The Russian Affair

by Michael Wallner

  “How’s your husband?” the plasterer asked, tearing her from her thoughts.

  “He’s good. He likes it where he is.” To all who knew of it, the fact that Leonid had been transferred without explanation necessarily seemed like a punishment, and as for the real reason, Anna couldn’t reveal it to anyone. She screwed the cup back onto her thermos bottle and climbed up her scaffolding.

  The following morning, Petya’s fever had increased. Anna swapped shifts with a colleague, dressed the boy so heavily that only his eyes and nose were visible between his scarf and his fur cap, and set out with him for the polyclinic. Along the way, she gave Petya some white lozenges to suck—they didn’t help, but he liked them. When he announced that he was feeling better, she knew that he was scared of the treatment that lay in store for him. Not even six months had passed since they’d been to see the doctor about his earaches. The doctor, a woman, had pulled his earlobes, and when Petya cried out loudly, she’d diagnosed an infection. She’d prescribed drops, which indeed deadened the pain, but the inflammation grew worse. Petya had whimpered for an entire night and fallen asleep at dawn. When he woke up, Anna had discovered a yellow stain on his pillow; his eardrum had burst and pus had run out of his ear while he slept. From then on, the boy had felt better, even though he was deaf in that ear for weeks. At the follow-up examination, the doctor had proudly announced that the membrane was going to heal.

  The freshly painted outpatients’ clinic impressed Anna; the work on the window frames and ledges had been skillfully carried out. Inside the clinic, the gray, oil-based paint remained unchanged. Petya was breathing in brief gasps and could hardly keep himself upright. In order to reach the children’s department more quickly, Anna carried him piggyback up two floors, only to find a disappointingly long line of people waiting to see a doctor. The queue stretched all the way out to the stairwell. Automatically, she asked who the last person was, and when told, she said, “Then I come after you.” The other mother nodded. She was handsomely dressed, with a tailored jacket and a black cap. The little girl she was holding by the hand turned toward Petya. At this distance from the treatment rooms, there were no chairs or benches, and so Anna spread her coat in a corner of the stairs to give Petya something to sit on. A nurse hurried past them, muttering something about a “Gypsy camp.”

  The morning was almost gone when they were called. The lady doctor sounded Petya’s chest and back, determined that he was suffering from a catarrh, and said that such a condition was standard in wintertime. Anna described his leaping fevers and his breathing difficulties, his frequent coughing and streaming eyes; the doctor assumed that they were all connected. She stuck to her diagnosis—a feverish cold—and prescribed a dose of ultraviolet therapy and an inhalant. “It’s winter, that’s all,” she said, waving the next patient in. “When spring comes, you’ll see …” She returned to her desk.

  In spite of the transfer form she’d been given, Anna and Petya had to wait another forty-five minutes before he was summoned to the radiation room. While the boy was inside, Anna went over the course of the next few hours in her mind. She visualized the trip back home, the shopping she’d do on the way, the ride to her worksite. Because she’d swapped shifts, she had some unexpected free time, several hours’ worth. She wanted to get something out of the day, to wrest a little enjoyment from it while she still could. She called Rosa Khleb from the nearest telephone.

  “I’m taking my lunch break at twelve noon,” said the pleasant voice at the other end of the line.

  “The thing is, I’m not dressed for going out to eat,” Anna answered. “And at three o’clock, I have to catch the workers’ bus on Durova Street.”

  “You’ve got enough time,” Rosa said, and when Anna hesitated, she added, “Don’t worry about your clothes—you don’t need to dress up for this place.” She named an address, and Anna rang off.

  Petya left the radiation room happy, declaring that he was warm all over. On the way back, he stopped several times to talk about the magic light he’d been shot with; the light, he said, had made the nurse’s white coat shine blue.

  When she saw the line in front of the pharmacy, Anna lost patience. With a tight grip on Petya’s hand, she pulled him past the waiting customers to the entrance. “It’s an emergency,” she said to the protesting women and gave the gaunt pharmacist an imploring look. If he wished to, he could banish her to the end of the line.

  “What does he need?”

  Ignoring the murmurs of disapproval around her, Anna took out the prescription.

  After a scant look at it, the pharmacist said, “We don’t have that. I can give you something similar.” He turned to the storage drawer cabinet behind him. “But it’ll cost more.”

