The Prince of the Soviets

30. HIDDEN RUSSIA

On the off chance, Klim decided to go out to Saltykovka. He prayed the Belovs might have some idea where Nina was hiding. But what if she had been arrested already?

The suburban train was packed with people traveling back out to their dachas outside Moscow. Jobbing laborers stood shoulder to shoulder with dairy women, rag merchants, and street peddlers. Above their heads bristled an array of implements: mops, shovels, and carrying poles.

Klim had to stand in the vestibule at the end of the car. He was next to a crowd of musicians who were traveling back from a wedding. They had had a couple of drinks and were delighted the train was too full to admit ticket inspectors.

“I’d like to give you all a tune on the fiddle,” said one of the musicians, a rough-looking man with blue eyes and a paper carnation stuck behind his ear. “But I’d only elbow someone in the face. Still, you got to admit, a tune helps a journey go quicker.”

“Give us a song then!” somebody shouted, and the fiddler began to croon in a thin voice:

The crowd roared with laughter.

It seemed to Klim that the train was hardly moving. He stood up on his tiptoes to see past the musicians’ heads and out of the window, but outside, it was raining hard. He could see nothing beyond the drops on the glass.

A moment later, the train drew to a halt.

“That’ll be on account of the Nizhny Novgorod express, the Blue Arrow,” the fiddler said. “We all have to wait while the top brass goes past.”

The tired crowd cursed the passengers on the Blue Arrow. It was generally agreed that shooting was too good for them.

The delay lasted one and a half hours, and by the time Klim reached Saltykovka, it was already dark.

An old man, who had traveled into the city to sell mushrooms, showed Klim the way to the Belovs’ dacha.

“Watch how you go though,” he said. “There are no walkways or street lights. Time was, we had wooden walkways, but they took ‘em for firewood when the Executive Committee passed a law against cutting down trees. And there’s been no paraffin for a year now.”

The warning was a timely one: as it was, Klim almost broke his neck crossing the deep ruts and potholes on the road.

Nina had told Klim that the Belovs had a special knock to the rhythm of the prerevolutionary anthem, “God Save the Tsar,” but Klim was so anxious that he forgot all about it.

There was no answer for a long time.

“Who’s there?” a woman’s voice asked warily from behind the gate.

“It’s me,” said Klim, and the gate flew open at once.

Nina came running out of the darkness and threw her arms around his neck. “So, you came! We thought it was the OGPU.”

Klim felt an incredible rush of relief. It was all too simple and miraculous to be true. He held Nina tightly in his arms and kissed her hair and her cheeks, murmuring over and over again the first thing that came into his head: “I thought I’d never find you… I didn’t know if you—”

Nina put her finger to her lips, and Klim realized that she had not told her hosts about the incident in the Red Army Club.

She introduced Klim to Countess Belov, a blonde, rather plump woman in a neat dress with a woolen shawl over her shoulders.

“It’s wonderful you’re here,” the countess said. “Come in and have some tea.”

The house turned out to be full of people. Besides the Belov family, their neighbors from nearby dachas were gathered around the samovar. Klim found himself in a world quite unlike Soviet Moscow. Here, the men were polite and chivalrous to the women, the young girls laughed and put their arms around each other’s waists, and the children were as excited about the new visitor as if he had been Santa Claus.

There were not enough chairs to go around, so Klim was invited to sit beside Nina on a large linen basket, which creaked ominously under their weight.

Nina’s shoulder pressed lightly against Klim’s own, and when she turned her head, her hair tickled his neck. She was warm and familiar, and he ached with love for her. He stroked her knee beneath the tablecloth so that nobody would notice, and Nina answered with a squeeze of her hand. It felt as if everything would be as it had been in the days before they had made such a mess of their marriage.

The Belovs were living in dire poverty. Their dacha was dilapidated and smelled of dried mushrooms and apples. And yet there was a spirit of youthful energy in the house: the walls were covered with children’s drawings, an array of chemical flasks and test tubes stood on the windowsill, and a half-dismantled diesel engine sat in the corner.

