Mikhail and Margarita

by Julie Lekstrom Himes

Pavel shook his head. “She couldn’t.” The years of heartbreak that went with that would go unspoken.

  “And Olga?” Was this required as well?

  “She is fine,” said Pavel. His brief smile sealed that avenue from anything further. “Did you marry?”

  Ilya shook his head. What was there to say, other than it was long ago. Even that seemed needless.

  Perhaps on this point Pavel agreed. He gestured expansively. “And now my important brother has returned for a visit.”

  Ilya had wanted information about Pyotrovich; he wanted it badly enough to risk this trip to the police station. To risk seeing his brother, though Pavel was not a threat. To risk seeing her—even in a photograph. He wondered vaguely if this visit might implicate Pavel in some way. It was unlikely the room was wired. Pavel appeared to have no concerns.

  The blowing whistle of a kettle sounded and Pavel got up to prepare tea. Watching him go through the mechanics provided a breath of normalcy. His gait was lumbering, perhaps painful, and Ilya noticed a limp. This was new—new in the last thirty years, and he felt some small guilt for failing to know of it, for his part in the silence between them.

  “I wrote you about Mother,” said Pavel, his back turned. There was the mildest sense of rebuke in his voice.

  “It found me eventually.”

  “I wasn’t certain.”

  At the time it’d seemed to have arrived from a different world. “It was nearly summer when I got it,” said Ilya.

  “Mail was tricky then.” He paused. “I’ve always wondered when I would see you again.”

  In his motions the sense of their mother returned more sharply. The quiet of her disappointment in his setting aside of family, her questioning of this; it would have been a personal thing. When his brother turned, he held a cup in each hand.

  Pavel’s gaze seemed to stop short; it focused on his mouth.

  “Do you still take milk? I have some powdered in the cabinet,” he said.

  When they were children, Pavel had always been able to find him. Even when alone in the forest, desiring the quiet of his own thoughts; even then, Pavel would appear, as though his brother’s wanderings were mapped on his heart.

  Pavel set the cups on the desk. One covered the water-mark. He sat down heavily.

  How easily they slipped into familiar patterns, as though they’d done this every morning. Time seemed a flimsy thing. What ran in one’s blood that allowed for this?

  Pavel sipped his tea. His lips retracted from the hot liquid. “You might want to let it cool a bit,” he said. He glanced at the telephone.

  Ilya fingered the cup. It had begun to snow.

  For thirty years he’d thought his brother happy. The master of happiness. Supreme in this. It had been enough to keep him away.

  But something was wrong. “What happened to Olga?” said Ilya.

  Pavel watched the steam rise up from the cup. “She died about a year after you left.”

  All that time he’d imagined the world with her somewhere in it. How could he not have known? Behind them the whirring of some small office machine could be heard.

  “Pyotrovich has been here twice,” said Pavel, touching the cup’s edge. “Unpleasant man. What is it they say about promotions? There is always one too many?”

  He remembered her scarlet cap, a blot of blood in the snowy tableau. He remembered her slender arm extended, her gloved fingers holding the small ring, his betrothal gift to her. Her words had been forgotten. Snow fell between them; perfect crystals alighted on the velvet cloth as though grateful for that brief privilege, then were gone forever.

  Come with me, he’d said. He meant, If you love me, you will come with me. It was then that he’d sensed another presence in the woods, a figure in the shadows. Someone waiting to take his place.

  Ilya stood, all at once anxious to leave.

  “Is she as beautiful as they say?” Pavel asked. He smiled a little, as though at long last happy for his brother. As though this was all he’d ever wanted.

  What was the distance between having everything and having nothing? A span of decades, a matter of seconds? What was the difference between having everything and having nothing? He could not answer; he could not tell them apart.

  The hut was dimly lit, the fire low amid embers. Ilya stood in the doorway. The night at his back, bitterly cold, was trying to get in.

  “Marry me,” he said. His voice hung oddly in the quiet room. He took his hat in his hand; the other held the doorframe.

