Petrov had not always approved of my friendship with Anna. He felt she wasn’t quite the right type to be associated with, lacking the true credentials of a proletariat. But Anna and I continued to meet once or twice a month while Petrov was out at work and gradually he became more tolerant of my older friend.
‘So, tell me, does your Dmitry live comfortably?’
‘Of course, he’s an artist; he lives like a king. They gave him a furnished apartment and his own telephone. They even gave him a dacha. He gets what they call an artists’ ration as one of the “creative intelligentsia”. So, he has access, you know, to the special stores and he helps me out. I could never invite you to dinner to my apartment.’
Viktor coughed – a tortuous, rasping cough that woke him up and made Anna jump. He glanced around the room and his eyes settled on her for a few seconds but he made no attempt to acknowledge her or show any sign of surprise that she should be there. After a few moments, his eyes closed again and his head lolled back down against his chest.
‘He’ll be OK for one evening,’ I said. She was offering to cook for Petrov and me at her brother’s apartment; a rare night out for us.
‘Rosa’s welcome to come to dinner as well, if she wishes.’
‘Anna, it’s very kind of you, but she always has her own plans. You know what eighteen-year-olds are like. But thank you, I’m looking forward to it.’
‘Is eight o’clock OK? You’ve got the details?’
I fumbled in my pocket for the piece of paper on which she’d written Dmitry’s address and read it out aloud.
‘That’s the one,’ she said.
I stared at the scrap of paper and re-read it to myself a couple of times. It would soon become an address that would be forever etched on my memory.
*
Why had I known that that evening would change my life? What inner voice had forewarned me? Perhaps because I was willing it to happen, for something to happen, because I knew that my future lay not with Petrov. I owed Petrov my survival, my existence, but where once he was my protector, he had become my warder. Where once he had given me the chance to breathe, he was now suffocating me. I was only thirty and still had hope for something better. But there was one thing I knew I couldn’t escape from – and that was my past. It lay within me, an unspoken tale that would haunt me forever more. It was inescapable. Sometimes I longed to tell someone, to allow the unspeakable to be spoken. But what choice did I have? My own existence was at stake.
Everyday in Moscow one sees beggars; it’s a common sight. These are the disenfranchised, the “former people” whom the State has thrown aside as outcasts. One ignores them; for to sympathise, to make any form of social contact, is to tar oneself with the same brush. But I feel for them because for our first few months in Moscow, Viktor and I counted among their number. Eventually, I found work as a maid for an accountant and lived in a crowded corridor outside his door, working long hours merely for the privilege of food. It was through the accountant that I met Petrov. Within three months, we were married. The ceremony was quick and without fuss, taking place in a small office on the fourth floor of a district police station. We waited in line behind a queue of others – people registering marriages, births, divorces and deaths. But whatever their reason for being there, everyone wore the same expression, one could not differentiate between the joyful or sorrowful. Having waited our turn, we leant against the high counter, signed various forms, paid our three roubles to the sullen, chain-smoking clerk, and left. The ‘ceremony’ took all of six minutes.
I now wore the mask of a respectable wife to a middling Party activist, but beneath the camouflage the conscience remained indelibly plagued. I took his family name and Petrov obtained my papers and an internal passport – my new persona was complete. I invented for myself a new history – the daughter of a Leningrad watchmaker, I’d come to Moscow to further my education and to work closer to the heart of communism. Viktor too was able to obtain a new identity and before long his wife and daughter joined him in the city. We’d perfected our history and, it has to be said, it was all down to Petrov. But even Petrov only knows what I’ve told him and although he knows nothing of our real story, he knows enough to have us stripped of our internal passports and arrested. Without the passport, one is finished – you lose your right to work, your ration card, you are barred from State benefits and the whole Soviet system is closed to you – you wear the stigma like a badge, you are one of the disenfranchised, a former person. As the Party becomes more and more paranoid of alien elements infiltrating its ranks, people are more liable to arrest and deportation than ever before. Petrov knows this but never mentions it. It is enough that I know.
