The Big Green Tent (67 page)

Mikha had no way of knowing that the decision to isolate him had been made beforehand, and that the powers-that-be were leisurely trying to come up with a case they could slap on him.

Finally, the decision came down from above, and the interrogation became more pointed and expedient, and Mikha realized that the case they were building was not related to the journal activities. Rather, the focus had been narrowed to his involvement with the Crimean Tatars. By this time, Edik had already been sentenced.

Mikha did not give any testimony, didn't sign anything, and answered some mundane, insignificant questions, and only off the record. He was amiable enough, but he firmly denied having any part in the right-to-return movement, and insisted that he knew nothing about the Tatar demographics paper.

Meloedov, certain at first that it wouldn't take much to make Melamid talk, grew progressively more agitated at Mikha's recalcitrance, and resorted to ever more convincing threats. He raged and fumed at Mikha's stubbornness, but nothing could make him give evidence. And to think that at first the investigator thought it would be enough to scare him a little, give him a light kick in the behind …

By the end of the month, Meloedov had left Mikha in peace and stopped calling him in for questioning. The interest of the investigative committee had shifted to the Tatars. One of them revealed that Mikha had helped them to write letters.

But Mikha knew nothing of this. Now he shared the cell with two other men. One of them was completely mad, and constantly muttered either prayers or curses under his breath. The other was a discharged military man, a procurement officer who had been caught stealing. These cellmates inspired no desire to socialize.

Then they transferred him to another cell, which he shared with a Tatar who was involved with the Crimean Tatar movement. It turned out that he was friends with Mikha's acquaintances Ravil and Musa. It was only on the third day, when they removed the Tatar from Mikha's cell, that Mikha realized he had been planted there. He was an informer. Now Mikha was even more adamant about not saying another word. After some time, Meloedov started calling him in for questioning again; now Mikha really did keep silent, like a deaf-mute.

In the middle of February, Mikha was formally charged, and he was allowed to see a lawyer. The lawyer was one of their own, not someone assigned by the state. Sergei Borisovich had seen to this. Her name was Dina Arkadievna, and she had the first intelligent and attractive face he had seen in a long time. She took a chocolate bar out of her pocket and said:

“Alyona says hello. And there's another piece of good news: Alyona's pregnant. She's feeling fine. Now we'll try to figure out how we can get you home before the baby is born. Eat the chocolate here. I'm not allowed to give you anything.”

She was one of the lawyers who took on political cases—the “magnificent five.” This was the third trial of its kind. It was also the trial that got her kicked out of the Collegium of Moscow Attorneys. After the prosecutor's statement demanding the application of Article 190, Part 1, of the Penal Code—the dissemination of false information defaming the Soviet authorities—she committed the rash act of not requesting that the sentence be reduced, instead insisting on the absence of grounds for indictment. In other words, she claimed the defendant was innocent.

Alyona, whose face had grown thinner as her belly grew, was sitting in the last row of the small, packed courtroom. On her right was her mother, Valentina, and on her left, Igor Chetverikov, one of Mikha's classmates from school, though not a close friend. Ilya and Sanya, along with many others, were not allowed into the courtroom, and stood outside the door.

Marlen, who was also present in the crowd outside the door, his face contorted with helpless anger, whispered fiercely in Ilya's ear:

“He's simply mad! What was he thinking? It's just beyond me! Why the Tatars? Why the Crimea? He should have been thinking about himself! For a Jew to get mixed up in the right of return of the Crimean Tatars! He should have been organizing his own right of return to Israel!”

Mikha was sentenced to three years in a medium-security prison camp, after which he was allowed to make a final statement. He spoke better than the judge, the prosecutor, and the lawyer put together. In a clear, rather high voice, calm and confident, he spoke about the justice that would ultimately prevail in society, in the world; about those who would feel ashamed of themselves; about the grandchildren of people alive today who would find it hard to believe the cruelty and senselessness of the past. What a wonderful literature teacher he made, and how unfortunate that the deaf schoolchildren had been deprived of his rare gifts!

After the trial, Alyona's parents took her home to their house. She spent two days there, quarreled with her father, then returned to Chistoprudny Boulevard.

