures and snatches of conversation that were quite without significance for him and were for this reason utterly engaging.

Not far away there was a shoe store. People came by with their cardboard boxes, still flushed from the pushing and shoving and the joy of purchase. A woman sat down on the edge of the bench beside him, took off her old down-at-heel pumps and put on those she had just bought. She turned her foot this way and that, studying it from ah angles, then stood up, took a few paces on the spot – are they too narrow? – and made off for the bus. The toes of the old abandoned shoes were left sticking out from under the bench.

Almendinger realized he was still holding the little parcel from the Beriozka store in his hand. He opened his briefcase and slipped his purchase into a small leather pocket. He saw the wads of paper there, the neatly arranged files and smiled. A tipsy passerby came up and asked him: "Tell me, friend, you don't happen to have any matches, do you?"

Still smiling, Almendinger held out a lighter to him. When after several attempts the man managed to light his cigarette and mumbled: "Thanks for coming to the rescue, friend," and tried to return the lighter, Almendinger was no longer there. He was already strolling toward the alley that smelled of bitter tobacco.

Ivan remained in the hospital for a long time, recovering from the heart attack he had suffered in the militia van. The inquiry took its course. No serious charges were brought against him. The Embassy sent a note to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. An article appeared in a Swedish newspaper: "Failed Hold-Up in Moscow Beriozka Store." The following day "Radio Liberty," broadcasting from Munich, gave the facts, mentioning the full names of all the participants correctly. Everyone knew that the story would soon evolve into one of those piquant anecdotes that are related at diplomatic cocktail parties: "It actually happened at the Be-riozka, you know. And a Hero of the Soviet Union, what's more! A Gold Star on his chest… Oh no, he's had his psychiatric assessment. A man of perfectly sound mind… You're right. Maybe it's what they call the Old Guard syndrome. Have you heard what that fellow Petrov says about it? Quite priceless! He's supposed to have stamped out all that kind of thing. When they told him about it he nodded and growled: 'Yes, the veterans stay young at heart for a long time…' And by the way, the veteran's daughter… Yes, yes… And there's another quite fascinating detail…"

At the beginning of June Ivan was to be transferred into preventive detention. While he was in the hospital Olya had been to see him every day. They did not have much to say to each other. Olya would produce the latest newspapers and fruit and food from her bag, and ask after his health. Then they would go down and sit on a bench in front of a flower bed that gave off the bitter smell of marigolds.

In the course of these two weeks, by borrowing money left and right and exchanging foreign currency, she settled accounts with the Beriozka. She telephoned Alexei… It was sometimes his father, sometimes his mother, who picked up the phone and each time they replied politely that Alexei was not there. His mother added: "You know, Olyechka, he's preparing for the Youth Festival at the moment. He's gone to France to sort out some problems to do with the makeup of the delegation." Olya thanked her and hung up.

Sometimes a longing overcame her, pathetic in its unreality: like a child who has broken a cup, she wanted to go back, to play the scene over again, so that the cup didn't slip from her hands, so that there should not be this resounding and irremediable silence. But even this pathetic regret vanished.

To her amazement, she saw that she was beginning to get used to a situation, which, a little while previously, would have seemed to her inconceivable. She was getting used to this orange flower bed, to this thin old man emerging from the dull fog of his room to meet her, to the inquisitive and merciless stares in the corridors of the Center. And the fact that nothing had radically changed seemed to her disturbing.

It was very hot in Moscow at the end of May. Sometimes through the open windows of the Center the long, slow siren of a ship could be heard, coming from the Moskva River. It even seemed as if you could smell the warm, muddy smell, the smell of the wet planks of the landing stage in the heat of the sun. And when evening came the streetlights already cast a blue radiance over the thick foliage as they did in summer. In the restaurant, amid the dense aroma of spiced dishes and perfumes, the tinkling of a little spoon or a knife had an agreeably cool resonance.

Svetka consoled Olya as best she could. But she was so happy herself at that time that she went about it clumsily. A little while earlier, her Volodya had sent her a smiling photograph of himself and a letter in which he promised he would be coming home on furlough for a whole month. In the photo two big stars could be seen very clearly on his epaulettes.

"So long as Gorbachev doesn't call it off in Afghanistan," she commented, "Volodya's sure to come back with his three colonel's stars. Of course, it's not much fun for him over there. But are things any better here? Apparently he's been in some garrison miles from anywhere for a long time, somewhere in Chukotka… Oh! I can't wait for August! We'll pop over to the Crimea and rent a little beach house by the sea. At least he'll get a decent tan. Last time he came back, you know, his face was like a Negro's, with just his teeth shining… and the rest of him all white!"

