Mikha had already taken a bath before they arrived. He scrubbed the three years of vileness off his skin. He wanted to wash himself from inside out, to clean the prison air out of his nose, his throat, and his lungs, to purge the foul prison food and water from his mouth, his intestines, his stomach …
Seven years! It would take seven years. In seven years, all the cells in the human organism are renewed. Who had told him that? But how long would it take to cleanse the soul of prison filth? Oh, if he could only wash his brain in liquid nitrogen, in hydrochloric acid, in lye, to expunge those three years from his memory! Let it all be washed away, so that he would forget everything that he knew and loved, everything he revered, as long as all trace of these three years would vanish.
His friends stayed a short while, less than an hour, then left. The three of them, their small family, remained. There was a lot they had to talk about. The little girl clung to her mother, pushing her father away. Mikha frowned and wrinkled his nose; she was afraid, and turned away from him.
What a high price to pay. The child doesn’t recognize me, she’ll never recognize me. Mikha didn’t feel things by halves, and he suffered from an acute sense of rejection.
“Let’s all go for a walk. Maya, want to go swing?”
“Yes. With you,” she said, and took her mother by the hand.
“We’ll take Papa with us, too.” And they went outside together.
Maya sat down on the swings, and Alyona pushed her gently.
“They dragged me back here under armed guard five weeks before my release was scheduled, and I realized that they were planning to pin something else on me. It turned out to be the case of Chernopyatov and Kushchenko,” he told Alyona, through Maya’s interruptions. “They didn’t let us meet face-to-face for a confrontation for a long time, but they let me read their testimony. The testimony was dreadful; I didn’t believe a word of it. I thought they were just planting false evidence cooked up by some agents. They named more than thirty names, including that of Edik Tolmachev. But this case wasn’t about Gamayun, but about the Chronicle, about all possible human rights cases. The protocols ran the gamut—sincere confessions, repentance, you name it.”
“I know all of this already,” Alyona said drily, nodding.
“I didn’t believe it until the very end. Actually, I still can’t believe it. But we met face-to-face. And what I heard was an echo of the protocols. What they did to them I don’t know. Maybe they beat the confessions out of them. I denied everything. Except that Sergei Borisovich was your father and my father-in-law. I was sure they were going to tack this case on me, too. Until the last day I couldn’t believe they would set me free. I still can’t believe it, really.”
Alyona didn’t raise her eyes to him. The expression on her face didn’t even seem to register his presence. Mikha put his hand on top of hers.
“I just can’t wrap my head around it, Alyona. Sergei Borisovich couldn’t possibly have said all that. But I heard him say it with my own ears. Don’t think that I love him any less, Alyona. I’m just terribly, terribly sorry for him.”
“I don’t know, Mikha. I don’t think I am. Since childhood, I always believed I had a hero for a father.” Alyona did lift her eyes, but stared at one place under the swing, at the confused shadows made by the seat that carried her daughter back and forth, back and forth.
“You’re not swinging me right, Mama!” the little girl said sternly. Mikha grabbed hold of the chain of the swing.
“Don’t touch it!” she said even more sternly.
Toward evening Zhenya Tolmacheva and an acquaintance from Alyona’s institute stopped over and stayed for a long time. They sent them away at nine, saying the little girl needed a bath.
In the communal bathroom, they placed the children’s tub on a stool, filled it with warm water, and placed Maya in it. She washed her dolly and her rubber dog diligently, then just splashed around. Mikha watched from the doorway and was filled with an unparalleled new love for the wet child, her darkened curls sticking to her forehead.
“Get the towel,” Alyona said, and he took the fragile back into the large towel. It was the first time he had held his own child in his arms. She was very light, but weighty. Small, but enormous; bigger than Mikha, bigger than the whole world. And that’s what she was—the whole world.
My little world, my giant world,
A world all eyes, light-brown, and moist,
One sleepy green eye, shade unfurled,
Ta-dum, ta-dum, ta-dum, ta-dum …
The little girl had fallen asleep. Mikha embraced his wife. She covered his lips with her hand and said:
“You haven’t told me anything I wasn’t already aware of. I know everything. I spoke to his lawyer. You don’t know her, Natalia Kirillovna. She’s wonderful. I asked her to tell him I didn’t ever want to see him again.”
She didn’t say the word father. She said “him.” Mikha took her hand away.
“Alyona, that’s crazy. You can’t do that to him. He deserves only pity…”
* * *
Everything was just as it had been before—the courtyard, the neighbors, the broken floorboard in the corridor, the poplar trees outside the window, the ancient curbstones that marked out what had once been a flower bed, the former skating rink … the saleswomen in the bakery and the fish store, the building manager. Yet it seemed as though thirty years had passed, and not just three. One false move and everything might split open with a resounding crash—the house, the courtyard, his little daughter, his wife, the whole city. And April, so warm and welcoming this year.
Anna Alexandrovna was the first person Mikha visited after his release, in the evening on his second day of freedom. She was the one he told, on that same day, that Alyona’s father was giving evidence and that he was afraid it would land him back in prison.
Anna Alexandrovna had prepared for Mikha’s arrivaclass="underline" she had spent the whole day before his visit in the kitchen.
“You know, Mikha, there’s nothing new under the sun. My husband’s own brother sent him to prison. They both perished. It’s fate that decides, and not our own actions or behavior, whether good or bad. Please eat, I made it for you.”
Three years in prison camps had changed him beyond recognition: a dark, haggard face, thinning hair, eyes faded almost to yellow. And the way he thought about everything seemed to have somehow shifted.
Anna Alexandrovna had not changed in the least. Her face was overlaid with a dense, fine net of wrinkles, as though carved with a burin. It had appeared very early and had frozen in place, without disfiguring her in the least. Now, when she was nearing eighty, she appeared to be very youthful. Looking at her, pondering her enigmatic words, Mikha realized that Anna Alexandrovna was a strikingly beautiful woman. And much more than beautiful. Through the veil of wrinkles, through the abyss of years, he saw her face suffused with light and loveliness.
“Anna Alexandrovna, I’ve so missed your home … If you only knew how much I love you…”
She laughed.
“Well, it’s about time! Mikha, I prepared you a ‘Jewish-style pike.’ That’s what Molokhovets calls it in her cookbook. I just threw it together, never having made it before. Taste it and tell me what you think.” And she placed an oval dish with pieces of pale fish in front of him.
“It’s delicious! Especially considering I’ve never eaten such a delicacy in my entire life!” At that moment, Mikha realized he was truly home. He beamed, smiled, talked, and ate all at the same time, forgetting for a time about the constant gnawing pain in his stomach.
Anna Alexandrovna, on her part, felt relieved. Perhaps everything would fall back into place. Mikha would assume his rightful role as father of his family, and Sanya would return, freed from his worries and cares about Alyona. Everything would go back to the way it was before, and all the complications, real and imagined, would disappear of themselves.