Elvira Baryakina - The Prince of the Soviets

Alov was already regretting dismissing Galina. She might have come in useful after all.

Back in his office, he called her and asked her what she knew about Rogov’s relationship with Kupina.

“I told you back in the winter that Klim was interested in her,” she said in a dull voice.

“And that’s all?”

“Yes. Leave me alone now, could you? Please?”

It was no good relying on Galina, thought Alov. The fool of a woman really did not have what it took to work for the OGPU.

1

On the off chance, Klim decided to go out to Saltykovka. He prayed the Belovs might have some idea where Nina was hiding. But what if she had been arrested already?

The suburban train was packed with people traveling back out to their dachas outside Moscow. Jobbing laborers stood shoulder to shoulder with dairy women, rag merchants, and street peddlers. Above their heads bristled an array of implements: mops, shovels, and carrying poles.

Klim had to stand in the vestibule at the end of the car. He was next to a crowd of musicians who were traveling back from a wedding. They had had a couple of drinks and were delighted the train was too full to admit ticket inspectors.

“I’d like to give you all a tune on the fiddle,” said one of the musicians, a rough-looking man with blue eyes and a paper carnation stuck behind his ear. “But I’d only elbow someone in the face. Still, you got to admit, a tune helps a journey go quicker.”

“Give us a song then!” somebody shouted, and the fiddler began to croon in a thin voice:

“All I need to soothe my soul

Is some rubbing alcohol!

Ma and Pa, they both agree

Meths is what my body needs!”

The crowd roared with laughter.

It seemed to Klim that the train was hardly moving. He stood up on his tiptoes to see past the musicians’ heads and out of the window, but outside, it was raining hard. He could see nothing beyond the drops on the glass.

A moment later, the train drew to a halt.

“That’ll be on account of the Nizhny Novgorod express, the Blue Arrow,” the fiddler said. “We all have to wait while the top brass goes past.”

The tired crowd cursed the passengers on the Blue Arrow. It was generally agreed that shooting was too good for them.

The delay lasted one and a half hours, and by the time Klim reached Saltykovka, it was already dark.

An old man, who had traveled into the city to sell mushrooms, showed Klim the way to the Belovs’ dacha.

“Watch how you go though,” he said. “There are no walkways or street lights. Time was, we had wooden walkways, but they took ‘em for firewood when the Executive Committee passed a law against cutting down trees. And there’s been no paraffin for a year now.”

The warning was a timely one: as it was, Klim almost broke his neck crossing the deep ruts and potholes on the road.

Nina had told Klim that the Belovs had a special knock to the rhythm of the prerevolutionary anthem, “God Save the Tsar,” but Klim was so anxious that he forgot all about it.

There was no answer for a long time.

“Who’s there?” a woman’s voice asked warily from behind the gate.

“It’s me,” said Klim, and the gate flew open at once.

Nina came running out of the darkness and threw her arms around his neck. “So, you came! We thought it was the OGPU.”

Klim felt an incredible rush of relief. It was all too simple and miraculous to be true. He held Nina tightly in his arms and kissed her hair and her cheeks, murmuring over and over again the first thing that came into his head: “I thought I’d never find you… I didn’t know if you—”

Nina put her finger to her lips, and Klim realized that she had not told her hosts about the incident in the Red Army Club.

She introduced Klim to Countess Belov, a blonde, rather plump woman in a neat dress with a woolen shawl over her shoulders.

“It’s wonderful you’re here,” the countess said. “Come in and have some tea.”

The house turned out to be full of people. Besides the Belov family, their neighbors from nearby dachas were gathered around the samovar. Klim found himself in a world quite unlike Soviet Moscow. Here, the men were polite and chivalrous to the women, the young girls laughed and put their arms around each other’s waists, and the children were as excited about the new visitor as if he had been Santa Claus.

There were not enough chairs to go around, so Klim was invited to sit beside Nina on a large linen basket, which creaked ominously under their weight.

Nina’s shoulder pressed lightly against Klim’s own, and when she turned her head, her hair tickled his neck. She was warm and familiar, and he ached with love for her. He stroked her knee beneath the tablecloth so that nobody would notice, and Nina answered with a squeeze of her hand. It felt as if everything would be as it had been in the days before they had made such a mess of their marriage.

The Belovs were living in dire poverty. Their dacha was dilapidated and smelled of dried mushrooms and apples. And yet there was a spirit of youthful energy in the house: the walls were covered with children’s drawings, an array of chemical flasks and test tubes stood on the windowsill, and a half-dismantled diesel engine sat in the corner.

Klim was showered with questions about Moscow and did his best to reply. He was amazed to observe these people who had offered to shelter Nina. Their intelligent faces shone with kindness, their clothes, though worn and old, were neat and tasteful, and they peppered their speech with foreign expressions, which nobody had any trouble understanding.

The youngest of the family, a twelve-year-old boy, whom everyone addressed respectfully as Georgy Vladimirovich, even made jokes in Latin.

“He’s interested in ancient Rome,” said Count Belov, ruffling his son’s hair. “But I don’t know how we’re going to teach him. He won’t be accepted into university with his family background.”

“I can teach myself,” answered Georgy Vladimirovich with dignity.

