The Prince of the Soviets

20. CHIMERAS

Klim was invited to a banquet in honor of visiting businessmen from the USA and Germany.

“Actually, these gentlemen are here courtesy of the OGPU,” explained the all-knowing Seibert. “These days, the OGPU is as much a resource procurement company as it is a police organization. The Soviet authorities are having forests cut down in the north, and they want to dispose of the timber somehow. So, the OGPU have called on Oscar Reich to act as an intermediary between them and the foreigners. Reich sorted it all out: the Germans buy timber for railroad sleepers while the Americans provide credit and underwrite the deal.”

At the mention of Oscar Reich’s name, Klim resolved not to attend the banquet, but then Seibert said something that made Klim reconsider.

“Mr. Reich is a very clever man. He knows there’s no point in talking to the big bosses in the West. Every last one of them is opposed to the USSR. If you want to strike a deal, you need to talk to the seconds-in-command: not the proprietors but the hired managers. Oscar buys these managers off in the old-fashioned way—with jewels and precious metals. You can’t slip a bribe to a prominent figure, but if you present him with a fifteenth-century royal goblet, he’s unlikely to turn it down. People tend to lose their heads at the sight of real gold rather than figures on paper.”

“Where does Oscar get all this gold?” Klim asked.

“From Russian museums and monasteries,” said Seibert. “And it’s not just gold. He makes gifts of paintings by old masters and ancient sculptures too. All the stuff is sent over to New York and Berlin, and in return, the managers, directors, and board members forget their anti-communist principles for a while. As a plan, it’s hard to fault. They get a profitable deal, and their shareholders are happy. What else could you ask for?”

It might be worth going to the banquet after all, thought Klim, just to have a look at this talented Mr. Reich, a man capable of breaking down trade barriers and plundering museum exhibits on an industrial scale.

At around nine o’clock, automobiles adorned with the flags of various foreign nations began to converge on Spiridonov Street. Guests mounted the porch in pairs: the men in dinner jackets and top hats and the women in evening dresses. It was difficult to believe all this was taking place in the heart of Red Moscow.

The mansion, previously owned by a wealthy merchant wife, was furnished like a fairytale castle. The walls were lined with peacock-blue silk and panels made of precious woods. There were suits of armor standing in every corner, and the staircase was decorated with wrought iron sculptures.

The Hunting Room had been transformed into a banquet hall. Whole sturgeons were laid out on huge silver platters alongside red lobsters with their tails shelled, grilled lamb ribs with rosemary, thin pancakes with caviar, and fillet of trout in sour cream and chopped dill. There were twenty different types of cheeses and salamis, pyramids of fruit, and a whole array of bottles of wine, brandy, and vodka.

At the head of the table sat Oscar Reich, holding forth passionately about all the things that the USA and the USSR had in common.

“Both our countries,” he said, “have to solve the problem of transporting goods and transmitting power over great distances. We both have unevenly distributed populations. But more importantly, we are both nations of dreamers, intrepid and inventive people who can cope with any problems that come our way.”

Klim listened attentively to what Nina’s husband was saying. He had to admit that Oscar Reich was a born orator. He was arguing that the USSR was like the Wild West of the mid-ninetieth century and that anyone bold enough to investigate the full extent of what the nation had to offer could earn untold riches.

The businessmen cheered on his descriptions of the mighty forests of Northern Russia and the deposits of precious metals in Siberia.

“Gentlemen,” said Oscar, raising his glass, “I propose a toast to the great and indomitable Soviet people! Hurray!”

After the champagne, a mound of delicacies was eaten, and a dozen or so foxtrots were danced—also for the sake of the Soviet people.

All the guests at the banquet seemed to have been infected by the mood of wild festivity. After a single drink, they were already drunkenly chanting “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” in English and “Long May He Live” in German: one of the foreigners was celebrating a birthday.

As Klim was walking through the ballroom, a familiar silhouette caught his eye. It was Nina, dancing with a military man. It was an extraordinary sight: a Red Army commander and a young woman in a magnificent dress gliding across the parquet floor to the sound of a jazz band. Nina’s partner was smiling at her, enraptured, his hand on her bare back, down the length of which hung a fine jeweled chain.

