Edge of Eternity (60 page)

She had made several discreet enquiries among people who would have known if Vasili had returned. The answer had been the same in all cases: no one had heard anything.

Then, that afternoon, Tania got word.

Leaving the
TASS
building at the end of the working day, she was accosted by a stranger. A voice said: ‘Tania Dvorkin?’ and she turned to see a pale, thin man in dirty clothes.

‘Yes?’ she said, a little anxiously: she could not imagine what such a man would want with her.

‘Vasili Yenkov saved my life,’ he said.

It was so unexpected that for a moment she did not know how to respond. Too many questions raced through her mind: How do you know Vasili? Where and when did he save your life? Why have you come to me?

He thrust into her hand a grubby envelope the size of a regular sheet of paper, then he turned away.

It took Tania a moment to gather her wits. At last she realized there was one question more important than all the rest. While the man was still within earshot she said: ‘Is Vasili alive?’

The stranger stopped and looked back. The pause struck fear into Tania’s heart. Then he said: ‘Yes,’ and she felt the sudden lightness of relief.

The man walked away.

‘Wait!’ Tania called, but he quickened his pace, turned a corner, and disappeared from view.

The envelope was not sealed. Tania looked inside. She saw several sheets of paper covered with handwriting that she recognized as Vasili’s. She pulled them halfway out. The first sheet was headed:

FROSTBITE

by Ivan Kuznetsov

She pushed the sheets back into the envelope and walked on to the bus stop. She felt scared and excited at the same time. ‘Ivan Kuznetsov’ was an obvious pseudonym, the commonest name imaginable, like Hans Schmidt in German or Jean Lefevre in French. Vasili had written something, an article or a story. She could hardly wait to read it, yet at the same time she had to resist the impulse to hurl it away from her like something contaminated, for it was sure to be subversive.

She shoved it into her shoulder bag. When the bus came it was crowded – this was the evening rush hour – so she could not look at the manuscript on her way home without the risk that someone would read it over her shoulder. She had to suppress her impatience.

She thought about the man who had handed it to her. He had been badly dressed, half starved, and in poor health, with a look of permanent wary fearfulness: just like a man recently released from jail, she thought. He had seemed glad to get rid of the envelope, and reluctant to say more to her than he had to. But he had at least explained why he had undertaken his dangerous errand. He was repaying a debt. ‘Vasili Yenkov saved my life,’ he had said. Again she wondered how.

She got off the bus and walked to Government House. On her return from Cuba she had moved back into her mother’s flat. She had no reason to get her own apartment and, if she had, it would have been a lot less luxurious.

She spoke briefly to Anya then went to her bedroom and sat down on the bed to read what Vasili had written.

His handwriting had altered. The letters were smaller, the risers shorter, the loops less flamboyant. Did that reflect a change of personality, she wondered, or just a shortage of writing paper?

She began to read.

Josef Ivanovitch Maslov, called Soso, was overjoyed when the food arrived spoiled.

Normally, the guards stole most of the consignment and sold it. The prisoners were left with plain gruel in the morning and turnip soup at night. Food rarely went bad in Siberia, where the ambient temperature was usually below freezing – but Communism could work miracles. So when, occasionally, the meat was crawling with maggots and the fat rancid, the cook threw it all into the pot, and the prisoners rejoiced. Soso gobbled down kasha that was oily with stinking lard, and longed for more.

Tania was nauseated, but at the same time she had to read on.

With each page she was more impressed. The story was about an unusual relationship between two prisoners, one an intellectual dissident, the other an uneducated gangster. Vasili had a simple, direct style that was remarkably effective. Life in the camp was described in brutally vivid language. But there was more than just description. Perhaps because of his experience in radio drama, Vasili knew how to keep a story moving, and Tania found that her interest never flagged.

The fictional camp was located in a forest of Siberian larch, and its work was chopping down the trees. There were no safety rules and no protective clothing or equipment, so accidents were frequent. Tania particularly noted an episode in which the gangster severed an artery in his arm with a saw and was saved by the intellectual, who tied a tourniquet around his arm. Was that how Vasili had saved the life of the messenger who had brought his manuscript to Moscow from Siberia?

