Edge of Eternity (102 page)

George had not thought of that. “I'm really sorry,” he said. “But what can I do?”

“How much does this relationship matter to you?” she said.

George thought her challenging words masked a plea. “Well,” he said, “it's a little early to talk of marriage—”

“Early?” she said, getting angry. “I'm thirty-eight years old and you're only my second lover. Did you think I was looking for a casual fling?”

“I was going to say,” he said patiently, “that if we do get married I assume we'll have children and you'll stay home and take care of them.”

Her face was flushed with outrage. “Oh, is that what you assume? Not only do you plan to prevent me getting any further promotions, you actually expect me to give up my career altogether!”

“Well, that's what women usually do when they marry.”

“The hell it is! Wake up, George. I realize that your mother devoted herself from the age of sixteen exclusively to caring for you, but you were born in 1936, for Christ's sake. We're in the seventies now. Feminism has arrived. Work is no longer something a woman does merely to pass the time until some man condescends to make her his domestic slave.”

George was bewildered. This had come out of the blue. He had done something normal and reasonable, and she was spitting with rage. “I don't know why you're so goddamn ornery,” he said. “I haven't ruined your career or made you a domestic slave, and I haven't actually asked you to marry me.”

Her voice went quiet. “You asshole,” she said. “You total asshole.”

She left the room.

“Don't go,” he said.

He heard the apartment door slam.

“Hell,” he said.

He smelled smoke. The steaks were burning. He turned off the heat under the pan. The meat was charred black, inedible. He tipped the steaks into the garbage bin.

“Hell,” he said
again.

G
rigori Peshkov was dying. The old warrior was eighty-seven, and his heart was failing.

Tanya had managed to get a message to his brother. Lev Peshkov was eighty-two but he had announced that he was coming to Moscow, in a private jet. Tanya had wondered if he would get permission to visit, but he had managed it. He had arrived yesterday and was due to visit Grigori today.

Grigori lay in bed in his apartment, pale and still. He was sensitive to pressure, and could not bear the weight of the bedclothes on his feet, so Tanya's mother, Anya, had placed two boxes in the bed, tenting the blankets so that they warmed without touching him.

Though he was weak, Tanya still felt the power of his presence. Even in repose his chin jutted pugnaciously. When he opened his eyes, he revealed that intense blue-eyed stare that had so often struck fear into the hearts of the enemies of the working class.

It was a Sunday, and family and friends came to visit. They were saying good-bye, though naturally they pretended otherwise. Tanya's twin, Dimka, and his wife, Natalya, brought Katya, their pretty seven-year-old. Dimka's ex-wife, Nina, turned up with the twelve-year-old Grisha, who had the beginnings of his great-grandfather's formidable intensity, despite his youth. Grigori smiled benignly on them all. “I fought in two revolutions and two world wars,” he said. “It's a miracle I lasted this long.”

He fell asleep, then, and most of the family went out, leaving Tanya and Dimka sitting at the bedside. Dimka's career had advanced: he was now an official of the State Planning Committee and a candidate member of the Politburo. He was still a close associate of Kosygin, but
their attempts to reform the Soviet economy were always blocked by Kremlin conservatives. Dimka's wife, Natalya, was chair of the Analytical Department at the Foreign Ministry.

Tanya began to tell her brother about the latest feature she had written for TASS. At the suggestion of Vasili, who worked now in the Agriculture Ministry, she had flown to Stavropol, a fertile southern region where the collective farms were experimenting with a bonus system based on results. “Harvests are up,” she told Dimka. “The reform is a big success.”

“The Kremlin won't like bonuses,” Dimka said. “They'll say the system smacks of revisionism.”

“The system has been operating for years,” she said. “The regional first secretary there is a real live wire. A man called Mikhail Gorbachev.”

“He must have friends in high places.”

“He knows Andropov, who goes to a spa in the region to take the waters.” The KGB chief suffered from kidney stones, an agonizing ailment. If ever a man deserved such pain, Tanya thought, Yuri Andropov did.

Dimka was intrigued. “So this Gorbachev is a reformer who is friendly with Andropov?” he said. “That makes him an unusual man. I must keep an eye on him.”

“I found him refreshingly commonsensical.”

“We certainly need new ideas. Do you remember Khrushchev, back in 1961, forecasting that the USSR would overtake the USA in both production and military strength in twenty years?”

Tanya smiled. “At the time he was thought pessimistic.”

“Now fifteen years have passed and we're farther behind than ever. And Natalya tells me the East European countries have also fallen behind their neighbors. They're kept quiet only by massive subsidies from us.”