Sanya, who turned up at Alyona's on the day he found out about Mikha's arrest, went to see her every day now. The years of mutual coolness in his relations with Mikha seemed to have evaporated overnight. Their friendship, it turned out, was alive and well, and didn't require any special nourishment in the form of frequent telephone calls, status reports, or drinking beer together.

A week after Mikha's arrest Ilya and Sanya were sitting one evening in Milyutin Park on the bench with two broken slats. Sanya stared at the toes of his boots: Should he say it or not? Either way it was lame; but not saying anything at all was wrong. He said it, without looking at Ilya's face.

“Ilya, you're the reason Mikha's in prison, you know.”

Ilya spat out defensively: “What are you talking about! Are you nuts?”

“You tempted him. Don't you remember what it says in Matthew about causing the little ones to stumble?”

“No!” Ilya insisted. “We're all adults, aren't we? Well, aren't we?”

But in his heart of hearts he felt uneasy. He was the one, after all, who had introduced Mikha to Edik, and he was responsible for what had happened in an indirect sense. But only indirectly!

*   *   *

The vindictive Meloedov did everything in his power to prevent Mikha from seeing his wife before being sent away under armed guard to the prison camp. Only the persistence of his father-in-law, an experienced ex-con himself, who managed to get an appointment with the deputy security officer of the prison, foiled in the end the machinations of the investigator.

On the eve of his departure, Mikha was granted a meeting with his wife. She had grown plainer, as some pregnant women do, especially (according to folk legend) if she's carrying a girl. To Mikha, her beauty was angelic, but he was unable to express what was boiling and seething inside him. He was unable because of his habitual, innate sense of profound guilt toward every living being, which was magnified even more by the circumstances. The only thing he managed to say was some sort of nonsense that sounded like Dostoevsky: “I am guilty for everyone, for everything, before all people…”

That was what he was feeling as he left under convoy to the prison camp: guilty, guilty for all that had happened … Guilty before Alyona, since he had left her alone; before his friends, for not being able to do anything that would change the disposition of things for the better; before the whole world, to which he was indebted …

It's a strange, inexplicable law that the most innocent people among us are the ones predisposed to the greatest sense of guilt.

 

FIRST IN LINE

It was completely natural that the powerful musical ideas that preoccupied Sanya rendered him completely oblivious to domestic political events, large and small. They seemed as distant from him as revolutions in Latin America, crop failures in Africa, or tsunamis in Japan. Even Anna Alexandrovna, who was apt to admire her son uncritically, would sometimes remark, with a tinge of perplexity:

“Sanya, dear, we live here. It's our country, after all. But you're almost like a foreigner in your own country.”

Early one morning in January 1969, Alyona rushed over to see him and to tell him about Mikha's arrest. It was Sanya's first personal contact with politics. It left him shaken and crushed. Mikha had shown him his magazine, and it was amusing. But it was impossible that a self-published collection on onionskin paper, consisting half of news that was usually heard on Western radio broadcasts, and half of poetry—some good, some indifferent, but still just poetry—could land someone in prison. It wasn't
The Bell
, not at all. It was homegrown. Sanya didn't know about all Mikha's activities, however. He was unaware of the Tatar connection in Mikha's life.

Ilya was exceedingly well informed about the progress of the investigation and trial; they summoned him to the KGB headquarters about the case of Edik Tolmachev. They didn't ask a single question about Mikha, and this surprised Ilya. He was even more surprised when Mikha was arrested three months after Edik.

Alyona came down with strep throat just after Mikha's arrest. Then and there she chose Sanya as her “girlfriend,” and, somehow, all the responsibility for taking care of her fell on his shoulders. Alyona had never been overfond of Ilya, and she avoided having any dealings with him.

Alyona had all but broken off relations with her father. She suspected him of some kind of foul play, and once she even burst out with the accusation that he was to blame for all their misfortune. She rarely allowed her mother to visit her at home, as though she were trying to punish her for something. Alyona wept a lot at first, and didn't want to see anyone but Sanya.

