Authors: Robert Littell
Mother Russia hooks her arm through Ludmila Sera-fimovna’s and pulls her into a corner. “I sent off another zinger to Singer today,” she confides in her friend. “My fingers are swollen from typing the copies-to. I don’t know how long he’ll be able to hold out against me.”
“I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes.” Ludmila Serafimovna laughs. The two women giggle conspiratorially, and Zoya’s friend demands: “What did you hit him with this time?”
“I told him,” Zoya boasts triumphantly, “that Singer ruined sewing.”
“Oh dear,” Ludmila Serafimovna cries excitedly, “that should give him something to think about.”
Ophelia Long Legs switches off the naked overhead bulb just as Pravdin emerges from the kitchen carrying a birthday cake with lighted candles. The guests cluster around Nadezhda, whose eyes sparkle in the candlelight. Ludmila Serafimovna counts the candles. “Twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six—but my dear, you don’t look a day over nineteen!”
“She looks young,” Pravdin mutters, “but she talks old.”
Nadezhda takes a deep breath and blows out all the candles but one. Pravdin moistens his primitively long, broken, badly set thumb and his forefinger and extinguishes the last flame between them.
“Leave everything,” Mother Russia instructs Pravdin. ‘We’ll clean up tomorrow. I enjoyed your friend Friedemann T. What does he do for a living?”
“Anything,” replies Pravdin.
“Not funny,” groans Zoya.
“Not meant to be,” says Pravdin.
“Dear Robespierre, you look like a man of the world.” Zoya drops into a seat across the kitchen table from Pravdin. “I need some advice on how one goes about getting an import license.”
“What don’t we manufacture in this socialist paradise that you need an import license for?” Pravdin wants to know.
“I need a piece for my Singer sewing machine, and the only—”
Nadezhda hands Zoya a note. “Come help with the birthday presents.”
“Think about it,” Zoya orders Pravdin. The two of them follow Nadezhda into her room and watch as she attacks the boxes piled on her bed.
“How nice of the general,” exclaims Mother Russia as Nadezhda peels away paper from a Czechoslovak hair dryer. Ophelia Long Legs has given her a pair of handmade leather sandals; Porfiry Yakolev, the weatherman, an alarm clock that wakes you up with the first notes of the “Internationale”; Yan Makusky, the embalmer, a recording of Uzbeki folk songs. Mother Russia’s gift is wrapped in tissue paper. It is a small icon, faded with age, depicting the Virgin Mary and a very chubby infant Jesus. Nadezhda stares at it for a long moment, turns to Zoya and embraces her.
Pravdin fetches his present from the attic, self-consciously presents it to Nadezhda. “It is the best I could do, little sister, on such short notice he apologizes.
Zoya gasps as Nadezhda removes the paper. “It is something people don’t part with for money,” she says in wonder.
Nadezhda runs her fingertips over Pravdin’s gift as if she is blind and her impressions come from her sense of touch. It is an extremely rare volume of Mandelstam’s collected poems published in 1928 and called simply, Poems. Three-quarters of the way through the book a small dried flower has been placed as a marker. Nadezhda opens to it immediately, reads the poem, hands the book to Zoya, who reads it aloud in a hoarse voice.
…
your spine has been smashed forever
,
My beautiful, pitiful age
,
And with an inane, bewildered grimace
You now look back, both cruel and weak
At the tracks of your own paws
.
Mother Russia looks up. “Tell us how it is you found this book?” she asks in awe.
“You forget, little mother, that I am a hustler,” replies Pravdin.
“You are to hustling,” Zoya dismisses his answer impatiently, “as a sailor who is uncomfortable with the wind is to sailing.”
They are reading some of the other poems, passing the book from one to the other, when Ophelia Long Legs comes bounding up the stairs carrying a small wooden trunk. “The attic before Comrade Eisenhower left this for Nadezhda,” she explains breathlessly. “You remember, the one with the funny blue flower tattooed on her cheek. I asked her to come up but she dropped the trunk into my arms and raced off down the alley. I suppose,” Ophelia says as she hands the
trunk to Nadezhda, “she’s shy is what it is. Say, what a neat record—can I borrow it?” Nadezhda nods and Ophelia hurries off downstairs with the Uzbeki folk songs.
“Here’s a mystery,” Mother Russia announces, obviously relishing the possibility.
Nadezhda bangs on the lock with the flat of her palm but it doesn’t give. Pravdin opens the small blade of his pocket-knife and, kneeling with his eye almost against the wood, inserts it in the lock.