She checked herself, ashamed of her happiness. "Listen, Olya, you mustn't worry. Your father, what can they accuse him of? Only a brawl and maybe they'll throw in that he was drunk. He'll get a year at the end of the world with a suspended sentence… And as for your diplomat, don't worry. With men it's always like that, you know. There are plenty more fish in the sea. Look, when he comes back, Volodya will introduce you to one of his friends from the regiment. And maybe your diplomat will come back to you anyway. Obviously his father and mother have turned him against you. But it'll all calm down and be forgotten. And if he doesn't come back, to hell with him! Listen, you remember Katyukha, who worked with the Americans. She married a guy like that. And he bugged her all the time. 'You've got no aesthetic intuition,' he used to say. 'No grasp of style. You can't tell the difference between Bonnard and Vuillard…' That whole artistic elite used to gather at their place, lounging around in armchairs, knocking back Veuve Clicquot and 'telling the difference.' And you know, she's a plain, straightforward girl. One day she'd had enough of all these stuck-up art historian bitches and guys with shrill voices. They were talking about Picasso at the time. And suddenly she came out with this riddle, which is a real scream: 'What's the difference between Picasso and the Queen of England?' It's a hoary old chestnut, of course. You must have heard it a hundred times. 'Picasso only had one blue period in his life and the Queen has them once a month… On account of her blue blood!' You can just imagine the faces they pulled, all those intellectuals! Her husband exploded: 'That's not only an obscenity – I'm used to that. It's sacrilege!' The idiots. They'd have done better to laugh instead of acting like constipated cows. Katyukha wouldn't put up with it. 'They're just daubs, your Picasso!' she shouted. 'He was a salesman, that's all. He got the message that there was a market for this kind of vomit – it's what you all like – so he vomited…' What a hullaballoo! The women all charge out into the corridor and get their mink coats mixed up. The men squeal: 'It's the Attila Complex!' Her dear husband goes into hysterics… He's already opened divorce proceedings, the bastard. He was always lecturing her: 'Life is an aesthetic act.' And all the time he was injecting himself against impotence. What an aesthete!"

They chattered on till dusk, as in the good old days. And, as in the old days, Ninka the Hungarian came to see them from time to time. She, too, set about consoling Olya, relating melancholy tales of her own life hitting the, rocks many times, of disappointed hopes and other people's black ingratitude… But she, too, found it hard to conceal her own happiness. In June she was to make her last visit to the Black Sea coast. In October she would marry and would found what she herself laughingly called "a model Soviet family."

Yes, everything remained as before. Nothing changed. Just one thing, perhaps. When Olya came home from work now she was vexed to notice that it was as if her face were covered by a sticky mask. She hastened to the bathroom to rid herself of it, scrubbing her cheeks. She tried to reassure herself: "I'm running around like a madwoman at the moment. And in all this heat…" She remembered how after work Svetka always used to hurry to the bathroom, calling out to her, without stopping: "Hang on, Olyechka. We'll have a word in a minute. Just let me put on a new face." Olya realized it was not just the tiredness and the heat she was talking about.

Prior to the summer vacation there was a great deal of work at the Center. On occasion Olya did not return home for three days in a row. During the day she attended trade meetings and in the evening put on her usual performance at the restaurant. During these three days she had not had a single minute to go see her father in hospital.

One morning, when she was able to get there, he was waiting with cheerful and nervous impatience. They took their places on their usual bench, in front of the flower bed. Ivan lit a cigarette. Then, rapidly stubbing it out, he spoke in a low voice. When Olya heard these muted tones a shiver ran down her spine. She thought her father was going to ask her questions about her work, about her life or – worse still – try to justify himself. Ivan had something else to say.

"You know, Olyuch, it's a very good thing you've come today. Tomorrow they're giving me my discharge and transferring me into preventive detention.

I want to hand something over to you. Keep it and hide it somewhere. I'm afraid they'll take it away from me when they search me."

Ivan unclenched his fingers – in the hollow of his hand shone the Gold Star.

Olya returned home in a rickety, half-empty bus. It was traveling along the beltway. On one side could be seen the new concrete apartment buildings, stuck there amid churned-up clay On the other side open fields, misted over with transparent greenery. Olya sat with her face turned toward the window, so that her tears should not be seen. She had begun crying when she opened her bag and caught sight of the Gold Star, right at the bottom, where normally either her keys or her lipstick would be hiding. "This is still his life," she thought with tender bitterness. "He thinks there are still people around who remember that war long ago, all that comradeship at the front… They're all just like children. A whole generation of grown-up children who've been betrayed. I only hope he doesn't know anything about me! I just hope he doesn't!"

She was still crying as she climbed the stairs to the seventh floor. She did not want to take the elevator for fear of meeting someone she knew. But when she got to the sixth floor she could already hear Svetka's laughter and merry shouts. "Aha," thought Olya. "Ninka's there and they're having a good time." And at once she felt a little comforted. She pictured them already bustling around her, cheering her up, putting the kettle on to boil. No doubt Ninka had come to say good-bye before setting off for the south. With her fund of stories she would be unstoppable. Olya turned the key and went in.

Svetka's bedroom door was wide open. Svetka was sitting on her bed screaming with horrible, sobbing laughter. Her swollen eyes, on which not the smallest trace of mascara was left, glittered wildly, madly. On the floor was a suitcase with several garments spilling out of it. Her shoes lay in two opposite corners of the room – as if one giant stride had left them there. Olya stopped on the threshold without trying to understand a word of this horrible howling because it was all too clear. She simply repeated like an incantation: "Svetka… Svetka…"

Choking with tears, Svetka was silent for a moment. She sat there, with her eyes closed, her whole body shuddering, breathing jerkily and noisily. Cautiously Olya sat down beside her. Svetka felt her hand on her shoulder and began wailing in ever more desperate tones: "Olka, a sealed zinc coffin… and you can see nothing… just his eyes, through the little glass window… no eyelashes, no eyebrows… Maybe there's nothing there… in the coffin!"

