The Big Green Tent

ENDE GUT—

At the beginning of the 1960s, a new breed of foreigner, madly in love with Russia, appeared in our midst. There weren’t hundreds of them—but they certainly numbered in the dozens. They were well known in Moscow and Leningrad.

The first to come on the scene were the Italian Communists, followed by all manner of Swedes and Americans. They swallowed the hook with the live bait of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Malevich and Khlebnikov—depending on their professional interests. All of them were lured by the enigmatic Slavic soul—tender and courageous, irrational and passionate, with a tinge of madness and sacrificial cruelty.

Shaking the bourgeois dust off their impeccable Italian footwear, they fell in love with Russian beauties untainted by the curse of feminism, and married them. Overcoming numerous hurdles, they took them away to Rome and to Stockholm, to Paris and to Brussels; then they returned again to Sivtsev Vrazhek and Polyanka, or else to Konkovo-Derevlevo. These foreigners found Russian friends, grew close to their parents and children, brought them books, medicine, pacifiers, furs, cigarettes … In exchange, they received gifts: limited-edition books, with reproductions of Andrei Rublev’s icons or the frescoes of Dionysius; black caviar; and rapturous, but not entirely selfless, love.

Since the festival of 1956, Pierre Zand had been sending, either by mail or through another person, all kinds of things: jeans, lace, record albums … The records were for Sanya, the Brussels-lace collars for Anna Alexandrovna, and the jeans were for all three friends. In this way he realized vicariously his love for the homeland his ancestors had left long ago.

Pierre occupied a special place among the foreigners who loved Russia: he was Russian, though his roots went back to the Baltic Germans, and his longing for Russia was existential and incurable in nature.

What vexed Pierre the most was that his rare and complex sensibility had long ago been pinned down and preserved for all time by the writer Sirin, thirty years before. As proof of this, he sent his friends books by this author, unknown in Russia, who by this time had replaced his pseudonym with his actual surname: Nabokov.

Like a character in a Sirin novel, Pierre’s “feat” was to send the books of a small Brussels publishing house to Russia. They were, for the most part, religious books. This was his form of social activism, akin to Komsomol work. In 1963 Pierre spent five months in Moscow, at Moscow State University, studying Russian as a foreign language. He lived in a dormitory on Volgin Street, rambled around Moscow, explored the dark underside of the city with Ilya, attended remarkable concerts with his friend Sanya, and, once, even visited the deaf-mute boarding school with Mikha. He was researching his beloved Russia.

Five months later someone denounced Pierre—perhaps on account of the books he received through the diplomatic mail pouch for his Moscow friends—and he was deported from the country as a spy. They were very strict about these things at his Institute for Russian as a Foreign Language.

There was a scandal: an article appeared in a major newspaper alleging his involvement in subversive activities and spreading anti-Soviet literature, as well as spying. It was clear that besides the denunciation, they had no evidence against him—only overblown suspicions.

* * *

During these five months, Pierre managed to fall in love with a pretty girl named Alla, with light northern eyes and straw-colored hair. But they were not destined to be united, about which Alla grieved until her dotage. She had done a foolish thing. If she hadn’t written the denunciation, perhaps she could have gotten him to marry her. They had pressured her, though, threatening to kick her out of the dormitory, to expose her as a prostitute, and to make her life generally miserable. The girl, who was not in the habit of trusting the Soviet authorities, believed them on this count.

* * *

Ultimately, being deported was far better than the Nabokovian prospect: “… and presently I’m led to a ravine, / to a ravine led to be killed.”

* * *

After departing from his beloved spiritual homeland within the three days allotted, Pierre spent the rest of his life yearning desperately to go back to Russia, as so many thousands yearned desperately to leave it. Some they wouldn’t allow in, some they wouldn’t allow out.

* * *

Life, however, led Pierre in the opposite geographical direction. He became a Slavist, and was invited to teach in a California university. Though his ties with his Moscow friends remained strong, communication became more sporadic. Still, this did not prevent him from receiving, in 1970, a book from Russia, soon after it had been published in samizdat. It was the strange novella Moscow—Petushki, by an unknown writer named Venedikt Erofeev.

* * *

Ilya had done his utmost. He had even written an accompanying letter, in which he explained to Pierre that the novel was the best thing that had come out of post-Revolutionary Russia. Pierre ardently agreed with his friend, and began translating it. Within three months, he realized that he couldn’t manage. The task was too daunting, the text too unwieldy. The deeper he delved into the book, the more layers he uncovered.

Enormous cultural depths rested on the device linking the novel to the tradition of Sentimentalism. These were the notes of a Russian traveler. From his roots in Radishchev and Griboyedov, however, the newfangled author had strayed very far afield—lurching off in the direction of Dostoevsky and Blok, or into the deep recesses of folk idiom, crude and incorruptible. The text was full of citations: spurious and authentic, twisted, ridiculed. The book contained parody and mystification, true suffering, and genuine talent.

