Monumental Propaganda (24 page)

58

To her delight, Aglaya discovered in Fyodor Fyodorovich a man who shared almost all her opinions. He shared her point of view on the October Revolution, the Civil War, electrification, industrialization, collectivization, the Rout of the Opposition, the Great Patriotic War, Stalin and Stalin's role in our achievements and victories. He also disliked Khrushchev, but he liked Brezhnev, which Aglaya was unable to say with certainty about herself.

Like Aglaya, Fyodor Fyodorovich detested revisionists—that is, people who took a negative attitude to the past, criticized the Party and Soviet power, and who preferred formalist trickery to realism in literature and painting.

“I was at an exhibition recently,” he told her. “Such talented young artists, they told me. Call themselves modernists. Abstractionists. Well, I took a look. A load of messy daubs. You look at something and you can't tell what it is. A house, a forest, a river, a dog, you can't make out a thing. A line down here, some twirls over there. What they call ‘God knows what tied up with a ribbon.' I went up to one of them and asked politely: ‘What's your picture called?' He said:
‘Wordlessness.'
I said to him: ‘
Brainlessness
is what you ought to call it.' I said to him: ‘What do you paint pictures for, why do you waste the paint? A donkey could paint better than that with its tail.' And you know what a rude lout he was, he said: ‘I can't even be bothered to talk to you on such a primitive level.' ‘Why you,' I said to him, ‘you vermin! I didn't spill my blood at the front so a parasite like you could sponge off the people and daub rubbish like this.' When I got home, I wrote to the newspaper. I got some of our lads together, veterans, they all signed it and the newspaper printed it. And the Union of Artists hit that lout with a reprimand for formalism, and I reckon they did right.”

“No they didn't!” Aglaya protested sharply.

“Why didn't they?” Burdalakov asked in amazement. “You can't imagine what terrible daubs they were!”

“That's what I mean,” she said, also growing agitated and clenching her fists. “They shouldn't reprimand them for that, they should shoot them!”

“What?” Burdalakov choked, as though a live fly had flown down his windpipe. “Oh you . . . Oh,” he said, “you're a hot-tempered woman.”

“What do you expect?” Aglaya went on. “It's not just harmless daubing, is it? It's not that simple. They're corrupting our youth. We lost twenty million Soviet people in the war. Didn't we? And what for?” Just at that moment she genuinely felt it was the abstractionists who were to blame for the death of those twenty million Soviet people. “No,” she said, unable to see any reason for leniency, “only shooting will do.”

“Yes,” Burdalakov agreed, “I suppose you're right, at the front we used to . . .”

He was about to say that at the front they used to shoot artists like that, but when he thought about it, he couldn't remember any artists like that being at the front. There was a caricaturist who used to draw Hitler in the field news sheet, but there wasn't a single abstractionist.

“Well then!” The general seemed to wilt, and he yawned into his hand. “As far as the memory of Comrade Stalin is concerned, I think that in his case justice will be restored pretty soon. Perhaps even in a few days' time. A certain responsible comrade told me . . .” At this point Fyodor Fyodorovich glanced around, peered suspiciously into the bushes behind him and lowered his voice to a whisper. “They told me there's going to be a special decree. Mikhail Andreich Suslov is working on it specially . . .”

Before bed they called into the dining hall again, where there were already glasses of kefir standing on the tables, covered with napkins. Aglaya drank her portion there and then, but Fyodor Fyodorovich took his glass off to his room with him. Their rooms were next to each other— the second one after the stairs was his and the one after that was hers. Usually, they said goodbye at the door of his room and got together again in the morning for their run.

59

Sometimes when people heard that the famous general was in Sochi, they would invite him to one of the nearby sanatoriums or local towns to give a talk to the vacationers, the young people, soldiers, sailors or veterans. Then he put on his general's dress uniform with the gold shoulder straps, brocade belt, medals and Hero's star, and he looked important and unapproachable. But when he took up his signature flag wound up tightly in its case, the impression was tarnished and he looked more like Charlie Chaplin with his cane. He used to go away for the whole day, or even two. Left without his company, Aglaya was bored. In the mornings she went running on her own, but she cut down the distance, just as far as the boat station and back, then home.

