Leading a Double Life
As the streetcar came to a stop, Andrei Vladimirovich tightened his grip on the brown-wrapped package he carried and squeezed through the close-packed crowd to the door. Once his leather breifcase was nearly ttorn from his grasp, but he clamped his fingers down onto the handle and thus kept the briefcase with him. The moment he stepped through the door he was pelted by wind-driven raindrops. Automatically he drew himself over to protect his package as he hurried down the street, past a sodden placard proclaiming, "With you in our hearts, Comrade Lenin, we build, we think, we breathe, we live, and we fight!" and into the shelter of the apartment house doorway.
As Andrei Vladimirovich stepped into the entryway, his nose was assaulted by the smell of boiled cabbage, which only got thicker as he climbed the stairs. It brought back memories of his childhood in Leningrad not long after the Great Patriotic War, and the dingy apartment into which three seperate families crowded, struggling to retain some semblance of decorum in those mean surroundings. For Andrei Vladimirovich, excellence in school and an advantageous marriage had been his key out of that squallor and into the priveleged life of a Party member.
As he knocked on the door, he could hear voices in the next apartment. He could not understand what they were saying, but he cod tell that they were arguing. He should know what an argument sounded like, for he had heard enough of them in his childhood.
The door opened, and there stood a young woman, dressed in a robe which was secured by a heavy sash tied around her slim waist. The moment she saw Andrei Vladimirovich she cried out, "Andrushka! Come in!"
Andrei Vladimirovich stepped in and said, "Nadya, I have a surprise for you." With that he handed her the package.
Nadezhda Grigoreevna whispered, "Andrushka, what have you done?"
"Open it," Andrei Vladimirovich said, setting his briefcase on the table and wiping the raindrops off its leather sides with one sleeve of his overcoat.
For a long moment Nadezhda Grigoreevna could only turn the package around and around in her hands. Finally she tore open a tiny corner of the wrapping and peeked into the hole she had made.
"Go ahead," Andrei Vladimirovich told her. "It's yours. Open it."
Nadezhda Grigoreevna tore apart the brown paper wrapping and tossed it to the floor. In her hands were a pair of real Western blue jeans. She gasped, then cried, "Andrei! Where did you get them?"
Andrei Vladimirovich grinned and said, "GUM, of course. The clerk claimed that they didn't have any left, but when I offered her two tickets for the Bolshoi ballet, she suddenly managed to find a pair in your size."
Nadezhda Grigoreevna held the jeans up to herself, all the time rubbing her fingertips across the material as if she could not believe that they were truly hers. Finally she said, "But when will I have time to wear them? All my days I spend practicing in the studio."
"My dear little ballerina," Andrei Vladimirovich said as he removed his overcoat and deftly stepped out of his dripping boots. "There will be time for you to wear them. I promise you that."
There was an angry crash from the neighbors' apartment. It made Andrei Vladimirovich think of his childhood, his mother brooding over the primus stove, cooking what meager meal she could scratch up. Father came home roaring drunk and started beating her because he didn't want cabbage again. One of the other men whose families shared the mean apartment intervened, and the fight began.
Andrei Vladimirovich suddenly felt foolish and sentimental. He blinked hard to stop the tears which were forming at the corners of his eyes and forced the memory out of his mind. "How do you tolerate that?" he said.
"I have grown acustomed to it," Nadezhda Grigoreevna said, shrugging her shoulders. "It recedes into the background after a time."
"You are a ballerina of the Bolshoi," Andrei Vladimirovich said. "You should not have to live in such miserable. . ."
"SHHHH!" Nadezhda Grigoreevna hissed, thrusting a hand over his mouth. "You must not say such things. Someone could hear you!"
Realizing how dangerous his intended words would have been, Andrei Vladimirovich flushed hot. Nadezhda Grigoreevna had enough trouble since her brother defected. "It's been a hard day," Andrei Vladimirovich said.
Nadezhda Grigoreevna led him to a chair beside the silver samovar and thrust a cup into his hands. "Drink this," she said. "The tea will make you feel better."
