Russian Winter (33 page)

Nina has to wonder. “Do you think there’s something we don’t know?” She says it softly, since she knows what it means to even think it. “Something he was up to?”

“I’m his wife, I would know.”

Nina bristles. Do you know that he was still seeing Vera? she wants to ask. To calm herself she breathes in deeply, and notes again the familiar-smelling air.

Zoya says, “The only thing I might not know is if his family might have somehow…I don’t know them, you see. He says his parents and other relatives are gone now. But maybe they were, you know…part of the class system. Who knows, really? Even if they were, we’re supposed to be free of our fathers’ sins. This is a new world, after all—oh, that’s a good line!” She takes a minute to scribble something onto the paper.

The training studios at the Bolshoi—on exam days, or during auditions. That’s what the smell reminds Nina of. The smell of cold human sweat.

“I assure you,” Zoya reads on, “my husband, like myself, has always lived his life as part of the fight for a great new society. Since we were born we have been taught to be always truthful, always honest and forthright—”

“Excuse me, Citizen, but do you know which line this is?” A woman with only a few teeth is tugging on Nina’s sleeve.

Again Nina’s first thought is that she has been recognized. Even with the kerchief obscuring her face, she and Zoya stand out among the many people in this line, their coats not quite as thin, their shoes not quite as worn.

“Is this the information line, or the parcel delivery line?” The words sound awkward due to the woman’s missing teeth.

“This is for information,” Zoya says briskly, pointing. “You need to go over there.”

“Thank you, Citizen.” The old woman shuffles away—and Nina sees where the backs of her felt boots are worn out.

“Where was I—oh, here. Truthful, always honest and forthright,
always prepared to fight the enemies of socialism. My husband has lived these credos fully and faithfully….” Soon Zoya is listing every major performance of Gersh’s work, every award he has ever won. Probably Nina and Viktor ought to be writing on his behalf, too, though there is always that other worry, that they might themselves be punished “for loss of political vigilance.” And meanwhile, people like that old woman with the worn boots…Who is there to write a letter for her?

Zoya’s letter is long. Not till the end of the third page does she say, “I thank you, Comrade Stalin, for your attention to this most urgent matter, and I look forward to continued service as a most devoted and enthusiastic member of our great Party. Always prepared in the struggle for the workers’ cause, et cetera….” Zoya nods to show that she has finished.

“It’s a good letter,” Nina says, wishing she could feel as hopeful as Zoya.

“Well, we’ll see.” Zoya gives a small, tired sigh. “Thank you for waiting here with me. It’s really very kind of you.”

Nina feels a pang of guilt. Because it isn’t kindness, really. She simply wants to be able to tell Vera whatever she can find out. Where Gersh is, or where he is going to be. It astounds her to think that everyone in this line is wondering the same thing, is here because someone they know has been arrested, and that like Zoya they don’t even know where he has been taken. Watching as each person has his or her turn at the information window, Nina can see, easily, which ones have been told their loved one isn’t there anymore. They are the ones who hang their heads, or cry loudly, then go to wait in line at a second window to find out which camp their loved ones have been sent to.

At last it is Zoya’s turn. Yes, he is still here, the woman in the window tells her in an almost cheery voice; she could be a ticket taker at the cinema. “He hasn’t been transferred yet, but he has been sentenced.”

Ten years “with correspondence privileges.” When Nina relays this news to Vera, later that afternoon, Vera says, “Well, I suppose that’s a relief.” Her face is swollen from crying, faint bluish circles around her puffy eyes. “‘Without,’ and you might as well kill yourself.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because then they can just kill you. They can do whatever they want, without anyone really knowing what’s gone on, since you can’t write letters or anything. But if you have correspondence privileges, then other people might have at least some sense of what’s happening to you.”

It still surprises Nina, how Vera hands out this information, as if she has some special source, as if her parents’ experience automatically allowed her this knowledge. Well, probably if Nina’s parents had been sent away, she too would have paid attention to this kind of information. Vera has no problem comprehending things that Nina is only now acknowledging.

“How long, did you say, until they send him away?”