And as she shook her head, she burst into tears once more. And once more, in a broken voice she cried out: "A little glass window… and only his eyes… only his eyes… he's not there… No… burned in the helicopter! There's nothing in that coffin. Nothing…"

Then, breaking free from Olya's arms, she jumped up and rushed to the wardrobe. She opened the door with a violent gesture and began pulling out boxes and cardboard cartons and hurling them to the floor.

"So who's going to make use of any of this stuff now?" she cried. "Who?"

Out of the cardboard cartons tumbled men's shoes, brand-new shiny boots made of first-rate leather; there were piles of shirts with Beriozka labels, jeans, ties. And, uttering a heavy sigh, Svetka collapsed in a heap on the bed and buried her head in the pillow.

Sitting beside her, Olya scarcely recognized her friend in this woman, now so crumpled and aged. She stroked her hand gently, murmuring: "Don't cry, Svetka, don't cry. It'll be ll right. It'll all come out right in the end. Lopk, things are going badly for me, too, but I'm bearing up… I'm bearing up…"

Svetka was leaving from Kazan Station. She seemed completely calm now, simply screwing up her eyes as if to avoid seeing the happy and excited crowd. Olya made her way along beside her, holding in her hand a big plastic bag into which Svetka had thrown everything that would not go into her suitcase. The bag was a great weight. Heavily burdened people came charging along, bumped into one another, colliding with their luggage. It felt to Olya as if the handles of the bag were slowly stretching and would tear. The crowd moved forward with painful slowness. Sweating faces, skullcaps on shaven heads, children whimpering…

The compartment was pervaded by a warm smell of thick dust.

"Oh, you haven't brought anything to drink on the journey," Olya suddenly realized.

Svetka shook her head silently. Leaping down from the coach, Olya weaved her way toward the buffet. Standing in line in front of a long glass-fronted counter where there were piles of dried-up sausage sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs and hazelnut biscuits, she consulted her watch nervously.

When she got back to the platform with a bottle of warm lemonade and two biscuits in a little bag, she saw two red lights receding down the track into the distance in a hot gray mist. She stayed on the platform for a moment, then set the bottle and the bag down on a bench and headed for the subway.

During one of those crazy days at the start of the summer, Olya realized that she was pregnant. She accepted the fact with dull and weary resignation. "In fact, there's nothing surprising about it," she reflected on her return from the clinic. "With all that pressure and stressed-out as I was… At such times you could end up producing twins and not notice…" At the Center she asked for three days' break to have an abortion and get herself on her feet again.

She had counted the days and she knew it had happened at the beginning of May when, as she listened to that tall German with the attractive name, she had forgotten the role she was playing. And she knew it was not just a matter of forgetting, either.

She arrived at the hospital two hours before the wards and clinics were due to open. In the stillness of the morning she walked around the pale yellow building, crossed the road, and sat down on a bench in a little courtyard surrounded by old houses on two floors. At the windows there were flowers in pots and crudely painted earthenware statuettes. "It's just like at home in Borissov," she thought. The pale, watery sunlight gradually filled the courtyard, illuminating the entrance halls with their wooden staircases and causing a cat sitting on a little wobbly bench to blink its eyes. Later on, Olya would try to understand what had happened on that sun-drenched early morning. She looked at the pale flowers behind the window panes, the sandbox all pockmarked by the rain that had fallen in the night, the tufts of grass thrusting up through the trampled earth of the courtyard. She looked as if seeing ll this for the first time. Even the ordinary gray soil mixed with sand was astonishingly present to her eyes, there before her, with its little stones, its twigs, its burned matches. She suddenly felt a sharp and gripping tenderness for this new vision, this joyful and silent wonder. This vision was no longer hers. She could already feel it within herself as something separate from her, but at the same time close, pulsating, inseparable from her breathing and her own life… As if she were experiencing it almost physically. Her eyes followed the cat as it slowly crossed the courtyard, shaking its paws and arching its tail. Olya knew she was not the only one watching it and knew for whom she was silently murmuring: "Oh, look at that pretty little pussy… Look at its lovely whiskers, its white tail, its little gray ears… Let's go stroke it…"

The houses were beginning to wake up. People emerged from the hallways with a busy tread, hurrying toward the bus stop. Olya followed them. Arriving home, she went to bed without undressing and fell asleep at once. Toward evening she was woken by the strident screaming of the swifts. She stayed in bed for a long time, watching the dusk deepening outside the open window. Occasionally a woman's voice would ring out from high up on a balcony: "Maxim, Katya, come in! How many times do I have to call you?"

And at once, echoing in reply, a shrill pair of voices: "Oh please, Mom! Just five little minutes more!"

The swifts sped by, close to the window, with a rapid rustling of wings. It sounded as if someone were abruptly tearing a thin strip of silk. "How simple everything is," thought Olya. "And no one understands it. They go charging along, pushing and shoving. They don't even have time to ask themselves, 'What's the point?' And yet everything's so simple. And I was going crazy, too – Alyosha, the apartment in Moscow, abroad… It's painful to think about it, but I'd begun to hate his parents so violently it gave me nightmares. All the time I dreaded them persuading him not to marry me. I almost prayed for them to be killed in a car or a plane crash! How horrible!"

