“Is there much support among the workers?”
“Yes. I think so. People seem enthusiastic about it.”
“But you aren’t.”
“No.”
“Because you think it’s futile.”
She answers reluctantly. “Yes.”
“You think it’s futile because you have background knowledge. You’ve studied the developments in Poland. You know that the strikes there were toothless until Solidarity came up with a new tactic.”
Maria stays silent.
This was true. Maria had a source in Poland who reported developments to her of a strike in the shipyards of Gdańsk six years ago. A few hundred workers entrenched themselves inside a factory. They held the machinery hostage, and the factory chairman could no longer bring in unemployed workers. It was a much different prospect for the militia; they couldn’t just chop down the strikers on the streets. To clear them from the factory would need a full-blooded military operation, and the chairman didn’t have the stomach for that. It had the added advantage of holding their morale together, reminding each other that they had a claim on their own workplace.
The tactic spread like wildfire. Most of the other factories in the region did the same thing within a day. The authorities cut the phone lines so word wouldn’t spread, but of course it did. Within a day or two, half the country knew what was going on. But not here. The Russian press didn’t cover it. Maria wrote some samizdat articles, tried to get the word out any way she could but, in retrospect, the conditions probably weren’t right for people to listen. Brezhnev was still in power, and he commanded a vast amount of authority. People lived in too much fear to contemplate such actions.
Maria still stays silent.
“I know about the recital at the end of the month. It would be quite a statement of intent to keep a high-ranking member of the ministry from leaving the building. That’s not even taking Yakov Sidorenko into account. Holding a world-renowned pianist would draw immense international interest. It has the potential to be a very significant moment.”
Maria doesn’t respond; she remains very calm. Eventually, she says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Again, Danil nods his head.
“I understand. Go away and check out my credentials with whoever you need to talk to. Once you find out I can be trusted, have a think about it. This is an incredible opportunity. Pavel has told me about your leadership qualities. But I won’t put the boy in that situation without your permission. I will leave that decision up to you. All I ask is that you decide soon.”
Maria shakes his hand and leaves. Pavel stands to follow her, but she stops him. She wants to be alone.
Chapter 23
Alina stands abreast of the ironing board, taking shirts from the basket, shaking them out, using an old bottle of window cleaner to spray water on the particularly creased areas.
She’s listening to the radio. It’s a documentary on the flora and fauna of Arkhangelsk Oblast. It’s the only thing on besides music and politics, and she’s had enough of both of those for the moment. The rural accents are a pleasant change; she finds she likes hearing the background noises, birds and wind. The sense of space they carry somehow expanding the dimensions of her home.
It’s a lovely evening, despite the cold. The sun spreads its colour over the canvas of the city, the white and grey walls soak in its warm hues; she shakes out the shirts and hangs them on the backs of her kitchen chairs, and the traffic weaves reassuringly below, cars and buses crisscrossing at a constant pace, and she feels contented, in her own way. Maybe it’s the gentle sway of the evening, but she can’t deny that something seems to be coming to an end. The forces that have pushed against her for so long are beginning to relent.
The iron has a compartment for water, but the nozzle has rusted and it sprays a russet-coloured residue onto the material, so she’s taken to using the plastic bottle. She needs a new iron, but this is not something to think about, not right now, not when they let her off from work early, told her to take an evening for herself, to go home and relax—not that this is a possibility. How little they know about her.
She irons and listens and follows the progress of the evening light smoothing itself slowly across the room. This, she supposes, is her own rehearsal of sorts. Soon the apartment will be empty. Not for a couple of years yet, but it’s coming. Zhenya, when he’s old enough, will have a live-in scholarship. Maria will find a man or will be able to put aside enough to bribe someone for a place of her own. Maria will always be okay. People are drawn to her. She has that gift.
Alina thinks it won’t be too much of a shock when it comes. It will take adjustment, but it’s not as if the place was filled with a bustling family, the neighbour’s kids crashing through the door, chasing each other around the table. Maria is gone all the time anyway, especially in the past few weeks—often to teach, often she doesn’t say—and Zhenya, of course, is practicing.
She spreads out the collar and irons the back and then the front, pressing down hard on the corners.
A recital with Yakov Sidorenko.
She had to sit down when Maria told her. Zhenya’s talent has never worried her—his temperament certainly, but never his talent. What really concerned her was the opportunity. It’s all very well being a genius, but people need to realize it too. People like us don’t get those opportunities, she’s often told herself, and this has always been her secret dread, that she wouldn’t be wealthy enough or connected enough to lay out a real opportunity for her child. That in twenty years he’d be working at some menial job and spend his cigarette breaks thinking of what he could have been and resenting her, what she couldn’t provide.
And so, even before the event, she can claim a certain degree of parental accomplishment. She has brought him to the cusp of achievement. She is the one who found him a mentor, paid for his lessons, demanded diligence. If the worst should happen, if the boy crumbles under the pressure, or they’ve overestimated his promise, well, such regrets are a burden she won’t have to bear alone. No one can point a finger at her, tell her she didn’t love enough, encourage enough, provide enough.
Shirts of beautiful light cotton, cross-stitched, double cuffs, sharp collars. People in their own building, living the same lives as they are. She would like to ask them some day where they get the money for such things, but that would probably mean they’d get their shirts laundered somewhere else, and it’s not as if she doesn’t need the business. Money is still, as she so often says, life and death.
The programme is comparing the feeding habits of rosefinches to rufous-tailed robins. They tweet freely in the background, uninterrupted for long stretches, and it’s not hard to think they could be sitting just outside on her balcony, talking their talk. When Zhenya goes to the Conservatory, things will open up for her; she may finally have some time for herself. The possibility unnerves her a little. She has no idea what her interests are, no idea what she’d do besides work. Perhaps she’ll get Maria to recommend a few books for her, expose herself to other lives. She’d like to make an effort to see more wildlife, to go and stand on the top of a mountain, sleep in a tent, turn her soon-to-be solitary life to her advantage. She’s been to the park, what, once a year, since Kirill died? This is a disgrace, obviously, but parks are for those who can afford the time.
She’s never had money, even when she was married. Kirill never had the kind of sly intellect that she sees in some of the men who come to the laundry, the casually indifferent way in which they sign their names on the return slip, slide over their roubles, the way they exude assurance, how apparent it is that they flow through life unobstructed by petty concerns.