Elkin, on the other hand, took Nina to the Moscow Art Theater to see The Days of the Turbins, a play about officers in the White Army—passionate, intelligent, and talented people who lost everyone and everything during the civil war. The Soviet critics lambasted the production, calling it “sentimental drivel,” but nonetheless, the play was a resounding commercial success. Many Muscovites went to see it several times and began to pepper their conversations with quotes from the play.
According to Bolshevik ideology, happiness could only be found in collective labor and the battle against imperialists, and the heroes of the day were revolutionary martyrs with an iron will. The Days of the Turbins, however, was the story of real people who loved not the Party and the international proletariat but each other.
Nina and Elkin sat in the third row. She looked around at the audience—on all sides, she saw faces transfixed, eyes open wide in wonder. The audience was silent as if some unheard-of miracle were unfolding before them. After all, a play like this had no right to exist in Soviet Russia.
When the performance was over, the people filed down into the foyer in silence as if they were still taking in what they had just seen.
Elkin showed Nina the playwright, Mikhail Bulgakov, who passed them on his way up the stairs, a sad-looking gentleman with fair hair combed back from his forehead, wearing an old-fashioned monocle.
“The Last of the Mohicans,” Elkin whispered. “The theater management only put up with him because they sell so many tickets for his plays. But he knows he’s doomed. The Soviet government can’t endure permanently such an obvious insult to their ideology.”
“Good evening!” Nina heard a familiar voice say in English.
She looked around and froze. Oscar and Yefim were standing behind them.
“Your wife goes out every day to visit this character,” Yefim informed Oscar, pointing at Elkin. “I’ve been following them.”
Oscar took Nina roughly by the elbow. “Put on your coat and get into the car this minute!”
“Mr. Reich, it’s not what you think!” cried Elkin desperately, but Oscar did not even look at him.
Oscar took Nina back to his house and launched into a blazing row, accusing her of unfaithfulness and ingratitude. It would have been wisest to have denied his accusations and tried to calm him down, but Nina hated to be shouted at.
“I won’t have you telling me what to do!” she said through her teeth, walking away. “I’m leaving!”
Oscar caught up with her and shoved her so hard in the back that she fell forward, knocking her head on a marble sill.
For two weeks, she was forced to lie in bed, recovering. The doctor announced that she had received a linear fracture to her skull and a cerebral contusion.
“What a maniac!” grumbled Theresa as she applied homemade poultices to Nina’s forehead. “And what were you thinking of? Why did you set him off like that?”
Oscar apologized to Nina once again, swearing undying love.
“I’ll never let anyone else have you,” he said, putting yet another bunch of flowers on her bedside table. “And if any other man so much as looks at you, I’ll break his neck.”
Whenever Oscar came in to see Nina, she would tense as if expecting to be hit. He would put his hand under the blanket to touch her, and she would go cold all over with helpless fury. This man had her completely in his power. He could rape her, beat her, even cut her throat, and he would get off scot-free. And she had no way of getting away from him.
Every day, Nina meant to find out what had happened to Elkin but could not bring herself to call the bookstore. While she was afraid of angering Oscar, she was still more afraid of what she might find out—that something terrible had happened to her friend, and all because of her.
A month had passed by the time Nina had plucked up the courage to leave the house and make her way to Chistye Prudy, taking great care not to be seen.
The snow had begun to melt, muddy water lay in the deep ruts in the road, and the rooks were clamoring in the ancient birches.
Nina went around to the back gate that led into the yard of the Moscow Savannah and bent down to look through the hole in the fence.
In the yard stood a truck spattered with mud. On its side, in crooked letters was written “Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate.” A group of youths, overseen by a woman in a red headscarf, were throwing bundles of books tied together with twine onto a bonfire.
“Why have you put Burroughs in the truck?” the woman shouted. “This lot’s going to the Presnya library—they don’t want any foreign dirt in translation there. And Locke can go on the bonfire too. I told you to burn anything we don’t need.”
In a minute, a large bonfire was blazing merrily in the center of the yard. The young men kept piling more books onto it, and the woman hit at them with a broom handle, knocking out sparks and cinders.
A gust of wind blew a page over the fence, black and charred, like a bat with lacerated wings. Nina caught it with the toe of her boot, and it collapsed into ashes.
The gate swung open, and Afrikan came out into the alley carrying a trash pail.
“Excuse me,” Nina said, approaching him, “do you know where Elkin is?”
Afrikan knitted his shaggy brows and sniffed loudly. “He’s not here. He’s left, and they’ve closed down his shop. They said he was opening at hours forbidden to private businesses and creating competition with state stores.”
“So, what’s going to happen now?”
“It’s a mess,” said Afrikan with conviction. “The whole of the ground floor has been taken over by the state. God knows who they’ll put there. It’s a good thing though that the gentleman upstairs took Mashka away. Elkin gave him the keys to the garage.”
Afrikan went off to take out the trash, and Nina stood for a long time in the middle of the alley, overwhelmed by feelings of guilt and helplessness. She was certain it was Yefim who had called in the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate, following Oscar’s order.
Nina looked up at the windows of the upper story, but she could see nothing through the colored panes of glass.
I don’t have any right to try to meet Klim, she thought desperately. No matter where I go, I bring nothing but bad luck.
18. SOVIET PRIESTS
Galina spent a week repairing everything that Tata had destroyed but could do nothing about the net curtains her daughter had ripped clean out of Klim’s wall. It was impossible to get ahold of curtain rods in Moscow.
Meanwhile, Klim kept his word: Kitty was no longer allowed to play with Tata.
“You have to understand,” he said to Galina, “that my daughter will be going to a European school. She’ll already face problems because of her appearance. If she starts a campaign against ‘bourgeois values,’ they’ll single her out immediately.”
These were painful words for Galina to hear. Clearly, it had never crossed Klim’s mind to adopt Tata and help her get a place in a good school.
In a fit of desperation, Galina told Tata what her actions had cost them. “Now he’ll never take us with him to Europe,” she lamented.
“Why on earth would he take us to Europe?” asked Tata in alarm.
Suddenly, it dawned on her. “Have you lost your mind?” she yelled at her mother. “Don’t tell me you’ve fallen in love with him of all people! It was all thanks to him I didn’t finish the poster. Now the Young Pioneers won’t have me in their organization.”
Tata is just a little version of her father, Galina thought. With all those phony values and her hysterical hatred of anything she did not understand, Tata had no wish to know what lay beyond her own familiar world.