Klim stood for a moment, spellbound. He had to admit that, deep down, he was hoping to see how his ex-wife fared. But where would that get him anyway?

Seen enough? he scolded himself. You can go now.

Opening the glass door, he went out onto the wide balcony, which was adorned by a statue of a chimera. The reflections of the lamps played over the monster’s stone body so that it seemed to stir slightly on its pedestal.

At that moment, Oscar Reich came out onto the balcony, holding a glass of brandy. He was drunk; his tie was crooked, and his hair was plastered to his head with sweat.

“Exactly the man I was hoping to see!” Oscar exclaimed, catching sight of Klim. “Have you heard that the Ford Motor Company is planning to help the Russians build an automobile works outside Nizhny Novgorod? Soon, they’ll be sending engineers and industrial architects over to check out the area. How would you like to write a couple of features for us about it? We need to cause a stir in the American press and show them that the USSR is a land of opportunity.”

Klim shook his head. “As soon as the Shakhty Trial is over, I’m taking a holiday. My daughter is sick, so I’m taking her down south.”

The door swung open again, and Nina appeared in the doorway. “Oscar, everybody is looking for you. You promised to play bridge.”

“I’m coming.” He finished his brandy and left the balcony.

Nina and Klim looked at one another, for all the world like hostile neighbors who had met by chance on the dividing line between their properties.

“What’s the matter with Kitty?” asked Nina at last. “Is she sick?”

“Every day is different,” answered Klim reluctantly. “Sometimes her arms and legs swell up, and she gets headaches.”

“Have you taken her to the doctor?” asked Nina. “What did he say?”

She kept showering Klim with questions, and he began to feel a nagging sense of irritation. Why was Nina suddenly acting the part of the anxious mother?

“Where do you want to take Kitty?” she asked.

“It depends what tickets I find.”

“So, you haven’t got your rail tickets yet?”

Nina was about to add something, but at that moment, Oscar came back out onto the balcony.

“You came out to tell me to hurry up,” he told Nina, “and you’re still out here talking to my friend.” He threw a meaningful glance at Klim. “I’m starting to get jealous.”

“See you again soon,” said Nina and left, leaving Klim in the company of the stone chimera.

He squinted at the monster crouched on its pedestal. It had the head of a lion and a crest along its back, and its body was like that of no creature on earth. A chimera was nothing but a chimera, a bad dream, a blend of incongruous parts. And that was exactly what Klim’s love had become.

Almost every one of the foreign journalists came to the next session of the Shakhty Trial. They all wanted to see the conclusion of the cross-examination of Scorutto.

The judge called the engineer to the microphone, and in quiet, calm tones, Scorutto announced that he fully accepted his guilt.

“I only withdrew my testimony because of my wife,” he told the court.

A barely audible sigh of disappointment was heard in the courtroom.

“His wife should never have shouted out to him,” whispered Seibert in Klim’s ear. “She let the OGPU know that she and her husband loved each other. That was just one more tool in their hands. I expect he was told that his wife would be arrested if he didn’t confess.”

Klim nodded gloomily. The trial was beginning to resemble the medieval allegory of the “Dance Macabre” in which a grinning skeleton leads people of all ranks and all walks of life into a dance, showing that no matter what a man might do, the force of fate still leads him into the grave.

It was utterly hopeless to resist the Bolsheviks.

As soon as Klim came out of the House of Unions, he caught sight of Nina. She came toward him, looking light and elegant in a little straw hat and a white flowered dress.

“Hello,” she said. “How’s Kitty?”

“She’s fine,” said Klim without meeting her eye.

Without exchanging a word, they set off in the direction of Okhotny Ryad Street. A stream of people was coming the other way, and as they let them pass, Klim and Nina touched shoulders and then moved apart from one another.

“I know just the place to take Kitty,” said Nina. “Elkin wrote to me that he’s in Koktebel now; it’s a small Bulgarian village in Crimea. His aunt has a house there, and she rents out rooms to holidaymakers. Elkin invited me to go and stay there.”

“I can just picture your playboy of a husband in a Crimean village,” snorted Klim.