Pierre wrote a long article about it and sent it to a scholarly journal, where it was rejected. No one knew the author, and the editors considered the article to be too daring.

* * *

Pierre was deeply offended by this, and got very drunk, after which he started calling his Russian friends. He couldn’t get hold of Ilya and Mikha. Sanya was home, however. Sanya told Pierre about the tragedy: Mikha was dead. He added a few incoherent phrases—along the lines of life having no meaning, what did it matter when the best people, and one’s dearest, die anyway, or leave you. And even meaning has no meaning.

Pierre sobered up and said that he would think of a way out for Sanya. They had already talked through his two-week paycheck. He said that he needed to go back and drink what was left in the bottle. And that Sanya should be expecting a call from his friend Evgeny.

Sanya immediately forgot about this conversation, as though he were the one who was drunk, and not Pierre. He had been gripped by despair, like a fever. He could do nothing but lie there on Nuta’s divan, his unseeing, vacant gaze fixed on the tapestry fabric of a tattered pillow, and a few visual outliers of the dense weave of varicolored threads—light blue, pale yellow, lilac—which vibrated in front of the woven image of a flower basket and the bouquet crimped with serpentine ribbon.

* * *

When had he left home the last time? For Nuta’s funeral? To go to the forty-day memorial service at the church? Yes, Mikha was at the church, too; he stood next to him, and Mikha was crying. Sanya was no longer able to cry. The very capacity of emotional response was already exhausted in him, and he had no feelings except a sense of terrible alienation from everything around him. Yes, first it was Nuta, and then Mikha. The only one left was Mama, whom he kept having to recognize anew, she was so changed. Rather, he guessed it was her. Every day before she went to work, Nadezhda Borisovna, her hair now dyed brunette, would tiptoe up to the sleeping Sanya and, tenderly, warily, leave him some tea with bread and cheese. In the evening she brought him a bowl of soup.

Sometimes Sanya ate his food without even noticing it. A gulp of liquid, a swallow of some chewed-up substance. That was all. He wanted strong, sweet tea with lemon. The kind his grandmother had brought him when he was ill.

Now it seemed that Nuta had died a beautiful death, and the memory of her was beautiful as well. Mikha’s death had been horrific, lawless. Sanya was on his way home from the Kirovskaya metro station, and was passing Mikha’s house. He turned toward the building as though he were going to stop in, out of habit, as he used to do during Mikha’s absence. Sanya was the first of the family and friends to see Mikha there on the ground. He was lying on the stone border of a flower bed that had long since disappeared, his head smashed.

He was wearing an old plaid shirt that Nuta had bought him. Sanya had one just like it … For some reason he was wearing no shoes, only socks. A small crowd was already gathering around the body. They needed to hurry and remove it.

They covered the body with a sheet that had been snatched off a clothesline. It had a large patch in the middle.

He already knew that Alyona and Maya had gone to the Ryazan countryside. Mikha had told him, not even trying to hide his grief and confusion. Now he would have to find Alyona. How would he tell her?

Right after Mikha’s funeral, Sanya took to his bed. He would sleep, then wake up, hear Lastochkin’s muttering and his belching, or the nauseating grumble of the television—when Nuta was alive they had never had a television! At six in the morning, the anthem assaulted his ears, then there was a surge of coffee-making smells and activity—Mama prepared it in the room, over a spirit lamp, as Nuta had always done. Then everything would go quiet again. Sanya dozed off, woke up, got out of bed when nature called him to the WC, and went to lie down again. Nadezhda Borisovna grew alarmed and tried to ask him questions, which made no sense to him; and again he turned his face toward the wall.

People from the Conservatory stopped in to see him. And someone else—Ilya? Vasily Innokentievich? Then Kolosov came. He sat down in Nuta’s chair. His visit signaled a truce after several conflicts. Sanya had gradually lost the support of his teacher, and had felt more and more distant from him. Now, rather than feeling glad about the visit, he felt indifferent.

It was difficult for Sanya to hold up his end of the conversation.

On the table, Kolosov placed a box of candies that he’d bought at the confectioner’s store opposite the Conservatory, as well as an old book, a splendid German edition. As he was leaving, he said that he had arranged for him to take a month’s leave. If he was sick, there was nothing like a little WTC for cleansing the soul and body, and for healing all one’s ills.

“I brought you a very rare thing. You’ll appreciate it.”

And Sanya did appreciate it. He reached for the volume two days later and discovered it was

The Well-Tempered Clavier,

or

preludes and fugues in all tones and semitones,

in the major as well as the minor modes,

for the benefit and use

of musical youth desirous of knowledge,

as well as those who are already advanced in this study.

