The Big Green Tent (20 page)

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During these years the general ensconced himself in his workshop for good, leaving it only rarely. Olga's mother was afraid of losing her position at the magazine, but no one tried to remove her: she was a Party-hack writer, a real bigwig.

When Kostya started school, they moved to the Moscow apartment and Antonina Naumovna began staying overnight at the dacha more and more often. The official automobile went back and forth twice a day, nearly every day—dropping her off and picking her up again.

When they had been together ten years, their marriage started to falter.

Ilya became nervous and importunate: his playful effervescence changed to gloominess. At the beginning of 1980 he announced to Olga that they would have to leave the country. They had been talking about it for a long time, but only in a perfunctory way. Suddenly, out of the blue, Ilya started treating it as a matter of grave urgency.

“I'll request an invitation for the whole family. If you don't want to come with me, we'll have to get a divorce.”

“Of course I want to go with you. But think about it—Vova will never let Kostya leave, if only to spite me. When he turns eighteen it won't be an issue any longer; we won't need Vova's permission.” Olga thought Ilya was being unreasonable and demanding. They hadn't left ten years ago—what was the big hurry now?

Ilya insisted and kept trying to rush things along. Olga met with her ex-husband to discuss it. It was no go. Vova proved to be as intransigent as she had anticipated. It even surprised her how mule-headed he was. He flatly refused to let her have her way, and even gave her a piece of his mind.

Olga begged Ilya to wait another year. He was in a feverish haste: they had to leave; it was now or never. And he had reason to be nervous about his situation. Unpleasant rumors about him were making the rounds, and he was afraid Olga would get wind of them. One day, almost on the spur of the moment, he announced, without going into much detail, that if Olga couldn't go with him because of Kostya, they would have to divorce immediately.

For Olga this was akin to a disaster—but a strange one, somehow unnecessary, or avoidable. It wasn't at all clear why Ilya was so adamant about leaving all of a sudden. If they waited a year, Kostya could go with them. Many of their friends had already emigrated to all corners of the earth. There really wasn't any hurry.

Finally, things broke down, and they filed for a divorce. Now a honeymoon began, only in reverse. The expectation of having to part ways—for one year? maybe two?—lent a bittersweet poignancy to their relations. Even Kostya was overcome by these tangled emotions. He had reached the age when he should have felt most alienated from his parents, but he clung to Ilya so stubbornly that he proved a constant threat to their solitude and emotional intimacy.

In these trying circumstances, their love reached such a fever pitch that their nocturnal passion destroyed the last boundaries between them—they made crazy vows to each other, oaths and promises so outlandish and unrealizable that they seemed to be fifteen years old rather than forty. They swore that no matter what obstacles arose, they would devote the rest of their lives to reuniting with each other.

The mechanism of departure was set in motion. The process was an unusually speedy one. Two weeks after submitting his documents, Ilya received permission to leave. He flew by the conventional route: through Vienna, then on to anywhere in the world. He had his sights set on America. A place far away.

His going-away party was held at the apartment of some friends. The general's apartment in Moscow wasn't suitable for any number of reasons.

The send-off was noisy, with peaks and valleys of emotion—sometimes it felt like a funeral, sometimes like a birthday party. In a way it was both.

At Sheremetyevo Airport, Ilya stood out in the crowd of people who were abandoning the country forever. They were nervous, sweaty, and burdened with children, the elderly, and piles of luggage. He wore a serene expression and carried no luggage. He had sent his collection of books ahead of him in a diplomatic mail pouch, arranged through a friend who worked at an embassy. The same friend had also sent the negatives from Ilya's photo archive. Colonel Chibikov was unlikely to have been privy to this information.

Many facts remained obscure. Why, for example, had Chibikov, who was by then already a general, helped him to emigrate? What did he stand to gain by it? Was Ilya's job at Radio Liberty a happy escape into freedom or a continuation of the ambiguous game he was mixed up in until the moment of his death?

It was unlikely that anyone would ever know.

Ilya receded into the black hole that yawned beyond the border guards. A camera with no film dangled from his neck—the film had been confiscated by the officials. A half-empty backpack was slung over his shoulder. In it was a change of underwear and an English grammar book, which he had been carrying around with him for two years.

During the night, after Ilya's departure, Olga started bleeding profusely. She was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. The illness, which had in fact begun long before, had chosen this day to manifest itself.

The first year of Ilya's absence was marked by feverish correspondence as well as bouts of fever. Olga lost her appetite, grew alarmingly thin, and had to force herself just to eat three spoonfuls of oatmeal a day. Her old friends rallied around her in sympathy. Antonina Naumovna also felt sorry for Olga, and the more she pitied her, the more she hated her former son-in-law.

Ilya had already made it to America by this time. Things were far worse there than he had imagined they would be. Moreover, the German to whom he had entrusted his collection of avant-garde literature, which he had begun amassing in his school years, was dragging his feet about sending it on to him. The value of the books, according to the auction catalogs, was far greater than Ilya had supposed.

Ilya wrote infrequently, but the letters were fascinating. Olga lived from one letter to the next. She inundated him with her missives, paying no heed to the vagaries of postal delivery: for every one he sent, she replied with ten.

A year later, Olga received a terrible blow. Some mutual friends of theirs informed her that Ilya had gotten married. She wrote him a wrathful letter. She got a tender and repentant letter in reply: yes, he had gotten married, the flesh is weak, his marriage was virtually fictitious, he wasn't actually living with his wife, since she lived in Paris. And she, Olga, must understand—here in America things were just not working out. He had to try to relocate to Europe. Marrying a Russian-French woman would give him that opportunity. It was the only way out.

Then there was a little throwback to the past/glimpse of the future: it was a temporary detour, unavoidable, their happiness still lay ahead of them … and a gentle reproach: you could have left Kostya there for a year, and we would have come back for him …

Olga was consumed with jealousy: Who was this woman, what kind of woman was she, where had she come from? She found out her name from her friends. She had been born in Kiev, had married a Frenchman, lived many years in France, and was then widowed. She was obviously no longer young. That was the only information she could dig up. Olga decided to go to Kiev, where they had mutual acquaintances galore. Truthful by nature, she nevertheless started lying to her Kiev friends right and left, and they told her everything she wanted to know. She even managed to wheedle a photograph of the newlyweds out of one of the bride's more gullible friends. The photograph showed a plump, middle-aged woman, her fleshy hand resting brazenly on the shoulder of a smiling Ilya. It had been taken at the Paris City Hall. This hand became the primary piece of documentary evidence in the case against him.

Olga carried out a full investigation and uncovered a plethora of details and facts. She returned home, reeling from the heaps of contradictory information, but certain that Ilya had deceived her and that the marriage was in no way fictitious.

When she got back to Moscow, she ended up in the hospital again. More hemorrhaging. The doctors removed a large part of her stomach, a measure that was necessary to save her life. But the main culprit, the biggest ulcer, was the colored photograph of the newlyweds, wrapped up in a plastic bag and tucked away in her cosmetic case. The misdeeds of her ex-husband were all she could talk about. When she came out of the anesthesia, the first thing she said to her friend Tamara, who was sitting next to her and taking care of her, was:

“Did you see the flowers in the picture? That bouquet was huge, wasn't it?”

The doctors had taken out a part of her stomach, but they couldn't remove the bleeding wound of her heart.

Olga expected the whole world to take her side in the conflict. Really there was only one side to take: a divorced man had gone away and married someone else at the other end of the earth. The promises, oaths, and vows of eternal love didn't add up to a side in the conflict at all; they were just words …

In the meantime, Olga's son, Kostya, was preparing to deal her another blow. He had fallen in love with a girl he had met in college, and they were going to live together for all eternity. The most improbable, and perhaps banal, part of this whole story is that Kostya and Lena, his first and only love, are still living in the general's Moscow apartment today, with their already grown children.

