The Prince of the Soviets

28. THE DRIVING LESSONS

All day, Klim had been traveling around the Moscow markets, conducting research for an article about the economic situation in the capital.

He got talking to a peasant who was selling horses’ tails for making soft furnishings.

“How does a horse manage without its tail?” asked Klim in amazement. “The flies must eat it alive.”

But the peasant only shrugged his shoulders. “Horses these days are all being sent off for slaughter. If you have a horse, you’re made to pay extra tax. But if you haven’t even a shirt on your back, you can join the collective farm next year and get a tractor.”

The man did not seem to know what this “collective farm” was and did not seem to want to know.

“We’ll get by,” he said. “We haven’t seen the end of Mother Russia yet.”

But I wonder how much longer she can hold out? thought Klim.

Russia was dying in instalments. In the Great War, more than eight hundred thousand people had perished; in the civil war—ten million, and during the famine of 1920–21—another five million. That was as many as the population of a country as big as Romania.

And it was frightening to think what awaited Russia now. The threat of famine and terrible privations was becoming more real every day.

Klim arrived for his driving lesson in a deeply gloomy state of mind. The lessons had not begun yet, and a crowd of would-be drivers—young men in work overalls—were crowding together next to the locked classroom door.

Klim approached the group and froze.

“The fire in the samovar went out,” he heard Nina’s voice, “so my daughter decided to ‘help it along.’ She took some paraffin and put it into the water, not the pipe. The landlady arrived and poured herself a cup of tea, and it stank to high heaven!”

The young men laughed.

Nina was wearing a sky-blue dress and a lacy shawl with a long fringe. With her simple outfit, her golden tan, and her seductive girlish smile, it was no wonder the driving students could not take their eyes off her.

When she caught sight of Klim, Nina gave a barely perceptible nod and continued with her story. “The landlady ran to the neighbors to ask them if they could smell paraffin, and Kitty was afraid that she would get into trouble. So, she tried to fix things by pouring a bottle of cologne into the samovar.”

Klim could not help smiling. So, she’s come back after all, he thought. Well, I wonder what she’ll get up to now?

The instructor appeared, a droll little old man with a fat belly and a mustache twisted up at the ends. He opened the door, and the students entered the classroom. Nina sat at the front next to a loutish-looking fellow with fair hair who hadn’t even bothered to remove his cap indoors. Klim made his way to the “dunce’s bench” at the back of the class.

The instructor put up a diagram of a Ford Model T on the blackboard.

“Today, we’ll be studying the construction of a modern passenger car with a four-cylinder engine,” he announced. “This car has a twenty-horsepower engine, and it can achieve breakneck speeds of seventy kilometers an hour.”

Klim did not take his eyes off the back of Nina’s head, but she never once looked around. She seemed to be genuinely interested in the location of the car’s fuel tank and how to measure the level of petrol using a special gauge stick.

During recess, Nina once again gathered her crowd of admirers around her and began to tell anecdotes about the time she had spent in Crimea. Klim stood a little way off, listening, growing gloomier with every minute.

A small Red Army soldier with protruding ears came up to him. “She’s a bit of all right, isn’t she?” he said. “I guess there’s some lucky guy out there enjoying all that, eh? Gotta be.”

Klim could barely restrain himself from breaking the man’s nose.

After the class, Nina said goodbye to her new friends and left.

All Klim had to show in the way of personal triumphs that day was a single nod of her head.

Klim was sure that Nina had only signed up for driving lessons because he would be on the course, but she paid no attention to him. During recess, a crowd would always gather around her, and the only time Klim found a way to speak to Nina was when they were instructed to crawl under an old Ford car together.

“Have you found the coil spring?” asked the instructor.

“Yes, I’ve got it,” answered Nina.

“If the car should break down on the road, you’ll need to fix it on your own. Go on then. As for you, Comrade Rogov, keep an eye out and help the young lady if she needs it.”

The screw nut was worn, and no matter how hard Nina tried to undo it, she could not get it to budge.

“Let me help,” suggested Klim, but she motioned him away with an irritable jerk of her shoulder.

“There’s no need.”

“You don’t have the strength.”

“Maybe not, but when I make up my mind to do something, I generally do it.”

It was difficult for Klim to argue with that.

