Denouncer

by Levitt, Paul M.

  Laxity. Have I been lax? Yes. I have allowed the students to escape the iron collar of rote learning and silent obedience. They are now allowed to speak in class, post their complaints on the school bulletin board, speak to the director, and spend time, if they wish, in a choir that performs music of their own choosing. So I would distinguish between my laxity toward the students and toward the faculty. The latter admittedly chafe at the new regimen.

  Indiscipline. I suspect that this charge, like “laxity,” refers to the new freedoms granted students. Students are now asking questions that heretofore were unthinkable. The result: Teachers have to prepare for class with more thought and depth. My own behavior has, I believe, been beyond reproach. I do not carouse; I do not smoke; I rarely drink. I read all the new directives that come from the Party; I study the works of Marx, Lenin, Engels, and Comrade Stalin; and, as you requested, I have befriended Avram Brodsky to learn what I can. At his request, I am currently reading a collection of essays written by Karl Radek. Some of the ideas are clearly subversive and, frankly, offensive to me, but I realize they were written before he was restored to the bosom of the Party.

  Formalism. In all candor, I must admit that this term has never been entirely clear to me. The critics of formalism treat the term as synonymous with art for art’s sake. But even the “purest” work of art speaks to the age from which it issues. No subject matter can escape class, and no style can hide its intentions. A work by Rembrandt can just as easily inform the masses as a painting about the great October Revolution. Speaking personally, I readily admit that my own literary tastes run to Restoration drama, which can be condemned as a courtier’s literature, or it can be read for its insight into the pomposity and foibles of a class. I choose to do the latter.

  Subversion. Once again I must ask whether I or my educational reforms are at issue? That I am reading Radek, I have already admitted. That I have undermined the previous system of teaching at the Michael School, I plead guilty. Am I a member of any political group? No. Do I write for any underground journals? No. Have I allowed the writings of Trotsky to enter our classrooms? No. I must therefore conclude that the complaint, like most of the others, bears on the new pedagogy.

  Bourgeois materialism. Here, I suspect, the complaint has nothing to do with students and everything to do with me. Alya Selivanova wished for a pony. I arranged with one of our local farms for her to have one—on loan. In a year or two, the animal will be returned. I should observe that a number of students enjoy playing with the pony, which is the only pet at the school. If you wish me to return the animal, I will, of course, comply immediately.

  Favoritism. Yes, I employed Galina, found a tutor for Alya, and allowed Goran Youzhny to build a photography lab in the stables. The first two actions cost the school little or nothing. The third had your blessing and that of the Politburo. But if Comrade Filatov wishes, I can close the lab. Ah! There was one other instance of favoritism. When I attended Leonid Astafurov’s class in Latin, I praised the man for his cleverness. To help the students understand the peculiar syntax of Latin, he had them speak Russian in the same inverted way. Although I never learned Latin in that manner, I thought it effective, despite the carping of other teachers.

  Wrecking. Have I wrecked the former way of doing things? Yes. Even Brodsky complains. As the former school director, he told me that he saw no reason to change a system that had stood the test of time. But that treasured past of his, as I explained to him, included Imperial Russia, Tsars, and serfs. Some would say that I wrecked the farmhouse by partitioning and renovating it to make two quarters from one. My view is that I improved the property—by means of barter. I admitted two students to the school free of cost because they did the work for nothing. Did I wreck the school by admitting the two marginal students? They are children of the proletariat and can only improve the education of the masses.

  Elitism. From its very founding, the school was dedicated to providing a first-rate education. By definition, then, it is elitist, especially when we compare the school to those others in nearby oblasts. Are the students selected on the basis of money or pull? No. We give preferential treatment to the children of poor, working-class parents. Are those students high achievers? Absolutely! Which only goes to prove that proletarian children are as gifted as the children of the privileged, even if the former take some remedial work to bring them up to speed.