“There are parts of you we haven’t been to yet,” teases Zoya.
“Opening closed doors is my specialty,” Pravdin says, delicately twisting the blade. Suddenly the lock snaps open. He lifts back the lid.
“Papers only,” he says, disappointed.
“Manuscripts,” Mother Russia corrects. She and Nadezhda exchange looks.
Nadezhda takes out the manuscripts, which are bound with faded red ribbons, and spreads them on the bed. The paper, thin and brown and brittle, is cracking with age. The writing has all been done in longhand. Nadezhda gently picks up a page, reads it, bursts into silent sobs.
Her voice reduced to a moan, Zoya quickly crosses herself and says: “Such things are not possible.”
“What’s going on?” cried Pravdin.
By now Mother Russia is reading and weeping too. The sight of the two women with tears streaming down their cheeks demoralizes Pravdin. He charges out of the room, slamming the door behind him, splashes water into the teapot and bangs it down on the stove. An instant later he pushes open the door of Nadezhda’s room again. “No matches,” he barks.
Nadezhda, drying her eyes on her sleeve, comes out and finds them for him. She gestures him aside and prepares
three cups of camomile infusion, which she carries back into her room on a tray. Mother Russia, her eyes dry but red, is avidly skimming manuscript pages.
Pravdin pushes a lump of sugar into his mouth and noisily strains his infusion through it. The act of drinking something warm seems to calm everyone down considerably.
“And so?” Pravdin demands almost belligerently.
“I’ll explain everything,” Zoya promises, turning page after page of manuscript. She shakes her head as if the motion will clear it. “It is a miracle,” she begins, “there is no other way to describe what has happened.”
“You can describe what has happened,” Pravdin remarks impatiently, “by describing what has happened.”
Zoya nods, collects her thoughts. “Where to start? The story begins with a Cossack novelist named Krukov, who served with the Whites during the Civil War. In 1922 I think it was, he was wounded and spent the next fourteen months convalescing on the estate of an uncle. During those fourteen months he was known to have written the rough draft of a long novel on the Civil War called The Deep Don. In 1923 the Red Guards finally brought the Cossacks to heel, arresting and summarily executing the White officers they got their greasy little paws on. Krukov made no attempt to escape; there is a story that he put on his uniform and sword and went out to meet the Reds when they arrived. At any rate, he was interrogated by a young Komsomol activist known only as Filipovich. When members of Krukov’s family attempted to find out what had happened to him, they learned that he had been put up against a wall and shot and that his manuscripts, which he kept in a small wooden trunk, had vanished.”
Pravdin stares at the trunk on the floor.
“Four years later,” Zoya continues, “a talentless short story hack named Ivan Filopovich Frolov—”
“Frolov is the Filopovich of your story!” Pravdin interrupts.
“Frolov published his epic, which he also called
The Deep Don.”
Pravdin starts to interrupt again but she motions him to wait. “Be patient; there is, God help us all, more. The book, a sizzling masterpiece full of passionate characters and breathtaking imagery, won for Frolov instant fame and fortune. But there were whispers of plagiarism, and two or three articles found their way into the newspapers abroad. To clear the air the Bolsheviks organized a commission in 1929 to investigate the situation and report on who was the real author of
The Deep Don
. The committee consisted of four writers and four editors, all members of the Party, to be sure.”
“To be sure,” echoes Pravdin.
“The matter seemed to be open and shut. Frolov was unable to produce his original manuscripts; he claimed they had been lost in the war. His only contact with Cossacks and Cossack life was his relatively short stint as a Red Army interrogator, though he denied ever meeting a Cossack named Krukov; his few short stories that had been published showed no hint of the brilliance or imagery that mark every page of
The Deep Don
. Krukov, on the other hand, had lived among the Cossacks all his life. Unlike Frolov, he had personally taken part in all the battles described in the novel. And his published works made it obvious that he was more likely to be the author of
The Deep Don
than the young pretender Frolov. The only thing against Krukov was that
his
manuscripts had disappeared during the war too—shortly after his interrogation by the Komsomol activist Filopovich! That’s where matters stood when the Commission counted noses. The result surprised no one: seven to one to uphold Frolov’s claim of authorship.”
“And the eighth?” asks Pravdin.
