The Big Green Tent

THE DELUGE

The girl, it seemed, had called from a pay phone near the entrance to the building, because she was at the door in the space of two minutes.

Ilya had been at their house a few times before her parents were sent to prison, but he either hadn’t noticed her, or she hadn’t been home at all. Or maybe she had already gone to bed.

Olga was certain that she was seeing the girl for the first time. She had the kind of face one doesn’t forget—small and thin, with eyes that were pale and somehow flattened out, and too big for the rest of it, and a tiny nose with a collapsed bridge. A strange physiognomy! Ilya had once mentioned her, saying she had a vicious character, and that no one could handle her. Olga had heard a great deal about her father, Valentin Kulakov, however. He was a Marxist who proclaimed himself to be Marx’s true successor, accusing all others who had entrenched themselves within the walls of the Institute of the Workers’ Movement and the Institute of Marxism-Leninism to be falsifiers, if not downright traitors.

Olga didn’t remember the details about where he had been expelled from, and why, before ending up in prison. He’d branded his enemies by any means available to him; he’d even written letters to the Central Committee of the Party, but they refused to listen to him. Then Kulakov single-handedly multiplied his battle cries for truth on a government copy machine, and began writing daring and irresponsible letters to the International Communist Party, the Italian branch, or the Austrian—or maybe both at once.

It must be said that the authorities tolerated his escapades for a long time, but when they finally expelled him from the Party and his institute, he became unhinged. He started an underground Marxist magazine and even tried smuggling it abroad, which was completely unacceptable to the authorities. That was when they threw him in prison. At the same time, they imprisoned his wife, Zina, who, though she was all thumbs, somehow copied and bound the publication herself, and was not a whit less dedicated than her husband on an ideological level.

He was, as they say, a foremost specialist on Marx and Engels, and at the institute there weren’t many scholars who could measure up to him. Inspired by Marx-Engels, he learned German. His goal was to read the Paris Manuscripts of 1844 in the original before he died. There was something in them about which Marx didn’t speak in his later years. When Hitler came to power, the German socialists had managed to smuggle these manuscripts into Moscow.

“What was the point? They’re languishing there under lock and key, and they won’t let anyone read them,” Valentin complained to Ilya.

Those were the days when Valentin and Ilya communicated most often, usually in the smoking lounges of various libraries. It was also when Ilya visited their home for the first time, and photographed both Valentin and Zina. Olga remembered the photograph—it was in one of the folders of Ilya’s archive. They made a funny couple. He had thick hair, parted in the middle and falling in two waves from the top of his head down to his ears. His wife had short, sparse wisps of hair, like a child after a long illness, and a doll-like face.

And now their scruffy daughter, wearing a child’s jacket with sleeves too short for her and a threadbare collar, was standing at their door. A medium-size dog with thick, light gray fur, a curlicue tail, and a pleasant expression on its face (unlike his mistress) was sitting next to her obediently. It was a northern breed, a laika. Both the collar and the leash were made of good-quality leather.

“I’m Marina. Did Ilya tell you I was coming?” She kept standing in the doorway without trying to enter.

“Yes, please come in.”

Marina made a little sound like a cough, and the dog went through the door ahead of her. The girl was carrying a rucksack.

Ilya came out into the hall and greeted her.

“Sit!” the girl said in a commanding tone. The dog sat and watched its mistress with an expression that seemed to say, Will there be anything else, ma’am?

Marina unhooked the leash and gave it to Ilya.

“Now she’ll only go out with you. Not with anyone else. If you say the word, you know, spazieren … she’ll come.”

When it heard the German word, it pricked up its ears.

“I see.” Olga smiled. “That’s a smart dog.”

“Hera? Smart? She’s a genius. She’s a laika. And laikas are the smartest dogs of all.”

Olga offered her tea, and then remembered—a child bereft of her family needed to eat! She asked if she wanted something to eat.