Tanya nodded. “It's a good thing we have huge exports of oil and other raw materials to help us pay the bills.”

“But it's not enough. Look at East Germany. We have to have a damn wall to stop people escaping to capitalism.”

Grigori stirred. Tanya felt guilty. She had been questioning her grandfather's fundamental beliefs while sitting at his deathbed.

The door opened and a stranger walked in. He was an old man, thin and bent but immaculately dressed. He had on a dark-gray suit that was molded to his body like something worn by the hero in a movie. His white shirt gleamed and his red tie glowed. Such clothes could only come from the West. Tanya had never met him, but all the same there was something familiar about him. This must be Lev.

He ignored Tanya and Dimka and looked at the man in the bed.

Grandfather Grigori gave him a look that said he knew the visitor but could not quite place him.

“Grigori,” the newcomer said. “My brother. How did we get so old?” He spoke a queer old-fashioned dialect of Russian with the harsh accent of a Leningrad factory worker.

“Lev,” said Grigori. “Is it really you? You used to be so handsome!”

Lev leaned over and kissed his brother on both cheeks, then they embraced.

Grigori said: “You got here just in time. I'm about done for.”

A woman about eighty years old followed Lev in. She was dressed, Tanya thought, like a prostitute, in a stylish black dress and high heels, makeup and jewelry. Tanya wondered whether it was normal for old women to dress that way in America.

“I saw some of your grandchildren in the next room,” Lev said. “They're a fine bunch.”

Grigori smiled. “The joy of my life. How about you?”

“I have a daughter by Olga, the wife I never much liked, and a son by Marga here, who I preferred. I wasn't much of a father to either of my children. I never had your sense of responsibility.”

“Any grandchildren?”

“Three,” Lev said. “One's a movie star, one's a pop singer, and one's black.”

“Black?” said Grigori. “How did that happen?”

“It happened the usual way, idiot. My son Greg—named for his uncle, by the way—he fucked a black girl.”

“Well, that's more than his uncle ever did,” said Grigori, and the two old men chuckled.

Grigori said: “What a life I've had, Lev. I stormed the Winter Palace. We destroyed the tsars and built the first Communist country. I
defended Moscow against the Nazis. I'm a general and Volodya is a general. I feel so guilty about you.”

“Guilty about me?”

“You went to America and missed it all,” Grigori said.

“I have no complaints,” said Lev.

“I even got Katerina, though she preferred you.”

Lev smiled. “And all I got was a hundred million dollars.”

“Yes,” said Grigori. “You got the worst of the deal. I'm sorry, Lev.”

“It's okay,” said Lev. “I forgive you.” He was being ironic but, Tanya thought, Grigori did not seem to realize that.

Uncle Volodya came in. He was on his way to some army ceremony, wearing his general's uniform. Tanya realized with a sudden shock that this was the first time he had seen his real father. Lev stared at the son he had never met. “My God,” Lev said. “He looks like you, Grigori.”

“He's yours, though,” said Grigori.

Father and son shook hands.

Volodya said nothing, seeming in the grip of an emotion so powerful that he could not speak.

Lev said: “When you lost me as a father, Volodya, you didn't lose much.” Keeping hold of his son's hand, he looked him up and down: gleaming boots, Red Army uniform, combat medals, piercing blue eyes, iron-gray hair. “I did, though,” Lev said. “I guess I lost a lot.”

•   •   •

As she left the apartment Tanya found herself wondering where the Bolsheviks had gone wrong, where Grandfather Grigori's idealism and energy had been perverted into tyranny. She went to the bus stop, heading for a rendezvous with Vasili. On the bus, thinking over the early years of the Russian Revolution, she wondered whether Lenin's decision to close all newspapers except the Bolshevik ones had been the key error. It meant that right from the start alternative ideas had had no circulation and the conventional wisdom could never be challenged. Gorbachev in Stavropol was exceptional in having been allowed to try something different. Such people were generally stifled. Tanya was a journalist, and suspected herself of egocentrically overrating the importance of a free press, but it seemed to her that the lack of critical
newspapers made it much easier for other forms of oppression to flourish.

It was now four years since Vasili had been released. In that time he had shrewdly rehabilitated himself. At the Agriculture Ministry he had devised an educational radio serial set on a collective farm. As well as the dramas about unfaithful wives and disobedient children, the characters discussed agricultural techniques. Naturally the peasants who ignored advice from Moscow were lazy and shiftless, and the wayward teenagers who questioned the Communist Party's authority were the ones who were jilted by their boyfriends or failed their exams. The serial was a huge success. Vasili returned to Radio Moscow and was given an apartment in a block occupied by writers approved by the government.

