The Prince of the Soviets

17. THE MOSCOW ART THEATER

Oscar’s journey had been a success. He had satisfied himself that his wife really was a rich heiress and instructed lawyers in Berlin and Stockholm to sort out her papers.

Now he had to think of how to get his precious wife over the border. There were Bremers in Germany, and they had got wind of the fact that Oscar had his eye on the family fortune and were demanding he produce Nina with proof that she really was Baroness Bremer.

Oscar sorted out documents for Nina at the American Embassy without too much difficulty. Now all he had to do was to get an exit visa from the OGPU.

As soon as his train got in to Moscow, he drove to the Lubyanka to see Comrade Drachenblut who was the head of the OGPU’s Foreign Section.

A swarthy secretary showed Oscar into a spacious office with portraits of communist leaders on the walls. Although it was still afternoon, the windows were covered with heavy drapes with tiny holes in the material that let in thin rays of light. A lamp with a green shade lit up a desk littered with papers and intercoms.

Oscar beamed amicably at a pale, scrawny man with a high forehead and thinning brown hair, who was sitting at the desk, smoking a cigarette.

“How are you?” Oscar asked and held out a hand.

Drachenblut, however, ignored this greeting and indicated a chair against the wall. “Sit down.”

He rummaged for a while through some yellow cards, plucking at his mustache and pushing up his spectacles with his middle finger when they slipped down his nose.

With each moment of tense silence, Oscar felt more and more uncomfortable. At last, Drachenblut put his yellow cards to one side and fixed his cold gray-blue eyes on Oscar.

“I’m very glad you came in to see me,” he said frostily. “I’ve had some complaints about you.”

“Who’s been complaining?” asked Oscar, surprised.

“That doesn’t matter. You were invited to the Soviet Union and provided with everything you needed to work to attract foreign capital into the country. And what’s the result? Do you know what proportion of our industry is currently provided by foreign concessions? A grand total of 0.6 per cent.”

“I can’t help it if your government is always quarreling with the rest of the world,” replied Oscar, trying to keep his voice steady. “You’ve backed the Chinese communists, and now, people in Washington don’t even want to talk about recognizing the USSR.”

“So, why haven’t you persuaded those people that they need to improve relations with us? There’s a democracy in the States, the American workers support us… you need to put pressure on the politicians.”

Good god, thought Oscar, what workers is he talking about? In the Kremlin and in the Lubyanka, they judged what was happening in the USA from reports by intelligence agents who wrote whatever their bosses wanted to read and whatever was favorable to them.

If some agent reported that the workers in this or that US factory were on the verge of rebellion, he would be given money to help the revolutionary struggle. Then he would report back, saying he had invested all the money in the cause. How was anyone to know that he was lying through his teeth and had spent the lot on whoring and gambling?

The Soviet Union had nothing to offer American farmers or workers whose dreams were not of world revolution but of having their own house and car and of their favorite baseball team winning the next game. The only people in the States who raved about socialism were left-wing intellectuals. They lapped up the communist propaganda and had no idea what life was like in the USSR.

But Oscar found it impossible to convince Drachenblut of this.

“The US Department of Commerce,” Oscar said, “released a report recently, saying that the Soviet state was on the point of collapse. All big businessmen in the States read those reports and trust them implicitly—”

“You were given several years to prove yourself useful to us!” Drachenblut interrupted, banging his desk. “You have not done so, and now, we shall have to liquidate you.”

“What do you mean?” Oscar asked, jumping to his feet.

Drachenblut gave a chuckle. “I mean we’re going to close down your company. The Soviet Union is moving to a planned economy. We’re collecting data on capacity and demand within the country and allocating all work according to a centralized system. There’s no place for you in the future Soviet state.”

“You can’t close my factory!” cried Oscar. “I have a contract with the Chief Concessions Commission!”

Drachenblut took a folder from his desk and, digging inside it, brought out a carbon copy of a typescript.

“Do you know what this is?” he asked. “It’s a memorandum from the vice chairman of the OGPU, Yagoda, informing the Central Committee that the foreign employees in your factory are all spies.”