It was so silent in the purple dusk that the sizzling of potatoes in a frying pan could be heard through an open kitchen window. Olya thought about the one whose presence in the world she had so clearly felt that morning. And now she immersed herself with calm joy in the future needs of the child, its little clothes, feeding it. Without knowing why, she was sure she would have a boy. She knew she would call him Kolka, that she would live with him at Borissov, that she would find some dull, monotonous job there, and the monotony of the peaceful, gray days that lay ahead suddenly seemed to her an unspeakable blessing.

She pictured how he would learn about the life of his grandfather, Ivan, and her own life. What had seemed to them like the disastrous collapse of all their plans would pass into his childish mind like a fairy tale, a kind of family legend: his heroic grandfather, who had suffered for the truth in his old age; his mother who had refused to live in Moscow, because the life they lead there is noisy, and dangerous even, on account of the crazy cars.

"For the moment I'll say nothing to my father," she thought. "After the court case, when he's well again, I'll tell him everything."

Vitaly Ivanovich listened to Olya without interrupting. His silence slightly disconcerted her. She spoke calmly, striving to be logical and convincing. Vitaly Ivanovich kneaded his face with his hand, nodding his head and from time to time threw her a twinkling and somewhat distant glance. Olya knew that from her very first words he had grasped everything she was about to tell him and was now patiently waiting for the conclusion of her speech. She uttered her final words in louder and more resolute tones: "You know, Vitaly Ivanovich, maybe this is my destiny. In the end we each have our cross to bear. For some it's Moscow for others, Borissov…"

Olya thought he would be in a hurry to dissuade her, and start to reason with her in an amiable and friendly manner: "Listen, this is just a whim, you'll get over it," or, alternatively, remind her in a dry voice of her duty and her responsibilities. But he continued rubbing his face, nodded, and said nothing. It was only when he heard her final words that he murmured: "Yes, yes, destiny… destiny…" Then, lifting up his face with its reddened cheekbones, he said: "It's been a crazy night, the telephone didn't stop ringing. I'm finding it hard to keep my eyes open. As soon as I sit down I fall asleep. I'm telling you this because, as you so aptly pointed out just now, we each have our cross to bear."

He smiled, weary and absent-minded. "When I was a student, you know, I studied philosophy at first; it was only later I changed to law. I was, so to speak, looking for myself. It always seemed to me that something didn't quite hang together, that it wasn't… When I embarked on philosophy I thought I should be immersed at once in the unfathomable mysteries of existence. Very well, I open Aristotle and he argues as follows: Why – excuse me – does the urine of a man who's eaten onions smell of onion? And the pinnacle of all philosophical thought was Brezhnev's speech to the last historic Party Plenum. When you're young all that's very painful! Now, of course, it's ridiculous even to think about it. We had a professor, you know, a kind of last of the Mohicans, one of the remaining ones who had qualified at St. Petersburg University. And been in the camps under Stalin, of course. Young people love professors like this. So I ran to him.

"'Here's how it is, Igor Valerianovich. I'm in the middle of an intellectual crisis, a crisis as profound as that of bourgeois philosophy itself. Suppose I do law studies. I qualify and I set out to crush the Rostov mafia as an investigating magistrate, braving the gangsters' bullets…'

"And then, of course, I talk to him about destiny, about vocation, about the cross I have to bear. And this old philosopher went on listening and then said to me: 'And you, distinguished young man, do you know the parable of the human cross?'

" 'No,' I told him. 'Never heard of it.'

" 'Well, listen. A man was bearing his heavy cross. He bore it and bore it and in the end he started cursing God. Too heavy, this cross. It's cutting into his neck, crushing him, bowing him low over the earth. He can't stand it any longer. God heard his lamentations and took pity on him.'

" 'Right,' he told him. 'Follow me, unhappy man.' He leads him to a vast pile of crosses.

" 'Behold. All these are human destinies, you see. Cast aside your own cross and choose another. Perhaps you'll find a lighter one.'

"The man is overjoyed and begins trying them out. He puts one of them on his shoulder. 'No, too heavy. Heavier than mine.' And he takes up another one. He spends the whole day running around the mountain of crosses and doesn't manage to choose one. Heavy are the crosses humans bear. Finally, toward evening, he finds one.

" 'Here,' he says. 'This one is lighter than the rest. It's not a cross, it's a real delight.'

"And God smiles. 'But that's your old cross, the one you cast aside this morning…'

"And that's the story. I approve of the professor myself, of course, and in my heart of hearts I think, like Goethe, as perhaps you do now: 'All theory's gray, my friend, and green and golden is the tree of life.' Ah, well. But in practical terms this is what we'll do, Olya. When is your vacation due? In October? We'll bring it forward to July. You'll have the time you need for reflection. To choose a lighter cross…"

Ivan's case came up at the beginning of July in the ugly little court building for the area, from which the Moskva River and the huge dockside warehouses could be seen. It was an old building on two floors, the staircases were worn and the courtrooms full of dust. In the dark corridor there was a whole row of doors, padded with black imitation leather. When one of them opened there was a glimpse of dark shelves piled high with thick files, a desk covered in papers, and, in the corner, a kettle on an electric burner. Out in the noisy, sun-drenched streets it was difficult to imagine that just two steps away from there such a place could exist, drab and silent, with people making tea on electric burner in this somnolent semi-darkness.