  Trotskyism. Having already admitted to reading the early essays of Radek, I would also include among my sins the belief that the world would be better served if the working classes in other countries took control of their governments. Surrounded as we are by Western hostility, and seeing the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany (which are not socialist countries, though they say they are), I worry for the safety of Russia, which would be less precarious if we had sympathetic neighbors and not warlike ones.

  S. Parsky

  After reading aloud a draft of the letter, Sasha sadly turned to Galina and observed that his colleagues had not taken kindly to his reforms, and that most of the complaints could be organized under a one-word heading: “Change” or “Reform.”

  “You can now understand,” she said, “why progress requires constant struggle. The conservative, the self-satisfied, the inertial will always outnumber those who want change, particularly if the change means having to act in a different way. We are all creatures of habit, and once we get set in our ways, we don’t want to trade the familiar for the foreign. To some people change is tantamount to learning a new language. In the Michael School, you have asked your faculty to speak a new tongue. Of course, they’re unhappy. In a well-run capitalist society, they simply give the workers more money or additional inducements; in Soviet society, we appeal to the greater good. Material rewards are usually more effective than abstract ones, so if you can think of a way to bribe your faculty, I’m sure the complaints will end.”

  Mulling over Galina’s advice, Sasha asked, “What if I introduced a sabbatical system? Every X number of years, a teacher receives a term off at full pay. Perhaps, then, vital saplings will grow from dead wood.”

  “Give me a day to think it over,” said Galina.

  The next evening they were sitting at the kitchen table, where most of their serious conversations occurred; and as always, they were sipping tea and nibbling black bread with honey. Sasha had come to depend on Galina’s intuitive sense and reasoned advice. Not only intelligent, she was also cunning. He, less practical, still believed in the power of ideas to persuade. She knew better. Even the early church fathers learned quickly that homilies on good behavior meant nothing unless you could promise the faithful a reward: an eternal life spent in a celestial paradise. How the Jews managed to keep their people in line without the promise of heaven remained an enigma. Perhaps the absence of a bribe explained their fractiousness and their constant striving, although the Old Testament did make clear that God’s rewards and punishments were visited upon one here and now, and not in some future Eden.

  Galina opined she would have to ask Brodsky about Jews, though Avram rarely ever mentioned religion. He probably found it safer to say nothing, buried, as he was, in a Greek Catholic community, and serving a term of internal exile. Galina had met him only a few times, and always in the town square. She found his reminiscences of Kolyma captivating but felt uncomfortable when Bogdan Dolin would sourly ask him a question like, “What was the daily ration of bread?” The source of Dolin’s skepticism remained a mystery, but Brodsky’s ability to turn a Dolin question into a Brodsky one was undoubted. “The daily ration of bread, you ask? Are we talking about a political prisoner or a criminal, a man with or without contacts, a woman with or without her skirt pulled up?” Dolin would grumble and walk off. On the few occasions that Galina remained to listen to Brodsky chat with his “faithful,” she detected a keen analytic intelligence. He had even graced her with his well-known wit when she asked him whether he thought that the astounding number of peop
le accused of being “wreckers” were mostly innocent? His reply: “Has the government ever been wrong? Not to my knowledge.” Everyone had laughed.

  Brodsky, impressed with Galina’s intelligence, had advised Sasha to put her in charge of the school library’s French literature collection, even if it meant earning the displeasure of Anna Rusakova. Sasha had agreed, and to please her, even read some of the French masters: Hugo, Flaubert, Stendahl, and Zola. Of an evening, he’d invite her to stroll with him along one of the woodland paths, all the while talking about some book, for example, Madame Bovary or The Red and the Black.

