Mother Russia (9781590209028)

by Robert Littell

“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.

  “An infusion won’t help,” complains Pravdin.

  “This one will; it’s three parts rum, one part boiling water, also sugar,” Zoya reassures him. “Nastrovia.”

  “L’Chaim” Pravdin blows into his cup to cool it, sips noisily. “Zoya Aleksandrovna,” he confesses, “there is something in all this business I can’t put my thumb on.”

  “Try.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said, try,” Zoya repeats, a mischievous glint in her eyes. “Commence with the Druse.”

  Pravdin’s voice slips several sprockets. “How do you know about the Druse?” he demands.

  “I told you when you arrived that we would the both of us together try and figure out why you had come,” Zoya explains patiently. “The Druse, Chuvash Al-hakim bi’amril-lahi, with his long pinky nail that indicates a taste for the absurd, is the key.”

  Pravdin’s eyes bulge. Questions stick at the back of his throat like bones. Zoya enjoys his discomfort. “Four years ago I was evicted from my room in Proletarsky when one of my letters to Comrade Brezhnev wound up in the New York Times. The thing that was unusual about this was I never sent the letter to the New York Times. But that’s another story. I was desperate, you can imagine. I tried everything I could think of to find a place to live. Nothing seemed to work. Every time I came across something I liked, the papers would mysteriously turn up indicating the apartment had already been assigned to someone else. It was almost as if a ghost were following me around and ruining my possibilities. I took to looking over my shoulder, I was that upset. One day a man on line behind me at the Housing Ministry whispered something about a Druse. I went to see him naturally; I was willing to try anything. He had nails that grew into the flesh at the sides, an indication of luxurious tastes. And of course there was his pinky nail. We drank a wonderful infusion made from rose hips and hell and talked about reincarnation and visits from other civilizations. Finally he asked me, almost as an afterthought, why I had come. I told him I needed an apartment. He wrote a name and phone number on a scrap of paper. When I called the number a man told me I could have this”—Zoya indicates the door to her room. “So here I am, in the last wooden house in central Moscow.”

  Pravdin stares at the shimmering images in his grog. “Was Nadezhda here?” he asks.

  “The general was here, along with Ophelia Long L
egs and the crew downstairs,” Zoya says, “but the only person upstairs was a strange young creature with a blue flower tattooed on her cheek. She slept in the attic when she was here, which wasn’t very often; she would disappear for weeks at a time. She never received mail or phone calls, and only spoke to ask if there was anything she could pick up for me. The first time she asked I laughingly said American coffee. She turned up several days later with two tins. The next time I tried something harder, as a test you understand. I asked her for typewriter ribbons. She returned with four, of West German manufacture. At various times she brought me carbon paper, copies of an American magazine called News-something-or-other, some Swiss homeopathic sleeping pills, an English knife sharpener and some French headache suppositories. Ha! Suppositories for a headache! Only the French would think of that!”

  “What about Nadezhda?” insists Pravdin.

  “Nadezhda moved in about three months after me,” Zoya continues. “Her story was much the same as mine. Her building was being razed to make way for a new hospital. Which hasn’t been built yet. But that’s another story. She searched for an apartment for weeks, but everything she heard about seemed to disappear before she got there. Someone whispered something about a Druse, she went to him and wound up here. It took several weeks of talking about various things until we stumbled on what we had in common: my husband defending her grandfather. Nadezhda said it was a coincidence that had brought us together, but I always thought it was fate.”

  “You were both wrong,” comments Pravdin. “It was the Druse.”

  Zoya nods. “It was Chuvash Al-hakim bi’amrillahi,” she agrees. “I must say you were less obvious; I couldn’t understand what you had to do with us until the manuscripts arrived. Then I saw the lovely logic of it. The Druse has organized the perfect team: the granddaughter of the real author, the wife of the only member of the 1929 commission to support that authorship and a hustler who is neither mute nor crazy, who can figure out how to right this wrong. Armed with the manuscripts—”

  “The manuscripts,” Pravdin cries, “are a mystery.” He is intoxicated with panic. “Where did he get them? And why does he want to ruin Frolov?”

