The Big Green Tent

THE IMAGO

Everything was just as it had been before—the courtyard, the neighbors, the broken floorboard in the corridor, the saleswomen in the bakery and the fish store, the building manager. Yet it seemed to Mikha as though thirty years had passed, and not just three. One false move and everything might split open with a resounding crash—the house, the courtyard, his little daughter, his wife, and the whole city, and April, so warm and welcoming this year. Cautiously, gingerly, he made his way around the room, the apartment, and his surroundings, doing what he had to do.

He first went to see Anna Alexandrovna. Then to the police, to have his passport registered. They said he had to find a job within thirty days.

Then he went to the History Library, almost certain they wouldn’t admit him. But they just told him he needed to reregister his library card.

Several weeks later, after Anna Alexandrovna’s death, he went to see Ilya and Olga. He rarely visited this strangely eclectic apartment—an admixture of Communist asceticism and Russian Empire style—on Vorovsky Street. Olga had never really warmed up to Alyona, but she adored Mikha.

Olga kissed him, and pulled out of the refrigerator some parchment paper bundles of pâté, Wallachian salads in little tartlike pie crusts, cold cuts, herring, and who knows what other marvels, all from the Prague confectionery and delicatessen. She laid it all out on translucent plates, and, blowing a kiss good-bye, ran off to finish a translation that had to be completed by the morning. Ilya took out a bottle of Armenian cognac. Mikha could hardly drink a thing, and he ate sparingly as well, expecting the pains in his stomach to start up again at any moment.

They sat down and looked at each other closely. Ilya was afraid to say anything out of place or unnecessary. He wasn’t terribly sentimental, but he was overcome with a feeling for Mikha that he had rarely even felt toward his disabled son. His eyes and nose stung.

“Did you see it last night?” Mikha asked.

Ilya nodded.

“Of course. All of Moscow watched it. Everyone was expecting something like this.”

“Expecting it? And I could never have imagined that he would do anything of the sort…”

“Ingenious, in its own way,” Ilya said.

The trial of Chernopyatov and his two closest friends had ended the night before. There had been an unprecedented television broadcast—a press conference with Chernopyatov. Sergei Borisovich had repented of all his sins against the Soviet authorities for an hour and a half. And he did this with real talent—if one can be said to have a talent for baseness and treachery. The most surprising thing was that he introduced himself as the head of the “Democratic Movement,” its leader, and its main ideologue; and as self-proclaimed leader of the movement he called upon his followers to reexamine their actions. Everyone who was even remotely involved understood very clearly that there was no unified movement to speak of, that there were various groups of people with their own concerns and “interests,” which sometimes coincided and sometimes did not, who were united only in their rejection of the current authorities and their hunger for change. And the change they wanted varied from group to group, person to person …

Many people discussed the previous day’s broadcast. The similarity with Dostoevsky’s The Possessed was not hard to see. People with a pragmatic bent feared an unleashing of wholesale repression against any nonconformist thinker. People who took a more philosophical view asked more abstract questions: Had the great Dostoevsky discovered a particular elemental force in the Russian character, this possession by revolutionary fervor, or had he unwittingly created it, along with his literary protagonists Stavrogin and Pyotr Verkhovensky?

He and Mikha talked about this all evening, without coming to any hard and fast conclusions. There was too much of the story that still remained obscure.

It was impossible to fathom what had happened to Chernopyatov himself. He had been the most steadfast of them all, wise and experienced. He had survived the children’s penal colony, Stalin’s labor camps, and exile … And he had a clear-cut enemy: the Soviet authorities, Stalinism. What could have happened to him to make him turn around so abruptly, so radically?

“Ilya, a month and a half before my release they brought me face-to-face with him. I didn’t know that he had been arrested and was naming names. A frank confession, they call it. Dozens of names. He betrayed nearly the whole Chronicle: editors, writers, compilers. This was the last thing I expected. Sergei Borisovich told me that I was making a mistake, that I needed courage to admit my mistakes, that I had to seek a new path. They tried to pressure me into going down that path with him. I refused. They told me they would send me up for a second term if I didn’t cooperate. I was certain they would never let me out after that. But they did. They made me sign a paper saying I wouldn’t engage in anti-Soviet activity, and let me go. What happened to him I really don’t understand. Maybe there is something we don’t know. They have so many methods at their disposal, besides beatings.”

“I was told they have some sort of ‘truth serum’ that they sprinkle in your food,” Ilya ventured.

“I could believe that. You know yourself that they’re professionals, and we’re absolutely defenseless against them. And we’re just as defenseless against the common criminals. I thought about Mandelstam a lot when I was inside. What it was like for him … to die there.

“But don’t imagine that they feel any lack of moral justification! In fact, they feel they are morally superior. For them, breaking a person with ideals is a special pleasure. It’s like we all have the same face to them. Like we’re all Chinese; or like we’re all weaklings who wear glasses. Before I was transported from prison to the camp, one of the jail bosses smashed my glasses. He got such a charge out of it, it was such a thrill to him to hear them crunch underfoot. I really can’t see a thing without them, as you know. I only received a new pair three months later—Anna Alexandrovna sent them to me. Chernopyatov, by the way, also wears glasses.”

“Yes, I photographed Chernopyatov a few years ago. It was a good portrait.”

No, Ilya didn’t feel any guilt about that whatsoever. What a bunch of motherfuckers was what he was thinking.

“Well, I’m just thinking about the ways in which he was vulnerable, that’s all,” Mikha said, explaining something that Ilya already knew perfectly well. “Maybe they made him drink something, or broke him in some other way … I just don’t want you to say anything bad about him. One has to feel sorry for him, on top of everything else. He wasn’t thinking of Alyona. How will this affect her? And all the people who’ve surrounded him all these years.

“I think the price he has already paid is so high that he is worse off than everyone else. How will he ever live this down?

“You helped me so much, Ilya, before my arrest. I’ll always remember what you said to me: ‘Every word you say will work against you. Keep silent. The best thing is to say nothing.’ And that’s what I did. But you know yourself, Sergei Borisovich is a big talker—an orator, even. He said too much, and then there was no going back. Or maybe his strength and willpower gave out. I’m not going to be the one to judge him.”

