The Russian Affair

FOUR



The next day was a Sunday, but Anna, anxious and worried, checked her mailbox downstairs in the lobby. The letter had been delivered by a messenger; she noticed the special stamp on the envelope right away. She stood with bowed head, reading the letter. It bore the signature of her building combine’s secretary and informed Anna that she had been chosen out of thousands of Soviet women to take part in an educational trip for the benefit of proven and tested former Pioneers. Lost in thought, she climbed back up the stairs.

“An educational trip?” Viktor Ipalyevich asked. “It’s been ten years since you were in the Pioneer Girls.” He screwed up his eyes. “Do you by chance have an admirer in high places?”

Anna jumped at how unerringly her father had guessed the truth. His work folder was already closed for the day, and he’d been perusing a novel. Now he stood up, switched on the samovar, and cast a glance out the window. “Pretty unusual, to go on such a jaunt at this time of year.” Gray snow hung on the window ledges like wads of dough, and a ladder of ice led down from the roof. “Where are you supposed to go on this trip?”

“Dubna,” Anna replied, without enthusiasm.

“They’re sending you all to the physics city?” Perplexed, he scanned the opening lines of the letter and then read aloud: “Religions dissolve like fog, empires collapse; only the works of science survive over time.”

It was the motto of the trip. The guests from Moscow were to visit the facilities in Dubna, a center of Soviet research, and receive instruction in its latest achievements during colloquies with scientists. “That certainly beats me,” Viktor Ipalyevich said, turning the letter over as though there might be an explanation on the other side.

“It has to do with the celebrations for the twentieth anniversary of the science city,” Anna explained. Given her way, she would have torn that letter to shreds, burned the shreds, and forgotten about her assignment. She pretended to have urgent business in the kitchen; once she was on the other side of the door, she took several deep breaths.

Viktor Ipalyevich followed her. “Foreign diplomats, high officials of the Communist Party, and members of the nomenklatura are allowed to go to Dubna. And now, my daughter!”

“Why not?” she said curtly, letting herself be provoked despite all her scruples. “I have the same right as anyone else to be informed about scientific progress.”

“Politicians’ platitudes,” he said, laughing, but he gave way before her angry look: “Of course you’ll go on the trip, Annushka, don’t worry about a thing, it’ll do you good.”

“Three days. Can you look after Petya for such a long time?”

“Haven’t I always?” Viktor Ipalyevich opened his arms. “Come here, Pioneer Girl, let’s drink to your trip.” Knowing there was no use in opposing him, Anna got out the little glasses.

That night, she tossed and turned as she lay beside Petya. The boy’s breath rattled in his throat; his head was nestled against one small hand. Anna drew the curtain aside, lifted her feet out of the alcove, and crept through the room. On the sofa, Viktor Ipalyevich slept without a sound, as if death had surprised him in his sleep.

She went into the kitchen, sat beside the stove, and lit the gas. The heat in the building was turned down so low at night that a film of ice had formed on the water in the sink. She lifted her legs, clasped her thighs at the knees, and held her feet near the flame. Shooing away the confused thoughts of half-sleep, she undertook some sober reflection. Was Alexey really behind her invitation, as Kamarovsky had tried to make her believe? Or was the Colonel merely using this as a pretext to lull her into a false sense of security? She recalled her conversation with him. “Bulyagkov himself set up the whole thing,” Kamarovsky had said. “Obviously, he wants to have a romantic encounter with you outside Moscow, and so he sees to it that you win an educational trip.”

“And suppose Alexey suspects something? Suppose he wants to put me to the test in this unusual situation?”

“When you’re a member of the visitors’ delegation, don’t do anything that might make him suspicious.”

Anna’s eyes glided over the window joints; the cracks in the cement were stuffed with newspaper, but still there was a draft that fluttered the blue flame on the stove. She put her feet back down on the floor. Her soles felt a little singed, yet at the same time her whole body was shivering with cold. I must see Alexey again before the trip, she thought. I must know whether his suspicions have been aroused. A sound from the living room indicated that the urge to urinate was about to awaken her father. Anna turned off the burner and groped her way through the dark apartment to the sleeping alcove. As she pushed the curtain aside, she realized that she had never, in the year and a half since her affair with the Deputy Minister began, contacted him on her own initiative. He’d always gotten in touch with her, either in writing or through Anton; but this time, she would have to break the ritual order of things. She lay down next to Petya and drew the curtain closed. Immediately afterward, her father got up and shuffled sleepily toward the bathroom.


If the building hadn’t stood opposite the Lenin Library, she would have overlooked the address. There was no nameplate, nor the smallest sign to reveal to the uninitiated that one of the special institutes was housed behind this smooth facade. Anna looked up the front of the multiple-story building. She exhorted Petya to behave particularly well and pushed open the iron door.

