He often thought that had he called the marriage off the night before, he would have shown more honesty than saying yes to a contract that he felt he could never honor. Although the village might have thought poorly of him, his friends would have understood. Then why had he not excused himself from a commitment that he knew he’d regret? The simple answer was family, his and hers. In their provincial way, his mother and father had come to admire Natasha’s peasant skills, to say nothing of her looks. She was unpretentious, kind, self-effacing, hardworking, and malleable. It was her malleability that made her subject to all kinds of mistakes. The last person to talk to her always came away the winner. She could not handle competing ideas. Hence, the balance always tipped in favor of the last voice she heard, even when that voice was not the most logical.
Natasha’s family comprised the other side of the equation. Her mother doted on her and had planned since the day of her birth to see her well positioned. Natasha would not make a disastrous marriage with a drunkard. To the contrary, she would marry a man of means, dress well, and travel in educated circles. Alexei fit the description. And had not her stepfather, a good man, slapped him on the back and told him that Natasha would make a good wife? He had even walked Alexei through a flowering meadow to dilate on the virtues of an honest woman, such as he had married. To dash the hopes of two families was more than Alexei could bear.
During their time together, Natasha had remained unsophisticated. Perhaps their separation would help. One could hope; one could tutor her, as he had, but he feared that no magic could turn chaff into grain. For all the Soviet crowing about a classless society, finally one’s rank was determined not by property and money, but by education and intellect. Rissa was a noblewoman, his wife a pretty toy.
Feeling the need to see Rissa not once a week but every day, he showed up the next morning to the surprise of Basmanaya, who reluctantly turned over the key. But instead of going directly upstairs, Alexei passed through the clinic, exited a back door, and hastened to a locksmith. When he entered Rissa’s room, he again sensed her magnetism, a combination of loveliness and lyricism.
“Do you know why I’ve come back today?”
“To bring me more music.”
“No, to try to bring you relief.”
“Am I then to assume that you know why first the resident doctor was sent away and then Dr. Chulkaturin?”
“I know the second physician but not the first. Let me guess. His initials are VGP. Is that right?”
Like a flower at nightfall, Rissa folded her bloom. She hugged her knees tightly, buried her face in her arms, and refused to answer. A moment later, she fell back on the bed in a fetal position and began to keen softly.
“Help me to understand, Rissa. I’ve been told nothing.” He touched her arm gently. “The story must come from you.”
She closed her eyes. Alexei fruitlessly tried to coax her out of this state. At last, he left her room. Returning Basmanaya’s key, he walked home pensively to study one of his medical books. The next day, he called on the other patients. This time, he decided to speak to them individually in the small examining room, with its desk, padded chair, and one wooden bench. He started with Helena Schmidt and then interviewed them in the same order as before; but this time, he deliberately tried to antagonize them, in the hope of eliciting a disclosure that might explain some hidden motive or essence for their behavior.
“You represent yourself as a deviationist, an oppositionist, but I think you are actually working for the secret police.”
“Then you are a fool,” came the reply.
“Fools often speak wisdom.”
Helena shouted, gesticulated, and slammed her fist against the desk, saying, “Would you have me cultivate a respect for the state rather than for what is right?” She then stormed out, cursing Alexei.
In turn, Benjamin Federov, Arkady Gorbatov, and Sviatoslav Sarkaski responded angrily to his charge of their working for the secret police; each fulminated and shook a fist, and, curiously, each responded with similar protestations about his being a fool, and the same line, “Would you have me cultivate a respect for the state rather than for what is right?” Coincidence? Surely not. But he had no facts or files to explain it.
Intuitively, he felt that the answers to most, if not all, his questions lay behind the locked door. Predictably, he now found himself persona non grata in Ward Two. The patients refused to speak to him, an indication that his time in the clinic would be short. He returned to Rissa’s room clandestinely, late at night, and discovered her playing Bach. A small table lamp created a pool of light. That afternoon, he had taken a tram across town to buy her several pieces for solo flute. She barely raised her head from the music to acknowledge his presence. Her long, dark hair hung loosely around her face, as she intently repeated measures and phrases to master the Bach. He sat on the bed and silently watched. Eventually, she looked up, and he handed her additional pieces of sheet music.
“Thank you. During your absence I’ve been thinking . . . about you . . . and the others.”
“What others?”
“Have they told you yet why I’m here?”
“No.”
“I’ve said nothing . . . kept my silence. If they ask . . .”
“I will tell them that you have been no help at all, that you are incorrigible. If you want me to say worse, I’ll oblige.”
“I’m fearful.”
“Of what?”
“Punishment.”
“What can they do?”
“Send me to Kolyma.”
“You seem to have blat. No one else has a private room.”
“There are reasons, but don’t ask for them.”
