Julie Himes - Mikhail and Margarita

Soon he would be with Margarita—soon he would hold her in his arms. His thoughts wandered past their more recent troubles to pause on a distant morning. Had it been midsummer? They had resisted the call to rise, lying in bed together. He tried to remember what was particular about that day from all of the others.

Could he convince her to give up Ilya to the authorities? And if he could not—there was the certainty of Pyotrovich’s words—what price would be exacted from an escaped prisoner, from an uncooperative one? He might never see her again. The thought itself was unbearable.

And if he could not convince her—would she be willing to forego escape? He would wait for her—eight short years. That was nothing to him. Could he ask that of her? Did time move the same for her as it did for him?

The early light that morning had seemed liquid as though passing through a shallow pool. Her silky head against his cheek; her warm skin pressed to his. Would that he could go back to those hours. He would tell her of their life together; his dream for them: writing each day, sunlight washing the page. Walks together in the afternoons around the town, his arm about her waist for all to see. Listening to Schubert in the evenings. The music of crickets and frogs from the garden, the splash of a koi. The soft light from a green-shaded lamp reflecting inward from the night’s dark window-glass. Her figure in that reflection; leaning over him, her hands on his shoulders, her lips near his cheek, urging him to bed; he could feel her warmth through his shirt.

The girl’s laughter rose above the bells. They were approaching a small hut, dark against the white expanse. A thread of smoke rose from its chimney. Bulgakov’s feet tingled within his shoes. When they stopped the driver helped him down from the sleigh; supporting him across the snowy yard, until finally he carried him inside.

Bulgakov was vaguely aware of others in the room. He was placed on a bench before a tub of water. Delilah removed his shoes and socks and rolled up his trouser legs. His feet were angry red. Gently, with a hand to the calf and the other to his ankle, she took them one at a time and set them into the warm water. Her scarves removed, he could see her delicate features, the cap of red curls. He could not feel her touch.

It was a state-run factory that produced the uppers for ladies’ dress pumps. Before the Revolution it was a family-owned business. After the dismantling of the NEP, its owner and family patriarch, a Turkestan, resisted the relinquishing of his business to the Commissat. He was taken from his office and brought to the building’s front lawn one morning as his workers were arriving. By order of the district party leader, provided on newly printed letterhead, he was shot. It was late spring. His blood spattered across the blooms of annuals his wife had planted earlier that month to give color to the grassy border. She and some of his adult children were arrested; the remainder disappeared by other means. The running of the factory was given over to a part-time machinist until he was arrested for selling materials on the black market. He was replaced by the whistle-blower, a second-line manager who had been marshaling the machinist’s shady transactions for a cut, who was shortly thereafter replaced by an illiterate bobbin spinner. The current manager was considered an excellent choice though he was not a Party member. He took the time to visit the homes of his workers after hours. He knew who drank to excess or beat their wives and counseled them against those behaviors. He was literate though had difficulty with figures. He was occasionally offered kickbacks which he refused and then reported. He never questioned the Party’s legitimacy.

His wife was unhappy with the arrangement with the labor camp. She said the girls they provided were dirty. Ill-fed. Lice-ridden. With that, her husband would look at her. Well, they were filthy, she said, and that was enough for her. They were criminals, for god’s sake. Occasionally she’d follow him into his office and he’d wave her away with one hand, the other carrying a cup of milky, tepid tea. This was how things worked, he would tell her as if he was prepared to give her an actual explanation of how the world operated but he’d have already lowered himself into his chair while lifting some page of ledger in order to give it a closer review. When he heard the click of the door shut, he’d look up.

With Margarita’s arrival, however, she was particularly unhappy. This time she shut the office door and faced him. He sensed her resolve, but his tea slopped over the edge of the cup and formed grey-brown puddles on the ledger page. “What is it?” he said, meaning, What is it now that is different from every other day?

“This one is worse than the others,” she pronounced.

He intended to say something that would end the conversation quickly, then noticed the expanding circles of tea. More spilled. He groaned, wondering if she understood the spoiled pages were her fault, as well as the delay to the start of his day since his pithy rebuttal had now been forgotten. He used his handkerchief and began to blot up the liquid.

“She must be sent back.”

“Why?”

“Besides, what happened to the other? She was at least all right.”

He inspected a page. It would require reprinting. He dreaded this and hoped the new girl would be capable.

“I was told she took ill,” he said.

“Was she infectious?” Her displeasure turned to fear.

“How would I know?” he said. “I need an assistant—they provide one.”

“Send her back.”

He was tired of her voice. “Fine,” he said.

He watched her turn, smooth and victorious. “But not until tonight,” he added. “These need to be redone,” he jabbed the pages with the cloth. “And there are other tasks.” She wouldn’t have it her way entirely.

“Tonight,” she said, still satisfied.

The front office with its dozen or so hourly workers was assembled of partitions and desks of various sizes and shapes. The perimeter of this space was a walkway raised above the main floor that allowed the manager to identify a needed clerk or typist. On the other side was a vestibule with a receptionist who had only a sorry-looking rubber plant for company, and adjacent to that, the manager’s office.

About half of the office workers had arrived that morning when the manager showed Margarita to her desk. He stepped on one clerk’s purse and stumbled into another’s chair. Margarita caught sight of one of the women mimicking the slack jaws of a baboon after he’d passed. He left her with some vague instructions for the morning’s tasks. From the perimeter’s walkway, an older woman dressed in an apron watched. Margarita guessed her to be the manager’s wife.

Margarita ignored the gossipy stories that came and went around her. At one point, someone asked her name. She gave it and the woman who’d asked nodded politely, then glanced to another woman sitting nearby. Neither offered their names and Margarita returned to her work. When she looked up again, the manager’s wife had moved to another part of the walkway.

About midmorning, Margarita sensed a presence. The wife was beside her desk and holding a machine-made cardigan. “Here, Comrade,” she said. Her face was thin and unattractive; her large nose and chin made it horselike. “You look cold,” she said, as if her chilliness was an inconvenience she imposed on the rest. “Did you bring lunch?” she asked. Margarita shook her head. Another inconvenience. “You will share mine.” She turned before Margarita could thank her. She stopped in front of another desk. “This work space needs to be tidied,” she announced. Her tone suggested this crime was of the same dimension as being cold and hungry. The other woman promised to resolve the matter. The wife swept past and disappeared behind the manager’s office door. No one offered an imitation of her behavior. The woman with the untidy desk leaned over. “That is the warmest cardigan you’ve ever worn and it will be the best borscht you’ve ever tasted.” Her laughing eyes softened then. “I don’t think she likes you, though. I’m sorry. It was nice knowing you.” The office door opened and the wife exited, heading around the perimeter and disappearing into the back of the building. Inexplicably, the office door slowly shut, as though of its own volition.

At half past noon, the atmosphere in the office lightened; someone laughed out loud. Books closed, pages were removed from typewriters and covers replaced, and the other women with their lunch boxes and pails headed to a door leading into the back of the building. The receptionist called to them and waved. She was to wait for a delivery and would join them shortly. Margarita, uncertain, followed the group. The wife waited for her along the walkway, her arms crossed.

“Have you already forgotten my invitation?” she asked. “I hope you like borscht.” She spoke as if she fully expected Margarita would not.

“It’s my favorite.”

The wife’s name was Vera. She led her through a series of doors to the back of the factory, then across a short snow-covered lawn to another, older building, following a path of packed footsteps. “This was the residence of the original owners,” she said as they entered. “Of course, now others live here as well.” They climbed the central staircase two flights, then passed through an ill-fitted doorframe that had been intended to provide an interior entrance where none had existed before. Margarita sensed a stiffness in her host, as if on their journey she’d thought to apologize for any number of flaws; the stained rug in the entry, the peeling paint of the upstairs hall, but thought better of it. Margarita was a prisoner after all. Once inside, she closed the door and pulled a curtain across its frame.

“Drafts,” she said without thinking. She closed her mouth over the word as if she’d regretted it. She directed Margarita to a table already set with bowls and plates and flatware. She served the soup then sat down. As it happened, it was delicious. Margarita found it difficult to answer her questions; the soup was distracting.

The conversation was one-sided. Vera wanted to know Margarita’s name. Her parentage. Her region of birth. The questions stopped short of her arrest. Margarita interspersed her answers with compliments on the lunch. With her third and most sincere, “You have no idea how wonderful this is,” Vera seemed to relax slightly. She tasted the soup and agreed. She glanced at Margarita’s bodice. “I don’t think they feed you well at that camp of yours,” she said and took another bite.

Margarita felt strangely self-conscious. “I’m naturally thin,” she said.

Vera looked at her as if there was a shared complicity in this admission. It disappeared with her next question.

“What happened to the other one? To Raisa?”

As though the outcome to a prisoner’s disappearance might be a benign one. Margarita looked down at her soup. “I really didn’t know her.”

Vera spooned through the liquid. “They say she’s ill.”

“We were told the same.”

“And is she feeling better? Perhaps we should save her job for her. For when she returns. It would seem only fair, don’t you agree?”

What if she told her of Raisa? Vera went on.

“My husband has an arrangement with the camp—but we’ve known Raisa for such a long time. Though I’m certain you are nice too,” she said without much conviction. “You probably miss your friends—the other—prisoners,” she added, unable to come up with a better word.

“I became sick at our last work site,” said Margarita. “I fainted from paint fumes.”

She frowned. “That’s terrible.”

Margarita considered her next spoonful. Perhaps she was being careless. Who was this wife? A clever woman trapped in muddy Siberia. Perhaps not so clever but smart enough. Fearful and frustrated. She was as much a prisoner as any of them. Her influence over the office workers imagined. She was the tyrant of nothing.

Margarita needed an accomplice. Willing—or not. Knowing—perhaps not. But she needed this woman to want to help her. She released the spoon and let it slide into the soup. She dropped her hands to her lap.

“Raisa’s dead.” Margarita said this much like a confession.

Vera shifted in her chair. “I really didn’t know her very well,” she said after a moment. “I knew nothing of her background—of her—” She didn’t say the last part. Of her crime.

Of course it made sense to distance oneself.