At one o'clock in the afternoon Ivan was led into one of the courtrooms where shaky chairs were set out in untidy rows. On a little platform stood the desk for the judge and the assessors; fastened to the front of this desk was the emblem of the Soviet Union. Behind a wooden rail could be seen the bench for the accused. The rail had been marked by hundreds of hands: scratches, crosses, dates, initials… On each side of the judge's desk stood the rather smaller tables for the prosecutor and the defense lawyer.

At one o'clock in the afternoon Ivan walked into this courtroom escorted by two militiamen: three hours later he was carried out from it, dead.

The window in the courtroom was half open but no coolness could be felt. The sun shone, hot and un-moving. Swaying gently, the fluffy seeds from the poplar trees floated in through the windows.

During those three hours facts had been produced apparently connected with the trial but at the same time infinitely remote from it. There were a lot of people. Everyone wanted to know all the details. The air in the courtroom was heavy and stifling. Some people fanned themselves with newspapers; others, going through clumsy contortions, took off their jackets, causing the chairs to creak. Two women in the back row talked the whole time, listening neither to Ivan's replies nor to the judge, nor to the witnesses. It was hard to understand why they had come there to waste their time in a Turkish bath like that.

The voices rang out dully, as if muffled by the lightly fluttering poplar down. One of the women assessors was allergic to these fluffy flakes. She was constantly blowing her nose, blinking her red eyes and thinking only one thing: let it end as quickly as possible! All her colleagues thought the same. The sun made people sleepy. Most of them were already getting ready to go on vacation, gleefully counting the days: just another week and then…

The judge, also a woman, had done too much sunbathing at her dacha the previous Sunday, and beneath her severe suit she now felt a stinging pain on her shoulders. She, too, wanted to make an end of these proceedings, pronounce sentence – a year's suspended sentence, she thought – and, as soon as possible, on her return home, anoint her shoulders with soothing cream. That was the advice of the assessor who was suffering from the poplar down. "Perhaps it's not an allergy but flu," the judge thought. "You sometimes get it in summer."

No one could quite remember at what moment the accused, Demidov, instead of the brief reply he was asked for, began talking very loudly, stammering, almost shouting. The judge tried to interrupt him, tapping on the desk with a pencil and saying in a deliberately formal voice: "That has no relevance to your case." Then she thought it was better to let the veteran get it all off his chest – all the more so because she had received a telephone call from on high advising her to bring the matter to a quiet conclusion, not to be too zealous.

Ivan talked about the war, about Stalin, about the Victory. He stuttered a little, alarmed by the silence that arose between his words, trying to break through the dense sleepiness of the afternoon. For no good reason he mentioned the Bolshoi, Afghanistan (here the judge began tapping on the desk with her pencil again), and the one-legged Semyonov. People pricked up their ears at first, then relapsed into uncomprehending indifference. Gorbachev had already allowed all this to be discussed in the newspapers. The women looked at their watches and the men, anticipating the suspension of the hearing, fiddled with their cigarettes. The ones in the back row, as before, paid no attention to anyone and were whispering. The judge said something in the ear of the assessor next to her. The prosecutor, picking at his sleeves, was removing little pieces of fluff from them.

At length Ivan fell abruptly silent. He embraced the courtroom with a slightly mad look and, addressing no one in particular, cried out with an old man's hiss: "You have turned my daughter into a prostitute!"

At that moment he caught Olya's eye. He no longer heard the hubbub arising from the public nor the judge's voice announcing that the hearing was suspended. He grasped that what had just occurred was something utterly monstrous, compared with which his drunkenness and the brawl at the Beriozka were but trifles. His daughter's face was hidden from him by someone getting up to go. He turned his gaze toward the windows and was astonished to see that the win-dowsill was gleaming in the sunlight with a strange iridescent glow. Then this light swelled, became dazzling and painful and suddenly the sill turned black. Ivan sat down heavily and his head fell onto the wooden handrail, marked with old dates and unknown names.

It was with some difficulty that the van pulled clear of Moscow in mid-festival, picked up speed, as if in relief, and plunged onto the freeway to Riazan. The driver and his colleague came from Riazan themselves. They did not know Moscow well and were apprehensive of running into the traffic police, who were in evidence at every crossroads on account of the festival. But everything passed off all right.

Olya was seated in the dark interior of the van. With her lightly shod foot she steadied the coffin draped in red cloth as it slithered about at each bend in the road. The van was open at the back and above the tailgate there was a bright rectangle of light. As they drove through Moscow there were glimpses, sometimes of a street Olya knew well, sometimes of a group of tourists in garish clothes. Coaches bearing the emblems of the festival scurried up and down the streets and here and there one could often make out the white jackets and blue pants of the interpreters. All this reminded Olya of the Olympic Games and that summer, now so long ago. Then open fields began to slip past in the rectangle of light, the gray freeway, the first villages.

Miraculously, after two days of fruitless searching, Olya had found this vehicle and succeeded in persuading the driver to take her. He had agreed simply because they were going in the same direction. Olya had given him almost all the money she had left.

Halfway there the driver turned off into a side road and stopped. The van doors slammed and his colleague's head appeared at the back above the tailgate.