The policeman looked up from his papers. He wasn’t the usual badly barbered kid with the carelessly knotted tie and worn shirt sleeves; his uniform was meticulously turned out and the sides of his head completely shaved. “Wrong door, Comrade,” he said, not in an unfriendly way, but as if no one had ever contested that sentence.

“I’m coming from …” Anna unfolded Kamarovsky’s note and approached the policeman’s table.

“Step back.” With an outstretched finger, he motioned her to stay behind the line painted on the floor. She obeyed, pulling the confused Petya with her. The policeman bent over a document. Then he said, “What do you have there, Comrade?”

She hesitated again, until he invited her closer with a patronizing wave. She carefully laid the piece of paper on the edge of his table. The policeman picked it up as though it were one of hundreds like it he received daily, most of which failed to pass his inspection.

“This isn’t an admission certificate,” he said without looking at it. Anna hunched her shoulders, as though expressing sorrow for troubling him with her request. The policeman held the writing up to his eyes. She watched as the fingers gripping the paper stiffened and slowly lowered it to the desk. “Why didn’t you say so at once, Comrade?” His smile uncovered a golden tooth. “You have to understand, many people try to get in without authorization, and it’s my duty …” He returned the paper to her, stood up, and showed her the way to the stairs. While Anna held her boy’s hand, the policeman pushed open the swinging door and let mother and son pass through it.

In the next moment, her surroundings were transformed. No more flaking paint, no more diffuse light from weak bulbs; here everything gleamed. A line of halogen torchères extended along the corridor, and the comforting green walls shimmered; the synthetic floor covering appeared to have been wiped clean minutes before. A nurse seated behind a semicircular window raised her head.

Anna presented her piece of paper. “Is there any chance of seeing Doctor Shchedrin?”

Under any other circumstances, she would have had to reckon with an unfriendly, condescending, or in any case negative reply. The nurse checked the authenticity of Anna’s note of recommendation, picked up the telephone, and informed someone that a patient was on her way to consult Doctor Shchedrin.

Anna corrected her: “I’m not the one who’s sick—it’s my son.”

“The doctor has time for you.” The nurse directed her to the third door in the adjacent corridor.

“Is that the waiting room?” Anna asked, taking Petya by the arm.

“That’s Doctor Shchedrin’s office.” The nurse waited until she was sure the visitor had entered the right door.

It was a friendly room, with a medicine cabinet, plants in stone planters, and a large assortment of children’s toys. There was a door in the opposite wall, and through it came a physician out of a picture book. His coat was fitted at the waist, and under it he wore a woolen suit and a bow tie. He looked comparatively young—there was only a little gray at his temples. A red fleck in the corner of his mouth indicated that the doctor had just been eating. He greeted Anna, bent down to Petya, and gave him his hand.

“How can I help you, Comrade?”

Encouraged by all the unusual friendliness, Anna told the story of Petya’s affliction: the early shortness of breath, the frequent attacks of dizziness and weakness; then, starting a few months previously, the coughing; and now, for the past several weeks, the constant fever. By way of ending her account, Anna started to repeat the diagnosis pronounced by the doctor in the polyclinic, but Shchedrin stopped her with a wave of his hand and swung Petya up onto the examination table. He did not ask the boy to stick out his tongue, nor did he have him undress; Doctor Shchedrin merely examined Petya’s eyes, pulled his eyelids down, and told him to look in all directions. Finally, he took hold of Petya at the point where his spine joined his skull. As he did so, he asked Anna, “Has he ever been tested for allergies?”

“We’ve always been told it was a cold, a catarrh,” Anna stammered, as though she’d committed a sin of omission. “Is it bad?”

“Not yet.” The doctor reached behind him and handed Petya some brightly wrapped candy. “In any case, until a year ago, he would have been too little to have the tests.”

“Tests? Does that mean a serious illness?”

“First we have to find out Petya’s secret,” Shchedrin answered. “Then we’ll do something about it. And after that, I promise you, Comrade, your boy will be considerably better.”

She felt such a sense of relief that she stood up and strode toward the doctor, but instead of falling on his neck, she embraced Petya. “Did you hear that? You’re going to be well soon!” The boy nodded.

Shchedrin leaned toward the intercom. “I need a full blood count.” He turned around. “You look like a brave boy.”

Petya darted a look at his mother. “Why?”

The doctor took out a case and opened it. It contained many little bottles, all of which looked the same. “Lay your arm on this cushion,” he said, pushing it under the boy. “Now I’m going to make thirty-three marks on your arm. And then we’ll see what happens.”

“Marks that hurt?”

“You know how it feels in the summer, when you get a mosquito bite, don’t you?” Shchedrin smiled. “It itches a little, right? But it doesn’t hurt.”

