An Agent in Place Page 6

  Ben paused to look at a display of hockey sticks and ice-skates in

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  the window of a sports store, and used the window to study the street behind him. As far as he could observe in the accumulating darkness, no one on the street appeared to take the slightest interest in him; no one turned away or changed his or her trajectory; no one stopped suddenly to window-shop in front of another store; no automobile pulled over to the curb and parked with its motor idling.

  From somewhere overhead Ben heard the quicksilvery ripple of a soprano voice skating back and forth across scales. Stepping back off the curb and looking up, he could make out the large windows of a second-floor rehearsal studio. Someone played a few chords on a piano. Then, with the piano accompanying her, the soprano began to sing the opening measures of a well-known aria. She stopped abruptly. The piano repeated a phrase twice. The soprano tried it again without the piano. A man's voice could be heard exhorting her. "You are swallowing vowels," he cried. "Spit them out." The singer attempted the phrase again. It was apparently satisfactory because she went back to the beginning, and with the piano accompanying her, continued on past the phrase.

  Under the rehearsal studio a big-boned woman pushed through the double doors leading to the street. She stood for a moment with her coat open, her gloves off and tucked under an armpit, counting with naked fingers a wad of rubles. Ben was instantly alert to her. He had never seen anyone quite like her in Moscow—or anywhere else for that matter; in this incarnation or any of the previous incarnations his grandfather insisted he had had. She looked as if she had walked off a 1930s movie set. Planted squarely on her large head was a pillbox hat with an enormous white feather spiked through it. Around her neck she had flung a threadbare fox neckpiece with a shrunken fox's head on one end that stared out at the world with unblinking marble eyes, almost as if it were stalking the hunter who had shot it. The fox in turn was draped over a worn cloth coat lined with what looked like a green Army blanket. The slush-stained hem of a thick ankle-length black skirt appeared to foam around her galoshes as she stamped her feet to keep them warm.

  Apparently satisfied with the count, the woman stuffed the money in a coat pocket and pulled on her gloves. She must have become aware of the singing coming from above because she angled her head up and cocked an ear, then backed over to stand near Ben and listen. The soprano voice broke off. A male voice straining to reach an

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  octave above its normal range demonstrated the phrasing. The soprano attacked the passage several times without the piano, then with it. Ben turned to the woman and said, in Russian, "Tosca. Act two, scene two."

  Without taking her eyes off the windows of the rehearsal studio, the woman shook her head. "Turandot I do not know the act. But there can be no discussion. I would recognize it anywhere."

  Ben asked, "Are you a singer?"

  The woman slowly turned her head toward Ben and studied him, her eyes as fixed as those of the fox peering from her shoulder. Then she said in a tone that did not invite him to continue the conversation, "In a manner of speaking, yes."

  Ben became aware of the broken, badly set nose. Curiously, the deformation only made her more sensual. He tried out a smile on her, but it didn't dent the wall of indifference behind which she seemed to be barricaded. "If you are a singer," he challenged her, "can you explain what pushes human beings to sing?"

  The woman sniffed at the imbecility of the question. "What is it that makes a bird sing?"

  Ben retorted, "Only a sky diver can know what makes a bird sing."

  The woman half-smiled as the image struck her, then burst out laughing. To Ben's ear the laughter sounded rusty, as if it hadn't been used in a long time.

  The woman appeared to inch out from behind her wall of indifference. "You speak with some kind of an accent," she noted.

  "I am American."

  "Is this your first visit to Kuchkovo?"

  "What is Kuchkovo?"

  The woman seemed quite pleased with herself. "That is the original name of Moscow. It tickles the Slavophile in me to use it."

  Ben said, "I am not a tourist. I should tell you right off that I work at the American Embassy. I am a very junior diplomat."

  The woman surprised him by switching to English. "I have never before now recountered someone from the other side of the looking glass. I must admit that America does not fascinate me the way it fascinates others. I have heard it spoken that the only original American contribution to world culture is the banjo."