“Yes, but I should warn you, I don’t eat meat.”

What cheek, Olga thought; but Marina smiled, showing her tiny pearl-like teeth, and turned the insolence into a joke.

“Hera and I made a bargain: she’ll eat the meat, and I’ll eat everything else.”

And she launched into a story about what remarkable dogs laikas were, and how they had always had laikas at home, since before the war, because her grandfather had studied the northern peoples, and had brought home their first laika, a puppy, forty years ago, and ever since then …

Olga vaguely remembered something about her grandfather, a philologist who was compiling a dictionary of the language of a disappearing northern tribe … and then disappeared himself, into the camps.

Marina ate a bowl of kasha. She smeared a thick layer of butter on her bread. Her hands were scratched up, as though she had a litter of kittens in her care rather than a dog. Her fingernails were bitten to the quick. She ate the whole bowl of kasha, four pieces of bread and butter, all the cheese there was, and almost half a pound of smoked sausage, apparently forgetting that she didn’t eat meat.

Poor thing, Olga thought, and sprang to her feet.

“Oh, do you like apricot jam?”

It turned out she liked it very much indeed.

The two of them ate more than half a jar of the jam. Then Ilya glanced into the kitchen, where they were eating, and, apparently feeling left out, said:

“What, without me?” Then he ate the rest of it.

Kostya came home from school, and was overjoyed to see the dog; but Marina warned him that it was a real dog, not a toy, and that he couldn’t play with it. It would rip him to shreds.

Kostya was very surprised. What was the use of having a dog, then?

Olga grew alarmed—yes, the dog might actually bite her son.

“Not bite him; rip him to shreds,” Marina said softly.

The dog was sitting stolidly in the same spot where he had been commanded to sit before they ate.

“Olga, will you give her something for a bed, a place she can lie down?” Marina said with easy familiarity.

After they had finished their tea, Marina said that she had to go out for a little bit. She ordered the dog, “Lie down!” and the dog lay on the old children’s blanket Olga had given her.

While the girl was gone, Ilya told Olga about this Valentin Kulakov.

“Strange as it might seem, we have only one thing in common: Stalin. Though he doesn’t hate him for the blood, for the Terror, but for trampling his own ideals. Kulakov had a rather complicated multilayered schema of consecutive betrayals: Stalin betrayed Lenin, but Lenin had already distorted Marx, though Marx had some sort of misunderstanding with Hegel, whom Marx didn’t altogether understand correctly, at least as Kulakov saw it … and for life to unfold and develop as it should, in accordance with the laws of dialectical materialism, everything had to be brought down to a common denominator and adjustments had to be made everywhere, and Stalin had to be exposed as a criminal, an enemy of the idea of socialism. There is a whole group of them who are prepared to walk through fire over some quotation or other from State and Revolution.”

“Oh, you don’t have to explain. It sounds just like my mother.”

“No, not at all! She’s a completely different breed. She’ll believe whatever they order her to believe. But this one uses his own brains; he’s seeking the truth, comparing texts and checking them against one another,” said Ilya.

“But my mother also believes in something,” Olga said, trying to defend her mother’s honor.

Ilya snorted dismissively.

“Sure, she believes. In directives issued from above. Everyone knows how she smeared Pasternak!”

Relations between the son-in-law and his mother-in-law were absolutely cut and dried: they felt a profound mutual aversion. Ilya couldn’t forgive Antonina for having kicked Pasternak out of the Writers’ Union. They had asked her to preside as secretary of that meeting, and she had agreed, whether out of foolishness or vanity—or perhaps fear. What a disgrace!

The mother-in-law couldn’t stand her son-in-law, either. She considered him to be unsteady and ill-mannered. His laugh was loud and unpleasant, and even the smell in the WC after his visits there was particularly repulsive to her. “He smells like an animal. Some sort of Jewish smell.” And each time she had to go into the WC after him, she would light a wad of newspaper to dispel the odor. “What a stinking stallion my daughter had to go and pick for herself…”

Olga, devoted body and soul to her husband, was disconcerted by the emanations of hatred that filled every space her mother and Ilya happened to occupy at the same time, and she tried as hard as she could to neutralize their interactions.