* * *

Mikha’s words were feverish and disconnected, but Ilya understood everything. In silence, Ilya poured them each another glass, and then drank, saying: “Me neither.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do for work now. It turns out that working with the deaf children was the best thing I’ve done in my life.”

“We’ll think of something,” Ilya said, with less confidence than usual. “Have you ever thought about emigrating?” This was the first time Ilya had ever brought this up directly with Mikha.

“Emigration—only to save my skin. The most terrifying thing for me is the prison camps, Ilya. I won’t survive them a second time. But emigration … I’m from here, everything I know and love is here. Friends, Russian, my work.”

“Work? What kind of work?”

Mikha seemed to wilt.

“But how—without work?”

Ilya didn’t know either. For him it wasn’t a matter of a single job, but of various kinds of work. A multitude of tasks.

“You know, let’s take one step at a time. First we’ll find a job for you. Then we’ll try to take stock of the situation, and think about where to go from there. I’ve already asked around. My friends are keeping an eye out for some kind of job for you. Start with your personal life, putting your own house in order.”

“That sounds like one has to make a choice—between one’s personal life and society.”

“Your head’s full of romantic rubbish. Why a choice? What kind of choice? That’s just childish thinking. There’s no choice—you wake up in the morning, brush your teeth, drink your tea, read a book, write your poems, earn your money, gab with friends—what kind of choice does that involve? At a certain moment, you start to feel—there’s something dangerous here. So you don’t touch it. You stay away from it. There’s always a boundary line. But we’ll figure that out when we come to it. You’re not going to go around asking for trouble! Sometimes you can’t help it. But you learn to move to the left, move to the right, so they don’t grab your ass. Of course, there are those who love to bask in glory, to be in the limelight. Sergei Borisovich is ambitious that way. He wanted fame, influence. He wanted to play a role. But there are others—Vladimir Bukovsky and Tanya Velikanova, for example. Sakharov. Valera, Andrei, Alik, Arina … many of them! They never choose between personal life and social life. They just live how they live, from morning till night. They don’t play at life…” Ilya said, sounding certain and knowledgeable. It was difficult to counter him. But there was something in his reasoning that didn’t add up. Mikha jumped on it.

“You’ve got to be kidding! You’ve just named all the ones who actually did make a choice. Not all of them have served time in prison yet, but their time will come, you’ll see. And I won’t survive another term in prison. I know that about myself. I won’t make it.”

But, as it turned out, Mikha didn’t have to make a choice after all. Everything happened of its own accord.

* * *

There were bad days and good nights—so bright and brilliant was the unprecedented love that finally took hold between Alyona and her husband that it illuminated the gloomy days. Only now, Mikha sensed, was Alyona finally able to respond to his loving ardor. They were in corporeal dialogue with each other, something that had never happened before now. Something had shifted in the depths of her body—or was it her heart? Or perhaps the birth of their child had opened something like a sluice gate? And some natural gravity drawing a woman toward a man had fallen into place. Their sleeping daughter warmed them with her presence, and she gave great meaning to their unfolding happiness.

Their intimate life flourished and filled the gaps of their impoverished existence. But what happened in the world outside the small circle of their love for each other gave no cause for comfort or hope. There was no job, no money, no meaningful activity of the kind that had occupied him before he was imprisoned. Their home, which had always been full of friends, both Muscovites and Central Asians, was now empty. Either they were afraid for themselves, or they were staying away because they feared for Mikha and Alyona.

Even Sanya almost stopped dropping by. He was feeling both relieved and slighted: Alyona had seemed to have dropped him like a thing she no longer needed. Now he was perplexed. Had he imagined all the emotional pressure that Alyona put him under during the three years that Mikha was gone? He was hurt that Maya so easily and quickly withdrew her affection from him. She no longer clung to his neck or tickled his ears. Were all women in it together?

Sanya even began to think vaguely about some colossal struggle of women against men, similar to the class struggle. Only Nuta never took part in that struggle: she loved boys. Most of all she loved her own grandson, of course; but she had also loved Mikha and Ilya. He wondered how it had been with her husbands and lovers—but it was unlikely she had waged war on them.

Perhaps the problem was one of age? In youth, there is conflict; then a truce is declared; and, finally, in old age men and women become invulnerable to each other.

I should discuss it with Nuta, he thought by force of habit. But this thought came up against the feeling of injury toward Alyona and Maya, who (both of them!) had loved him so importunately, so onerously, for three years; and then, after Mikha’s return, within a matter of a few weeks all that love had dried up and disappeared, as though it had never been …

* * *

Sanya would never know what Nuta thought of all of this. And Mikha would never know that Anna Alexandrovna couldn’t stand Alyona—or any others of that subtly drawn type: weak, demanding, despotic, feeble women, with a gift for inspiring tenderness, passion, and love, but who were nearly incapable of responding to it with gratitude and sympathy.

After her death, all Anna Alexandrovna’s close friends were always trying to gauge what her reactions might have been, to reconstruct the words she might have said, apropos of one thing or another.

Nadezhda Borisovna tried to push away her knowledge of the aversion her mother would have felt toward her fiancé, Lastochkin. Only six years later, after their divorce, when Lastochkin would begin the process of trading their large room in a communal flat on Chernyshevksky Street for two smaller apartments, and, to complete the absolutely fair transaction, would do an inventory of Nuta’s property, from the spoons to the bed linens, and then divide it all into two absolutely equal parts, did she shiver, thinking how lucky it was that Mama didn’t live to see this, and that Sanya had left for good …

* * *

But Anna Alexandrovna had also done something terribly cruel, something no one would have expected of her: she had left them all, abandoned them—Sanya, Mikha, Vasily Innokentievich and her daughter, Nadezhda, who had never learned how to move through the world on her own. She had not provided them with any explicit instructions for how to go on living. She had told them how and where she wanted to be buried—but what happened after the funeral? The next day? A month later? A year?

All the boys and girls whom Anna Alexandrovna had guided so tirelessly through life, without their even being aware of it, were suddenly deprived of that light and lighthearted guidance, in which there was a golden mean of wisdom and whimsy. She had both common sense and a sense of contempt for it; a trust in life, and a sharp, critical vision that could size up a new person after only a single, fleeting encounter.

While Sanya sank into a depression after his grandmother died, Mikha underwent, like an insect, the final stage of metamorphosis: the death of Anna Alexandrovna forced him to grow into an adult.