Klim was showered with questions about Moscow and did his best to reply. He was amazed to observe these people who had offered to shelter Nina. Their intelligent faces shone with kindness, their clothes, though worn and old, were neat and tasteful, and they peppered their speech with foreign expressions, which nobody had any trouble understanding.

The youngest of the family, a twelve-year-old boy, whom everyone addressed respectfully as Georgy Vladimirovich, even made jokes in Latin.

“He’s interested in ancient Rome,” said Count Belov, ruffling his son’s hair. “But I don’t know how we’re going to teach him. He won’t be accepted into university with his family background.”

“I can teach myself,” answered Georgy Vladimirovich with dignity.

Klim could only feel astonishment that people like the Belovs were now treated as worthless rubbish that had no place in the Soviet society. After all, these were the finest people the nation had to offer.

There was dancing after dinner. The table was carried out of the room, and the countess brought in some sheet music and propped up the lid of the old piano.

Count Belov stood in the middle of the room and made an announcement. “Young men, please take your partners for the first dance!”

Klim bowed to Nina. “Madame?”

She curtseyed as she had been taught back in her school days and held out her hand.

The floors shook, and the curtains jumped in the windows as everybody took part in the dance. Couples whirled to and fro, bumping into each other, pirouetting, laughing, and shrieking. Ladies sank down exhausted onto chairs at the side of the room and fanned themselves with their handkerchiefs.

“Play another, Mamma, please!” the girls shouted, and once again, music shook the house.

It all seemed like a fantastic dream to Klim. Here he and Nina were hiding from the world among strangers, their lives full of fear with no certainty and no hope of planning for the future. And yet right now, his wife was gazing at him with eyes full of love, and he was ready to give up everything for the sake of this dazzling moment.

After the dance, Klim followed Nina into the kitchen to help her wash her face before bed. Simply pouring water onto her hands from a mug filled him with indescribable joy.

“Look. This is our product,” Nina said proudly, showing him a cake of soap in the shape of a rooster. “We use old molds for making biscuits and sweets. It looks good, don’t you think?”

Klim nodded. “Very nice.”

The water rushed noisily into the enamel pail. Nina shivered from the cold and wiped her face dry with a towel so old it was almost transparent. Then it was Nina’s turn to pour the water for Klim.

My God, I’m about to get into bed with my wife! he thought, and his heart swooned at the thought.

A bed had been made up for them on the floor of Belov’s study, a little wooden cubbyhole full of books and sacks of dried apples, the walls hung with portraits of great writers.

The count had unscrewed the only electric light bulb from the chandelier in the living room and offered it to his guests, but Nina had assured him that she and Klim could make do with a church candle.

They put the flimsy door on the latch, placed the candle into a glass jar like a flower in the vase, and sat down on the patchwork blanket, stealing glances at one another.

Nina lay down on her back, and her hair spread out around her head like the wavy rays of a sun on a child’s drawing. Klim ran his fingers gently along one ray and then another.

He knew he needed to speak to Nina about Oscar Reich, but he was reluctant to come down to earth from the clouds.

“I think that I’ve found my Russia right here in Saltykovka,” said Nina. “This dacha, these people, making soap in these old molds—I could stay here forever.”

Klim nodded. “I feel the same. But what if Oscar—”

“Please, let’s not talk about that now.”

She pulled on Klim’s hand, but out of mischief, he resisted. Even using all her weight, she could not manage to get his hand away from him.

“You’re not playing fair!” Nina said, laughing. “That being the case, I’m going to my den.”

She grabbed a sofa cushion in an oversized pillowcase of flowery calico and pulled the end of the case over her head.

“Wow! It’s not a den here,” Nina said. “This is the Garden of Eden. Do you want to come and see me in here?”

How could he refuse?

It felt wonderful to play together like children, kissing under the pillowcase and looking up at the light through the colored flowers printed on calico.

Klim ran his hand over Nina’s waist, then lower, over the steep curve of her hip, and lower still, down the more gentle, gradual line of her thigh. He wanted to take his time, to absorb as many tiny details as he could. The faint trace of warmth on the sheet where Nina had been lying; the nub of her wrist bone through her skin; the tiny golden hairs on her arm.