Klim could only feel astonishment that people like the Belovs were now treated as worthless rubbish that had no place in the Soviet society. After all, these were the finest people the nation had to offer.

There was dancing after dinner. The table was carried out of the room, and the countess brought in some sheet music and propped up the lid of the old piano.

Count Belov stood in the middle of the room and made an announcement. “Young men, please take your partners for the first dance!”

Klim bowed to Nina. “Madame?”

She curtseyed as she had been taught back in her school days and held out her hand.

The floors shook, and the curtains jumped in the windows as everybody took part in the dance. Couples whirled to and fro, bumping into each other, pirouetting, laughing, and shrieking. Ladies sank down exhausted onto chairs at the side of the room and fanned themselves with their handkerchiefs.

“Play another, Mamma, please!” the girls shouted, and once again, music shook the house.

It all seemed like a fantastic dream to Klim. Here he and Nina were hiding from the world among strangers, their lives full of fear with no certainty and no hope of planning for the future. And yet right now, his wife was gazing at him with eyes full of love, and he was ready to give up everything for the sake of this dazzling moment.

2

After the dance, Klim followed Nina into the kitchen to help her wash her face before bed. Simply pouring water onto her hands from a mug filled him with indescribable joy.

“Look. This is our product,” Nina said proudly, showing him a cake of soap in the shape of a rooster. “We use old molds for making biscuits and sweets. It looks good, don’t you think?”

Klim nodded. “Very nice.”

The water rushed noisily into the enamel pail. Nina shivered from the cold and wiped her face dry with a towel so old it was almost transparent. Then it was Nina’s turn to pour the water for Klim.

 My God, I’m about to get into bed with my wife! he thought, and his heart swooned at the thought.

A bed had been made up for them on the floor of Belov’s study, a little wooden cubbyhole full of books and sacks of dried apples, the walls hung with portraits of great writers.

The count had unscrewed the only electric light bulb from the chandelier in the living room and offered it to his guests, but Nina had assured him that she and Klim could make do with a church candle.

They put the flimsy door on the latch, placed the candle into a glass jar like a flower in the vase, and sat down on the patchwork blanket, stealing glances at one another.

Nina lay down on her back, and her hair spread out around her head like the wavy rays of a sun on a child’s drawing. Klim ran his fingers gently along one ray and then another.

He knew he needed to speak to Nina about Oscar Reich, but he was reluctant to come down to earth from the clouds.

“I think that I’ve found my Russia right here in Saltykovka,” said Nina. “This dacha, these people, making soap in these old molds—I could stay here forever.”

Klim nodded. “I feel the same. But what if Oscar—”

“Please, let’s not talk about that now.”

She pulled on Klim’s hand, but out of mischief, he resisted. Even using all her weight, she could not manage to get his hand away from him.

“You’re not playing fair!” Nina said, laughing. “That being the case, I’m going to my den.”

She grabbed a sofa cushion in an oversized pillowcase of flowery calico and pulled the end of the case over her head.

“Wow! It’s not a den here,” Nina said. “This is the Garden of Eden. Do you want to come and see me in here?”

How could he refuse?

It felt wonderful to play together like children, kissing under the pillowcase and looking up at the light through the colored flowers printed on calico.

Klim ran his hand over Nina’s waist, then lower, over the steep curve of her hip, and lower still, down the more gentle, gradual line of her thigh. He wanted to take his time, to absorb as many tiny details as he could. The faint trace of warmth on the sheet where Nina had been lying; the nub of her wrist bone through her skin; the tiny golden hairs on her arm.

It was more than any human heart could bear. Klim crushed her tightly to him and realized all at once that they were breathing as one.

3

“Do you think we made too much noise?” Nina whispered afterward, pulling the sheet up to cover her shoulders. “Now the Belovs will make us leave in disgrace.”

“Not only that; we’ve disgraced ourselves in front of all these literary masters,” said Klim, pointing to the portraits of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

The great men were staring down from the wall with expressions of evident disapproval.

The candle had burned down, and now, it went out, giving off a sharp smell of burning and releasing a thin stream of blue-gray smoke into the air.

“Oscar somehow found out that I was going to the driving classes,” said Nina in a whisper. “He told me that he had documents in his briefcase that would expose me, and I was afraid he was going to turn me in to the OGPU.”

Klim laced his fingers with Nina’s and squeezed her hand.

“Oscar tried to choke me,” she continued, “so I hit him hard with the crank handle and grabbed the briefcase. I was expecting to find the documents inside, but I found something else.”

“What?”

“Ten thousand American dollars in hundred-dollar notes.”

Klim propped himself up on his elbow. “No kidding?”

Nina pressed in close to him and began to cry. “I can’t stay with the Belovs—their position is already so dangerous. And what will happen if I’m caught?”

Klim suddenly had an idea. “I know what to do. We’ll get you some false papers. You can be a German peasant girl who has never had any official documents apart from certificates from the village council. We’ll use Oscar’s money to bribe Babloyan. He’ll get you a foreign passport, and then we’ll send you out to Hamburg to charter a ship. You can stay in Germany, and Kitty and I will come out to join you. My contract expires soon in any case.”

“We’re crooks, you and I,” Nina said, still sobbing. “The Belovs would never use stolen money.”

“That may be so, but we’re two of a kind,” said Klim. “We were made for one another.”