Petrov, I know, is also disillusioned. He’s always wanted children, lots of them, and now feels betrayed because I haven’t been able to satisfy him. I know his desire stems more from his sense of civic responsibility than any paternal longing; for the State makes it clear that it is our patriotic and social duty to bear future Soviets. Indeed, it pays families with seven children or more about 2,000 roubles a year in child support. Petrov, always fervently keen to fulfil his social obligations, sees it as a failing in both of us. My infertility has become the subject of silent reproach, a ritual of humiliation.
I also want a child; I simply don’t want Petrov as its father. Perhaps God is aware of this, for after all this time I am still without child, despite Petrov’s best efforts to the contrary. I’d hoped he would divorce me and find himself another, more productive wife. Divorce is so easy in the Soviet Union – you don’t need the consent of the other and can be done in a matter of minutes. But despite his revolutionary leanings, Petrov is, in many ways, old-fashioned and won’t contemplate divorce. Especially, as he thinks he loves me. Of course, he doesn’t – he’s never experienced real love to know the difference between love and habit. Sometimes, I visualise myself walking into a registration bureau and signing the declaration of divorce, freeing both me and Petrov from our mutual encumbrance. If only he knew it, he’d thank me. But I know that far from giving me a future, such an action would bring the past back to the present and my mask would slip and fall.
And so, for these last five years, I have lived as Maria, with my invented history and my assumed name as Petrov’s attentive wife.
It was time to break free. It was time to live again.
Chapter 2: The Dinner Party
The following evening, a cold blustery night, Petrov and I arrived at the appointed hour of eight o’clock. The building, according to Anna, had until recently been a run-of-the-mill tenement block before being spruced up and renovated into an artist’s co-operative consisting of over a hundred luxury-sized apartments. Petrov and I gave our name to the portly concierge who pointed us towards the lift.
As we walked down the echoing corridor, we exchanged glances, his eyes furtive behind his rimless glasses. It was almost as if we felt guilty to be in such surroundings. This corridor did not stink of cabbage, nor was it populated by ragged occupants, nor piled high with rubbish and decaying food. I think Petrov realised how far down he came in the Party’s pecking order. We knocked and, as we waited, I quickly straightened Petrov’s sombre blue tie. Petrov was nearer to Anna’s age but, in appearance, seemed older. He was wearing his customary dark suit and polished black shoes, and, for the occasion, had specially trimmed his moustache and goatee. The door opened with a flourish and we were greeted by Anna.
‘Welcome, comrades,’ she said rather formally, ‘come in.’
‘Hello, Anna,’ I said, planting a delicate kiss on each cheek. She took us through to the main room that was bathed in a warm welcoming light. The table was already laid for dinner. A large, patterned rug covered the expanse of floor; the walls of the room were painted a dark yellow and everything seemed so spacious compared to what we were used to. There hung, as usual, portraits of Stalin and Lenin, and another of Molotov. Among the photographs were a number of small landscape paintings. I wondered whether these were th
e work of our host. Standing in the corner, wearing a checked shirt and a brown corduroy jacket, opening a bottle of red wine was, I presumed, Anna’s brother. He smiled at us as Anna showed us in, placed the bottle on the table and stepped towards us, hand outstretched.
‘Hello, welcome. I’m the brother, Dmitry, how nice to meet you.’ His voice was deep, each word carefully articulated. I felt myself blush as he shook my hand. His eyes were dark and had a slightly mischievous look about them, etched with prominent laughter lines; his hair, black but slightly greying, was longer than was customary and swept to one side. And, I couldn’t help but notice, he smelt of aftershave, such a rarity in Moscow. He was tall – at over six feet, he towered above Petrov but his posture was slightly stooped. He looked strong; this, I thought, was not a man routinely bothered by food shortages.
‘I hope you’re both feeling hungry,’ he said.
‘Mmm.’
‘If you’ll excuse me,’ said Anna, ‘I need to check in the kitchen.’
