The Innocent

by David Szalay

  THE DAY YOU got home from work early. It was September. Your hair was wet. Rain-sodden ringlets. ‘What is it?’ I said. I had been sleeping. I was working nights that week. ‘Why are you home so early? What’s happened?’ You started to wrench open drawers, and search violently through them. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’ve been sacked,’ you said, tipping a drawerful of stuff onto the floor.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  You tipped out another drawer.

  ‘Stop it! What are you looking for? What’s going on? Why were you sacked?’

  You said you had had a brooch on the lapel of your coat when you went to work. At lunchtime it wasn’t there, and you had accused Svidersky’s wife of stealing it. Sviderskaya, of course, had instantly lost her temper. I was able to picture the scene. Pushing imperiously past you, she would have started shouting, ‘Miron! Miron!’ Her voice, when she told Svidersky what had happened, would have been quiet with fury. ‘How can you stand for this?’ she would have said. ‘How can you stand for this?’ Perhaps the second time her voice would have soared to a shriek, especially if you were standing there in tears. And Miron – old Miron Svidersky – would have shoved his whiskers into his weskit and shaken his head. He would have sighed.

  You said that Sviderskaya had stolen things from you in the past, that things had vanished from the pockets of your coat. You said that she hated you, that she was jealous of you. That was what you said.

  Her voice screaming in the stock room would have been audible to the women queuing in the shop, steaming in their oilskin coats. (And there were many more of them queuing outside, as I saw myself when I went there later. A shipment of shoes had arrived that morning, and word had spread through the city.) ‘She never does any work! What does she get paid for? Why is she here?’ I knew the sort of thing Sviderskaya would have said, and I imagined Miron saying, ‘Sh, sh … Quiet.’ And Sviderskaya screaming ‘No!’ and storming out. And Miron lighting a papirosa in the stunned stock room – he would have offered you one, if you were still there, and lit it for you. The two of you would have smoked in silence for a few minutes. Then he would have said, ‘Irishka, this isn’t easy for me. And it’s not just about this. Today. It’s not just about today …’

  You were still sifting through the stuff on the floor. When you found it – it was nothing more than a piece of painted glass with a safety pin pasted to it – you wiped your eyes.

  ‘You found it?’ I said, noticing the sudden stillness.

  ‘M-hm.’

  ‘Do you want me to speak to Miron?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ You were taking a cigarette from the pocket of your coat. Only when you were lying on the divan did you light it. The ashtray – a seashell – was on the parquet near your head. Half a cigarette was enough to send you to sleep. You let it slip from your fingers and turned your face to the wall. Such was your habit – to smoke half a cigarette and knock yourself out in the middle of the afternoon. An obvious symptom of unhappiness. I felt sad and helpless. I felt so helpless, Irishka. That sleep was like an immovable object. It was stubborn, sullen. Sometimes I was angry. Your slack face open-mouthed in the daylight – it was the only time you ever looked ugly to me – seemed like an indictment. And in a way it was, for my failure to make you happy. I did not know what I should do though. ‘Why are you sleeping?’ I would sometimes shout in this mood, when I took it so personally. When I tried to wake you, you shoved me away.

  I went to the shop. The queue of women spilled out onto the street. Some of them held newspapers over their heads to protect themselves from the rain. Inside, I pushed my way to the front – the women tried to stop me, until they saw my uniform (I had put it on specially) – where Miron was politely shouting, ‘One pair each, ladies! Only one pair each!’ When he saw me emerge from the wall of frantic women he frowned for a moment. Then he looked at me with a strained smile, and said, ‘Aleksandr Andreyevich …?’ We withdrew into the stock room, leaving the shop-girls to put shoes into thrusting hands. Towering over her husband, Sviderskaya did not try to hide her feelings. With her arms folded and her cardigan on her shoulders like a shawl, she stared at me furiously. I said that you were not sleeping well, that you had made a mistake, that you were very sorry, and that it would mean a lot to me, personally, if he would let you keep your job.

  He sighed.

  ‘Miron!’ Sviderskaya snapped.

  He shrugged weakly. ‘Okay,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I’ll take her back.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Sviderskaya left, slamming the door. Miron lowered his head. I knew that his wife stole from the stock, and he knew that I knew.

  Unfortunately that was not the end of it. As we know, it was only the start. Sviderskaya had a niece who was a waitress at the Ural restaurant. This niece had once met me and had told Sviderskaya that she had seen me there with a woman. So perhaps a week later, when you had kissed and made up, Sviderskaya took you to one side in the stock room and told you sadly over a papirosa that your husband was seeing someone else. He often took her to lunch – this tall, elegant woman he was seeing – at the Ural restaurant. ‘My niece is one of the waitresses there. She’s seen them. She’s even served them …’

  ‘Do you go to the Ural restaurant?’ you said to me that night.

  It was obvious that this was not just an ordinary question, though you tried to make it sound like one. Something had upset you – I saw that immediately – and when you mentioned the Ural I knew what it was.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Sometimes. Why?’

  ‘I was speaking to Sviderskaya today.’

  ‘Oh yes? What did she say?’

  ‘She said you take a woman there.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘Yes.’

  You looked as though someone had slapped you. Tears of shock. ‘Who?’

  ‘How does Sviderskaya know?’ I said.

  ‘Who IS she?’

  I told you that she was the wife of a friend of mine who was in hospital. I said this because I did not want Sviderskaya to know that she was the wife of a prisoner, a political, someone vilified in the press. I said I had promised my friend that I would look out for his wife while he was ill. ‘Don’t you understand?’ I said. ‘Sviderskaya’s just trying to upset you. Once or twice I’ve taken her to lunch. I’ve lent her some money. That’s it.’

  ‘Who is he? Who is this “friend”?’

  ‘You don’t know him.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You just don’t.’

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  Seeing that there would be no end to your questions, and not wanting to tell you more lies, I told you the truth. ‘He’s not in hospital,’ I said. ‘He’s in prison.’

  ‘In prison?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then why did you tell me he was in hospital?’

  ‘I don’t want Sviderskaya to know. You mustn’t tell her …’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me about her?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘This woman!’

  ‘Why would I? It’s not important.’

  ‘How old is she?’ you said.

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t know. Mid-thirties?’ In fact she was thirty-one.

  ‘What does she look like?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What does she look like?’

  ‘She’s … quite tall. I don’t know … What does it matter?’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Her name?’

  ‘Yes. What is it?’

  To say the name felt like a transgression. Simply to say the name. Such was our innocence, Irinushka. You see, nothing had happened. If a handshake is something, then nothing had happened. That was what I tried to tell you. Faced with your suspicion I was filled with a fierce sense of my own innocence. And you were more and more suspicious. I stood next to a woman wearing perfume on the tram a
nd you sniffed it on me. I had to work unexpectedly late one night and found you furious, in tears, packing a suitcase. The more I protested my innocence, the more you thought I was lying, the less you trusted me. Why did you not trust me? You opened my letters, went through my pockets. You found nothing of course. There was nothing to find.

  Then you found something. Or you thought you did. You found ‘Our Friends’. I had wondered whether to leave this novel – with its unfortunate inscription on the flyleaf: ‘With warmest thanks, N’ – in my office. In the end, I took it home. Why wouldn’t I? I had nothing to hide.

  Though I stuffed in into a shelf, you found it quickly. And you must have read it – you knew exactly what it was about. That too was unfortunate. The friendship, love affair, and finally marriage, of a young widow and a state security officer.

  When I got home it was there on the table.

  ‘Who’s N?’ you said.

  ‘Who do you think?’

  ‘Your mysterious Nadezhda?’

  ‘Yes. She’s not mine.’

  ‘Isn’t she?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well she seems quite taken with you.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  You snatched the novel from the table and started to read a passage aloud. You had obviously prepared this performance – selected the passage, marked it with a piece of paper. It was a love scene, somewhat trite. ‘Stop it,’ I said. Though you were laughing, you had tears in your eyes, and suddenly I understood that you were taking this entirely seriously. You seriously thought that something had happened. I was shocked. ‘Irina,’ I said. You had found a second passage, similar to the first. You were halfway through it when you threw the novel at my head. It hit me over the eye. You threw it with all your strength and it hurt. ‘Why did you do that?’ I shouted. ‘Have you gone mad? It’s just a book. It means nothing. I’ve helped her out. She wanted to thank me. So what? Maybe she does like me. I don’t know. Morozov likes you. I don’t mind. I’ve seen you flirting with him. It’s nothing serious. If I had something to hide, why would I have left that book lying around here?’ And it was true about Morozov. You did flirt with him. ‘Irina,’ I said. ‘This is insane. She’s lonely. She has no one else to turn to … What should I do?’

  Your cigarettes were on the table. You took one and put it in your mouth. Your hands were shaking. The first match didn’t work – the phosphorus smeared off like paste when you tried to strike it. When the second did the same, you threw them onto the floor. ‘Stop seeing her,’ you said. ‘Stop seeing her.’

  I picked up the matches and lit one for you. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll stop seeing her.’

  15

  HE IS LOOKING through the bookshelves that entirely fill one wall of the living room. When he has looked, spine by spine, through the whole expanse, he stands there with a puzzled expression on his face. Suddenly he starts to take down the volumes of the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia, first edition (1947). The thing he is looking for is hidden somewhere there … He finds it. It is a sort of exercise book, tied shut with a strip of blue satin, the meticulous letters on the front faded almost to invisibility. Nadezhda Filippovna Podlubnaya, 1932.

  It started as a Komsomol self-improvement exercise. This is obvious from the first entry, which was written in December 1932, when she was fifteen.

  Self-study

  All over the Union and in countries all over the world the annual balance sheet is being drawn up. In many cities, especially in Moscow, conferences and congresses are meeting in order to review the work of the year. We too must review what we have achieved this year, especially in our political and psychological development. We must draw up our own balance sheets.

  I have had some difficult times this year but I don’t regret it. The struggle has taught me a lot. It has helped me work out a new approach to life. I think this year I have arrived at a new stage of my consciousness. I have come to see my work as an integral part of my existence, as indispensable to me as the bread I need in order to live. Or even more important. It is what makes me a useful person, it is what justifies my existence. As Comrade Stalin has said, work is a matter of honour, glory, valour and heroism. I have taught myself to understand this, and now that I have understood it I will put it into practice in my life. So I am optimistic about the future.