  “What does it matter?” declares Zoya. “His motive may be personal. Or political. Maybe someone in the superstructure is out to sink Frolov and is using the Druse. Who cares about the why? What matters is that we have the proof—the original manuscripts of The Deep Don in Krukov’s handwriting.”

  Pravdin, calmer, only shakes his head. “There is still something in all this business I can’t put my thumb on.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Mother Russia

  is certified …

  Mother Russia is certified, Pravdin berates himself under his breath, but I’m the one who is off his rocker.

  The man at the next urinal, a trim captain in the regular Army, hears Pravdin rambling on. “Were you addressing me, comrade citizen?”

  Instinctively Pravdin casts a quick glance at his neighbor’s penis, notes that he’s not circumcised. “Not at all, honored captain,” he replies hurriedly, hunching forward into the urinal to hide his own covenant with a God in whom he doesn’t believe. “I was mulling over some lines from one of Lenin’s articles. You know the one; it’s called, ‘What is to be done?’ “

  Staring suspiciously, the militia captain zips up, wipes his palms on his trousers as he leaves. Clutching his briefcase tightly under his arm, Pravdin shakes out a few last drops, retracts, bends his knees, pulls up his zipper and straightens at the same time, scrawls with his felt-tip pen above the urinal:

  The shortage shall be divided among the peasants

  (Anon: Pravdin considers himself something of an armchair agronomist). That’s it, Pravdin thinks, no more procrastinating, and he dashes into the corridor in search of the room marked “Public Prosecutor.”

  He has changed his mind a dozen times a day for the last week. Even after he photocopied portions of the manuscripts at the Lenin Library (a “favor” that cost him a German edition in braille of The Story of O and a two-year-old Sony four-band portable) and hid the original, he wasn’t sure he would go through with it. “Maybe yes, maybe no,” was the best Mother Russia could get out of him when she pushed him into a moral corner.

  “Maybe yes, maybe no,” she scolded, wagging her fly swatter under his nose. “Your life is one big maybe yes, maybe no. For God’s sake, take a stand. Run a risk. Walk on water. Move mountains. Change the world. Work up a sweat from a noneconomic activity! A little idealism is good for the digestion, heartburn, headaches, neuritis, neuralgia and sexual potency.”

  “Idealism is an ideal,” Pravdin protested gloomily, “not a formula for everyday survival.”

  “Ha! Survival!” cried Zoya, seizing upon the word as if it were an admission of guilt that slipped accidentally from the lips of the accused. “All you think about is survival.”

  “Survival, little mother, is a habit I don’t want to kick.”

  “Will you or won’t you?” she demanded, exasperated to the point where she had trouble breathing.

  “Maybe yes, maybe no.”

  Nadezhda took another tack. “If you think it is too dangerous,” she wrote once, “perhaps you shouldn’t.”

  “Nobody will criticize you if you back out now,” she wrote on another occasion.

  “Go ahead with it only if you feel it is the right thing to do,” she wrote the following day, slipped the folded note into his shirt pocket, stood on tiptoes and kissed him squarely on his bloodless lips.

  “You win,” Pravdin told Zoya over camomile tea the next morning. He rolled his bloodshot eyes in mock horror. “Let’s see who will surrender to unarmed truth.”

  The waiting room outside the public prosecutor’s office is as hushed as a library reading room. “Take a number,” the clerk at the door whispers to Pravdin.

  “I’ve got it,” he says, thinking she is about to try and read his mind.

  “From the box,” she hisses when she sees what he’s up to.