‘Do you need any help?’ I asked, thinking how nice it must be to have a whole kitchen to herself. What a difference between this domestic splendour and my own sordid accommodation with its communal kitchen and shared utensils.
‘No, no, it’s all done, just the finishing touches, you know.’
Dmitry smiled and I couldn’t help but feel a tingle of pleasure at the way he looked at me. ‘Please, let me take your coats.’
We chatted about the weather and our journey there. Anna reappeared from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘Dinner won’t be long,’ she said.
As Dmitry lit the candles, Petrov wandered around the room, picking up ornaments and books as if inspecting them for auction or perhaps for authors who had earned the Party’s displeasure. In the corner of the room, on a small wooden table, sat a gramophone player and, next to it, a case full of records. I saw Petrov grimace; he evidently disapproved of such extravagance, forgetting how only a few days before, he had talked of buying one himself.
‘Looking for evidence of counter-revolutionary objects?’ asked Dmitry pointedly.
Petrov laughed with embarrassment. ‘No, of course not,’ he said. But I feared that Dmitry had already got the measure of my husband.
*
Half an hour later, we were coming to the end of the first course – mushroom and paprika salad. I couldn’t remember the last time I had had mushrooms. ‘This is truly delicious, Anna. I didn’t realise you were such a good cook.’
‘It’s not so much the cooking; it’s having the right ingredients in the first place. I could never have done this without Dmitry’s culinary contacts.’
Dmitry laughed. ‘It’s all a matter of where to go.’
I glanced at Petrov. I could tell he felt uneasy; he liked his food simple and this dinner was bound to give him indigestion. ‘So then,’ he said helping himself to a second glass of wine, ‘I never knew the Party looked upon the artist with such high esteem. I always thought of art as a bourgeois pastime but you seem to be doing well for yourself, if I may say so, Dmitry.’ I knew that this was a political rebuke framed as a rhetorical question. Fortunately, Dmitry rose above the implied criticism.
‘Well, it’s like Stalin says, the artist is the engineer of the soul –’
‘A toast to Comrade Stalin,’ said Petrov gushingly.
‘Comrade Stalin,’ we all said in hearty unison.
‘Dmitry’s been nominated for an Order of Lenin, haven’t you Dmitry?’ said Anna. ‘For his “contribution to socialist art”.’
‘Well, yes...’
‘If he’s awarded it, he’ll receive it on Labour Day at the Gorky Park celebrations.’
‘Congratulations,’ I said.
‘Thank you, but I haven’t won it yet. Although it’s what I do that’s important, you know. Art has a vital role in society. I have a job to do and fortunately for me, the State considers my job as pivotal in expressing socialist realism as it is, or at least as it should be.’
‘As it should be?’ Petrov was still trying to score political points off his host and we were entering delicate ground. One dared not criticise the State, however obliquely, unless one was totally sure of one’s company. But Dmitry was not likely to have his comments misconstrued by a rank-and-file Party activist like my husband.
‘Yes, as it should be and as it will be when we achieve true socialism. The road is a long, arduous one, my friend, and it may take generations to fulfil Lenin’s vision. And anyway, everything you see around you – it’s not mine, not in the true sense of possession, all this belongs to the State, I’m just looking after it on a sort of permanent loan, if you like.’
Petrov was getting agitated. He was a man of contradiction. He either fell prey to envy and quickly criticised those who were better off than him, believing them to be contrary to the spirit of true socialism; or he looked disdainfully down on those who struggled, believing that they hadn’t done enough for the Revolution to reap its awards. He was often quoting Marx’s edict: He who does not work, does not eat. But what really got his goat was when others used Lenin’s name as a means of justification. ‘But have you no pity for our fellow countrymen out there who go short, who queue for hours –’
‘Do you? I don’t suppose for a moment, comrade, you have to queue...’
Petrov took a quick slurp of wine to cover his embarrassment. ‘No but –’
‘But perhaps you’re right, sometimes I do feel oppressed by a sense of guilt. But look at it this way: what I have here is evidence that scarcity is waning. For every citizen who is privileged, there’s one less in the bread queue. Soon privilege will be so widespread it won’t be considered a privilege any more. That’s when we’ll know we’ve got there.’