  She’d been sleeping, seated in front of the fire. She straightened slightly, blinking. She rubbed the back of her neck.

  “I would go out and fetch a priest this moment,” he said. There were no priests to be found, yet the binding quality of a bureaucratic seal seemed lacking for the task.

  She was fully awake now. She looked achingly young and in this he felt aged. He could forgive her that. He went onto his knees before her.

  “I can take care of you,” he said.

  “I never doubted that you would return.” Her arms were crossed over her chest. Once again, he felt the need to take one hand into his, to separate it from the other, as though apart they could be more easily convinced.

  “I can make you happy.”

  Could he? Her eyes carried that question.

  He imagined a snowy forest as though it’d been his to remember; the quiet movements of a man and a woman toward one another. They’d always known, Pavel and Olga, since childhood; it’d run in their blood, yet they had been willing to allow for the grandest of cosmic errors. Perhaps he’d known too, and when he left, he knew that Pavel would blame himself.

  “I can make you happy,” he repeated. He could make someone happy.

  She took his hand; he could see that she would try to believe him. But the gesture communicated something else. Surely she’d intended to give comfort rather than despair. His talent as an interrogator would not allow for misunderstanding.

  CHAPTER 40

  Bulgakov was summoned to the Regional Office of the Chief Directorate of Frontier Guards and Interior Troops in Irkutsk. Pyotrovich had established a temporary office on its second floor. It was clear he was dissatisfied with the local contingent. After the clerk had ushered him in, Pyotrovich got up to shut the door himself. “They smile while they’re slipping something unpleasant into your tea,” he said. He sat down again. “At least in Moscow, no one pretends to like each other.”

  He expressed surprise that Bulgakov had not heard from Margarita. Pyotrovich did not say how he knew and he studied him as though the cause of this was some flaw which could be rectified by a reasonable improvement in personal hygiene or a new jacket. “It’s possible she’s more under his influence than I’d originally considered. That happens not infrequently—particularly in cases of prolonged association.” His inflection seemed to give the relationship a bureaucratic tone. “Of course those of certain sensitivities are more prone,” Pyotrovich added. These weren’t just Bulgakov’s inadequacies.

  Bulgakov searched their last moments together at the camp; nothing she had said or done would support this, yet other images slipped willfully past these thoughts. He imagined Ilya and Margarita standing alone in the foyer of a comfortably furnished house; the light was low; perhaps they had been guests of some future happy evening, well-fed, the conversation and laughter of the gathering still clinging to them as they prepared to depart into the snowy night. Ilya offered her coat, holding it as she slipped it on; then, with practiced intimacy, lifting her hair so that it might spill over the collar. She turned and Bulgakov saw her ease, her grateful smile, as she buttoned it close. Ilya layered upon it her scarf; sometimes he wrapped it about her neck; this time instead he leaned in and kissed her lightly. She waited while he put on his coat; she looked to the window; her face held only patient waiting. Beyond her, the light from the street shone in hal
os through the glass. The threads of her scarf were frayed slightly and brushed the edge of her cheek. Her eyes glistened. Perhaps she was thinking of the quiet walk home.

  Pyotrovich took him outside to a small enclosed yard; a collection of women of varying ages and ethnicities had been arranged to stand along a wall. The local police had been conducting regular sweeps of the train depot, he explained; his gesture was both effeminate and dismissive. Likewise in Ulan-Ude and Chita. Pyotrovich went down the line; it seemed more of a schoolyard inspection and he appeared unexpectedly pleased, as though these women were somehow a favorable reflection upon himself. He stopped before one; he removed his glove and stroked her cheek. She was young and sturdily built.

  “Feel this complexion,” he gushed. “That brow, that cheekbone.” He drew his thumb along these. He then squeezed her shoulder. “She could plow a field single-handed.”

  Her gaze was stony. He pinched her cheek then slapped it. She didn’t flinch and he laughed at this. “Any one of them,” he swept his arm. He glanced at Bulgakov as though suggesting he might pick one for himself. They might both pick.