“I’m not sure, but he’ll still be there tomorrow, at least.”

“Then I can bring him a package.” Vera goes to the little table beside her bed and opens a large Palekh box, takes out some money, and finds a clean handkerchief to wrap it in. “I should try to find him some socks and underwear, too. And some onions—for scurvy.” As businesslike as Zoya.

It takes two days for Vera to leave her package for Gersh. “You should see the employees at the drop-off,” she tells Nina, when she has finally succeeded. “They open up your parcel and take everything out and hold each thing up to the lights like scientific specimens. They tested the onions as if they were buying them at the market.” She laughs, a sad, weak sound. “I’d tucked a letter inside one of the socks, and the woman found it. She started yelling at me, ‘What in the world do you think you’re doing?’ So loudly the people behind
me were staring. I said I just wanted to make sure the letter didn’t fall out. She said, ‘Now we’ll have to read it, make sure there’s nothing in it….’ Oh, Nina, I worry what they’re doing to him in there.”

“What did the letter say?”

“Oh, just that I loved him and that we were working on securing his release, that surely someone can pull some strings.” She looks away, and Nina wonders if Vera really believes that.

H
E TOLD HER
to come to his office after work tomorrow. That way, he considered, they could speak without Drew having to worry about her supervisor, and yet they would not be alone, would have to behave professionally, no risk of Grigori embarrassing himself again. The Asian Languages division was holding a meeting at five, and the place would be teeming with professors.

All the same, Grigori kept worrying that he had somehow dreamed Drew’s phone call. A personal request, nothing to do with the auction. He supposed it was an olive branch, simply to show that she did not intend to have him arrested. Unless this was all some terrible trap, to catch him out, make him look like a fool for having felt, in that awful moment, that there was some connection between himself—dour Grigori—and this bright-faced young woman.

She showed up in a coat of pale yellow that seemed to herald spring. Before he could thank her for coming over, she said, breathlessly, “I think I see what you mean. About the letter and the poem. The descriptions of the amber and of the forest.”

“You see it, too, then?”

“They match up. Well, in a way. The image is so similar.”

“I think you’ll, well, here”—he took up the photographs—“hopefully it will all make sense.” He might have shown her the hospital certificate, too, but it was in the safe. And yet, to tell her
that part, about his parents, about his mother bringing him the vinyl purse…Surely it was too much. Grigori felt, already, his courage waning.

“May I see the photos?”

A mute panic spread through him: that showing them to her—exposing Nina Revskaya, in a way—was an act of meanness, done behind Nina Revskaya’s back. No, he quickly decided; as long as Nina Revskaya continued to insist that none of it was hers, then all that these documents could ever be, really, were relics.

Drew held the photographs with slim, neat fingers. Both pictures were slightly worn, lines near the corners where they must have been folded by accident. But the images themselves were very clear. The first showed two couples seated on a settee, looking relaxed and happy. “This is her, isn’t it?” Drew said. “She’s so elegant. In a way, her face hasn’t changed much. It’s just…harder. Older.” After a moment, Drew asked, “Is this her husband?”

“Yes, that’s Viktor Elsin.” Looking virile and jolly, he sat at one end of the settee with a cigarette held nonchalantly in his fingers. Next to him Nina Revskaya looked almost prim, her shoulders and neck straight, her smile small and slightly impish.

On her other side was the man Grigori had eventually identified as Aron Gershtein. His slightly crossed right eye had helped with that. “This was his friend, an accomplished composer.” Looking up everything he could about Viktor Elsin back in college that first year, Grigori had learned that some thought Elsin’s arrest might have been related to that of Gershtein. Grigori had therefore read up on Gershtein too, and subsequently recognized him as the other man in this photograph. “He survived years of persecution.”

“What was he persecuted for?”

“Oh, it was simple anti-Semitism. After the formation of Israel in ’48, Stalin decided he had a new enemy. He was old and becoming
more paranoid, and of course Israel was allied with the United States. So he revved up the anti-Jewish campaign. As a result, people like this man here suffered.”

