But Aunt Valentina said nothing of the kind. She unrolled the two faded photographs: one showed an old man with an oversize jacket hanging off him. He was standing by a wicker fence with two earthenware pots affixed to its posts, and his face was such that it took Olga’s breath away. On the other one, he appeared again, this time in a black cassock. He was sitting at a table covered with a tablecloth. In the middle of the table was a small white mound of Easter curd cheese, and a plate with three dark eggs.
“This was from Easter of 1934. Evidently he had served at Easter matins.”
They sat and mused silently. Then Valentina wrapped everything up in the newsprint and put it back in the envelope.
“Olga, I have no one else to leave these to. You and your Kostya are the only ones left from our family. I really don’t know you at all. Perhaps you don’t want these photographs at all. I’ve saved them my whole life. First Aunt Katya had them, then me.”
“I’ll take them, of course, Aunt Valentina. Thank you. How terrible it all was, though!” Olga took the envelope from her knotted old hands and her aunt immediately began getting ready to leave.
“Well, I must be going. I’ve stayed longer than I had planned already. I have to make it to Teply Stan.”
“Aunt Valentina, what about your older brothers? How did they fare?”
“Pyotr took to drink. Seraphim disappeared without a trace in the war. Pyotr, it seems, had a family, but his wife left him, taking the daughter with her. I don’t know whether Seraphim left anyone behind when he went to war or not.”
“What a story. But come back to visit us. I’d like to give you some of Mama’s things…” And she faltered, because the expression on Aunt Valentina’s face was such that it was impossible to bring up the Yugoslavian boots. “I’ll call you, I’ll be in touch,” Olga murmured, trying to kiss her aunt’s cheek, and kissing her gray knitted cap instead, as she led her to the front door. “We’ll certainly see each other again, and you will tell me everything you can remember.”
“Yes, yes, child, of course. Only don’t be angry with your mother. Those were terrifying times. Terrifying. Indeed, all of us were orphans. Now we all live so well…”
Kostya stood behind his mother, unable to understand why she had suddenly lost her nerve and broken down in tears; the whole day she had shown such admirable self-control. Olga went back into her mother’s study. Again she laid out the photographs, which seemed to have floated up out of the abyss of oblivion.
Her mother was no more—her mother, who had long ago turned into a brittle shell of a human being, into a pile of sterile habits and mechanical phrases. And in her place there was now a stranger with a beautiful, expressive face, who had survived betrayal by his adolescent offspring, the death of his wife and his little children, prison, and who knows what else. The dim photograph with the Easter feast opened her eyes. Olga, tears streaming down her face, sat in her mother’s study, undergoing a sea change the likes of which she had never known before. She felt like a shoot, slashed off with a knife, then grafted to the parent tree, which was her grandfather Naum, and all those myriad bearded men, with their long locks of hair, both village and townsmen, scholarly and not especially scholarly priests, their women and children, both good and not especially good. She couldn’t find words to explain the upheaval that was taking place inside her. And Ilya, who would have been able to find the precise words, who would have known how to put everything in its proper perspective, wasn’t there.
The B trolleybus, its rods hooked up to the wires above, rattling, pulled out from around the corner. Ari Lvovich quickened his pace: the trolleybuses ran infrequently during the late-evening hours. He had already forgotten about today’s deceased. One of the secretaries of the Writers’ Union was now at death’s door. Ari was already planning the pompous funeral solemnities. He hoped it would happen during the week so he could go to the dacha on Friday. He was hurrying home to his young wife. Ten years earlier, a newly minted widower, he had met the wonderful, tender Klara at one of his funerals and had fallen in love. He had married her, and a new daughter, Emma, was born. He felt he had been granted a fresh life, a happier life—so that it was almost impossible to imagine he would ever have to die. And he had been on such close terms with death for such a long time that he served her not out of fear, but out of duty and compunction. Hadn’t he earned a rebate?
Maybe I’ll live until ninety-five, like my grandfather. And why not? I have adult grandchildren, thanks to my eldest daughter, Vera, from my first marriage. Great-grandchildren will be here before you know it. And if I make it to ninety-five, I’ll live to see Emma’s children, too. And why not? My health is good, knock on wood, I have an excellent job—a good income, as well as respect. And the work is interesting; it feeds the soul. Yes, it would be a good thing if the secretary—a rogue if there ever was one, by the way—died not today, and not tomorrow, and not even on Monday, but would hold out until Tuesday. Then everything could be organized without any rush, and it would all be over and done with before Friday. And the wake could be held in the Oak Hall, with a table set for one hundred guests.
KING ARTHUR’S WEDDING
Even as a child, Olga had known that people were reassuringly predictable. She already knew beforehand what her girlfriend, her teacher, or her mother would say. Her mother in particular. Very early on, Antonina Naumovna began schooling her daughter in the rare virtue of sacrificing one’s own interests for those of society. The girl seemed to have had an innate sense of justice. When one of the children came out to play bearing a precious piece of bread and butter sprinkled with sugar, Olga was the one (and the only one) entrusted with the task of doling it out among all the mouths present in the courtyard. If the piece of bread was misshapen and hard to divide into even pieces, only Olga knew how to add a piece here, and take away a piece there, so that everyone got the same amount. She didn’t know what bread rations were—she had been born at the end of the war—much less labor camp rations. But the instinct for them was bred in the bone.
Antonina Naumovna admired her belated offspring—she was made of the right stuff! She had inherited all her parents’ good qualities. From her mother: integrity and firmness of character. From her father: kindheartedness and good looks, with fair skin and hair. The Greek strain, the black hair and prominent nose from her mother’s side of the family, was nowhere in evidence. Nor did she exhibit any of Afanasy Mikhailovich’s fleshiness, a trait that had been noticeable in him since childhood.
During Olga’s childhood, Antonina Naumovna was the editor in chief of a magazine for youth, and she put her pedagogical and child-rearing theories into practice in her own life, with her own daughter. Her observations and experiences, in turn, became fodder for her articles. After watching her little one at play in the sandbox—pouring water on the sand and building a clumsy sandcastle—she even resorted to artistic imagery: the sand represented disparate individual personalities, and water was the ideology that served to mix and knead the dough. Out of this substance a great building was created. She used this metaphor in both her editorials and her reports. Her speeches were always distinguished by their imagery, especially when she had occasion to speak at official Party events. She had studied at the Literary Institute, which was a rarity in such circles. The writers were unimpressed; they all had a way with words. She had other means at her disposal for them. But in Party circles she was regarded as having a golden tongue.
Still, Antonina Naumovna had never felt as comfortable in the collective as her daughter. With her hand on her heart, Antonina Naumovna had to admit: they envied her! However sad she was to have to acknowledge it, there were still petty people who were jealous of her position, her authority, and the respect she commanded among the higher-ups.