Now, without Nuta, Mikha tried to understand why he had been the one to witness her last minutes on earth. He kept waiting for the mystery to be revealed, so that he would know how to live, how to go on in this world; for he was now the eldest, and there was not a single person on earth who could advise him on difficult questions and quandaries of existence.

There was something very important that Anna Alexandrovna had not had time to tell him, and now he had to find out what it was for himself.

Quietly, fearing to startle away the improbable happiness, Mikha delighted in his blossoming family life, adored his daughter, and trudged around to various places trying unsuccessfully to find a job. The deadlines imposed by the authorities had all passed, and he now ran the risk of being accused of “parasitism,” punishable by banishment from Moscow.

Kusikov, the neighborhood parole officer, came by to urge him on in his search for employment. He was a country boy, with the vestiges of a rural ruddiness and with glimmers of humanity left in his face.

He took a good look around him. He examined Alyona’s graphics for a long time. They were marvelous. Mysterious and enchanting. Noticing his curiosity, Mikha explained that his wife was an artist. The policeman was impressed, and filled with respect for the wispy girl. They may have been poor, but you could see they were cultured. He even wanted to help them out. As if from nowhere, Kusikov was filled with a sense of pity for Mikha and his spindly wife.

He offered to help him get a job as a loader in a fish factory. The manager was a friend of his. Mikha shrugged uncertainly. He’d worked as a loader before, but his eyesight had gotten so bad that more of that kind of work—loading and unloading things in the dark—could do untold damage to his vision. His hand strayed mechanically up to the metal frames of his glasses. Alyona offered the policeman tea. He sat down, his legs spread-eagled on the chair, his sturdy boots planted on either side of it. Maya stared transfixed at the policeman’s cap lying on the table. Alyona placed two pastries on a plate in front of him. He ate only one of them, evidence of his good country breeding.

When he was leaving, Kusikov said he knew of another good job opening for Mikha, working somewhere as a guard. He lamented that the personnel office might not approve it, though, with Mikha’s criminal record.

“How strange our Soviet—or maybe Russian—life is: you never know who will denounce you, report you to the authorities, or who will help you out; or how quickly those roles might reverse. Isn’t that true, Alyona?”

Alyona nodded, her hair falling over her face.

“Yes, I think about that a lot. Everything is so mutable, so unpredictable. There is warmth and sincerity in abundance, and so many good intentions; but they never amount to anything.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Mikha objected.

“But that’s what I mean,” Alyona said, smiling a clever smile. Lately, she had acquired a new, clever smile—much cleverer than she really was.

Two days later, Kusikov took Mikha to a curious establishment, where they hired him as a forwarding agent. He was in charge of sorting and sending out samples sent in by geological expeditions to several other establishments.

In comparison with his work at the school for the deaf, which required all his spiritual and emotional energy, or the camps, which drained him of all his physical strength, this almost meaningless work was remarkable in one sense: it lasted from eight to four; sometimes he was even able to leave earlier in the day. The workday ended when it ended, until the next day. He didn’t have to think about it; his mind, his heart, were free, and he had strength left over. There was an enormous expanse of time that he could spend with Alyona and his daughter. Sometimes he went to the library, where he read up on every possible subject, without his former greedy hunger, allowing every word to penetrate his being—Montaigne, Madame Blavatsky, Lao-tzu …

Then he returned home for a late dinner. Maya would already be asleep. Alyona would be wearing her lime-green sheath dress that outlined her slim body, but had generous bell sleeves. In her fragile hands she would bring in from their communal kitchen a heavy cast-iron skillet loaded with fried potatoes.

The room smelled of cooking oil, a sleeping child, freshly mopped floors, and Alyona’s special scent—cool, and a little sweet. These were the smells of home life, of family and love.

Mikha ate his potatoes in a hurry, while Alyona slowly drank her herbal tea, drawing out the end of the day and keeping the arrival of nighttime at bay.

His former life, with its wrongs and injustices, its stale ideas, and its notions of reform and change, drifted away from him. Sergei Borisovich’s public repentance, though it threw into confusion all of his previously held ideals, to a certain extent justified Mikha’s capitulation. Having chosen between the valorization of some and the betrayal of others, he lived his life in quiet and somewhat shameful disgrace. The act that several months before had tormented him as defeat and apostasy—signing the humiliating document renouncing all social and political activity—now seemed to him to be his only means of surviving and protecting his family.

Everything fell into place again, and even the job as a forwarding agent—a mind-numbing, alienating task—had its advantages. Mikha sometimes had to sort the contents of parcels with all manner of samples: colored clays; sharp, translucent crystals; stones gleaming with veins of metals. The marvelous names of the places where these samples had originated—Maly Storozhok at a tributary of the Lenochka stream; Matiukovka Mountain, part of the Vsevolod-Vilvensky deposits; the Shudi river basin in the northern Urals—caressed his tongue. Mikha once even wrote a poem full of these enchanting geographical names.

Life continued on its quiet way, as though on tiptoe at twilight, and despite the lack of money, the material scarcity, and Mikha’s deeply hidden shame for renouncing his former existence, daring and vivid, domestic happiness brightened their 150-square-foot room, and everything seemed larger than life, like the best films, like his favorite lines from Pasternak:

Shadows lie upon

the glowing ceiling.

Crossed hands, crossed legs,

Fates entwined.

Two small slippers

clatter to the floor,

and tears of wax drip

from the lamp onto the dress.

Just around the corner, a three-minute walk, was Potapovsky Lane, where Pasternak’s last love, no longer young and gone to fat, who had done time in the camps for this love, and her daughter, who had also been imprisoned for complicity and knowledge of the affair, stopped into the same bakery or grocery store that Mikha shopped in. When he saw them on the street, he would whisper to Alyona: “Look, there’s Ivinskaya, there’s Ira Emelianova, she went to our school.”

Alyona turned around to look—she saw a heavy older woman wearing too much makeup, without a trace of her former beauty, in a tattered coat. Could it really be her? Was it possible? And to think that at one time she had been compared to Simone Signoret.

Alyona and Mikha exchanged glances: we live not in nature, but in history … And Pasternak walked down this very lane twenty years before. And one hundred fifty years ago—Pushkin. And we are walking down it, too, skirting the eternal puddles.