“I’d go to Koktebel without Oscar. He’s gone to Germany—he left yesterday.”

There was a crash from above the street, and a cloud of lime dust rose into the air. Klim looked around. Behind a fence plastered with theater posters, a group of workmen was demolishing the Church of St. Parascheva. Already, the golden cupolas had gone, and huge holes gaped in the walls, through which could be glimpsed the heads of the workers.

“I know someone who works for the People’s Commissariat for Railroads,” Nina went on, “and he’s booked a rail compartment for me. You and Kitty can come with me to the town of Feodosia, and from there we can take a bus straight to Koktebel.”

Klim looked at her in amazement. What was all this about a compartment? She didn’t really believe for a moment that he would agree to travel with her?

“My dear girl, you must realize that everything is over between us,” he said.

Nina’s face contorted as if in pain. “But you said yourself that Kitty needs to go to the south!”

“I refuse to take any charity from you.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re sharing Reich’s bed!” retorted Klim angrily.

Nina hung her head. “What about you and that Galina?” she whispered. “I don’t imagine you’re just sitting around playing solitaire.”

“Watch out!” came a shout from behind the fence as a beam crashed down from the roof of the church.

“If you’d only listened to me at the start—” said Nina with a catch in her voice. “But I don’t know why I’m even interfering. If you want to kill our child out of sheer stupidity—”

“Don’t use Kitty to blackmail me!” snapped Klim, but Nina interrupted him.

“I’ll be at the Kursk Station on Friday at two o’clock. The train to Feodosia, Car Two, Compartment Four. If you want to come, come.”

Then she turned and walked away.

Klim arrived home in a state of turmoil. What sort of plan was this of Nina’s? It was madness for the two of them to travel together, not to mention in a single compartment. Kitty would realize that her mother had been found, and then what?

But what if I don’t manage to find rail tickets in time? Klim thought. His period of leave from work would pass, the summer would be over, and perhaps Kitty would still be sick.

He opened the door to his apartment, and Galina came rushing to meet him. “How was the Shakhty Trial?”

“Fine,” he answered, his mind elsewhere.

What if he did decide to go to Koktebel after all? What would he do about Galina? When he had told her he wanted to go south, she had immediately assumed he was taking her, although he had promised nothing.

Klim stared gloomily at Galina’s thin legs in their short socks, shrunk from constant washing, and at her coarse cloth dress, creased from long hours of sitting at a typewriter.

Why had he got involved with Galina? For months now, he had been justifying himself by reasoning that it was what she wanted, but this charm no longer worked. He had a crime on his conscience: he had allowed Galina to hope for something. Now he faced a choice of either crushing her completely or carrying this pointless and heavy burden around for the rest of his life.

Galina put her arms around his neck and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Why were you so long? I missed you!”

Any failure to respond to her affectionate advances was to risk bringing forth a torrent of alarmed questions. But to respond was only to wrap a noose tighter around his own neck.

Galina could already see from his face that something had happened. “What’s the matter?” she asked anxiously.

Klim blurted out the first thing that came into his mind. “I just saw them demolishing the Church of St. Parascheva. What a shame! That church is more than two hundred years old, you know. It’s the same all over the country. I read in the paper that in my hometown of Nizhny Novgorod, the city council has ordered the demolition of the churches on the main square so that they don’t get in the way of military parades.”

Klim remembered the church in which he and Nina had been married. “The Church of St. George is going to be demolished too,” he said. “Those swine don’t give a damn for history or tradition.”

“Are you from Nizhny Novgorod?” asked Galina, surprised. “You always said you were from Moscow.”

Klim cursed himself silently. What a stupid blunder!

“Well… I used to visit Nizhny Novgorod… a long time ago when I was a child….” Just in case, he decided to change the subject. “Do you know what? I think that all those fires and accidents in the Shakhty region were the result not of sabotage but of something far more mundane: worn-out equipment and a failure to observe safety procedures. After all, similar things are happening all over the USSR.”

Klim was hoping to draw Galina into an argument so that she would overlook the slip he had just made. But, unusually for her, she did not rise to the bait.

“I’ve got soup on the stove,” she said and went off into the kitchen.