For their especial diversion, composed and prepared by

Johann Sebastian Bach,

currently ducal chapelmaster in Anhalt Cöthen

and director of chamber music,

in the year 1722.

Nuta hadn’t forced him to learn German for nothing. He was even able to read the ancient title.

Sanya grew more animated when he opened the volume. It was a marvel—the Urtext, the author’s original. The fourteenth volume of the first complete works of Bach, published at the end of the nineteenth century. All the publications that he had seen up till then had been redacted and edited. They had inserted accents, tempos, even fingerings. Now he was seeing the “bare” text, and this made an astounding impression on him, as though he had suddenly found himself face-to-face with the genius who composed it. Without intermediaries. Like all theoreticians, he had studied The Well-Tempered Clavier, marveling at the transparent simplicity of its construction, in ascending keys from C major, to C minor, to C-sharp major. The third prelude, Sanya recalled, was first written in C major. Then Bach corrected it—he added seven sharps, and it was finished. And so on, with all twenty-four keys. Simplicity itself! A children’s exercise. He had written it for his adolescent son, and said: I trained him in the musical alphabet. No author’s notations, no directions—play it as you wish, musician! Utter freedom …

Modern notation, rectified and regularized by editors, undermined this freedom.

Sanya’s curiosity burned: he knew a number of renditions of The Well-Tempered Clavier, and now he couldn’t wait to listen to them and compare. They had records at home—a wonderful recording by Samuil Feinberg, bought by Nuta ages ago, with all forty-eight preludes and fugues. They also had a recording by Richter, which was marvelous, but the recording was badly scratched and it skipped a lot.

Sanya found the Feinberg and put it on. Kolosov was right—they were purifying, cleansing sounds. He let his entire being pour through the music, or the music pour through him.

For a whole week he either listened, or studied the notes. Feinberg was absolutely magical. Opinions about him differed. Some people extolled Glenn Gould for his Preludes and Fugues; but for others, Richter was king. In Feinberg there was such sorrow, delicacy, and refinement. One sensed that life had already passed, and the only thing that remained were these modulations, the breaths of air under a butterfly’s wings; not the flesh, but the soul of music.

He wasn’t a magnificent man, but an ordinary one with a goatee, who, until recently, had still walked the Conservatory corridors, where people never whispered in his wake: Look, there goes Samuil Feinberg.

Neihaus and Richter were quite another thing. Throughout their lives, wherever they went, people would whisper: Look, there goes …

And Sanya listened to Bach over and over again, until, by the end of the second week, he was completely healed.

On the final prelude and fugue in B minor, Bach had written the words: Ende gut, alles gut.

“Good,” Sanya said. He trusted Bach.

He scrubbed the bathtub, filled it with water, as hot as he could tolerate, and soaked himself for a long time. He trimmed his nails, shaved his stubble (which already qualified as a beard), then put on a new shirt. He had no idea where he was planning to go. He looked at himself in Nuta’s mirror. He had become thinner. He had an interesting pallor, and two nicks on his chin. The telephone rang.

“I’m Evgeny, Pierre’s friend. Finally, I’ve managed to reach you! I want to see you. At the usual spot.”

Sanya had almost forgotten about the usual spot, where Pierre sent all his couriers—with books, jeans, records …

* * *

They met next to the beer garden in Gorky Park. Evgeny turned out to be Eugene, an accredited correspondent for an American newspaper in Moscow. Prompted by Pierre, he offered to arrange a fictitious marriage for Sanya. Sanya, who had barely recovered from his depression, was unenthusiastic: Was that even possible? Eugene assured him that they would have to try, and that Pierre was already sifting through the candidates.

“A blonde or a brunette?” And Sanya laughed for the first time since Mikha’s death.

* * *

The January frosts, which are supposed to arrive either at Christmas or at Epiphany, took hold in the interim, between the two holidays. Eugene Michaels and Sanya Steklov arrived by different routes at the airport: Eugene took the metro to Rechnoi Station, and from there took a taxi. Sanya came on the shuttle van. There weren’t many people there to meet the flight from New York, and Sanya and Eugene pretended not to notice each other.

The plane was an hour late. Finally, they announced that it had landed. The people waiting to meet it surged up to the sacred space where the official state border was about to open up and let through a narrow stream of foreign citizens and a few Russian passengers, diplomats and their KGB brothers-in-arms.

The waiting people had gotten into position too soon—it would be another hour before the arriving passengers had gone through customs and picked up their luggage.

