For four days now Moscow had lived in the grip of silence. In the crowded apartment blocks of the novye raione, the new worker districts, children were hushed at play, arguments between husband and wife were cut short and radios turned to a low whisper. Television ran film, hour after hour, of the life and achievements of President Romanovsky. Somber music played over scenes of visits to memorials of the Great Patriotic War. All but food shops were closed and traffic reduced itself, seemingly voluntarily, to a minimum.
Yet it was the future, not the past, which was on the minds of millions of Soviet citizens. Stunned, apprehensive people murmured apologies on the subway as if no one knew what tomorrow would bring in power and influence to his neighbor.
Some were hopeful. They saw an improvement in the conditions of the ordinary workers’ lives, an increase in freedom to criticize and write. But they were few. Most Russians, if not most Soviet citizens, felt immediately the withdrawal of that warm, harsh authority which they had grown to live with.
The cult of personality in Russia and her dominions has been no accident. Nor was it even in the days of Joseph Stalin, conjured by the leader alone. To a great extent it was condoned, encouraged, even required by the Russian people. Monarchist at heart, even today, the Russians require an emperor to venerate. Hardest for them is the interregnum. In the days of the Old Empire primogeniture solved the problem: “The Czar is dead, long live the Czar.” But in the days of the new Soviet Empire the leader’s death meant doubt, struggle, uncertain allegiance, a people deprived of a personal authority. At these times the deep anarchy in the Russian nature comes to the surface.
The men in the Kremlin knew this well.
As old Yelenda, Anton Ovsenko’s mother, stumbled with a blood-stained sack on her shoulder toward the Cheremushki free market that morning, she had other reasons for remembering the city.
The militia guard at the market had been surprised to see the old woman struggling toward him.
“Now come on,” he said as she swung the heavy sack down onto the pavement, “you know the market’s closed. You know what today is.”
“I know,” she said. “Don’t I remember Stalin’s funeral?”
Befuddled by vodka and the numbing cold, he peered down at the bloody sack. “That’s meat you’ve got there.”
The frozen blood crackled the hessian fibers as she peeled open the mouth of the sack. “The best part of the bullock,” she said, and reaching into the sack, dragged out by the ear the bloodied animal’s head.
“Thirty-five pounds.” She scooped the grinning object into her arms, letting the sack fall to the ground. “Plenty of meat on the chops and the tongue left in, though that’s carrying generosity a bit far. An hour in salt water and there’s enough on the tongue alone to feed a family of eight.”
The militiaman frowned. “The market’s closed, old woman. You know that. Because of the funeral. All your honored foreigners, your gospodin, will be in Red Square for the parade. In any case, you can’t see them buying a bullock’s head. They’re used to a juicier cut than that.”
The old woman bundled the huge brown head back into the sack. “I didn’t travel forty miles to sell good meat to foreigners,” she said. “The bullock’s head is for you.”
“Now wait a minute,” the militiaman slammed his black-gloved hands together. “I can’t afford your prices. If I want meat it has to be queued for in the shops. The free market’s not for the likes of me.”
“Your daughter gets married on Sunday.”
The guard shrugged in his heavy, overlarge coat and adjusted his shapka.
“So you need meat.”
“The neighbors have promised sausages,” the man said defensively.
“Sausages! Breadsticks for your dochka’s wedding! What sort of father are you, Pavel Alexandrovich? What sort of provider will her new husband’s family think you are?”
The snow raced across the pavement between them.
Again he slapped his gloved palms together. It was a militiaman’s gesture, not so much of authority as of some Olympian unconcern. “Go back to your village, old woman,” he said, “the market’s closed.”
“Forty miles I’ve traveled. In a boxcar since before dawn. Then humped this fine head all the way from the Finland Station.”
“So go and sell it on Gorky Street, though if you’re caught you’ll be hauled up for speculation.”
The old woman swung the sack toward him. “I’m not selling,” she said. “It’s yours. If you want it, it’s yours.”
The heavy bone thumped down at his feet. He ignored it, looking instead into the old woman’s wrinkled face.
“What is it you want from me?” he asked suspiciously.
She took a pint bottle from her pocket and unscrewed the cap. Tipping the neck of the bottle to her lips, she swallowed a mouthful of the white spirit.
“Homemade,” she cackled, screwing back the cap. “Plenty more where that came from.”
“What is it you want from me?” he said again.
The sky was lightening behind the market building. A convoy of military trucks, their headlights blazing, rumbled past on their way to Red Square.
“Last week you told me about your brother,” she said. “The one who’s been posted to the labor camp at Panaka.”
The militiaman watched her sly smile. He hated peasants with their black-grained hands and well-fed wrinkled faces. Do nothing but complain about life in the villages, and yet can buy and sell most Muscovites, he felt sure of that.
“You need my brother to do you a service?”
She took from inside the folds of her gray cloth coat a small linen purse and tipped the contents into her hand.
“You said your brother goes by airplane to Krasibirsk. He’ll be at Panaka tonight.”
He stared down at the gold coin nestling in the fat grimy palm.
“A gold ruble of the Czar Nicholas,” she said. “My husband’s grandfather kept it through the Revolution, the Civil War, the famine, the Patriotic War against Fascism, everything.”
The militiaman extended his forefinger and rubbed on the surface of the coin as if expecting the dull yellow gleam to wear away.
“Worth a good two hundred rubles now,” she said, snapping closed her hand. “Will your brother take it for me?”
“To Panaka? To the labor camp?”
“He’s to be promoted detachment guard, you said. He can take in what he wants.”
“Take in the coin?”
“To my son,” she said shortly. “He’s a zek there. Seven years he got.”
The militiaman barely hesitated before bending down to pick up the sack. “What’s your boy’s name?” he said. “And number. I’ll make sure he gets the ruble.”
The bullock’s head poked from the opening in the sack, a great hole between the eyes where the metal point had broken through the skull.
“Yes,” Yelenda said, “you make sure he gets the ruble.” She jerked her thumb at the bullock’s head. “Pole-axed it myself,” she told him. “Then took a chopper to the neck. Do the same to you in the name of Holy Mother Russia if my boy doesn’t get that ruble.”
For Yelenda it had been a successful trip. Finishing the half-liter she had in her pocket and buying another half at a shop on October Street, she decided to go down to Red Square to see this great man’s funeral.
In the new American Embassy building George Gotz, the Head of Chancery, had been up until the early hours working out allocations of personnel for the funeral. It was the usual problem. The Moscow government departmental overlap was such that on all major occasions the Embassy would be bombarded with invitations. Each invitation would need to be carefully sifted to avoid slighting a minister or an important head of a department. But allocation of the twenty-five principals, from the Ambassador himself down, was a delicate matter. By dawn on the morning of the funeral, he sat back pleased with what he felt was the subtlety of some of his decisions.