Sanya was the first to know about her pregnancy. He had agreed to accompany her to the gynecologist who was supposed to carry out the Soviet woman's favorite operation. Halfway to the doctor, who was ready to perform the procedure, they turned back, after he persuaded her not to go through with it. Alyona was often offended by something Sanya said or did. She sent him away, made scenes, and kicked up a fuss; and he put up with everything patiently. Alyona rarely left the house all winter—either she was sick or simply didn't feel up to it.

She's so cantankerous and bad-tempered!
he would think. But he couldn't resist her capricious charms. Up to a predictable point.

Ilya brought Sanya money to give to Alyona regularly. Alyona didn't refuse the money, but she didn't particularly need it. Anna Alexandrovna put together care packages and sent them to her through Ilya. Throughout her pregnancy, Alyona either lay in bed or drew her enigmatic ornamental patterns. During the final months she learned how to draw lying prone on the bed.

When the time came, Sanya took Alyona to the maternity home, then fetched her, now with her newborn daughter in her arms. With a bouquet of carnations in hand, he played the role of husband and father for the nurses. This set a precedent, and afterward he accompanied Alyona and her daughter to consultations at the polyclinic, bathed the baby, fed her … He even liked this intimate bustling and pottering about. At the same time, however, he felt uneasy for his own safety and well-being. The whole time that Mikha was in prison, Alyona was half-unconsciously trying to seduce Sanya. He would adopt a high guard, like a boxer; or simply let the feminine signals pass over him, like air or steam; or quickly make himself scarce, like water running down a drain. Occasionally, Alyona had hysterics, or went into a sulk with him. Several times she even chased him out of the house; but either she would start missing him and call him up, or he would come over without warning with a toy for the little girl, or pastry eclairs for Alyona. In fact, she ate almost nothing the whole three years that Mikha was gone. It was some sort of metabolical hunger strike. She was able to drink tea with bread or sweets, but she couldn't stomach meat, or cheese, or even soup. It was strange that the more emaciated she became, the more beautiful and ethereal she seemed. Sanya felt this, and feared her morbid attractiveness. It was Sanya who had taken her to see Mikha, before he was transferred to a prison camp. Sanya was the only one who wrote Mikha long letters. Alyona wrote short letters, very beautiful, sometimes even with little drawings. Mikha would write Alyona an open letter once a month—one for everyone, but with a specific message for each person individually. All the people who corresponded with him would gather at Alyona's for the reading. Alyona usually sat in an armchair with the sleeping baby on her lap, and Sanya set out tea with cookies. He gave the impression of being Mikha's replacement. This occasioned rumors about a romance between Alyona and the friend of her imprisoned husband. There was no romance. But a tension hung in the air nevertheless.

Sanya, perhaps more than Alyona, was anxious for Mikha's return. He sensed her psychological volatility and was afraid—what if her strength gave out suddenly before he came back or his own well-trained resistance failed him? Alyona was perhaps the most attractive of all the women he had ever known: she seemed nearly disembodied, with the long, slow turns of her swanlike neck and head, to the point of conclusion made by her chin, upraised. Or the slow, gentle sweep of the fingers that grazed her temples, and the fingertips coming to rest at the edge of her hairline, pulling slightly at her almond-shaped eyes. It was almost as though her head were hanging on her fingertips, frozen in midair.

Mikha's family took up a great deal of Sanya's time, and cut into his musical activities. He suffered over this, and had difficulty concentrating. Preoccupied with household worries and chores, he was forced to find a time and place in which to seclude himself with his beloved music, fleeing his family obligations.

He taught at the Conservatory. He didn't have a heavy teaching load—it never exceeded twelve hours a week.

Thanks to Alyona, he had stopped being a foreigner in his own country. In any case, now he knew the address of the infant feeding center, and all the surrounding pharmacies and polyclinics. He began his mornings with a run to the infant feeding center, and the evening closed with a scheduled visit to Alyona. He knew he had to force her to swallow at least a spoonful of some sort of nourishment. Without Sanya she never sat down at the table at all. She spent the greater part of the day in bed, with her daughter. When the baby, Maya, got a bit older, Alyona, who was afraid of the people and noise out on the streets, began going out into the more secluded courtyard to walk with her, but only if Sanya accompanied them.