The Russian Affair Part 26

"I want my car," he told his old friend.

"Some other time, my dear Antip Iosifovich," the doctor said. "You can go for a drive some other time. Not today."

"On the contrary," the Colonel said with a smile. "Some other time, you'll keep me here, maybe forever, if it comes to that, because I surely can't take many more attacks like this last one. But today, my friend, even with the best will in the world, I can't stay."

"And where do you want to go, Antip?" the doctor asked, looking at him earnestly.

"What's today?" Kamarovsky thrust his hands behind his back, trying to reach the strings of his hospital gown.

"Wait, I'll help you. Today's Tuesday."

"If today's Tuesday ..." Unceremoniously, the Colonel allowed his friend to undress him and watched as the nurse, at Shchedrin's behest, fetched the green suit from the closet. "If it's Tuesday, I don't need a car, I need a helicopter. I have to get to Riga as quickly as possible."

"Ah, Antip Iosifovich, that's not good for you." The doctor put together the necessary medications for his friend and in the end gave him back his spectacles.

As they approached Novosokolniki, the darkness became definitive. Anna couldn't have said whether the incessant rolling and thumping and rumbling was caused by the road or by the throbbing pressure in her head. The distance they'd come seemed immeasurable, the distance yet to go endless. She stopped looking at the odometer; it was too disappointing to see how slowly they were approaching their goal. Stupid fantasies fluttered through her brain, probably because of an offhand remark Anton had made. As they were leaving the metropolis behind, he'd called the provinces west of Moscow "the Land of the Old Believers" and told her that the people here made no distinction between life and death and would secretly keep their dead loved ones in their homes.

In the smoke from his cigarettes, with visibility limited to the small stretch of road directly in front of the headlights, Anna pa.s.sed into a kind of comatose state, swinging between waking, dozing, sleeping, and reviving. A long, interminable sleep was something devoutly to be wished, a sleep between this world and the next, and so it didn't seem particularly surprising when she recognized Alexey in the darkness, lying there in state. The wolf's eyes were closed, but his ears were p.r.i.c.ked up, as if he could hear, even in death, what was going on around him. A veiled woman, the widow, stepped to the bier; Anna pictured Medea, stony-faced, under the veil. At the head of the casket stood Colonel Kamarovsky, not in a dark green suit, but in the sumptuous regalia of a metropolitan, black and gold, with which his steel-rimmed spectacles seemed out of place. In the next moment, the nameless place turned into Anna's own sleeping alcove, but bigger, as though it were a deep, deep cave in which the wolf, an old hero in fabulous leather clothing, lay dead. It was obvious to her that traitors had a.s.sa.s.sinated him, but that he could still escape his end if only someone would bring him the water of life. In these familiar surroundings, Anna looked for herself in vain, but there was the television set, and here was Viktor Ipalyevich, bent over his notebooks. The metropolitan said a prayer and recalled the hero's accomplishments in the service of science. When Anna tried to take a better look, she realized that it wasn't Medea who was wearing the veil, it was she. How amazing, to be the old wolf's widow, and yet it was only logical, because only a young person with a fighting spirit could give him the water of life. Anna was alert, excited, and happy until she suddenly noticed that Anton, without warning, was turning off the M9.

"Where are you going?" she asked from under the veil.

"Those two are a little too inconspicuous for my taste," he said, leaning into the steering wheel and holding on. The turnoff road was haphazardly paved, and the Zhiguli skidded uncomfortably.

"Who?" Anna asked, wide awake.

"Two Volgas, for the last six miles." He looked in the rearview mirror and nodded. "Just as I thought."

Anna, too, could see two pairs of headlights follow them onto the side road. "Now what do we do? Should we talk to them?"

"That would take time." He stepped on the gas. For the time being, the headlights disappeared behind a curve in the road. "We can talk later."

"If they're already following us here, then they're surely waiting for us at the border!" Anna said, her voice growing hysterical and her breath short.

Without answering, Anton drove still faster, jerking the car from one side of the road to the other and avoiding the worst holes.