“A wasp stung me once. That hurt a lot.”

“Compared to a wasp sting, this is nothing.” The doctor took out an indelible pencil. “I have to number the marks so I can tell them apart later.” He began to write little numerals on Petya’s arms, one to twenty on the left and twenty-one to thirty-three on the right; next he opened a sterile package and extracted a tiny knife. Then, taking the first vial out of the case, he said, “And now we start.” Holding Petya’s arm still with one hand, he sought out a spot above the wrist and made a scratch in the skin. Petya’s eyelids twitched, but he made no sound.

“Was that bad?” The doctor daubed a drop from the little bottle onto the wound.

“What kind of allergy could it be?” Anna asked, watching as her son’s arm was covered with precisely placed drops.

“There are many possibilities, almost as many as the marks I’m going to make.” Shchedrin threw the small knife into the trash basket and pulled out a new knife. “Grasses, flowers, dust mites. Moscow air isn’t good for our lungs. It’s particularly hard on children.”

Anna had never heard anyone say openly what everyone knew: that the air pollution in the capital was harmful to your health.

“I can’t change the air,” Shchedrin went on, “but we should make sure that Petya doesn’t come into contact with irritants. In addition, there’s a new medication available. If the tests show what I think they will, I’ll give him a prescription for it.”

Anna gazed at the doctor with warmth that bordered on affection. Medicine that really helped? It was too good, too rare, to be true. Her gratitude extended to the man who had made this happiness possible, to A. I. Kamarovsky, who’d done nothing but write a note.

A nurse brought the instruments for the blood test. Before she left, she asked Anna, “Would you perhaps like some tea, Comrade?”

Anna nodded gratefully. Doctor Shchedrin took the next little bottle out of the case.





FIVE



The earflaps of Anna’s fur hat were down as she approached the six-story building. She had left Petya with his grandfather and set out on her search, beginning behind Red Square. After a whole day of thawing, sleet had fallen that morning, and pedestrians were stalking along the walkways as if they had artificial limbs, slipping and sliding, clinging to walls and traffic signposts. Anna had to laugh at the crazy ballet being performed by people around the Central Committee building, who danced with their briefcases pressed tightly under their arms. The weather was Anna’s ally. Everyone was concentrating on reaching his goal without falling down, and nobody observed the young woman who was visiting, one by one, the six entrances to the building complex. The gates were made of steel, the underground levels protected by concrete ramps. Anna’s attention was directed toward the vehicles that approached the CC complex and disappeared inside or stopped nearby. Without exception, the automobiles were black, with license plates that began with the letters MO. The Volgas and Chaikas aroused no interest in her, but if a ZIL drove by, Anna made an effort to get a look at the back of it. She reached the windowless annex to the main building; there were many ZILs parked outside, one behind the other. Struggling to keep her balance, Anna moved along the pavement, looking at the limousines’ ice-covered rear ends and rectangular taillights. Her eyes were seeking a broken brake light with a dent in its metal housing. The damage had been done during her last ride in the car. More hastily than usual, Anton had turned off the Mozhaisk Chaussée and failed to notice a concrete pillar. There had been an unpleasant crunching sound, and Anton had leaped out with a flashlight in his hand and run to the back of the car. “They’ll be laughing at me in the garage,” he said when he got in again. “I’m the driver with the most accidents.” He winked at her in the rearview mirror. “I’m not going to take it to the repair shop just for a dent. Don’t give me away, Comrade.”

Since the announcement of the Five-Year Plan would be made very shortly, Alexey had to go to the Central Committee every day, and right about this time, too; Anton must park the car somewhere around here, she thought. At the third ZIL, Anna hesitated and bent down for a closer inspection. It wasn’t a dent, just the remains of some ice still clinging to the rear fender. The security officer on duty at the gate noticed her and approached. Anna pretended to straighten her cap, using the car window as a mirror, and skidded away. When she reached the main entrance for the second time, the number of policemen there had doubled; one of them pressed his walkie-talkie to his ear. The steel panels of the gate parted, the policeman stopped the ordinary traffic, and a convoy of four limousines appeared, their rear-window curtains all closed. The first car drove into the inner portion of the complex, followed by all the others; none of them slowed down. The gate closed, and the policemen disappeared back into their sentry boxes. Anna imagined that she had seen Brezhnev himself being driven to work. Since the assassination attempt on him a few years before, it was said that the General Secretary always traveled in a convoy so that nobody would know which limousine he was riding in. Anna looked over the square. She could have been watching the arrival of any CC member, she thought; what difference did it make?