One day the general was taken by helicopter to the town of Samtredia and flown back with numerous bags containing presents from “the workers of Sunny Georgia,” that is, from the local Party bosses. One of the presents was a four-liter plastic container of the young wine Izabella.

Aglaya was invited to a tasting.

She accepted and entered Burdalakov's room with a certain restrained curiosity. So far, they had behaved like two pensioners, without even a hint at any other relations. But now it seemed to her that their relationship had arrived at some kind of threshold that required clarification. After all, he was a widower and she was a widow, both of them getting on a bit, but not so far gone that nothing was possible. In short, when she entered his room, she wasn't counting on anything specific, but she had a presentiment that some kind of declaration would be forthcoming.

His room was exactly the same as hers, square with two windows, a wooden bed, a divan, a low table for magazines, and two pictures on the walls. On one wall there were Shishkin's bears in the picture
Morning in
a Pine Forest
and on another a picture by a local artist entitled
Storm
Warning
—cliffs, a lighthouse and waves.

“Look at that,” said Burdalakov, “he's an artist too, but you can understand it: these are rocks, these are waves, and that's a lighthouse. He might not be very talented, but everything's lifelike, it's not one of those ‘gun smoke makes you choke and you can't make out a thing' pictures.”

The aforementioned plastic container was standing on the table, together with a year-old number of
Ogonyok
with an unfinished crossword puzzle, two thin-walled tea glasses, a bowl of fruit (apples, mandarins and feijoa), a round flat loaf of bread, a large plate of suluguni cheese and some other strange food product that looked like a rubber sausage with nuts in it. Fyodor Fyodorovich said it wasn't made of rubber but of dried grape juice with walnuts and it was called churchkhella.

“Churchkhella?” Aglaya asked. “Isn't that what they call Kim Il Sung?”

“No,” Fyodor Fyodorovich said seriously. “The Koreans call Comrade Kim Il Sung the Great Chuchkhe, but this is churchkhella. Not ‘chuch,' but ‘church,' like a house of worship in English. Your health, Glashenka.”

Demonstrating his great knowledge of the art of consuming wine, he examined his glass against the light, then twirled it a little, turning it so that the wine inside swirled into a vortex, took a sip and looked up at Aglaya: “Well, how do you like it? A certain doctor of medical science, by the way, once explained to me that alcohol”—he emphasized the second
o,
French-style—“in moderate quantities is extremely good for the health. It's not like smoking. Smoking only does damage. But this . . . Shakespeare drank champagne all the time, and the German writer Goethe consumed a bottle of red every day. And Comrade Stalin was also fond of the Georgian red wine Khvanchkara. Although he wasn't averse to vodka too. I've clinked glasses with him myself.”

“You?” Aglaya was amazed. “With Stalin? In person?”

“Naturally, in person,” Fyodor Fyodorovich said with a smile. “How can you clink glasses any other way? If you've seen the old newsreel with the Victory Parade, you might have noticed me in it. I'm still young there and I have a mustache. I'm throwing a fascist banner into the general heap. Here, eat something, go on, this suluguni cheese is very good too— it's remarkably easy to digest and it contains calcium, which is absolutely essential for the female organism. Yes . . .” Fyodor Fyodorovich took a sip of wine, threw his head back, and his eyes grew misty. “Later, after the parade, there was a government reception in the Kremlin. I tell you, the supper was absolutely unique. You might say that I've been spoiled now, but back then it was the first time I'd eaten grouse or tried mushroom julienne. After supper we got up from the table to stretch our legs, and there we are, a group of officers, standing near the window and talking, when my friend Vaska Serov nudges me in the side with his elbow. I turn around and ask: ‘Why are you shoving me?' I look, and blow me! Standing right there in front of me is Comrade Stalin in that, you know, dark gray uniform. And just a single Gold Star on his chest, nothing else. Standing as close to me as you are, or even closer. Holding a glass of vodka. And there beside him are Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, Georgii Maximilianovich Malenkov and Marshal Ivan Stepanovich Konev. And can you imagine, Comrade Stalin shifts the vodka from his right hand to his left, holds out his right hand to me and says: ‘How do you do, I'm Stalin.' That's just what he said, ‘I'm Stalin.' As though I might not know who he was. I was dumbstruck and just stood there with my mouth open. He says: ‘And what's your name?' And you know, I tried to answer him, but my tongue just stuck in my throat, as they say. Comrade Stalin stood there, looking at me and waiting. But then, all right, Konev came to my rescue. ‘Comrade Stalin,' he said, ‘this is Colonel Burdalakov.'

