Good People (30 page)

His companion reprimanded him. ‘Comrade Stalin is busy with the war in Europe now. We're expected to solve these problems for ourselves.'

The first doctor coughed. ‘Perhaps you're right.'

She turned around to them. ‘Maybe you'd better shut up.'

They stared at her. Perhaps they guessed where Maxim worked, or her tone indicated her status. People learned to identify NKVD in all sorts of ways, some of which, like a certain distance between the lips and the eyes, were entirely imaginary. Her temples throbbed; too many troubles were crammed into the train: the hungry girls, the faulty medical equipment, flakes of the
pirozhki
on Maxim's moustache. She closed her eyes and pressed her ear to the pullover, and Brodsky's caressing voice cradled her together with the rocking coach: ‘In times of distress, innocent people turn to their friends for help, but smart people, who understand a thing or two about life in this country, turn to the kingdom of sleep, where their secrets are safe.'

…

Every morning her husband rose early, thrust the axe into his belt and joined the men from the dachas on the hillside; they planted lemon trees, chopped wood for heating and weeded the gardens.

‘In this season, there aren't too many high-profile people on holiday in Sochi. It's a bit cold,' Styopa said with a wink when he told her about the vacation. ‘So I could get one of the best dachas for you. You don't
want to know who lives in them during the summer, names everyone knows.'

‘Styopa, I just want to get back to work,' she had replied. ‘I need you to make me laugh.'

‘When you come back, I'll make you laugh as much as you like,' Styopa had answered. ‘Would you rather go to the healing waters of Borjomi? Anything is possible. Just say the word.'

‘Dear Styopa, your concern truly warms my heart.' She had practised the line. ‘But I need the routine of work. I believe that's what's best for me.'

‘You'll come back, my dear. After all, without you we're done for.'

He had been adamant about the need for a holiday. He was as cheerful as ever but he looked at her forensically, doubtless seeking evidence for the rumour Reznikov had circulated, that she had gone mad after the incident with Morozovsky. ‘But first of all, you have to get your strength back. Your husband will join you. We decided long ago that he needs a vacation. We must take very good care of such a dedicated man.'

After Maxim went off with his axe, she would lie in bed for a little while, picking at the tray of little treats he prepared for her every morning, and then she would dress and sit on the balcony that surrounded the wooden building. The house was at the top of a steep hill overlooking the sea; a few smaller dachas were scattered below it. She would sit at a round wicker table with her chin thrust into the fur lapel of her coat (when they reached Sochi she discovered that Maxim hadn't packed a single one of her scarves, but he had somehow squeezed her spring wedding dress into the suitcase) and look across the slope which gave way to a dark green fringe. It was a panorama of enchanting movement: horses and their straight-backed riders galloped on the shore; in the west, bands of hunters with shining rifles belted to their backs strode towards the forest. Small boats bobbed on the waves that turned grey as the hours passed, and on the distant horizon clouds swirled around the jagged, snowy peaks of Krasnaya Polyana, which looked like small human heads. Sometimes, in the afternoon, the sun
would shoot against it and a white gleam, as silver as mercury, would quiver up there. She called it ‘a burning angel dancing on the mountain', and a swift glance was enough to bring a tear.

After lunch she would walk in the garden and sometimes, with her unbandaged hand, she would prune the raspberry bushes alongside the path. Those were the hours when old men dressed in rags and Circassian women in colourful capes could be seen—Podolsky told her that the villagers looked for odds and ends of food here, because in the summer the vacationers lit bonfires and roasted meat, and sometimes scraps were left over.

‘It's not enough that those fools haven't figured out that there are no barbecues in winter and always beg for food,' he said in annoyance, ‘they also whine about all the injustices done to them. It's a good thing that there isn't a political party for every complaint.'

In the evening the world darkened. It was too quiet, aside from the whistling of the wind, as if something terrible was about to happen. Of the two of them, only she understood that quietness, because Maxim was yet to suffer: his father died in bed from heart disease, he visited his mother and sister once a week; he didn't realise that these were luxuries. The previous evening, when sadness and silence overwhelmed them, he suggested that they visit the neighbouring dacha of Semyon Emilyevich to play roulette and cards. In the schoolyard Maxim had been the king of card sharks, and he loved to invent games. With the help of his shining eyes and the odd curse, he would force his friends to play, although they all knew that he would be the only winner. But in recent years he had abandoned his boyhood fondness for gambling.

She declined the invitation, and sternly ignored his expectation that she would let him go without her. She knew he wouldn't dare ask, and swore she wouldn't give her consent. There's no choice, Maxim, she chuckled to herself, that's married life, you wanted to get married, didn't you?

And even more than refusing him, she enjoyed seeing him stifle his request, or, on the other hand, resist his impulse to shake off the woman who had taken over his hours of leisure by saying to her, ‘I'm
playing roulette tonight, and you can do what you want.' Sometimes she thought she was abusing him for no reason: he was devoted to her, bringing a tray to her bed every morning with bread, a hard-boiled egg, jam and tea, quick to respond to her requests, coming up with ideas that might give her pleasure, and yet if every reason for annoying him were a skein of thread, it would be possible to knit pullovers from it for all the Circassians roaming the area.

One evening they were sitting on the balcony, and a ballad by Verstovsky, warbled by a soprano voice, came from Semyon's dacha. Maxim gave an irritable smile and recited gloomily:

Then he delivered a querulous sermon about the Circassians, who blocked the traffic with their lazy wagons, and yesterday annoyed a group of holiday-makers. He talked and talked, just throwing down words, bored, while the enthusiastic shouts of the gamblers in Semyon's dacha grew louder. After they had gone to bed, and were barely asleep, a muffled, sad ballad crawled into their room:

In the morning she told him, ‘Maxim, even if I wanted to join you, I don't have a nice evening dress.'