* * *

In the spring, in the middle of May, something unexpected happened. At two in the morning, the elevator door banged shut, then the doorbell rang four times—the Melamids’ ring. Mikha and Alyona, sleeping in each other’s embrace, startled awake simultaneously. Through their confused, nighttime stupor, they thought: They’ve come!

They hugged each other more tightly, pressing together their cheeks, their breasts, their knees, bidding farewell with their whole bodies, and got up, pulling on their clothes. The bell—four rings—resounded again, but this time less urgently. Now they embraced again, this time not saying good-bye, but expressing hope that misfortune would pass.

Hand in hand they walked down the communal corridor toward the front door. Mikha opened it without asking who was there. Instead of three, four, five security thugs, they saw a small girl in a green silk dress, with a thick braid of hair as coarse as a horse’s tail hanging over her shoulder. They recognized her immediately.

“Ayshe! Ayshe!”

The Tatar girl they had met in Bakhchisaray, daughter of Mustafa Usmanov, hero and leader of the banished Tatars, was standing in the doorway. Only she was now no longer a small girl, but a young woman. “Come in, come in! Why didn’t you call? We would have met you at the station…”

A small suitcase, a cloth-lined basket, her gloves fall to the floor. “Don’t take off your shoes! In our room, you can take off your things in our room. Why didn’t you call, how many years has it been? Yes, four, five, at least, you have a daughter; and we do, too! We have a daughter, too. You got married, yes, tell us, tell us everything! Tell us…”

“I couldn’t call. I was too scared. They arrested Father. He has a good lawyer, who told me to come to Moscow. He said I needed to find Academician Sakharov, so that he would write a letter. But how can I possibly find this Sakharov? The lawyer said we need foreigners to make a fuss about it, on the radio, or however they do it there. From America! It’s urgent—Father has shrapnel in his chest, and if it moves, he’ll die. And our Tatars are all quarreling. Father is a Communist. Although he was expelled from the Party ages ago, he still keeps talking to them about Lenin. And those evil devils will destroy him in jail! The lawyer sent me—you need to leave immediately, he said, otherwise your father won’t survive until the trial…” And she cried through her garbled words, and her tears were as blue as her eyes, and fell thick and fast, like the tears of small children.

“Ayshe, don’t cry, please. There, now, don’t cry…”

* * *

There was an extra place to sleep in the room on a folding cot, if her head was pushed right up against the wall under the windowsill, the table was shoved about eight inches to the side, and the child’s high chair was put away. They drank some tea, put Ayshe to bed, and went back to sleep themselves for another two hours. Mikha got up at seven, and by eight he was already at work.

He called Ilya from work to say that they needed to meet. Where? Same place as always. Milyutin Park, in other words.

“You mean she’s at your house right now?” Ilya asked, frowning. “That’s dangerous. Someone’s sure to be shadowing her. You have to move her somewhere else.”

“No, that’s impossible. That night in the cemetery, in Bakhchisaray … And Mustafa is a remarkable human being. What will be, will be. Can you find Academician Sakharov for me, Ilya?”

“Give me one day,” Ilya said.

Ilya’s circle of friends and acquaintances was enormous. He even boasted a bit about the variety of his connections, and joked that if you didn’t include the Chinese, common laborers, and peasants, he knew everyone in the world, either personally or through someone else. That’s exactly how it was with Academician Sakharov. A certain Valery, an old acquaintance of Ilya’s, worked closely with the academician: both of them were members of the Committee for Human Rights. After a few phone calls back and forth, Sakharov agreed to meet with Ayshe.

Three days later, Mikha took her to Chkalov Street. They walked the distance, since it was twenty minutes by foot from their house to his.

The whole way, Ayshe couldn’t stop trembling. Her head ached from agitation and worry, and she broke down in tears when they were at the door. While Mikha was trying to comfort her, the door opened, and an adolescent carrying a garbage pail asked them who they wanted to see. When they told him, he let them in, and asked them not to slam the door behind them.

From that moment on, everything that happened seemed to Mikha and Ayshe to be completely improbable. Ayshe even began thinking that someone had played a trick on them. A thin, ordinary-looking man in an old cardigan, who did not in the least conform to their idea of an academician, received them sitting on a bed in a small, cluttered room. Ayshe was hiccuping so strongly after her bout of tears that Mikha had to tell the whole story of Mustafa himself, beginning with their first acquaintance in a hotel in the city of Bakhchisaray.

The academician—or the impostor who called himself an academician—listened attentively, nodding, his head inclined forward. He made a few replies that revealed a detailed familiarity with the case, noted down the name and surname on a scrap of paper, then offered them tea.

They moved into the kitchen, where a middle-aged woman in thick glasses was presiding.

An old woman in a soft cap was sitting in a corner, and the adolescent whom they had met when they arrived took a glass of tea and a few cookies, then disappeared into the dark corridor.

Ayshe touched the cheap teacup decorated with polka dots and said frankly what had been on her mind for the past half an hour:

“Andrei Dmitrievich, I could never have imagined that academicians lived so modestly.”

Mikha blushed from embarrassment. What a country bumpkin!

The older woman in glasses laughed:

“My dear child, only academicians who write letters in defense of exiled Tatars live like this!”

Then Ayshe realized what a foolish thing she had said. Her cheeks turned crimson, and her face began perspiring profusely. “I’m sorry, please forgive me! I understand everything. I just hadn’t expected it—no one ever told me that this is how it is.”

Then a young couple came in—the middle-aged woman’s daughter and her husband. They wouldn’t all fit into the tiny kitchen, so Mikha and Ayshe went out, freeing up some stools.

The academician promised to write a letter about Mustafa Usmanov, and advised Ayshe to give an interview to one of the American journalists accredited in Moscow. He said he would organize it.

The most remarkable part of the story was that Academician Sakharov really did write the letter, and not to the American Congress, and not to some Western newspapers, but to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Two weeks later they invited him to a reception on Ogarev Street, and there he discussed the matter of Captain Usmanov with a couple of officials. It was still the time when they talked seriously to him, and didn’t just chuck him out with a respectful expression glued to their faces. The academician did truly achieve something: not long before, a Tatar family had been granted a residence permit in Crimea. One family out of many thousands. And he continued to make the rounds, to submit requests, to petition, to write letters.

