The Red House

‘So that they don’t believe all they read about Russia.’ He wrapped a sheet around his waist, more shy after love than this formidable girl at the window, and stood beside her.

‘That’s what’s so sad,’ she said. She felt the warmth of his body behind her, smelled his sweat. ‘We don’t know the truth about America and I’m sure few Americans know the truth about us.’

About our gaiety most of all. Sad that the Americans never heard guitars strumming in the parks, smelled stews cooking in communal apartment blocks, ate cheese and sausage sandwiches or drank kvas at student parties, sang and cried (drunk even on mineral water), camped on river beaches, kissed on steamers. To Americans, Natasha suspected, Russia was a prison camp. And the smuggled literature of Georgi and his dangerous friends only encouraged that belief: it was ironic that all this free thought only made the picture of Russia blacker.

‘The West must know the truth,’ Georgi, who was studying political science, had explained.

‘But they already know everything bad about Russia.’

‘Only from their own propagandists.’

‘And what about our propagandists?’

‘Their work is so crude that no one in the West bothers to print it.’

‘So no one in America ever reads anything good about the country?’

‘I suppose not. And no one here ever reads anything good about America because their own propaganda is just as crude and no one bothers to reprint it here.’

‘It’s very bewildering,’ Natasha pronounced. ‘No one seems to make the effort to tell the truth. Either about themselves or the …’ she had hesitated then.

‘Or the enemy?’

‘I was searching for a more suitable word. But what chance have any of us if no one tries to explain?’

He had kissed her fondly, patronizingly. ‘I am glad you’re studying languages and not philosophy or logic or politics.’ Stick to your English and your sweet singing, his tone indicated.

But that was before they’d made love. Now the arrogance had receded, a dog’s bark lost in a blizzard. Paradoxically her loss had given her strength, and the spirit of Alexandra Kollontaya stirred within her. She giggled and led her confused lover back to the bed. The snow had stopped and the late sun cast dying light on the City of Apples. A snowplough prowled, a branch of silver birch, ice-sheathed and glittering with diamanté, scratched the window.

‘How much longer do we have?’ Natasha asked.

‘About half an hour. Yuri and Boris are very tactful.’

‘Since when?’ asked Natasha, thinking of Georgi’s two boisterous roommates.

‘They understand.’

‘You mean you made a pact with them to stay away while you deflowered a poor virgin?’

Georgi denied it so indignantly that Natasha knew he was lying. She was pleased with this new insight into the behaviour of men. She told him not to be so dramatic: someone had to deflower her.

‘Is that all it meant to you?’

Instinctively she knew that it was the woman who usually said that. ‘You were a wonderful lover,’ she said, taking up the script.

‘How would you know about that?’

‘Certainly I can’t make any comparisons. But you were wonderful.’ She combed his hair with her finger so that it fell in a thick fringe across his forehead. How many more scripts? She was not even sure what sort of man she would love. Big and strong and brainy was all very well, but she knew that such statutory requirements were discarded when love (not infatuation—she was prepared for that treacherous experience) finally surfaced.

She looked down at Georgi the rebel with affection. He is an attractive boy and at least we share bewilderment. And now, I think, a little honesty. She brushed a nipple across his face, felt his sharp ribs, hips, the awakening phallus—more arrogant now than its owner.

Then he made love to her again. Or was it the other way around? Anyway it was even better than the first time.

‘Georgi,’ she said, pulling on her grey skirt and black sweater, ‘don’t you think you should get your hair cut just a little?’

‘You sound like a wife already,’ he grumbled. He lingered on the bed, probably hoping to be caught in the middle of dressing—the conquering lover disturbed. How shallow, how presumptuous, how conceited. Perhaps she should say, ‘There he is, gentlemen, I have just seduced him. He’s all yours.’

She said, ‘I was only thinking of your own safety. The other night a Komsomol patrol grabbed a student off the street and forcibly cut his hair. They also read his notebooks.’