  “We’ll get them,” he said. Bulgakov should not despair.

  Bulgakov looked at the women—did any even resemble her? And if one had, would he have risen up in her defense? To save a nose of a similar tilt, a common complexion, hair that was styled in the same fashion? The women looked cold, the breeze moved across their coats; they looked frightened. He wanted to save them all, a triumph of her cause.

  She must leave with Ilya. Both needed to disappear. He imagined them together in the train depot; anxiously looking to the timetables, listening for the approaching whistle. Would their hands be clasped? In mutual comfort or something more? How could she not love someone willing to sacrifice for her? For Ilya, this had never been a choice. What if he could warn them, ensure their escape? Would he not try? Was this even a choice?

  What could Pyotrovich know of despair?

  Bulgakov went to the train depot.

  The interior was an open space with rows of benches. The wall adjacent to the ticket sellers had been painted black; the arrivals and departures were posted in chalk. The next train was due in several hours and the benches were half filled. Margarita and Ilya weren’t there.

  Ilya would anticipate the police surveillance of these stations. This one would be as good as any.

  Bulgakov sat down.

  Nearby a young soldier waited next to a woman who appeared to be his mother. Between them on the floor was a single suitcase tied with string like a parcel. His uniform was new; its cuffs were stiff and without wear. His hands, pale young things, rested on the fresh fabric of his trousers. He looked regularly to the board and to the windows overlooking the platform. Squares of blue promise. His face carried both uncertainty and excitement.

  His mother looked away from the ticket windows, away from the chalkboard, from the platform, and instead to the doors which led to the town, to the street where they’d lived their years together. Bulgakov could only guess—perhaps seventeen or eighteen. She would know. She would try to recall some memory from when he was small and still needed her. She would wish she could talk to her own mother about it.

  One of the conductors came with a cloth, and, climbing the short stepladder, updated the board with fresh chalk.

  Their soldier was a good boy. He tried to look regretful of the approaching hour; she tried to seem brave.

  He would get on the train; he would wave farewell and later would forget this day; others would take its place.

  She would remember the walk home; she would notice not the other pedestrians, but instead their footprints in the snow and the way light shifted to blue as it passed into the shadow cast by the fragile rim. She would climb the stairs to the apartment they’d shared, a tidy room in the fading light, a lamp-shade made of colored glass, a figurine from another country, and she would wonder how any of these things could have ever held importance to her before.

  Bulgakov looked about the depot—others, scattered figures lost to their own thoughts. Their hearts were available to him for his reading; the particulars of their defeats as though they’d been pinned to their coats like a written notice. Here was the real People’s Army. He would be a willing recruit. He would come back tomorrow, and each day of those that followed. He would do what was necessary to safeguard her departure. He would join their ranks.

  CHAPTER 41

  The next morning they did not start a fire. Ilya brought out clothes suitable for a young man and Margarita dressed quickly. Her breasts were camouflaged by the loose tunic. He handed her a cap. “Wouldn’t it be better to cut it?” she said. She twisted her hair atop her head and put it on. He stepped back to examine her. He shook his head.

  “This isn’t going to work,” he said. He took some ash from the fireplace and smeared it lightly over her chin. “It’s hopeless,” he said, in a kind of wonderment.

  She looked at her reflection in the small mirror of his shaving case. She couldn’t capture the entirety of her head in it.

  “I can try to scowl like a teenager,” she said.

  He studied her; he seemed contemplative of something else.

  “Perhaps you should cut it,” she said after a moment. She removed the cap.

  He looked away as though her gesture had unsettled him. “If I thought it would help, I would,” he said. He went to manage the luggage. She put the cap back on.

  Her other clothes and papers were placed in the hidden compartment of the suitcase. The new papers he produced made her his nephew.

  Outside, the air was still. Fresh snow covered the ground and settled on the larger branches. The sky was pale with thin high clouds. The sun, hanging low in the east, was a tepid yellow ball. She got into the car with him. Today, he told her, they would leave Russia forever.

