The Big Green Tent

A TAD TOO TIGHT

After she had seen her sister off, Shura returned to her new husband and the remains of their wedding. Most of the guests had departed, of course, but the truly inveterate revelers were still celebrating on the third day. By this time, they had forgotten all about the host, not to mention the hostess. Shura threw herself into the cleanup. After fashioning new rags out of two old shirts of Artur’s, she began from the kitchen and moved backward through the house like a quiet but powerful tractor, scraping off successive archaeological layers of dirt. Masha assisted her silently: she drew water from the well, washed the windows, and laundered the ancient curtains. Artur didn’t allow them into his room, but Shura knew that sooner or later she would gain admittance to it. Although Artur had ascended to the rank of husband, she continued to regard him as a beloved brother-in-law.

On the fourth day, when all the guests were gone except for a certain Tolik, who still couldn’t manage to sober up, Artur summoned her to his den, opened his desk drawer, and, pointing a huge finger into its depths, said:

“Shura, take money from here when you need it.”

There was a lot of money. Shura felt abashed, and waved her hand dismissively:

“You give it to me yourself.”

Without even looking, he grabbed as much as his hand would hold and thrust it at her. She was surprised: it turned out he was a rich man. Lisa had always claimed that his pockets were empty, that she had to try to make do as best she could. It didn’t tally.

It was awkward enough taking it directly from the drawer, but accepting it right out of his hand like this made her even more uneasy.

She had lived on her own for many years. Her husband had died on the job, log rafting, when Masha was only two.

“I’d like to send Father some,” Shura said on the fly, though the thought had only just occurred to her.

“Go ahead, send something to Ivan Lukyanovich. Here, take some more.” Again he put his hand in the drawer and drew out a wad of bills. He was amused that he had switched wives, but that he still had the same father-in-law.

“Thank you, Art. Father hasn’t been doing too well recently.”

The next day Shura sent Masha to the Central Telegraph Office to dispatch the money to her father in Ugolnoe. Even though Masha was not even eighteen, she knew her way around the city far better than Shura did. Lisa had twice taken Masha with her to Moscow. The last time Masha had stayed with Lisa in a rented apartment for a month and a half, and she had wandered the streets alone from morning till evening. She liked walking around alone and getting to know the city.

Now Masha was hurrying to the telegraph office to send the money. After that she planned to go to Red Square to visit Lenin’s Mausoleum, if she was lucky enough to get in. But the window she needed at the telegraph was closed. A spurious, hand-lettered sign dangled in front of the window, reading: “Maintenance break. Back in fifteen minutes.” Masha stood in line for fifteen minutes, then left, walking toward Red Square. Nothing had changed in the past three years; only, it seemed to Masha, there were now more people. Suddenly, Red Square opened out in front of her. Her thoughts leapt back to Ugolnoe, to her friends Kate and Lena. If only they could see all this beauty with their own eyes.

When I settle down here, I’ll invite them. First Lena, then Kate, Masha decided.

The line at the Mausoleum seemed to go on forever, so Masha headed in the direction of GUM, the state department store. There she found another line, spilling out the side doors. A girl of about Masha’s age took a pair of boots out of a long white box and showed them to another girl. The other girl went pale with envy. The sight took Masha’s breath away, too; she had never seen such boots! Tall, reaching almost to the knee, they had a small heel. They were made from beautiful brown suede. Her grandfather, who was good at leatherwork, would never have been able to make anything like this.

Masha had never been subject to secret passions or mad longings, but now she was burning inside. She would have given anything for those boots. Unfortunately, she had nothing to give. At that moment, she had even forgotten about the money wrapped up in a handkerchief in her pocket, secured with a safety pin.

“Are you last in line? I’m after you!” a girl with a big hairdo said, nudging her.

That was when Masha remembered about the money—she had a hundred rubles with her! And it seemed she was already standing in line; there was even someone behind her.

She stood there for four hours. Twice a rumor spread down the line that they had run out of boots. It turned out that there were no more size 37s, but other sizes were still available. By the time Masha got to the front of the line, all the boots were gone, both large and small. But mounds of boxes were stacked on the counter. Women who didn’t have any ready cash were writing layaway checks, valid for two hours, and rushing off to fetch the money. Whoever didn’t manage to redeem the boots within the allotted time would lose them forever—other anxious women, their happiness almost within reach, were clamoring to buy them, bills clutched in their sweaty fists. Masha was one of them. And she was in luck. The long cardboard box with the soft, brown creatures inside was hers. The whole way home her hand kept straying into the depths of the box, to touch the tender flanks enveloped in darkness …

You have absolutely lost your mind, Masha told herself; but she couldn’t do anything about it. Riding on the commuter train back to the dacha in Tarasovka, her new home, she started crying. What would she say now to Mama, to Artur? She had spent her grandfather’s money on boots, it was shameful! What in the world was she going to tell them?

Before she got to the house, she stopped. The solution was a simple, though provisional one. She darted through the gate and crept over to the corner of the yard, near the outhouse, where she buried the box in a large pile of last year’s leaves.

Shura was so worried that her daughter might have gotten lost in the city that she didn’t chide her for being late. She merely asked whether the money had been sent, and Masha nodded her head.

“I got mixed up, Mama. I got out at the wrong station. And then I went to look at the university.”