"You'll never shake them off!"

"In love and on the run, you need two ways out," Anton said. There was no trace of nervousness in his deep ba.s.s. He forced the car along so fast that Anna could do little but hold on tight. The Zhiguli bounded over b.u.mps, slid sideways, and lurched dangerously, but it always righted itself and found the middle of the road again. The trees became shapes flas.h.i.+ng past them. Anton maintained one hand on the gears.h.i.+ft, kept the engine turning at its top rotation speed, and reacted to curves and rising ground before Anna became aware of them.

"There." He took one hand off the steering wheel and pointed at the forest. "We're driving parallel to the railroad. A few minutes through the woods, and you'll reach the tracks."

She was listening to him breathlessly. "Walk along the tracks, and after a few miles, you should see the town of Maevo. Do you have money?"

She reached into her bag. "And where are we going to meet?"

"We won't meet again." Anton drove around a pothole. "The train will be safer and more comfortable."

He braked hard, and the car came to a lunging stop close to the edge of the forest. "We're about an hour ahead of the night train."

While he looked in the rearview mirror, Anna opened the door. "Just a moment, Comrade," Anton said. "How do you expect to find Alexey Maximovich?"

The pursuing headlights flashed above the top of the hill behind them. In the seconds that remained, Anton gave Anna the name of a hotel. Then he closed the pa.s.senger's door and drove off, without a word of encouragement or farewell.

Anna stood at the side of the road, facing the woods. Then, not looking back, she began to put one foot in front of the other, stepped among the trees, and fell, somehow ducking as she did so. Before long, the lights were there, the noise of the engine even with her, then already past. She raised her head, turned, and saw the brake lights flicker, go out, and flash again before disappearing into the terrain. Almost as if lost in thought, she faced forward again. The forest looked so thick that there seemed to be no way through it.

THIRTY-SIX.

Rosa's apartment wasn't very nicely furnished. She could have afforded good furniture, and she even knew the channels through which it could be procured, but she had no appreciation for it. A room and a half in the Arbat district, overpriced, viewless, and ugly to boot-that was Rosa's residence. The bedclothes were seldom changed and the table was wobbly, with its veneer lifting up around the edges. She had no carpet-the floor covering was made of some synthetic fiber-and a single picture hung on the wall. The sofa served as a clothes closet. Thick dust covered the stove; Rosa didn't like to cook and had never learned. A jar of prunes was in the sink, but she couldn't remember why she'd bought it. On a shelf stood a few books, including a much-talked-about novel that she'd placed there, ready to be read, but it remained unopened. She came home only to watch television and sleep; if she had to attend to something important, she did so from her office at the newspaper, and she never had guests. When colleagues expressed interest in Rosa's private life, she fobbed off their questions with insinuations. She was indifferent to people. Women didn't interest her, because most of them thought of nothing but getting married and starting a family, and they asked no more of life than to wallow at home. Rosa hated men; she found it absurdly easy to see through the swaggering way they marked their territory. Russian men were ugly and inclined to corpulence, with fat thighs and unclean skin. They smelled so bad it could make you sick. There was a time when Rosa thought she'd like slender men with dark hair; a week in Rome had cured her of such romanticism. The men there, more agile than Russians, behaved like street mongrels, panted and howled after Rosa, made lewd movements, and didn't give up even after being whacked on the nose. She despised good-looking men still more than those whose crudity and tactlessness made them loathsome right from the start. Men had always been blinded by Rosa's beauty; when she was younger, the degrees of male primitiveness had amused her; these days, she considered her condescension justified. A dark line under the eyes, and already men's heads turned in her direction; some shadow on the lids, a red mouth, and entire packs would change direction, cross the street, and follow her like children behind an organ-grinder. If in addition her dress was stretched tight over her bottom, if high heels presented her bosom and backside in their best light, men could no longer be differentiated from beasts. In her early twenties, Rosa had thought she could grow accustomed to being touched by animals. Her work and her curiosity about life had led her to disrobe in front of them and spend naked hours with them. As the years pa.s.sed, however, her revulsion hadn't diminished; on the contrary, it had grown with every guy.

