“Informer!” Kapitolina wailed. “Why are you such a backstabber?”
“I’m not a backstabber. I’m trying to see you do things right. What did you think—that the master wouldn’t miss all that coffee?”
“Well, he didn’t miss the cup, did he?”
“What cup?” asked Klim, frowning.
Kapitolina and Afrikan both fell silent. There was a tense pause.
“The cup was on the table, and they had a fight and started running around the table,” Kitty explained. “And everything fell off. But there’s no need to get mad, Daddy. Kapitolina gave me my milk in a tin.”
Klim took some money from his wallet. “Kapitolina, go out for me and buy us some new cups.”
“Don’t go sending that great lummox out to a china shop!” cried Afrikan in horror. “She’ll break everything in sight.”
But Kapitolina was already winding the paisley scarf around her head. “Yes, sir, this minute, sir! I’ll be quick, so I will—I swear to God.”
Klim had wanted a guardian angel to relieve him of his household chores, but Kapitolina was more like a goddess of destruction. He could not use her as a courier either. She did not know Moscow, and in any case, she was not allowed to go anywhere. Anyone taking messages from a foreigner needed official permission.
Klim bit the bullet and went to the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs to ask permission to hire an assistant.
Weinstein was clearly delighted at this turn of events. “We’ll find you somebody with just the right qualifications,” he promised.
“Sir,” Kapitolina hissed and ran up to Klim on tiptoe—she believed that this was less distracting. “There’s a woman asking about a job as a courier. Her name is Galina Dorina.”
Klim told Kapitolina to let the prospective courier in, and in walked a diminutive, shabbily dressed woman with an extraordinary face. She had almond-shaped eyes the color of honey, a long thin nose, and full, pale lips. With her looks, Comrade Dorina would have been well-suited to play the role of a Christian martyr from ancient Byzantine icons.
“Good afternoon,” she said. “I’ve been sent from the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs.”
“Sit down,” said Klim, pointing to the divan, “and tell me about yourself.”
Comrade Dorina asked Klim to call her Galina. She told him that there was nothing much to say about her life. She had worked until quite recently as a filing clerk. But now, the Commissariat was laying off staff, and she was looking for a new position.
“Have you ever worked as a courier?” asked Klim.
“No, but I know Moscow well—I grew up here. And I have a good pair of felt boots. If you don’t take me on, you should ask the other candidates about their footwear. Without felt boots, you’ll find your courier ending up in bed with a cold.”
“Do you have any other skills?”
“I can type in Russian, English, and French and do shorthand.”
“Could you type something for me as a test?”
Galina sat at the typewriter like a pianist at her instrument and shot an enquiring glance at Klim. He began to dictate the first article that caught his eye from the Times: “The Soviet Union’s economic experiments are continuing to amaze the world…”
Galina clattered away confidently at the keys and, in just a few minutes, had typed out an article about the budget crisis in the USSR. Klim could not believe his eyes: there was not a single typing error in the whole text.
“And with your skills, you still want to be a courier?” he asked.
Galina shrugged. “I need any work. And I’ve heard that foreigners have their salary paid on time. Is it true?”
Klim nodded. So long as this Galina did not ask for too high a wage, there seemed little point in interviewing anyone else for the job.
As he looked at her, he noticed an ugly lilac scar on her neck, protruding from beneath the collar of her blouse.
“I see you’re looking at my scar,” Galina said. “Perhaps you’d better ask me right away how I got it. Otherwise, if I come and work for you, you’ll only keep wondering about it.”
Klim smiled. “How did you get it?” He rather liked this Galina.
“My husband was a commissar in the civil war,” she said. “The White bandits set fire to our house down. I had to carry my daughter out in my arms, but my husband died. I was badly burned.”
“How do you manage alone with your child?”
“What’s there to manage? There’s not much washing as we hardly have any clothes, not much cleaning as we live in one small room, and we don’t have anything much to cook either.”
She got up. “Well, I’ll be going now. If you would like to take me on, you can call me—I have a telephone at home.”
Klim saw her out.
In the hall, Galina pulled on a pair of huge men’s felt boots. “Goodbye,” she said.
Suddenly, she looked at Klim with a serious expression. “There’s just one thing I want to say. There’s a mistake in your paper, the Times. Socialism isn’t an experiment; it’s a necessary stage of human development.”
“Let’s look at it logically—” began Klim, but Galina interrupted him.
“We don’t need your logic! What can you and the Times possibly know about us? You’re trying to crush us, to undermine our belief in our own strength, but we don’t care! We…” Galina put her hand on her heart. “We know that there is not a capitalist army in the world that can defeat us. We shall never surrender; we shall fight to the end for our bright future.”
Suddenly, she became embarrassed. Her face reddened, and her lips began to tremble as if she were about to cry.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know I’ve spoiled everything, and you won’t employ me now. I just wanted to make you understand…”
There was no need for explanations. Klim could see that Galina lived a very hard life and that all her hopes were tied up in the idea of the “bright future,” which the Soviet press continued to depict in such glowing colors. The article from the Times was challenging this belief, so Galina refused furiously to accept the facts cited by the foreign journalist.
“I’ll take you on for the job,” said Klim. “But let’s agree on one thing: we all have a right to our own opinion: you, I, and the Times newspaper.
Galina nodded, bitterly. “You wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette, would you? I’m badly in need of one, but I left my packet at home.”
“I don’t smoke,” Klim told her. “I have a small daughter, so I won’t allow cigarettes in the house.”
“Of course. I’m sorry. I was just a little flustered.”
Galina ran outside, and Klim went back to his room. He watched from the window as she cadged a cigarette from a young man loitering by the skating rink across the road. She smoked it hungrily, looking back now and again at the Moscow Savannah building.
Klim had no doubt that Galina would inform on him. Well, let her inform the authorities that he had sent off a dozen cables checked by the censor or that he had gone to a stationery store to buy blotting paper. Perhaps she might even earn a ruble or two for herself.
7. THE SECRET POLICE AGENT
Galina Dorina was a dentist’s daughter. For as long as she could remember, her family’s large apartment had been a meeting place for the revolutionaries welcomed into the house by Galina’s mother, who was keen to be thought of as a progressive social reformer.
The badly dressed guests would eat and drink their fill before they began to give speeches declaring that the Tsar, the landowners, and the capitalists were bleeding the life out of the Russian people.