Andrei Vladimirovich lifted the cup to his lips and drank. Then, when he had recovered his composure, he said, "I have two tickets for Dobrenivnien's poetry reading tomorrow night. I thought that you might wish to come."
"That sounds wonderful," Nadezhda Grigoreevna said. Then, in a softer tone of voice, she added, "What will your wife say?"
"She'll never know," Andrei Vladimirovich said, grinning slyly. "I told you that I had business to take care of at the office."
"Just like you told her you'd be working late tonight," Nadezhda Grigoreevna said.
Andrei Vladimirovich said nothing. He slowly sipped his tea through a bit of sugar, all the time wishing that he had never mentioned Dobrenivnien. Those two tickets had been given to him by his boss with orders for him to go and listen for something to attack in another of those anonymous articles he had written for Pravda over the last several months.
Finally Nadezhda Grigoreevna said, "I wonder what Dmitri Aleksandrovich will do on stage this time?"
"Then you will be coming?" Andrei Vladimirovich said.
"What do you think? Would I miss a chance to hear his poetry?" Nadezhda Grigoreevna's voice held more than a little indignance.
"Of course not, my little ballerina," Andrei Vladimirovich said. "I trust that you will be ready for me tomorrow night."
"Naturally," Nadezhda Grigoreevna said. Then she looked at the clock hanging on the wall. "You must be going. Sasha will be home soon."
The samovar, which had been full when he had arrived, was now nearly empty. Reluctantly Andrei Vladimirovich rose and put on his wraps once again. Then, picking up his briefcase, he bade Nadezhda Grigoreevna farewell and walked out the door."
As Andrei Vladimirovich opened the door of his apartment and walked through the carpeted entryway, he could smell roast burning. His stomach growled, but he resolved to say nothing and eat whatever his wife was able tto put before him. It wasn't her fault that she had never learned to cook. She had grown up in the household of a powerful member of the Central Committee, and thus had never even needed to learn how to fix a meal. At least not until she had married and come into the home of a young writer and literary critic who could nto get someone to cook the meals for her. But Andrei Vladimirovich wasn't complaining, considering that it had been her father, with his powerful position, who had secured such a fine apartment for them.
Feeling sorry for himself, he entered his book-lined study and sat down beside the silver samovar which had been a wedding gift. Hoping for some sort of comfort, he drew himself some water for tea. But as the water poured out, he saw that there was no steam. Cautiously he dipped a fingertip into the water and discovered that it was anything but hot.
"Lara," he shouted, "The samovar is cold!"
"I told you yesterday that the samovar was broken," his wife, Larisa Sergeevna, shouted back, hurrying in from the kitchen. She was a small woman, and there had been a time when she had been quite pretty. But now she was getting heavy and her face was creased by permanent scowl lines.
"Then why don't you get it fixed?" Andrei Vladimirovich shouted, jumping out of his chair.
"Whe do I ever have time? You fix it!"
"Who said I had time on my hands?"
"All you ever do is waste your time with that ridiculous poet who gets himself criticized in Pravda all the time." Larisa Sergeevna shook a scolding finger at him, then continued, "You should not spend so much time with him -- he will do nothing good for you."
Helplessly Andrei Vladimirovich sank back into his chair and looked at the books around him, searching for something to get his mind off those articles he had written for Pravda. His gaze finally fell upon two books sitting on the table beside the samovar. The first was a well-read paperback of Tolstoy's War and Peace which he had been given by a teacher as encouragement to write an essay on Tolstoy's great masterpiece for an all-USSR school essay contest. It had been his essay on War and Peace that had won him a trip to Moscow in his final year before college, wher ehe had actually spoken to the First Secretary. Although he had since acquired other copies of the book, he could never bear to throw this one away, however worn it might become.
The other book, bound in red leather, was part of a collection of Mayakovsky's poetry which the First Secretary had given him on that visit. Wearily Andrei Vladimirovich picked it up and began to read. But hte poetry, instead of calming Andrei Vladimirovich, only made him think of how Mayakovsky had been broken and ultimately driven to suicide by the endless politically-oriented attacks by Proletkult and RAPP, which consisted primarily of critics of mediocre abilities who were determined to control Soviet literature.