  “The doctor said …” Anna tapped the prescription.

  “Yes or no?” With a jerk, he pulled out a drawer.

  “I’ll take it.” She removed from Petya’s grasp the plastic sign advising customers that they could have only one prescription filled per day.

  The substitute medicine was three times as expensive as the one originally prescribed, but the growing ill humor of the people waiting in line induced Anna to pay without further delay. Taking her boy by the hand, she stepped out into the cold.

  When they got home, the apartment had been tidied up and Viktor Ipalyevich, dressed in the jacket he wore around the house, was sitting at the table. His composition book lay in front of him, and next to it, a writing pad with notes. The glass beside him was empty. Anna laid her hand on the samovar; whatever Viktor Ipalyevich had been drinking, it wasn’t tea. His cap was pulled down to his eyes, as if he wanted to shut out the visible world. His pencil hung motionless over the paper.

  “Would you like beef in pepper sauce for lunch?” Anna asked as she passed him on her way to the kitchen. She’d put the fatty meat in a marinade the night before and needed only to cook it. Petya took his book from the sofa, pulled the curtain to one side, and threw himself onto the bed.

  “I swapped shifts with Svetlana today. Will you fix Petya’s dinner?”

  The figure in the black woolen jacket didn’t move. While sautéing the garlic, Anna read the little leaflet that had come with Petya’s medicine, set some water on to boil, and prepared his inhalant. She squeezed tomato paste out of a tube, stirred it into the pot, and added the meat. Then she went into the other room and sat down across from her father. He didn’t look up. There was writing on the page in front of him, but an eraser lay close at hand. In order to save paper, Viktor Ipalyevich would make repeated revisions of a poem on the same sheet, until it was gray and worn from erasures. Anna started telling him about her morning at the clinic, heard the water boiling, rushed to the kitchen to fetch it, stirred the meat as she passed, and carried the steaming pot into the room. She called Petya, who laid his book aside, grumbling a bit, and trotted over to the table. She poured the required amount of the inhalant into the water, put a cushion under the boy, told him to lean over the pot, and spread a towel over his head and shoulders. He gasped for air and started struggling; his mother stroked his back. If he was a brave boy, she told him, he’d start feeling better that very day. Gradually, the little fellow under the towel began to breathe evenly.

  “How’s it coming along?” Anna asked her father.

  “Nothing’s coming anymore. I’ve been aware of it for a long time.” He looked at her with watery eyes; his homemade liquor was having its effect. “The spring has dried up.”

  “But you were writing well just yesterday.”

  “One can always write something.” He turned over the page and showed his daughter that he had torn out all the preceding pages. “Worthless stuff. I sit there from morning till evening and tell myself I’m practicing a craft.” He threw his pencil across the table. “An idler, that’s what I’ve become. Nobody needs what I produce.” He laughed grimly. “I haven’t met my quota. The committee will scold me.”

  Anna said nothing and contemplated the carpet hanging on the opposite wa
ll, her only wedding present. While Leonid was still living with them, Viktor Ipalyevich had done better at keeping his drinking under control; it was embarrassing for him to let himself go in front of his son-in-law. Anna’s eyes wandered to the shelves where her father’s books stood. Above the shelves hung the wall light in the gilded sconce, which had its own odd history. She gazed at the rusty radiator and the velvet cloth that hid the sleeping alcove. She’d neglected to wash the curtains in the fall; now, yellowish and heavy, they’d have to wait until spring.

  “Lunch is almost ready,” she said. When she stepped past Viktor Ipalyevich, she could smell his rotgut liquor. In the kitchen, she turned off the gas, put the meat and sauce on a platter, and carried it and the plates into the other room.

  “Will you clear the table?” Without waiting for her father’s consent, she clapped his notebook shut. His gloominess took her breath away, and she could hardly wait for her appointment with Rosa.

  “How long do I have to stay down here?” Petya asked, coughing as he spoke.

  “Just a little while longer.” Anna served her father and herself and started eating. “For the most part, the beginning of a poem comes to you fairly easily. And you write the ending quickly, too.” She pointed to the closed composition book. “It’s just in the middle where you have problems, isn’t it?”

  “What do you know about how a poem gets written?”

  “Nothing.” She chewed slowly. “I know nothing about it.”

