The Russian Affair Part 15

"Let's drink to that!" With irrepressible self-a.s.surance, the physicist gestured toward an unoccupied chair.

"I must speak to you alone," Bulyagkov replied, glancing sidelong at Anna.

"Don't we have all day tomorrow at the Ministry for that sort of thing?"

"I was just about to leave," Anna interjected.

"Imagine, this is Comrade Anna's first time in the Ukraina," Lyushin said, switching to a conversational tone.

The waiter appeared behind Bulyagkov. "Your coat?"

"I'm not staying," the Deputy Minister replied.

A second waiter came up, pushing the serving cart. A silver platter was laden with steaming slices of meat, dressed with a greasy sauce and garnished with bay leaves and bilberries. The waiter began to distribute the portions.

"I'd rather not eat," Anna said.

The waiter paused with uplifted serving utensils.

"Please fetch the comrade's coat," Bulyagkov said, indicating Anna.

Whatever was behind Alexey's sudden appearance, she didn't like the way decisions were being made on her behalf. "Maybe I'll have a little taste, after all," she declared.

The waiter placed a plate in front of her, and for the second time she laid her napkin on her lap. Then she cut herself a piece of meat.

"We were discussing The Open Ear, the TV program," Lyushin said, trying to get a conversation going. "A nerve-racking interview. The subject was too much for the woman who moderates the show. She was in over her head."

Upon hearing this a.s.sertion, Bulyagkov took a seat. "You talked about your project on television?"

"Perhaps a bit, in a popular-science sort of way."

Anna saw the two exchange looks.

"The Minister will want to hear details from you tomorrow," Bulyagkov said.

"I have the doc.u.ments with me." Lyushin stabbed his fork into a morsel of venison, brought it to his mouth, and chewed. Meanwhile, Anna, inexplicably ravenous, cleaned her plate.

"I'd like to go through the papers with you," said Bulyagkov, unb.u.t.toning his coat and leaning back.

"Now?" Lyushin patted his forehead with his napkin.

"How are you getting home?" Alexey asked, tapping the back of Anna's hand.

"On the subway, naturally."

"Don't be silly. Anton will give you a ride."

"And what about you?" She didn't understand his sudden change of mood.

"I'll be here for a while yet. I've got some things to do."

"The three of us!" Lyushin said with a laugh. "Like the Three Musketeers! We should all go to a bar."

Bulyagkov gazed at him with cold eyes. "Comrade Anna surely has to get up early. And as for you, Nikolai, you'd best go to bed soon so you can sleep off your liquor."

"I find Moscow even more provincial than Dubna," Lyushin said with a sigh; however, when Anna stood up and accepted her coat, he didn't protest. "It was a pleasure, Comrade," he said. "Too bad we didn't have more time together."

"Thanks for the invitation." She wrapped her scarf around her head.

After he'd walked a few steps with her in the direction of the exit, Bulyagkov observed, "I believe you should thank the Ministry for Research Planning."

"I'd rather go home on the subway," she announced. The moment alone with him was disagreeable to her. Halfway to the door, he took her hand, squeezed it, and turned back without a word.

As she hurried over the richly patterned carpet, Anna tried to make sense of her departure. Had Alexey, insulted and offended at having found her with Lyushin, thrown her out? Had he turned up at the Ukraina only to speak to Lyushin, or had someone tipped him off about her? Anna went through the revolving door and into the cold night air, which hit her like a blow.

When Alexey returned to the table in the alcove, Lyushin was studying the dessert list. "Let's go."

"I've got a craving for something sweet-"

With unaccustomed violence, the Deputy Minister struck the menu out of Lyushin's hand. "You've had enough sweets for one evening." Like a dog only now perceiving the possibility of a beating, the physicist rose to his feet. Bulyagkov made for the steps to the mezzanine, where the elevators were. By the time the double doors split open, Lyushin had caught up with him, and they stepped into the elevator together. "Have you completely taken leave of your senses?" the older man barked as soon as the doors shut. "I don't care whom you choose to meet. But inviting Anna to this place was stupid and dangerous!"

"You can't believe that I asked your girlfriend here-"

"Shut your mouth." With a gesture, Bulyagkov directed Lyushin to push the b.u.t.ton for his floor. "What did you tell her?"

"Nothing! In any case, nothing that she could have understood."

"So you told her something!"

"No, I didn't, I swear!"

"She's Kamarovsky's informant." Bulyagkov stepped closer.

