Levin gnawed off another mouthful of ham and thought of Yelena. She had acquired a totally unexpected taste for Western things. She especially liked Western fashions now, although they did not suit her. She had grown into a woman unfathomably different from the girl with whom he had fallen in love. Yelena had always had the quickness and edge of a city girl. Yet, when they first met under the hilariously correct circumstances of a Komsomol gathering, she had spoken as a true believer, speaking her lines with conviction when the exchanges covered the triumphs of socialism and the road to inevitable communism, or the dignity of the proletariat and the need to revitalize the role of the Party through restructuring. But there had been nothing dignified or formal in her lovemaking. It was youthful, and animal, and it held Levin spellbound. It was only much later that he realized the extent to which she had led the way. He had fancied himself as serious and mature, destined to lead men. But Yelena had led him. Her father, an urban Party official of influence, had opposed their marriage at first. Levin had been at a loss to understand why, since he had a perfect Komsomol record and he was a model student at the academy for military-political education.
Yelena had her way. They married. She was an only child, and she always had her way with her family. Levin had dutifully volunteered for the airborne forces, and, as a new junior lieutenant, he received a prized posting to the Baltic Military District.
They had a child. Mikhail. Levin, who spent his off-duty time studying and preparing his classes for the troops, was astonished when this new life appeared, as though Yelena’s months of pregnancy and complaints had merely been another academic problem. Suddenly, he was a father. Now when he spoke at lectures and political-education seminars about the duty of the Soviet soldier to prepare the road to a better future for all mankind, the word “future” and the tumult of concepts and images associated with it resonated with a deeper meaning than ever before. A better future. A better world. Levin realized, to the tune of an infant’s cries, how these notions really had been little more than cold abstractions for him in the past. But now it was all different. The better world would be the world in which his son would live.
Yelena changed after the child came. Perhaps she had already been changing, although he had not noticed it. But the event of childbirth seemed to unleash something unexpected in her, an uncomfortable and unwelcome new spirit. She began to joke about the Party and about Levin’s beliefs. He could not comprehend the change in her. And she complained that he only had time for his books, and that he was naive and blind to opportunity. She gained weight.
She demanded that he leave the army as soon as he could. Her father was in a position to secure him a very good Party job; perhaps he could even arrange for an early release from Levin’s military commitment. He needed a job with a future, she insisted. And he knew that she meant a job with perquisites and comfort and material possibilities. He was learning fast as a father.
He, too, saw many things differently now. Yet he continued to believe. He read history, and he reviewed how far the people had come. Socialism was far from perfect. But it was continually evolving under the tension of the dialectic. And it had made the world a better place, Levin believed. It had rescued Russia from its fatal backwardness, and it had made the Soviet Union a great power. If the price had been high, then so had been the achievement. There was a new equity and security in the life of the average man. If there were many problems that remained unsolved, it was up to the present generation to address them, to fight inertia and complacency. Really, it was an exciting time to be alive, rich with new possibilities. He could not understand how Yelena had so fully lost her vision, how she could fail to see the dynamic at work.
And he loved the army. He found the purely military side of his duties almost more stimulating than the political, even as he enthusiastically embraced every opportunity to reach out to the young soldiers, to help mold them into better citizens of a better state. Slogans that others mocked were sacred to him, and he labored long over the most minor paperwork. He sought to perfect his abilities as a leader and his political-didactic skills.
Yelena had an affair with a moronic line officer. When Levin found out and confronted her, months after the rest of the garrison had known about the situation, Yelena stamped and screamed that he neglected her, that he did not love her, and that he did not even care enough to provide for the future of his child.
The accusations about the child hurt him most. Even though he could not accept them as true. It was Yelena who showed little concern for the infant. At times, she seemed to regard their son’s care as nothing but a loathsome duty to be discharged with as little effort and conviction as possible. She was not even very clean about it all, and their cramped apartment grew slovenly.
Yet her threats about leaving him reduced him to panic. He had long loved her, and he had never wavered in that love. Now, at the revelation of her betrayal — a betrayal she had not tried very seriously to hide — he felt his love for her overripen to desperation. He hated the humiliation of it. And he loved her anyway. She let herself go. In a matter of months, she looked ten years older than her age. She painted herself with far too much makeup, becoming a cartoon of a Western harlot. And, as she took from him, he only wanted to give her more. He wondered how he could possibly make a contribution to saving the world if he could not even save the woman he loved. He begged her not to leave him, to give him a chance, leaving all of his accustomed notions of manliness in ruins.
He promised he would leave the army. He would do everything she wanted him to do. But it was too late to avoid a last posting. He had a commitment to fulfill, and even Yelena’s father could not move the Soviet bureaucracy with the requisite speed. And he went to the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. Alone.
Yelena went to live with her family until his tour ended. She wrote decent, even loving letters, and sent him snapshots of his son. He tried not to think of the men with whom she might be betraying him. Because, he told himself, they did not matter. The weakness and error of the flesh was a minor concern. It was only the future, the better future, that mattered. There would be a tomorrow of decency, fairness, and love. There would come a future without betrayals.
“Comrade Political Officer?”
It was Dunaev, a lieutenant from Third Company.
“Over here.”
Dunaev searched the cavernous room with his pocket lamp, finally slapping its light across Levin’s face. Then he respectfully lowered the beam.
“Comrade Political Officer, the battalion commander has sent me to relieve you. He wants you to report to him at the hospital.”
“Is something wrong?”
“I don’t know. He just told me to relieve you.”
Levin brushed the crumbs from his hands and slung his assault rifle onto his right shoulder. “All right. Let me walk you around our positions. There’s plenty of food here, by the way. The soldiers have already eaten. Just keep them away from the liquor.”
“Yes, Comrade Political Officer.”
Levin took the lieutenant on a tour of the platoon perimeter. The buildings, both new and old, were extremely well constructed, and the ring boulevard and the park beyond offered a perfect break where overlapping fields of fire could be established. Most of the soldiers were awake and alert, the noncommissioned officers seemed to be firmly in charge, and no one had wandered from his assigned position. Levin suddenly felt very proud of them all, proud of how much they had already achieved.
He left Dunaev back at the ad hoc command post in the restaurant and walked briskly down the main street, keeping well under the shadows of the overhanging buildings. From behind a line of gabled rooftops that paralleled the river up ahead, a vibrant glow lit the sky. The section of town on the far side of the river was burning. But the old town remained safe, even strangely peaceful, as Levin made his way through its heart.