Simultaneously with this growing awareness, the most abstract thing in the world had become, for the Khleb, the most important: She loved money, in whatever form it appeared. She liked banknotes in packets and preferred newly printed bills to used ones, and there were evenings when she would sit happily for hours in her ugly apartment and count her a.s.sets. Since the possibility of a sudden trip abroad could not be disregarded, Rosa had converted her "savings" partly into various foreign currencies but mostly into gold leaf. She arranged it in clear plastic folders, touched it for its color, and even laid the cool metal on her skin. Rosa undressed for gold and covered herself with thin sheets of it. Not only for lascivious reasons, but also for practical ones; should the day come when she would have to take flight, gold leaf could be hidden everywhere on her body, and who, Rosa asked herself, would dare approach so close as to discover her riches?

Tonight the desire had come over her, and she'd taken out all her treasure. The artistically printed paper money lay on the table. She'd set aside the rubles; only foreign currency counted. She placed pound notes next to Swedish kronor because of their similar dimensions. Rosa found German money cool, even repellent in its presentation; she didn't like those cold-eyed faces. Dollars were ugly money, as lacking in interest and culture as the people that issued them. One good thing about dollars, however, was their uniform color. Rosa played with the green notes, smiled at the stupid heads printed on them, switched to the pounds, and ran her fingers over the British queen's crown. She went to the sofa, stretched out on it, and opened a folder. She'd turned the heat up high, so even though she was completely naked, the temperature was comfortable. Delaying gratification, she thrust her hand into the folder and fingered her gold until she could stand it no longer, removed the first leaflet, and wrapped it around one calf. At first, she savored the coolness of the little sheets, but then she began to apply them more quickly. She wanted to transform herself into a golden mummy and rejoiced in the reflection of the gold every time her breast heaved.

As she stroked her throat with a golden leaf and laid it across her Adam's apple, somebody rang her doorbell. She could feel the big vein pulsing-this was no ordinary visit. Since she lived on the fifth floor, she should have been able to hear footsteps on the stairs long before the doorbell rang, but whoever was outside had come silently. Because of her training and her familiarity with the way those people worked, Rosa knew what was happening. There must have been some twist she'd overlooked. She should have followed her first impulse, collected her gold and her money, and left the country. The decisive time had come, and she'd missed it. A long time before, she'd seen this moment in a dream: She was standing on a scaffold, and Kamarovsky looked up at her and told her he always won the game. Then he gave the signal, the trapdoor opened, and Rosa plunged through it and fell until the rope stiffened and her neck broke with a snap. Swaying in the wind, she watched the Colonel leave the place she recognized as the rear courtyard of the Lubyanka, where obstinate remnants of snow remained, even in spring. Sometimes, even as a dreadful accident is happening, one thinks it unreal or believes it can still be averted, and so Rosa remained on the sofa, completely covered with gold. The interval between the first and second ringing of the doorbell was incredibly long. Rosa was familiar with this technique, too: They didn't want to strike terror into the delinquent's heart prematurely; he should open the door without suspicion. She let the second ring fade away and forbade herself to hope that the visitors outside would simply leave.

Rosa raised her head. After all, everything was done; she'd known more of life than most people do. She'd been honored, feted, admired, she'd seen the world outside socialism, felt the frisson of evil, performed the reprehensible with a cool hand. She no longer expected anything new; from now on, life would repeat itself. Rosa stood up. Sweat and surface tension kept most of the leaves clinging to her; she stepped to the window and stood there like a golden statue. From outside the door, she heard the inconspicuous rustling with which her colleagues were searching for the right tool. They had to hurry. Soundlessly, Rosa opened one side of the cas.e.m.e.nt window and, as she did so, saw her arm. Did she want to land on the street like a gold angel or strip off the gold leaf first? Why should she allow her stupid colleagues to enrich themselves with her savings? It would be better to let the people down on the ground find her as she was; they'd struggle with their scruples at first, but in the end they'd help themselves from her b.l.o.o.d.y corpse. She smiled, grabbed the window frame, heaved herself up with one foot on the radiator, and watched as several golden leaves fluttered away into the night.