"Then why didn't you get rid of her long ago?" Lyushin hissed.

For a moment, the Deputy Minister seemed about to punch the suntanned face beside him, but instead, he thrust his fists into his pockets. "I thought you understood the game. If you hadn't played Don Juan tonight, Anna would still be our best camouflage."

"I gave away nothing. What do you think I am?"

"I think you're someone who acts like an idiot whenever his d.i.c.k takes over. Anna will report to Kamarovsky ... she has to! And the old devil will draw his own conclusions." Bulyagkov smoothed his hair back and put on his hat. "Where are the papers?"

"In my room." Lyushin was holding tightly to the rail that ran around the elevator car.

"In the safe?"

"No, in the ..." He paused, realizing that he'd made yet another mistake. "In my suitcase."

"I'll take them away with me tonight and put them in a more secure place."

The elevator doors slid open, and Lyushin staggered out first. "Please, believe me, I had no designs on Anna. I ... I don't know anybody in Moscow, and she's such a charming person."

"The crucial question is whether Anna will continue to believe your story." Bulyagkov watched pensively as the other unlocked his door.

They entered the dark hotel room. Lyushin hurried to his bag and pulled out a briefcase. "There," he said, handing it to Bulyagkov. "You see, there wasn't anything to worry about."

The Deputy Minister turned on the lights and examined the combination lock. "Most of the time, the Minister limits his questions to the bare essentials. Speak only when you're called upon to do so." He held out the briefcase to the physicist and said, "Open it."

Lyushin dialed in the combination and took out two apparently identical folders.

"Which is which?"

"That's the folder for the Minister. And this one's for you."

Bulyagkov opened the folders and paged through the doc.u.ments, comparing them. "Good." He thrust the folders under his arm. Lyushin lay collapsed on the sofa. "You'll come to the Ministry tomorrow at eleven o'clock sharp," Bulyagkov said. "We won't see each other again until the appointed time. When you arrive, I'll be with the Minister, and we'll be expecting you." He turned to the door. "And no more bars tonight, you understand?" He left without waiting for an answer.

SEVENTEEN.

Anna didn't call Rosa Khleb that night, or the following morning, either. As she did every day, she took the building combine's special bus to Karacharovo, put on her work overalls, and together with her colleagues-all women-began her shift in the sh.e.l.l of the twelve-story building. She felt safe on the scaffolding. Here, there was no telephone; here n.o.body asked her to explain herself. Anna applied a coat of finegrained plaster to the ceiling. You have to call Rosa, her sense of duty reminded her; hesitating any longer would arouse Kamarovsky's suspicions. Anna had no illusions about why she was stalling instead of following the usual procedure: She couldn't decide how to report Lyushin's drunken performance. Had he really given something away, or had it all been mere boasting? It seemed obvious that he was putting off the Ministry in order to gain more time and increased funding for his work. Fame and success were of great importance to him, and if he was withholding the results of his research, he must have reasons for doing so. Suppose Anna were to express her suppositions; who would benefit from that? Certainly not Nikolai Lyushin. Wouldn't his conduct be cla.s.sified as irresponsible and harmful to the State? It's not your job to a.n.a.lyze information, she told herself. So why was she toying with the idea of portraying her date with Lyushin as an innocuous encounter? Basically, there was only one person toward whom she felt responsible: Alexey. As Lyushin's superior, it was he, first and foremost, who was being traduced.

She spread the plaster over the ceiling with circular movements. Although droplets of the stuff were sticking her eyelids together, she worked on, lost in thought. At the end of her shift, she locked up her tools, changed into her street clothes, and was bused back to the center of Moscow.

After getting off at Durova Street, she took the subway for two stops and went into a small notions shop near Gorky Street. Anna wasn't shopping for cotton or woolen fabrics, which was what most of the establishment's customers required; she was on the lookout for synthetic material. Before long, she found what she wanted: a slick blue fabric, which though unpleasant to the touch was made entirely from a fiber described by its manufacturer in Omsk as indestructible. As Anna lifted out the bolt of material, she flinched from the discharge of static electricity. She asked for a length of twenty feet, chose a tape, paid, and left the shop.

When she got home, instead of climbing to her fourth-floor apartment she knocked at a door on the first. The door opened, slowly and hesitantly. "I'm glad you're home, Avdotya," Anna said, greeting the shape in the semidarkness.