The Soviets differed from the Americans primarily in the amount of luggage they carried and the terrified expressions on their faces. The Americans could be distinguished from the Soviets by their height, their air of inquisitive naïveté, and their clothing. If you looked closely, however, the clothes of the Americans and those of the Soviet officials and their wives were the same: tweed overcoats on the men who occupied higher positions, and hooded anoraks or duffel coats on those of a more modest position. All of them wore muted, dark winter tones; but on the Soviets, the clothes wore a different facial expression.

Among this group, sedate and exhausted after the flight, there was one bright spot: a red gnome hat that stuck out above the crowd, boldly and provocatively. Under the pointed cap were lavishly painted eyes, red cheeks, and a mouth covered in a horrendous shade of lipstick. A typical matryoshka nesting doll—but one of foreign make. A detail for the initiated—she wore a luxurious mink fur and hiking boots. In her hands, along with a woman’s makeup case, she carried a giant plastic sunflower. This was the signal.

A light-haired young man in a black jacket separated himself from the waiting group. A hat with earflaps was sticking out of his pocket. He moved in the direction of the sunflower, just as sunflowers follow the direction of the sun. He stopped in front of the woman in the red gnome cap and reached out for the sunflower …

“Debbie! You are … I’m glad…”

Debbie, his fiancée, was no beauty, but she had a radiant smile.

“Sah-nee-a! Ya tebya lublyu!”

Pierre had managed to find an ideal bride for Sanya. She was a journalist, a feminist, and a hell-raising activist from the American delegation for the International Women’s League. A year before, she had been in Moscow for a women’s seminar organized by the Committee of Soviet Women. Where she and Sanya had met and started a romance! A watertight legend!

They embraced. From one side, the click of a camera shutter sounded—a photographer from a progressive American newspaper was documenting the meeting of Debbie O’Hara, an activist in the American women’s movement, and a young music historian. With her pudgy hands, Debbie grabbed Sanya by the cheeks and kissed him right on the mouth. The soapy taste of lipstick. Sanya put his arm around her weakly. She was half a head taller and seventy pounds heavier than he was.

Another smacking kiss. Another click of the camera. One more kiss, one more click, and Eugene Michaels left: he had accomplished his mission. Two gray suits, who blended into the crowd, crossed from two corners of the hall. They came together in the middle, by the exit, like somnambulists, whispered something to each other, and parted again.

Chirping:

“Your English is wonderful!”

“Yours is too!”

“You’re so cute!”

“And you’re my life’s dream!”

The bride and groom giggled. Sanya was covered in red lipstick. Debbie gently rubbed off the spots of faux blood with a soft handkerchief.

Sanya tried to grab the suitcase, but she pushed him away, protecting it.

“You’re a savage, Sah-nee-a! I’m a feminist! I won’t allow you to open doors for me, or to carry my suitcase. I’m an independent woman!”

Sanya looked at her, somewhat abashed.

“Well, I just thought it was heavy…”

She had already thrown the bristly dark brown fur over her left arm. She bent her right arm at the elbow, saying:

“Look at my muscles! I lift weights!”

Sanya probed her bare arm.

“Debbie, you’re simply the dream of my life! When I get tired, you can bring me up in your arms!”

Marvelous, fluent English.

“Oh! You made a mistake! To ‘bring up’ is what a mother does. You know, nursing your young, and all that. ‘Carry me’ is what children say!”

Putting down her suitcase, she placed both palms on her heavy breasts to illustrate her point.

Sanya was somewhat alarmed.

Sanya took his bride to the Berlin Hotel. Before Debbie went to sleep—for about twelve hours straight, a logical consequence of jet lag, her revels with friends in New York on the eve of her departure, and a healthy nervous system—they drank vodka downstairs in the bar. They chatted. Then they kissed, and parted until the following morning.

The next day, Sanya had planned to show his bride Moscow, and to take her to the Conservatory in the evening. He hadn’t prepared any other surprises for her. There was just one thing on the agenda: submitting papers for registering their marriage at the Palace of Matrimony, the only place that accepted documents from foreign citizens.

Their morning stroll through Moscow began after lunch. Sanya had put together the itinerary. Debbie had seen the Kremlin the last time she was there, and now she wanted to see what she called “real life.”

When they left the hotel, the weather was magical: frost and sunshine, a marvelous day, a remarkably blue sky and snow. In the bracing cold and frigid sunshine, the Irish girl from Texas experienced such a corporeal joy and exhilaration that Sanya, who didn’t like winter, looked around and was forced to agree: it was great!

Still, winter induced no ecstasy in Sanya, and, unconsciously wishing to deflate his bride’s euphoria, took her to the most terrible place of all—to Dzerzhinsky Square, where the bloody knight of the Revolution stood in the middle like a column.

He pointed to the building at his back.

“That’s the Lubyanka. Our own Judgment Day.”

“I know, 1937!”

He took Debbie’s hand.

