Fellow Travelers (29 page)

Pop poured vodka into some water glasses, handed one to me, and sat down in a large winged chair, one hand holding the glass, the other touching Cerberus's head. I sat down on the small sofa across from him.

I must have made him uneasy, suggesting a drink together like that. We didn't have that kind of relationship. We weren't accustomed to sitting down with each other and just shooting the breeze, never mind having heart-to-heart talks.

Pop lit a cigar, and the flame threw his face into shadow, giving him a sinister look. He sat back and puffed, watching the smoke drift upward into the darkness. I took another cigarette and tried to keep my voice calm.

“I ran into an old friend tonight,” I told him.

“One of your money-running friends from the old days?” he said, teeing me off. He was always slyly criticizing me for my ability to do the things that had to be done when the firm needed money.

“You didn't complain when you wanted $5,000 for Gitlow,”

“I wasn't complaining. I was just asking.”

“Don't give me that.”

“Well,” he said after a moment, “do you want to tell me who you met?”

“Varya.”

“Varya?” he said blankly.

“You don't even remember?”

“I'm afraid not.”

“Katya's sister.”

“I don't think I ever met her.”

“She told me what happened to Katya.”

“Poor girl, she had so much warmth to give somebody.”

“Somebody else, you mean. You never did like her.”

“I liked her very much. In some ways.”

He stopped short of saying anything else, but he didn't need to.

“But you do know what happened to her?”

“The secret police took her away,” Pop said. “She was seen plotting with a counterevolutionary agent in a café on the Kalinnin Prospect, or some place.”

“They sent her to Siberia,” I said.

“That's where such people usually end up.”

“A prison camp, a work camp.”

“Come on now, Victor. You know it's not just a penal system. They're building a new country out there, and they need people, young, vigorous people. Stalin believes the whole world is aligned against him, and one day the country is going to need the industrial engine he's trying to build there on the far side of the Urals.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“What else is there to believe? We've all seen the pictures of Magnitogorsk in the papers. The biggest steel mill in the world, bigger than anything in Germany, bigger even than anything in the United States. Katya will help build the socialist world of tomorrow.”

“On her back, I suppose.”

“If need be, yes. You need that to build a new world just as you do everything else.”

“You make me sick sometimes.” I said. At least I think that I said it. I certainly thought of saying it. God, but I hated my father. He didn't even look like my father anymore, with that shaven head, like some Mongolian warlord, not the man I remembered from my childhood with his full head of hair and drooping moustache.

I spat out, “How did they happen to pick on Katya? Tell me. Why did they pick on her?”

“Because she was engaging in some sort of counterrevolutionary activity.”

“At a coffee shop? Don't give me that.”

“That's what they said at the time, and I see no reason to doubt it.”

“Who said?”

“I don't remember anymore. The GPU man the night they came to take her away maybe.”

“What I want to know is why they picked on her?”

“How do I know why they picked on her,” Pop said. He ground out his cigar and began to get up. “It's late, it's time we both got to bed.”

“Stay here. I've got to talk with you.”

“Not when you talk such nonsense.”

Cerberus growled, low in his throat, teeth bared. He sat at Pop's feet, not curled up but straight out, as imperial as one of those lions in front of the New York Public Library. Pop's right hand dangled over the arm of the chair so he could reach down and touch his head.

“Why don't you get rid of that dog? He's vicious and dangerous. Why do you make the whole house put up with him?”

“He's mine,” Pop answered. “And he's devoted to me. He protects the house and all of us in it. He would tear your throat out if I told him to. I like that about him, his wildness, his savage recklessness, he's like a lightning flash.”

We just looked at each other. It wasn't a threat, I knew that. It was a fact, but that didn't help any.

“I want to know about Katya,” I said again.

“Look, I don't have to explain to you what life is like in this country. You've been here for ten years now, even longer than I have. Katya was living with you. She was involved with us. We're foreigners. You have anything to do with foreigners and you're suspect. I shouldn't have to spell that out for you.”

“But we're the Fausts, the fabulous Faust family. The managers of the aspirin trust, cofounders of the party in America. You're telling me we still count as foreigners?”

“These days everybody counts as foreigners. The new government is obsessed with them.”

“But this isn't now, this was then, this was four years ago, before Stalin had taken over the country. It wasn't that bad then. Do you mean that the Fausts couldn't have protected her?”

“What are you saying?”

“I'm saving that I don't believe anymore that the GPU would have taken Katya away unless they were pretty sure you wouldn't protest. If you had, I don't think they'd have sent her away. They'd have let her go. I think you arranged for them to come take her away. I think you wanted to get her away from me. I think you're a murderer.”

“What do you know about murderers? I do, I spent three years of my life with them.”

The storm was rising, the winds rattled the windows, and outside you could see the shadows of the tree, tossing, shaking its leaves.

“Couldn't the Fausts have protected her—if they had wanted to?” I went on insistently.

“I don't have any idea. They took her to Lubianka.”

“How do you know that?”

“Stop behaving like a child. Everybody goes to Lubianka. You go around all the time whimpering and whining, and you blame people for things you should blame yourself for.”

“I didn't send her to Lubianka, and didn't that give you any second thoughts? You know what happens to people there. Didn't you have any feeling for her? Don't you remember how she would tease you? She liked you.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“There isn't anything you wouldn't do, is there?” I said heatedly. “Nobody you wouldn't sacrifice—Katya, me, Mama Eva, Manny—”

“That isn't true,” he said, cutting me off as I added Madame Onegin.

“What did you say?”

“You heard me. You think I don't know,” I found myself shouting. I rose to move toward him, and as I did, the dog leaped forward and began growling.