“All right, Ilya, I know all about my mother, it’s all hot air. But what about the girl? How can we help her? Maybe the foundation will do something.”

The Foundation for the Support of Political Prisoners, run by the most famous prisoner, the most controversial writer, and the most implacable émigré of all, was already transferring his royalties from the West to Russia, and they were being distributed in the labor camps as food packages. They also went to other destinations as aid to the families of people behind bars, to facilitate their release, and to pay medical bills. And although all the people running the foundation were honest and upright, they were, in the Russian manner, disorganized and lackadaisical. Everything was carried out haphazardly, with blunders and mishaps—letters were mixed up, and money and packages had a habit of falling into the wrong hands. And the authorities weren’t asleep at the wheel—Stop, thief!—so the game took on enormous dimensions, involving post offices, messengers, secret codes, and muddles throughout the country.

“Who should they help, if not this girl?” Olga said.

“No, Olga, you don’t understand how it works. They do have money, and it’s earmarked for the needs of political prisoners and for those who are being released. But, you know how it is, you first need to get the go-ahead from the Classic.”

“So you need to get permission for every transfer or handout?”

“Not exactly. As far as I know there is regular distribution of, say, food, and the list of recipients is made up here. It’s not monitored over there, but when there is some irregularity, they start asking questions.”

“And who’s in charge here?”

“What’s the difference? Slava, Andrei, Vitya—they’re all the same. The people change, but the job gets done. But when it comes to individual disbursements—questions always arise.”

“You don’t think they’d help a child?”

“How should I know? It’s hardly likely the Classic would want to help any Marxists. He hates communism. On the other hand, she is the daughter of political prisoners, so…”

“Exactly. Someone needs to help her. I feel very sorry for the girl. She’s raggedy, hungry—and she feeds meat to her dog and doesn’t buy any for herself…”

Marina showed up again toward evening. She brought a “Prague” cake for them.

The vestiges of a good upbringing, Olga thought.

They drank tea together again, and Marina went to change her clothes. She was going to be taking a train trip. When she emerged from the bathroom, Olga gasped. The girl was wearing a light-colored raincoat instead of the child’s jacket, and she wore high-heeled boots. Her eyes were made up like she was going to a drinking party in some workers’ quarters out in the boondocks.

“You hardly recognize me, right? The watchers won’t either. I’ve tested it out so many times. I go around in these rags on purpose. They’re so used to them that when I get dressed up, they look right through me, like I’m not even there. Maybe I could leave this jacket with you?”

She stuffed the jacket, rolled into a ball, into her rucksack, along with her unisex sandals, and put the rucksack under the coatrack.

“Marina, why don’t you let me take you to the station?” Ilya suggested.

“No, that wouldn’t be right. Why do them any favors?” She shook her head, and her hair divided neatly into two parts. Marina pushed her splayed fingers through her hair, from her forehead to the back of her head, and tucked it under a barrette. Her bangs fell down to her nose. She blew them upward and shook her head.

Ilya looked at her in surprise: still just a kid, but she already understood a thing or two …

“Only you should take Hera out for a walk first. The first time while I’m still here, okay?”

Again she showed a remarkable perspicacity for her age. What a girl!

Ilya took the leash from the coatrack and gave the command: “Let’s go for a walk!” The dog followed him out with a trusting demeanor.

Marina then turned to Olga.

“The thing is, you know, I’ve never been to Leningrad. One of my friends keeps telling me to come, saying it’s great, with the white nights and all. I know the Leningrad scene a little—those guys came here once to visit. They promised they’d give me a place to crash.”

