Russian Treasures

8. THE OPPOSITION

I have sent eight letters to Nina but still had no reply. Mere mortals are not allowed to send telegrams; the telegraph lines are far too busy carrying the wise decrees of our esteemed government around the country. I feel as though I’m standing on the brink of some postal abyss, staring into its mouth like Dante looking into the maw of hell. Could it be possible that Nina and I have lost each other for good?

My friend Durga, the goddess of official forms and stationery, takes a keen interest in examining my soul. She is curious to know what am I doing here and what lurks behind this quasi-foreigner’s gloomy mask, and she tries in various ways to find the key that will open me up like a burglar trying to break into a safe.

“Imagine your life was a painting,” she said. “What genre would it be, and what would it depict?”

I told her about a type of seventieth-century Dutch still life painting known as a Vanitas. These pictures often included skulls as a token of the inevitability of death, playing cards to represent excitement and chance, money bags for wealth (of which I’m badly in need of right now), a rose as a symbol of love, and an hourglass to remind us of the transience and brevity of our lives. All of these objects are set against a backdrop of ruins with the encouraging motto, “All is vanity and chasing after the wind.” And that just about sums up my life right now.

Khitruk, who is a smart man, has advised me to get Nina and her family passes to get to Ukraine so that we can travel into German-occupied territory. Anyone who is able to bribe officials and prove their “Ukrainian origins” is going there.

If you want to get into the occupied zone, you have to be quarantined with all the poor souls who are sick with typhoid and dysentery. Once they have died, the survivors are then permitted to travel on. But before you can even get into this hellish place, you have to get ahold of a passport with a visa—something that costs twelve hundred rubles. The permissions from the Cheka cost another thousand.

Uncle Anton was lucky—he got out when the Bolshevik officials were in a blind panic and ready to grab anything that dropped into their lap, including a paltry five-hundred-ruble bribe.

Like a dogged scarab, I try to gather an unfeasibly large dung ball of money and possibilities.

The ball started rolling when Khitruk let me into his little bookkeeping secret. His newspaper wasn’t bringing any money in, and his benefactors were still waiting to see any tangible returns on their investment. Now, when Khitruk goes to them for finance, they are beginning to shrug their shoulders and tell him that times are hard.

I had a word with the newspaper vendors, and they told me that there’s much more money to be had selling collections of jokes or pornographic postcards than opposition newspapers.

The all-seeing Durga was right: criticism of the Soviets is not what Russia needs at the moment.

The Russian press on both sides of the ideological divide have become completely discredited, and people buy newspapers not so much for their content but for their practical use as fire starters or cigarette papers (the thin paper is ideal for rolling tobacco to make handmade cigarettes).

There’s no truth in the Bolshevik press, and the opposition can’t publish the truth either. Since we have no reliable sources of information, our entire network of correspondents has long since been scattered and destroyed. And even if we did manage to dig something up and publish it, we’d be summoned to 2 Gorokhovaya Street, an infamous address from which few return. Ironically, the Petrograd Cheka is housed in the same building that used to house the Tsarist secret police.

I wrote a front-page article for Khitruk with the banner headline, “Excellent Substitutes for Imported Colonial Goods such as Tea and Coffee.”

At first, Khitruk was indignant. “I’m not going to turn a serious political broadsheet into a recipe book.” But I persuaded him that it would be difficult to find a more striking illustration of the times we live in, and he agreed to give it a try. Sales shot up, and now, we publish comment pieces on Soviet decrees on the left side of the front page while the right-hand side is reserved for articles with titles such as, “How to Cook Raw Rye and Wheat and Save Firewood.”

In addition to the paper, Khitruk is also publishing my memoirs featuring the lifesaving recipes that I picked up on my travels from Tehran ragamuffins, Shanghai coolies, and the immigrants of Buenos Aires.

I spend days at Durga’s using up government ink on my immortal manuscript, Recipes for the Resourceful Intellectual.

While I dictate, Durga bashes away at the typewriter. “Flour gruel. Take half a cup of rye flour and mix with boiling water until smooth.”

As the rickety Underwood typewriter thunders away, paper clips jump on the desk and the lid of the incense burner rattles.

“Now what?” asks Durga.

“That’s it,” I reply. “That’s your gruel.”

“Maybe you could add some saccharin?”

“What a bourgeois notion! The rye flour is sweet enough as it is, but perhaps we can stretch to a little salt.”

I visit the Public Library and trawl through the dusty volumes of Edible Plants and Mushrooms of Our Region for precious information. For poorer readers, we publish Bread Surrogates: Acceptable Additives, while better off members of the public tend to buy our more upmarket publication: Candy Recipes with Sugar Substitutes.

My pride and joy is The Home Distillers Handbook—this is the demure title of my leaflet on how to make a still for hooch. Next, I’m planning to publish two twelve-page brochures: Maintaining Satisfaction in the Marital Bedroom and Contraception on a Shoestring.

I keep the wages I’ve received from Khitruk in a small, old chocolate box and carry it in my breast pocket. This is my private security fund.