With a sudden jolt, the apartment door gave way. Three men in uninspired raincoats entered the room and looked around. The sight of the money on the table held their eyes for an instant, but not long enough for Rosa to clear the windowsill. The first man caught her by the leg, the second sprang to his aid, and together they dragged her, naked, back into the room. While the men gazed at her in amazement, while the abhorrence she felt for them set in like a reflex, her reason told her that a period of unspeakable suffering lay before her.

She pointed to the money. "And what if I propose that you help yourselves?" she asked, making a pathetic effort.

"We'll do that one way or another, Comrade." The man grinned and opened his raincoat.

THIRTY-SEVEN.

Thicket and underbrush, pitch-black night. Had Anna considered that she was not only subjecting herself to incredible unpleasantness but at the same time taking part in something that would be cla.s.sed as subversion, her impulse to turn around and go back to Moscow as quickly as possible would have looked like the only rational response. But in that night-shrouded no-man's-land, whipped by tree branches, frightened by animal sounds, with no guide to orientation other than Anton's injunction to find the tracks of the Baltic Railroad, Anna stumbled onward, come what might. A peculiar magnetic force had taken possession of her, pulling her along, compelling her to keep advancing on the impa.s.sable path whose goal was named Alexey. The stronger the doubts that plagued her and the greater her fear not only of doing the wrong thing but also, and more simply, of heading in the wrong direction, the more resolutely Anna struggled on. In all the months they'd been together, she'd gone to Alexey dozens of times, but never with such commitment, never with the feeling that she was going not the right but the only way. In many spots, the ground, thawed by the spring sun, had turned into a swamp; she sank in it up to her calves and consequently did her best to give the lowest terrain a wide berth. The time her walk was taking seemed interminable. Mustn't the train have pa.s.sed already? But Anna hiked on and on, until at last she tripped over an obstacle and fell flat. It was the aforesaid tracks, and the tree above her was no tree, but a power pole. Worn out and b.l.o.o.d.y-palmed, she started walking west on the cross ties.

Sooner than expected, lights came into sight, silhouettes darker than the sky appeared, sounds reached her ears, and more incredulous than relieved, she reached the little town of Maevo. She was able to purchase a train ticket without standing in the usual line, and the cas.h.i.+er had kindly informed her that the train would arrive on time, that is, with the usual delay. While she was asking for information about the formalities at the Latvian border, she heard the locomotive pulling into the station, and she was directed to join the little group of night travelers and board the train. There were amazingly few pa.s.sengers in the carriage; Anna heard someone remark that trains headed in the opposite direction were always full. She fell exhausted into a seat, listened for a while to her breathing as it slowed down, and soon dozed off. Her nap seemed to have lasted only a few minutes, because when she started awake, they were arriving in Isakovo, an hour and a half from the border.

A large family of Latvians, returning home from visiting relatives and laden with leftovers, boarded the train. They spread themselves out near Anna and reveled in their memories of the festive hours they'd spent. Anna thought about why her family had always been so small. The war had carried off her paternal grandparents. Her mother's parents had moved away from Moscow, and by the time Anna was born, both of them were dead. Viktor Ipalyevich had no siblings, and Dora, too, had been an only child. Petya, Father, and I, that's the yield of the Tsazukhin family, Anna thought. And then there was Leonid. She wondered why she'd never wanted a second child. A job like hers was sought after because it paid well, and until such time as Leonid would attain a higher rank and more pay, income had taken precedence over her desire for more children. So now he was a captain-and he lived in Yakutsk. She realized that of all the questions currently pressing in upon her, the one about whether or not to have another child was probably in last place. And yet, the unity displayed by the Latvian family over there awakened a longing in her. How confident those people were, how protected they felt in the cozy bosom of their family.

