Denisov understood all that was said about his problem but he did not accept the conclusions. Sometimes he yearned for sleep as a lover yearns for the beloved. Let me hold you; let me see your mysteries.
But he had slept last night and awakened refreshed as the cold sunlight poured through the bedroom window. He had relished that moment. Yesterday, it had been the usual morning with the family around, and the din of morning had embraced him; today it was silence; in three days, the din would return.
If they had been here, his wife would now be in the kitchen, banging the pots unnecessarily as though to assure everyone that, yes, she was on the job as usual, as expected — why, God help her if she wasn’t, and they had to miss a meal — they didn’t have to worry about her. The noise of the pots carried her resentments eloquently.
And his sister would still be holding out in the bathroom as though it were her private dressing room. The door had no lock and she held her foot against it as she prepared her body for another day of flirtations in the offices of the Writers’ Union.
Denisov frowned when he thought of Nasha. She was too old for this, she should have been married long ago or at least settled into her spinsterhood; she dressed like a schoolgirl. She embarrassed Denisov, who liked to think of himself as a man of patience and tolerance, even for those in his family. She was certain that she was an intellectual and nearly as certain that she was a writer of worth, though every contribution by her that appeared in the literary magazines attested more to her powers of sexual conquest than to her literary skills. For a time she had insisted that Denisov read her short stories when he preferred the company of a good novel or his television set. The stories were dreadfuclass="underline" All of them were set in the time of the war, which she wrote of in the style of Tolstoi, as though the war against the Fascists were a great, unpainted stretch of canvas that no one had thought to use before Nasha began her great themes. In the hands of people like Nasha, Denisov thought, the style of Tolstoi became a dangerous weapon. And what did she know of the war? She had not even been born until 1944. He remembered it, as a child. There had been darkness in the war, always, and cold, and there was no food.
And his son, Ivan. If they had been here this morning — if his uncle who had been a professor at the Army College of Strategy and Tactics had not so generously decided to die this week and give Denisov two days of peace — then Ivan would be at the door of the bathroom at this point, pounding on it against Nasha’s foot. Fighting and pounding, clattering pots and pans; noise that only ceased when he added to it or appeared at the kitchen at last for his morning glass of tea. Fights and shouts, threats and sobs in an apartment generous by Soviet standards but too small for all this emotion. This was the portion of a man’s life.
“You must pay your respects to them. He was your uncle; they are important.” Anna had been after him the day before but he had ignored her. He had no wish to go anywhere and certainly not to Gorki with its secrets and its air of suppression. Anna was not an unattractive woman, he thought, she had once had a deep and lingering beauty about her eyes that had affected him enormously. She had never been thin but she had been beautiful, ripe and budding, a springtime of a person, full of expectation for the warm lush summer.
Now, in the living room, in the silence of his thoughts, he looked at her as she had been.
Dmitri Denisov smiled to himself and reached for the album he had chosen. It had been brought to him by a courier in the diplomatic mail from London. Denisov had not yet found the silence to listen to it more than once.
It was The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan. As he held the record sleeve, he spoke the title of the opera and the names of the composer and librettist. Denisov’s accented English had once been very good, though he had a tendency to drop malapropisms from time to time. Over the years his great musical passion had become Gilbert and Sullivan’s Savoy operas; with his customary patience, he had managed to acquire a nearly complete collection of them through the usual black market available to Moscow’s elite.
The record began to spin on the Japanese turntable and the first sonorous strains of The Mikado filled the apartment. Denisov watched the record turn as he sipped his drink; then he leaned back on the wide couch and closed his eyes and let the music fill him.
He felt contented. The past eighteen months had not been good to him but the bad time was over now.
Denisov thought of the time of his disgrace, of the internal exile to Gorki he had suffered while he was examined by the Auditing section of the KGB. It had all been so unnecessary; he had been betrayed by an American agent named Devereaux. The betrayal had nearly cost Denisov his life when the British sent him back in disgrace to Moscow.
He pictured Devereaux in his mind. They had worked on the opposite sides for a long time, first in Asia, last in England. He would never see him again; but if he did, what would he do?
On a Belfast street, Denisov had killed a man to save Devereaux’s life. Devereaux acknowledged this but had not relented; Denisov was the enemy and Devereaux betrayed him. His reception in Moscow was not pleasant. He had failed in that English mission and he had permitted Devereaux to blow his cover.
He thought he would kill Devereaux if he had the chance again.
Then he heard a knock at the door.
Denisov realized he had been dozing when he heard the sharp sound. He frowned and opened his eyes. The knock was repeated; the knock insisted, it had its own rhythm; it had force and sureness to it, as though confident of the correctness of the intrusion it demanded.
The knock of the State.
Denisov reached for his wire-stemmed glasses and carefully fitted them over his ears and nose.
The man in the hallway was named Luriey, an Extra in the Committee; Denisov had seen him before. Beneath an unbuttoned wool overcoat the Extra wore a plain blue, shapeless suit and a white shirt with a dirty collar and a dark tie.
The bulge in the breast of Luriey’s suit was doubtless caused by his pistol, Denisov thought. Why did one have to carry a pistol in this city? Especially one so obviously sent by the State?
But he knew: The pistol was power, a sort of benefit paid to men who were nothing but glorified messengers in ill-fitting suits.
Serfs, he thought, not for the first time.
“Dmitri Ilyich Denisov?” The voice was ponderous, as though the name had been memorized. “I am here to summon you.”
The Mikado, Denisov thought. Or the Lord High Executioner.
Denisov opened the door wide, feeling the sense of the music behind him; Luriey was invited into the room but he hesitated, even looked shocked, as though Denisov had suggested an immoral act.
“You are summoned.”
“To Room Twenty-four,” Denisov said. “Come in for a moment.”
Luriey held his ground in the gray concrete-and-tile hallway of the building.
“Yes, where else would you take me? I know where I’m to go but you’ll have to wait until I dress. It is more comfortable to wait here.”
With reluctance clouding the coarse features of his face, Luriey stepped inside and Denisov closed the door behind him. Luriey stumbled after Denisov to the bedroom; he waited at the door for Denisov to dress.