Tania read the story twice. It was almost like talking to Vasili: the phrasing was familiar from a hundred discussions and arguments, and she recognized the kinds of thing he found funny or dramatic or ironic. It made her heart ache with missing him.

Now that she knew Vasili was alive, she had to find out why he had not returned to Moscow. The story contained no clue to that. But Tania knew someone who could find out almost anything: her brother.

She put the manuscript in the drawer of her bedside table. She left the bedroom and said to her mother: ‘I have to go and see Dimka – I won’t be long.’ She went down in the elevator to the floor on which her brother lived.

The door was opened by his wife, Nina, nine months pregnant. ‘You look well!’ Tania said.

It was not true. Nina was long past the stage when people said a pregnant woman looked ‘blooming’. She was huge, her breasts pendulous, her belly stretched taut. Her fair skin was pale under the freckles, and her red-brown hair was greasy. She looked older than twenty-nine. ‘Come in,’ she said in a tired voice.

Dimka was watching the news. He turned off the television, kissed Tania, and offered her a beer.

Nina’s mother, Masha, was there, having come from Perm by train to help her daughter with the baby. Masha was a small, prematurely wrinkled peasant woman dressed in black, visibly proud of her citified daughter in her swanky apartment. Tania had been surprised when she first met Masha, having previously got the impression that Nina’s mother was a schoolteacher; but it turned out that she merely worked in the village school, cleaning it, in fact. Nina had pretended that her parents were somewhat higher in status – a practice so common as to be almost universal, Tania supposed.

They talked about Nina’s pregnancy. Tania wondered how to get Dimka alone. There was no way she was going to talk about Vasili in front of Nina or her mother. Instinctively, she mistrusted her brother’s wife.

Why did she feel that so strongly? she wondered guiltily. It was because of the pregnancy, she decided. Nina was not intellectual, but she was clever: not the type to suffer an accidental pregnancy. Tania had a suspicion, never voiced, that Nina had manipulated Dimka into the marriage. Tania knew that her brother was sophisticated and savvy about almost everything: he was naive and romantic only about women. Why would Nina have wanted to entrap him? Because the Dvorkins were an elite family, and Nina was ambitious?

Don’t be such a bitch, Tania told herself.

She made small talk for half an hour then got up to go.

There was nothing supernatural about the twins’ relationship, but they knew each other so well that each could usually guess what the other was thinking, and Dimka intuited that Tania had not come to talk about Nina’s pregnancy. Now he stood up too. ‘I’ve got to take out the garbage,’ he said. ‘Give me a hand, would you, Tania?’

They went down in the elevator, each carrying a bucket of rubbish. When they were outside, at the back of the building, with no one else around, Dimka said: ‘What is it?’

‘Vasili Yenkov’s sentence is up, but he hasn’t come back to Moscow.’

Dimka’s face hardened. He loved Tania, she knew, but he disagreed with her politics. ‘Yenkov did his best to undermine the government I work for. Why would I care what happens to him?’

‘He believes in freedom and justice, as you do.’

‘That kind of subversive activity just gives the hardliners an excuse to resist reform.’

Tania knew she was defending herself, as well as Vasili. ‘If it were not for people like Vasili, the hardliners would say everything was all right, and there would be no pressure for change. How would anyone know that they killed Ustin Bodian, for example?’

‘Bodian died of pneumonia.’

‘Dimka, that’s not worthy of you. He died of neglect, and you know it.’

‘True.’ Dimka looked chastened. In a softer voice he said: ‘Are you in love with Vasili Yenkov?’

‘No. I
like
him. He’s funny and smart and brave. But he’s the kind of man that needs a succession of young girls.’

‘Or he
was.
There are no nymphets in a prison camp.’

‘Anyway, he is a friend, and he’s served his sentence.’

‘The world is full of injustice.’

‘I want to know what has happened to him, and you can find out for me. If you will.’

Dimka sighed. ‘What about my career? In the Kremlin, compassion for dissidents unjustly treated is not considered admirable.’

Tania’s hopes rose. He was weakening. ‘Please. It means a lot to me.’

‘I can’t make any promises.’

‘Just do your best.’

‘All right.’