How did Marina change her appearance in the space of a few minutes, from a gawky adolescent into a slutty-looking runaway who hangs around train stations? Olga wondered. Then she grew alarmed. What if she gets lost in the role? But Marina seemed to read her thoughts.

“Olga, I’m not the one you thought I was at first; or the other one, either. I’m someone else altogether! A third person!” She brayed with laughter. “Or maybe even a fourth…”

Without changing her tone, she gave Olga clear-cut instructions.

“I’ll leave when they come back. You have to walk her twice a day, early in the morning and later in the evening. Early means about noon. I never get up before then. But you’ve got to give her a good run. Laikas aren’t meant to live inside at all, really. The cold is good for them, and they need to be worked hard. There’s a chance I may move away from the city altogether next year. We’ll see…” And she looked at Olga secretively, as though expecting her to ask more questions, which she wouldn’t deign to answer anyway.

But Olga sensed this, and didn’t bother asking. She liked this Marina for her independence, but the effrontery of that independence irked her.

Then the girl left, and they all went to bed—Kostya in the little room next to the kitchen, Hera on the blanket by the front door, and Olga and Ilya in the bed of Karelian birch with the ornate headboard. This birch served Olga faithfully in both her first and her second marriage.

The night was not a quiet one. First Olga got the sniffles, then she started coughing. Toward morning, she woke up. Something strange was happening to her: her face felt heavy, and it had become hard to breathe. She prodded Ilya a long time before he would wake up. Then he opened his eyes and sat bolt upright.

“What happened to you?”

“I don’t know, I’m having some sort of attack. Maybe we should call the emergency service?”

The medics came very quickly; they were there in only twenty minutes.

And they diagnosed Olga’s problem quickly, too. They said it was Quincke’s edema. They gave her an injection, sat with her for twenty minutes to make sure that the shot was working, and, before they left, said that it was most likely an allergic reaction to the dog. They should get rid of it immediately!

Olga waited until seven in the morning before calling Tamara and asking her, in a sniffly voice, to come over right away. In their school days it would have taken Tamara five minutes to run from Sobachaya Square to Olga’s; now the trip from Molodezhnaya metro station took forty minutes. Tamara didn’t deliberate for long, and didn’t ask any questions. If Olga needed her, she needed her, and that was that. She quickly got herself ready, and in an hour she was with Olga.

When she entered the apartment she was greeted by a medium-size dog. Well, not exactly greeted—in the hall sat a dog that didn’t so much as flick an ear upon the arrival of a guest.

Ilya was the one who greeted her. He took Tamara’s raincoat and opened the door to the bedroom, where Olga was. The dog sat by the front door, like a stone carving.

Tamara looked at Olga and gasped.

“What happened?”

“Oh, it’s Quincke’s edema,” Olga said casually. “Listen, Tamara, here’s the situation. This is the Kulakovs’ dog. You don’t know them? No? But you’ve heard of them, of course? You really haven’t? Valentin and Zina Kulakov? No, what does Red Square have to do with it? He’s a philosopher, a Marxist, and he published a magazine. It’s already been more than a year since they were both sent to prison, and their fifteen-year-old girl was left behind alone. Well, she’s sixteen now; but just imagine … Thank goodness she wasn’t thrown into an orphanage. At first they settled her with her aunt, but the girl has quite a temper. She ran away from her aunt after only a week, and started living by herself. We have some friends in common—not close friends, though. Since the girl was going to Leningrad for a week, our friends asked us if we would take care of the dog for a while. We agreed, naturally. Yesterday she showed up—right off the street. With the dog. And it turns out I’m allergic to dog hair. I guess it’s obvious. We could have taken the dog to the dacha, but my mother would never allow it, that’s for sure. Mother is from the country, you know, and a dog who lives indoors makes no sense to her. And outside—we don’t even have a doghouse! It would run away and get lost. And we’re supposed to be taking care of her.”

