The state university set him up with his own lab. His students were hungry for a new era of science and flocked to his lectures. The university buildings are across the river, and from the window of his lab you could see the two-hundred-foot gilded spire of the Admiralty. The river and canals divide the city into many islands. Vasilesky Island is the home of the state university and many important buildings of science. Walking to his lab down the long, long hallway of the school, you could see the beer garden barges and boats filled with tourists traveling up and down the river. The lab was sparse but well equipped. He had changed his research from biology to chemistry and then to physics because it was safest during Stalin’s time to be a physicist. Stalin was convinced that in order to build a Soviet atom bomb, they had to employ Einstein’s theories. Other sciences and their leading minds were condemned—genetics, Darwin, biology, all denied. The only decoration in the lab was a needlepoint his wife had made having heard about his meagerly equipped lab. It read, “It’s better to have a small fish than a big cockroach.”
“My wife is very practical,” he said.
He stood close enough for our lab coats to touch. I had a sense from the sober look and message of the needlepoint that Trofim was in need of affection. I admired his charts, flickering spectral scopes, and heating crucibles. Out of the deep freezer he pulled a sealed test tube of clear liquid and a beaker that had something purple and gray hanging in frozen liquid.
Jiggling the heavy liquid in the test tube, he said, “This is the best vodka; we make it here from the original recipe of Mendeleev. Let’s drink to being together in Leningrad, Stalina.”
Mendeleev’s chemistry for the distillation of vodka couldn’t be outlawed. Stalin could not have Russia without vodka or the atomic bomb.
“What’s in the other beaker?” I asked.
“That’s my good luck brain,” he said.
“Whose brain?” I asked suspiciously.
“T. D. Lysenko, the great scientist and my teacher.”
“He was mad. Why would you want his brain?”
“The university thinks I’m doing research on his brain cells. Slicing them and shining a light through the sections to better understand his gifts.”
Lysenko’s theories served Stalin’s desire for the human race to have limitless power over nature. He became the Soviet’s ultimate man of science. To disagree meant certain arrest. Trofim played along, and a few years before we met he became part of a team of scientists sent to Siberia to create a race of giant rabbits. The “Rabbit King of Siberia,” as his team leader was known, employed Lysenko’s fictitious concepts, which claimed an organism could be altered genetically from one generation to the next. The largest rabbits were gathered from all over the Soviet Union to breed. The people were told they would never starve with farms filled with giant bunnies. Trofim’s job was to collect the semen from the most oversized specimens. Between this hoax and the wheat Lysenko claimed would grow in the Arctic, millions of our people starved.
“Trofim, don’t think me a fool, but that’s not his brain,” I said.
“Of course it’s not, sweet Stalina. I use it to keep my students disciplined. They think I’m crazy because I worship Lysenko, and they never fail to do their work.”
He put the flask and beaker down and put his arms on my shoulders. I could see the flickering reflections of the Neva on the yellow ceiling of the lab and in his half glasses. I was fascinated by what filled his fanatical brain. He looked like a sun-lined cloud as he moved over me; his blue eyes were the sky peeking through. His shadow made me shudder with a chill of delight. His lips touched mine, and out of the corner of my eye I could see the fake Lysenko brain warming up in its viscous suspension. If it wasn’t Lysenko’s, then whose was it? The strong smell of formaldehyde filled the lab. I let my lips go soft, but not too soft, and thought about Amalia’s kissing lessons with the plums.
Coming up for air, he said, “I love the smell of formaldehyde.”
That was a line from one of my father’s more famous poems. On the radio in the lab they were playing Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony.
“You know my father’s poem?”
The music reached a thundering kettledrum sequence. Trofim smiled and hummed along with the music.
“My father would play the third movement while he wrote,” I added.
Trofim spoke the next line of the poem.
“It preserves the unborn calf with two heads. Will it do the same for my misshapen poem?”
I looked deep into his eyes and could feel the heat on my back as we leaned closer to the lit gas burner.
Then Trofim said, “When we aren’t together, it’s your lips I think of.”
“That’s not a line in the poem,” I said, amused.
“No, it’s not.”
His lips had a slight red hue from my lipstick. I loved how his lips were full in the middle and went a bit crooked when he smiled, almost a secret smile just for me.
“Trofim,” I said as I took a deep breath, “I think I need a drink.”
“Yes, let’s make a toast.”
Through the test tube, I saw his face, stretched and twisted like in a fun house mirror. He looked beautiful to me.
Chapter Thirteen: Manicured
I retrieved the plastic cellophane-wrapped cups from the bathroom. The photograph of the roller coaster hung over the toilet, I had to say, was a nice touch. I peeked into the shower to check on Mara’s cleaning job. Her work was just short of a proper sparkle. You had to get rid of all the residue in order for the chrome to glisten. I had to control myself from pulling out a cleaning rag and finishing the job.
Ring. Ring.
“Stalina, will you answer that?” Joanie said as she sat on the bed combing Harry’s thin pate of hair. I picked up the phone.
“Stalina?”
“Yes, Mr. Suri.”
“How long do you think they are going to be? I have two couples waiting.”
“I’m not sure; we’re doing what we can. Business has been good lately.”
Click.
“He wanted to know how long we would be,” I said to Joanie.
“Harry’s sleeping like a baby. Maybe he just had to catch up on some sleep. How about that vodka?”
The “roller-bed-coaster” was designed for physical antics and not necessarily for comfortable sleeping, but Harry seemed very peaceful with his feet raised and slung over the hump. I poured the thickened, cold vodka into the plastic cups. The vapor from the alcohol felt peppery in my throat.
“I hope Harry doesn’t wake up; he would have a fit if he saw us drinking out of plastic cups. He says it’s disrespectful to the drink,” Joanie said as I handed her a cup of vodka.
“Nostrovya,” I said.
“Here’s to Harry, my best friend.”
We gulped the vodka down together.
“Harry would like you, Stalina. He likes women who can drink.”
“Thank you. There is a Russian saying, ‘A drink in time saves nine.’”
Harry made a gurgling sound.
“A drink in time.” Joanie laughed. “You Russians.”
“Why, is that not the saying?”
“We Americans are just so prissy. We say, ‘A stitch in time saves nine.’ I love your accent.”
“Thank you. I am very proud of my English.”
Harry gurgled again and lifted his right arm in the air.
“Maybe he’s waking up. Quick, let’s have another shot,” Joanie suggested.
I went over to get a closer look at Harry. His arm came down with a flop, but it was not only his arm that had risen.
“Look, Joanie, your man is thinking about you.”