  Lively and engaging conversation, of course, can as easily ignite a romance as a pretty face. Slowly their talk of great literature and personal experiences led to more intimate disclosures and behavior, and finally coitus. Throughout, Sasha had behaved like an old-fashioned swain, courting his damsel with sweet words, kindliness, small gifts, and an avowal of his honorable intentions, knowing full well that she was married and her husband still living. In short, he wished to enjoy her both intellectually and physically in a state of freedom, not marriage. She, in turn, made it clear that even if she obtained a divorce, she didn’t wish to remarry. With that agreement, they began sharing his bed, not hers, so Alya wouldn’t know. Their lovemaking, even allowing for the hesitancy of the first time, was never a riotous stew. They sweated over one another, but not passionately. She occasionally cried when she climaxed, and he would ask why. But it took several months before she admitted the source: his gentleness. With her, yes; but the fact remained that two men were dead. Decapitated. By him. His gentle touch had hardened into a fist as it gripped the sickle. At the time, he felt not so much as a moment’s hesitation or remorse. Gentle? Perhaps now, but not then. Galina’s idea of gentleness did not include murder but tonguing. When she asked him to run his lips down her body and engage in cunnilingus, she climaxed immediately and then took him in her mouth, a new reality for Sasha, exhilarating and addictive.

  For the sake of appearances, she never remained in his bed the whole night, but retreated to her own room, where she could hear Alya breathing in the adjoining alcove, which had been remodeled for her. The few times the child awoke and called for her mother, Galina instantly materialized, dressed in a robe and slippers that she kept at the ready. Initially, her only fear was pregnancy, given the paucity in the countryside of condoms. But that fear was eclipsed by another, her husband, who had emerged from a photograph and taken up temporary residence with Father Zossima. Yes, it was Petr. He had sent her a note; he would come to the farmhouse. But if he wished to engage in conjugal relations, would she insist, as she had before his disappearance, that he sleep on the couch? Just his presence on the premises would mean an end to the lovemaking with Sasha, a prospect that saddened her.

  Late one night, she heard fingernails lightly tapping on her window. Pulling aside the curtains, she saw an emaciated, bearded man with long hair and sunken eyes. It took her a minute to recognize Petr, whom she admitted through a back door that adjoined the pantry. He looked sick, his eyes bloodshot, his skin covered with suppurating sores, his gait unsteady. Even his teeth were bad and his breath worse, which became apparent the moment he opened his mouth. They stiffly hugged, and he said without self-pity:

  “I’m not well.”

  “I’ll make you some soup.”

  Rather than use the kitchen she shared with Sasha and risk waking him, she resorted to the hot plate and kettle in her sitting room. Her small supply of personal provisions included tea, biscuits, and a few dried soups: leak, potato, and beet. Slowly stirring the potato broth, she looked not at Petr but at the pot, afraid that eye contact might reveal more than she wished. He was sprawled across the armchair she favored for reading. The slipcover she’d made to hide the chair’s tattered state was now disarrayed, revealing the old sackcloth and rough stitching.

  “Tell me,” she said, without looking up, “where have you been? I was told you were dead. Killed. I even received a government stipend for your loss.”

  “Living with a priest in the village,” he breathed laboriously. “A Father Zossima.”

  “No, before that. It’s been well over a year since the murders.”

  “What do you know about that?”

  “Only what I read in the police report.”

  “Never saw it.”

  “Were you even there?”

  “Yes . . . and no.”

  She looked up. Her need to know was urgent. “Tell me!”

  The story he conveyed came in starts and stops, and not always in order. He had been living with the priest because he feared that the police had learned of an army deserter in the area.

  “The name ‘Sasha Parsky’ provided the scent I’ve been following to track you down.”

  “What does he have to do with you or the murders?”

  “They took place at his parents’ farm.”

  “I don’t believe you! You must have the wrong Parskys. Besides, the police never told me the name of the family. How would you know?”

  “Viktor told me.”

  “Viktor Harkov? I don’t believe a word you’ve said. You’ve always been jealous of him.”

  “Ask Sasha Parsky. From what I understand you’re living under the same roof.”

  A flustered Galina blurted, “But not in the same bed.”