“Why 1937? That monster is still alive today. And now that I’ve managed to spoil your good mood, let’s walk around some more.”

He spoke his textbook English well, and his keen ear immediately picked up on her slightly lisping Texas drawl.

They went to Pushkin Square, stopping at the very beginning of Tverskoy Boulevard. How often the LORLs’ excursions had begun here in years gone by! Victor Yulievich would arrange for them to meet at the Pushkin monument, and from there they would take excursions into the past: Ilya with his camera, Mikha with a notebook, and ten other inquisitive lads …

Debbie turned out to be an absolute novice, a clean slate, when it came to Russian culture—so much so that it was difficult to know where to begin.

“Have you read Tolstoy?” Sanya asked.

“Oh, yes! I saw the movie War and Peace. Two movies! I adore them! Audrey Hepburn, she’s just gorgeous! And your Pierre Bezukhov, Bondarchuk, of course. He got an Oscar! I wrote a review!”

“That’s a start. I’ll show you the house where the family of Count Rostov lived,” Sanya said with a sigh.

What a simpleton she is! he thought, and took her to look at the famous mansion.

For four days the bright cold weather held, and for four days they wandered through the city. The bride, despite her naïve simplicity, turned out to be quite capable of sensitivity and sympathy. She was, in fact, a wonderful traveling companion, animated and curious. Her astonishing ignorance about everything concerning Russian culture gave way to a passionate interest in it, which took hold on the empty spot. This interest extended to Sanya.

During the sunny days, they walked through the icy streets, and in the dim, poorly lighted evenings they shivered and stopped into cafés, which were hard to find back then, for a warm-up and a snack. For Debbie, this was the most romantic trip of her life. With the exception of Spain—ten years before, she had spent a month there, and a handsome Spaniard had turned up, shown her Madrid and Barcelona, and then run off with all her money. There hadn’t been much of that anyway …

After visiting the museum in Khamovniki, where Debbie was so moved she nearly cried (“Sah-nee-a! Your Lev Tolstoy is every bit as great as Voltaire!”), freezing, they had taken shelter in the entryway of an old building. On a third-floor windowsill, they sat down to warm themselves over the radiator. Sanya took a flask out of his pocket—Ilya’s example!—and both of them took a gulp right from the bottle.

Debbie chattered almost nonstop. But now she was very quiet, and when they were by the hotel, saying good-bye, she said:

“Sah-nee-a! I can’t understand how I have lived without all of this! When I get home I’m going to learn Russian!”

“Debbie, why would you need to do that?”

Debbie blazed up. Her temper was not merely Irish (though that would have been enough), but downright Italian.

“Ya lublyu! Ya lublyu the Russian language! You are, of course, very cultured, and I understand! But I am perfectly capable of learning myself! I learn fast! I learned Spanish! I learned Portuguese! I will learn Russian! You’ll see!”

Sanya got nervous, and adroitly changed the subject.

“Debbie, do you know who Isadora Duncan was?”

“Of course! Of course I do! I’m a feminist! I know all the extraordinary women! ‘The Dance of the Future’! A new style of dance, barefooted and wearing tunics! And her lovers were Gordon Craig and a Russian poet, I forget his name.”

“Look, Debbie, they stayed in this hotel in 1922. This is where her love affair with Sergei Esenin began!”

Debbie lifted her hands to the sky in a gesture of prayer.

“My God! It’s unbelievable! And I’m staying here, too! And I’m not even having a love affair!” She laughed. “No, I’m having a love affair with Russia!”

The following day, accompanied by Olga and Ilya, for moral support, they went to the Palace of Matrimony on Griboyedov Street, the only place where male foreigners could solemnize their marriage to a Russian woman. This was a rare instance in which a Russian man was marrying an American woman. Debbie’s American documents were so well prepared that she even had a few papers too many. Sanya didn’t have his birth certificate with him, so he had to take a taxi and go home to find it, not very confident of success. But Anna Alexandrovna didn’t let him down now, either. On the shelf with his favorite books, between the French novels, in a folder that was very familiar to him, Sanya found all his documents, arranged in perfect order, beginning with his birth certificate and ending with his Conservatory diploma and certificates of vaccination.

The documents were accepted. The wedding date was set for May.

“Our Fanya always said that you shouldn’t marry in May, or you’ll rue it the rest of your life,” Olga said.

Ilya and Olga fully backed this marriage venture. Olga was eagerly taking part in establishing the matrimonial union: she made borscht and cooked dumplings.

Debbie was over the moon about Moscow, and about borscht, and the Russian people she met. She loved everything about the Soviet country except the position of women. She came to her conclusions after observing how Olga prepared dinner, washed the dishes, and took care of their adolescent son, and Ilya didn’t lift a finger to help her. When she tried to express her indignation about this, Olga simply didn’t understand.