"Not too shaken? We'll be there in an hour. Wait a while; we're just going to call in at a store. Everywhere's dry in Moscow, you know, especially now that the festival's on…"

Olya heard the footsteps moving off. In the sunny rectangle could be seen part of an izba, a fence, a garden in which an old woman was stooping down to pull something out of the ground. It was hot. Little rays of sunlight filtered in through the cracks. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked lazily.

Olya was convinced that at Borissov, once they learned of her arrival, everyone would rally around to arrange the funeral and find the musicians. She even imagined a procession of local dignitaries in their grotesque dark suits, the tinny grinding of the band, the condolences to which she would have to respond with meaningless set phrases.

But it all turned out differently. The driver and his colleague, sweating and panting in an exaggerated manner, let the coffin drop on the table and made off, after extracting another ten rubles from her on account of it being on the third floor. Olya was left all alone facing this long red box, fearsome in its silence.

In the morning she went to the motor pool where her father had worked. She was received by the new boss in jeans that were baggy at the knees. Once he had grasped what this was about, he began talking rapidly, without letting her get a word in edgewise. All the vehicles were requisitioned for summer work at the kolkhoz, the only two remaining ones lacked wheels, and half the personnel were away on holiday. And, in self-justification, he showed her the deserted yard, spotted with black patches of oil, and a truck, into whose engine a disheveled lad was plunged up to the waist. "And in any case," added the boss, "we're operating a self-financing regime now."

"But I'll pay," Olya hastened to say, to calm him down. "Just give me a vehicle and some men."

"But I've just told you, I can't," groaned the boss, spreading out his arms in a gesture of helplessness.

At the Military Committee the officer on duty asked her to fill in a form, then went off in search of orders on the far side of a padded door, covered in glittering studs. On his return he opened the safe, took out the Hero's certificate, and handed it to Olya.

"Now we're all square with you. As for the funeral, you'll have to apply to the Veterans' Council. It's not our responsibility."

Olya took out the photo of her father on the certificate and examined it with astonishment. It was a young lad with a round, shaven head, almost an adolescent, looking out at her. "He wasn't yet twenty," she thought in sheer amazement. The courtyard at the Military Committee was empty and silent. There was just one lanky soldier sweeping an asphalt path. The dust arose in a light cloud and settled back in the same place.

At the Veterans' Council there was no one. A sheet of cardboard bearing faded red lettering dangled on the notice board: "Veterans' Day Parade to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Victory will take place on May 9 at 10:00 a.m. Assemble in Lenin Square. The participation of all members of the Council is strictly compulsory."

"It's the summer," said the caretaker dreamily. "In summer it's only by chance that anyone shows up around here."

The Party's District Committee also seemed to be deserted.

"He's gone off at the head of a commission inspecting the region," said the female secretary. "He won't be back tomorrow, either. In any case it's nothing to do with the District Committee. You need to apply to his former place of work."

The next day Olya went around the circuit again. She demanded, implored, tried to telephone Moscow. That evening she dreaded going home. It was already the fourth day of her ordeal with the red coffin. Coming into the room where it had been set down, she was afraid to breathe, afraid of detecting a smell and losing her sanity At night the coffin appeared to her in a dream, not long and red, as it was, but small, luxurious, varnished, and painted like a lacquered box from Palekh. She kept trying to put it into a bag storage locker. But sometimes she forgot to dial the code, sometimes she was prevented by passersby. In the end, unable to bear it any longer, she decided to retrieve the contents and throw it away. She tried to open it, to separate its two halves, as one pries apart the two halves of a shellfish. And indeed the coffin suddenly resembled a finely modeled black shell, covered in mucous varnish. When she finally managed to open this bivalve, breaking her nails in the process, what she found inside was the celluloid doll she had had as a child, staring at her with strangely alive and moist eyes, like those of a human being.

The following morning Olya went to the cemetery There, in a tiny shack, behind the dilapidated church invaded by wild plants, sat three men, with dried fish and bread laid out on a sheet of newspaper. They were drinking.

They listened to her request and shook their heads in unison: "No, no, not a chance! Coming here out of the blue like this. Tomorrow's Saturday. We finish an hour early today. So, what do you think we are? Slaves? You might as well come on Sunday while you're at it. No, no! It's not possible!"

Olya did not go away. She understood that they were going through this routine so as to be paid more. The men went back to talking among themselves, casting oblique glances in her direction from time to time, and extracting fish bones stuck between their teeth. Finally one of them, as if taking pity, said to her: "Ah right, my beauty. You give us a hundred rubles now and fifty rubles after and we'll do you a first-class burial."

"How much?" asked Olya, dumbfounded, thinking she must have misheard.

"A hundred and fifty," the man repeated. "So what did you think? We're not going to do the job for the sake of your pretty blue eyes. Least of all on a Saturday! There are three of us. And we have to give something to the boss. And the driver. Suit yourself! But I'm making this offer out of the kindness of my heart."

And with a sharp crunch he bit into a huge onion.

Olya had only ten rubles left. The men sat there taking their ease, interrupting one another, swapping remarks about the funeral of a local notable. The whole shed was cluttered up with frayed old wreaths, tombstones, and iron bars for railings. Olya had an impulse to say to these men in a low voice: "For heaven's sake have pity on me, you bastards!"

"If I bring the money tomorrow morning," she asked, "Is that all right for you?"

The men nodded their approval. "Sure, that'll be fine. We'll start digging in the morning, before it gets hot."

