Another taxi drove into the Village a couple of hours later, but this one stopped at the Kravchuks’ house. Nora, pulling back a corner of the embroidered curtain, saw how, in response to a voice calling for the owners, first Ada and shortly afterward her husband, wiping his greasy mouth with his oily driver’s hand, leapt out of the summer kitchen.
In the wide-open gate stood a strapping young man with long hair held like a girl’s ponytail by a rubber band, wearing tightfitting white jeans and a pink T-shirt. Ada was quite flabbergasted by the sheer brazenness of his appearance. The new arrival smiled, however, waved a white envelope, and asked, without moving from the garden gate, “The Kravchuks? A letter from your son with new greetings. Saw him yesterday.”
Ada snatched the envelope, and, without saying a word, the Kravchuks disappeared into the kitchen to read the letter from their only son, Vitka, who since graduating from army college had been living in Moscow province for three years now, and as it seemed from the perspective of the Village was making a great career for himself. The new arrival, showing not the least concern for the taxi-driver who was still waiting by the outside gate, sat himself down on a bench. The Kravchuks had meanwhile read that their son was sending them a very useful contact whom they should under no circumstances charge for accommodation, whose every whim they should indulge, and that the commandant of the entire military district himself queued up for massage at the hands of this same Valerii Butonov.
Before they had finished reading the letter, the Kravchuks rushed out to the new arrival. “But please come in, do. Where is your luggage?”
The new arrival brought in his luggage, a leather suitcase with a thick layered handle, covered in foreign stickers. Nora wearied of holding up in the air the old-fashioned smoothing iron with which she was ironing Tanya’s skirt and put it back on its holder. Her landlord and landlady were running in circles around the new arrivaclass="underline" the suitcase had impressed them too.
He was probably an actor, or a jazz musician, or something of that kind, Nora supposed. The iron had cooled, but she did not want to leave her little cottage to heat it up again in the kitchen. She put the half-ironed skirt aside.
CHAPTER 4
Medea had grown up in a house where meals were cooked in cauldrons, eggplants pickled by the barrel, and fruit dried many kilograms at a time on the roof, yielding up its sweet fragrances to the salty sea breeze. While this was going on, brothers and sisters were being born and filling up the house. By mid-season Medea’s present dwelling, lonely and silent in the winter, was reminding her of that childhood home, so crowded and full of children had it become. Laundry was endlessly boiling in great vessels standing on iron tripods; in the kitchen there was always someone drinking coffee or wine; guests were arriving from Koktebel or Sudak. Sometimes free-spirited young people—unshaven students and unkempt girls—would pitch a tent nearby, loudly playing their new music and surprising everyone with their politically daring new songs. And Medea, introverted, childless Medea, although long accustomed to this free-for-all in the summer, did sometimes wonder why it should be her house, baked by the sun and blown by the winds from the sea, that should draw all these tribes from Lithuania, Georgia, Siberia, and Central Asia.
A new season was beginning. Last night she had been alone with Georgii and this evening eight people sat down to the early supper.
The younger children, tired from their journey, were put to bed early. Artyom went off too in order to avoid the humiliation of being sent to bed. His voluntary departure went some way toward making him the equal of Katya, whom nobody had packed off to bed for a long time now.
The early supper developed imperceptibly into the late supper. They drank the wine Georgii had bought. Georgii had lived in Moscow for five years while studying in the Geographical Faculty of Moscow State University. He hadn’t taken to the city, but news of the capital always interested him, and now he was trying to extract it out of his cousins. Nike’s narrative, however, was constantly going off at a tangent, either about herself or moving on to family gossip, and Masha’s tended to politics. Such were the times. No matter where a conversation started, it invariably ended with a conspiratorial lowering of voices and a raising of the temperature by politics.
This time they were discussing Gvidas the Hun, Medea’s Vilnius nephew, the son of her late brother Dimitry. He had built himself a very extensive house indeed.
“What about the authorities? Have they allowed it?” Georgii asked, his whole being quivering with interest in just this matter.
“In the first place, in Lithuania things just are a bit more liberal. In addition to that, he is an architect. And don’t forget, his father-in-law is a top bastard in the Party.”
“Gvidas doesn’t play those games, does he?” Georgii asked in surprise.
“Well, how can I put it? On the whole, Soviet power is a bit of a pantomime there. Lithuanians have always taken their smoked sausage, eels, and beer more seriously than meetings of the Communist Party, that’s for sure. Cannibalism is less widespread there,” Nike explained.
Masha flared up: “You’re talking complete rubbish, Nike. After the war half of Lithuania was put in prison, almost half a million young men. More than they lost in the war. Some pantomime!”
Medea got up. She had been wanting to get to bed for a while. She knew she had missed her usual time when she slipped easily and smoothly into sleep, and now she would be tossing and turning till morning on her mattress stuffed with marine eel-grass. “Good night,” she said, and went out.
“Look at that,” Masha said, chagrined. “No one can deny what a great personality our Medea is, hard as flint, yet even she is downtrodden. She didn’t say a word and just left.”
That made Georgii angry.
“You’re a half-wit, Masha. You think all the evil in the world comes down to Soviet power. She had one of her brothers killed by the Reds, another by the Whites; in the war one was killed by the Fascists, and another by the Communists. For her all governments are the same. My grandfather Stepanyan was an aristocrat and a monarchist, and he sent her money when she was orphaned as a young girl. He sent her everything they had in the house at that time. And my mother was married by my father, who was, forgive my mentioning it, a red-hot revolutionary, just because Medea told him, ‘We’ve got to save Elena.’ What does it matter to her who’s in power? She’s a Christian, her allegiance is to a higher authority. And never say again that she’s afraid of anything.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Masha shouted. “That’s not what I meant at all! I only meant she left as soon as we started talking politics.”
“Well, why should she want to talk to a half-wit like you, anyway?” Georgii retorted.
“That’s enough now,” Nike intervened lazily. “Have we got anything tucked away in the reserve?”
“Need you ask?” Georgii said, cheering up immediately. He rummaged behind his back and pulled out the bottle he had started earlier in the day.
Masha’s mouth was trembling and she was just waiting to rush into battle, but Nike, who hated quarrels, moved a glass in her direction and began singing. “The river is flowing over the sand, washing the shore, a handsome young fellow, a dashing young rascal, is begging his foreman . . .”
Her voice was quiet and moist at first. Georgii and Masha relaxed, leaning against each other as members of one family, and all the disputation ended of its own accord. Nike’s voice poured like light out through the chink of the partly open door, through the small, irregular windows, and the simple, semioutlaw song lit up the whole of Medea’s realm.
Valerii Butonov came out into the night to relieve himself and, rather than bothering to walk all the way to the little planked house, disconcerted the tomato seedlings by giving them an unexpected warm watering. Now he gazed up into the star-studded southern sky dissected by lascivious searchlights probing the coastal strip in search of cinematographic spies in black frogmen’s suits. At this time of the year, however, not even the buttocks of lovers on the beach were to be seen gleaming in the moonlight.