On her last day in Moscow, Debbie ended up at Sanya’s apartment. The visit was unplanned. They had been walking around Kitai-gorod, and she desperately needed to use the bathroom. The closest one, it turned out, was at Sanya’s. Neither his mother nor his stepfather were home. Debbie threw her mink coat on Nuta’s chair, and proceeded to walk through the communal apartment to the communal WC. After her rest stop, she glanced into the communal kitchen.

The Texas native experienced another shock. She had not been sympathetic to communism before now, and a single WC and kitchen for twenty-eight people did not increase her regard for the social system. The next shock came when she sat down in Anna Alexandrovna’s armchair and looked around: an old piano, a voluptuous dressing table on claw feet, painted with flowers and birds, bookshelves containing books in three languages, sheet music, paintings, a valuable chandelier gleaming with crystal … She found it hard to reconcile the poverty of the shabby communal apartment with the splendor of Sanya’s room.

“Try to warm up. Do you want some tea? I’ll put on some music.”

“Why don’t you play something yourself?”

She took the gnome’s cap off her head, and her red Irish hair crackled with dry static.

Sanya sat down on the round piano stool. He thought a bit, and began to play Prelude no. 1 in C Major.

Debbie sat listening, her hands folded over her stomach like a peasant, and analyzed the situation that had unfolded. She was not as stupid as Sanya thought she was. She liked this Russian boy—he was over thirty, and three years younger than she was—very much.

He was younger, better educated, and, besides, he clearly came from a higher class of people than she had ever had anything to do with.

By the time Sanya had finished playing, Debbie had made a decision: since this strange and absurd proposition had already come about somehow or other, let it not be merely for show. She would marry this boy for real.

Sanya had not suspected that things might take such a dangerous turn.

* * *

The weather broke on the last evening, as though Moscow had grown sick of trying to make a good impression on Debbie. A damp wind began to blow, it grew warmer, and icy snow started to fall. Sanya wanted to take Debbie to a Richter concert, but it was canceled. They went to Olga and Ilya’s on foot.

Olga fed her friends what she called a “prenuptial dinner.” By that time, Sanya had grown weary of the endless walks with his bride, and even the idea of the marriage had begun to pall. It hadn’t even been his idea in the first place!

Olga served salads and pies. Ilya brought the vodka out of the cupboard built into the kitchen window—the original refrigerator from the time of the building’s construction, before the advent of modern fridges.

Debbie ate a lot, and drank a lot as well. She sat next to Sanya and kept trying to tickle him and paw at him; but she did this as though in jest, as if it were all a game. She pushed her smiling face into his, and he noticed, all of a sudden, the glistening pink strip of her gums above her upper row of teeth. It prompted a sharp adolescent memory—Nadia’s gums! Potapovsky Lane!

“Sah-nee-a! Why do you resist? If you are so cold toward me, I won’t marry you! But if you are a good boy, I’ll just put you in my bra and smuggle you out as contraband!”

“Debbie, that wasn’t our agreement! When we get married I’ll be an ideal husband—you won’t even see me at all!”

“No, no, I’ve reconsidered! I think you might suit me both in the kitchen and in the bedroom.”

* * *

The next day, Sanya took her by taxi to Sheremetevo Airport. They kissed when they said good-bye. Before she disappeared down the passageway, she waved her hand, clutching the red gnome cap, at him. Sanya went back home by bus. Outside, a snowstorm raged, and snowy porridge stuck to the bus’s windows.

* * *

I won’t go home. I don’t want to go to Ilya’s. I’ll go see Mikha, Sanya thought.

And then it hit him again. Mikha was gone. Anna Alexandrovna was gone. His mother was all but gone, too.

What is left is the unhappy Alyona, and Maya, and my mother, who is nothing like me; and the horrible Lastochkin. And a bit of music, that absurd circumstances deprived me of. So Pierre must be right, and his only choice was to flee all of this. Or should he lie down and stare at the tapestry pillow again? Or, like Mikha?

He shuddered. Depression was stalking him.

* * *

Debbie arrived in Palo Alto without warning.

The California winter did not resemble the Russian winter in the least: 59 degrees Fahrenheit. While she was trudging up to the third floor, dragging her mink coat behind her, she tried to remember the formula for converting Fahrenheit to Celsius. She remembered precisely that in Moscow it had been minus 25 degrees Celsius.

She pushed on the door to the apartment. It was open. She called out from the doorway.

“Pierre! Russian minus twenty-five Celsius—how much in American degrees?”

Pierre knew the formula.

“Well, about minus thirteen.”

From the doorway Debbie flung her fur onto a chair, and it slithered onto the floor.