When she got to Moscow Olya began telephoning all the people she knew but reaching someone in summer and especially on a Friday evening was very difficult. The only one who responded to her call was a vague acquaintance, a dealer Ninka had introduced her to.

"Olya," he exclaimed into the receiver almost joyfully, "I've been completely cleaned out. Yes, the cops caught me near the Beriozka with hot currency. And they emptied the apartment as well. I'm broke.

Otherwise, you know, I'd be very happy to help you but I haven't got a cent. Hang on. I'll give you the address of a buddy of mine. He can change your currency. What? You haven't got any? Well then, odds and ends of gold. Write this down. He's called Alik. Yes he's from Azerbaijan, a regular guy. A bit unpredictable, that's all…"

She arrived at Alik's place late in the evening. When she showed him the emerald bracelet and two rings he began to laugh.

"And you waste my time for that? No, young lady, I work seriously. Do you think I'd risk ending up cutting wood in the north for five grams?"

And he was already hustling her toward the exit along the dark corridor. Suddenly, as if remembering something, she opened her bag and took out the Gold Star.

"And that?"

"Have you got the certificate?"

Olya held it out to him.

"With the certificate I'll give you a hundred rubles."

"I need a hundred and fifty," said Olya in a weary voice.

"Well, come back another day," Alik said flatly, opening the door.

Outside Olya went into a telephone booth. There was an immediate reply.

"Alyosha," she whispered, almost without believing it.

"What a surprise!" a soft voice at the end of the line replied with quiet astonishment. "Where have you been hiding? Well, you're right, it's my fault. I'm living between Moscow and Paris now. Our diplomatic wagging tongues have spread the word that you've been having some problems. Well, I'm sure it'll all sort itself out in the end. Do forgive me, I can't give you much time. I've got a meeting here with people responsible for the festival. Yes, the French are here as well. It's a shame you can't come over. You'd be a charming flower at our all-male gathering. It'll all sort itself out in the end. Forgive me, I must get back to my guests now. Don't forget me. Give me a ring some time. And bonne nuit! "

Olya hung up. "Diplomat!" she thought. Then took her lipstick and powder compact out of her bag.

When he opened the door Alik remarked to her carelessly: "Ah! You've had second thoughts. And you were right to do so. A hundred rubles is a fair price. I'll have that Star on my hands for several months. There are not many collectors up for such a risk."

"I need a hundred and fifty," repeated Olya.

And she looked him in the eye for a long time. Alik took her by the elbow and in utterly changed tones observed: "Didn't anyone ever tell you you've got the eyes of a mountain deer?"

"Where must I go?" she asked in a weary voice.

The burial took place very quickly. The men worked swiftly and neatly. As they filled in the grave, Olya noticed that dazzling dandelion flowers, cut by the spades, were falling into it along with the earth, and this caused her a stab of pain.

By the afternoon she was sitting in the kitchen of her parents' apartment. She stared at the walls which, before leaving for Moscow, her father had started to paint pale blue. On the gas stove the great old kettle that was familiar to her from childhood was hissing in a soothing manner. It seemed to her that everything was still possible; you just had to learn to stop thinking, to stop remembering.

At that moment a strident woman's voice rang out beneath the windows. "Petrovna, they say there's butter at the Gastronom! Let's go there! We might get some."

"So, how many packs does everyone get?" shouted Petrovna from her window.

But their voices were drowned by a man's bass voice: "Don't be in a hurry, my little ladies. I've just been there. It's not butter. It's only good-quality margarine. And there's none left anyway."

Olya closed her eyes and for the first time in all these days she wept. She left for Moscow the same evening.

She spent much longer in the hospital than she had expected. After the abortion there were complications, then septicemia developed. What saved her was a huge silvery poplar tree outside the window. Its leaves made a great rushing sound and filled the whole ward with their shimmering light, redolent of the sunny south.

The new client Olya was due to work with arrived at the beginning of October. Vincent Desnoyers, twenty-seven, deputy commercial director of an aeronautics firm. When he landed in Moscow a gray and rainy fall was already beginning. The end of September, on the other hand, had been mild and serene, with morning frosts and warm, sunny afternoons.

During her first days out of the hospital Olya took greedy breaths, unable to get her fill of the airy blue of the streets and the slightly bitter scent of the leaves. Close to the walls of buildings warmed in the sun, the air was mellow and light, rippling densely in the purple shadows of the cool evenings.

The Center continued with its customary busy life. The bronze rooster was still regularly leaping about on its perch. The black wrought-iron figure of the naked Mercury on his pedestal was still running somewhere in the direction of the Moskva, brandishing his gilded wand. It seemed that all the trials and tribulations of the spring were left behind in the past. Few people at the Center had noticed her absence. "Did you have a good rest? Where were you? In the Crimea? In the Caucasus?" some people asked.

One day one of Olya's acquaintances caught up with her on the staircase, Salifou, a Guinean businessman. He had come to Moscow six years before and had concluded a contract to supply parrots to Soviet circuses and zoos. Since then, as it happened, he had long been handling major business deals but when they greeted him people never failed to remind him of this first contract.

"ll there, Salifou! Are your parrots still selling well?"

"Hopelessly! You're ruining me with the competition. Soviet parrots are the best in the world…" Salifou showed Olya a photo. "Here, I must show you my latest little one."

