Good People (7 page)

Emma rested her elbow on the cover of the black piano. Out of all the men and women who were poets in Leningrad, Emma Feodorovna had chosen Nadyezhda Petrovna to be her satanic double—her close friend and even closer enemy. Nadya always beat Emma to it, making conquests that Emma had merely dreamed about, leaving her only scraps of glory. One of Sasha's clearest childhood memories was a poetry evening at the end of which Emma had emptied a bottle of kerosene on Nadya's red rubber cape after she had declared that Emma's poems put her to sleep standing up, just like the stories of Maximich. The insult of the comparison with Gorky pushed Emma over the edge as, visibly trembling, she stood in front of Nadya, who was leaning on the windowsill.

‘Go ahead,' Nadya said, ‘light a match if you dare, but only if you dare, my dear.'

Osip Levayev looked at their faces as though wondering at their faintness of heart. He turned to Sasha's father and said, ‘Andrei Pavlovich, it's true I missed the previous meeting, but this evening you've invited us to your home again. Perhaps you can explain to us what, in your opinion, we should do? It goes without saying that all of us are asking questions about the arrest. I don't know a thing about it. In the past few months I've hardly seen Nadya at all.'

From her hiding place Sasha surveyed the young man, whose cold expression emphasised the distance that had come between him and Nadya and her close friends. If so, why had he turned up here this evening anyway? Was he the informer? Or maybe he had been going out of his mind with fear at home and wanted to find a way to avoid arrest? This gathering endangered them all, but Nadya's arrest had taken her friends to the brink. Maybe a demonstration of innocence at a meeting that would doubtless be revealed to the NKVD was preferable to staying at home. Osip Borisovich's lips were now dancing in front of Sasha like a pink half-moon. Four years earlier, on her eighteenth birthday, they had kissed at the beach. He had begged her for a whole year not to tell her mother, and took pains to praise all her poems. They weren't especially good, she knew that, and anyway her dream of becoming a poet had recently lost its charm. She might have been enchanted by Nadya's and Emma's poems when she was growing up—but was poetry really how she wanted to spend her life?

Andrei Pavlovich Weissberg, the man now called upon to lead the group, rocked in his chair and gazed out at the sky, over which the early autumn darkness had spread. Cold gusts struck the windowpanes, and they all wrapped themselves in their coats. Her father, too, removed his coat from the back of the chair and put it on like a scolded child. His tormented face told of the horrors he had conjured up in his imagination: his beloved Nadka in jail, dragged out of a narrow cell, where she had been forced to stand up, on her own, for many days, unable to tell day from night, into the interrogation room, where they
sat her down—though sometimes they punished her by making her stand there too—for eight-hour sessions, and then another hour, demanding again and again that she tell the story of her life, name names, confess.

Sasha understood that her father was already mourning for Nadya. In recent years he had grown weaker, as if he no longer believed in anyone's ability to decide his own fate. If it was up to him, he would have already held a memorial ceremony for her.

He had only dragged her to Nadya's house once. She must have been around twelve. The poet was ill. She had been in bed for weeks, and her father went to her tiny, unheated room every day. Sasha felt as if someone was shoving her nose into a bottle of oil. Tangled in her bedding, Nadya whined that her body was betraying her, that two old women and four children were living with her in the apartment and torturing her, that Emma Feodorovna was smearing her with oil as if she were the axle of a wagon.

Her father pulled the blanket off and wiped away her perspiration. Sasha turned around and stared at the wall. Nadya kept complaining: no one came to visit, a person was ill for a few days and everyone had her in the grave already, her back ached from the treachery of her friends. ‘Look at me, girl!' she shouted at Sasha. ‘You're the only one who won't betray me!'

Sasha turned around and watched her father kiss her eyes and forehead, purring endearments. He fed her beef soup from the cafeteria at the institute. Sasha could see how he came to life around this woman. When Nadya became drowsy, her father kissed her hand, pressed it to his heart and consoled her with stories about all the influential people whom her poetry had moved. Soon she would receive a special grant, Brodsky was terribly impressed and was going to write a review.

