Good People (18 page)

After dinner Sasha slipped out again.

‘Don't you dare,' Valeria said, ‘your little brother is begging you to stay.'

Vlada looked at her with indifference mingled with a hint of triumph. His suspicions were confirmed: it was futile to expect anything from their frivolous sister.

There is no suffocating person who can't find a party somewhere, she joked to herself. She floated out and fell into the street and the refreshing chill. She slipped on the ice and buried her face in the snow. A fleeting moment of purification.

She and Zhenya passed the time in Kostya's house. Kostya was Zhenya's boyfriend, a guy who had avoided the army and hadn't been arrested, a true magician, Zhenya gushed, a black-market-and-dance-bar type, expensive restaurants, played billiards all day long and made a fortune. He also had good wine. They drank, giggled and danced in the middle of the room. He clung to them from the back, embracing
them both. His fingers pinched their hips, they pushed them away, he lectured them: Comrade girls, be less individualistic, more cooperative, learn how to fuck in groups. Sasha kissed him. He invaded the gap between her and Zhenya, slipped under her sweater and undershirt, kissed her navel. His tongue was hot. She stretched, and his tongue slipped down her belly, she stifled a moan, heard her breath.

The heat disappeared. She saw his head moving under Zhenya's sweater. She stood neglected in the middle of the room and felt the place where his saliva was drying on her skin.

Zhenya said to her secretly that in her opinion he had a death wish: they killed his father, maybe he wanted to die. He had foreign currency and bought clothes for the women he liked in Torgsin. He frequented the famous nightclubs in Moscow: Metropol, National, Savoy, with artists and theatre directors and architects.

Then he said, ‘Nadyezhda Petrovna? I've never heard of that poet. The only Nadyezhda Petrovna who interests me lives in Moscow, and she sews the best dresses in Russia.'

Sasha was amused. ‘It's wonderful that you know such special people,' she said.

Now she lay on the sofa next to Zhenya's boyfriend. She rested her head on his belly. He leaned towards her, lifted her head and brought his tongue to her lips. His hand groped under her skirt. ‘How many guys have you been with already?' He blew warm air into her ear.

She ignored his question. She had kissed a few boys, and also Osip Levayev, but she had only slept with Podolsky. Pleasure spread through her when his hand slipped between her legs, and two of his fingers touched her. He moved them delicately, arousing desire in her for full, strong contact. She led him to lie on her, but Zhenya was complaining: she wanted to go home and wouldn't leave her alone with the boy. He got up. At once Sasha was assailed by all the worries that had disappeared for the past few minutes.

At the door the guy hugged her and whispered some lines from Pushkin:

Zhenya said he was too theatrical. Then he gave them parting gifts: pickled herring for Zhenya, smoked bacon for Sasha.

She returned home towards morning. Her father was sifting through letters in a box. ‘Did you have a good time?'

‘Yes, really lovely.'

Her mother scolded: How dare she go out at night? Where did she bury her shame and her heart? But now her father was being sympathetic. Fondness for him burbled within her. She hadn't thought a lot about what he had lost, maybe because it was all so predictable, and now she remembered how one day, after he was fired, he started waxing lyrical about the new windows in the institute that had expelled him. He had absolute loyalty to whatever touched his soul, whether it was the institute or Nadyezhda Petrovna; they remained as exalted in his eyes as on the day they first enchanted him.

‘Pay no attention to Mother's shouting,' he said. ‘She's suffering a lot. Envy of the young poisons the blood.'

No doubt he got a cheap thrill from this coward's revenge. She used to think that if disaster ever struck them their loyalty and love would be on show, but now, as the days passed, aside from isolated flashes of compassion, each of them was being devoured by fear and blamed the other.

‘Father, why are you up at this hour?'

‘I'm thinking about the story of my life.'

She heard a foghorn on the Neva, Vera's children singing, their voices bursting with life. Soot drifted through the shutters. Her nightgown was as damp and filthy as a rag. Faint pain swirled in her belly, passed, maybe hunger. She swallowed some bitter saliva and then dampened her dry lips with spit. She was half-awake, and that's when the memories piled up.

