The Big Green Tent (29 page)

The car started moving, carrying off the King's wives. The King waved magnanimously.

Olga touched Ilya's shoulder.

“Let's go home. I think I've had about enough of this.”

Ilya finally managed to find his backpack in the house, and they left the celebration without any ado—they didn't even bother to say good-bye. They were just in time for the commuter train; they didn't even have to wait. They boarded, put their arms around each other, and fell asleep. They slept all the way to Moscow.

Early the next morning, the King in his lair set about repairing the tape recorder.

Guests lay scattered about in unlikely places, having dropped off to sleep from an excess of celebratory cheer. Lenka Vavilon woke up and went into the yard, where she saw an unfamiliar man peeing next to the outhouse. She was surprised—he had made it all the way to the outhouse, why hadn't he done his business inside? She understood the reason when she tried to go into the outhouse herself. She found a comfortable spot in the raspberry bushes, where she discovered that she was not the only one who had come there in search of cozy intimacy.

A flock of sparrows was feasting on the leftovers strewn about the table. Meanwhile, two chickadees were sitting in the branches of an aspen tree, speculating about whether there was room for them among the rabble. Lenka Vavilon gathered up the dirty dishes, poured the rest of the water from the bucket into a large pot, and turned on the gas, preparing to boil water for washing up. She began scraping the leftover scraps of food into the slops pail, fishing out stray cigarette butts that might harm the neighbor's piglet.

*   *   *

Shura accompanied Lisa all the way to Leningrad. Lisa bought her a ticket—albeit in a crowded sleeping car, rather than a separate compartment. Shura was offended, but said nothing. She put her sister to bed, then returned to her own car.

“I'm just a spineless idiot. My whole life I've let Lisa push me around, even though I'm six years older,” Shura berated herself.

Shura slept the sleep of the dead, but she was the first to rise in the morning and emerge onto the station platform. Lisa was the last. Still not completely sober, she begged forgiveness and kissed Shura's chapped hands, lingering especially on yesterday's burn mark. Shura was always flustered and clumsy. She always burned herself on this spot when she took her pies out of the oven.

Although she was not very fresh herself, Lisa was wearing a freshly laundered blouse—Shura had not forgotten to wash and iron one for her. Now her bra was underneath the blouse, where it belonged, and she wore a string of beads she had made herself out of tightly rolled strips of paper from shredded pages of the magazine
America.
Her fingers, with their stubby fingernails, were loaded down with cheap silver jewelry and stones. She wore a short, light blue skirt. The new stockings that Ville had brought her for the wedding—he had given her a whole pile of them, twelve in all!—already had a very visible run along the calf.

The sisters kissed and embraced one last time, and Lisa barked out her final instructions as Shura retreated.

An hour and a half later, at the Soviet-Finnish border, Lisa was already going through customs control. The Russian customs officers were the first to search her suitcase and her purse. Lisa, still a bit tipsy, pulled out a packet of photographs and showed the officials her father, and her mother, and her older sister, and her hunting trophies, and some pictures of the natural scenery of the Far East. She had no foreign currency; all her Russian money—every last kopeck of it!—she had given to her sister. Her documents were all in order: a new passport, a visa, a marriage certificate. The border guards laughed at her good-naturedly—she was a strange bird! A little prostitute who had found a scrap of Finnish happiness for herself.

One of them with fewer moral scruples had managed to put his hand on her skinny behind, and she giggled. The other one, an older man, had given her some fatherly advice:

“Go easy on the alcohol over there, sweetie. All Finns are drunks, never mind the dry laws!”

The train rolled over the border—an invisible line running through identical unprepossessing forest tracts, bald patches, and boulders.

Then the train halted. The Finnish customs officers and border guards came aboard, and the whole process was repeated—only they didn't rummage through her suitcase and purse. And it all happened much more quickly and efficiently.

The Finns left, and the train pulled away from the station. Lisa got up, swaying, her little purse swinging on its thin strap, and walked down the aisle to the bathroom. She hung the purse on a hook. She looked at herself in the mirror, and didn't like what she saw, so she stuck her tongue out. Then she sat on the toilet. From her secret place she pulled out a tube of much smaller dimensions than what it normally accommodated, and peeled the condom off it. She threw the condom in the toilet, and without opening the tube, she put it in her purse. Then she stuck out her tongue at her reflection again. Three microfiches—an entire book—were on a treacherous journey. But the main leg of the journey, the most dangerous of all, had already been traversed.

Ville adored his Russian wife. From the very beginning, he had said: “I know you'll ditch me. But I never loved anyone until you, and after you I'll never love again.”

At one time he had worked in Russia as a journalist; now he had lost his job. It didn't matter. Tomorrow they would fly to Stockholm, and from there on to Paris. And the banned manuscript, the author of which was doing time in the camps, would be lying on the desk of the publisher, who had been eagerly awaiting it for a long time.

Ville hated communism, loved Russia, and adored his wife, Elizabeth. Ilya loved his work. The microfiche of the manuscript, which had been smuggled out of the prison camp by the author's wife in another of the most secret places, had been expertly photographed. Sergei Borisovich Chernopyatov, who was directing the entire three-stage (at least) anal-gynecological operation, had always known that everything would work out just fine. Lisa never let anyone down.

 

A TAD TOO TIGHT

After she had seen her sister off, Shura returned to her new husband and the remains of their wedding. Most of the guests had departed, of course, but the truly inveterate revelers were still celebrating on the third day. By this time, they had forgotten all about the host, not to mention the hostess. Shura threw herself into the cleanup. After fashioning new rags out of two old shirts of Artur's, she began from the kitchen and moved backward through the house like a quiet but powerful tractor, scraping off successive archaeological layers of dirt. Masha assisted her silently: she drew water from the well, washed the windows, and laundered the ancient curtains. Artur didn't allow them into his room, but Shura knew that sooner or later she would gain admittance to it. Although Artur had ascended to the rank of husband, she continued to regard him as a beloved brother-in-law.

On the fourth day, when all the guests were gone except for a certain Tolik, who still couldn't manage to sober up, Artur summoned her to his den, opened his desk drawer, and, pointing a huge finger into its depths, said:

“Shura, take money from here when you need it.”

There was a lot of money. Shura felt abashed, and waved her hand dismissively:

“You give it to me yourself.”

Without even looking, he grabbed as much as his hand would hold and thrust it at her. She was surprised: it turned out he was a rich man. Lisa had always claimed that his pockets were empty, that she had to try to make do as best she could. It didn't tally.

It was awkward enough taking it directly from the drawer, but accepting it right out of his hand like this made her even more uneasy.

She had lived on her own for many years. Her husband had died on the job, log rafting, when Masha was only two.

“I'd like to send Father some,” Shura said on the fly, though the thought had only just occurred to her.

“Go ahead, send something to Ivan Lukyanovich. Here, take some more.” Again he put his hand in the drawer and drew out a wad of bills. He was amused that he had switched wives, but that he still had the same father-in-law.

“Thank you, Art. Father hasn't been doing too well recently.”

The next day Shura sent Masha to the Central Telegraph Office to dispatch the money to her father in Ugolnoe. Even though Masha was not even eighteen, she knew her way around the city far better than Shura did. Lisa had twice taken Masha with her to Moscow. The last time Masha had stayed with Lisa in a rented apartment for a month and a half, and she had wandered the streets alone from morning till evening. She liked walking around alone and getting to know the city.

Now Masha was hurrying to the telegraph office to send the money. After that she planned to go to Red Square to visit Lenin's Mausoleum, if she was lucky enough to get in. But the window she needed at the telegraph was closed. A spurious, hand-lettered sign dangled in front of the window, reading: “Maintenance break. Back in fifteen minutes.” Masha stood in line for fifteen minutes, then left, walking toward Red Square. Nothing had changed in the past three years; only, it seemed to Masha, there were now more people. Suddenly, Red Square opened out in front of her. Her thoughts leapt back to Ugolnoe, to her friends Kate and Lena. If only they could see all this beauty with their own eyes.