In the photograph he was laughing. Leaning into him was a beautiful woman with big dark eyes. It had taken Grigori longer to figure out who she was. Only after much research had he learned that Gershtein had married an active Party member, an employee of the Moscow Education Department.

Even as he explained this to Drew, she kept her eyes on the photograph. “It’s amazing,” she said. “It’s as if they still exist. There’s so much life in this picture. You can see it in their faces. They’re in love.” Her expression was sad and serious.

“Both of those men ended up incarcerated, probably not long after this photo was taken. A year or two at most.” Saying so, Grigori felt like a killjoy.

“And Nina Revskaya defected.” Drew nodded gravely. “And this woman”—she pointed to the woman next to Gershtein—“do you know what happened to her?”

“No, but she probably would have become, by association, an enemy of the state.”

Drew made a little sighing sound. She seemed to be having trouble looking away. “She’s so beautiful.”

Before he could stop himself, Grigori offered that he found the woman looked a bit like Drew.

“That’s quite a compliment!”

Something inside his chest did a small flip, at the delight in her eyes. For a moment she seemed about to speak—but then she looked to the other photograph. This one had been taken out of doors, in front of what looked to be a dacha. Seated there were Nina Revskaya, Viktor Elsin, and another woman. Nina and Viktor looked much more serious in this one, almost stiff, their eyes tired and gray underneath. But the woman next to them, skinny and long-necked,
had a big bright smile. There had been someone next to her, too, but the way the photograph had been cropped, only the side of his arm and his hand were visible.

“Someone wanted this guy out of the picture,” Drew said. “Who is this woman, do you know?”

“I do not.” He had tried to find out, had looked through numerous photographs associated with Elsin and Revskaya, but none showed any woman resembling that one.

Drew was again examining the photograph. “Do they know what eventually happened to him?”

“According to my research, Elsin was sent to the Vorkuta gulag and died there a few years later. It was surely a miserable existence.”

Drew looked at the photograph for a moment longer before asking the question Grigori had been expecting. “And you have these photographs because of your…family connection?”

Grigori said what he had prepared. “It’s a long story, but, through a series of events, I was given, many years ago, a woman’s pocketbook that contained these photographs as well as the letters I showed you.” He waited a moment before adding, “It also contained the amber pendant.”

“Oh!” And then, “But whose pocketbook—”

“Exactly. I was told it belonged to a dancer. A woman who gave birth to—” But he could not do it, he could not say it. Why not? Just say it, Grigori, tell her what you think. A fool, to think he could just open up like this…“A relative of mine, who was then adopted.” He closed his eyes, furious at himself, at his cowardice. “This relative was told that the dancer, his birth mother, had died.”

Drew’s eyes had opened wide, her mouth opening slightly. “You think…the birth mother—the dancer…” He could almost see her mind working. “That’s why you tried to show them to her. To Nina Revskaya.”

“Tried, yes.”

Drew was still thinking. “And if I showed them to her…”

“Perhaps you might have more luck. But, Drew, that’s not the reason I’m showing them to you. Not to make you do that. Not to make you do anything for me. I hope you understand that. I decided to share them with you because I felt I could tell you. I—I want you to know that I have them, and why I have them.” He was already feeling embarrassed. “I supposed, since you’ve been so involved with the auction, you might be interested.”

A look in her eyes like a question mark. She was still figuring, calculating. Why not just tell her, Grigori, that you’re that child, that boy?

“This auction,” he said, “what started it, I fear, was…” He decided to begin with November, the second anniversary of Christine’s death. But what came out was his grief, how he had loved Christine more than he had understood, that sometimes one forgot what it meant, really, to love, the way the tide of a marriage advances and retreats, and how it was to watch her fade into some other person at the end, still Christine but also someone he did not, could not, quite know. Drew sat still and expressionless as Grigori continued, explained that he had already lost his parents, felt that loss every day, really, and now that Christine was gone realized just how much these things mattered, not just family but love, connections—and that time was short, he had in his possession these belongings, and Nina Revskaya was still alive. “And so I wrote to her. I included in my letter a photograph of the pendant. Because surely it’s one of a kind, surely she would recognize it, no one else could have the same one. If indeed it is part of her set.”