"Ah, Anna, well, well. I thought you were the mailman!" Avdotya said, shouting because she was hard of hearing. Anna, who had no desire to listen to the Metsentsev story, strode briskly and purposefully into the apartment. "I have something for you." She turned her head toward Avdotya so that the older woman could read her lips.

Next to the window stood the symbol of Avdotya's craft, the pride of her life: her own sewing machine. At the end of her long and meritorious service in the garment industry, the company had rewarded its retiring forewoman with the gift of an obsolescent model. As a consequence, Avdotya had been the recipient of a virtually unbroken series of commissions ever since her retirement. Since Metsentsev, the Party secretary for that district of Moscow, was also one of her customers, things went smoothly for her.

Anna laid her packet of material on Avdotya's table and said, "I need a curtain!"

"What?" Avdotya closed the door.

"A curtain, little mother!"

"I couldn't possibly start making it before next week!"

"But this is only Tuesday!" Anna unrolled the fabric.

"I have to turn the cuffs on thirty shirts. Then Ryukhin on the fifth floor wants me to alter his suit, and the Perth family has ordered a wall hanging!"

"My Petya needs the curtain!" Anna acted distressed. "He's sick, he's really sick. He's got some kind of nasty allergy. If I don't keep everything that sets it off away from him, then my boy can't get any air! This curtain will let him breathe freely!"

The old woman picked up the material and examined it with an expert eye. "Loosely woven," she muttered. "I'll need to make a double st.i.tch."

"But look how smooth." Anna spread out the piece of fabric. "Three panels every six feet. How much work can that be?"

"What about the tape?"

Anna took it out of her bag. "It won't take you even an hour, Mother! And you'll be helping Petya breathe at night! Besides, the curtain will m.u.f.fle Papa's snoring."

She negotiated the price in the same tone of voice, and Avdotya determined that Anna should check back with her in two days to see when the work would be finished. Relieved, Anna left the ground-floor apartment and mounted the stairs to her own. Halfway up, she stumbled and spent a few moments wondering about her lack of strength; then she realized she hadn't had a thing to eat all day long. She closed her eyes and leaned against the banister. When she felt better, she walked up the rest of the way, took off her scarf as she entered the apartment, and hung her coat on the hook.

"You're late." Viktor Ipalyevich looked up from the table. "I couldn't give your lady friend any information about when you might come home." With a movement of his head, he indicated the sofa. In front of the wall hanging sat Rosa Khleb. A stack of Anna's father's poetry collections lay on Rosa's lap, and the top volume was open.

"Good evening," she said. "With Comrade Tsazukhin's poems to read, the time flew by."

Speechless at this "house call," Anna looked from one of them to the other.

"She didn't want anything to drink," said Viktor Ipalyevich, by way of excusing himself for the fact that he had a cup of tea in front of him while Rosa had nothing.

Anna turned her head toward the sleeping alcove. "Petya's playing in the courtyard with the others," his grandfather explained.

"I never tire of reading the poems in The Red Light," Rosa said, holding up the battered volume.

"May I offer it to you as a gift?"

"What have I done to deserve such an honor?"

"I rarely meet any of Anna's friends." He looked at his daughter. "You usually get home at five."

"I bought the material for Petya's curtain. Avdotya's going to sew it for us."

During this innocuous conversation, Anna tried to grasp the urgency that lay behind Rosa's unusual visit. Was Anna's delay in reporting really that serious? Should she have called Rosa last night, after all?

"Will you have dinner with us?" Anna asked, in an attempt to clarify her visitor's plans.

"I'm afraid I don't have enough time. I just wanted a chance to chat with you, Anna." Rosa briefly arched her eyebrows. "I waited so I could at least tell you h.e.l.lo, but now I must be off." She put aside Viktor Ipalyevich's books, except for The Red Light. "I accept this with humble grat.i.tude," she said.

"Wait a moment, I'll write something in it." He unscrewed his fountain pen and formulated a dedication. Rosa watched him, smiling as she did so, but Anna could detect her impatience.

"I'll walk you to the bus," Anna said as her friend was putting on her cap.

"That would be nice of you."

"Will you go and call Petya in?" Anna asked her father as she slipped into her overcoat. "I'll fix dinner as soon as I get back."

Rosa exchanged farewells with Viktor Ipalyevich; then she and Anna left the apartment together and went wordlessly down the stairs. At last, Rosa broke the silence. "Your father's a very pleasant man," she said.

"He can turn his charm on and off, whenever he wants. Did you meet Petya, too?"