I don’t know where Nina is, what she is doing, or even whether she is alive or not. I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing staying in Petrograd and trying to get ahold of these papers.

Should I send a messenger to Nizhny Novgorod to try to find out what is going on? That would mean spending all of my precious chocolate-scented savings, but I need to hurry and get the Ukrainian papers before even that loophole is closed off by the Bolsheviks.

Every night as I get ready for bed in Khitruk’s guest room, I push away all thoughts of my everyday life—or rather nonlife—and fill the room with visions of last winter, that wonderful, terrible, unbelievably happy time.

But now it’s too late—a huge crack has opened up in the earth, and my love has hurtled down into the abyss.

Khitruk says, “I wish I could give you everything you need immediately, but you can see for yourself how many people I have to pay and support. Never mind, old chap. Don’t despair. Everything will be all right.”

But I have to admit that despair descends upon me from time to time in my lonely room. Sometimes I feel that it’s too late and that I will never win back what I once had.

Klim threw the door open and ventured into the printing works, a cramped, damp place that stank of cigarette smoke. The room was lit by a single electric bulb under a curved round shade.

“Where’s the boss?” Klim asked a bald old man stooped over the typeset.

The old man pointed to the door of the printing shop and the deafening noise of the printing press coming from behind it.

Klim entered the printing shop. Despite the pleas of his staff, Khitruk had decided to publish a report on the local elections. He was operating a press that looked as if it had been stolen from a museum, and the floor was already covered with stacks of that day’s freshly printed issue.

“The Bolsheviks have lost ground throughout the country,” Khitruk assured his young assistant, Arkasha. “People have voted for other socialist parties. No other newspaper will dare to reveal this secret, but we will.”

“This is suicide!” Klim exclaimed. “You have twenty-nine employees. What will happen to them if the Bolsheviks shut down your paper?”

Khitruk let the wheel go and pulled the lever that turned the sheet of paper. “You’re planning to leave the country, but as long as we’re staying here, we’ve got to keep telling the truth, or the Bolsheviks and their lies will prevail.”

“Thanks to you, Mr. Rogov,” Arkasha said, “our newspaper already looks more like a cookbook than a serious paper.”

“You wouldn’t survive another month if all you printed were political articles…” Klim fell silent when he heard heavy boots tramping through the next room.

The door crashed open, and a group of soldiers burst into the print shop.

“Against the wall, all of you!” they yelled. “Put your hands up!”

Those arrested were taken to Gorokhovaya Street.

“There’s a shortage of paper in the country,” the young investigator told Khitruk. “It’s only fair to distribute newsprint according to the relative size of the target readership. Your newspaper represents the former upper classes, and since the bourgeoisie are less numerous than the workers, we are going to confiscate your newsprint and give it to the Red Newspaper.”

The investigator told the employees at the printing shop to come back to work the next morning. As for Klim, he was told that he had twenty-four hours to leave the country.

“Your men confiscated my box in which I kept all my savings,” Klim said. “I would like it back.”

The investigator raised an eyebrow. “What are you talking about? I know nothing about your box.” He returned Klim’s passport with its visa now canceled. “Good luck. You may leave now.”

Klim and Khitruk went out into the empty street. It was the time of the “white nights” in Petrograd, and the city slumbered in a bluish twilight.

“A penny for your thoughts,” Khitruk asked as he lit a cigarette.

“It’s hard to believe that this is actually my life and not some bad dream,” said Klim gloomily.

Khitruk patted him amicably on the shoulder. “I thought you were going to say that this was all my fault, you tried to warn me, and I didn’t listen to you.”

“Each of us has his own responsibilities.”

“Tell you what,” Khitruk said, “let’s go to the theater. Right now, we need the healing power of art.”

The small concert hall was packed. People were sitting in the aisles and on the floor in front of the stage. A beautiful girl was singing, her wrists and neck covered in chaste lace. Her pure voice sounded like something from a past that was now lost and forever out of reach.

A storm of applause swept through the auditorium. People sprang to their feet in a standing ovation. The singer smiled, blushing, unsure how to react to this sudden outburst of rapture.

“Bravo!” cried Khitruk, pulling Klim’s sleeve. “What about that, eh? What do you say to that?”

“It’s beautiful,” Klim said.

It took some time for the audience to calm down, and the concert-goers only began to disperse when the lights were dimmed. But as they made their way down the marble staircase in the semi-darkness, a male voice began to sing, “It seemed that everything was over,” and soon, the whole crowd joined in. The chorus of voices rang out deep and rich beneath the painted ceiling.

“We’re not finished yet,” said Khitruk, deeply moved. “See? The Bolsheviks can deprive us of many things, but they can’t take away our spirit.”

Back at Khitruk’s apartment, Klim entered his room flooded with a dusky twilight and sat down on his sofa. He could still hear that song in his head as pure as a sparkling stream.

He took out his notebook, and by the light of the Petrograd white night, he wrote across the page: