This made Nina angry.

“You was the one who kissed me first!” she reminded me.

A gentleman in my place would have said something about her charms or about the power of Cupid’s arrow or something else appropriate, but instead, I did something outrageous. I told her that I had had a choice: either to hear details of all her infidelities or to pay Oscar back in kind and to cuckold him just as he had cuckolded me. The second course seemed to me the more interesting one.

“But I told you,” Nina cried, “I’m not going back to Reich!”

“Well, that’s a shame,” I said. “Of course, you could stay with Elkin and be the wife of a country blacksmith for a while, but I imagine that wouldn’t be a very good deal for you.”

Then all hell broke loose. Nina is not only passionate in matters of love; she has a fearsome temper too. She poured such a torrent of abuse at me that I’m afraid I’ll never manage to clear my name.

I was listening respectfully to all this when she suddenly stopped mid-flow and announced that in any case, I would not escape her. She would get ahold of a ticket and come back to Moscow after me, sinner that I am.

Now, I am full of curiosity about what she is planning to do. After all, I haven’t had the holiday I was hoping for, so I’ll have to find my amusement in some other way.

I think I have hit on the right way to handle my relations with Nina. We need less drama, more pragmatism, and a sensible approach to our affairs. We should behave like relatives with shared family concerns. After all, I did want Nina to take a role in bringing up Kitty. If she can get herself settled in Moscow, then we can be on friendly terms.

I am very grateful to Seibert for whisking me away from Koktebel in the nick of time. I came very close to crossing a line I must never cross.

25. THE HOUSING PROBLEM

1

Alov was woken by the rattle of the lid on the coffee pot.

“Dunya, my dear,” he heard Valakhov saying on the other side of the dresser, “do you know why it is that only twenty-five percent of the overall membership of the Young Communist League are women? It’s because they have to stop taking part in public life after they’re married. Look at you, for instance. What are you doing now? Making breakfast for your husband. But you could be using that time to go to a party meeting.”

Dunya said nothing. The only sound that came from behind the dresser was the measured tapping of her knife against the breadboard as she cut something.

“Everyday domestic chores will turn even the most principled women into empty-headed housewives,” Valakhov continued. “With your talent, you should be acting in movies, and you’re wasting the best years making sandwiches and washing dishes.”

Alov sat up in bed. I’ll smash his face one of these days, I swear! he thought for the thousandth time. But he knew it was impossible. Valakhov was the star of the OGPU wrestling team while Alov was unable to manage even a single pull-up on the crossbar.

“Get some portraits done by a photographer and give them to me,” Valakhov said eagerly. “One of my friends is a director, and as it happens, he’s looking for a girl just like you.”

“Don’t listen to him!” Alov barked, poking his head around the side of the dresser. “It’s all lies!”

Dunya was bustling about in their “kitchen,” a small area next to the window sill. On the sill stood two primus stoves and a breadboard with shelves underneath for storing food. The top shelf was for Dunya and Alov, and the bottom shelf for Valakhov.

Dunya thrust a sandwich and an enamel mug of ersatz coffee under her husband’s nose. “Here’s your breakfast.”

Valakhov was lying on the sofa, his muscular white arms flung behind his head. Alov stared at Valakhov’s faded underpants with disgust. What kind of man walked about in his underwear in front of another man’s wife?

“Good morning to you!” Valakhov waved cheerily to him. “What’s the health forecast today then? You were coughing so loudly last night you just about deafened me. Seriously, it was louder than artillery training.”

“Knock it off,” spat Alov, seething with impotent rage.

Dunya fastened a white headscarf around her head, planted a kiss on Alov’s unshaven cheek, and ran off.

Every day, she went out to a theatrical agency looking for work. Sometimes, she would land a role and bring back a fee of five rubles. For children’s matinees, she would get three rubles, and for pageants, no more than one and a half.

Valakhov knew that Dunya would do anything for a genuine role and exploited the fact shamelessly. And if Alov made any objection, he would just mock him.

“Dunya, my dear, it looks as if your husband wants to keep you locked away between these four walls—or should I say two walls?”

The dresser between the Alovs’ corner and the rest of the room did not count as a genuine wall.

Alov dreamed of one thing above all else—a room of his own. One day, he had been present during the interrogation of a biology professor who had come out with a comment that had left a deep impression on Alov. The professor had argued that the surest way to make people unhappy was to cramp them together and leave them no way out.

“You’ve packed us into crowded trams and communal apartments,” the professor had harangued his interrogators. “And you know what will happen now, don’t you? All-out war when neighbor fights against neighbor for living space—the same way as animals fight for their territory.”

He’s right. That’s exactly how it is, Alov had thought. Though it had not stopped him leafing through the professor’s personal file, which contained a note of his address. Alov had known that this counter-revolutionary would be sent off to the camps and was wondering who would get their hands on the professor’s accommodation.

Alov often dreamed that he and Dunya had got a permit for a room of their own, and he told her of these dreams in which they would pack their belongings into pillowcases, say goodbye to Valakhov, and set off by tram to their new house.

He imagined having a place of his own with tall windows, a stove, and an extra big windowsill. And underneath it, three shelves, every one of them belonging to the Alovs.

Listening to him, Dunya always laughed. “Stop your nonsense! It’ll never happen.”

But Alov’s idea to send Galina with Seibert had borne fruit: she had got hold of information that might win him not only a room but also a promotion. Alov was sure his chief would snap up the story and make something big of it.

Once, when they had been drinking, Drachenblut had told Alov about Stalin whom he frequently visited in the Kremlin.

Stalin had never been sociable, but he had now become a complete hermit, surrounded by “courtiers” who brought him information about ill-wishers both within and without his circle. He was obsessed with coded messages and secret files and demanded absolute vigilance from his subordinates.

The craze for exposing enemies had spread like wildfire through the whole of Soviet society. For anyone wishing to gain promotion at work, it was essential to display vigilance. This was what lay behind the mass purges and political repressions—bureaucrats were doing their best to advance through the ranks while at the same time seizing the chance to remove competitors.

As might be expected, these workplace battles were most brutal inside the OGPU. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that the chairman of the organization, Menzhinsky, was constantly ill, and his two deputies, Drachenblut and Yagoda, were engaged in a deadly struggle for the place of his successor.

Yagoda had staked his efforts on unmasking conspiracies within the USSR—he had personally masterminded the Shakhty Trial. Drachenblut, on the other hand, was trying to curry favor through operations abroad, which allowed him to procure not only valuable information but also foreign currency. But he was also obliged to expose opponents to the regime—those who did not report on counter-revolutionary plots could be accused either of trying to cover up for the enemies of the state or simply failing to carry out their work properly.

Alov thought he held a trump card in his hands. But when, on the previous day, he had presented his supervisor with Galina’s denunciation (altered slightly so that it would read more convincingly), Drachenblut merely gave it a cursory glance and told Alov to come in again the following day.

Though surprised, Alov decided to think nothing of it. Drachenblut was flesh and blood after all, and he too needed to rest from his duties occasionally.

As for the question of whether Seibert was actually guilty of conspiracy, this did not bother Alov in the slightest. Guilt was determined not by the actions of a given “customer” but by the potential threat he represented. If foreign journalists were given free rein, they would not hesitate to harm the USSR in word and deed. There was no sense in going too soft on them.

2

Drachenblut took off his glasses and looked sharply at Alov.

“You claim that Seibert set up an espionage ring to intercept radio communications?” he asked.

Alov nodded readily. “That’s right.”

“Nonsense. Any radio enthusiast can ‘intercept’ messages in just the way you suggest. What else do we have?”

Drachenblut bent his head over the paper, found the place he was looking for, and began to read aloud:

“In order to discredit the USSR, Seibert arranged the dispatch of warships from Murmansk, charging them with the mission of destroying the icebreaker Krasin and the Soviet Arctic heroes on board as well as the Italian airmen.”

Alov felt an unpleasant gnawing sensation in his chest. Drachenblut did not seem very happy with the report at all. But why not? He had instructed all his subordinates to sniff out some serious case for him in whatever way they could.

“We have been in contact with Murmansk,” Alov said hoarsely. “The duty officer received a telegram from Moscow and thought it came from the Central Committee rather than the Central Telegraph Office. He reported to his superiors, and the port was put on a state of alert—”

“There are no warships in Murmansk,” said Drachenblut in an expressionless voice. “During the war, it was used for delivering supplies from the Allies, but now, it is a small commercial port. Who could even be put on a state of alert in Murmansk? The local fishermen?”

Alov began to cough as he always did when agitated. His lungs almost burst with the effort.

Drachenblut poured him some water from a decanter on his desk.

“I understand perfectly what you mean,” said Alov as soon as he got his breath back. “But if we don’t act on this information, there could be serious consequences for us.”

“What consequences?” Drachenblut demanded. “Don’t take me for a fool.”

“The duty officer from Murmansk will be frightened out of his wits by now. Like as not, he’ll go to the local OGPU office to make a confession of guilt. Then they’ll question him about the telephone conversations, there will be an investigation, and the case will be sent straight to the top—to Yagoda. When he finds out that Seibert was under our jurisdiction, he will almost certainly ask, ‘Why did Comrade Drachenblut not show sufficient vigilance?’”

“Do you think anyone will listen to him?” Drachenblut asked, raising his voice. “Yagoda’s a liar! He writes on all his forms that he joined the Bolsheviks in 1907. It’s not true! He’s nothing more than a common criminal! He only joined us to rob and kill with impunity!”

Alov’s shot had hit home. Drachenblut, an idealist prepared to sacrifice his own and everybody else’s life for the world revolution, now felt that the old Bolshevik guard was giving way to pressure from cynical careerists like Yagoda.

“We can’t arrest Seibert,” said Drachenblut with a frown. “He’s almost a national hero in Germany, and we have to organize timber shipments to the West.”

Alov was still hoping to profit from Galina’s report. “We can’t let this affair with Seibert go unpunished!”

But Drachenblut was no longer listening to him.

“If we so much as touch a hair on Seibert’s head,” he said, “there’ll be a press scandal, and that might jeopardize our deal. I think we should deport him. As long as he’s out of the country, we won’t have a problem. And we’ll punish those blockheads in Murmansk to show that we were not keeping our powder dry.”