Eventually, Nina managed to release the screw nut. There were cheers from the other students as she handed it to the instructor.

“You see, we can achieve anything with patience and hard work,” he said, shaking her by the hand.

After class, Klim went up to speak to Nina.

“You haven’t once asked me about Kitty,” he said. “Don’t you want to know how she is?”

“I already know,” she said coolly. “Kapitolina takes her to classes at the children’s library, and I see her there.”

Klim did not know what to say at this.

“How’s Elkin doing?” he asked.

“He stayed behind in Crimea,” Nina said. “He proposed to me, but I told him it would never work.”

“Why not?”

“I’ll give you three guesses,” laughed Nina and, swinging her bag, she set off down the path to the park.

Kitty admitted to Klim that she really had been meeting her mother. Kapitolina remembered Nina from her time in Elkin’s store and decided that she must have got a new job in the children’s library. Kapitolina had simply been leaving Kitty with Nina and going off about her own business.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Klim asked Kitty sternly.

“Because you already took Tata away from me!”

It was painful to look at Kitty. She was convinced her father would forbid her to see Nina, and she already had tears in her eyes.

Klim pretended that he did not care about their secret meetings. He himself was seeing Nina three times a week. But that was all he was doing—seeing her. She spoke more to the cloakroom attendant than she did to Klim.

Nina was close but at the same time quite out of reach. She was doing everything she could to make herself into a valuable prize and was always surrounded by a throng of admirers. She was insinuating herself into Klim’s thoughts, making him wonder where she was living, how she was earning a living, and what plans she was making. There was some air of mystery about her.

It was a strange feeling, thought Klim: to know that you were being shamelessly seduced, to be indignant about it, and at the same time to wait impatiently for the next session of emotional torment.

Klim noticed that after class, Nina did not go with everybody else to the bus stop but hurried to the park. It happened time and again, and it could only mean one thing: she was meeting somebody there.

Naturally, this was too much for Klim to bear, and one day, he set off after her.

The evening sky was soft and clear, and little butterflies were fluttering over the late-blooming flowers.

Klim followed Nina at a distance, annoyed at the cyclists who kept hurtling toward him, shouting at him to watch out. God forbid Nina should turn around and see him!

She disappeared around a corner, and Klim began to walk faster. He already imagined finding some Red Army officer waiting for Nina on a park bench, but when he rounded the corner, he saw her in the company of a large gray goose. She was standing on the bank of a pond, feeding it from her palm.

Spotting Klim, the goose shook itself, spread out its wings, and set off toward the stranger, hissing.

Nina laughed. “Hey! He’s a friend! Stop that this instant!”

She threw the goose a crust of bread, and it immediately forgot about its rival.

The ground was damp after the rain the day before, and as Nina tried to climb up the bank from the pond, she kept slipping on the wet clay.

Klim held out a hand to her. “Here—let me pull you up.”

This time, Nina accepted his help and even allowed him to hold her by the elbow while she cleaned off the mud from her shoes with a stick.

Klim had imagined she would ask him why he had been following her and was trying to think up an acceptable excuse, but Nina, acting as if nothing had happened, began to tell him about the goose.

“The rest of its clan have been caught and eaten long ago,” she said, “but it’s been hiding in the rushes all this time. I come here to feed it.”

They walked along the path together, followed by the goose. From time to time, it gave an angry honk and flapped its wings noisily. It seemed to regard Nina as its own property.

Klim was no longer trying to think about anything. He just walked along beside Nina, breathing in the heady scent of the autumn leaves and feeling amazed at how neatly she had forced him to make the first move.

Nina, it appeared, now lived in Saltykovka, in the house of Count Belov, and traveled to the capital every day on the suburban train.

“To see Kitty?” asked Klim.

“To see both of you. Also, Belov and I have started up a soap-making business. Once, I translated a brochure for Magda about it, so we use the technology she had described. But I have to go around Moscow all the time to find our supplies.”

“But how do you sell your products?” asked Klim, amazed. “I don’t suppose you have a patent, do you?”

“No, but I have a head on my shoulders,” said Nina, laughing.

From what she told him, it was clear that private enterprise had not disappeared but had been pushed underground by the draconian measures of the government.

Nina had spent all that remained of her money on buying raw materials and equipment. In the suburbs, there were whole colonies of lishentsy who had been driven out from the capital. They were prepared to take any job they were offered.