Anna tried to s.n.a.t.c.h an hour's sleep before reaching the border; according to the schedule, the train was due to roll into Riga around dawn. She took off her shoes and made herself comfortable, taking up two seats, but she couldn't manage anything deeper than a light doze. She saw the signs for Dmitrovo glide past-at this time of night, there were no pa.s.sengers either boarding or leaving the train. The conductor came through the car for the second time. Although he'd already taken Anna's ticket, he stopped in the aisle and stared down at her as she lay curled up on the seats. She pretended to be asleep.

At Zaistino, border officials got on the train, two in police uniforms and one in civilian clothes. Anna sat up properly, rubbed her bleary eyes, and got her ident.i.ty papers ready. She observed the plainclothes official; the man was obviously drunk. He was doing a good job of holding himself steady, but his skin and eyes betrayed him.

The large Latvian family was subjected to exhaustive scrutiny. The patriarch of the clan gave good-natured replies, while the women, intimidated, remained silent. It struck Anna that the Russian border cops were treating the Latvians as though they'd been granted the privilege of traveling in Russia, but now that period of grace was over, and they must scurry home to their "sister state" as quickly as possible. The officials' condescension and rudeness irritated Anna. They gave the members of the family their doc.u.ments back, approached Anna's seat, looked at her-and continued on without a word. She expected the men to check her on their way back through the car, but soon they opened a door while the train was still moving and stepped off. They were in the no-man's-land between the two border stations; a little farther on, Latvian officials saluted and took over the train on their native soil. While Anna was watching the exchange and trying to find an explanation for such lax bureaucracy, an automobile stopped on a gravel road near the railroad line. Everyone except the driver got out and boarded the train.

There was no reason for her to feel proud or elated, and yet, at that moment, Anna thought her adventure remarkable. Increasingly confident of actually arriving in Riga before too long, she even grew convinced that Anton had been nimble enough to shake off his pursuers. In her inexplicable cheerfulness, Anna saw herself as a genuine traveler, riding the night train on a flying visit to Latvia. While she was imagining her meeting with Alexey, the door opened behind her. She a.s.sumed that the Latvian officials were now doing their duty, and so she collected her ident.i.ty papers, turned around, and looked into A. I. Kamarovsky's eyes. In spite of the mild temperature, he was wearing a winter coat. He looked hollow-cheeked, even deathly; his innocuous smile didn't suit his wasted face.

"Your blus.h.i.+ng cheek shows me that you find it exhilarating, just as I do, to run into old friends while traveling." He threw off his coat, spread it on the seat, and sat down next to Anna.

A great heat rose in her, as if she'd taken some fast-acting poison. Words fled from her mind; there was nothing to say.

"You probably find it impossible to sleep in trains, too," he said with a benign smile. "So we may as well talk. We still have a while to go before we reach Riga. What would you like to talk about?"

She refused to put up with his taunting. If talk was what he wanted, it had to be the real thing. "I didn't know anything about all this," Anna said.

"Of course you didn't. If you had, your behavior would be completely incomprehensible." He raised his hands, indicating their unreal situation: Anna and the Colonel, their faces illuminated by the cold nighttime lighting, and behind them the big Latvian family, sound asleep. Kamarovsky pulled the skirts of his coat over his lap. "At the next stop, we should get ourselves something to drink. Have you ever been to Latvia before?"

She shook her head.

"I know practically nothing about it myself. That's about to change." The Colonel raised his eyegla.s.ses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "However the two of us work out what's going to happen," he said softly, "it won't be easy, and I won't hide from you the possibility of an unpleasant outcome."

"Have you got Anton?"

"Anton's insignificant. A loyal liegeman of his false lord." Kamarovsky stiffened. "In a nutsh.e.l.l: Bulyagkov must not leave Riga. He must be stopped, one way or another."

"One way or another." She repeated the Colonel's words and understood that he was speaking of life and death.