Masha lied so convincingly that she even surprised herself. The following morning, Shura and Artur went to the hardware store. Shura wanted to fix up the house. Artur didn’t welcome the idea, but he was so mild-mannered that he had agreed, especially since Shura was doing all the work herself—from hanging the wallpaper to whitewashing the ceilings. Lisa had always laughed at her, saying that Shura could satisfy her sexual needs with a good floor mop, while Lisa herself needed a good … and Lisa didn’t hesitate to say it.

When they had left and Masha was alone, she dragged the box out of the pile of leaves and carried it into the house, clutching it to her chest. She drew the boots out of the box, wiped off the soles of her feet with her palms, and tried stuffing her bare feet into the boots; but they wouldn’t fit. She found her mother’s socks in a suitcase, put them on, and tried pushing her feet in again. They were a tad too tight; they pinched. But since the leather was as soft as a baby’s skin, she was able to get her feet inside them.

Feet swell up in summer, when it’s humid; winter is drier. Masha consoled herself with this thought. Still, she decided to stuff them with a wad of paper, to stretch them out a bit.

She looked everywhere, but all she could find were dirty newspapers. How could she put those inside her heavenly boots? Then she looked under the table, and saw there was a thick packet of just the right kind of paper—the sheerest onionskin. Masha crumpled up one page at a time, rolled them all into tiny balls, and stuffed the boots up to the very top. She used up the whole packet of paper. They stood up straight and tall, as if there were living legs in them. Masha rubbed a boot against her cheek—just like a baby’s skin. “Dorndorf” was written on the box. Where was this Dorndorf? In Germany? In Austria? And where would she hide them now? Certainly not outside, in the pile of leaves by the outhouse …

She thought and thought. She decided she couldn’t keep them inside the house, either; instead, she took them to the outhouse. There was a high shelf, right up by the ceiling, draped with cobwebs. No one ever looked up there. Two empty paint cans had been left on the shelf and forgotten. Masha checked the surface to make sure it was dry. It was: a sturdy sheet of tar paper covered the roof of the outhouse, and even hung over the side.

I’ll get a job, Masha thought. I’ll earn some money and send it to Grandpa, and no one will ever know. Winter will come, and I’ll be wearing my boots! And college? Well, I’ll just apply to get in the following year.

This was the revolution that happened in Masha’s head in the space of one day. And even her heart felt lighter. She had graduated from high school, almost with honors. She had planned to enroll in college right away, and get married, and eventually get an apartment in Moscow so as not to be a burden to her mother and her uncle. But the boots pushed back all her plans by a year. She shoved the box back into the very corner of the shelf, and put the empty paint cans back in front of it. No one would ever find it there.

Artur and her mother didn’t get home until much later. They had gone all the way to Pushkino, to a big store where they’d bought the wallpaper and paste, and whitewash for the ceiling and windows. They returned toward evening. Shura was happy, beaming like a copper kettle. She bustled in, carrying the big rolls of wallpaper by herself. Artur followed leisurely behind, with a weary and perpetually good-natured air.

A lord, Masha thought disapprovingly.

Before they had even managed to bring all their purchases into the house, some uninvited visitors barged in: three in uniform, two in plainclothes. They asked for Korolev, Artur Ivanovich. The senior officer, with a bleached-out face, showed his ID, then pulled out a piece of paper and shoved it under Artur’s nose.

Artur sat down in his armchair, smiling a bland smile.

“Get on with it! Go ahead, get to work, fellows. Shura, you prepare some food for us. While these people work, we’ll have something to eat.”

* * *

The search lasted almost twelve hours, from half past four until three in the morning. They climbed into the attic, they crawled under the floorboards, they tapped on all the walls. They went out to the gazebo and broke down the wall. They threw all the lumber out of the woodshed, and turned everything upside down. They peered into the outhouse and shone a flashlight inside. Artur showed them both his discharge papers and his award certificates.

“You must answer to the law,” the captain mumbled sullenly. “You have no license, you don’t pay taxes. You bind all this stuff, all this anti-Soviet junk…”

Piles of secondhand books, in both new bindings and old, fraying ones, crowded the workbench.

“What do you mean, anti-Soviet?” Artur said, spreading out his enormous hands. “Hamsun, Leskov; and this is a cookbook. What kind of anti-Soviet stuff are you referring to, fellows?”

Masha was also a bit anxious. What if they found the boots on the shelf in the outhouse and decided to open a case against her?

The good fellows finished their work when it was already growing light in the east. They left with both books and bookbinding tools.

“Put on the tea, please, Shura,” Artur said.

Masha sat fretting: What if Artur was thrown in prison and she and her mother would have to go back to Ugolnoe? And would there be enough money for a plane? By train it would take four whole days and nights.

Artur crawled under the table—there had been a whole pile of books there, and now there was nothing. The searchers had turned everything inside out and upside down. Artur sat in his chair with the patched armrests and scratched his hairless pink chin in perplexity.

“I don’t understand it. It must be some sort of magic, a spell! Shura, there was a copy of The Gulag Archipelago lying there, under the table. That’s what they were after, I’m sure of it. Some bastard ratted on us. But where did it go? It was a huge packet of paper! How could it just disappear? Am I crazy?”

Well, let’s say that Shura, for one, knew he was crazy. They don’t just throw you in the loony bin for nothing. But Masha was already asleep, exhausted by the drama of the boots, unfortunately a tad too tight, the nocturnal search, and the happy knowledge of her secret possession.