Now Sasha stretched her legs, which had fallen asleep, and paced her room. She stopped at her desk, and in the dim light from the living room sorted the slips of paper on which she'd written her tasks for the coming week. Everything seemed boring, especially the interview her
friend Zhenya had arranged for a job taking shorthand. Her mother railed at her for never getting through more than a quarter of her tasks. But her mother didn't understand anything. Naturally if she had an interesting job like Brodsky, who wrote about books in the newspaper, or even like Zhenya, who translated articles into English for the foreign news section of
Leningradskaya Pravda
, she would work day and night.

She went back to the door. Silence reigned in the living room. Her father sat bent over, wearily drumming on his knees. There would be no salvation from Andrei Weissberg. Now everyone turned to Vladimir Morozovsky, who had not said a word. Morozovsky worked in a car repair shop, mainly for high-ranking officials. He loved poetry, and loved talking about poetry with poets even more, no matter if he bored them. ‘No, no one said anything. I asked a friend who is a member of certain institutions, and whose circle includes men whose influence is not to be sneezed at—'

‘And what did he say?' Emma broke in.

‘He said that there are no rumours, and that's usually the worst sign.' Morozovsky shrugged and spread his huge hands. People joked that in a single fist he could hold Weissberg's and Brodsky's heads and all the women who had slept with them.

‘There was a reason to arrest Nadya,' Levayev said, adopting a serious expression. ‘More and more sabotage networks are being discovered. Loyal citizens must remain vigilant and help the authorities uncover the truth.'

‘You, Andreyusha,' Emma said to Sasha's father with a mischievous look, ‘were the closest of all to Nadka, even at night. You must have some idea why she was arrested.'

No one dared look at Valeria as she sat by her husband, massaging his hand—except for Emma, of course.

‘Emma Feodorovna, Andreyusha already said that he doesn't know anything. He's busy all day at the institute,' Valeria scolded her. ‘I suggest that we turn to Comrade Stepan Kristoforovich Merkalov, the new head of the department…'

‘No, we need someone in the literary world,' Emma objected.
‘Brodsky can write to his beloved teacher, Tolstoy!' She made sure everyone had caught her mocking tone. ‘He must appreciate our friend's critical perspective.'

Emma really had a noble soul, Sasha decided, since her life would be easier in a world without Nadya—but she was prepared to take a risk to try to save her.

Brodsky scratched his reddish beard and appraised his friends with his bright, grave eyes. Now Sasha saw her mother glare at Brodsky. Her imagination shaved his beard off and examined his naked face: was he the informer? Maybe all these fears were exaggerated, unnerving them, kindling constant suspicion? Maybe there were no informers here at all?

‘It would do no good to speak to Tolstoy,' Brodsky's silky voice crooned. ‘He read Nadya's long poem where she says what she thinks about his writing: “Footprints in the snow are better literature.” Not long ago we asked him to give her coupons for a sweater and a coat. He authorised the sweater, but refused the coat.'

‘Why did she have to ask? Isn't she getting a pension?' inquired Morozovsky.

‘They replaced it years ago with old-age benefits,' Brodsky chuckled. ‘Barely a hundred rubles. Her father told me they wrote to her: “You are receiving an allowance by virtue of your devoted work on behalf of Russian literature, and because it is not possible to use your services at the present time.” And someone from the Writers' Association told her, “It would be better if you stopped writing poetry.”'

An image glimmered on the edge of Sasha's consciousness: they were sitting in Varlamov's garden, and the old poet was giving one of his speeches. Nadya hugged her. ‘Girl, if you want to be a poet,' she said, ‘just remember one thing—true poets resist the enchanting spells of nostalgia.'

She struggled to drive away the memory. Her mother was placing a platter of poppy-seed cookies on the round wicker table. Beneath it she could see the twins' tattered slippers. ‘I remembered something,' said Osip Borisovich. ‘It would be wrong not to mention it: wasn't there
some kind of connection between Nadka and Bliumkin in the twenties? Could that be behind the accusations against her?'

Stillness fell in the living room, interrupted by the clink of Brodsky's fork.

Her father shut his eyes as he always did when he knew he was hearing something because of cruel fate.