Alexei gathered that she knew people in government or in some influential family. Although the Soviets denied it, the old landed gentry still had some sway. “If you can have your own quarters, why can’t your friends arrange your release?”
“You really are an innocent. The Soviets use every form of persuasion available to them, from aristocrats to ignorant peasants. Although you don’t know it, they are using you now.”
“I am merely trying to restore your peace of mind.”
“I see: render me docile and malleable. It won’t happen.”
“No, I want to drive out your fears.”
“Impossible.”
“Can’t we just talk?”
“We are.”
“About why you are fearful.”
“It’s too complicated.”
“Has any doctor ever given you sodium pentothol?”
“What’s that, a secret Soviet potion that induces paradise?”
“It’s a favorite Russian drug, a kind of truth serum that helps to free repressed memories. You talk and I listen.”
“And once you tap into my memories . . . what then?”
“If you make peace with your past, it won’t poison the present.”
She paused and looked around. “You know that at this moment the Soviet cockroaches might be eavesdropping. But even if they are, what do you propose?”
“There’s a new theory about the scrutiny of words.”
“Psychoanalysis.”
“Literary analysis.”
“Words, words, that’s all theory is. People need bread, not theories. In Russia, thinking has engendered a plague. Once, our country was green with promise; now, it’s dead and mourning.”
Alexei touched her hand. She tensed, then relaxed, and let his fingers remain resting on hers.
“The preservation of our memory is in words. Whether we intend to or not, we reveal ourselves in our speech. Farmers talk one way, professors another. A good doctor treats his patients’ words as clues that require close reading to arrive at an accurate diagnosis. The sodium pentothol can make it easier for you to remember words.”
Her expression bespoke both doubt and concern.
“You want words, I’ll give you words. Riddle the third.
I met a doctor constructed of stone.
I met a doctor when I was alone.
I met a doctor who counseled ’gainst fear.
I grimly refused to issue a tear.
How could a doctor be fashioned of stone?
How could a doctor be deaf to my tone?
How could a doctor counsel against fears?
How could a doctor take refuge in sneers?
A doctor sans shame has bone made of stone.
A doctor sans grace takes Rissa from home.
A doctor sans clothes exhibits his spear.
A femme in a field is flooded with fear.”
* * *
Shortly after six o’clock the next morning, Basmanaya’s phone rang. Dr. Leshin had called to curse the clinic director.
“The man on duty, last night, said Alexei entered her room. Are you trying,” Leshin shouted, shaking the phone like a rattle, “to get us both posted to the outer reaches of Russia?”
“He must have a key.”
Leshin repeated mockingly, “‘He-must-have-a-key!’ Of course he does. Any imbecile could deduce that.”
Basmanaya swore without conviction. “Damn it, I forbade him.”
“A year in a work camp might do him some good.”
“Or a military assignment.”
“How many times do we have to repeat this exercise?”
“Are you saying we’re at risk?”
“You are twice an imbecile. Of course, we’re at risk! From the first signs of trouble, I told you to bug her room and record every word. No, you had to be softhearted and just let her be.”
“Do you suppose he is trying to psychoanalyze her?”
“You’re the director of the clinic, not me!”
“Andrei, you must admit that I did recommend she be sent away.”
“What, so she could spread rumors through every camp in the country? I was right: better to keep her locked up.”
“Psychoanalysis,” Basmanaya mumbled. “I hate the word. Why is it the things we hate have so many syllables? Psychoanalysis! Six syllables. If you break it up into two words, ‘Psycho,’ and ‘analysis,’ then the longest word has only four syllables.”
“You really are an imbecile. What’s your point?”
A confused Basmanaya had lost the thread. “My point about what?”
“Breaking it up into two words.”
“I just thought it worth mentioning.”
“Leonid Basmanaya you come from a good family. You have a kind wife, with relatives in Moscow. Act the part!”
“My apologies.”
“The last two physicians were charged with immoral behavior. What will this one be charged with?”
“Why not the same thing?”
“Your problem, Leonid, is that you suffer from a lack of imagination. What if every time I stole, I stole the same things? Don’t you think the repetition would be noticed and prove my undoing?”
“But you wouldn’t steal, doctor. So it’s a moot question.”
“Leonid, I am going to murder you!”
“I was just trying to help.”
“Then keep still.” After a disquieting pause, Leshin continued, but deliberately and subdued. “When a man sentenced to internal exile for political activity inimical to the state violates the terms of his exile, he is subject to imprisonment—or worse.”
“Alexei will say he’s a doctor with a right to see the patient.”
“Ah, so in that thick skull of yours, there is actually some semblance of thought.”
“In school, my teachers said I was quite clever.”
“That was the old Russia, where the teachers were all blind. Now the schools have Soviet teachers who can recognize fools.”
