“Yes. A tragedy for the country, to lose such a talented singer twice. He squandered the chance most other prisoners and former prisoners, millions and millions of them, never got — a second chance at life. To me, only one thing that could explain his behavior — madness. Perhaps he and Galochka weren’t so different in the end.
“After this, a wave of gossip and paranoia rolled through Magadan. Those who had advocated for the relaunch of Makin’s career got very nervous. People still remembered the years of repression, Stalin, Yezhov. Kazakov, the radio director, destroyed all the recordings of Makin’s new songs. My own fears subsided a bit when Baba Mila was appointed official witness while the KGB inventoried Makin’s property in his room, but you never knew whom they might play against whom.”
“And you never saw him again?”
“I did. Once. A year after his second arrest. I was looking for the supervisor at a construction site for one of my depot workers’ houses and instead found Makin. He sat at a desk in the corner of the room — well, you could hardly call it a room at that point, it was just a concrete box.”
“Dedushka! What was he doing there?”
“He was the timekeeper. His job was to record the hours of the other inmates who worked toward shortening their sentences. My first impulse was to pretend not to recognize him, to save our dignities. He looked up at me and smiled like at an old friend. I smiled in return. Genuine smiles are contagious, Sonya. I instantly forgot everything.
“‘Vadim Andreevich, I’ll try to do something to get you out sooner,’ I said. ‘Did you know how much Galochka loves you? She wants to marry you and take care of you as if you were her own child. We will restore you as the director of our musical ensemble at the Workers’ Club. You will be rehabilitated.’ I didn’t have the power to do what I was promising. In fact, my rambling probably sounded crazy and foolish, too. I tell you, Sonya, he had a witching influence over me, just as he did over millions of Soviet people. One nod from him, and his welfare would’ve taken over my life again.
“Makin spared me that responsibility. ‘Mikhail Pavlovich, please, don’t worry about me. This time, I’ll look out for myself,’ he said with his gypsy smile. It was pride and shame speaking. Gypsies are a proud people. There was nothing more I could do. We soon acquired new upstairs neighbors—”
“Wait. Do you think he knew that it was you who sent Galochka away?”
Deda Misha looked surprised. “I don’t know, I didn’t tell him. It was beside the point. Makin hadn’t changed at all, Galochka or no Galochka.
“I remember our new upstairs neighbors well because your father became best friends with the son, also named Tolya. That Tolya’s father was a police detective and his mother taught phys-culture at Baba Mila’s school. Details, details. I’m glad to have such a greedy memory, to remember every day with my family and Baba Mila.
“Baba Mila and I moved back to Ukraine in the midseventies, after your father graduated from college. Just before leaving, I saw Makin on our local TV. It was the studio where they filmed all the concerts in Magadan, the one with the black-and-white four-leaf clover floor. ‘All’s ever, the same old guitar,’ he sang with his usual earnestness and accompanied himself on the piano. His perennial rubber cat perched on top of the piano. He was in that same familiar pose, turned toward the audience, emphasizing the words with his torso and hands. That same unmistakable timbre, though his voice was weaker now. Vocal cords are just muscles, and they get old whether you are a star or not a star. He seemed to be really enjoying himself. He sang the songs he’d written about Magadan: ‘Snow Waltz’ something, ‘The Streets of Magadan.’ I didn’t like them as much as his old classic songs.
“Then, one of the listeners asked him about his early years as a singer, when he was worshipped by the whole USSR. Makin must’ve been almost seventy then, bald and chubby but still sprightly. He was finally free to leave Magadan. I don’t remember much of the interview except that he said — in a friendly tone and smiling, that I remember — that he didn’t regret anything. Vot tak … The end.”
“The end? But what happened to Galochka?”
“Galochka? She returned to Magadan a few months after Makin’s arrest and continued to work in our accounting department. Then she resigned and left for the continent. Some said she’d had a mental breakdown and went to a sanatorium on the Black Sea. I don’t know for sure. I’ve never liked to get involved with the gossip. So you stayed till the end of the concert, eh?”
Sonya nodded. She was reeling from the story.
“Did they announce that he would finally receive the title of People’s Artist of Russia?”
“I don’t think so.” She combed her mind. Could she have slept through it? The concert seemed like it had happened a century ago.
“I don’t think Makin was ever officially rehabilitated. A pity, a pity, but what can you do.”
“You don’t have any connections anymore, to help him?”
He smiled. “No, Sonechka.”
They sat in silence. Deda Misha stared into the empty teacup as if divining the tea leaves. Sonya rose and picked up the empty bowl and her cup.
“Leave it, Sonechka. I’ll clean up,” he said. “Go to bed.”
She stood in front of the frosted window. “Deda,” she whispered.
He grunted tiredly.
“Is it sometimes better to keep the animal locked up?”
“Kak? What animal?”
“The wild animal. Like with you, when you told Galochka about Makin. Sometimes, maybe it’s better to keep it in the cage?”
“What are you talking about? The wild animal was just me saying … it’s just a metaphor.”
“I know it’s a metaphor!” Sonya cried out. “I’m not totally dumb. I know it’s a metaphor. I didn’t open the stupid cage.”
“Shhh!”
A hot wave of shame rose up through her chest and pushed on the top of her throat. “I didn’t tell Papa about Oleg, not even when he moved in with us and ate the food Papa sent. I didn’t want Papa to come back from America. I didn’t stop them.”
Deda Misha was silent for a long time. “Don’t worry too much about that, Sonya. Your father knew. Magadan is a small town. He allowed it.” His glance had a harsh, unfamiliar edge.
She grieved for her mother and her father — and for Makin.
“We didn’t think that in the end she would be stupid enough to leave. Our side of the family doesn’t give up easily, though.”
She was suddenly disgusted with Deda Misha. For the last two years her mother had been both happier and more miserable. But what was she like before she met Oleg? Sonya could hardly remember.
“Too bad you’re leaving tomorrow, Deda. We could’ve visited Makin,” she said. He started at the mention of Makin. “I want to see that famous rubber cat. Maybe I’ll go to his museum with Mama later, then stop by his apartment and ask him if he remembers you.”
“The true tragedy is to have lived without a woman’s love, Sonya, to not be able to love a woman. I don’t regret sending Galochka away. Measure seven times, cut once, as they say.” Deda Misha stared at a space in front of him. “And he even denied it to the journalists, in the nineties. One of my old Magadan acquaintances had read in the newspaper and called me. I was shocked.”
“Denied what?”
“He said he was only interested in those circles for the sake of art … he wanted to know how they lived, how everyone lives, to write better songs. And the incident in Sverdlovsk was pure provocation. Again.”
“But if he wasn’t, how…”
“A setup, he claimed. Because people were jealous of him, and certain people wanted revenge, but he didn’t say who or for what. He had never been married but he had had an infant daughter, he said, and she died with her mother during the Leningrad blockade. For all the years I’d known him, he’d never mentioned any daughter. I don’t believe that he was honest in the interviews. Or maybe he finally changed.”