Good People (32 page)

The men headed in a group towards the gun rack near the door. Sasha tried to catch Maxim's eye, but he avoided her. Suddenly they were grasping their rifles. Sasha sat down, withdrawn. She heard their footsteps on the stairs and then the pounding of boots on the floor above. The boards creaked, and dust filtered into the room through the cracks.

‘You're lucky. Your husband is the kind of man you read about in books,' said Evelina Sergeyevna. ‘Do you like Marian Anderson? I was a little sorry they stopped broadcasting her on the radio. What about Skomorovsky's jazz? Does he still have fans in Leningrad? He's a genius, I know that.' She leaned an elbow on the table, turned the roulette wheel and complained about the men's impulsiveness. ‘You know that Stalin called him.' She pointed at the roof, which was raining shouts and whistles down on them, and the metallic click of rifles being cocked. ‘Stalin had got a letter from one of the workers in the factory, who said there was no hot water in the showers. Semyon Emilyevich had everything repaired. It was just that no one had complained before, but I'm afraid they won't understand how devoted he is to his work.' Trust glowed in her face.

A mighty clap of thunder was heard from the second floor, followed by another one. The roulette table shook, the chips danced, a cup and a pitcher shattered. Evelina Sergeyevna shrieked and looked wide-eyed at her palm, which had begun to bleed. It's lucky, my dear, you have excellent bandages and antiseptics, Sasha silently mocked.

Why did this Evelina Sergeyevna tell her about her husband? Did she hope that Maxim Podolsky, the man out of books, would help, if she channelled the request through Sasha? Perhaps Evelina Sergeyevna had actually asked for her help? Even outside of the building, where she edited confessions, people regarded her as one of
them
.

‘Take that!' shouted the man she called her husband. ‘Ready, aim, fire…' More shooting thundered above them, and whistles. She felt as if gunpowder had been thrust directly into her nostrils. The whistles melded into a strong, monotonous buzz. Evelina Sergeyevna said something, but Sasha didn't hear her. She looked at the window. She expected to see flashes of fire on the horizon but, except for one weak flare that died far away in the mountains, there was nothing.

…

‘Before us dread, and dread behind us. Sit with me a while, for God's sake, sit with me,'
*
Styopa recited, chuckling, and with the familiar, masterly sweep of his arm he invited her to sit. It required a great effort to approach him, because those lines were enough to make her understand that great trouble had befallen the head of the department. ‘Look how shiny the floor is,' he grumbled, ‘we worked like dogs all morning to wax it.'

‘You did well,' she said, and impishly patted the seat next to him.

Styopa turned his back to the auditorium, which was filling up. A sheet was hung from a side wall:

1940

HUGE ACHIEVEMENTS

HARD WORK

SPLENDID FUTURE

He glanced at her bandage. The message was clear: Do you have to keep on reminding us? She sensed his doubt: maybe he overestimated her; maybe he hadn't understood that she was just a spoiled little girl? And maybe she had come back from holidays as a different person.

‘Did you have a good time?'

‘It was wonderful. We're both grateful. Towards the end I had a
slight infection, and a pesky woman doctor dressed it,' she said, raising her bandaged hand in a light, graceful way that she immediately remembered was inherited: every time her mother wanted to hint that something important had happened and was over and done with, she languidly raised her hand towards her shoulder, while her fingers plucked do-re-mi in the air.

He looked at her fondly. Her answer satisfied him. ‘Hundreds of unedited confessions have piled up here: prisoners swore they murdered people who are well and truly alive, conspired with people who are totally dead, in places that were wiped off the face of the earth in the eighteenth century! All enemy agents owe you a debt of gratitude, Weissberg; thanks to you, we haven't arrested anyone in the last month.' ‘Stepan Kristoforovich, from tomorrow morning on, I'm at your disposal.'

‘You know, Alexandra Andreyevna, guilt is an emotion people like us have to expect. It's a cunning, malicious demon we have to struggle against and expunge from our bodies.'