Oscar gulped. Now he understood everything. In times of economic hardship, the secret police bosses had less money than usual. Recently, they had even had their monthly wages withheld at the Lubyanka. There were only two ways the secret police could improve its position: either by intimidating enterprise executives to extort money from them or to hint to the Kremlin that there were enemies on all sides and that the state should allocate more funds to fight them.

“I’ll take you to court,” said Oscar in a trembling voice.

Drachenblut smiled sarcastically. “Be my guest! You can declare war on me if you like.”

He came out from behind his desk and, walking up to Oscar, put a hand on his shoulders. “Listen. I’m not your enemy, you know. I can save you from Yagoda if you do something for us. We need hard currency—badly!—and we’re going to sell a large consignment of timber abroad. The Germans are building a new railroad. They need sleepers for it, but directors on their board are all fanatical anti-Soviets and won’t have anything to do with us. We’re looking for a go-between, someone to fix things for us. If you do the job properly, I’ll arrange for your firm to be bought off, not confiscated, and we can part on good terms.”

Never had Oscar Reich been spoken to in such an offhand manner!

“Have you thought about where that will get you?” he spat the words out furiously. “After a crude stunt like that, you won’t be able to attract a single businessman into the USSR.”

Drachenblut shrugged his shoulders. “As you please.”

He sat at his desk again and took out another document from his folder.

“We have a story here on file; the story of a brilliant young man who was studying to be a pharmacist in New York. One day, he decided to give a sleeping draught to a rather attractive young lady friend—I suppose it was the only way he could think of to get her into bed with him. The young man raped her, and unfortunately, the girl never woke up. The unqualified young pharmacist had given her a fatal dose.”

The room swam before Oscar’s eyes. How had the ORGU found out about that story?

“You tell everyone you came to Russia to help people,” said Drachenblut. “But in fact, you needed to hide out from the New York State Police for a while. That was why you jumped at Trotsky’s suggestion. Your father arranged it so that another man went to jail in your place. But if you try to put a spanner in our works, I’m afraid I’ll be forced to remember this story, and the papers will kick up no end of a fuss. How do you like the headline ‘Famous Red Millionaire Revealed as Rapist and Murderer’?”

Oscar looked at the worn carpet at his feet. A single thought pounded in his brain over and over: “I’m done for…”

“So, what do you say?” asked Drachenblut. “Will you consider our timber project?”

Oscar nodded slowly.

There was no point now in asking for an exit visa for Nina. The OGPU would almost certainly keep her in the USSR as a hostage until he had made sure they would get their timber sale.

Oscar had taken Nina to the Bolshoi Theater—the bastion of the Soviet elite, but Elkin introduced her to another side of Moscow theatrical life.

“What do they have on at the Bolshoi?” he asked with a disdainful grimace. “The Red Poppy. And they call that art?”

Nina had gone to see this ballet, and it had amused her to see how under the Bolsheviks, even ballerinas had to fight against world imperialism. The Red Poppy was the story of Soviet “pale-faced brothers” saving Chinese natives from the yoke of English rule. The producers did not even realize how insulting this premise was to the Chinese, who considered their Celestial Empire a citadel of wisdom and culture, the center of the world. And the name of the ballet was comically incongruous too. In China, the red poppy was a symbol not of revolution but of narcotics because of the connection with opium while in Britain, it was a symbol of remembrance for the war dead.

Elkin, on the other hand, took Nina to the Moscow Art Theater to see The Days of the Turbins, a play about officers in the White Army—passionate, intelligent, and talented people who lost everyone and everything during the civil war. The Soviet critics lambasted the production, calling it “sentimental drivel,” but nonetheless, the play was a resounding commercial success. Many Muscovites went to see it several times and began to pepper their conversations with quotes from the play.

According to Bolshevik ideology, happiness could only be found in collective labor and the battle against imperialists, and the heroes of the day were revolutionary martyrs with an iron will. The Days of the Turbins, however, was the story of real people who loved not the Party and the international proletariat but each other.

Nina and Elkin sat in the third row. She looked around at the audience—on all sides, she saw faces transfixed, eyes open wide in wonder. The audience was silent as if some unheard-of miracle were unfolding before them. After all, a play like this had no right to exist in Soviet Russia.

When the performance was over, the people filed down into the foyer in silence as if they were still taking in what they had just seen.