  I have to be more systematic. Sometimes I am lazy. I have to try and develop a more materialistic worldview and become more politically oriented. I get downhearted sometimes. I need to learn to have more trust in my own strength and will power. In short, I need to work on my psychology.

  Positive and negative examples

  A positive example is my mother. She understands the need to rework herself and learn to develop a proletarian psychology. She attends evening school and performs voluntary social work, for which she has even received awards. In the summer she went to a summer camp to cut peat. Though it was difficult, she stayed for a whole month until the victorious end. As Gorky says: ‘Life is a struggle!’ I admire her more than anyone else.

  A negative example would be my uncle Fyodr. He is of no use to anyone and completely superfluous. He has left the old behind in many ways, but not altogether. But in the material sense definitely. Yet he hasn’t been able to join the new. We have to help him with many things. We must force him to work on himself. His character is that of an old man, although he’s not really very old.

  Other negative examples would be the Rodins. These people who live in our flat are all from a village, an extremely low milieu. For instance Vaska is only twenty and he is often dead drunk. On drunken legs he taps out a dance. He forgets that it’s time to go to work and that his comrades are waiting for him, that the driver is waiting with the truck (he’s a loader). He has emptied a whole bottle of vodka, he couldn’t care less. But tomorrow? Tomorrow when he loses his job, and his bread? And when they won’t give him work, where will he go? Perhaps he’ll steal. Or he’ll literally die of hunger. Without a home, he’ll freeze to death. He is someone who it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to put on his feet.

  Her father’s name was Podlubny. He was a Ukrainian kulak, who prospered under the NEP. In 1929 the family were dekulakised, and Podlubny was sent to Arkhangelsk for a period of internal exile. Nadezhda and her mother, Yefrosinya, obtained false papers showing them to be of proletarian origin and settled in Moscow. Her mother found work as a janitor. In spite of speaking only Ukrainian and having to learn Russian as she went (when Aleksandr knew her there was no trace of this in her voice, she spoke like an educated Muscovite), she soon excelled in school. She joined the Komsomol, where she also excelled.

  Living with a secret past was stressful and frightening and for the first few years her journal was full of examples of this. One summer, her Komsomol brigade organised a work trip to a kolkhoz near Moscow. She was one of the leaders of this initiative, and suggested that everyone get up at sunrise and work until late morning, then sleep for a few hours. Some of the others did not want to get up so early, until they understood how unpleasant it was to be in the fields in the middle of the day. Then they wondered why she was so familiar with farm life. From then on she pretended not to know what she was doing. The following winter, she and her mother met ‘Vova and Itta’, former neighbours from their village, on a street in Moscow. They had fled the famine in the Ukraine, and Yefrosinya helped them find shelter in the city. Nadezhda, however, shunned them, worried that they would tell people who she was.

  As a teenager, she observed people intently – the secretary of the Komsomol brigade, some of her teachers and school-friends – and imitated them, trying to understand how she should look, speak, move, what opinions she should hold, and how she should express them.

  I asked the leader of the political circle: what should I read first, Marx or Lenin? She said I should read both at the same time. That is very significant. She advised me to work with a pencil. In Marx, in his philosophy, he says so many obscure things, so much in it is difficult to
understand, there are such depths, that you read it for the second and third time and still discover the significance of something new. You don’t see everything at once. Today, in my present state of development, I understand only one part, the easiest and most obvious part. Tomorrow I will understand something new. I have also been reading novels. For instance, I’ve just read The Life of Klim Samgin by Gorky.

  Over time, she started to worry less about the possibility that she might be ‘unmasked’ as a kulak – though she worried that if she applied for university her past would be investigated – and more about the fundamental question of her psychology. Was she psychologically healthy? In other words, did she now have a proletarian psychology? She knew that, through useful work, it was possible even for kulaks to feel their way towards this. However, she found it impossible to know for sure whether she had successfully done so. Her struggle with this was the main theme of her journal from 1934 onwards; from initial optimism – What am I supposed to do? Well, that’s obvious. I only need to perform socially useful work in a proletarian spirit – to uncertainty – I need to perform socially useful work in a proletarian spirit. But am I working in this spirit? How am I ever to know this? – to fear – So has my entire progressive development been false, superficial, no more than a mask? I lie awake at night when I think that, it sucks the blood from my stomach like the sap from a birch tree – and despair – It’s not a question of working harder, of trying, striving. It’s a question of psychology, pure and simple. I have to accept it, I have a sick psychology.

  What made her feel sure, in the summer of 1936, that she had a ‘sick psychology’ was an increasing sense of her own unhappiness. Psychologically healthy people are happy. That was almost a tautology. When it is done in a proletarian spirit, work makes you happy. One thing in particular, she thought, was obstructing her path to psychological health and happiness.

  To try and lead a double life, to hide my origins from people, will never succeed. It’s of no use to anyone, least of all myself. The thing is, I must stop pretending to myself that this isn’t the whole problem.