It was more than any human heart could bear. Klim crushed her tightly to him and realized all at once that they were breathing as one.

“Do you think we made too much noise?” Nina whispered afterward, pulling the sheet up to cover her shoulders. “Now the Belovs will make us leave in disgrace.”

“Not only that; we’ve disgraced ourselves in front of all these literary masters,” said Klim, pointing to the portraits of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

The great men were staring down from the wall with expressions of evident disapproval.

The candle had burned down, and now, it went out, giving off a sharp smell of burning and releasing a thin stream of blue-gray smoke into the air.

“Oscar somehow found out that I was going to the driving classes,” said Nina in a whisper. “He told me that he had documents in his briefcase that would expose me, and I was afraid he was going to turn me in to the OGPU.”

Klim laced his fingers with Nina’s and squeezed her hand.

“Oscar tried to choke me,” she continued, “so I hit him hard with the crank handle and grabbed the briefcase. I was expecting to find the documents inside, but I found something else.”

“What?”

“Ten thousand American dollars in hundred-dollar notes.”

Klim propped himself up on his elbow. “No kidding?”

Nina pressed in close to him and began to cry. “I can’t stay with the Belovs—their position is already so dangerous. And what will happen if I’m caught?”

Klim suddenly had an idea. “I know what to do. We’ll get you some false papers. You can be a German peasant girl who has never had any official documents apart from certificates from the village council. We’ll use Oscar’s money to bribe Babloyan. He’ll get you a foreign passport, and then we’ll send you out to Hamburg to charter a ship. You can stay in Germany, and Kitty and I will come out to join you. My contract expires soon in any case.”

“We’re crooks, you and I,” Nina said, still sobbing. “The Belovs would never use stolen money.”

“That may be so, but we’re two of a kind,” said Klim. “We were made for one another.”

Galina rang Klim and, without any explanation, told him that she would not be coming back to the house on Chistye Prudy. Klim breathed a sigh of relief, but no sooner had one problem been solved than another appeared in its place. He was being shadowed. Every time he looked out, he could see an observer standing on the street opposite his house.

Klim tried to tell himself that it was no big deal to be accompanied everywhere by the snoops. After all, they never attacked him and generally left him alone. But despite this, he felt a keen sense of loss—the loss of a little thing called freedom. He could no longer go anywhere he chose or meet anyone he liked.

On the bright side, he had passed his driving exam and was now qualified as a driver, which meant he could get away from the snoops who were shadowing him. Even when the OGPU came with cars, they could not keep up with Mashka.

Several times, taking great precautions not to be followed, Klim had gone out to Saltykovka. What bliss it had been to visit Nina and walk with her in the golden birch woods, making crazy plans for the future!

Father Thomas had agreed to register Nina as one of his fellow villagers by the name of Hilda Schultz.

Klim began to count up all the surnames Nina had had in her life: “You were born Kupina. Odintzova was your first married name; then you took the false name Bremer. Reich was your false married name, and Schultz is your official name according to your documents.”

Nina laughed. “But my real name is Mrs. Rogov.”

When they came home, they would go up to Belov’s study and leaf through the atlas.

“All we need to be completely happy is good food, suitable clothes, and a roof over our heads,” said Klim. “All that might be very expensive in London, but it would be very cheap in some places with very beautiful sunsets. What do you think of going to live in British Honduras?”

Nina studied the article in the atlas for a moment and then frowned. “No, that won’t do. They have hurricanes and flooding there.”

“What about Japan then? We’ll find a pretty village up in the mountains. There will be maple trees, pagodas, and waterfalls. What’s not to like? We’ll teach in the local schools, and when we get bored, we can go to the Italian Alps or to Hawaii.”

They both knew that rural idylls were one thing on picture postcards and another in life. The farther they went from the vices of civilization, the more likely they would be to encounter extreme poverty, epidemics, and religious fanaticism. But Klim and Nina loved playing this game in which they dreamed about another world where there was no politics, no passports, and no constant worry about how to make money.

“The main thing now is to meet with Babloyan,” said Klim, “get him to arrange a foreign passport for you, and send you to Germany.”