Olga demanded sympathy and loyalty from Kostya, the person she felt closest to; he, in turn, stubbornly resisted. He didn't want to sympathize with her, nor did he wish to take anyone's side in the matter. He loved his mother, but he loved Ilya, too. He didn't want to hear his mother's constant reproaches of his stepfather. Olga was deeply offended by this. She grabbed a handful of fabric on the shoulder of his new black sweater, and hissed:

“From Ilya? It didn't take much to buy you off.”

Ilya did send parcels addressed to Kostya from time to time. Besides the clothes for him, there were also things “for the house,” which were in fact meant for Olga. Olga fastidiously passed these things on to her mother—newfangled can openers, oilcloth for the table in highland plaids, and other cheap rubbish.

Antonina Naumovna was delighted with any sort of foreign household appliance or trinket, but she attempted to put the infidels in their place:

“In Russia, all our might, all the intellect and know-how of our scientists, is for exploring the cosmos and making atomic power stations. They just invent can openers. Well, I have to admit, they do know how to make those.”

Of all the people involved in the situation, Antonina Naumovna was the only happy one. She basked in her triumph. Olga couldn't bear to look at her; it filled her with rage.

Kostya kept silent. He didn't want to hear anyone speak ill of Ilya, never mind foreign can openers. Just then he was completely absorbed in his own feelings—his beloved Lena was in her third month of pregnancy and he couldn't take his eyes off her. He was endowed with the same gift for loving as Olga was.

Olga built up a dossier on Ilya. For some reason, she now felt compelled to prove that her ex-husband was an evil man in every respect, in every sense of the word. She began communicating with her humble and unassuming mother-in-law, who had never inspired any interest in her before now, with Ilya's female cousins, with his childhood friends, and with anyone whose name appeared in his old address book. It transpired that in the seventh grade Ilya had been kicked out of school for stealing some sort of camera lens from the photography club at the House of Pioneers, and even had a police record for this minor infraction.

He had also been caught forging some documents—not very important ones, just a library card from the History Library. But it was still wrong, wasn't it? Some things about his first family came to light as well—that the child he had abandoned was sick, and he had never provided the family with any financial support. That his first wife, who was a quiet sort, and none too bright, had nevertheless supported Ilya all the years they were together.

“Yes, it figures!” Olga was almost glad to get the lowdown on Ilya's shady past from completely random people or those with only the most tenuous connection to him. He had been the same kind of cad and opportunist with her as well! She had worked her fingers to the bone to make a decent living, while he had been sitting in the library, or taking photographs, or riding a bicycle, or traveling; and all on her income! Well, he earned something from his books and photography, it was true; but she never saw a kopeck of it. He spent it all on his own pastimes and pleasures. He was just a plain, old-fashioned parasite—and the Soviet authorities had nothing to do with it!

Her friend Tamara was the first to realize that Olga was losing her mind. It was as though a demon had taken over this once kind and magnanimous person. When Olga talked about Ilya, the tone of her voice changed; her manner of speaking, even her choice of words, was different. The former Olga had not even known such words. Tamara equivocated for a long time, but finally told her friend that she needed to face her obsession head-on and that if she couldn't rein in her runaway jealousy, she would end up in a psychiatric ward.

Olga was eloquent and articulate, however, and knew how to convince everyone that it wasn't about obsession or jealousy, but about truth and justice. While she was talking, it all sounded very logical and self-evident, but no sooner had you walked out the door than you sensed that all her arguments were the product of this very madness she tried so hard to deny. Such was the power of Olga's persuasion that only Kostya was unmoved by it. His love for Ilya remained steadfast, and he had no intention of judging him for any sort of baseness of character or cruelty.

Besides, Kostya was oblivious. These days he belonged heart and soul to his fragile, vulnerable young girl with the hangnails. He had no thought of leaving for anywhere: his whole life was bound up with this place, this person.