She saw a young woman in flowery clothes, a baby in her arms, staring at the lens with an assiduous but at the same time half-sleepy air. To her left could be seen the shapes of a tree with dense foliage and a strip of blue-gray sky.

Olya studied the photograph and could not take her eyes off the young woman's face. In the calm, distracted gaze of her dark eyes, in the curve of the arm supporting the child, she sensed something that was intimately close and familiar to her. Olya understood that she should say a few words, offer an appropriate compliment. But she continued to stare, fascinated. Finally, without thinking, without detaching her gaze, she said: "It must be very hot there, in your country."

Salifou laughed. "Of course! Like a Russian bath… Come and see us. You'll tan as brown as me, I promise you.

And, slipping the photo back into his wallet, he went on down the stairs.

Olya put the Frenchman's briefcase into the big black envelope, slipped his address book into an inside pocket and placed the envelope near the door.

In the room a comfortable, somewhat sugary warmth prevailed. The Frenchman slept, the covers thrown aside, his arms wide outstretched. The paler skin around his loins made a striking contrast with the dark color of his tan.

During dinner he had talked a good deal. And all his remarks were well judged; they all produced the smile, the look, the reply he had expected from his companion. He was in that agreeable state of mind where you feel that everything about you is sparkling, when you have the impulse to say to yourself: "This young man, in his expensive, highly fashionable, jacket, his dark pants with cuffs, and his luxurious golden brown leather shoes: this is me." His well-groomed hair falls over his brow in a black fan. Nonchalantly, but fine-tuned almost to the millimeter, the knot in his tie is loosened. Even his cigarette smoke coils elegantly.

He talked a good deal and felt he was pleasing this woman. He experienced this joie de vivre almost physically. The suave flavor of it was something he relished tasting. As he drank the cocktail he began talking about Gorbachev. Before leaving France he had read an article in Libération about the reforms in the USSR. It was all very well explained: why Gorbachev would never succeed in democratizing the régime, restructuring the economy, catching up with the West in the field of electronics.

"All the same," he argued nonchalantly as he sipped his cocktail. " Russia is the land of paradoxes. Who was it began all these shenanigans with perestroïka? A disciple of Andropov. In France they even call Gorbachev the 'young Andropovian.' The KGB as the initiator of democratization and transparency? It's science fiction!"

"I wonder where he is now," thought Olya. "That German with his collection of little lighthouses."

As he was falling asleep, his thoughts racing, Vincent was considering what he could do to stay in Moscow for one more day, or, more precisely, one more night. Call his boss and tell him he had not had time to sort out all the details of the prices? No, the old fox would catch on right away. You couldn't pull the wool over his eyes. Maybe a problem with the plane? There were no seats left? Complications at customs? Yes, that's true, but then there would be the hotel. He would have to fork over for that himself. And then maybe he would have to pay her, this girl, or give her a present. How does that work? Anyway, it's not a problem. Some trinkets from the Beriozka should do the trick…

Sleep swept in abruptly. All at once everything that was on his mind began to be swiftly resolved, all on its own. He saw his boss talking to him amicably, walking with him along endless streets, half Muscovite, half Parisian. He extracted wads of notes from the ATM machine that was actually located in the hotel bedroom… And once again, already dreaming, savored in his mouth the sweet taste of happiness…

Olya put the briefcase back in its place, carefully slipped the address book, the right way around, into the inside pocket of the jacket. The silence in the room seemed to her strangely profound, unaccustomed. "Perhaps it's because we're at the Rossia Hotel instead of the Intourist," she thought. "There's less traffic." She went over to the window, drew back the curtain and suppressed an "Oh" of surprise.

The first snow was falling. The trees covered in snow, the cars all white alongside the sidewalks. Olya could not resist and half opened the narrow, lateral fanlight. The first gust was difficult to breathe in – so sharp was this first vertiginous scent of winter. "It's good that the snow's falling," thought Olya. "When it freezes I'll go to Borissov, to the cemetery." And she pictured herself- feeling no longer grief, but a calm bitterness, lodged somewhere beneath her heart – a gray winter's day; the frozen earth crunching underfoot on the pathway between each set of railings, the trees bare, and the two graves, covered in snow and the last of the leaves, no longer frightening to her, maintaining their unimaginable, watchful silence beneath the pale winter sky.

Only the Moskva River was black. And above it, on all sides, swirling up into the sky or hanging motionless in the air, fluttered a white veil. All at once the muted sound of bells trembled within these snowy and icy depths. It was not the Kremlin clock but a thin and distant chime. It rang out from the belfry of a little church lost in all this silent snow, somewhere near Taganka Square. "We each have our cross…" Olya remembered. And she smiled. "And each our first snow…"

She shut the window, drew close to the bed and looked at the Frenchman as he slept. "Without his clothes he looks like a boy," she told herself. "I must have chilled him opening that window." Cautiously she drew the covers over him and slipped in beside him. Slowly, a little stiffly she stretched out on her back.

Abruptly everything began to spin before her eyes – snatches of conversation, the sensation on her lips of all the smiling done that day, the people, the faces… the faces… Just before she drifted off, in the manner of a half-whispered childish prayer, a thought brushed against her: "It would be good if he paid me in hard currency… I could buy back my father's Star…"