“But how will I take the dollars out of the country?” asked Nina. “They always search anyone crossing the border, and if they find such a large sum of money on me, I won’t be able to explain how I got it.”

Klim asked Friedrich to take the money to Germany for them, but he refused. It was too big a risk. Not long before, one of the pilots had been caught smuggling foreign currency, and the poor wretch had been accused of financing the counter-revolution and was shot.

A special performance by the Blue Blouse theater company was to take place in the Elektrozavod Club to commemorate the opening of a new factory facility.

When Klim arrived, a folk orchestra was playing in the foyer. While some people danced, others crowded around the counter where bread and ham sandwiches were being sold as a special treat in honor of the celebration.

Klim spotted Babloyan from a distance. He was having his photograph taken with the factory directors against the backdrop of the slogan “Long Live the Bolshevik Party!”

“Comrade journalist!” Babloyan cried, waving to Klim. “So, you’ve come to report on our theatrical performance? That’s grand!”

He suggested that Klim sit next to him in the front row so that he could get a good view.

“I’m very interested in theater,” said Babloyan as he lowered himself into a chair. “Have you heard of the Blue Blouse company? It’s something like a live newspaper. About half of our workers can’t read and write, and we’re short on radios. But we need to explain to people what’s going on in the world. So, the Blue Blouse company goes around factories and other workplaces putting on performances.”

The show did indeed turn out to be a curious one. The host asked the crowd to welcome the “Pillars of Soviet Economic Might,” and six young men and women ran onto the stage, armed with shields on which were emblazoned the words “Industrialization,” “Electrification,” “Rationalization,” “Fordism,” “Standardization,” and “Militarization.”

The orchestra struck up a tune, and the “pillars” began to demonstrate the work of the machines in the new facility.

Babloyan nudged Klim. “What about that Fordism, eh? Quite a looker, isn’t she? I already found out her name. She’s called Dunya Odesskaya.”

Klim made a note in his reporter’s book:

Dunya Odesskaya began to declaim a poem by a famous Soviet poet, Vladimir Mayakovsky:

This was the new proletariat art, an art without poetry, without intimacy. It did not concern itself with the trivial experiences of worthless individuals but with the aesthetics of organized crowds.

Nevertheless, the Blue Blouse company did touch on the subject of love. Dunya Odesskaya donned a leather jacket, mounted a podium, and began to pretend to give a political speech.

One of the male actors addressed the audience with feeling. “That comrade is one red-hot mama! She’s got me properly agitated with her agitprop.”

The audience clapped delightedly.

“Take a look at that!” exclaimed Babloyan, his eyes fixed on Dunya. “That skirt barely covers her backside, but if you tell her it’s indecent, I bet she’d say she can’t afford any more material.”

“And now,” the host announced, “we’d like to welcome Comrade Babloyan on stage to say a few words.”

There was wild applause, and Babloyan was almost too touched to speak.

“At this time,” he began, “when our country is threatened by the blockade imposed by the bourgeois countries of the West, we can hold our heads up high and boldly show everyone… this… hmm…. What I mean is, the power of art to change society will win through!”

All anyone understood from his speech that followed was that Soviet girls, such as Dunya Odesskaya, were the most beautiful girls in the world. Nobody was interested in the ideological content, anyway. The most important thing was that Babloyan came across to them as “one of us,” a regular guy, representing the Party that cared about working people.

“Pretty soon,” he said, “every working man will receive a cartload of firewood for the winter. And don’t worry about paraffin! The Soviet authorities will bring electricity into every home, even the humblest worker’s cabin.”

After lengthy and noisy applause, Babloyan bowed and set off toward the exit with his entourage.

On stage, the amateur concert resumed.

Klim barely managed to catch up with Babloyan in the corridor.

“I wanted to ask you a small favor, sir. Do you remember our conversation about the Volga Germans?”

Babloyan glanced meaningfully toward the lavatories and then announced to his henchmen, “Wait here. I won’t be a moment.”

In the men’s lavatories, a tap was dripping, and the walls echoed with the sound of water trickling into the enamel basin. A dim light filtered in through the window, which had been half painted over.