After an hour, she admitted to herself that with so many ZILs about, it was naive of her to think she’d be able to find the very one that Anton drove. In the end, the weather and the chaos on the streets made Anna give up and sent her on her way back to the bus stop. Later, loaded down with purchases from various shops, she entered a telephone booth and dialed the number of the apartment on Drezhnevskaya Street. As she had expected, there was no reply. It was clearer to her than ever before that the Deputy Minister could get in touch with her at any time, but the reverse was impossible.


Some days later, Anna was informed that the visitors’ committee was having a preparatory meeting. Its purposes: introduction to the work of the science city, illustration of the basic concepts of physics, distribution of informational material.

After the early shift, Anna set out for a meeting house of the Moscow City Soviet. There she was given a laminated card that declared her an official member of the “Dubna Visitors’ Committee.” In an overheated room on the fourth floor, most of the other members of the delegation were already present, among them a young woman who was a budding Aeroflot pilot, the forewoman of a factory that made finished building parts, a slender blonde in training to become a peace ambassador of the Soviet Union, a schoolgirl named Yelena, and a cashier who’d attracted notice because of her unusual mathematical abilities. Among the men, there were two Irkutskians from the International Friendship Club, a young farmer from Karabanovo, the director of a Moscow orphanage, and a producer at a radio station. Anna presented herself with her job title, and a woman with dyed black hair stepped forward and shook her hand. “I’m Nadezhda from combine four-four-seven,” she said. She had small eyes, and her face appeared to be stamped with a permanent grin. “So you’re the girl who’s going with us instead of Raisa.” Nadezhda took a seat in the middle of the first row and offered her colleague the place next to her.

“What happened to Raisa?”

“She was replaced all of a sudden. No reason was given.” Nadezhda gazed mockingly at Anna. “Have you come directly from work?”

Someone came into the room. His shirt and tie looked new, and there were sharp creases in his trousers. “Good day, comrades. I am Mikhail Popov, group leader for our three-day excursion to Dubna,” he said. His voice sounded like a sewing machine.

The members of the delegation interrupted their conversations. Popov draped his overcoat across the back of a chair, stepped to the podium, and opened a document folder. “The acquisition of knowledge requires human courage,” he began without a transition. “The Soviet scientists chose a deserted area, a marsh, as the place to build the biggest research center in the world. It serves exclusively peaceful purposes.” As he read, he held a finger under each successive line. “The city of Dubna is surrounded on three sides by rivers—the Volga, the Dubna, and the Sestra—and on the fourth by the Moscow Canal. These waterways were of the utmost importance for the transport of heavy equipment. The land where laboratories and apartment houses now stand was originally under water; the engineers took boats to the various worksites.”

When Popov turned the page, it sounded like a whiplash. He looked up, and his eyes met Anna’s. She nodded, showing her interest, and at the same time wondered whether he might be the minder whom Kamarovsky had certainly assigned to her.

“On the fourteenth day of December 1949, the synchrocyclotron began its work. The main building required more than seven hundred thousand cubic feet of concrete; the walls are more than one hundred feet high; the ceiling alone weighs ten thousand tons.” Mechanically, as though trained to do so, Popov tilted his head to one side. “Imagine a magnet that weighs seven thousand tons. Three Volga limousines could comfortably park on each of its poles.” He responded with satisfaction to his audience’s mild tittering; yes, his look seemed to say, science has its lighter side, too. Then he went on, describing the efforts made by the building collective in 1949 to fulfill its duty of putting all machines in operation before the government’s stipulated deadline. “Enthusiasm and the creative spirit of the Soviet engineers led to success.” At this point, Popov began to read a list of technological research achievements that had been produced in Dubna.

Anna stretched her back—her shoulders ached. The substance of Popov’s lecture would surely be in the materials up there in the box, ready for distribution. She looked behind her, and she had the impression that most of those present found nothing new in his revelations. The pilot was playing with a button on her jacket; the peace ambassadress, lost in thought, ran her fingers through her hair; only the forewoman was leaning forward with her elbows on her knees and listening. Anna was sure that Kamarovsky had smuggled in another “member of the delegation,” someone tasked in his or her turn with reporting on Anna’s conduct and methods. She knew that she was starting to judge reality according to a scheme learned from the Colonel. She’d grown adept at machinations, she was acquainted with the means of gaining advantages for herself, and she was preparing to use people the way Kamarovsky did. Wasn’t she even making use of Kamarovsky himself? Hadn’t she foreseen that he’d be able to find her and her son a decent doctor? It had cost him nothing and made Anna happy. She thought of the little presents for Petya that Anton had picked up in specialty shops; now they were probably lying on the backseat of the limousine. Anna was afraid of her own hedonism, but at the same time, she didn’t know how to curb its growth. She’d already taken on too much. With a sigh, she slumped against the back of her chair. She’d lost the thread.