  Ben answered in Russian. "You are forgetting the rocking chair," he said good-humoredly. "And baseball."

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  She laughed at this. "You speak Russian good for a foreign person. You speak it like me. Well, not exactly like me." She smiled selfconsciously at her English. "Almost like me."

  "Your English is as good as my Russian," Ben said. "Where did you pick it up?"

  "In prison," she replied, measuring him to see what effect her reply would have. "I once shared a cell with a Hungarian origin lady that formerly instructed the English grammar for the children of Hungarian diplomats. She had a Russian husband who got into what you with your love of cliches call heated water. I have nothing against cliches, mind you. Cliches are dead poems. When the Hungarian origin lady defended her Russian husband, she got also into heated water. In this prison she to me recited English poems. In exchange I to her recited Russian poems. Mostly but not always Akhmatova, some Pushkin, some Mandelstam."

  Above their heads the soprano reached for a high note and missed. The woman with the broken nose winced. She and Ben exchanged conspiratorial smiles; more of the wall behind which the woman was barricaded crumbled. She studied Ben frankly, then asked, "So: Are you a sky diver?" *

  "In a manner of speaking, yes."

  This made her laugh again. "It does not change the fact that what she is singing, though not very well, is Turandot, and not Tosca"

  "You want to bet?"

  The woman switched back to Russian. "You are very sure of yourself. I do not think that is such a good thing in a man. To be less sure is to be more open." Angling her head, she half-smiled again at the idea of taking him down a peg. "What is it you would have us bet?"

  "If I lose I will buy you a cup of coffee and a piece of cake. If you lose you will buy me a cup of coffee and a piece of cake."

  The woman was clearly tempted. Above their heads the soprano broke off again as her teacher demonstrated the phrasing of still another passage. The teacher and the soprano repeated the passage in chorus. In the street the white feather piercing the pillbox hat quivered in the icy evening currents of air. The woman came to a decision. "Not coffee, but hot wine. Not cake, but finger sandwiches."

  Ben, surprised, nodded; he hadn't expected her to agree. She nodded in return, and disappeared through the double doors into the

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  building. The soprano's voice stopped in midphrase, and for two or three minutes the piano and the soprano were both silent. After they resumed the woman with the fox around her neck reappeared on the street. She walked directly up to Ben and regarded him with her characteristic half-smile that had very little to do with humor and a great deal to do with nervousness. "Tosca, act two, scene two," she said.

  She turned on her heel and started to walk off, then stopped to look over her shoulder. Seeing Ben's uncertainty, she called, "A bet is a bet" and motioned with her head for him to follow her. He fell into step alongside her. They passed the peasant woman selling parsley and rounded the corner.

  "Where are you taking me?" Ben inquired.

  "There is a cafe called the Druzhba on the corner of Petrovka and Kuznetsky Most, at the Petrovka Passage."

  They walked in silence, pushing through a swarm of teenage girls with painted eyes and rouged cheeks standing in front of a store wincjow watching a Russian rock singer on television. Further on they had to detour around workmen digging up a segment of sidewalk with jackhammers. When they were far enough away from the jack-hammers to make themselves heard, Ben commented that he found Moscow incredibly noisy. If cities were quiet, the woman remarked, people would not live in them. Explain yourself, Ben insisted. Contrary to what our sociologists tell us, she said, the real reason people congregate in monstrous warts we call cities has little to do with economics and a lot to do with loneliness. Noise provides evidence that we are not alone.