‘It’s bourgeois decadence, if you ask me,’ said Petrov quietly.
‘No. No, it’s not. It’s cultural betterment.’
‘“Life has become better, comrades”,’ said Anna quoting Stalin’s edict from a few months previously.
‘Yes and “life has become more cheerful”,’ said Dmitry, finishing the quote.
Anna laughed and Dmitry pulled a face. I glanced again at Petrov. He was watching them and something in his eye made me most uneasy. He was trying to work out whether they were sincerely quoting Stalin or, as I feared, mocking him. If they were, they were being unbelievably careless. To deride Stalin or the Party in company, however gently, could mean denunciation and arrest. Anna knew she could trust me but equally she knew that even I wouldn’t trust Petrov. He had never, as far as I knew, denounced anyone socially, but at his work, many had suffered at his hands for their careless banter. Petrov was a staunch supporter of the Party that had promoted him well beyond his ability. His success had depended on their favour and the downfall of his more able predecessors, but with promotion came responsibility and with responsibility came risk. The further you went up, the more likely and the more devastating the fall. He paid the Party his dues with an intense devotion to the cause by uprooting wreckers and exposing enemies of the people wherever he thought he saw them.
Generally, people were more careful now. If you knew what was good for you, you simply avoided conversation of any substance and stuck to the banalities of everyday life. Even a whispered criticism ten years ago could land you in trouble. And I knew of parents who kept their guard in front of their children – especially their children – for it only took an innocent repetition of what Mama or Papa had said to see Mama or Papa whisked off by the secret police, the NKVD.
Needing to divert the conversation, I asked Petrov to regale us with the story he told me about bumping into an old Party friend who had “disappeared” for making a joke about the first Five-Year-Plan. Petrov gulped his wine and told his tale adding unnecessary embellishments and digressions. I pretended to listen and made appropriate clucking noises to show my approval while subtly looking at Dmitry. It was rare to meet someone so full of confidence, so relaxed, so sure of his place in the world. I’d known Anna for about
five years and she’d occasionally mention her brother with almost reverent respect. I had built up a picture in my mind of a handsome, self-assured man, but usually when one has an image of someone, the reality differs vastly from one’s preconceptions. In this case, the mental image was unerringly correct – he was indeed self-assured, and he was most certainly handsome.
The main course was something to behold – roasted duck cooked in a black cherry sauce with rice; I hadn’t eaten such delicious food for a long time. Even Petrov began to relax, dominating the conversation as he tackled his third and then fourth glass of wine. Dmitry and Anna smiled politely as he talked about his work and shared his fictitious reminisces of his revolutionary childhood on the streets of Moscow. I hated it whenever conversation turned to one’s social origins; it was the subject where I felt most vulnerable. I’d become adept over the years at immediately steering the topic to less controversial territory. Accordingly, I asked Dmitry about his painting.
‘I have a patron,’ he said. ‘He finds me work, gets me commissions, that sort of thing. He’s the sub-regional chairman of our local division of RAPA.’
‘RAPA?’
‘Russian Association of Proletariat Artists, of which I’m a member. Moscow East division. In fact, right now, I’m working on a commission – a piece for the director of a locomotive factory.’
‘How interesting, what sort of painting is it?’
‘Usual thing, a healthy slab of social realism, the nobility of the peasant, that sort of thing. I’ve almost finished. Maybe if Anna doesn’t mind, I’ll show you it before our dessert.’
Anna waved her hand. ‘No, no, you go ahead, I’ll clear up the dishes.’
Dmitry took us to another room and turned on a light, which seemed unnecessarily bright for such a small space. Inside, was a large table pushed to one side, covered with tubes of paint, and palettes, sheets of paper, brushes and various other tools of the trade. The smell of paint and turpentine hung in the air. In the middle of the room was a large canvas perched on an easel. ‘It’s far from finished yet,’ said Dmitry by way of explanation.
The Black Maria Page 2