“We now have enough money to sort out the passports and the cost of freight,” Klim spoke in a low voice.

He told Babloyan about the Canada plan and about Hilda Schultz.

Babloyan considered his words, frowning.

“All right,” he said at last. “Bring me the money and a list of the names of all your Germans.”

“What about an interview with Stalin?” Klim added. “Do you think it might still be possible to organize?”

Babloyan looked at Klim uncomprehendingly. “Why do you want an interview with Stalin?”

“Our readers want to know what’s happening in the USSR.”

“Then they should read Pravda. It’s all there in black and white,” said Babloyan curtly, and then he left.

Alov had come to the Elektrozavod Club before the concert began. During the performance, he had been standing beside Klim Rogov, inconspicuous in his peaked cap and standard-issue jacket and trousers from the Moscow state clothing factory.

He was intrigued to see Rogov sit down next to Comrade Babloyan. What, he wondered, was the connection between the two of them?

But soon, Alov saw something that distracted him completely from thoughts of work. Dunya, his Dunya, was up on stage, behaving in the most shameless manner.

For some time now, Alov had not been going to watch his wife perform. He had always said that he trusted her implicitly, but now, he felt that this had been a mistake. In the first place, some young fellow was carrying her about on his shoulders, which meant that a certain part of her anatomy was coming into contact with the man’s neck. Besides this, Dunya had performed some “Dance of the Conveyor Belt,” which had involved high kicks and a run out on stage in some makeshift sort of toga that looked as if it might fall off at any moment. The very idea was enough to make Alov die of shame.

But the worst was yet to come. The next moment, Comrade Babloyan had got up on stage and begun to praise Dunya’s good looks in front of everyone. Alov knew very well that Babloyan was a notorious womanizer. Did he have his eye on Dunya?

When Rogov and Babloyan left the hall, Alov hurried after them and saw them turn off the corridor into the lavatories.

Babloyan’s henchmen waited patiently for him. At last, he emerged, and they set off toward the lobby. Alov stared after him furiously. There wasn’t much even an OGPU agent could do against a member of the Central Committee. Such people existed outside the law and outside any moral codes; they simply took whatever they wanted.

Soon, Rogov came out into the corridor too. Alov darted up to him and showed him his OGPU identity card.

“What were you just talking about with Babloyan?” he demanded.

The two of them stood glaring stiffly at one another.

“My bosses are insisting that I arrange an interview with Stalin,” said Rogov at last. “So, I asked Comrade Babloyan to help. But he told me there’s nothing he can do.”

“Is that all you talked about?” asked Alov, his voice thick with mistrust.

“Well, no. We talked about actresses too.”

“Which actresses?”

“The ones who just performed; the girls from the Blue Blouse. Dunya Odesskaya has made quite an impression on Comrade Babloyan, it seems.”

Alov pulled his amber beads from under his cuff and began to click them rapidly to and fro. He was smarting with fury. Just think, this sleek, pampered bourgeois prig thought he had the right to discuss any woman he chose and to demand an interview with Stalin himself!

“Excuse me,” said Rogov, “but I have to go.”

The upstart did not even feel the slightest alarm at being faced by an OGPU agent. It seemed he had no idea that Alov could have him deported and his visa annulled with no more than a snap of his fingers.

With great effort, Alov forced himself to speak politely and calmly. “We’re interested in talking to a woman by the name of Nina Kupina,” he said. “You don’t happen to know where she is?”

Rogov shrugged. “No idea. We met on a driving course.”

“Don’t lie to me!” Alov said. “A few months ago, you were interested in the whereabouts of this same individual.”

It was clear from Rogov’s face that he had not expected the OGPU to be so well-informed.

“So, what do you say?” Alov asked in an insinuating tone.

Rogov winced like some businessman pestered by a street beggar. “Is this an interrogation?”

“No, it’s an offer,” said Alov. “I’d like you to cooperate with us. Who knows when you might need a connection in the OGPU?”

“Good evening.” Rogov left without even holding out his hand.

Just you watch out! thought Alov. I’ve got my eye on you.

If there was one thing Alov could not bear, it was when other people failed to treat him with respect.