“And then he asked: ‘Burdalakov? Fyodor Burdalakov? Commander of the Hundred Fourteenth Motorized Infantry Guards Regiment? The former intelligence scout?'

“Well, at that I was totally stupefied. Can you imagine it, a generalissimo, the Supreme Commander—the number of divisions, people and intelligence officers he has, how can he possibly remember every one by name? And he said: ‘Tell me, Comrade Burdalakov, are you a nondrinker then?' You can just imagine how scared I was, I didn't know what to say. If I say I do drink, he'll think I'm a drunk. But being a nondrinker's not so good either, somehow. I stand there and say nothing. And Comrade Stalin says to Konev again: ‘Seems like you've got a dumb teetotaler here.'”

“Then Ivan Stepanovich helped me out again. ‘Certainly not, Comrade Stalin,' he said, ‘how could a front-line scout be a nondrinker?' ‘That's what I thought,' said Stalin, ‘there aren't any scouts who don't drink. A drinking man might not be a scout. A dumb man might be a scout, all he has to do is see and hear, but he can't be a nondrinker. A nondrinker could never be a scout.'

“Those were the very words he said to me, and I'll never forget them as long as I live.” Holding up a piece of churchkhella in front of him, Fyodor Fyodorovich pondered in silence for a moment and then he brightened up again. “And just imagine, after that—after that he says to me: ‘If you have no objections, Comrade Burdalakov, let's take a drink together.' Can you just imagine that? If I have no objections! And they talk about him being a megalomaniac. But what kind of mania has he got if he asks a colonel if he has no objections to taking a drink with him? If he'd told me: ‘Burdalakov, drink a pailful of vodka,' or even kerosene, I'd have drunk it. I don't even remember how the glass of vodka ended up in my hand. ‘Right,' he says, ‘what are we drinking to?' I plucked up my courage, looked him straight in the eye and said: ‘For Comrade Stalin.' And he smiled again and said: ‘Why not, Comrade Stalin it is then—Comrade Stalin's no slouch, after all.' I held up my drink, we clinked glasses, he sipped a bit of his vodka and looked at me. And you know, back in the village before the war I'd learned to drink vodka without swallowing, straight down, just watch, the gravity takes it down into your gullet.”

Fyodor Fyodorovich poured himself some more wine, got to his feet, threw his head back, opened his mouth wide, twirled his glass the way he had before tasting the wine and began tilting it over his mouth. The wine flowed into the general in a twisted stream, as if it were being poured from a funnel, and it gurgled like a mountain brook. But his Adam's apple didn't move.

“Yes!” said Aglaya admiringly. “You can do it all right!”

“Comrade Stalin was astonished. He watched me do it: ‘Well, well,' he says, ‘you're not Burdalakov, you're a vurdalak, a real ghoul. By the way,' he says, ‘where does that name of yours come from?'

“What could I tell him? ‘I couldn't say, Comrade Stalin,' I said. ‘Of course you couldn't,' he says. ‘Maybe your ancestors actually were some kind of ghouls. But of course, I'm only joking when I tell you that.' Then he laughed and moved on. And he started saying something to Konev, not about me, about something else. He forgot about me immediately, but it's something I'll remember for the rest of my life. I've seen lots of people you could call great, but after all, Stalin is Stalin!”