He looked at her as though wondering whether she wanted him to bring up the idea that would infuriate her. Finally he said, ‘Maybe

you could wear the wedding dress? I packed it.'

She couldn't help admiring her husband, who had clearly identified the unconcealed trap and yet still limped into it. ‘I'll never wear that dress again!' she shouted, but her sympathy for his courage softened her anger.

Then it occurred to her that he hadn't actually sacrificed anything, since he knew that was what was needed to calm her down. She got even angrier: it's all a mess. It's impossible to blame him for something and its opposite! But why was everything her husband did so annoying?

‘Tomorrow I'll go into town and buy you a new dress,' he said.

‘Fine, Maxim.'

At night he desired her but didn't address her body openly; he approached her with childish stratagems. Usually he produced some twisting motion or stretch that pulled her against him, as though by chance, and then he acted as if desire had overcome him, and he was forced to submit to it.

Sasha saw Maxim as the general outline of a body in the dark wooden house. Sometimes a high wall clock emerged from the gloom, with bluish numbers from one to twenty-four in the centre, the kind of clock that Sergei Kirov used to give to outstanding workers: her father had received one of the first models from his hands. The clock became her favourite landmark in the room, and she kept her eyes on it while Maxim positioned her body, which, to her surprise, responded to him. Now she was lying on her belly, rolling onto her back, sitting on his knees, whose bones were so sharp, touching his skin with the fingers of one hand.

In those nights she discovered that her body still craved him.

They would lie zipped together, and her eyes would wander between the clock and the ceiling, from which pointy hooks protruded like sharp blades; she struggled against her imagination, which pictured the hooks coming down and skewering them. He murmured words of love, reminisced about their youth, and a week later she was astonished to realise that he had built a bridge from their school days to their marriage, delicately knitting together the huge rifts. For him
their marriage was the inevitable consummation of youthful love. In their story, at least the one they discussed, no trace remained of that dreadful night when he had stood in her room and told her to be someone else or die. He had taken her from the bed, and, when he understood that she hadn't breathed fresh air for days, he pushed her head out of the window. While she was taking in the night breeze, he told her straight: they had to marry now to pre-empt the NKVD investigation. She listened, torn between knowing she had to stay in Leningrad for the twins and wanting to chase after them, to be swallowed up by some camp and die. She asked whether he believed that their marriage would make any difference; if she was lost there was no reason for him to be lost too.

He had answered sincerely that it was possible; such matters were sometimes decided arbitrarily, but it was the most correct action. In recent years they had arrested husbands and wives, and even the wives of high-ranking people, as in the case of Budyonny, but sometimes they left the little people alone. ‘And in our case,' he said, looking around as if the severity of the punishment that had been inflicted on the occupants of the house had only now become clear, ‘no one is left but you, and maybe they'll be satisfied with that and pardon my wife.'

The next day he told his superior that he intended to get married; now, after the saboteur parents had received their punishment, there was no longer any obstacle to their connection; and Alexandra Andreyevna was prepared to help root out the entire Leningrad Group. In the evening he reported with satisfaction that his superior sounded favourable, but he made it clear that he had to consult with Stepan Kristoforovich Merkalov, the head of the department responsible for investigating the group.

Maxim drank some wine and seemed fortified, and suspicion flashed through Sasha's mind that the question she had asked the day before had been too innocent: he had certainly spoken with his superior before coming to her house, and if he had felt that he couldn't help her he wouldn't have come at all, just as he had disappeared for the last few weeks. She weighed that suspicion against the possibility that she
was doing him an injustice, and decided that she would probably never know the truth.

‘If we marry, will they return the twins to us?'

He had anticipated that question. ‘In 1937 the NKVD issued a secret directive following a decision of the Politburo, that the children of traitors who were not yet fifteen years old would be placed under the authority of the state, and older children would be judged according to the particulars of each case.'

‘But Vlada and Kolya are almost sixteen. They aren't supposed to be placed automatically under the authority of the state.'

‘A few months here or there—in their view, if you're not sixteen, you're fifteen,' he joked. ‘Look,' he added, when he understood the rage that his little witticism had provoked, ‘I'll do whatever I can. You know I always was fond of the skinny one, but the chances are poor. Even the son of a marshal with so much to his credit like Yakir was thrown into jail. I can't remember his name.'

‘Pyotr, maybe.' During her parents' last days at home, she and Vlada had researched all the precedents for their case.

‘Yes, perhaps. A lot of people intervened on his behalf, but nothing helped. It's possible to prevent a decision, but it's very hard to reverse one.'

Colleagues from his department and other senior people had attended their wedding. Maxim assumed that this was evidence that she was safe, at least for the time being. She wore a pink dress with a lace collar, her mother's wedding dress, and her skin crawled the whole time with fear that she would be caught in a hot and blinding spotlight and the whole picture would be revealed to the guests: a little traitor in the dress of a big traitor who had been sentenced to ten years in Kolyma without the right to send or receive letters. Her memory of the wedding was of an endless swirl of movement, where she was continually avoiding guests, picking up snatches of conversation—maybe she'd overhear that final accusation.

Was that her hope? Was she disappointed not to be exposed? It
was stupid of her to burrow into the past to locate the moment when the desire to die had overcome the desire to survive. If she was still here, it was clear which urge had won.

After the wedding, when they were lying in bed drunk, she asked about the twins, and he recited resentfully, ‘Sashinka, people at the highest levels are making inquiries, and I'll let you know as soon as there's any information.'

She lay beside him, and the memory of the twins stung her throat. The clock said 4 a.m.; the commotion in Semyon's dacha had subsided; through the window their yard was already sprinkled with the silver gleam of dew. How had Maxim manoeuvred her into this sweaty lovers' tangle?