Tamara didn’t say anything. She wasn’t from the country, and dogs living indoors made perfect sense to her—but she worked in a medical research laboratory, and she observed dogs either in cages, or in an enclosure and a vivarium. They had never kept any pets at home. Tamara’s mother was mortally afraid of dogs, and she didn’t like cats. When her grandmother was alive, she’d had an old cat named Marquise; but after her grandmother died, there were no more pets.

“So, Tamara, if you’d keep her at your place for the time being—her owner will be back before you know it. The dog’s name is Hera.”

“While Mama’s still at the sanatorium, I’ll keep her; but after she comes back, I really can’t, Olga,” Tamara said, surprisingly unequivocal about the matter.

“But for how long? When is your mother getting back?”

“In three days,” Tamara said firmly.

Olga sniffed, and kissed Tamara’s tight little curls.

“You’re so dependable, Tam. You and Galya—there’s no one else like you two. If you can just keep the dog until your mother gets back, we’ll think of something by then.”

“Maybe you could ask Galya? Maybe she’ll take the dog?” Her eyes showed a glimmer of hope.

“As if! It’s not just any old dog; it’s a dissident dog! You might even say a Marxist dog! Take a dog like that into a KGB agent’s den?” Olga laughed in what was almost her normal sonorous voice. “And besides, Galya’s on vacation.”

Transporting the dog was problematic. Hera was determined not to get into Ilya’s car. She sat next to the open door with an imperturbable expression on her face, her translucent yellow eyes staring off into the distance. They were about to give up and take the metro when Tamara had an idea.

“Ilya, get into the car first, then command her to get in.”

“Clever!” Ilya said. He got behind the wheel and, patting the seat next to him, said: “Lie down!”

The dog’s eyes expressed momentary hesitation, but she stood up, sprang lightly into the front seat, and lay down, extending her paws out in front of her. Then she sighed, just like a human. The dog clearly didn’t have enough room, but the look on her face showed only dignified submission.

Tamara sat in the backseat, and they drove off.

In the evening Tamara called Olga to say that the dog had run away. She had broken loose from Tamara’s grasp, leash and all, and taken off.

Tamara had searched long and hard through the neighboring courtyards, asking all the dog owners whether they had seen the laika, to no avail. The next day they posted flyers around the neighborhood, and near the Molodezhnaya metro station. Then they waited. No one responded to their announcement.

In the meantime, Ilya had met with the director of the foundation and asked whether they could help a girl whose parents were in the camps. The director promised to look into it.

Three days later, early in the morning, Marina rang the doorbell.

Olga immediately told her about the missing dog. Marina sat down on the floor in the hall and put her face in her hands. Only when she took her hands away did Olga notice that her whole face was covered in red spots.

“Good God, what’s wrong with you? Is it an allergy?” Olga said.

“No. I need a bath. I shouldn’t have bothered going there. It’s caused nothing but trouble.” Marina sniffled, and rushed into the bathroom without taking off her raincoat.

She ran the water a long time, until Kostya woke up. He had to brush his teeth and get ready for school. Olga knocked on the bathroom door; it opened right away. Skinny as a fish skeleton, her body covered with red marks, scratches, and bruises, Marina stood there in front of Olga in her wet bra and underwear. All her clothes were floating in the bathtub, and the surface of the water was full of small, dark red globs. Heavens above, they were bedbugs!

Olga told Kostya to wash in the kitchen. She hurriedly fed him breakfast and sent him off to school. She found a nightgown for Marina to put on.

“Let’s have some coffee.”

Ilya was on a trip. If he had been home, they probably wouldn’t have been able to spend this time together. They were like sisters: Olga the elder one, and Marina, confused and nearly eaten alive by bedbugs, the younger one.