The general and his guest were silent for a moment—he excited by an experience relived and she by a story heard for the first time.

“They tell us now,” she said, hoping to be contradicted, “that his face was pockmarked.”

“Nonsense!” The general denied it immediately. “Pockmarked, him? Why would he be pockmarked? If anybody said that, I'd, well I don't know what I'd do to them. He had a fine, manly Russian face.”

“But he was Georgian by nationality, after all.” Aglaya felt she had to get that right.

“Well, yes,” said the general, “of course he was. But his face was Russian.”

They drank a bit more, and then Fyodor Fyodorovich began showing Aglaya albums of photographs, some of them faded. For the most part, they were ordinary snapshots, family photos. With his wife after their wedding. On a bicycle trip. On the beach. Their first son. Their son and their daughter. The three children. The children when they were little. The children when they were big. Fyodor Fyodorovich's patriotic endeavors were illustrated in a separate album. On the first page there was a recent full-length photograph of him in full military uniform, with his peaked cap, stripes on his trousers and decorations. Then there he was in uniform and in civilian dress, taking part in all sorts of ceremonies. An address to the graduates of the artillery college. A meeting of veterans on Mamaev Hill at Stalingrad. Fyodor Fyodorovich being presented with an award, a diploma, another award. With Marshal Chuikov, with Marshal Bagramian. A meeting of veterans on Victory Day, May 9, at the Bolshoi Theater. Something else at the Bolshoi Theater. Then suddenly—the general with Brezhnev. After the story about Stalin, Brezhnev didn't provoke any excitement, but it was interesting all the same.

“What's that you're handing him?” Aglaya asked.

“A diploma as the honorary chairman of our veterans' club. And look, this is me with this standard. Have you seen it unfurled? Hang on, I'll show you.”

He took the standard out of its case, unfurled it and strode ceremonially back and forth in front of Aglaya, showing more or less the way he marched into Berlin with it. Aglaya tried, but she couldn't imagine how it was possible to march into a city like that in the thick of battle.

“But you were already a divisional commander,” she reminded him. “You couldn't carry in the banner yourself . . .”

“That's nonsense!” Fyodor Fyodorovich protested passionately. “You can't even imagine the kind of man I was then. Young . . . Well, how young was I? When the war ended, I was thirty-six and I already commanded a division—the men used to call me Colonel Dad. But I was hotheaded, ai-ai-ai. Always trying to get out there in front. As for the standard . . . Of course . . . One day the standard-bearer was wounded in battle and he began to fall. And I thought: If he drops the standard, how's that going to affect the men? And then, you understand,” he said, getting worked up again and starting to twitch, “I leapt to the front, grabbed up the standard and . . .” And he began describing to her a scene very similar to something Aglaya had seen very recently in some movie or other.

Aglaya looked at the clock. It was about midnight. She got up: “Time for me to be going.”

“Wait.” Burdalakov stopped her.

She gave him an inquiring look.

“I forgot to show you something,” said Burdalakov, and he took a long object out of the drawer of the writing desk. It proved to be a dagger in a silver sheath. “Look. My front-line friend General Shaliko Kurashvili gave me that in Samtredia. Made in the early nineteenth century and presented to General Alexei Petrovich Yermolov. You remember, the one who conquered the Caucasus?”

The dagger was straight, with a groove along its center and a gold handle that terminated in a tiger's head with ruby eyes, and running along the blade was a nielloed inscription in Russian which Aglaya could just make out without her glasses if she screwed up her eyes.

KILLER OF ENEMIES' FRIENDS' SAVIOR, she read out in a loud voice, and looked at the general. “What does that mean?”

“I've been trying to think,” said Fyodor Fyodorovich with a shrug, “but I can't understand it. And Shaliko doesn't know. It's a mystery, that's all there is to it. So I'll see you by the entrance as usual tomorrow morning?”

“All right,” said Aglaya, feeling slightly disappointed. Fyodor Fyodorovich saw her to her door.