The Big Green Tent

LOVE IN RETIREMENT

Once a month, Afanasy Mikhailovich rose at five in the morning instead of the usual seven, shaved with special care, and changed his underclothes. He ate his bread with tea, pulled a woolen overcoat over the old army uniform jacket, and donned a hat with earflaps. In civilian attire he felt like someone wearing a crown at a masquerade. And, it was true, no one recognized him; even the guard who stood sentry at the entrance to the dacha settlement failed to greet him.

After yesterday’s snowfall, everything was as clean and fresh as it was after a spring cleaning. Afanasy Mikhailovich walked to the bus stop. The schedule was illegible, encrusted with a thick layer of snow, so he couldn’t tell when the next bus would come. He waited under the overhang at the stop. Two women were waiting for the bus, too—one a nurse, who didn’t recognize him, and the other a stranger. She also seemed to be a local, though. He turned away and began looking in the other direction.

He was on his way to a secret rendezvous with his sweetheart, Sophia, to grumble about things and mull over them, pouring out his heart—or whatever a general had in its stead, for there was certainly something—and listen to what she had to say about why he was suffering so.

She had a gift for getting to the heart of his troubles, and putting it into words. From that first day in 1936, when he was working in the department of construction at the People’s Commissariat of Defense and she showed up to work as his secretary, she had known how to find just the right words for all those things he couldn’t express himself.

She had never been wrong. Not once. She said just what needed to be said. Nothing more, nothing less. What was better left unsaid stayed that way. That’s how it was right up to 1949, with a break during the war. After the war, when Afanasy Mikhailovich was appointed head of the Military Construction School, he sought out his former secretary, and she rushed to his side again. They were like Aaron and Moses. He would mutter some incoherent, garbled words, and his subordinates would rush off to find Sophia for an explanation.

She was tactful, and had had a good upbringing. She received her upbringing in the girls’ gymnasium, which she attended until she was fifteen, at which time the gymnasium was shut down because of the Revolution. Her tact was a natural gift. Nature had also endowed her with copious beauty. She had thick brows and large eyes. Her regal head tilted back slightly from the weight of her luxuriant braid, twisted into a simple knot until 1949. After that she cut it off. Although Sophia was small in stature, her ample bosom inside her sizable blue and green dresses, her plump hands with their long red fingernails, and her broadly curving gestures gave the impression of a large woman. Oh, what largesse she had—not only in the salient points of her figure, but in her whole character. Her nickname was the Cow. And she really did resemble one—Europa the cow. But the general didn’t know this. He only knew she was a goddess. And he worshipped her. He was never plagued by the trifling thought that he might be betraying his wife. His wife was one thing; Sophia was another. Completely other. And if she hadn’t turned up in Afanasy Mikhailovich’s life, he would never have known that love was sweet, or what a woman was, and what profound solace she could bring to the troubled life of a builder.

In all those years she worked for him, right up till 1949, there was only one time, just at the end, that she put him in an awkward position. She knelt before him and buried her head in his gabardine jodhpurs, leaving a trace of red lipstick in an immodest spot. But what could he have done? No, don’t talk to me about your brother, he had said.

Why go to such lengths for your brother? he remembered thinking. You’re the one who needs saving. But she wasn’t.

The general was called before the administration and ordered to fire his secretary.

Although tongue-tied and inarticulate, he was still indispensable, a valuable asset. But his interlocutor—a young captain, blond, with stubbly remains of hempen locks, close-set eyes like a pale, washed-out figure eight, blue shoulder straps—didn’t care that he had fought at the front, that he was a distinguished general; they could at least have sent a colonel to question him.

“You’re trying to protect your mistress!” he said. “You know that I know that you know…”

“Well, do what you know, then,” Afanasy Mikhailovich said, retreating after the second hour of interrogation. “You have your area of competence, I have mine—bridges, roads, and access routes.”

The pale wisp smiled a cold smile, and nodded. But agreeing to fire her wasn’t enough for him. The haggling continued, step by step. It was like bargaining in business, but the captain kept turning the screws tighter and tighter. He knew everything—about what went on in the office, and about their secret rendezvous. He would drop oblique hints, avoid saying anything outright, and then—bam!—and didn’t you visit her on Dayev Lane? And didn’t you ever meet Sophia’s sister, Anna Markovna? A professor, isn’t she? And Iosif Markovich, her brother, an actor in the Moscow State Jewish Theater? You’re not acquainted with him?

Is Sophia the only one they’re after? he asked himself suddenly. He was drenched in sweat.