“We found a young chemist,” said Nina. “He was expelled from the university because he came from an aristocratic family, and he’s thought up a cheap method of creating lye for us.”

Nina’s soap was being peddled around various markets and stations, but most of her profit came from government organizations. Nina was coming to agreements with the directors of laundries, hospitals, and schools to supply them with soap, given the current shortage.

“The state demands that institutions comply with standards of hygiene,” Nina told Klim, “but there are no soap supplies left. Nowadays, every company has two sets of accounts. The first books are the official ones, for the government officials, and the second are the work accounts. They include a completely different list of goods and completely different figures.”

Klim remembered what Elkin had told him about translating Swedish manuals.

“So, you’re telling me that all manufacturers are breaking the law and that they’re criminals by definition?” he asked.

“The whole population is engaged in criminal activities these days,” said Nina. “Some people are trading illegally; others are evading taxes or getting their salary paid cash-in-hand. And all the officials take bribes. We’re all in it together.”

They arrived at the gate, and the goose, deciding not to go any farther, flew back to its pond.

“Where are you going—to the station?” asked Klim.

Nina nodded, and he hailed her a cab.

“See you tomorrow,” she said, shaking his hand as if they were just friends.

Nina has had an idea about what to do with the Volga Germans. She has advised us to find people who have connections with the Canadian Railroad Company. The population of Canada is very small, no more than nine million people, and they don’t have anyone to service the railroads that run through the forested areas. Nina has heard that the government in Ottawa is prepared to help immigrants who are willing to settle in these remote areas. They will be given land, equipment, and interest-free loans. Magda has made contact with the Canadians and found out that they are indeed ready to take our refugees, and the German embassy in Moscow has agreed to give the Germans transit visas on condition that they go to Hamburg beforehand and charter a steamer from there to take them to Quebec.

Once again, it all comes down to foreign passports and money. We’re all hoping that Seibert will manage to raise the necessary funds, but so far, he hasn’t had any success.

Nina has also thought up a way for the Germans to earn some cash in the meantime. She has suggested that they gather up old flags and banners left after political demonstrations and make them into various items, from shopping bags to children’s clothes. Friedrich has brought several crates of thread and sewing materials from Germany, and production is already underway.

What’s happening at the moment between Nina and me? There is not a great deal to report. We’ve found common cause caring for other people who are connected to us only because they are fellow human beings. Nina and I have taken to wandering in the park by the Red Army Club, and instead of talking about our own affairs, we discuss our plans to rescue the Germans.

During one of these walks, we found a mysterious fence and discovered behind it a whole store of prerevolutionary statues commemorating subjects that are no longer in favor. All the bronze sculptures have long since been taken to be melted down, but the marble figures of emperors and generals are all still there, gradually becoming overgrown with moss and begrimed with soot.

During recess, we go to visit these vanquished heroes. Nina spreads out a cloth on a pedestal supporting some general and treats me to her own homemade bread.

I don’t always come empty-handed either. A couple of days ago, I managed to get a bottle of champagne from the canteen at the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. I’ll never forget how we cracked it open and drank champagne straight from the bottle.

When our classes are over, we go to visit the goose—he’s still alive for the moment. Then I walk Nina some of the way home. Our evening strolls around Moscow are becoming longer and longer. At first, we would say goodbye on Tsvetnoy Boulevard, but now I take her as far as the station and then go home… to Galina.

Tata is now back at her old school. No sooner did she get there than she created a scene: the Young Pioneers were playing the traditional skittle game, gorodki, where you knock apart formations of wooden pegs. The Pioneer leader had suggested that instead of the traditional shapes like cannons and forks, they lay out the pegs in the shape of granaries and factories—then their game would be more in tune with the spirit of the age.

This sent Tata into a frenzy of righteous indignation. She wrote a denunciation to the headmaster complaining that the Pioneer leader was guilty of encouraging sabotage and was planning to destroy Soviet enterprises by knocking them apart with sticks.

Galina told me the whole thing as if it were a joke. The headmaster turned out to have a head on his shoulders and told Tata not to be a fool, and the Pioneer leader didn’t get into trouble. But I was stunned to hear the story. It seems that Galina has no idea what a little monster she has raised.

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.