  He smiled; they were nearly there.

  He started the car. She touched the back of her neck where the chilled air had slipped past the collar of her coat.

  They stopped along the roadside briefly. In the distance a town clung to shallow-sloped hills. It was cold and bright with a steady breeze. Ilya had brought some food and she spread a cloth across the hood of the car and laid out the small meal. He set a flask of vodka where their cup would have stood. She took a drink and he smiled at this. It felt like a dare and she drank again.

  “When I become too drunk to walk,” she said. “What will you do with me?”

  “I will carry you home,” he said.

  His use of the word surprised her. She imagined a flat they might share, the cluttered messiness: stacks of books, dishes, shoes about the floor. Both his and hers. Did he make the bed or allow the sheets to collect in a mound at the foot? Would he measure first before hanging a picture or tack it askew? It seemed disconcerting that she didn’t know such things.

  She went on more carefully. “And when I become too heavy to manage?”

  “I will pitch a tent around us and wait until your drunkenness passes.”

  “A tent?”

  He seemed to feign surprise. “I carry one for just such occasions.” He touched the brim of her cap; he smiled a little, as though it was remarkable in some way.

  “And should I catch a cold from spending the night in your tent?”

  “I will feed you tea and honey and aspirin until you are better.”

  She imagined them lying together, her pregnant with their child. She imagined him stroking her stomach, cupping the swell, talking to it, sternly at times. Counseling it on the finer points of hockey; assuring that it would know how to skate before it could walk.

  And if it’s a girl, she’d mildly protest.

  I see that it makes no difference, he’d say. He’d put his daughter against any lineup of boys.

  “And if I should become diabetic from the honey and my toes collect sores?” she said.

 
“I will clean and dress them until they are healed.”

  She imagined herself wasted with disease in a hospital bed. She imagined him arguing with doctors, sneaking portions of soups and casseroles past militant nurses. While she slept he would doze in the chair beside her. When she was awake he would tell her gossip of the neighbors, stories to distract. He’d hide his heartbreak from her.

  “And if my toes fall off?”

  He looked off, at the distant town. “I will give you mine.”

  When they were done she gathered the small cloth by the corners and shook the loose crumbs out over the expanse. In the distance, the hills were spotted with shadows cast from high white clouds. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

  The train depot in Irkutsk had been built in the time of Tsar Nicholas, shortly before the arrival of its first train in 1898. The ceilings were high and arched; places where its plaster had fallen revealed dark underlying timbers. The stone chosen for its tiled floor was overly porous and its former brilliance had been ground to a toothlike grey even in those few decades. It was poorly heated. Timetables were rarely adhered to and its rows of benches were filled. Some drowsed as they waited. Several grudgingly shifted to make room for them.

  A few soldiers milled about though they appeared no older and with no greater seriousness towards life than teenagers. Their uniforms reminded Margarita of the camp guards and she was chilled by the thought that they’d been sent to retrieve her. She laid her glove over Ilya’s and they sat hand in hand as a young couple might, despite their disguise. Margarita knew this could expose them. She hadn’t counted on the pervasiveness of her distress, and she was surprised he tolerated the risk. Perhaps he felt a similar despondency; how could they succeed, in which case, what did it matter? Better to find comfort in their last moments. An old woman swathed in black stared at them. She lifted her hand in what Margarita thought would be a gesture of silence, but instead she crossed herself.

  Nearby, a young girl played on the floor with a small and crudely made doll. When she saw Margarita she came over. Holding the doll in one hand, she stroked the sleeve of Margarita’s coat. Her eyes were steel blue and unblinking; short, fair-colored braids could be seen from under a knit cap. She as well seemed unimpressed by Margarita’s disguise. Who was this child—why did she choose Margarita for her attentions? “Someone’s made a friend,” said Ilya; he sounded more curious than concerned. “Where is your mother?” Margarita asked. The girl appeared not to understand or care to be helpful; she seemed to have laid claim to her.