Apricot Jam: And Other Stories (50 page)

He was thriving not only because of the food and not only because he was doing well in his studies. (They were selecting students to specialize in atomic energy and automated aircraft guidance systems. He chose the latter, without giving it a great deal of thought. Had he taken the nuclear option, he would have been locked away in secret laboratories for years on end, as if he
’
d gone to prison.) He was also thriving in his community service, in the Komsomol.

It happens imperceptibly and not by any intention: we learn our own worth only with the passing of years and by the way that others regard us (
“
he
’
s exceptional
”
). Everyone notices that you
’
re energetic by nature, that you
’
re the first to make proposals on how the collective should handle a certain
issue, that
your opinions prevail over others
’
. So, why don
’
t you preside over the meeting? Will you make the report? Well, why not? And your words come together easily when you make a speech—these people must be supported, those must be denounced. Everyone applauds. And they vote for you. It all proceeded so smoothly, as if it had happened of its own accord: Komsomol leader, faculty secretary in your third year,
deputy secretary of the whole institute in your fifth. (For this post, you had to be a candidate for the party. But an instruction had come from the Central Committee: Party intake is to be suspended effective 1948 [during the war they had taken in too many people]. And so the proposal was
“
that Comrade Yemtsov be accepted, as an exception.
”
There were now some war veterans at the party meeting, and they began to murmur: Why him? Why the exception, and for a young puppy like that? The meeting was against the proposal. But the head of the institute, this imposing and confident woman, rose to her feet—and remember who her husband was. Was anyone unaware of that? Her words fell weightily on the auditorium:
“
There are some
special considerations
in this case.
”
And that was enough. Even the veterans voted in favor.)

Very soon—you still hadn
’
t graduated and hadn
’
t yet been given your job assignment—they took you into the Moscow City Committee of the Komsomol as deputy director of student youth. (You still had to travel to the institute, but why take the streetcar? Call the city committee and you can ride in a Pobeda; call again and the Pobeda will bring you back, but not to the student residence: now you have an apartment.)

Yes, you had favorable winds behind you, to be sure. But you weren
’
t the least bit embarrassed in front of your classmates because there was nothing dishonest in any of this: you never pushed for it yourself, you never plotted and schemed, it just happened all by itself. And even more: the work of the Komsomol was honest, true,
even
sacred! (The first time you came into the Komsomol City Committee
’
s offices, it was like a religious person entering a church—with reverence and awe.) This was the living, throbbing center of a resplendent life for all our people: after the world-renowned victory we had won, the streams of energy directed to reconstruction simply poured through the whole country! And the news of our grandiose construction projects resounded through the land. And you are a part of this, and you are helping guide your generation of students toward those projects and those achievements.

He wrote proudly to his father (who had remained in his factory shop, now on the Volga—they were never sent back to Kharkov). His father could appreciate what it meant to succeed through your own talents. He was the son of a blacksmith who had risen to become an engineer. He had married a girl from a Poltava landowning family who in the early 1920s was looking to shelter herself under someone
’
s wing. (Later, his father would get very angry when his wife spoke to her mother in French.) In 1935 he suffered the misfortune of being arrested when someone spread slander about him. (Their family immediately had to begin living in straitened circumstances, and their Schroeder grand piano was put into a cellar on its side.) Six months later, however, his father was acquitted. Being freed in such a wondrous fashion only strengthened his proletarian faith in the soundness of our system and reinforced his lifelong dedication to the path of Lenin.

But wasn
’
t it true that something had changed in the Komsomol City Committee? Not everyone entered there with reverence. And some were clearly deficient in ideological enthusiasm; their affectation was obvious and could not be hidden. It was true, to be sure, that once a person yields even a little to his
personal interests, it
’
s very difficult to put him back on the right path. One person is scheming against another to get a better job. Suddenly, the second secretary of the City Committee gets caught on his office sofa with a secretary. Well, measures were taken . . .

Like it or not, there are also certain
facts
that slip into each of our lives. Here was a fact: Beginning with his promotion to deputy director of the section and continuing with each promotion, a long envelope, always of the same greenish brown color, would slip into his hands each month. It was called a
“
package.
”
Inside was the equivalent of a month
’
s wages, the full amount, without any deductions, taxes, or payments for state loans. And you
’
d be lying if you said that you found this awkward, unnecessary, or unacceptable. In fact it was very acceptable: there
’
s always a use for a bit of extra cash.

He married one of his classmates, but they had no honeymoon: like all party and government officials in Moscow, he had to be on duty in the City Committee until two or three in the morning, wide awake because of the will and the habit of Stalin. He would come home in his Pobeda sometime before four a.m., and why should he wake his wife? She had to get up at six to catch the suburban train for work.