"The last thing we want is an arrest outside Russia. It mustn't look as though we're recapturing an escaped bird. But at the same time, the bird must be prevented from singing. Do you understand, Anna?"

Even though the possible consequences for Alexey terrified her, she was relieved that the Colonel was eschewing all bombast and rhetoric in discussing the matter. It wasn't a question of hunting anybody down, but of correcting an erroneous development and preventing it from doing damage.

"I've never needed you so much as I do now," Kamarovsky said soberly.

"What can I do to change anything?"

"Unfortunately, we won't be able to know the answer to that question until after the fact. The important thing is for you to see the background issues in their proper proportions."

From the day when Alexey had told her his story-the biography of a student who'd been brought to Russia clandestinely and forced into an uncongenial career there-from that moment on, Anna should have faced up to those background issues. She'd neglected to do so and instead acted as a mother, as a wife whose marriage was slipping from her grasp, as a daughter who wanted her father's happiness. Whenever a change had occurred, she'd adapted to it and hoped that time was on her side. Alexey, on the other hand, had looked far into the future and known their time was limited. He'd treated Anna like a lover, but also as an instrument of his purpose, and he'd never taken his eyes off his goal. And now, Kamarovsky was demanding that Anna confront this man, and that she do so in full awareness of the "proper proportions." In the woods and on the train, her spirits had risen at the prospect of seeing Alexey again, of being, in a way, his savior; but the idea of contacting him as Kamarovsky's advance guard literally revolted her. At the same time, she had to smile at the Colonel, because his faith in her capabilities seemed unbroken.

"Please inform me, Comrade," said Anna.

He nodded. Before he began, his eyes wandered to the window. "I can't believe it's already getting light outside. We're farther north than Moscow, but it's unusual to see a dawn like this back home." And with that, he turned to her again.

THIRTY-EIGHT.

Bulyagkov was sitting in the bar at the Hotel Riga, surrounded by professors. The establishment had closed long since; only the visitors from Moscow were still being served. The Deputy Minister understood the unconstrained exuberance displayed by the scientists, eight men and three women; they were about to put on the biggest public performance of their scientific careers. Again and again, he toasted with them, but he himself drank moderately, even though his desire for stupefaction was great. The day had included much unpredictability; for example, to Bulyagkov's surprise, his baggage had been inspected. He'd opened his suitcase and the briefcase inside it and then looked on wordlessly as the uniformed official took out Nikolai Lyus.h.i.+n's dossier. This folder contained many scientific doc.u.ments, however, and the official had failed to notice the only one that was explosive. He'd leafed through the pages covered with Lyus.h.i.+n's microscopic handwriting and then thrust the folder back into the briefcase. Bulyagkov had stood and watched the operation calmly, but when the Kyrgyz mathematician, waiting her turn, cast a curious glance at the doc.u.ment, Bulyagkov, as if inadvertently, had blocked her view with one shoulder.

After a short flight and a warm welcome by the Presidium of the Latvian SSR, the schedule had called for a bus tour of the city, which meant that Bulyagkov and the delegation were driven past the Old Town on the way to the Palace of Science. There was insufficient time for extensive sightseeing; therefore, the Deputy Minister had merely unveiled a memorial tablet to the founder of the astrophysics observatory. The Russian delegation had shaken hands with a delegation of Latvian scientists; in the brief speech of greeting, the hosts' sorrow that not a single one of their number would represent the Soviet Union in Stockholm had been impossible to ignore. After that, the leader of the Riga City Soviet had taken charge of the group and led them on a brief walking tour, beginning at the square dedicated to the Latvian Red Riflemen. Finally, the delegation had been brought to the Riga, a bulky hotel on the Muscovite model, and Bulyagkov had taken a room on the fourth floor. After a short rest break, the delegation had been driven to an unusual building on Komjaunatnes Street that looked like a Florentine palazzo but proved instead to be the headquarters of the Supreme Soviet of the Latvian SSR, where the banquet in honor of the Russian guests had taken place.