“Quiet!” Pop said, “quiet,” touching the dog. “How dare you say that? How dare you bring up that woman? I never killed anyone in my life. I'm a doctor. I swore to heal.”

“You swore to a lot of things in your life. And what does it mean? Nothing.”

“You don't know what you're taking about.”

“Don't try to kid me. I know what happened to Madam Onegin. Don't tell me you didn't kill her. You think I didn't know what was going on between the two of you? I walked in on you that day and saw you humping her on your consulting table. Have you forgotten that?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“All right, you had other things on your mind. And don't think I don't know what happened after that. You knocked her up, and when she wasn't content to have an abortion, you killed her. I heard you quarreling. I used to listen at keyholes.”

“I can't believe I ever had a son like that. You turn my stomach.”

“I disgust myself, Pop, I have always disgusted myself. But I know what she said, how she wanted to run away with you and make a new life, and I heard you tell her how you couldn't stand Mama Eva anymore, and her three runty boys. You wanted to go away but you couldn't, and she kept insisting, and when she wouldn't shut up, you killed her.”

“I've never heard such twaddle in my life. These are childhood fantasies, like something invented by that degenerate Viennese Jew.”

“You're telling me these things didn't happen? You didn't cut her up on the operating table, and she didn't die?”

“These things happen. Any surgical procedure involves some risk, and this was a perforated womb. I didn't know it had happened, I swear. You think I haven't been haunted by her death ever since? It was an accident,” and then he heaved a deep sigh and looked across the darkness at me.

“But you're right, I killed her. I was responsible for her death, and I always felt that they were somehow right in finding me guilty even though I was innocent. Victor, I loved that woman. For a while I loved her, I was intoxicated by her, as I was years before with your mother.”

“And with dozens of others before and since. You've got the morals of a jackrabbit.”

“I won't talk about these things with you.”

“I don't think there is anything you wouldn't do if you thought it was to your advantage.”

“My poor, poor boy. I never knew you hated me so much.”

“You're not worth hating. And are you telling me I didn't see you fucking her on the consulting table?”

He got up and poured some more vodka in the tumbler. “No, I'm not telling you that.”

“Are you telling me she didn't say all those things about running away together?”

“Look, son,” he said. “That was her idea, not mine. I would never have deserted my family, not for anything, not for a minute.”

I don't think he had ever called me son before.

“You mean you were lying to her?”

“If you want to put it that way, I was lying to her. You ought to know enough about women to know that there are lies that seem like truths even when you know they're not. I have always been devoted to your mother. When we were young, we were crazy about each other. Almost literally crazy. She excited me more than any woman I've ever known before or since.”

“But all that passed?”

“Not entirely. If it had, we wouldn't still be together, we wouldn't fight so much. She wouldn't drink, and I wouldn't go down the hall to Olga.”

“And Promyslov?”

“The brave little tailor? He didn't care. I used to give her money to take care of the house, and she gave it to him. It was a neat arrangement. Finally she couldn't stand it anymore and she left him, and that was it.”

“Manny was his son, too.”

“Of course not.”

“But you're not sure.”

“Nobody is ever sure. After all that's happened, can you be sure now that the girls are your children? Maybe they are Mayakovsky's or the chauffeur's, George Bernard Shaw's or Nijinsky's for all I know. Tania saw plenty of everybody.”

“Don't say that.”

“Why not? You're willing to tear yourself apart over some other man's children? You keep saying you want to take them away from this terrible country and bring them up somewhere where things are decent. And they may not even be yours.”

“Is that what all this is about?” he said. “You want to believe that Manny is Promyslov's son?”

“How can you be sure he's not?”

“Your mother and I were lovers. She told me, and I believe her, and that's enough.”

“That's bullshit and I am ashamed to have your blood in my veins.”

“You're no blood of mine, I can't believe I have such a son, you're sick and disgusting.”

His words seemed to linger in the room like a trail of smoke, and I suddenly laughed, “I guess we deserve each other.”

“I'm tired,” he said, “and it's late.”

“Four years late,” I responded. “All right then just admit it. They wouldn't have gone after Katya if you hadn't told them.”

“Maybe they wouldn't,” he finally said.

“So you did tell them?”

“We mentioned her at lunch one day with Genrikh Yagoda.”

“The head of the secret police? And you mentioned her at lunch?”

“We had to do something. She could have done incalculable damage to our relations with the government. If we wanted to extend the concession we couldn't be involved in anything that would look suspect.

“Her father was a kulak. We couldn't have a kulak in the family. You were getting much too involved. You brought her into this house, into this family. We didn't know what you might do. We had to have somebody acceptable, and Katya wasn't it. Tania seemed a better bet.”

“But didn't you know I was in love with Katya? I really cared about her.”

“Don't give me that. You think I don't know Tania was giving you blow jobs in the Rolls and you loved it and you aren't going to tell me that when you went to Yalta you spent the time watching the palm trees on the beach?

“We knew you'd get over it. Love doesn't last forever, you always get over it, and you did. You're foolish, Manny was right. You never have used the brains the good god gave you.”

“So you decided to manage everything.”

“Look Victor, you were only a child. We knew you needed our guidance, that's all.”

“We, who is this we?”

“Me and Manny.”

“How could you have done this? You and Manny manipulating my life like this?”

“You'll get over this, too. You were a child. You still are.”

The storm had really begun. It was pouring outside, the rain cascading against the window, with crashes of lightning. Cerberus was shivering with excitement, and Pop got up finally, went to the French doors and let him out into the court. The wind rushed through the room like a fist, as he closed the door and came back to his place by the lamp.