“The first night was just an orgy of drunkenness. My friend was there, too—what a pig! He begged and begged for me to come, and then, in the middle of the night, he went off with some girl and left me alone with these complete strangers. In the morning I went out with them to walk around town in the cold and rain. We were drinking vodka in little dives and bars, and then we bought some kind of pastries to eat and just wandered around all day. No one invited me to stay overnight. My friend had disappeared altogether. I called him at home, and they told me they hadn’t seen him for a whole week. What could I do? I went to the train station, but they were completely out of tickets. I called another girl, a friend of a friend, and she invited me to hang out with her. I waited in the station for three hours before she showed up. She looked like an awful person, but I went with her anyway.

“She took me to Saigon, some sort of café, like our Molodezhnaya. I liked it there, and I got to know another bunch of people. We went to Peterhof, outside the city, and wandered around there for two days. I ran out of money. Everyone sort of left one by one, until there were just two guys and me left. They took me to the university dormitories, which were empty, since it’s summer break, except for some sketchy types, petty thugs and all that. Well, we ended up crashing there, sharing a room. I’m going to skip the next part, since I don’t want to traumatize you. Right up until it happened, I didn’t realize what was going on; but I didn’t scream. Why should I scream? It was my own fault. I should have known I was just asking for trouble. And I got it. Well, I tried to struggle a bit, but those guys were hefty, they pinned me down. Then I just collapsed, like I was dead. To be honest, I was drunk. That night I woke up feeling like I had been scalded with boiling water. And it was light outside—those goddamn white nights and all that. It was so disorienting. And I love the nighttime. But there, it’s like there’s no real day or night, like some weird twilight, twenty-four/seven. And my whole body was burning, like it was on fire. And then my eyes almost popped out of my head—the walls were covered with polka dots, and the dots were moving toward me! I look down—and I’m covered in bedbugs! I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. It was a swarm of them, a whole army! There was no place to wash, just one small sink in the WC at the end of the hall. Somehow I managed to get ready to go. I noticed that one of the guys had left, and the other was still passed out in the room. I went through his pockets and took all the money he had on him. I thought it would be enough for a ticket; and even for two. Surprised? Yeah. Well, that’s how it happened. Just like that. Which one of them screwed me, I wondered, this one or the other? Then I thought—both of them, most likely. I didn’t remember. Anyway, what’s the difference? So I split. Straight to the commuter train, then to the train station. There were no tickets, but I bribed the conductor, and she let me stay in her own little compartment in the front of the wagon. I slept the whole way. I kept scratching like a pig, though, I’ve got to admit. I only realized just now that the bedbugs had hidden in the lining of my raincoat, and crawled out on the sly to bite me. Don’t worry, though. I drowned all of them, poured scalding water over them. Olga, what’s wrong? Why are you crying? Don’t, please, or I’ll start crying, too. And now Hera’s gone!”

Her tears streamed down her cheeks to her little chin. Olga and Marina grabbed hold of each other and cried in each other’s arms. Their tears were as heady and salty as blood.

“Never mind, never mind, everything will turn out all right,” Olga whispered. “We’ll find Hera. Your parents will be released. Everything will be fine…”

Marina, who had quieted down a bit, began howling again.

“Fine? What could be fine about it? Those idiots will come back, and everything will start all over again. They’re crazy, they belong in the loony bin, not in prison! The only good thing about my life is that they’re not in it. I was ten years old the first time I ran away from home. I couldn’t have told you why back then. But now I know why. They don’t need me! I only get in their way. All the other kids had normal lives, but all I had were endless meetings and conversations in the kitchen. Marx, Lenin, Lenin, Marx! I hate them. I don’t know how I’m going to survive now. But when they get out of prison, it will be the end…”

The coffee had long since grown cold.

“Warm it up, okay?” Marina said.

“I’ll put on a fresh pot.”

“Are you nuts? Just warm up this one. Have you got any cigarettes?”

Olga didn’t smoke. Even after all her years together with Ilya, she had never taken up smoking. She looked around to see whether Ilya had left any behind. They drank the old, warmed-up coffee, then put on another pot. Olga wanted to keep Marina at home with her, but she couldn’t. Her mother was going to spend the night at home, since she had scheduled some medical tests at the Writers’ Union polyclinic that morning.