Georgi shrugged. ‘It’s a cheap way to get a haircut.’

‘But your notebooks, Georgi …’

‘I’m not stupid enough to write anything incriminating in them.’ He lit another cigarette. ‘Anyway they probably only did it for a little fun. It’s their job to stop hooliganism. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?’

Natasha agreed that there wasn’t and began to braid her long shiny hair. She searched herself for the irreparable sense of loss that was supposed to accompany the loss of the maidenhead. She felt only satisfaction and a little soreness.

Georgi continued to lecture. ‘Although there are still changes to be made we’re lucky to be young now in 1968. No Stalin, no Beria, no 2 a.m. knocks on the door. And also we’re just young enough not to have been too badly affected by Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin. In 1956,’ he added in case she wasn’t too good on contemporary history. ‘Can you imagine what it must have meant to those kids? Why, once upon a time they used to sing a hymn to Stalin.’ He sung a few bars. ‘Leader, scattering darkness like sun, Conscience of the world, Luminary of the ages, Glory to him.’

They heard footsteps outside and a tentative knock. Georgi leapt out of bed, pulling on undershirt and pants. ‘Answer the door, Natasha. That’ll be Boris and Yuri.’

She smiled at him with maternal indulgence and went to the door.

The two plainclothes policemen pushed past her. ‘Georgi Makarov,’ one of them said, ‘please finish dressing and come with us.’

5 (#ulink_6d0029eb-93e8-54be-9485-dcad66fa2d4a)

IT was two weeks before Vladimir Zhukov staged his first unspectacular revolt. But the desire to buy was drooling in him. More than thirty years preparation for the impact of bloated capitalism and I am like a kid with five roubles to spend in a toy store.

Valentina observed his craving with contempt. ‘Don’t forget, Vladimir, that it has nothing to do with their system. It’s all a question of natural resources. And the fact that the settlers in America were the toughest and bravest people from Europe. And, of course, they avoided the devastation of the last war …’

‘I know,’ Vladimir said, ‘I attended that lecture, too.’

In any case her nagging was unnecessary. He despised the gluttony of living. But when in Rome … Would it do any harm to taste a little of the plunder? A single orgy couldn’t corrupt. A practical experience of decadent extravagance.

He began gently. At a drugstore on Dupont Circle called the People’s Drug—the name soothed his guilt. But even in this humble American mart the horn of plenty sounded loud in Zhukov’s ears. Stationery, perfume, magazines, paperbacks, ice-cream—pills and potions to ease the punishments of gluttony.

But it’s difficult to spend money after a lifetime of frugality, Zhukov discovered. He bought a comb and a tube of pink transparent toothpaste which Valentina might prefer to her tin of powder. So hard to spend and so easy to pay: no abacus, no hour-long queues, no trips from counter to cashier and back.

Shyly he ordered a cream soda from a day-dreaming Negro girl. Slyly added a dollop of ice-cream. Then furtively treated himself to a hotdog, squirting it thick with mustard, burying the punchy-skinned sausage in green relish; swallowing some paper napkin with his first bite.

The waitress said, ‘You go on eatin’ like that and you’re goin’ to be a plenty sick man.’

The schoolboy Zhukov apologized. ‘I didn’t have any breakfast.’ But his accent defeated and bored her. She moved indolently away, gawky limbed and graceful.

But why feel shame, Comrade Zhukov? Aren’t Muscovites the greatest eaters in the world? Stuffing themselves with creamy borsch, fat meats, black bread, cucumbers, potatoes, the gurievskaya kasha that Valentina cooked so well, the salted pig fat on thick bread that peasants still ate, the finest and creamiest ice-cream in the world. I shouldn’t feel shame at eating these synthetic snacks. He prodded the floating ice-cream with disdain. And a coffee, perhaps, to complete the culinary adventure. The girl who wore a blue-black wig slid him a cup and he experimented with the cushion of sugar and tiny pot of cream as if he were in a laboratory.

As he paid at the cash desk he belched.