In his speech, after first expressing regret for the Minister's illness and apologizing for his absence, Bulyagkov had delivered a spirited paean to Latvia's industrial achievements that had been received by the hosts with applause and brotherly kisses. Relieved at having discharged his duty, the Deputy Minister had sat still for the Party secretary's answering address as well as four additional speeches before the meal was served.

After dinner, Bulyagkov had received his second surprise in the person of the Latvian professor Otomar Sudmalis, who'd expressed his joy at meeting the Deputy Minister, a man he knew to be in close working contact with Nikolai Lyus.h.i.+n, with whom the professor maintained a regular correspondence. Sudmalis, it had turned out, was well informed, dangerously well informed, about Lyus.h.i.+n's work; the professor was acquainted with certain results of Lyus.h.i.+n's researches about which the Ministry, thanks to Bulyagkov, had remained ignorant. He'd answered the Latvian's questions in general terms, built a hedge of verbiage around p.r.i.c.kly details, and pretended to be drunker than he was. In the end, although he couldn't feel he'd satisfied the other's curiosity, Bulyagkov believed he'd at least given him the possibility of presenting himself as an authority.

Under normal circ.u.mstances, the Deputy Minister would have stayed late on such an evening, as the secretary of the Latvian Central Committee was a man without affectations and, for a leader of the apparat, amazingly communicative. But shortly after midnight, Bulyagkov, thinking about what was to come on the morrow, had caused the delegation to leave the banquet and return to the hotel.

The next unforeseen event had occurred around one in the morning. Back in his room, Bulyagkov had already removed his tie and loosened his belt when there was a knock on his door and a visitor announced herself: Professor Tanova, the mathematician from Kyrgyzstan. When he'd opened the door, the entire delegation was there. Someone had pointed out, to general amus.e.m.e.nt, how easy it was for a woman to get into the Deputy Minister's room. Bulyagkov had joined in the laughter and accepted the invitation to go downstairs for a nightcap.

The wallpaper in the bar was the color of ox's blood. The Russians were still sitting there, drinking Latvian vodka and eating smoked fish, when dawn began to light the sky outside. In a few hours, they were scheduled to have breakfast with some deputation-Bulyagkov had forgotten its mission-before boarding the plane for their 12:05 flight to Stockholm. Having been born on the twelfth day of the fifth month, Alexey Maximovich took the departure time as a good omen. He knew himself well enough to be certain that he'd get no sleep this night; the liquor was good, and the Kyrgyz woman had a smile that would be able to sustain him through a few more drunken hours.

As his gla.s.s was being refilled, he forbade himself speculation about what lay ahead. He was afraid of coming to the conclusion that the weights on the scales were unbalanced, and not in his favor. Medea's face came into his mind. At first, she'd overtly threatened to denounce him, and she would have done so, too, had she not been the one who'd lured him into his current life and watched him go to ruin in it. As lovers, they hadn't been suited to each other, but as a soul mate, no one would ever be closer to him. It must have been an enormous sacrifice for her to have agreed to his plan, he thought, and she'd probably already begun to regret it. She might even-as soon as he reached safety-admit what she knew. Medea had never been able to live a lie. Lost in thought, Bulyagkov struggled to follow the Kyrgyz mathematician as she told a long-winded story; he didn't fail to notice that she'd moved her hand on the couch closer to his thigh, and he hoped day would come soon.

He considered how it was possible to love a woman for nearly two years and, at the same time, callously make use of her. It wasn't his character that he was calling into question, it was the phenomenon of deception itself. Right at the beginning, he'd told Anna that she would never have anything to fear from him, and yet he'd lied to her every time he'd seen her. His behavior seemed to him so duplicitous that he couldn't help seeing in Anna, too, in Anna who had defied him, a woman with two faces. One was gentle, candid, the face of a woman nearing the end of her twenties who wanted more from life than climbing on scaffolding day after day. The other was the artful Anna, who, aware of her own immorality, had spied on him. In a woman like Rosa Khleb, those opposites wouldn't have been at all incompatible: She deceived some people and played them off against other people, because the center of her interest was always and only Rosa Khleb. Bulyagkov had never known a woman so immoral. She hadn't betrayed him and his purposes to the KGB for one reason and one reason alone: He paid her better. The cunning idea of poisoning the Research Minister two days before his scheduled departure had been Rosa Khleb's.