‘Bliumkin! A despicable human being!' Varlamov shouted at the wall. ‘A murderer who betrayed the proletariat, and had the effrontery to start scheming with the Trotskyites. His execution was a happy day for the party!'

Sasha stifled a laugh. This habit of talking to the wall was new. No one doubted that the telephones were tapped, and now people had started asking: were they installing microphones in the walls too? If so, in which ones? Many believed that it couldn't be done, or they were listening to more important targets. Nevertheless, niggling doubts remained: perhaps some things were best said directly to the wall.

‘Bliumkin was a filthy dog, an enemy of the people. Death was too good for him,' Brodsky proclaimed to the faded wallpaper.

‘They say that the traitor Bliumkin used to give women pleasure until they went mad,' commented Emma Fiodrovna, ‘almost like our friend Brodsky.'

Why did Osip bring up Bliumkin? He wouldn't have dared, Sasha concluded, unless he received an order from someone. The NKVD? No, that was too simple and suspicious a move.

‘Osip Borisovich, we admire your sincerity, but there's no point throwing rumours around with no evidence to support them,' said Valeria. She brought her hand up to her face and divided it horizontally at eye level, then plucked at the air with her fingers until her hand moved towards the sky, as though giving a sign that her words had evaporated. Sasha was charmed by the perfection of this gesture every time her mother made it. The guests, still traumatised by the very mention of Bliumkin's name, did not take in the way she softened her reprimand. ‘You're still young, and you don't know that this isn't our way of behaving.'

Sasha watched: her father now picked up on the caressing tone. He glanced at his wife in surprise. She was looking straight ahead. Her body relaxed, and her chin sank.

Sasha turned away, finding it hard to breathe. It was unbearable to watch this miserable woman not daring to defend her dignity. All of her friends knew about her husband's infidelity. Now she could see the whole evening from her mother's point of view. Valeria had been enlisted in the effort to help her husband's lover, and the sight was so saddening that Sasha knew she had to kill her compassion dead, so it could never emerge again, making her incapable of venting her anger against her father.

‘Of course. I hope the whole thing is a misunderstanding,' Levayev sputtered. Valeria poured him a healthy shot of vodka, and he sipped it with a faint gurgle of pleasure. ‘But it's impossible to set things right if we don't know the source of the inaccuracy.'

‘What a loss the death of Kirov is,' Konstantin Varlamov lamented. ‘He had a rare talent for stating things accurately.'

‘Perhaps Comrade Varlamov could list his friends for us and ask our advice…' Brodsky chuckled, gaily surveying the shock he caused to everyone who could hardly believe he was crazy enough to invite another litany of names.

‘It's really not necessary!' Osip Borisovich blurted.

‘No need at all,' Emma Feodorovna groaned, glancing in despair at Varlamov, who looked like a statue come to life. ‘A dreadful idea.'

‘It's actually very necessary,' Brodsky declared.

‘It would be too much, and besides, we've talked enough about sad things,' Valeria called out. ‘Emma Feodorovna, how is your new collection of poems coming along?'

‘Please let the esteemed poet Varlamov address his friends to help Nadya,' Brodsky repeated like a stubborn child.

A chill ran down Sasha's back. She thought she understood why he was so amused: Brodsky could think in abstractions and he respected power; he always looked for the principles guiding events, and this was because it was mostly impossible to find out who was responsible
for a certain act or from what building an order had been issued. He was often tormented by the question of who had empowered something to happen, determined its effects and restricted its outcomes; he was always disturbed when lawless voids opened up in his world, the chaos of visible but faceless power. He had dedicated years to deciphering the logic of arrests and betrayals, and had concluded that they had no chance of being saved. Nadya would name names, and they would all be arrested. All he could do now was deride his unhappy friends, who still clung to the hope that it was possible to escape their fate. Sasha no longer dared to look at his pale face, on which an amused grimace was fixed, as if he had no more strength, and had only one last expression left. She shrank back and sat, panting, on her bed.

‘They didn't answer my last letter,' Varlamov said. ‘They're preoccupied by important matters.'

‘Preoccupied! And how could they not be?' Emma interrupted. ‘These days everyone is busy.'