Are we quits, then? They were—and all it took was one signature. The next day a new secretary was sent to him, and Sophia was gone. For just over four years. At the beginning of 1954 she returned from the labor camp at Karaganda. Another year passed before they met again. And what a place to run into each other! It was at the market at Nakhabino, early one morning in June. Afanasy was buying radishes and carrots. It was Sunday, and guests were expected. Antonina Naumovna was bustling about, she had forgotten to send the housekeeper to the market. Afanasy Mikhailovich volunteered—glad to get out of the house to avoid the kitchen confusion. He went by himself in his private Pobeda, without the chauffeur.

She recognized him first—and she stepped aside to avoid him. Her braid was gone, her plumpness had sagged, her hand flew up to her face and covered it: the same large hand with dimples at the base of every finger. Only now she didn’t wear red fingernail polish—it was a faint pink. He recognized that hand. It had stroked his bald head for many years, and with that one deft motion had vanquished his troubles and woes. He rushed to catch up with her.

“Sophia Markovna!”

“Afanasy!” she said, covering her mouth. “My God!”

Every other one of her sugary white teeth was missing.

“They released you?”

“Eleven months ago, July last year.”

“Why didn’t you let me know?” When they were face-to-face he was unable to call her by name. Addressing her formally was impossible, too.

She waved her beautiful hand dismissively and turned down the road, as if to walk away from him.

He chased after her and touched her on the shoulder. She stopped and began to cry. He removed his civilian straw hat and started crying, too. She wasn’t the same as she had been, she was someone else altogether; but in a single moment the two merged and became one—that former regal beauty, and the haggard, homely woman standing before him now, who was still the most wonderful in all the world.

She lived with her sister, Anna Markovna, at her sister’s dacha, not far away. He left his car by the market so he could walk her home. They didn’t say a word along the way, as if the breath had been knocked out of them. His mind kept returning to the same question: Did she know that he’d signed the document? Before they reached the dacha, she turned to him and said:

“We have to say good-bye here. My family can’t see you. And you don’t need to see them, either. You know they shot my brother.”

She knows, he thought. His heart seemed to drop to his stomach. But what does she know? Maybe she thinks I betrayed her brother.

Sophia had introduced him to her brother, Iosif. He was a good-natured fellow, and worked at Mikhoels’s Moscow State Jewish Theater. He had even written a few tales in Yiddish. They had met two or three times. But Afanasy Mikhailovich had put his name to paper only once—and that one signature had nothing to do with Sophia’s brother.

“Do you still live on Dayev?”

“I live at my sister’s. They took the room away from me. A yardkeeper lives there now,” she said indifferently, and he recalled the room that smelled like Red Moscow perfume, the flock of pillows, her collections of flacons and cats—of porcelain, glass, stone. “They tell me they’ll get the room back for me, and kick the yardkeeper out.”

Indeed, it was not long before they did return the room to her. Afanasy Mikhailovich began to call her from public phone booths now and then at the old, prewar number. He wanted to see her. For a long time Sophia refused him.

“No, please, I don’t want to, I can’t.”

But one day she said: “Yes, come.”

And once again he went through the courtyard and up the back stairs, which were adjacent to one wall of her room. As before, he avoided going through the main entrance, where the door to the communal flat was covered with doorbells for all the families living there. Instead, he knocked on the wall to her room, and she undid the huge iron latch to the back door, filling the darkness of the corridor with her body and her sweet scent. Then she led him into her little nest of pillows and blankets, where he basked in the warmth of her luxuriant body, which sank underneath him.

And all their former closeness returned, even more intense than before—for they had lost each other forever, and found each other again by chance.

And the second part of their double-feature true-love movie began. One thing, it goes without saying, had changed. They never talked about work. Sophia Markovna was as tactful and circumspect as ever. She never asked him anything. She never talked about her own trials and misfortunes. They talked about the subjects he brought up. The conversation usually concerned domestic matters, his family affairs. And he always talked about his daughter, Olga. Sophia Markovna had known her since she was born, of course—from a distance. Only from photographs. Once, not long before all the trouble, in 1949, he decided that Sophia Markovna should see Olga in person. He bought three tickets to a children’s theater, a ballet performance of Doctor Ouchithurts. He gave two of the front-row tickets to Olga and her girlfriend, and the third ticket he gave to Sophia Markovna. The girls sat next to Sophia Markovna; she watched them, and they watched the performance.

Framed photographs of the little girl adorned her walls. And that’s how things continued. Sophia took a great interest in Olga. It is likely that Afanasy Mikhailovich would not have known as much about his daughter as he did if he hadn’t been assembling this domestic dossier on her for Sophia Markovna: he reported what grade she had gotten on dictation, what museum she had visited the previous Sunday, and so forth …

The years passed, and Sophia heard all about Olga starting college, and about her early marriage. She’d had her doubts about the marriage from the very beginning. No, she said, our Olga is head and shoulders above Vova as far as intellect is concerned; mark my words, she’ll find someone far more interesting. And she was right. She was always right about everything. When Olga’s travails began, Sophia Markovna again gave Afanasy the right advice: she told him to retire.