When I settle down here, I'll invite them. First Lena, then Kate
, Masha decided.

The line at the Mausoleum seemed to go on forever, so Masha headed in the direction of GUM, the state department store. There she found another line, spilling out the side doors. A girl of about Masha's age took a pair of boots out of a long white box and showed them to another girl. The other girl went pale with envy. The sight took Masha's breath away, too; she had never seen such boots! Tall, reaching almost to the knee, they had a small heel. They were made from beautiful brown suede. Her grandfather, who was good at leatherwork, would never have been able to make anything like this.

Masha had never been subject to secret passions or mad longings, but now she was burning inside. She would have given anything for those boots. Unfortunately, she had nothing to give. At that moment, she had even forgotten about the money wrapped up in a handkerchief in her pocket, secured with a safety pin.

“Are you last in line? I'm after you!” a girl with a big hairdo said, nudging her.

That was when Masha remembered about the money—she had a hundred rubles with her! And it seemed she was already standing in line; there was even someone behind her.

She stood there for four hours. Twice a rumor spread down the line that they had run out of boots. It turned out that there were no more size 37s, but other sizes were still available. By the time Masha got to the front of the line, all the boots were gone, both large and small. But mounds of boxes were stacked on the counter. Women who didn't have any ready cash were writing layaway checks, valid for two hours, and rushing off to fetch the money. Whoever didn't manage to redeem the boots within the allotted time would lose them forever—other anxious women, their happiness almost within reach, were clamoring to buy them, bills clutched in their sweaty fists. Masha was one of them. And she was in luck. The long cardboard box with the soft, brown creatures inside was hers. The whole way home her hand kept straying into the depths of the box, to touch the tender flanks enveloped in darkness …

You have absolutely lost your mind
, Masha told herself; but she couldn't do anything about it. Riding on the commuter train back to the dacha in Tarasovka, her new home, she started crying. What would she say now to Mama, to Artur? She had spent her grandfather's money on boots, it was shameful! What in the world was she going to tell them?

Before she got to the house, she stopped. The solution was a simple, though provisional one. She darted through the gate and crept over to the corner of the yard, near the outhouse, where she buried the box in a large pile of last year's leaves.

Shura was so worried that her daughter might have gotten lost in the city that she didn't chide her for being late. She merely asked whether the money had been sent, and Masha nodded her head.

“I got mixed up, Mama. I got out at the wrong station. And then I went to look at the university.”

Masha lied so convincingly that she even surprised herself. The following morning, Shura and Artur went to the hardware store. Shura wanted to fix up the house. Artur didn't welcome the idea, but he was so mild-mannered that he had agreed, especially since Shura was doing all the work herself—from hanging the wallpaper to whitewashing the ceilings. Lisa had always laughed at her, saying that Shura could satisfy her sexual needs with a good floor mop, while Lisa herself needed a good … and Lisa didn't hesitate to say it.

When they had left and Masha was alone, she dragged the box out of the pile of leaves and carried it into the house, clutching it to her chest. She drew the boots out of the box, wiped off the soles of her feet with her palms, and tried stuffing her bare feet into the boots; but they wouldn't fit. She found her mother's socks in a suitcase, put them on, and tried pushing her feet in again. They were a tad too tight; they pinched. But since the leather was as soft as a baby's skin, she was able to get her feet inside them.

Feet swell up in summer, when it's humid; winter is drier.
Masha consoled herself with this thought. Still, she decided to stuff them with a wad of paper, to stretch them out a bit.

She looked everywhere, but all she could find were dirty newspapers. How could she put those inside her heavenly boots? Then she looked under the table, and saw there was a thick packet of just the right kind of paper—the sheerest onionskin. Masha crumpled up one page at a time, rolled them all into tiny balls, and stuffed the boots up to the very top. She used up the whole packet of paper. They stood up straight and tall, as if there were living legs in them. Masha rubbed a boot against her cheek—just like a baby's skin. “Dorndorf” was written on the box. Where was this Dorndorf? In Germany? In Austria? And where would she hide them now? Certainly not outside, in the pile of leaves by the outhouse …