Only in Mustafa’s case it was impossible to determine whether his words had an effect or not, since Mustafa Usmanov died in solitary confinement in a pretrial detention cell in Tashkent a month and a half later. Perhaps the academician’s letter pleading the case of the former Tatar hero, defender of the Motherland and special deportee, had not arrived in time, because the postal service of our country is known to be very slow.

But, for the time being, Ayshe was glad that she had had an important meeting, and she was hoping for the best. Mikha led Ayshe by the elbow. She could hardly stand on her own two feet, and kept thanking Mikha in words that were both too direct and too wooden. Only when they were right in front of Mikha’s house did he realize that they were being followed by someone with such an ordinary, unprepossessing face that there could be no doubt about where he had come from.

Two days later, in the evening, a foreign correspondent by the name of Robert visited them at home. He had been sent by Academician Sakharov. He wore a long Soviet coat and a fur hat with three flaps. He resembled more closely a Russian truck driver than an anti-Soviet Slavist from Washington, with Polish roots thrown into the combustible mix. They drank tea and talked. A small tape recorder, a miracle of Western technology, was placed on the table to record Ayshe’s words. The former Pole was wont to be a skirt chaser. He stared at Ayshe with a sweet expression on his face, and paid her compliments. She basked in the attention and bloomed. Smiling, she straightened her shoulders and spoke freely and even boldly, not at all shyly and haltingly, as she had in Sakharov’s kitchen.

Then Robert left, got into the cab that had been waiting for him the whole time, and went to his house on Leninsky Prospect. When he got out of the car, two thuggish-looking young men jumped him. He got into a fight with them, though he knew perfectly well that he shouldn’t have done that, and that the best thing to do was to make a beeline for his front door. As a result of this tussle, all three of them were taken down to the police station and charged with hooliganism. Robert got off fairly easily. They held him there overnight, and in the morning the American consul came to liberate the idiot. Unfortunately, in the midst of all these vagaries the tape recorder disappeared, never to be seen again.

The following day, toward evening, when Ayshe had gone to Children’s World to shop for her daughter, the neighborhood policeman, Kusikov, looked in and saw both the basket in which Ayshe had brought a melon and grapes, and the cheap suitcase. He hemmed and hawed a bit, then led Mikha out to the staircase landing and said:

“Hey, Mikha, it’d be better if you would, you know … They stopped by asking about who was living at your place. They really let me have it. You—well, you know, she’s gotta get out of here…”

That same evening Mikha took Ayshe to Kazan Station, and early in the morning, she left for Tashkent, after Mikha arranged for her to travel in the conductor’s compartment, without a ticket, in exchange for some hard cash.

Three days later, Mikha found a summons in his mailbox. It was an invitation to the Lubyanka, to a meeting with Captain Safyanov.

Mikha never told Alyona, but he showed Ilya the piece of paper when they met at their regular spot.

“I warned you. You shouldn’t have let Ayshe stay with you at home. You’re in the crosshairs now.”

Mikha blazed up all of a sudden: “What the hell should I have done, chase a young girl out onto the street in the middle of the night? In some situations you just can’t say no.”

“My God, Mikha, you’re such a child! You could’t afford to say yes, either! I warned you! And I told you that she should go to Sakharov’s alone, without you! How could you have agreed to allow someone from the foreign press corps into your home? You’ve made so many mistakes acting on someone else’s behalf, and now you’re going to be the one to take the rap. These are serious times we’re living in, things have never been worse. They’ve rounded up almost everyone. The Tatars, the Jews. The Chronicle isn’t even coming out anymore—there’s no one left to publish it. You picked a bad time to be noble and high-minded.”

Mikha relented.

“I know, I know. But there was no way I could act otherwise. I couldn’t chase her out onto the street; I couldn’t send her off to Sakharov’s alone. As for Robert coming over to my place—I could have avoided that, I suppose. But the rest of it—there was no other choice, Ilya. No other way.”

Ilya grew morose and silent. What could he do for his friend now?

“Listen, I know a man, a geologist. Maybe you could take off for the Far North, on an expedition? Conditions are harsh up there, of course. Yakutia is a long way off.”

“No. I can’t. Alyona. Maya. Anyway, you know there’s no hiding from them, once they set their sights on you!”

“Well, what if I went to Yakutia with you?” That was the most Ilya could offer. And there was no one who had anything else to offer him. Ilya recognized the familiar hand of fate, and knew deep down that Mikha could not extricate himself now.

* * *

Captain Safyanov wasn’t suited to outside surveillance—he had a large purple birthmark on his right cheek, which may even have been a growth. It was visible a hundred yards away. The birthmark didn’t interfere with investigative work, and Safyanov rose steadily in the ranks, not overtaking anyone else, completely satisfied with his salary, his bosses, and his family life. The most unpleasant part of his work was questioning those under investigation, but he tried to keep good relations with them insofar as it was possible. Which wasn’t always the case.

Melamid, the citizen who had been summoned for questioning today, had been handed down to him by another colleague who had just been promoted. The captain familiarized himself with the contents of the thick dossier beforehand, and was distressed—judging by the documents, this was someone with experience. He would have to work on him a long time.

The experienced citizen came right on time, not a minute late, and he looked like he had been around: a skinny neck, pale red hair, almost yellowish, sticking out in tufts, and cheeks covered with the beginnings of a beard. There was no beard to be seen on the photograph.

Well, we’ll need a new photograph for the file, Safyanov decided.

The captain began the conversation obliquely, reminding him of the document he’d signed last time, asking him about his employment, about his future plans. Then, out of left field, he asked:

“Are you acquainted with Ayshe Mustafaevna Usmanov?”

But this Melamid character clammed up, then denied it. This was just how he had behaved during the last interrogation, when he had been brought face-to-face with Chernopyatov—which the captain was able to gather from the documents. For an hour and a half they circled around and around the issue, and then Safyanov, the first one to grow tired of this game, pulled out a piece of paper covered with foreign print and said with feigned chagrin:

“Well, Mr. Melamid, I can’t see that you have any interest or desire to help us in our work. This is most unfortunate. We conferred about your case, considered your situation, and decided that, from our side, there wouldn’t be any objections to your leaving for somewhere beyond the boundaries of our homeland. You are not one of us, Mr. Melamid. Which is astonishing—your father died on the front lines, but you have no respect for…” Safyanov did not find it easy to say these words. “In short, I won’t hide from you the fact that an invitation has been sent to you and your family from the state of…” Here he inserted a pregnant pause, cleared his throat, and pronounced, with repugnance, “Israel.” He placed the stress on the final syllable, which made it sound even more sinister.