Their meetings were clandestine, but Tanya also ran into him occasionally at union events or private parties. He was no longer the walking cadaver that had returned from Siberia in 1972. He had put on weight and regained some of his former presence. Now in his midforties, he would never again be movie-star handsome; but the lines of strain on his face somehow added to his allure. And he still had buckets of charm. Each time Tanya saw him he was with a different woman. They were not the nubile teenagers who had adored him in his thirties, though perhaps they were the middle-aged women those teenagers had become: smart females in chic clothes and high-heeled shoes, who always seemed able to get hold of scarce nail varnish, hair dye, and stockings.

Tanya met him secretly once a month.

Each time he would bring her the latest installment of the book he was working on, written in the small, neat handwriting he had developed in Siberia to save paper. She would type it for him, correcting his spelling and punctuation where necessary. At their next meeting she would hand him the typescript for review and discuss it with him.

Millions of people around the world bought Vasili's books, but he never met any of them. He could not even read the reviews, which were written in foreign languages and published in Western newspapers. So Tanya was the only person with whom he could discuss his work, and he listened hungrily to everything she had to say. She was his editor.

Tanya went to Leipzig every March to cover the book fair there, and
each time she met with Anna Murray. She always came back with a present for Vasili from Anna—an electric typewriter, a cashmere overcoat—and news of even more money piling up in his London bank account. He would probably never get to spend any of it.

She still took careful precautions when meeting him. Today she got off the bus a mile from the rendezvous, and made sure she was not being followed while she walked to the café, called Josef's. Vasili was already there, sitting at a table with a vodka glass in front of him. On the chair beside him was a large buff envelope. Tanya waved casually, as if they were acquaintances meeting by chance. She got a beer from the bar, then sat opposite Vasili.

She was happy to see him looking so well. His face had a dignity he had not possessed fifteen years earlier. He still had soft brown eyes, but nowadays they were keenly perceptive as often as they twinkled with mischief. She realized there was no one, outside her family, whom she knew better. She knew his strengths: imagination, intelligence, charm, and the gritty determination that had enabled him to survive and keep writing for a decade in Siberia. She also knew his weaknesses, the main one of which was an irresistible urge to seduce.

“Thanks for the tip about Stavropol,” she said. “I've done a nice piece.”

“Good. Let's just hope the whole experiment doesn't get stamped on.”

She handed Vasili the last episode, typed out, and nodded at the envelope. “Another chapter?”

“The last.” He gave it to her.

“Anna Murray will be happy.” Vasili's new novel was called
First Lady.
In it the American president's wife—as it might be, Pat Nixon—gets lost in Moscow for twenty-four hours. Tanya marveled at Vasili's power of invention. Seeing life in the USSR through the eyes of a well-meaning conservative American was a richly comic way to criticize Soviet society. She slipped the envelope into her shoulder bag.

Vasili said: “When can you take the whole thing to the publisher?”

“As soon as I get a foreign trip. At the latest, next March, in Leipzig.”

“March?” Vasili was disappointed. “That's six months away,” he said in a tone of reproof.

“I'll try to get an assignment where I could meet her.”

“Please do.”

Tanya was offended. “Vasili, I risk my damn life to do this for you. Get someone else, if you can, or do the job yourself. Hell, I wouldn't mind.”

“Of course.” He was immediately contrite. “I'm sorry. I have so much invested in it—three years' work, all in the evenings after I come home from my job. But I have no right to be impatient with you.” He reached across the table and put his hand over hers. “You've been my lifeline, more than once.”

She nodded. It was true.

All the same, she still felt cross with him as she walked away from the café with the ending of his novel in her bag. What was bugging her? It was those women in high-heeled shoes, she decided. She felt that Vasili should have grown out of that phase. Promiscuity was adolescent. He demeaned himself by showing up at every literary party with a different date. By now he should have settled down in a serious relationship with a woman who was his equal. She could be younger, perhaps, but she should be able to match his intelligence and appreciate his work, perhaps even help him with it. He needed a partner, not a series of trophies.

She went to the TASS office. Before she reached her desk she was accosted by Pyotr Opotkin, the editor in chief for features, the department's political overseer. As always a cigarette dangled from his lips. “I've had a call from the Agriculture Ministry. Your piece on Stavropol can't go out,” he said.

“What? Why not? The bonus system has been passed by the ministry. And it works.”