He wouldn’t have been able to make the decision himself—but, at her urging, he submitted the necessary papers. This decision bolstered his health. After he retired, his life changed, and the changes were much for the better.

Afanasy Mikhailovich never notified Sophia of his impending monthly visit. He didn’t announce himself beforehand. She never left the house before noon, in case he decided to drop by. She always kept frozen minced meat on hand, ready for preparing pancakes at a moment’s notice. She would make the dough, then fry up the paper-thin crepes, two for wrapping around the meat filling and one for the sugar-sweetened cottage cheese. He washed down the meat-filled pancakes with thyme-infused vodka, and the sweet one with tea. All the food Sophia made was slightly sweet—even meat and fish. And the sweetness seemed not to come from the sugar, but from Sophia herself, from the smell of her body, her clothes, her bed.

On March 12, he went to see his girlfriend for the last time, though he didn’t know this yet. He only knew that it hadn’t even been a full month since he had last visited her, but just over two weeks. And already he was filled with longing; he couldn’t contain himself. The bus was running on schedule, and the electric commuter train didn’t let him down, either. He arrived at Rizhskaya Station promptly at 9:50. It had been quiet and still outside of town, but here snow was blowing through the squares. While he was buying flowers—mimosa—the squall died down and the sun peeped out. He boarded the trolleybus. Everything was happening right on time, but for some reason Afanasy felt uneasy. What if she wasn’t home? Something could have come up—maybe she had gone to see the doctor, or gone out shopping. He felt around for the key in his pocket. Sophia had given him the key to her room long ago, just in case. Which was quite pointless, since he didn’t have a key to the main entrance. And he couldn’t have gotten into her room through the rear, because the back door was always latched.

When he was nearing the building, the snow squall started up again. Afanasy Mikhailovich noticed that there was a crowd standing in front of the house. There was a bus, and several smaller vans. But this was not his affair; he had nothing to do with them, or they with him.

He went up the back stairs, knocked on the wall and waited at the door, expecting her to come to undo the latch. He waited for what seemed a long time, but she didn’t open the door. He knocked again—he ought to have telephoned, at least. But they weren’t in the habit of calling each other. Sophia Markovna still didn’t trust the telephone, though times had changed.

I’ll try the front entrance, Afanasy decided, and he went back out into the courtyard.

The bus, its windows draped in black, was performing a difficult maneuver, trying to pull right up to the front entrance of the building. People holding flowers leapt aside to make way.

A hearse, Afanasy noted impassively.

And, at almost the same moment, he was struck with alarm: Who had died?

And, right away, he knew it was Sophia Markovna.

He looked at the window farthest from the entrance—at that very moment it flew open, as though confirming what he had already guessed. The two halves of the large entrance door were propped open, and an enormous, plain coffin was carried out, not in the proper way, feet first, but head first. And the head, propped up high on a pillow, was that very same beautiful head, with a pale yellow face and red-painted lips. And the sweet smell assaulted his nostrils.

The general started to reel, and his legs began crumpling underneath him. Someone grabbed him, breaking his fall. They put smelling salts under his nose, and he came to. The face of the woman he saw standing before him looked familiar, for some reason. She was of the same stamp as Sophia Markovna—a noble head, large, dark-brown eyes, shoulders almost as broad as a man’s. But, of course, it was her sister, Anna Markovna—Annie.

“You! You!” She spat the words out with quiet rage. “What are you doing here? How dare you? Get out of here! Get out!”

And he did. He didn’t witness the custom-made coffin—ready-made coffins for people of her girth were not available—being stuffed, with great effort, into the back of the bus, or her many Jewish relatives piling in behind it. Nor did he see his two former colleagues, with whom Sophia Markovna had kept up relations after her return from Karaganda.

They saw him, however, and exchanged glances with each other. For a long time afterward they would prattle about him, and about Sophia; they would surmise all kinds of things. They would finally conclude that Sophia Markovna had tried to pull the wool over their eyes with stories about her high blood pressure, about her advancing years and her loneliness, when all the time she had been secretly carrying on with her retired lover. They thought hard about it, and did the calculations. Since 1935—that meant they had been together for thirty-two years, not counting the years of forced separation.

The general, crushing a whisk of mimosa in his bluish fist, walked to the trolleybus. It turned out that Sophia had known everything. And had forgiven him.