But now she felt awkward and even ashamed. And she was ashamed for him, too: Poor Marlen, why had he behaved so badly? He, too, had been ruled by hormones.
On that penultimate Shabbat in December, when their hearts were still pounding and his moist, hairy chest was still pressed tightly to hers, he had said matter-of-factly:
“On Wednesday they called me in for questioning again. They’ve thought up a new approach for nailing me: now I’m not just a Zionist, but a human rights activist. Their evidence is that I signed a petition on the right to emigrate. They went nuts after the demonstration, of course. The bald one who’s always there says: You won’t get off with just fifteen days administrative detention this time. Take a piece of paper and explain in writing how you ended up with the petition. Who brought it to you? Maybe it was Academic Sakharov? And there were about fifty names on it. I said I didn’t intend to incriminate myself. Well, in short, they said they would give me three days to tell them who gave me the petition. If I don’t tell them, they’ll arrest me. So it might be a long time before we see each other again, Tam.”
The weight of the broad-boned male body, being filled by it, becoming one with it … Today I will get pregnant and then give birth … come what may … no more abortions … today … and if they throw him in prison, I’ll do it myself … I’ll raise the boy alone …
“Then, you know, I learned of a new circumstance.”
Propping himself up on his elbow, he wiped himself off with the edge of the sheet, then sat up, swinging his woolly legs down to the floor.
Tamara hardly heard him. She was listening hard to something else at that moment: how two microscopic but living entities, hers and his, were drifting toward each other slowly, but surely; it just had to be. Let that plump Lida of his bear him another girl, but she would give birth to a boy, and, all by herself, raise him … it was now or never. And she wasn’t going to ask.
She lay on her back and stroked her belly. What an idiot I was. What an idiot. I wasted so much time. He would already be starting school by now if I had made up my mind right off, Tamara thought, imagining the life she wasn’t destined to live.
“It’s a very interesting circumstance. Long ago I had heard that these bastards let Jews out for a price. I found it hard to believe. It’s just like it was in Germany in 1939: they used to let rich Jews buy their way out of the concentration camps. Later, even that became impossible. That’s the way it works here now. Can you believe it?”
“What are you saying? Here?” Tamara said, astonished, forgetting momentarily about her imaginary embryo.
“Of course, here! Where else?” Marlen said, frowning. “Believe it or not, someone from my aunt’s village told her. A tailor, you know, just as you’d expect. An excellent one, as a matter of fact. He outfits a very high-ranking official—I can’t tell you his name.” He knocked softly on the wall, then bent over to whisper in Tamara’s ear.
“You’re crazy! I don’t believe it.”
“Believe it! I’m not making it up. This tailor has been sewing for him since before the war. He sews for his whole family. The official even moved him to Moscow, and set him up in his own apartment. Well, not his very own—he has several apartments at his disposal, for people he needs around him. And he’s a decent fellow, in his own way.”
“The tailor?” Tamara said.
“Who cares about the tailor? No, the official! This man, Mister X, isn’t a bad sort. He’s not bloodthirsty; he just likes money. Well, actually, not money for its own sake, either. He collects art. Serious paintings, by famous artists. Serov, Perov, you know, those Wanderers, or whatever you call them. He had a whole trainload of them brought here after the war—German paintings. Now he’s collecting Russian painters.”
“An art collector?” Tamara couldn’t quite grasp the notion of a bigwig official who was so devoted to art.
“Well, yes, a collector, if you like.” Marlen grimaced slightly. “This tailor is a distant relative of ours. He says he has access to his boss. His boss doesn’t want to get mixed up with just anyone, as you might imagine. So this relative of ours knows how to go about it. He’s pulled it off before. They let out a family of four for a Savrasov. A rather small picture it was, too.” Here Marlen demonstrated with his hands, just as the tailor had done.
Tamara understood instantly what he was asking her.
“Marlen, we don’t have any Wanderers. The most valuable thing we have is a Korovin, and another by Borisov-Musatov.”
“He didn’t say anything about those. He said that the guy had his heart set on a Vrubel.”
“Vrubel wasn’t a Wanderer,” Tamara said. “We do have a Vrubel, but it’s not a painting; it’s just a study.”
“What difference does it make? The main thing is to act quickly. If they throw me in prison, no painting is going to help. That falls under another department.”
Tamara turned on the light. The angel with the broken wing hung above the headboard of her bed. The head was outsize, the forehead too convex. The face was lacking in detail, all smears of paint, the strokes hurried and nervous. The wing, though, was bluish and softly feathered, shimmering and iridescent. It was a fine wing.
“Take it,” Tamara said breezily. “Take all of them.”
“But, you do understand—it might not work.” He seemed to doubt himself whether it was worth the risk, but Tamara sensed that his eyes had grown brighter, and he was already thinking ahead—where to take the paintings, how to hand them over, and so on.
“Perhaps. But they may throw you in prison.”
Without covering their nakedness—it no longer existed—they grabbed the pictures off the walls. They wrapped all three of them up in sheets, then got dressed.
“Please excuse me, Tam, but I’ve got to run. I’ll catch a cab and take the pictures to my aunt. The tailor promised to come tomorrow at ten in the morning. He said we should have everything ready for him by then. I’ll leave Robik with you till tomorrow.”
After that, events unfolded at lightning speed.
Three days later, instead of being arrested, Marlen was called to the district office of the KGB, where he was given a document revoking his citizenship and permitting him to leave the country, accompanied by his entire family, within three days. The next Shabbat he didn’t come to see Tamara; he dropped in on Friday morning. He brought Robik with him on his leash. He told her they were flying to Vienna the next day.
“I’m in your debt till the end of my life,” Marlen said. “You’re the best thing I’ve ever had. If you ever think about returning”—he always said “returning,” rather than “emigrating”—“get in touch through Ilya. I’ll send an invitation for you right away. I’m leaving Robik with you to remember me by.”
Tamara didn’t attend their send-off. Olga later told her about how many people showed up to see Marlen off, about how disoriented Lida’s parents were about everything, about how unexpected it all was: emigration instead of the promised arrest. It was a celebration instead of a funeral. Still, there was something funereal about it.
“But you’re not leaving, are you? Or do you think that all the Jews are going to leave Russia in the end?” Olga looked searchingly at Tamara’s stony expression.
“No. As for me—no. Even if everyone else leaves. You can be certain of that.”
So, at the very end of 1981, Marlen left. In November 1982, Brezhnev died. The bigwig official, art lover and friend of the much-decorated leader with the bushy eyebrows, was dismissed from his ministerial post. A case was opened charging him with brazen embezzlement and the abuse of power for personal gain. The tailor quickly moved out of the apartment that had been provided for him and disappeared. In bad novels, minor characters sometimes disappear in this way, a clumsy way of advancing the plot. The property of the former boss was confiscated, and he shot himself with a double-barreled Gastinne Renette hunting rifle. Or maybe his own people shot him, to close a case that could have resulted in a great deal of unpleasantness for all concerned.