Elkin showed Nina the playwright, Mikhail Bulgakov, who passed them on his way up the stairs, a sad-looking gentleman with fair hair combed back from his forehead, wearing an old-fashioned monocle.

“The Last of the Mohicans,” Elkin whispered. “The theater management only put up with him because they sell so many tickets for his plays. But he knows he’s doomed. The Soviet government can’t endure permanently such an obvious insult to their ideology.”

“Good evening!” Nina heard a familiar voice say in English.

She looked around and froze. Oscar and Yefim were standing behind them.

“Your wife goes out every day to visit this character,” Yefim informed Oscar, pointing at Elkin. “I’ve been following them.”

Oscar took Nina roughly by the elbow. “Put on your coat and get into the car this minute!”

“Mr. Reich, it’s not what you think!” cried Elkin desperately, but Oscar did not even look at him.

Oscar took Nina back to his house and launched into a blazing row, accusing her of unfaithfulness and ingratitude. It would have been wisest to have denied his accusations and tried to calm him down, but Nina hated to be shouted at.

“I won’t have you telling me what to do!” she said through her teeth, walking away. “I’m leaving!”

Oscar caught up with her and shoved her so hard in the back that she fell forward, knocking her head on a marble sill.

For two weeks, she was forced to lie in bed, recovering. The doctor announced that she had received a linear fracture to her skull and a cerebral contusion.

“What a maniac!” grumbled Theresa as she applied homemade poultices to Nina’s forehead. “And what were you thinking of? Why did you set him off like that?”

Oscar apologized to Nina once again, swearing undying love.

“I’ll never let anyone else have you,” he said, putting yet another bunch of flowers on her bedside table. “And if any other man so much as looks at you, I’ll break his neck.”

Whenever Oscar came in to see Nina, she would tense as if expecting to be hit. He would put his hand under the blanket to touch her, and she would go cold all over with helpless fury. This man had her completely in his power. He could rape her, beat her, even cut her throat, and he would get off scot-free. And she had no way of getting away from him.

Every day, Nina meant to find out what had happened to Elkin but could not bring herself to call the bookstore. While she was afraid of angering Oscar, she was still more afraid of what she might find out—that something terrible had happened to her friend, and all because of her.

A month had passed by the time Nina had plucked up the courage to leave the house and make her way to Chistye Prudy, taking great care not to be seen.

The snow had begun to melt, muddy water lay in the deep ruts in the road, and the rooks were clamoring in the ancient birches.

Nina went around to the back gate that led into the yard of the Moscow Savannah and bent down to look through the hole in the fence.

In the yard stood a truck spattered with mud. On its side, in crooked letters was written “Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate.” A group of youths, overseen by a woman in a red headscarf, were throwing bundles of books tied together with twine onto a bonfire.

“Why have you put Burroughs in the truck?” the woman shouted. “This lot’s going to the Presnya library—they don’t want any foreign dirt in translation there. And Locke can go on the bonfire too. I told you to burn anything we don’t need.”

In a minute, a large bonfire was blazing merrily in the center of the yard. The young men kept piling more books onto it, and the woman hit at them with a broom handle, knocking out sparks and cinders.

A gust of wind blew a page over the fence, black and charred, like a bat with lacerated wings. Nina caught it with the toe of her boot, and it collapsed into ashes.

The gate swung open, and Afrikan came out into the alley carrying a trash pail.

“Excuse me,” Nina said, approaching him, “do you know where Elkin is?”

Afrikan knitted his shaggy brows and sniffed loudly. “He’s not here. He’s left, and they’ve closed down his shop. They said he was opening at hours forbidden to private businesses and creating competition with state stores.”

“So, what’s going to happen now?”

“It’s a mess,” said Afrikan with conviction. “The whole of the ground floor has been taken over by the state. God knows who they’ll put there. It’s a good thing though that the gentleman upstairs took Mashka away. Elkin gave him the keys to the garage.”

Afrikan went off to take out the trash, and Nina stood for a long time in the middle of the alley, overwhelmed by feelings of guilt and helplessness. She was certain it was Yefim who had called in the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate, following Oscar’s order.

Nina looked up at the windows of the upper story, but she could see nothing through the colored panes of glass.

I don’t have any right to try to meet Klim, she thought desperately. No matter where I go, I bring nothing but bad luck.