  Ben asked her what she thought of perestroika. The woman said she thought it was a fine thing as far as it went. The trouble was that it did not go far enough; it did not go to the root of the problem, which was to define the role of the Communist Party in a society that had been ruined by the Communist Party. She had read an American novel called Catch something or other, she said. Catch-22, he prompted. That was it, she said. Catch-22. We Russians have our own catch-22. Under Stalin, under Khrushchev, under Brezhnev, policy was set at the top and everyone fell into line. Now the policy set at the top is that policy should not be set at the top. It would be funny if it were not a matter of life and death. But it was. A matter of life and death. There was a time bomb ticking away in the Soviet

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  Union, she told him. The current bosses justified their reforms by pointing to the terrible condition of the economy. It was only a matter of time before their enemies—prominent among them, the ul-traright-wing anti-Semitic nationalist Circle that went by the name of Pamyat, or Memory—cited these same conditions as proof that the reforms were not working. Ben asked her what would happen then. She shouldered through a line of people queuing at a kiosk for waffles stuffed with frozen strawberries. An old man who thought she was trying to get in ahead of him insulted her, but she ignored him and strode on. Ben made his way aro
und the end of the line and caught up with the woman who had lost the bet. He repeated his question. What would happen when Pamyat cited the economic conditions as proof that the reforms were not working? The woman hiked a shoulder in irritation; on her neck the fox's head nodded in eager agreement. Perestroika would give way to perestrelka, she said. Did he know the word? Perestrelka was Russian for shoot-out. Some people will start shooting at other people.

  Ben wanted to know what she would do if that happened.

  The woman breathed out into the cold air. A cloud of vapor swirled around her face. "I will duck for as long as such a thing is possible," she announced. "But violence is a circle. I will certainly end up wounding someone."

  With Ben trailing after her, she pushed through a revolving door into the Druzhba Cafe, stamped the slush off her galoshes on a worn doormat and strode past the coatroom into the crowded, noisy, smoke-filled cafe. Looking around, she spotted a free table and went over to claim it. Settling onto the metal chair with a sigh of relief, she pulled off her gloves, loosened the fox fur around her neck and opened the buttons of her coat. Ben sat opposite her and unbuttoned his sheepskin overcoat. A waiter in a stained black dinner jacket delivered two drinks and a plate of sandwiches to the next table, then turned to them. "Two glasses of hot wine," the woman ordered. "And a plate of liverwurst sandwiches."

  Ben said, "My name is Benedict, which is the long version of Ben."

  The woman reached into the pocket of her coat, came up with some paper and tobacco and began to roll a thin cigarette. "Mine is Zinaida Ivanovna. My son shortened Zinaida to Aida, which is what my friends call me."

  Ben watched her moving fingers, fascinated by their dexterity. "I

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  will call you what your friends call you. If you have a son you must be married."

  When Aida saw that Ben expected an answer, she said with a trace of irony, "That is not a question."

  Ben watched her fingers work the tobacco onto the paper and deftly roll it. "Are you married?"

  "In a manner of speaking, yes."

  "Every time I ask you something you reply 'in a manner of speak-ing.

  Aida licked the paper closed and struck a match with her thumbnail and held it to the tip of her cigarette. She filled the air with a haze of unpleasant-smelling smoke before she replied. "I am married—and I am not married," she said presently. "Which is to say I have a husband, but Vadim, which is the name of my future ex, has a mistress with whom he is madly in love. He and I are only waiting for him to move out of my apartment to get divorced."

  "What prevents him from moving out right away?"

  "He has his heart set on moving into a penthouse overlooking the Moscow River. Before he can do that the woman who lives there must get legal custody of her son so they can emigrate to Israel. The logistics of life in Moscow can be complicated." Aida smiled bitterly. "It is the complications that save us. If we did not have them, if life were relatively simple, if you could buy a pair of stockings without queuing on three lines and move out of an apartment when you wanted to get divorced, there would be time to think. And then where would we be?"

  Ben wanted to know how she had met her husband.

  "You ask a great many questions," Aida noted.

  "That is the usual way of starting a friendship?"

  Clearly annoyed, she dragged on her cigarette, exhaled a perfect ring of smoke and watched it lose its form as it drifted away. "What we have," she said, "is not a friendship. We made a bet. I lost, so I will buy you a glass of warm wine. That will be the beginning and the end of our relationship."