  “That no longer matters,” said Petr. “I met a girl in Ukraine, from Kiev. That’s another reason I came looking for you. If I asked for a divorce, the authorities would know I’m alive and my whereabouts. If you divorce me—after all, I’m presumed dead—no one will be any the wiser.”

  Distraught, Galina slumped on the couch with her head in her hands, as if trying to keep the tears or the anger from leaking out. He didn’t know which. “Tell me more,” she mumbled. But he merely stared, as he often did in the presence of great emotion. Slowly, Galina raised her head. Only once before had Petr seen the fury in her face bulge the bones in her eye sockets. “Surely, there’s more,” she hissed through clenched teeth. “There always is in a world of murderous hatred.”

  Alexander Harkov and Petr had orders to expel the Parskys from their farm. They had been denounced as kulaks. As Galina knew, Petr had come to regret the “expulsion detail” assigned to Alexander and him. It was raining torrents. They—he and Alexander—had stopped at an inn before they reached the Parsky farm. A drunken Martyn Lipnoski, a fellow soldier heading home on leave, had spent the night in that wretched place with a whore . . . who had gone off with his wallet and papers. They greeted their comrade warmly and bought him a drink. In fact, two. He was broke. Alexander even paid to fill Martyn’s flask and offered him a lift in the truck.

  The kettle whistled. She poured the water into a mug, and then emptied the contents of the packet. “Here’s your soup,” said Galina, handing him also a tin of biscuits. Although she had brought the soup to a boil, he guzzled it. The biscuits he shoved whole into his mouth, wadding his cheeks, until he could flush them down with the soup. As she watched him voraciously eat, she could feel his hunger, resulting, no doubt, from the priest’s meager stores.

  He said that Martyn was delighted to join them, but the closer they came to the Parsky farm, the greater Petr’s apprehension. When they stopped on a ridge above the farm, he exited the truck. Whether owing to the impending expulsion or to some intuition, he couldn’t say, but he stood in the road refusing to get back in the cab. Martyn carelessly offered to change places with him, and Petr gladly accepted. Alexander fumed, told him it could cost him ten years in a work camp, begged him not to do this “stupid thing,” and then drove down the hill in a huff.

  Standing in the trees next to the road, he had watched. He knew from the expulsion papers given him and Alexander, the Parskys were elderly, but their farmhand, who must have been an illegal itinerant, looked young. Waiting for the rain to abate, he watched and then ran off in the opposite d
irection. Surely his eyes had deceived him. What he imagined he’d seen could not have been true. But to go to the farm was out of the question. He was now a deserter and had to find places to hide. That same night, he came to a barn that belonged to a collective. He found a pair of overalls and a coarse woolen shirt, which he exchanged for his uniform, and then continued walking. The back roads teemed with workers who had left their state farms and were heading in every conceivable direction, just so long as that direction did not lead back to Bolshevik control of the land.

  A group of men heading to Ukraine invited him to join them. The number of wretched villages and hamlets he passed through were innumerable, and the suffering immeasurable. People had been reduced to cannibalizing their pet animals and even their dead friends and relatives. What he witnessed was a government-made famine, forced starvation, to punish farmers who fiercely resisted the confiscation of their land and livestock. After a year of wandering, he made his way back to Ryazan, where Viktor Harkov temporarily housed him. From Viktor he learned that Sasha Parsky had been at school when the murders occurred.

  “You must be mistaken. You have the wrong Sasha Parsky.”

  “Not according to Viktor.”

  “How would he know? It wasn’t in the police report given to us.”

  “He knew there was a son, and he knew his name. That’s how I got here. Maybe you ought to ask Sasha about his parents, and don’t forget the farmhand. Because if you don’t ask him, I will. That’s one of the reasons I returned.”

  “Viktor and I,” said Galina, “were led to believe that the family and farmhand simply disappeared.”

  “For good reason.”

  “You saw it?”