“Ah, the eighth. The eighth member, a gentle editor of
children’s books, was arrested and packed off to the camps, where he eventually gave up, as the saying goes, the ghost. Frolov, damn his soul, went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. And to publish other books. But none of them were ever on the same level as
The Deep Don.”
Sapped of strength, Zoya sinks back into the cushions with a shudder.
“The eighth member of the commission,” Pravdin puts the pieces of the puzzle together, “was your late lamented husband, the one who died in the camps.”
“And Krukov,” Zoya adds, “was Nadezhda’s grandfather.”
Pravdin winces, reaches instinctively for Nadezhda’s hand. She lets him take it, leans down and touches her eyes, which are moist, to the back of his wrist.
Mother Russia snatches a page of manuscript. “Lies are like a sweater with a loose end,” she cries passionately. “Pull and the whole thing unravels.”
“That’s exactly the problem,” agrees Pravdin, leaping from the bed and pacing nervously around the room. “If they let you set this matter straight, there will be other clowns with the same idea.” Pravdin gestures despairingly toward the alley, the city, the country. “The whole thing will unravel!”
“Robespierre is right,” Nadezhda writes quickly, “we must move cautiously.”
“By all means let us move cautiously,” Zoya urges in a whisper, “but let us
move.”
Pravdin, holding his temple to contain the hot flashes of panic, groans. “What is this us? What disaster are you dragging me into?”
Zoya’s eyes glisten with excitement. “Don’t you see it,” she demands. “You were put here to help us. Nadezhda can’t talk. And nobody will listen to me because I’ve been certified. Which leaves you. With these manuscripts you will
show up that usurper Frolov. You will vindicate my husband, God rest his silly soul. You will restore the reputation of Nadezhda’s grandfather.”
Pravdin’s proscenium inclinations get the best of him. “I can see it now,” he cries, shielding his eyes with his hand and squinting into a nonexistent spotlight stabbing down from a nonexistent balcony, “Robespierre Isayevich Pravdin. Hero of Socialist Labor! The Order of the Red Star!! The Order of the Red Banner!!! The Order of Lenin even!!!!”
Zoya flings her thin arms around Pravdin’s neck. “You can’t fail. Remember what Pasternak said about the irresistible power of unarmed truth.” She taps the manuscripts triumphantly. “Voilà—here is unarmed truth!”
“Touch wood,” Pravdin moans, reaching over and rapping his knuckles on the trunk. “How irresistible unarmed anything is is what we’ll see.”
Pravdin, an avenging Isaiah in flowing Bedouin robes, slumps between the humps of an animal he is afraid to identify, levels his cotton-tipped lance and charges the KGB building on Dzerzhinsky Square. Life-sized wind-up soldiers buzz around him like horse flies. Pravdin dips his lance into a bucket full of water lily root infusion and scrawls in invisible ink on the gray wall:
The revolution is incapable of regretting
(I. Stalin: Pravdin has read it and wept). The giant doors of the KGB building yawn open; the Druse, holding a guest list, bars the way. Blood trickles from his severed jugular. “Pravdin, R. I.,” Pravdin calls out, “at your beck and call.” The Druse shakes his head without looking at the list. “There is no Pravdin, R. I.,” he says politely. A bird perches on Pravdin’s head, squawks,
“Rev-lutions are verbose, waak, waak.”
“There is no Trotsky, L. D., either,” insists the Druse. Pravdin flashes the crooked smile that signals he is about to gate-crash,
digs his spurs into the side of the beast he is afraid to identify. It rears back, empties its bowels with a spasmodic heave of its sphincter muscle. The aroma, reminiscent of sour mustard, burns Pravdin’s nostrils, stings his eyes. He panics, fumbles frantically for his gas mask, comes up with only a handful of brittle pages bound in ribbons.
“Aiiiiiiiii!” screams Pravdin, bolting upright in bed, sweaty and weak and wide awake.
“Robespierre Isayevich,” Mother Russia calls up from the bottom of the stairs leading to the attic. “Pssssssst, Robespierre Isayevich, are you, God forbid, ill?”
“Bad dreams,” Pravdin responds, mopping the sweat on his forehead with his pajama sleeve.
“Come down then,” Zoya orders. “I couldn’t unfortunately sleep either. I’m brewing up a pot that will put the both of us out of our misery.”
Pravdin folds an old robe around his bones, slips his feet into his sneakers without bothering to tie the laces, descends to the kitchen. Zoya, wearing an Uzbek robe and her fox furs, places two steaming cups on the table.