  The waiter returned and set two glass mugs of hot red wine on the table, along with a plate of small sandwiches. Ben wrapped his fingers around his glass to warm them. "I would still like to know how you met your husband."

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  Aida shrugged quickly, stubbed out her cigarette in an ashtray and started eating a sandwich. She spoke with her mouth full. "So: We were both of us students at Lomonosov University on the Lenin Hills. In order to make money to buy books I found a part-time job washing windows in office buildings. One day I was washing a window and Vadim suddenly appeared on a scaffold washing the same window from the outside."

  Ben sipped his wine. He relished the warmth in his throat. "What was it that attracted you to him?"

  "His sense of humor. His Jewishness. His insolence. His courage even. He would say the most scandalous things about the bosses, even with other people around. He had the knack of passing off as a joke things that were deadly serious. The day I met him he pressed his face to the window, flattening his nose. He wrote on the glass backwards in soap, Will you marry me?' I shook my head no. So he wrote, Will you at least sleep with me?' Unlike most of the boys I knew, Vadim did not beat around the bush. I wrote back on my side of the window mozhet bit —maybe. He did a jig on the scaffold. That is how I always imagine him—doing a jig on the scaffold twelve floors above the street."

  "How long were you married before you had your son?"

  Aida sipped her hot wine, then brought the glass up to warm her cheek. "Vadim is not the father of my son," she said softly.

  Ben waited for her to go on.

  "Why do I tell you all this?" She shrugged. "I had a friend who became a lover ... he was a wonderful friend, a wonderful lover ... he was an editor ... he died of old age ... at thirty-two." A film of tears transformed Aida's eyes into mirrors. She half-smiled at a memory. "He spoke Russian with a Polish accent and lisped. He left a message on his telephone answering machine. 'I talk before the beep, you talk after,' is what it said. After he died I phoned up two or three times a day for weeks to hear his Polish accent and his lisp. One day I called and found that his voice had been replaced by the recorded voice of his widow. What do you want?' is what it said. What I wanted was him. It was on that day that I recorded his death in my journal."

  "What did Vadim say when you gave birth to a son who was not his?"

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  "Vadim and I had long since stopped being lovers and become comrades. About Saava, he was very chic. He always treated him as if he were his own son."

  "What happened between you and Vadim? What went wrong?"

  "He retained his insolence, but lost his sense of humor. In order to make people laugh he was reduced to telling jokes." Aida smiled wistfully. "It is not possible"—she slowly shook her head and repeated the phrase as if she were reminding herself of a fact of life— "to survive in Russia without a sense of humor."

  Nibbling on one of the sandwiches, Ben noticed that a young woman sitting alone at another table was glancing furtively at his companion. The young woman, gathering her courage, scraped back her chair and approached their table. She offered a ball-point pen and a small notebook to Aida. "I am a great fan of yours, Zinaida Ivanovna. Would you give me an autograph?"

  Aida scribbled her name in the notebook. "I will treasure this for the rest of my life," the young woman announced with great seriousness.. Half-bowing, she backed away from the table.

  Ben, flustered, asked, "Are you famous?"

  Aida laughed. "Pasternak said to be famous is indecent," she replied. "To answer your question, I am slightly indecent."

  "What kind of things do you sing?"

  "I said I was a singer in a manner of speaking. What I do is rummage in the debris of language. I listen to silence. What I am is a poet."

  Ben was impressed. "If I knew your family name, could I find your books?"

  "I had one collection published years ago, but it has long since gone out of print. I have been told that one of those new private publishing houses is ready to bring out a collected works, but I will believe it when I see it. I do translations of poems, always from the American, always by women poets—Emily Dickinson is my special passion. Some of my less controversial poems are occasionally taken by journals. When you met me I had come from collecting money for two poems being published by Novy Mir. I am often invited to read my poems. I never refuse. What fame I have comes from that."

  Aida popped another sandwich into her mouth and washed it down with a gulp of wine. Ben asked, "What is it about your controversial poems that makes them controversial?"