The Bolshoi Theater was full to capacity, mostly with college students from Moscow University. Surriounded on all sides by chattering college students, Andrei Vladimirovich and Nadezhda Grigoreevna sat and waited for Dobrenivnien to show himself. Andrei Vladimirovich could see a few other young Party members in the crowd, but they were by far the minority among all the college students, who were talking idly about everything, especially the poet Dobrenivnien. "I wonder what he will do this time." "Didn't you love it when he dressed up like a priest?" "Sure! That was hilarious." "Pravda didn't think so. They had a huge article blasting him after that." Andrei Vladimirovich winced involunatrily, for he had been the one to write that article. It was terribly untrue, but it was what the Party wanted to see.
Suddenly the college students fell silent. A few voices could be heard muttering things like "oh no" and "not again." Then Nadezhda Grigoreevna tugged on Andrei Vladimirovich's sleeve and whispered, "Andrushka! Take a look at what he's done now."
Immediately Andrei Vladimirovich looked up to see what could be going on. Across the stage walked Dmitri Aleksandrovich Dobrenivnien, a tall man with glistening black hair that fell in ringlets all about his shoulders. His jacket had been assembled from pieces of different colored cloth, and he had wound two red scarves around his wrists. Under his outlandish jacket he wore a yellow tunic, and around his neck was a scarlet sash which reached nearly to the floor and fluttered around him as he walked.
In the middle of the stage he stopped and looked over his audience. Then he grinned and said, "Welcome, my friends. I see that the fine articles Pravda has been running about me have brought some new faces here ttonight."
The students fairly howled over Dobrenivnien's ironic reference to the articles attacking him. However Andrei Vladimirovich could only squirm inside himself as he thought of the terrible things he had written and how he would write even more lies for Pravda the very next morning.
The reception was held in the ballroom of the Moscow Writers' Union. While the older Party officials seemed to be trying to ignore Dobrenivnien's presence, the younger ones were crowding around the controversial poet, who was still wearing the outrageous outfit he had affected for his reading. As he spoke with the young Party members, many of them budding writers and poets, he constantly ran his long sash through his hands.
Andrei Vladimirovich and Nadezhda Grigoreevna stood at the edge of the circle of Dobrenivnien's admirers, quietly as the others slowly drifted away. But they did not have long to wait, for Dobrenivnien happened to see them and recognize Andrei Vladimirovich. The poet then disengaged himself from his diminishing circle of admirers and crossed over to Andrei Vladimirovich.
"Andrei," the poet said, grabbing Andrei Vladimirovich by the shoulders and shaking him in the sort of greeting that might be exchanged between two school chums. "I was hoping that you would be here."
Andrei Vladimirovich suddenly felt sick inside. How could he be standing here and talking to the very man he had orders to attack in another vicious article in Pravda? A voice inside his head shouted at him, "How can you do this -- attack him when he comes and speaks personally to you?"
Andrei Vladimirovich swallowed hard and answered, "I've been looking forward to hearing you tonight." But even as he said it, his words sounded empty in his ears. Surely the poet could hear how false his tone was, just like those accursed articles he had to write for Pravda.
But if he did, he gave no sign. Instead he spoke of trivialities as if nothing were going on, all the time twisting one end of the sash about his hands in a curiously disturbing manner. Just watching him made Andrei Vladimirovich feel sick. He could only think of those articles, and what they must be doing to Dobrenivnien. He had always been so self-confident, and now some of it seemed to be slipping.
Andrei Vladimirovich was almost glad when Dobrenivnien left him to speak with another young admirer. Seeing the poet so closely made Andrei Vladimirovich feel all the more terrible about writing articles full of lies.
Yet he had to write those articles if he wanted to keep his position, Andrei Vladimirovich argued to himself. And surely Dobrenivnien couldn't be sufferring too badly if he was able to make jokes about those articles the way he had done on stage. Surely a few anonymous articles in Pravda couldn't hurt him too badly, especially when he had the influence of his father, an admiral of the Red Navy, to protect him from anything serious. Anyway, Andrei Vladimirovich told himself, if he didn't write those articles, someone else would, probably someone who seriously disliked Dobrenivnien and would attack him far more viciously.