“I’ll go home with you,” Olga said. They got on the number 15 trolleybus and took it to Tsvetnoy Boulevard, where the Kulakov family lived on the first floor of a three-story building in the courtyard of the former Trubnaya Square.

The misfortunes didn’t end there that day. When they arrived at Marina’s, they found there was no electricity in the building. It was plunged in darkness, and there was a powerful stench. The wooden floor was full of puddles. When they entered the building, the door slammed shut with a bang.

“Olga, hold the door open, I can’t see a thing.”

Marina peered into the darkness: the door to her apartment had been forced, and a notice was stuck to the door frame.

“The KGB has been here again, Olga.”

They went inside. Marina flicked the light switch—nothing. The whole apartment was underwater. It was clear that the flood had occurred several days ago already, because they could see where the water level had receded. Swollen books floated like victims of drowning. And the stench was commensurate with a disaster area.

Quite unexpectedly, Marina started laughing. Olga looked up in alarm: Had the girl suddenly lost her mind?

“Look, Olga! The four lower shelves of books are soaked! The water came all the way up to here! The divan is soaking wet—so are the pillows and the blanket! What a stroke of luck! Too bad it wasn’t a fire! No, a deluge is way better! Olga, we’re going to toss everything out right this minute. Get rid of everything! Everything the KGB didn’t take! Plato! Aristotle! Hegel! And everything in German, too! And Karly-Marly! And Engels!”

She rushed over to the shelves and started pulling everything off, both the wet and the completely dry volumes, and they fell into the shallow, fetid water with a weighty plop, joining scraps of pictures, pieces of wallpaper, and little vases …

“‘Over the gray expanse of sea, wind gathers the storm clouds. / Between the storm clouds and the sea the stormy petrel soars like black lightning! / Now with his wing he grazes the whitecaps, now like an arrow surges toward the clouds. / He screeches, and the storm clouds hear the joy of the bird’s bold cries!’”

In clothes that were not her own (Olga’s black sweater and trousers held up by Ilya’s belt), given to her after the bedbug death bath, Marina swept through the apartment like a fury, throwing books from the shelves and yelling:

“‘In his cries is the storm’s wild thirst! In his cries the storm clouds hear / the power of his rage, the flame of passion, and sure victory! / Let the tempest rage and roil!’ Fuck it, Olga, I’m a Wunderkind! Didn’t you know? I’ve read every one of these books. I’ve even read Plato’s Republic! I read Aristotle at fourteen! I never read Hegel, but I read the Communist Manifesto! Fuck it! It’s the deluge! Finally, the flood has come! I’m going to throw everything out and renovate the whole apartment. All by myself! I’ll scrub everything down, I’ll whitewash it! Everything will be just like new, white and clean!”

Olga realized that this was exactly what would happen, and she started taking all the sodden books down to the garbage heap. The blue Lenin, and the red Stalin, and all the historical materialism, and the dialectical materialism, and the political economy … everything.

“Along with the bedbugs! We have them, too, you know! Not as many as in Peterhof—but plenty of them!” Marina shouted.

And Olga grew suddenly happy herself. This is it, the real Fathers and Sons! The Kulakovs would be released—Valentin in two years, Zina in a year. Then they would have three years of exile, and return home. And their lives would be pure and white.

Just one thing remained unclear—how she would survive all those years, this passionate, bold, desperate girl, covered with bedbug bites, raped by a pair of alcoholics, pitiless toward herself, pitiless toward her parents … a tender girl-child.

On her third run down to the garbage, a huge bin hammered together any which way out of rough boards, Olga discovered a medium-size dog sitting there. It was Hera. She had come back home, all the way from Molodezhnaya Station to Tsvetnoy Boulevard. A true dissident dog.