“Your relative Marlen Kogan—you know someone by that name?—has interceded for you, to reunite the family. The invitation is for you, your wife, and your daughter. Have a look.”

He held out a beautiful letter. Mikha took it, and held it up close to his nose. The invitation had been issued three months before. All that time it had been languishing somewhere in the Foreigners’ Registration Office or the KGB, and they had decided that now was the time to put it to use.

“It’s expired, Comrade Captain,” Mikha said.

“Well, we’ll take care of that. It can be extended,” he said, tapping his finger on the telephone. “It’s in our hands … we won’t object. Think about it. You have many things to consider, too. You haven’t kept your word: you signed a document stating you wouldn’t get mixed up in any of these kinds of activities. And what do we see? You allow undesirable people to live under your roof, with no residence permit, no passport records; you go to Academician Sakharov, and he writes all kinds of libel that he distributes abroad. You invite foreign correspondents to your house. And who gave you permission to engage in these activities? Leave the country! It will be better for you. If another case against you is opened, you won’t get off with only three years, Mr. Melamid. Why are you dawdling? All your people are champing at the bit to get to Israel! They would give anything for an invitation like this. All right, all right, think about it. You won’t have a lot of time to think, but we’ll give you three days or so. If you don’t leave, we’ll throw you in prison. Although there are other possibilities … Take a pen and a piece of paper and write a frank confession: about your connections with the Tatars, about Mustafa Usmanov, and about this Ayshe. How you went to see Academician Sakharov, and what you did there. And about what Robert Kulavik, a fake American, was doing at your house. Write it all down in detail, take your time, and we’ll be able to part on good terms. I can’t promise anything, though. I’ll do my best. You do your best, and we will, too.”

He rubbed his purple birthmark with the back of his hand. Mikha decided the captain must be a nervous sort. And I don’t have any nerves at all, it seems.

Mikha smiled and put the invitation on the table. He pressed it to the tabletop with his palm, as if it might fly away.

“I understand you, Comrade Captain. I’ll think about it. May I leave?”

“Go, go. I’ll expect you on Monday at three.” He signed Mikha’s pass. “Personally, I think you should seriously consider this proposition. Such an opportunity will not present itself again.”

He went outside. Winter? Spring? What time was it? Late morning? Early evening? Was he in Kitai-gorod? The Boulevards? The Lubyanka?

O God, don’t let me lose my mind …

No, no, not that one.

When will the pall on my

Ailing heart disperse?

When will the tangled nets

I’m caught in set me free?

When will this demon that

Commands my mind’s dark dream …

He forgot. He forgot what Baratynsky wrote next.

He walked in circles, first away from home, then approaching it again; but he couldn’t find the strength to go home and say that single word to Alyona: emigration.

Finally, he mustered his courage and told her everything: about the summons, about the unexpected offer. Alyona heard him out. Her face went dark. She averted her eyes, dropped her lashes, bent her head down so her hair fell over her face, and whispered:

“This is what you’ve always wanted. Now I know for certain, this is just what you’ve always wanted. But let me tell you: Maya and I will never leave here. Not for anything. Not ever…”

But it wasn’t so much her words as her altered face that said everything—in the space of a second it had become suspicious and alien. Her eyebrows seemed to elongate, her lips compressed into a straight line. That drop of Caucasian Mountain blood she had inherited from her father—both proud and wild—surfaced like a sudden sunburn. Alyona lay down on the divan and turned her face to the wall.

From that moment on, she stopped washing, eating, dressing, and talking. She could hardly drag herself to the WC before returning to the divan with tiny, uncertain steps and turning her face again to the wall. Her clinical depression was so obvious, the symptoms so classic, that Mikha had no trouble diagnosing it himself. Even Maya’s whimpering entreaties couldn’t rouse Alyona from the divan. Mikha floundered in despair and helplessness. For several days he rushed to and fro like a madman, trying to balance work, domestic duties, and taking care of Alyona and the child. Zhenya Tolmacheva came to help. Alyona refused to talk to her as well, but she accepted the help without a murmur of thanks, as though she didn’t notice it. Sanya showed up again, and Ilya came after Mikha’s phone call.

Ilya looked around, raised his eyes to the heavens, searched for an answer in the invisible expanse of space, and called in a psychiatrist named Arkasha. Arkasha was also one of their own. He was active in dissident circles and had written letters of protest, exposing the judicial-psychiatric establishment. He had lost his job a year before, and was now working as an orderly in a hospital outside of town. He recommended immediate hospitalization, and getting a categorical refusal, he prescribed some strong psychotropic medication.

Maya hovered around Alyona, but she remained indifferent to everything, including her daughter. For a second week in a row, Mikha took his daughter to work with him. He missed his appointment with Safyanov, and he didn’t bother to open the mailbox, where—he knew!—he would find another summons.

At the end of a second week lying on the divan, Alyona’s mother, Valentina Ivanovna, suddenly arrived from the Ryazan countryside, where Sergei Borisovich had been exiled. Why she had had the sudden urge to come to her daughter was unclear—most likely maternal instinct. She was horrified at what she saw when she arrived. She kept trying to find out what had happened, but Alyona refused to speak to her, either, and turned her face to the wall again.

Valentina Ivanovna recalled some strange episodes from her daughter’s childhood, so she didn’t insist, but did the only thing that was in her power—she took Maya with her.

Mikha expected Maya to cry and resist, but his mother-in-law behaved very wisely: she whispered to the little girl that in the country she had a real live goat, a white cat, and a speckled hen. Maya, tempted by this domestic zoo, went happily and willingly with her grandmother. Alyona said good-bye to them sleepily and turned back toward the wall.

Mikha finally went to see Safyanov two weeks after their scheduled appointment. He told him that his wife was ill, and Safyanov believed him: Mikha looked completely haggard and miserable. He told him he wouldn’t accept the invitation to leave, that his wife didn’t want to go, and that he wasn’t ready, either.