Alexey s.h.i.+fted himself away from the Kyrgyz woman. He didn't want to compare Anna with the Khleb, and he couldn't equate what he was doing with Anna's weakness. He'd probably never see her again. He peered gloomily into his gla.s.s.

You're a monster, he thought. How often have you had slogans promoting the worldwide equality of all mankind on your lips? You used them in speeches and conversations while you were building your private, individual dream. He loosened his tie. No, that wasn't right; he had believed, he still believed, that the world needed to be remade, and even that the Soviet empire was the right power to precipitate the revolution. But he couldn't make out the people capable of such a feat. The petrifaction had progressed too far; the system now defined itself only by its immutability. Was it worth it to be loyal to such a power, to make sacrifices to it with an eye to future generations? He'd often discussed that with Medea, who would challenge him to think in larger historical dimensions. It would take more than a few years to transform the world, she'd say; it would take time for the good and n.o.ble forces to gather together and overcome the alliance of the exploiters. On such evenings, inspired by his wife, Bulyagkov had felt his faith restored. But the next morning, in the Ministry, the truth appeared once again before his eyes.

The big things are simple, he thought. Never in history has the development of a plan for life brought any sort of advancement to mankind. But what was Alexey Maximovich's idea of "simple"? If I were fifteen years younger, he said to himself, it could have been a life with Anna. She was the simple solution to all the intricacies that entangled his existence. She was the warmth he longed for, the light he would have gladly followed, the love his heart so badly needed. Although fully aware of his own sentimentality, Bulyagkov called Anna's image to his mind-her thick hair, her kind eyes, her seductive mouth. He saw her like that, standing before him, and standing at the entrance to the hotel bar.

Bulyagkov thought he'd been carried away by his fantasies, thought he was mistaken, thought his drunken eyes would soon see that the woman entering the bar was actually the waitress. It wasn't possible that Anna was in Riga, and out of the question that she'd come into this ox-blood-red room and, stepping deliberately, approach the still-boisterous group of eleven scientists, who only now noticed her. When the head mathematician from Novosibirsk shouted a loud greeting and indulged himself in the commonplace about the latest hours that bring the prettiest guests, Bulyagkov realized that Anna Nechayevna, in the flesh, was there in front of him. Wherever she might have come from, and for whatever reasons, she'd made her way to where he was. He loved her for that, right then. But in the next moment, anxiety seized him. He raised his head to see if others had come in behind her, but she was alone. Her demeanor indicated that she was glad to have finally reached her goal.

"Where did you come from?"

The group fell silent, emanating curiosity.

"This is Comrade Tsazukhina," he said awkwardly. "She's brought me some papers I forgot, doc.u.ments I need for the presentation in Stockholm." He straightened his tie. "Thanks for taking the trouble to come so far."

Anna stood there and waited for him to invent an excuse for the two of them to leave the bar.

"Well, then, we should go over them right away," Bulyagkov said, rising to his feet. "So you can finally go to bed, Comrade."

Accompanied by the scientists' farewells, in which there was no lack of double entendres, and followed by the Kyrgyz woman's disillusioned gaze, he took his leave and, with a gesture, showed Anna the way to the elevators. After a few steps, they were alone.

"You're crazy," he whispered, grabbing her hand.

"No, the crazy one's you."

He saw the seriousness in her eyes. "You know?" Then, after a breathless pause, he asked, "Who else knows?"

She pushed the b.u.t.ton. "Come on." The elevator doors slid open.

They kissed on the way up, not out of pa.s.sion, but in order to exclude the possibility of speech from the little s.p.a.ce they were riding in. He pressed her against him; she clung to his shoulder. They stood there like that, in the deepest despair.