“The trouble is: He hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“Not yet, but like the others, he will. That’s why I want him to continue seeing her, and I want a microphone installed in the room.”
“I see. He’ll gain her confidence, maybe more, and then . . .”
“We’ll have access to both her words and deeper feelings.”
Basmanaya shook his head at the phone as if Leshin could see him through the receiver. “Andrei, I still think we ought to send her away. May I speak my mind?”
“That shouldn’t take very long.”
“I remain convinced she’s a threat, a danger to me and the clinic. That’s why I recommend exile.”
“By keeping her here, we rule the roost. Once out of our control, she could bring down on us the chistka. At the first sign of trouble, those damn purges spring up like mushrooms. Bug her!”
Alas, Rissa’s room had been recently plastered, and a patch would draw notice. Unless a listening device could be planted in a light fixture, Basmanaya would have to think of some pretext for fixing a wall. Did Leshin have any ideas?
“You always have some excuse, Leonid. Just move her to the visitor’s cottage. She likes gardens.” Lapsing into sarcasm, he said, “With the sewer line next door, she’ll have plenty of water. Besides, the cottage is completely wired. What we can’t hear,” he laughed sardonically, “we’ll write off to silent love.”
“The reason for my caution is, well, that if the listening devices were discovered and the clinic’s work came to light . . .”
“They won’t.”
“But if they did, in your capacity as chief medical officer . . .” Basmanaya chose deliberately not to finish his sentence, hoping to induce the right response from Dr. Leshin.
“I’d step in.”
Sighing with relief, Basmanaya added, “You know, Andrei, you really are quite a good fellow. So it’s understood?”
“If a problem arises . . .”
“We dismiss the doctor for unprofessional behavior.”
“Like our military friend and the professor.”
“Precisely.”
* * *
Told that she and her belongings would be moved to the cottage that very day, Rissa chose to wait in the humidity shed of the greenhouse. Alexei found her there, under the watchful eye of a woman attendant, whom he sharply directed to leave. He then retreated to the pharmacy and collected from Comrade Lvov a syringe and a vial of sodium pentothol. When he returned, Rissa was admiring some exotic orchards, glorious in their different coloration. Alexei removed his vest in the heavy air and sat watching Rissa fondle the petals.
“What better place to talk,” he said, “than in the Garden of Eden. And you, like Eve, can lead me astray.”
“I—I don’t know,” she said without turning to look at him.
“What’s the matter?”
She failed to reply.
On the potting table, Alexei put a Costa Rican orchid and some bay leaves. He told Rissa to inhale the aromatic leaves while staring into the heart of the flower. With her permission, he injected the drug and told her to say whatever word came into her head in response to his prompts.
“For example, if I say black, you’re likely to say white. Fat, skinny. Tall, short.”
She shook her head and slowly sunk to the ground, where she sat glassy eyed from the drug. Alexei sat next to her.
“Courting.”
“Candy.”
“Inside.”
“Outside.”
“Meadow.”
“Stream.”
“Violets.”
“Violence.”
“Picnic.”
“Grass.”
“Ward Two.”
“Informers.”
“State.”
“Secret.”
“Mayflies.”
“Sex.”
“Pistol.”
“Forehead.”
“Click.”
“Fear.”
“I’ll shoot.”
“Rape.”
Alexei took her hand. “Viktor.”
“Podol,” she screamed, and vomited.
Alexei kneeled beside her and stroked her hair. “You’re safe now, Rissa. It’s over. You’ll never again have to relive that pain.”
Rissa
stared at him with dilated eyes as mournful as mist. Then she pressed her cheek against his and cried copiously, mumbling, “Never again, never again.”
A bell rang in the clinic, signaling an emergency. Rissa reached up with one hand as if the sound were palpable and she could seize it. “No, it was a cow bell,” she said. “A farmer was leading his cattle to pasture.”
* * *
Alone in the cottage together, except for the listening devices, Rissa told him what she’d discovered: that Ward Two was a training area for spies placed in mental hospitals, where they would be privy to the confidences of “politicals” confined as insane.
Alexei, incredulous, said, “Informers, all of them!”
“Who is not an informer? I swore to be silent, and here I am telling you.”
“They do it for a privileged life.”
“And I in the service of what?”
“I’d like to think love.”
When the listening devices revealed that Alexei knew about the “training program,” Leshin and Basmanaya agreed that he too could never be allowed outside the premises. Alexei merely asked that his clothing and books be moved to the cottage.
“They both love classical music,” said Leshin sneeringly. “Then let them lie in the beautiful silent music of a padlocked cottage.”
Basmanaya cackled. “He said that in Russia the sane are jailed and the insane go free, so we’ve given him what he wants.”
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