Safyanov was surprised. He frowned, and began rubbing his marked cheek, thinking hard.

He rang for a deputy, then went out. Forty minutes later he returned, seething with anger. He sent out the deputy, and changed his tack with Mikha. Now his threats were unconcealed and explicit.

“We have a mountain of evidence against you, Melamid. I’m not even talking about the Tatars. Things turned out fairly well for you in the past. This time, you won’t get off so easy.”

He placed a pile of grayish paper in front of him.

“Casual conversation is over. We had our little talk, off the record. Now comes the interrogation. Under protocol.”

“I won’t talk. Since you have so much evidence, what need is there for me to say anything?” Mikha said quietly, not looking at Safyanov. He kept his mouth shut for the next two and a half hours.

On the way home, twice he thought he glimpsed the purple mark on the cheek. Could Safyanov really be following him? It was impossible; but his face kept coming into view at the periphery of his vision.

It was late when he got home. He brought Alyona tea, and made a sandwich. She propped herself up on the pillow, and drank the tea. She didn’t eat anything, and she didn’t want to talk.

Ilya and Sanya arrived before midnight. The three of them sat around talking, just like old times. Mikha said that they had been shadowing him for the last several days, and he was afraid they would arrest him any day now. The telephone was, no doubt, being tapped.

He ran his fingers through his shock of hair, the only thing about him that still had volume. Except for his hair, he resembled a vertical plane, a profile, a cardboard cutout. Since Alyona had taken to her bed, he had stopped shaving.

He scratched his soft red beard with his bony fingers.

“What do you think?”

“What do you think we think! They offered you the chance to emigrate, didn’t they? Do it—you’ll never survive here.” Sanya was convinced that he himself wouldn’t survive here, either. But no one would send him, a Russian, an invitation to emigrate.

“Yes. It’s the only way,” Ilya agreed.

Mikha gestured toward Alyona’s back on the divan with his eyes.

“Don’t you understand? I can’t! I just can’t. And Alyona can’t, either.” His face looked like that of a hunted animal.

“Do you know what I think? Hear me out, now; don’t get upset. You should go alone,” Ilya said.

“Have you lost your mind? Abandon my family? Do you have any idea what you’re saying?”

“Alyona will come to her senses and follow you,” Ilya said, as confident as ever.

“We’ll get her ready and send her off,” Sanya said, with less certainty.

“What the hell? That’s rubbish! The situation is completely hopeless. It couldn’t possibly get worse.”

Sanya embraced him like a child, pressed his cheek to Mikha’s stubbly face, and pleaded:

“Mikha, I’m begging you. If you have no pity for yourself, at least think of Alyona and the child. Alyona will regain her health and follow you there. This is your chance! If I had even the remotest possibility to do the same, I’d jump at it in a second! I’d fly away like the wind! Please, go! That’s what Nuta would have told you.”

It was already after two by the time they left Mikha. Sanya was tipsy, Ilya was sober.

“Listen to what I’m telling you, Sanya. You blamed me once for what happened to Mikha. For his imprisonment, I mean. Well, it’s true, I am guilty; only not of what you accused me then.”

Sanya stopped in his tracks and shook his head, trying to regain his sobriety. He was not a drinker, and only did it under exceptional circumstances, out of necessity. Ilya went on:

“Everything’s more complicated than it seems. But I want you to know that both you and Mikha are like family to me. Even more than that. Do you understand that I would never betray you under any circumstances?”

“Ilya, the thought never occurred to me. What I meant was that you got him mixed up in, you know, the magazine and all that. Lord, how do you guys drink this stuff? It’s absolutely vile!”

Sanya stumbled against Ilya, who put his arm around him gently and led him through the Pokrovsky Gates toward home. Everyone felt miserable. Absolutely miserable.

* * *

Mikha was wrong about one thing: that things couldn’t get any worse. The following day, they did. He went to work, and the personnel director called him in. He said that several parcels had gone missing, and showed him a packet of invoices.

“You see? There’s your signature right there! You sent them off, but they never arrived. They were valuable samples; look here.”

The director had begun in a quiet, measured tone, but he quickly grew incensed, and three minutes later was cursing up a storm.

Mikha realized immediately what would follow—he would be asked to sign a resignation letter. And that is just what happened: either sign the letter of resignation or be taken to court.

Mikha signed the letter of voluntary resignation and didn’t even bother going to the accounting office for his back pay. This was Safyanov’s doing, no doubt.

* * *

That was Tuesday. On Thursday he was scheduled to see Safyanov again; but on Wednesday something unforeseen happened. And things got even worse. Without warning, Valentina Ivanovna arrived from Ryazan. She came in a car that she drove herself. This was, in itself, surprising. She hadn’t known how to drive before. She must have gotten her driver’s license. She came with Maya, but not to return her to her parents. She came to fetch Alyona.

It was all very strange. Alyona, who hadn’t wanted to see her father at all since the trial, got up and began collecting her belongings submissively. Mikha had never seen this sort of submissiveness in her. She had always been independent to the point of insolence with her parents. Valentina Ivanovna helped her pack, coaxing her softly:

“We’ve fixed up a room for you, with windows onto the garden. Liza Efimova sent me some mohair, for hats. There’s a whole box; twenty hanks. You could make a sweater. Look, I knitted a blue hat for Maya from it.”

“Yes, blue,” Alyona said, nodding.

Dumbfounded, Mikha watched them pack. The words caught in his throat before he could utter them. Valentina Ivanovna didn’t turn her head in his direction, as though he weren’t even there.

“You can’t imagine what good friends Papa and Maya have become. She never leaves his side.”

“Yes, yes,” Alyona said in a soft, slow, completely alien voice.

Mikha took the things out and put them in the trunk of the blue Moskvich. Maya waved to him vigorously. Alyona nodded good-bye as though he were just a chance acquaintance. Mikha didn’t dare even kiss her.

The next day he would have to go see Safyanov again and listen to all his threats, all that garbage. He realized he was on the edge.

* * *

In the morning Mikha got up early, as usual, though he had no need to go to work. The emptiness was so pressing that his ears rang with it. Or perhaps his blood pressure was up? He spent two hours revising his old poems.