  “Oh,” Pravdin says out loud. A half dozen heads swivel toward the sound of his voice; he expects to be shushed. He takes a cardboard number, moves to a place on the wooden bench next to a stony-faced war veteran whose one remaining eye is fixed on the shadowy crotch of a young girl across the room. Pravdin follows his gaze, sees she is wearing the shortest miniskirt he has ever seen.

  After a while the one-eyed war veteran pokes Pravdin with his elbow. “If miniskirts go up another centimeter,” he snorts, “there’s going to be a revolution.”

  “We’ve already used up our quota of revolutions, friend,” Pravdin replies sourly.

  The one-eyed war veteran leans toward Pravdin, talks to him while continuing to stare at the girl. “What are you here for?” he asks conversationally.

  “I’m here to complain about doctors,” Pravdin tells him. “It’s this way: I share my one-room flat with my mother, who is a hundred and twenty-two years old. Touch wood.” (His knuckles rap on the bench.) “The problem is that we’re a little cramped for space and she looks as if she’s going to live forever.”

  “But what’s that got to do with doctors?”

  “What’s that got to do with doctors,” Pravdin explains, his voice rising in desperation, “is that they’ve ruined pneumonia!”

  The one-eyed war veteran turns toward Pravdin for the first time and regards him through his narrowed eye. “You’re crazy, you know,” he says seriously.

  Pravdin’s palm slaps his high forehead. “Crazy is what I am!”

  A middle-aged woman with a small boy in tow emerges from the inner sanctum. “Number one forty-one,” the clerk calls. The one-eyed war veteran glances at his number, grunts, heaves himself off the bench and starts toward the door of the prosecutor’s office. Pravdin averts his eyes from the mini-skirted siren, loses himself in thought. He remembers sitting for fourteen hours on exactly the same kind of wooden bench, clutching his throbbing thumb broken under the heel of a KGB interrogator, waiting
to see the officer with the blue shoulder boards. The interview, when it finally came, lasted two minutes. The officer, a young man with a permanent pout, leafed through the dossier marked “Pravdin, R. I.,” ranted about some conspiracy or other, ordered Pravdin to name names, asked Pravdin in the name of Stalin to name names, begged Pravdin for his own good to name names, shrugged, uncapped his fountain pen, wrote something, signed it with a flourish, looked up and said, “Eight years.” In his mind’s eye Pravdin sees himself standing before the officer, only vaguely comprehending what has happened to him, mumbling his thanks (his thanks! Even now Pravdin cringes with humiliation when he remembers he thanked the bastard), executing a military about-face and marching briskly off as if his cadenced step would testify to his loyalty to Mother Russia and Papa Stalin.

  “Number one forty-two.”

  Frightened by the pounding of his heart, Pravdin looks up at the clerk.

  “Number one forty-two,” the clerk repeats. Across the room the girl in the miniskirt uncrosses and recrosses her legs, stares inquisitively at Pravdin. “Are you or aren’t you?” the expression on her face seems to ask.

  “Maybe yes, maybe no,” Pravdin mutters.

  “I beg your pardon?” the clerk says.

  Pravdin rises on weak legs, still not sure he’ll go through with it. Droplets of sweat break out like pimples on his forehead. He tries to tally up the pros and cons but can only think of the cons. And Mother Russia telling him to walk on water. And Nadezhda’s cool kiss on his bloodless lips. And in he goes.

  The first things he notices are the public prosecutor’s fingernails (thick, cut squarely, a sure sign of rural roots) and a small hand-lettered plaque on the wall under the obligatory photograph of Lenin that reads, “Civic courage is rarer than military valor.”

  “You really believe that?” Pravdin asks, indicating with his nose the plaque under Comrade Lenin haranguing workers at the Finland Station.

  The prosecutor, an intense young man with thick wavy hair and a broad open face, nods solemnly. “With all respect to your medals,” he says, “I do. Military valor requires you to do what, in doing, wins approval. Civic courage requires you to go against the grain; to do things that people disapprove of. Civic courage requires moral judgments.”