She's walking up stairs strewn with cabbage leaves and cucumber peels: Grandfather's roomy parlour is crammed with faded velvet furniture, and four giant mirrors extend almost to the ceiling, hanging at an angle as though bowing to the room. They cast multiple reflections, distorted, upside down, until one day Vlada broke one of them, and after that the parlour lost its charm. Narrow alleys are visible from the window, crammed with little workshops, the smell of tar, tinsmiths and cobblers. Grandfather looks at them and plucks at his beard. Those new arrivals, they've stolen my view. After the Bolsheviks stole power, rats appeared here, disguised as human beings, and they're taking over the street. Lots of Jews, he casts a look at her father, thugs from Voronezh, and from villages of illiterates where no trains stop. I'm telling you: in the streets, right down there, the blood of heroes and saints didn't flow just so that all sorts of Chukhonets could sneak in here and make every last trace of our Saint Petersburg disappear.

Her father says nothing. Grandfather mocks him as the
intelligent
while Andrei calls him the ‘murderer from the Okhranka'. Grandfather is actually proud of his twenty years' service in the Czar's secret police. He tells Sasha, ‘We took good care of Communist
intelligents
like your father. But to my regret we underestimated them.'

When they leave, Grandfather always rumples Vlada's hair, calls him the enthusiastic Young Pioneer, and explains how gullible the boy is for believing all the Bolshevik tales that his father and schoolteachers and the newspapers tell him. Once, as they were leaving, her father had muttered, ‘Your grandfather makes me grow fond of the Chekists.'

Sasha and Maxim Podolsky are strolling down the street. It's a summer night, late, around one o'clock. There's a light breeze, their sleeves are bare. Maxim says that he heard from his father, who had heard from
someone high up, that after Kirov's death the people in Moscow had decided to deal with Leningrad—the eternal stronghold of bluster, revolt and opposition—with a firm hand.

Maxim hugs her. ‘We have hard days before us, Sasha.'

She shook off the blankets. Dust began to filter into her eyes. She closed them, but the tears came anyway. Neighbours had gathered in her room. One of them was holding a lamp. In its light a layer of dust and soot was visible on her body.

‘Impossible to remove it,' they shouted, ‘all the dust and soot of Leningrad has stuck to you. You'll have to scrape it off. Sorry, we don't have the right tools.'

‘Can't you buy them?' she begged. ‘There are stores downstairs. Mother will pay you back.'

The last dinner. Mother drinks coffee and Benedictine liqueur and in a cackling voice imitates Reznikov, the interrogator: ‘Look, Comrade Weissberg, it sometimes happens that a person wrongs his friend. There are all sorts of reasons for that…Perhaps you aren't really an enemy of the people. Maybe you were just associated with real enemies who influenced you!' The twins laugh and plunge their forks into the pork chops. ‘And if a person confesses, then his friend can forgive him. Their friendship will be rehabilitated, and they will be even better friends than they were. But a complete confession is needed…Stay home for a few days and contemplate the history of your life.'

An hour passes. Father and the twins are playing at riddles: Father asks what temperature all sorts of things melt at, and the twins guess. Sasha is getting dressed in her room. She's listening to their game, which is being played as if nothing is wrong. Fine, she has no time to be sad now. You don't sob after you've put on make-up.

Summer in Varlamov's garden. Nadyezhda is reciting a few sentences from an article she's writing in response to Ostrovsky's book: How was the steel tempered? you ask. I'll tell you: by means of oceans of shitty
factory literature, the biggest load of garbage since the journals of Genghis Khan. Monkeys are now more advanced than we are. Russia is full of books, petitions and articles by mosquitoes constantly shrieking: Execute the traitors, liquidate the dogs. And our new history? One huge lie. ‘Stalin carried out Lenin's instructions and led the Bolshevik brigades,' they write. Or ‘Stalin in the war against the Whites in Tsaritsyn, in Rostov.' Or ‘Stalin Defeated Denikin.' It's all Stalin. We'll have to rebuild Russian culture from scratch.