She didn't understand what he was driving at, and was alarmed. ‘I don't feel guilty. In the past few months I've done everything I could for…'

‘Of course, of course,' he soothed, his thin eyebrows arched, astonished that she hadn't caught his meaning. ‘You did excellent work. Just the opposite, perhaps guilt troubles you because you've saved your people from this group of traitors that conspired against all of us. Sometimes a person is struck by guilt precisely because he did what was required, especially if people who were close to him are involved.'

‘But I did save them,' she said hoarsely. ‘Without me, they would have confessed to worse crimes, and their punishment would have been more severe. You yourself said that, if it weren't for me, Emma Rykova would have been executed, and others, too.'

‘No doubt, Alexandra Andreyevna, you did them a big favour, even if some of those
intelligents
didn't understand that.' He gave her cheek a fatherly pat. ‘But guilt isn't rational, it's a cunning, ugly demon, I say. Sometimes I'm attacked by guilt because after the murder of
Kirov some of my closest friends, including Medved, my commander, were criminally negligent in dealing with the enemy, and I was forced to oppose them. Could I have done anything else? Of course not. Yet in my dreams, they still complain.'

The band started playing jolly music, and the head of the first department came over the loudspeakers. ‘Dear comrades, you are all invited to the dance floor.'

‘My health has improved a lot, and I look forward to getting back to work. But soon I'm going to want to speak with you.' She was surprised by her defiant tone.

Did he understand the equation that had come clear to her on the train? Enough time has passed. Without progress in the matter of the twins, I can't go on working here, and, for my part, you can execute me. She was stricken with anguish: maybe she had wasted too much time, maybe Styopa couldn't help her anymore.

He excused himself and ran after two men with bony necks in mustard-brown suits. The colour reminded her of a sick man's skin. He caught up with them and started chatting, gesturing to the waiters to bring a tray of vodka. Two old women, secretaries from the third department, approached her. She didn't remember their names, but they always treated her with kindness and called her
sirota
, ‘orphan'. One of them once told her in secret that her sister, a former worker in the Kirov factory, admired ‘the great physicist Andrei Pavlovich Weissberg'. They took her hands in theirs. ‘
Sirota
, we're so pleased that they shot the villain who tried to burn you.' They glanced across at Styopa. ‘Look at him, the head of the largest department,' one of them whispered. ‘It's interesting they didn't choose a man for that job who knows how to read. He sits in the projection room every day, a hundred times he's seen
Chapaev
, two hundred times
Alexander Nevsky
, and he already knows how to sing “If War Comes Tomorrow”.'

‘He even asks his prisoners, the poets, to write love letters in his name to the actress Smirnova,' said her friend.

‘Dear comrades,' Sasha reprimanded them fondly, ‘I suggest you stop drinking.'

They exchanged glances.

Styopa came back. The old ladies didn't move. ‘Comrade Weissberg.' He bowed slightly, and made a theatrical gesture. ‘Since your husband is backstage getting ready to play me in the first skit, permit me to play the lucky bastard.'

As she and Styopa turned to leave, she saw that the women were looking at her as though to understand whether their message had got through. They had tried to gossip with her. Had Styopa sent them so she would be seduced into badmouthing him? She linked her fingers with his. Did he suspect her?

They stood on the dance floor. Familiar faces surrounded them: Natalia Prikova in a pretty dress, a bouquet in her hair, blew her a kiss, acquaintances waved, called her name and complimented her, hands stroked her shoulders. Styopa spread out his arms as though to emphasise that she was returning to work under his protective wing.

He wrapped an arm around her waist. The contact was loose and cautious, and hope burned in his eyes. They stood, breathed and didn't move. It seemed to her that he was about to retract his invitation to dance, but at the same time he was urging his body to behave naturally. For the first time she wondered whether the rumour that he was in love with her was groundless. From the start she knew that he delighted in her personality—in particular her scheming side—but tonight his attentions were delicate, even awestruck, and she suspected it was contact he had desired for a long time.

She laughed. ‘Styopa,' she scolded, ‘a dance is a dance.' And with her left hand she tightened his grip.