  “Then don’t tell me anything about it, either.” He picked at his food. “How often is Petya supposed to have these inhalation treatments?”

  “No more!” The red face appeared from under the table. “I just had one, I don’t have to do it anymore.”

  “Again before he goes to bed,” said Anna. She put some food on the boy’s plate and took away the pot of water. “You’ll feel better tomorrow,” she told Petya, looking at the kitchen clock. “Does the brave boy want a treat?” She returned to the room with a cookie in her hand. Then she put on her scarf and grabbed her coat. “Errands,” she said, answering Viktor Ipalyevich’s questioning look.

  “You’ve hardly eaten anything.”

  “Put it in the oven for me.” She was already out the door.

  The bus took Anna from west to east. She got out at the Lubyanka Theater stop, took longer than she liked to find the right street, and stopped to stare in amazement at an old man who had piled bundles of dried green twigs against the wall of a building. He turned his sign—OAK 50 KOPECKS, BIRCH 45 KOPECKS—so that she could see it. She shook her head, thanking him, and looked for a spot where she could wait undisturbed. Ten minutes passed. Rosa’s tardiness annoyed Anna, and she resolved to give her friend five more minutes before she went off to have a glass of tea on her own.

  Rosa Khleb had turned out to be the most refreshing and, at the same time, the most disastrous acquaintance that Anna had made in recent years. She couldn’t imagine a more interesting friend, but Rosa was also a she-devil who often made Anna wish that they had never met. Two years previously, in June, around the time when her affair with Alexey had begun, Anna had gone to buy bread at a bakery on Kalinin Prospekt that offered five different kinds. In no hurry, she’d moved forward in the line, mentally going over her remaining errands.

  “But it’s back there,” she heard a man at the counter say.

  The girl behind it held out a loaf to him.

  “That’s at least five hours old. I’d like some of the fresh bread back there on the trays.” He pointed toward the ovens.

  “Next in line.”

  “Wait a minute, I’m first!”

  “You want some bread from back there, right?” said the shop assistant, imitating him. “That’ll be available in an hour.” Disregarding the man’s protests, she signaled to a woman with a child to step up to the counter. The woman wasn’t choosy; she took the proffered loaf and thrust it into her shopping bag. Furious, the man pushed his way out of the crowded shop.

  Only then did Anna notice the pretty woman standing in front of her in the line. She was wearing a striking summer dress, dark blue with a light-colored pattern. No dye could have produced the natural color of her shoulder-length blond hair. She might have been around Anna’s age, but her bearing, her self-confident air, suggested a woman in her thirties. When the blonde’s turn came, she didn’t make her choice hastily, as the other customers did; she took the long-handled spoon from the counter and pressed the metal into the loaves that were on offer. By the fourth, the people behind Anna began to grow restless. “They’re all the same!” one cried out.

  The shop assistant nodded and said, “They all come out of the same machine.”

  “How old is that one?” the blonde asked.

  “It’s fresh.” The girl tried to hand her the loaf, but the customer decided on another one. “That man who was just here was right,” she said without emphasis. “You ought to put out your newest loaves. This bread’s already getting hard.” With that, she took the loaf and went to stand in the line in front of the cash register. Very soon, Anna was behind her again. It had grown dark outside, a draft of cool air entered the bakery, and thunder crashed over the rooftops.

  “Oh no, not now!” a woman cried. She quickly counted her kopecks, dropped them on the cashier’s counter, and ran out in an attempt to beat the coming storm. The next woman in line was equally hurried, but not the blonde. She calmly opened her shopping bag, let the cashier peer inside to see whether there was anything there besides a loaf of bread, took out her purse, and started looking for the correct change.

  “It’s going to be pouring in a minute!” a man barked.

  After paying, the blonde ambled past the line of customers to the exit.

  Anna paid in her turn, put her change in her pocket and her loaf under her arm, squeezed through the door, and stepped out. The air was green, there was a smell of sulfur, and lightning and thunder were following each other in rapid succession. She was surprised to find the blond customer still standing in the entrance, apparently having trouble with her umbrella. The rain was coming down so hard that two men who were running for the bakery collided just outside the door. Laughing, they hastened to take refuge inside. From one second to the next, the street was swept empty. Anna decided to wait out the heaviest downpour and leaned against the wall. As the pretty woman was still struggling with her umbrella, Anna offered to help and opened it with two swift movements.

