David nodded. Smart. How is she?"
Yakov was not very good at telling people that someone they cared about died. No matter how much practice in bearing bad news his line of work threw at him, he still stammered and averted his eyes. Dead, he said, studying the patterns on the surface of the bar. Twenty years. I remember her though."
"So do I, his grandfather said. I am so sorry."
"She thought you were dead. She wrote to the NKVD, but they wouldn't tell her anything. In the sixties, they finally sent her a letter of apology-the standard form they sent to all families of those repressed. Yakov chewed his lip, remembering the letter his grandmother kept in a small cigar box with happy Cuban women on the lid. Photographs and letters, some yellowed, some new. Photographs of baby Yakov and his mom, passport photographs of his grandmother looking resolutely into the black eye of the camera as if it were a gun. One photograph of his grandfather, making a silly face, smiling. So yellow and brittle, she didn't let Yakov touch it, especially since his fingers were usually covered with sticky goo of one origin or another. But she let him look. And letters from her grateful students, birthday cards from relatives in Serpuhov, diplomas, dry flowers, and that one letter on government letterhead. Posthumously cleared of all charges, it said. Rehabilitated. Even now, Yakov tasted the bitterness of the word on his tongue, doubly now, when the man exonerated in the letter stood before him, absentmindedly wiping a beer glass.
David nodded. The glass clanked out of his hands and rolled across the rough surface of the bar, obviously whittled from the trunk of a glowtree. He caught the glass and straightened it. All right, he said. Let's sit down and talk."
Yakov made an apologetic wave to Galina and Fyodor, who sat at the table with Sovin and his ancient friends. They waved back, probably glad to have the relief of sitting down with a beer and not worrying for a bit.
David settled at a small table tucked away in the remote end of one of the pub's arms, by a triangular window that allowed in some light from the trees outside, and the view of a row of backyards, overgrown with pale weeds. He brought two glasses and a bottle with him, and poured as soon as Yakov sat down. Well, David said, let me start with my version of the story."
David was born in 1900 in Lancashire, outside of Manchester, in a place not so different from the underground town-there was little light, and coal dust hung in the air, giving everything a dusty, black-and-gray look. When it rained, black water slid like sooty tears down the windowpanes of the cotton mill where David's mother worked; he started when he was ten, and by fifteen he was involved with a trade union.
By the time he turned seventeen, the cotton industry had finished its migration overseas, and David left Lancashire to look for a job. He worked as a laborer at the docks and at the hops farms; at night, he read. His connection with the labor unions continued, and by the age of twenty-two he developed an over-inflamed sense of adventure and social justice.
He traveled to Melbourne, Australia-not entirely voluntarily, as he hinted. There, he joined the nascent Communist Party of Australia and started a socialist newspaper, which caught the attention of the authorities somewhat earlier than he believed just, and that of his intended audience-not at all. His link to the illegal Industrial Workers of the World led to criminal charges.
"You have to understand, he told Yakov and touched his hand with tentative warm familiarity. In those days, it took a lot to be considered an undesirable person in Australia. A lot. And I only wished that my political activity had done someone some good, for all the trouble it caused me. He sighed. Anyway."
The socialist newspaper landed him in jail; by the time he got out, he was a persona non grata in a large segment of English-speaking world.
"So, what brought you to Moscow? Yakov asked.
"I decided to go to the source, to the place where it actually existed. To learn, so I could understand it better, to explain to people-look, I've seen it, I know. I thought after I had seen socialism, with some first-hand knowledge, I'd be able to persuade them better. And if I were good enough, it was only a matter of time before capitalism in Britain toppled."
"It sounds-nave, Yakov said.
David nodded. That's what everyone here said. Jackdaws have more sense than I. Even the bloody fairytale things laugh at me. So be it. Maybe I am stupid. But if I weren't, I would've never met your grandma. What do you have to say to that?"
Yakov had nothing, and David continued.
Tanya, he said, was the only woman, the only person who interested him more than reading Das Kapital. He first saw her on the bus he took to work every morning, and he threw himself into courtship with his usual single-minded sense of purpose that always got him into trouble. Ironically, for the first time in his adult life he stayed away from politics; but politics wouldn't stay away from him.
Poverty in his new country did not faze him; he was used to poverty, and found that it seemed less tolerable when it was coupled with the wealth of a few. The language barrier, however, presented a challenge. He got a job at a meat-processing facility-it required minimal talking, and the physical exertion helped him think. At night he read as usual, switching for the time to Russian textbooks. And he waited for the mornings, when he would get on the bus and watch the girl with serious eyes and a high ponytail, until she got off a few stops later, by the school. She usually read textbooks on the bus, and he guessed that she was a schoolteacher; one day, he worked up the courage to sit next to her and ask about the pronunciation of a word in the Russian grammar text he carried with him.
"Which word was it? Yakov interrupted. It seemed suddenly important, to know what was the word that brought them together.
"Saucepan, David said. I know, not terribly romantic, but it is a difficult word."
It was spring when they first spoke; by the beginning of summer, they saw each other every day off the bus. By fall, they were married.
Tanya kept her maiden name. David was progressive enough not to mind, but he wondered since it was certainly not traditional. He finally asked her.
She looked at him with her deadly serious dark eyes. Understand, David. This is not a safe time for foreigners. He (she never mentioned Stalin by name, out of real fear or a superstitious reluctance to attract the attention of malevolent forces by summoning them by name) is insane. Do you know how many people disappear every day? Do you know that you're a suspect just by being a foreigner?"
"But I'm a communist, he argued.
"You're a fool, she corrected. If you want me to, I'll take your last name. Just know that sharing the last name usually means sharing the fate."
"I thought you'd die for me, he joked.
Her face remained serious, and he wasn't certain that she got it. No. I would promise to you that I would, if there weren't a real risk of that coming true."
Now he couldn't decide whether she was joking.
He moved to her apartment, shared with a messy middle-aged man, with a propensity to mutter to himself and leave his saucepans soaking in the communal kitchen. Tanya never said anything to him, but David was not so tolerant. Please clean up after yourself, he told the neighbor in his best Russian.
The man only scowled and mumbled something. I do what I want, he said out loud as he was exiting the kitchen. You raise stink again, I'll make sure that you're gone."