He woke up, and his familiar pride straightened his back. With a sudden motion he brought her close to him. He was a skilful dancer, even a bit arrogant, and he led her with surprising speed. She felt that he was filling her body with lithe power—the twins always complained, screaming and scratching, that they couldn't move when she wound her legs around their bellies. She acknowledged to herself that Styopa was one of the best dancers she knew. He glided fast, but without haste, which gave his dancing a kind of spin that made everything else fade,
and concentrated you inside your own movement. Nor did he exaggerate like those fops who pulled you around so much that you were afraid of falling over, and he was good at finding a moment to pause, not so long that you were helplessly flung out of the dance, but a pause in which the movement still whirled. No question, Styopa's body was strong. She hoped that her intimations of disaster were wrong.

The music stopped, and everyone clapped.

Outside the windows snowflakes fell onto the Neva and gathered up the city's lights. Snow always sneaks up; you don't look for a moment, and there it is. The high roofs and the spear-towers were already covered with white, to which the light of the streetlamps gave a lacy smoothness.

She returned her gaze to Styopa. He was breathing heavily and sweating; tufts of his thinning hair stuck to his forehead. He kept looking at the row of notables, the functionaries whose faces she recognised from the newspaper, and another dozen or so middle-aged men dressed in faded jackets. They were concentrating on plates laden with quiches, barley and cooked vegetables. Podolsky had told her that for budgetary reasons it had been decided not to serve meat. Behind the men hung a giant picture of Stalin, and on either side of it were smaller pictures, draped in black ribbons, of the two beloved departed ones, Sergei Kirov and Sergo Ordzhonikidze.

‘Comrade Zhidnov won't be coming,' Styopa announced drily. The two old secretaries passed by them again. He greeted them in a cajoling tone that suited him less than his usual teasing. ‘Grumpy geese,' he muttered to Sasha. She looked at the stage, where the orchestra was tuning up. ‘Start playing,' she prayed.

Styopa waved to one of the functionaries, and she stared at him, seeking another hint of weakness. The orchestra began to play again, and Sasha drew close to him.

‘My old age is shaming my youth, Sashinka. One more dance and I'll die. How about a drink?'

‘Good idea, my ageing commander.'

They walked over to the bar. How could she have been so stupid,
after her first certainty, to be seduced into some illusory hope—the hope, by the way, that always throbbed in all the weak people she investigated—that everything was all right? Even when it was clear that the game was up, and there was no chance of evading punishment, their miserable souls groped for some sign of redemption. At first these quests were heartwrenching, but after witnessing so many she only felt demoralised. Why would they in particular be saved? Because everyone believed he was special somehow, that the story of his life was different? Almost everyone, whether guilty or not, clung to this illusion: whoever understood every aspect of their lives would also understand how deep their tragedy was. Most people believed there was an eye somewhere, expert in the hidden recesses of the human heart, that peered into the caverns of their soul and made them, in particular, gleam among the dusty masses. Those in lofty positions knew they still had plans, were loved, could be useful. None of them, not even Brodsky, understood how insignificant he was, fluttering in the wind. His degree of guilt or remorse made no difference at all, and they wouldn't even discuss his case, because his face had already blended in with the multitude; how could he be found now?

The room was darkened, and then the stage was spotlit. Maxim Podolsky stood there with a red face, lightly made up, wearing a black wig and a tight suit, upholstered with a pillow. He staggered like a drunk.

‘Dear comrades, good evening. As head of the second department, I am forced to admit that I find nothing more disgusting than books and art. People write and paint and take on all sorts of spiritual endeavours, aspire to greatness, dream about Pushkin and Lermontov, and meantime lots of work piles up on my desk. Friends, we must beat our breasts!' He had begun to shout. ‘Graphomania is a dreadful Russian disease! Is it easy to obtain pencil and paper? Certainly. Is it easy to be an author? A cinch. A poet? A breeze. A man writes:

And then he complains that he's being deprived, that jealous poets are plotting to get rid of him, and he demands money and a holiday house for the whole summer.'

Two women and two men in prison uniform, shackled, crawled to centre stage.