Tania felt overcome by gratitude, and kissed his cheek. ‘You’re a good brother,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

*  *  *

Just as the Eskimos were said to have numerous different words for snow, so the citizens of Moscow had many phrases for the black market. Everything other than life’s most basic necessities had to be bought ‘on the left’. Many such purchases were straightforwardly criminal: you found a man who smuggled blue jeans from the West and you paid him an enormous price. Others were neither legal nor illegal. To buy a radio or a rug, you might have to put your name down on a waiting list; but you could leap to the top of the list ‘through pull’, by being a person of influence and having the power to return the favour; or ‘through friends’, by having a relative or pal in a position to manipulate the list. So widespread was queue-jumping that most Muscovites believed no one
ever
got to the top of a list just by waiting.

One day Natalya Smotrov asked Dimka to go with her to buy something on the black market. ‘Normally I’d ask Nik,’ she said. ‘But it’s a present for his birthday, and I want it to be a surprise.’

Dimka knew little about Natalya’s life outside the Kremlin. Nikolai was her husband, and they had no children, but that was about the extent of his knowledge. Kremlin apparatchiks were part of the Soviet elite, but Natalya’s Mercedes and her imported perfume indicated some other source of privilege and money. However, if there was a Nikolai Smotrov in the upper reaches of the Communist hierarchy, Dimka had never heard of him.

Dimka asked: ‘What are you going to give him?’

‘A tape recorder. He wants a Grundig – that’s a German brand.’

Only on the black market could a Soviet citizen buy a German tape recorder. Dimka wondered how Natalya could afford such an expensive gift. ‘Where are you going to find one?’ he asked.

‘There’s a guy called Max at the Central Market.’ This bazaar, in Sadovaya Samotyochnaya, was a lawful alternative to state stores. Produce from private gardens was sold at higher prices. Instead of long queues and unattractive displays, there were mountains of colourful vegetables – for those who could afford them. And the sale of legitimate produce masked even more profitable illegal business at many of the stalls.

Dimka understood why Natalya wanted company. Some of the men who did this kind of work were thugs, and a woman had reason to be wary.

Dimka hoped that was her only motive. He did not want to be led into temptation. He felt close to Nina just now, her time being near. They had not had sex for a couple of months, which made him more vulnerable to Natalya’s charms. But that paled beside the drama of pregnancy. The last thing Dimka wanted was a dalliance with Natalya. But he could hardly refuse her this simple favour.

They went in the lunch hour. Natalya drove Dimka to the market in her ancient Mercedes. Despite its age it was fast and comfortable. How did she get parts for it? he wondered.

On the way, she asked him about Nina. ‘The baby is due any day,’ he said.

‘Let me know if you need baby supplies,’ Natalya said. ‘Nik’s sister has a three-year-old who no longer needs feeding bottles and suchlike.’

Dimka was surprised. Baby-feeding bottles were a luxury more rare than tape recorders. ‘Thank you, I will.’

They parked and walked through the market to a shop selling second-hand furniture. This was a semi-legal business. People were allowed to sell their own possessions, but it was against the law to be a middleman, which made the trade cumbersome and inefficient. To Dimka, the difficulties of imposing such Communist rules illustrated the practical necessity of many capitalist practices – hence the need for liberalization.

Max was a heavy man in his thirties dressed American style in blue jeans and a white T-shirt. He sat at a pine kitchen table drinking tea and smoking. He was surrounded by cheap used couches and cabinets and beds, mostly elderly and damaged. ‘What do you want?’ he said brusquely.

‘I spoke to you last Wednesday about a Grundig tape recorder,’ said Natalya. ‘You said to come back in a week.’

‘Tape recorders are difficult to get hold of,’ he said.

Dimka intervened. ‘Don’t piss about, Max,’ he said, making his voice as harsh and contemptuous as Max’s. ‘Have you got one or not?’

Men such as Max considered it a sign of weakness to give a direct answer to a simple question. He said: ‘You’ll have to pay in American dollars.’

Natalya said: ‘I agreed your price. I’ve brought exactly that much. No more.’

‘Show me the money.’

Natalya took a wad of American bills from the pocket of her dress.