I can’t bear to be around Galina now. Her eyes, which I once thought of as honey-colored, now seem to me the color of engine oil. But I still don’t have the heart to dismiss her. She has always shown kindness to me, and I couldn’t repay this kindness with rank ingratitude.
All my castles in the air have come tumbling down, my life is in disarray, and I am living each day as it comes. My contract with United Press is coming to an end, I have no money saved up, I have not managed to get an interview with Stalin, and I have no idea what will happen to me next.
I know only one thing: I live from one driving lesson to the next. I’m prepared to spend hours rummaging under a radiator hood or steering a car between empty buckets or even pushing the Ford we use for training when it gets bogged down in the autumn mud. All this just to be next to Nina, to gallantly offer her a screwdriver or go trailing behind her with a spare wheel.
29. EXPOSURE
Galina knew that Klim had begun seeing somebody. He now did his best to avoid her and clearly disliked it when she tried to kiss him. There had been no question of them going to bed together for some time.
In the middle of dictating an article, he might stop mid-sentence and point at the typewriter with a smile. “Here’s an interesting puzzle. Look at the keys on the top row of the typewriter: Y-U-I-O. Can you make them into words that fit?”
Galina stared back at him, bewildered. “What words?”
“Look. It’s the words ‘You’ and ‘I’ mixed up together. Don’t you see it?”
Gazing at the black Underwood, Galina found her eye drawn to something else completely: the key of the space bar denoting nothing but emptiness.
However hard she tried to avoid facing the truth, it was no good. Recently, Klim had, by some miracle, brought back a pineapple and then taken it off to his driving lessons. What was he thinking of? Was he going to offer some to the other students instead of eating such a rare delicacy at home?
So, when Klim asked her to collect some statistical reports from the Moscow Tuberculosis Institute, Galina could not resist calling in at the Red Army Club, which was right next door.
She marched up to the receptionist and, in a stern voice, demanded to see the student register.
At first, the old lady was reluctant to bring out the list, but Galina’s OGPU card made her change her mind.
“Everything is in perfect order,” she assured Galina in a flustered voice. “We always check the papers of everyone who comes here.”
There were twenty men and a single woman signed up for driving lessons. Galina ran her finger down the list of names. Here was Klim’s name, and here, sure enough, was Nina’s. An address was written beside Nina’s name, copied out from her documents: 8 Petrovsky Lane.
Where is that? Galina wondered. Wasn’t it opposite the Korsh Theater? And why was there no apartment number?
All of a sudden, she remembered where she had heard the surname “Reich” before: that was the name of the famous American businessman who had been granted all those Soviet concessions. She had heard Alov mention him more than once, invariably with a sense of outrage that this bourgeois had his own house while honest workers like himself had to put up with four square meters of living space behind the dresser.
Now she understood it alclass="underline" Klim’s wife had left him for a millionaire, but she hadn’t enjoyed living with her new husband and had started meeting her ex-husband again.
Galina wondered if Mr. Reich knew Klim Rogov was bringing pineapples to his wife?
When she got home, Galina went straight to see her neighbor, Mitrofanych.
“I need everything you have in the archives on Nina Reich,” she said. “Nina Kupina and Nina Reich are the same person.”
Mitrofanych brightened up at her words. “And what do I get in return?”
After a pause, Galina began to undo the buttons of her blouse.
Drachenblut placed a pile of sealed packages of banknotes before Oscar.
“There are ten thousand dollars here, and all the numbers have been recorded. Pass this money to Seibert when you’re in Berlin.”
“So, Seibert has decided to work for the OGPU?” Oscar asked in surprise, putting the notes away in his briefcase.
“Seibert is desperate—he’s completely high and dry. He’ll be working in secret, picking out journalists for us who will write encouraging articles about the USSR. We need to have positive press coverage. The Canadians are doing everything they can to disrupt our consignments to Germany. They want to sell timber to the Germans themselves, but their transport costs are higher than ours. So, they’re pushing the idea that it’s risky and unethical to do business with us. But with a bit of help from Seibert, we’ll get the better of them in no time.”
“Whatever you say.” Oscar found it amusing that Drachenblut claimed to be waging war on capitalism, but that when it came down to business, he behaved like a hard-nosed trader trying to cut himself a fat profit.
When he got home, Oscar saw a pale-faced woman with auburn hair waiting at his gate.
“Ask that woman what she wants,” he instructed his chauffeur.
The driver lowered the window, but without waiting, the woman ran up to the car and began to speak in perfect English.
“Mr. Reich, I have something to tell you about your wife.”
Oscar flinched. Nina had run away while he had been out of the country, and all his efforts to trace her had come to nothing. He had found it hard to accept that the fortune of Baron Bremer, which had been almost within his reach, had eluded him. But what could he do?
He asked the strange woman into his car while he made his chauffeur wait outside.
“Do you know where my wife is?” he asked.
The woman nodded and took a pile of papers from a carrier bag.
“Look at this,” she said. “This is the certificate from the civil registration office where you and Nina Bremer were married. And this here is a note from the police archives which states that Nina Bremer is receiving compulsory treatment at the Kashchenko psychiatric clinic.”
Oscar stared at the piece of paper. On it was a stamp that read “Certified to be a true and correct copy.” According to the document, Nina Bremer had been admitted to the hospital in January 1928.
“But that’s impossible,” he said, bewildered. “Nina was with me all that time.”
“The woman who was with you was a commoner from Nizhny Novgorod by the name of Nina Vasilievna Kupina. Here’s a photograph of her.”
The woman showed Oscar a picture. On the back of it was a scored-out inscription “Nina Kupina,” and below that, somebody had written “Mrs. Reich.”
“This young lady has been using somebody else’s name,” the woman said.
“Do you know where she is now?” asked Oscar.
“She’s taking driving lessons at the Red Army Club.”
Long after the woman had left, Oscar sat, motionless, staring at the leather back of the seat in front of him.
“Mr. Reich, are we going somewhere else?” asked the chauffeur,
Oscar looked at him vaguely. “Do you know the way to the Red Army Club?”
Kapitolina had had a fight with her machine operator, and for two days now, she had been sitting sobbing in the kitchen.
“I told him we need pillows with feathers. How are we supposed to sleep with no pillows? And he says to me, ‘If that’s the kind of thing you’re wanting, you can go marry Rockefella.’” Kapitolina looked up at Klim, her eyes brimming with tears. “What do you think, sir? How can I get to know this Rockefella? I don’t suppose he’d make a fuss over a couple of pillows, would he?”
Klim poured Kapitolina glass after glass of milk and tried to reassure her that the pillow crisis would soon be over.