  “Where do you have to go? I can take you part of the way.”

  Had Anna been able to imagine the consequences of this offer, she would have run out into the rain without replying. Instead she gazed at the lovely things the blonde was wearing. “You’ll ruin your dress,” Anna said.

  “I want to go to that café.” Arm in arm, protected by the umbrella, and running in step, they set out.

  When they reached the door of the bar, the unknown woman asked, “Shall we go in and have some tea?”

  Anna, breathless, stood there without speaking.

  “Without you, I would have got soaking wet,” said the woman, smiling. “And by the way, my name is Rosa.”

  The meeting that took place one week later marked the first time that Anna stepped into the trap. For a long time, her family had enjoyed a privilege: During the 1940s, when Viktor Ipalyevich was at the height of his fame, he had purchased a grave in one of Moscow’s central cemeteries. And so Anna was among the few who, when they visited their dead, could do so inside the city; most people had to go to the urn graves located on the outskirts. On that particular afternoon, having picked up some spike broom and some forget-me-nots, Anna had passed through the cemetery’s main portal and watched the crows, which seemed to be attacking the graves. It was hot and sunny. Many visitors were kneeling on the marble gravestones, scrubbing them with brushes or putting plants on them. Anna reached the grave that was her goal and greeted a couple who had set up a table on their son’s gravestone and were having lunch.

  “We’ve brought Sa
sha some of the things he used to like.” With a gesture, the father invited Anna to share their meal: pirozhki, hard-boiled eggs, pickled mushrooms, and fish. Regretfully, Anna pointed to the neglected adjacent grave and held up a hand rake. “First I have to tidy up Mama’s place.”

  “The winter made a real mess.” The neighbors kept eating.

  Anna went down on her knees. Her grandparents’ marker had been moved farther back, and in the middle stood a stone of polished granite bearing a picture of her mother. The photograph showed a pretty woman with her hair pinned up high on her head. The look on the youthful face gave Anna a pang; in reality, Dora Tsazukhina had been a slight, inconspicuous woman, somewhat shorter than Viktor Ipalyevich. She’d worked for the Writers’ Association as one of a hundred typists and had met, at a reception, the poet whose work she’d revered even as a girl. Viktor Ipalyevich was divorced, and he enjoyed being revered by women for his poetry. He’d seduced Dora that very night and visited her a few times after that at the Writers’ Association, but without considering the matter very important. Soon afterward, a lover of many years’ standing left him for a sculptor who won the Lenin Prize. Finding himself empty-handed in every way had dealt a sharp blow to Viktor Ipalyevich’s self-confidence. As chance would have it, the editing of his latest volume of poems had recently been completed, and Dora was typing up the revised manuscript, so that the two of them had professional reasons for spending time together. The poet had instinctively understood that in securing Dora he would be drawing to his side a lifelong admirer, someone who would always subordinate her existence to his needs and who (this consideration was not to be disdained) earned a respectable income. Dora and Viktor were married during a heavy March rainstorm; at the end of November, Anna came into the world. “She’ll be an idealist,” her father had declared, and he’d given her the name of the protagonist in Tolstoy’s famous novel. The allocation of a larger apartment was achieved without difficulty, and Viktor, Dora, and the infant moved into their new home near Filyovsky Park. Dora wasn’t robust, but nobody found her delicacy worrying; for Viktor Ipalyevich, all it meant was that he would go on his long hikes through the hills around Zagorsk alone or choose easier routes. On one such excursion, Dora had slipped and, although she didn’t fall, broken her shinbone. The fragility of her bone structure aroused surprise; a medical examination revealed that she had cancer of the bone marrow. At the time when her mother was hospitalized, Anna was a fourteen-year-old Pioneer Girl. For three years, Dora had fought her illness with a determination that commanded Viktor Ipalyevich’s deepest respect; in the final months, however, both he and his daughter had wished that the sick woman’s ordeal might be over soon. Anna’s mother died in the household; outside, as on her wedding day, there was a terrific downpour. The normally complacent Viktor Ipalyevich had mourned his wife’s death more deeply than Anna would have thought him capable of doing, and during this period he’d produced his most beautiful poems: not elegies, but vibrant declarations of love to Dora. Shortly afterward, Anna had left school and accepted a trainee position in the building combine.