Terrible poems. Terrible, Mikha thought, without any particular rancor or disappointment. He wanted to throw some of them away. He made a whole pile of them to get rid of. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

* * *

He arrived at Captain Safyanov’s on time. The captain had a formal air about him, as if it were the eve of a holiday. Maybe it’s some sort of holiday for them? Mikha wondered. No, the November holidays were still two weeks away.

“We’ve tried to do everything we could for you, Mr. Melamid. We even offered you something we resort to only in exceptional cases—letting you go abroad.”

Mikha shook his head, and waved his hand dismissively. He didn’t even notice himself doing this.

“Look here,” Safyanov said, and showed Mikha a piece a paper that read, “Arrest Warrant.” “It isn’t dated. We can sign it today, or tomorrow. And here is your testimony.” He waved several densely covered pages. “You yourself didn’t give us this testimony. No, you didn’t give it. Here, take a look.”

Mikha took the standard protocol form. It was a new kind, printed on large-format paper and folded in half. Written in blunt words, with grammatical errors, in a woman’s handwriting, a secretary’s, with a thick line for the spine of each letter, it was a denunciation of various people, most of whom he had never laid eyes on.

“This is my final offer. You put your signature here, and I’ll rip up…” And he shoved the arrest warrant under Mikha’s nose.

It’s a risk, but maybe it will buy me another day of freedom? Mikha thought. What was it Ilya had said about that hypnotist, what was his name? Yes, Messing. He could make anyone think or do whatever he wanted them to do. Even Lavrenty Beria … Had he signed something? Or, no; it was what he didn’t sign. He just showed them a blank piece of paper, and they thought they saw a signature there.

He picked up the protocol from the table and began to put his signature to it. He was a teacher, and during the years that he had to sign his pupils’ homework assignments and the roll call, he had elaborated a streamlined signature, like Victor Yulievich—first, “M. Mela…” followed by a long tail that soared upward.

He took the pen, wrote an “N” that resembled an “M,” and put a period after it. Then he wrote “Ofuckingway,” and sent the tail soaring upward. The likeness was uncanny …

“Here you are. But now I have to run home to my wife. She’s very ill. Please sign my pass so I can leave,” Mikha said in an importunate voice, at the same time tensing the part of his head just under the frontal bone, in the very center.

Safyanov caressed the paper with the surprisingly elegant signature, which looked like it hadn’t been written by Mikha’s hand at all, and called someone on the phone. A sergeant with a pass entered.

Sign it, sign it, Mikha commanded Safyanov silently.

The captain signed the pass, and Mikha walked backward toward the door, without removing his gaze from the captain. He exited the room with the sergeant. Now he didn’t care when they would notice his little joke. He had time!

He walked to Chistoprudny Boulevard at a brisk pace. He went into his house, feeling light, almost weightless, not thinking about anything. He went up to the sixth floor on foot. It was just after four o’clock. The elevator was out of order again.

He sat down at the table. He wanted to reread his poems again, but he suddenly felt that there was no time for that. He pushed the whole pile aside. Childish, childish poems. Soon he would be thirty-four. And still his poems were childish. And they would never be grown-up poems. Because I never grew up. But now the time has come for me to take my first step as a grown man. To liberate myself from my own absurdity, my lack of substance. To liberate Alyona and Maya from myself, from the utter failure of my existence, from my inability to live like a normal, full-grown man.

What a simple and certain choice! Why had this way out never before occurred to him? How perfect it was that he had not yet turned thirty-four. Thirty-three was the age when Jesus had committed the deed that proved his absolute maturity: he had willingly given his own life for an idea that didn’t inspire any sympathy in Mikha whatsoever—the sins of others.

Being the master of one’s own fate—that’s what it meant to be an adult. But egotism was an adolescent trait. No, no, he no longer wanted to be an adolescent.

* * *

He went to the bathroom and took a shower. He put on a clean shirt. He went over to the window. The window frame was dilapidated, the glass was dirty, but the windowsill was clean. He opened the window—rain, gloom, paltry city light. The streetlights weren’t on yet, but there was a gentle shimmer of illumination.

He took off his shoes so they wouldn’t leave dirty footprints and jumped up on the windowsill, resting there for a brief moment. He murmured: “Imago, imago!” And flung himself down lightly.

* * *

And the wings? Through a fissure in the chitin, the moist, sharp folds of wing rigging burst forth. With a long, fluid movement a wing works itself free, straightens itself out, dries itself in the air, and prepares for its first beat. Gridded like a dragonfly’s, or scaled and segmented like a butterfly’s, with an intricate map of venation, unable to fold up, if more ancient, or folding up smoothly and easily, when of newer vintage … and the winged creature flies away, leaving the empty shell of chitin on the earth, empty grave of the airborne, and new air fills its new lungs, and new music sounds in its new, newly perfected organ of aural perception.

* * *

His glasses and a piece of paper with his last poem lay on the table.

Once amid the bright flash of the day

The future will shed light upon my credo:

I am in the people, too, I did not forsake you

In any way. My friends, for me please pray.

His friends who were believers bid farewell to the nonbelieving poet, each according to his own lights. In Tashkent, the Tatars honored him: they carried out a memorial rite in the Muslim tradition for him. In Jerusalem, Marlen and his friends commissioned a Kaddish, and ten Jews read aloud the ancient, mysterious words in Hebrew to honor his memory. In Moscow, Tamara, Olga’s girlfriend, arranged a funeral mass in Preobrazhensky Cathedral, where a freethinking priest was willing to perform a requiem for a suicide.

The face of the deceased was covered. There were many people, and everyone wept. Victor Yulievich, the former teacher, stood with lowered head, tears streaming down his unshaven, unkempt countenance.

“Poor boy! Poor Mikha! I am to blame here, too.”

Mishka Kolesnik, the childhood friend of the defrocked teacher, accompanied him. He stood next to him: “Three arms, three legs,” as they had called themselves so long ago.

* * *

Sanya wept—his tears were never far from the surface. Ilya had his camera, and photographed the memorial. Everyone ended up in the frame: even Safyanov, with the purple growth on his cheek. He had miscalculated, and it had been his downfall. Oh, what a downfall!

Alyona didn’t attend the funeral. Her parents decided that it would be better not to inform her of her husband’s death when she was in such a frail psychological state. Later they would tell her.