“Are you crazy? You should have called, I just got home! I might not even have been here,” Pierre said angrily.

“I just flew in myself! I don’t need your old fur coat! It’s totally useless in our climate, anyway! It’s insulting, actually!”

“Wait a minute! Have you changed your mind? What’s insulting? We agreed about all of this!”

On a small table stood a bottle of whiskey, already opened. Debbie rushed over to it. Pierre grabbed the bottle from her hand, and poured a third of a glass.

Debbie tossed off all of it, then slammed the wet glass down on the glass table with a dangerous, earsplitting crash.

“After all, he could marry me for real, couldn’t he? Why not? Why doesn’t he want to marry me?”

“Hold on, hold on. We had a formal agreement—the mink coat as an advance, and the money after the marriage takes place. What is the problem?”

Debbie quickly took another tack, and started crying.

“There’s no problem. Just explain to me why I’m not good enough! He’s the one who’s not good enough for me: he’s little, and he probably doesn’t have a penis at all! And he’s useless—and he has some weird profession!”

“Debbie, what does his penis have to do with anything? Or his profession? We had an agreement…”

“To hell with the agreement!” Debbie burst out. “What’s wrong with me, Pierre? Why doesn’t anyone want to marry me? Even your little Sanya? I am an independent, self-respecting woman! I don’t give a damn about men! But why don’t they want to marry me? Maybe I don’t even need to get married! But why? I just want to know. Why?”

Pierre realized the whole endeavor might be in jeopardy. He picked up the fur from the floor and threw it on the couch. He poured two more glasses of whiskey. He sat down next to the large woman and placed a glass in her hands.

“Debbie, I can’t answer for all men. You know yourself that you’re an extraordinary woman. But everybody’s different. I can tell you something about Sanya. Sanya is depressed. I told you he was an extremely talented person. He’s special. Have you ever lost anyone who was close to you? In the same month, he lost his grandmother, who raised him, and his best friend, who committed suicide. He himself is … on the edge. He’s just not up to marriage. And the problem is not with you. He has to save his own life.”

“Yes, but he could marry me, and I would save his life. Why doesn’t he want to marry me for real? Not a fictitious marriage, but a real one?”

* * *

Now there was just one last chance.

* * *

“Debbie! Did it never occur to you … Ilya always had a lot of women. Mikha, his dead friend, was deeply in love with his wife. He never had any other women. But I’ve never seen Sanya with a woman at all.”

Debbie’s eyes grew wide with sympathy.

“Oh, do you think he might be gay?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t say that. I just said that I’ve never once seen him with a girl or a woman.”

Debbie made a new decision: “That changes the picture. Then it doesn’t hurt me. If he’s not gay, then he’s just afraid of women. And maybe he’s a virgin?”

“I wouldn’t rule it out. But that doesn’t affect our agreement.”

Debbie calmed down and began to think about the future. She had an intriguing task before her.

* * *

“Well, tell me, how was your trip? How’s Eugene?”

Debbie pulled a packet of photographs out of her purse.

“Here you go! Photographs! Eugene took them. They’re funny. Pierre, the city is amazing! And the people are amazing! I was only there for four days, but it felt like I was there for a whole month. So much happened, and I saw so many new things! Oh, and did I say that the wedding is in four months? So long to wait! You have to wait in line to get married! And then we’ll have to file Sanya’s application with the U.S. Embassy. For a visa. And he’ll have to wait for that, too; they explained it all to me.”

Debbie was a little tipsy.

“Listen, Pierre, I want to learn to speak Russian. Will you give me lessons?”

“Why do you want to do that? It will be expensive. You’ll have to spend a lot of money on gas, driving back and forth. It’s an hour and a half one way. I’ll find you a teacher in San Francisco.”

“I need a good one!” Debbie pouted.

“Fine, I’ll get you a good one.”

Pierre realized that his male honor would not be lost if Debbie would get good and drunk, and she was halfway there already.

He poured her another glass.

“I want Sah-nee-a! If I can marry him for real, I won’t take the money from you.”

“But we made a deal about a fictitious marriage!” Pierre was doing his best to protect Sanya’s liberty.

“What do I need the money for, anyway? I have money! I want little Sah-nee-a as my husband!” Debbie wailed, and burst out in hysterical weeping.

Looks like there’s only one way out, Pierre thought, and put his arm around her. Instantly she went quiet, and became pliant and limp.

Pierre didn’t approve of adultery. He had sown his wild oats before he married, and he took his family commitments very seriously. But his wife and his daughter had been staying with his in-laws in Milan for the last three weeks. Moreover, he attributed his fall solely to his devotion to his Russian friend and the furthering of his friend’s interests. Still, the lack of spontaneity of the situation did not detract from its pleasantness.