His work and his responsibilities expanded in a big way. They set up the International Union of Students (he worked in it with Shelepin himself) and made it a part of the international struggle for peace. Here he also had a support job, writing speeches for the big bosses:
“
We will not allow the clear sky of our homeland to be darkened once more by the clouds of war!
”
—that sort of thing.
Some tasks were secret, some quite open, but he was in the public eye and he held his head high.

Then his father came to visit him while on holiday. He stayed for a week. He listened to what his son had to say and took a close look at everything. But he expressed none of that fatherly pride that Dmitry had expected. Even worse: he sighed and said,
“
So, now you
’
re one of the straw bosses. You
’
d be better off back on the shop floor.
Production
— that
’
s the only real job.
”

Dmitry was wounded and offended. He felt that he had always been flying high, and if he did touch the earth he walked about it like a bigwig.
Then suddenly to hear that he was a straw boss?

His father read only the newspaper
For Industrialization.
And he lived
“
for the good of the people,
”
as he was fond of saying.

The son rejected what he had heard as merely a father
’
s grouchiness. But as the weeks passed, something began to gnaw at him inside and to weigh heavily on him. His father
’
s censure lay on his heart like a stone. It would have been easy to brush it aside had it come from anyone else. But from his father . . . ?

Perhaps his father was right: What sort of
“
job
”
did he have? He could see it himself: talk and more talk, sitting through meetings, plotting and scheming, too
much drunkenness. When he looked at his colleagues, he could see they were all blockheads and bureaucrats. And if you yourself had such abilities, why not find a place where they could be better used? (But where should he go? That he didn
’
t yet know.)

Still, parting with his
“
packages
”
and his Pobeda wouldn
’
t be easy.

Something kept gnawing away at him. And it wasn
’
t easy to decide what to do about it.

Suddenly, just like that and with no real consideration, he put together a letter of resignation and sent it in.

Then
he learned what such a letter meant. How could a member of the party send in his
resignation
?
Against the will of the party?
He
’
s an unreliable element in our midst! And they made him out to be such a troublemaker, and they gave him such a going over and chewed him out at the party meeting so that he could only sit there like a boiled crayfish and go on apologizing for his error.

Perhaps it was for the best. His career took a positive turn again. (He was given some very odd assignments: the students at one institute had established, supposedly in jest, the Society for the Protection of Bastards and Bootlickers. When you looked into it closely, though, was it not a case of political subversion?)

Then there was a major shake-up in the party in Moscow. At a plenum of the Moscow City and Oblast Committees, the longtime first secretary, Popov, who was so solidly entrenched, so imposing and so unshakeable, was suddenly ousted. (His enemy, Mekhlis, had been plotting against him, and Stalin had decided to purge those who had done well by the war. There was no shortage of accusations against Popov, either: How was it that a paved road outside the city reached just as far as the home of Popov
’
s mistress and no farther?) Khrushchev was designated to take his place.

Then
came
Komsomol Day. A group of Komsomol activists were invited to a reception and a banquet in the St. George Hall in the Kremlin. The lively and generous Khrushchev, whose round head looked as though it had been shaven, made a promise to them:
“
Keep working! Keep
working,
and you all can be secretaries of the Central Committee!
”

Suddenly—and what in blazes ever made him do it?—Yemtsov spoke up. Recklessly he jumped to his feet:
“
Nikita Sergeych! May I ask a question?
”

“
Of course.
”

“
It
’
s been two years now since I graduated, and my diploma is still lying idle in my desk. Don
’
t we need people to work in manufacturing? I
’
m prepared to go anywhere the party wants to send me.
”

(Now how did that sound!
Right in the St. George Hall.
He had to admire his own courage.)

Khrushchev barely paused before he nodded his bald head:
“
Comrade Sizov, I believe that you can look into this request?
”

“
Look into it!
”
Why that
’
s as good as an order when it comes from the mouth of one of the country
’
s leaders! (Mitya never expected such a sudden and irreversible turn of events. Had he been too hasty in jumping up like that?)

Sizov called him in to discuss the matter. He said expansively:
“
Why did you take that approach? You should have said something to us earlier. We could even have moved you up to the Central Committee.
”
Well, I
’
ve lost that chance.
“
So where do you want to go?
”
“
Somewhere in the aviation industry.
”
“
The Aviation Materials Research Institute?
Or the Central Aerodynamics Institute?
”
“
No, I want to go directly to the manufacturing sector.
“

The request went through the ministry
’
s personnel section, and he was assigned a place in the provinces. True, he was able to choose the city he had come from and where his parents were living. The names of such factories are made deliberately obscure to conceal their purpose. This one was called the
“
Modular Assembly Plant
”
—
try
and figure out what
’
s going on in there. What was going on was the manufacture of aviation electronic equipment, autopilots, and fuel metering devices, but the plant was also supposed to produce consumer goods. They were to get busy producing household refrigerators, for example: We should be ashamed to be lagging so far behind Europe!