Silence, cherries being savoured, Varlamov coughs. Nadyezhda is aching for a response, yearning for affection. History is so boring, she says, and moves on to discuss insomnia: Everyone here is insomniac—the black cars, the bright nights, the foghorns, the smoke and the soot from the factories. They all join in and offer examples of their own: the summer dust, the autumn winds that pierce your bones, you're always in some damned whirlpool. And Nadyezhda again: When sleep comes at last, you glide in European dreams—Paris, Rome, Berlin—and then lightning whips you awake: your fate is here.

Evening. Vlada is cutting a cucumber, slicing bread; he's found some sausage, too.

Don't expect that Mother and Father will come back soon! he says. They'll get a few years in a gulag. The sabotage at the institute is even worse than what Pyatakov planned, apparently because of the involvement of the fascists. For quite a while I've been saying that the alliance between traitors and fascist infiltrators is going to set us back many years.

No one answers.

It's clear that Father isn't involved in the matter. He just happened to be in the firing line. Some piece of filth apparently told stories about him.

No one answers. It's odd that they still haven't searched the house. He looks at Sasha suspiciously. They always do a search when they arrest you, or right afterwards. Anyway there's nothing here. I checked. Mother and Father had enough time to prepare. They even got rid of
the book by Balmont.

Kolya is sitting by her side. She's tired of consoling him. She hugged him all day long.

It's four-six-eight-ten o'clock.

Their parents didn't come back from the interrogation. She clings to the hope that Podolsky can tell her something about their fate, but for two weeks now he hasn't been around. At night, she imagines his severed head rolling on one of the bridges over the Neva.

She is aware of the weight of time, of all those seconds and minutes until supper, until sleep. If Kolya doesn't fall asleep soon, she will lose her mind. She's petrified by the thought that tomorrow a long day will dawn, with so many hours and minutes and seconds.

A door slams, she wakes up, it's late. The fourth night without Father and Mother. She is starting to accept that every time she wakes up she will remember the fact of their absence. To her relief she's alone in bed. A silhouette near the door.

Brodsky's house burned down; Seryozha and I helped them put out the fire. Vlada's tone of voice is light and sweetish.

Was everything burned?

It was a big fire. It probably had something to do with candles. You know how absent-minded he is, all day long with his nose in books.

Is he all right?

Trembling like a rabbit, but all right. I told him that in a little while our house would be vacated, that he should get ready to break in. If we're doomed to lose the house, at least we'd have the consolation of knowing it had fallen into the hands of a loyal friend like him.

The last morning. Vlada tells more stories about the fire in Brodsky's house, about the smoke that hid the stars and the moon. Sasha cooks porridge for Kolya and makes a jam sandwich for Vlada. How could she have been so complacent?

Five in the afternoon.
They haven't come home.
She races to the school. The headmaster receives her in the hallway, makes sure that a
few teachers witness the meeting. He says that two NKVD men were waiting for the twins with warrants, and seated them in a car. They didn't say where they were taking them. He assumes that, as in earlier cases, they will be sent to an institution for boys whose parents have been arrested. He has no doubt that the matter will be resolved in the best possible way, because it is impossible to leave boys without a supervising adult.

Perhaps she says, Thank you, Headmaster.

A few hours later she woke up in bed.

How many days had she been there? She stretched her muscles, wondering whether to get up, and her limbs protested: Now you want to move? She stayed in bed. How many days had she been there? Night-morning, night-morning, maybe another two days. She heard steps. She recognised them: they were his steps. A light turned on in the hallway. She wanted to move but couldn't. Now he was standing there. His body filled the doorway, pushed the light back. Her gaze rose, trying to take all of him in, and she couldn't.

His shoulders supported his neck like two bricks, his hair was twined with cobwebs that hung from the ceiling. His movement towards her was enormous, swallowing the small room. You! she wanted to shout, Maxim Adamovich Podolsky, I know you, stop looking so different!

She closed her eyes and opened them, he was standing above her. ‘You finally remembered to do a search?' she asked. Her lips stung and her throat was hoarse.

‘Do you remember the play we saw at the end of eighth grade?' He sounded excited, as if he'd been waiting for this moment for a long time.