“If you marry Sanya for real, you’ll owe me for both the plane tickets and the hotel!”

“No way! Whatever you spent is already gone. I’ll pay you for the Russian lessons.” She placed her hands, holding them both in an obscene gesture, over her ample breasts. This was something she’d picked up in Russia.

“All right, if everything works out and we manage to get Sanya out of there, the tickets and the hotel are on me.”

They continued kissing gently, rounding out the session.

And now I have the added stimulus of trying to draw him out of his shell, Debbie thought with satisfaction.

* * *

The wedding took place in May, as indicated on their application. It was a rainy day, which promised to bring the young couple wealth, according to folk superstition.

Debbie O’Hara was wearing a big white dress. Her hands held a round wedding bouquet of plastic flowers, which she had brought with her from America. She wore white high heels. Sanya wore a black corduroy jacket with a zipper and old blue jeans.

Eugene, wearing a tweed jacket and a tie, looked much more like a groom than Sanya did. Olga, Ilya, and Tamara were all there, dressed in their best attire.

The bride and groom stood side by side, and Eugene took a photograph. Ilya photographed them from the other side.

They entered a hall, the matrimonial holding cell. Several couples were already sitting there: two Africans with blondes, one Arab with a girl with oriental facial features, and several indeterminate Eastern European couples: Czechs or Poles. There was a line.

* * *

They sat without speaking. Sanya studied the faces of the couples about to be married. The Africans were most likely from the Patrice Lumumba Institute. One of them, a handsome, dark-lilac-hued fellow, pulled out a deck of cards and asked his bride whether she wanted to play. She declined. He began laying out a game of solitaire. A second young man, small and homely, was holding his bride’s hand, admiring the paleness of her skin. He ran his finger across her wrist. The Arab man was older. His profession was unclear, but gold dripped from all his fingers. His bride was also covered in gold, and it was obvious that they were eager for the ceremony to be over. He put his hand now on her waist, now around her shoulders. She luxuriated in it. One Czech (or Pole) was reading a newspaper.

It’s in Czech, Sanya observed.

* * *

Debbie was visibly nervous. Sanya amused her with conversation. Finally, they were summoned into a long room. A red carpet runner led up the aisle to a table, behind which was sitting a stately woman who looked like the actress Alla Larionova, with a thick red sash over her shoulder—a smaller version of the red runner. The witnesses—Olga, Ilya, and Tamara, and Eugene, with his camera, were admitted through another door. Along the way they got rid of the local photographer. They also got rid of the Mendelssohn.

Then the rigamarole begins. The woman in the sash stands up. She announces:

“Citizen of the United States of America, Deborah O’Hara, and Citizen of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Alexander Steklov, have applied to be married in accordance with the laws of our country…”

Debbie wants the wedding. Sanya wants to disappear. Debbie wants a honeymoon. Sanya wants to bury his head in the ground. Debbie wants a wedding night. Sanya wants to fall off the face of the earth.

Olga throws together a wedding party at her place.

Over the past six months, Debbie has learned to speak some Russian. She talks incessantly. Sanya remains silent, in both Russian and English. Toward evening his temperature shoots up, and a headache takes hold.

Ilya takes him to Chernyshevsky Street. Nadezhda Borisovna does everything that Anna Alexandrovna used to do: she presses a hot towel to Sanya’s head, gives him sweet tea with lemon, and two Citramon tablets. As always, in such cases, his temperature is near 104 degrees. Nadezhda Borisovna continues to do everything that Anna Alexandrovna did in this situation. She covers his shoulders and chest with vodka, then rubs it in with a woolen rag. No, Anna Alexandrovna did everything much better.

Sanya is sick for the usual three days. Debbie spends these three days in Olga’s apartment: the first day she sobs; the second she chats animatedly with Olga. And, on the third day, Ilya takes her to Sheremetevo Airport. Sanya languishes on Nuta’s divan with his high temperature.

The farce called a “wedding” is over. The only thing that remains to be done is submit the application for a visa to the American consulate. And then wait, wait, and wait some more.

Eight months later, Alexander Steklov landed in New York. Pierre Zand met him at Kennedy Airport.

By this time, Debbie spoke Russian very well. She met Sanya a year and a half later at the lawyer’s, after she had found a real fiancé for herself (also Russian, by the way), and she needed a real divorce to make him her real husband.

Debbie refused the five thousand dollars that she was supposed to receive for the fictitious marriage. She also refused to keep the fur. In the end, she got the fur anyway. Pierre kept the coat in cold storage in Palo Alto for a few years, and gave it to Debbie for her second, real wedding. By this time she had moved to New York, where winters are sometimes cold enough to wear a fur coat.

Sanya lives in New York, too. He teaches the theory of music at a world-famous music school.

Ende gut, alles gut.