Julie Himes - Mikhail and Margarita

Ilya reached the end of the carriage and turned to face him, and it struck Bulgakov that there could be complexities to his dying; that somehow Ilya was singular from other men and inherent differences in his physiology would need to be anticipated. Bulgakov turned and they headed toward the front of the train. Ilya’s footsteps sounded behind him.

In their compartment, the porter had laid the table for tea. Ilya measured the leaves and placed the pot into the samovar. He sat down heavily across from Bulgakov. The afternoon sun passed through the glass and into the carriage. Outside, gold stubbles of grass poked through rivulets of new snow. The sky to the east was darker, sullen; twilight was advancing, perhaps bringing more snow. It ran counter to the fields that glowed with unnatural light. It was toward this darkness that Ilya now looked, as though anticipating future difficulties.

Bulgakov didn’t believe he could kill him outright, raise a gun against an unprotected man. He imagined them faced-off, as in a duel. Writers tended to fare badly in those contests. Perhaps they indulged in some final moment of introspection, searching the distant face, struggling to taste the grit of the killing emotion. Perhaps they waited to hear the other’s shot as if none of it was to be believed until they did; then of course it was too late. The bullet would be felt before its sound reached the ears.

He wondered if Ilya was thinking of her. Perhaps he envisioned these routine gestures in her presence. Hopeful for something as simple as this. The chance to prepare her tea. The possibility of a different life. Ilya looked up as though Bulgakov had spoken. He seemed self-conscious. Perhaps he felt some guilt for such thoughts. Perhaps he had reason for guilt.

“You saw her,” said Bulgakov. “After she was arrested. Before she was sent away.” He considered hating him for that.

Ilya appeared surprised by the question. “Once,” he said. “To see her more might have drawn scrutiny.”

“How was she?”

“Physically?” Ilya hesitated, as though it was necessary to conjure her image. “No different than expected. Thinner. She appeared unharmed, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

Was that what he was wondering?

“She’s rather delicate, isn’t she?” said Ilya. He touched the empty cup before him, smoothed his thumb across its porcelain surface, along the spine of its handle. As though marveling at its ability to exist when any careless movement could break it. “I worry about her. Contagion can decimate these camps in the winter.”

Bulgakov could hate him for his concern.

Ilya took the cup in his palm. “She’s stubborn though. Infuriating. I tried to convince her to save herself, but she would not.”

Soon, Ilya would get to save her. Until then, he could talk about her. He wanted so badly to talk about her. The same as any person in love. To touch a cup and imagine her skin. To stare at the horizon and imagine their future.

Bulgakov got up suddenly, his hand to his lips. Nausea rose through his chest. Saliva pooled in his mouth.

Ilya said nothing as he left for the lavatory. His lingering gaze might have been sympathetic. Even after days of travel, sickness from the continual motion could appear without warning.

Even a creature such as he was allowed to dream, was he not?

The second half of their journey was punctuated by a series of mysterious stops, including one that went on for several days, such that nearly two weeks passed before they arrived in Irkutsk. Conversations between the two men dwindled to nothing. To Bulgakov, it felt as if the landscape had taken not only their fortitude but other bits of memory as well. The morning of their arrival, Ilya did not return from the lavatory; then Bulgakov realized the suitcase with the compartment was gone. The Bulgakov of Moscow would have felt some anxiety over this.

He remembered a conversation from earlier in their trip. He could not recall the context for it. Ilya had been describing an interview he had conducted with a suspected dissident. He’d seemed careful to omit the person’s name and Bulgakov had wondered about it and about any concern he should have felt. Ilya had described a particular gesture the man had made, and how, with that one motion, all had been made plain, namely, whatever truth the man had been trying to hide had now been fully revealed. It was always that way, Ilya had said. His voice had trailed off—it often did in those days as though the purpose of any particular conversation had been forgotten before it’d reached its conclusion—then he’d shrugged and looked to the window. They were passing through the Urals. The bulk of any one of that range rose and filled the breadth of their compartment window for such a span of time that it seemed the dimensions of space were altered. His words had left Bulgakov with the lingering impression of anticipated loss. Perhaps not loss; sacrifice was the better word: here was a man traveling to a new place, a new life, where an interrogator’s talents offered no particular advantage.

Later Bulgakov realized that the gesture described had been his own; one he’d made within moments of entering their train carriage at the start of their journey. It seemed then that to have once believed that Ilya would not have discerned his true purpose was itself naïve to the point of laughable. Theirs was a nation of informants; Ilya understood this landscape. In this he was like the physician towards the diseased: he could have compassion for them, yet remain untroubled. How else might one disfigure the flesh in order to remove the tumor?

For weeks Margarita watched for some opportunity. She flirted with their guards, though they seemed oafish in their capacity and of little use. Anyuta expressed disapproval of her behavior, but how could simple Anyuta understand? Should she pretend some illness? One of the women complained incessantly of stomach pains yet this was ignored. If she caught some contagion would she be quarantined? If she broke a leg would she be taken out and shot like livestock?

They arrived at the work site where they had been painting dormitory interiors the day before. Margarita had gone without water or tea since the preceding evening. She squatted beside the oblong pan on the floor as the other women returned to their workstations and loaded it with grey-green paint. She inhaled the vapors; they gave her a little jolt, a “painter’s high,” and she almost giggled. She stood quickly and, now dizzy, she willed her legs to weaken further. She fought the instinct to right herself and collapsed at Anyuta’s feet. She thought for a moment to say something, but her head went back and banged dully on the cement floor. The pain was real. Anyuta called for the guard. She squatted next to Margarita and picked up her hand. “Tremble more,” she coached her quietly. “No—not like an epileptic, that’s too much—oh, never mind. Here they come.”

Margarita was first taken to the small clinic on-site at the factory, where a doctor conducted a careful neurological exam which he pronounced normal. He asked her to follow his fingers with her eyes. She studied his face instead. He was young for a physician, perhaps a year or two older than her, and sad looking. He noticed her stare. “What did she do?” he asked the guard offhandedly, to find her way into a labor camp, but got no reply. He took her pulse a second time and leaned in. “Is there a chance you might be pregnant?” he whispered. She shook her head. She was touched by his concern. He wanted to keep her for more testing, but the prison guard said it was unnecessary, she would be transferred to the prison infirmary. He seemed gloomier than before as he signed her discharge papers, and she was escorted from the clinic.

At the infirmary she was given a bed in a room filled with empty cots. She stared at the ceiling. The prisoner who’d painted it years earlier had left swirls in the shapes of birds in flight. Flight! Where was this prisoner now? What was the penalty for such fancies? The room was cold and she pulled the sheet over her shoulders. The prison physician read the paperwork from the factory doctor and discussed her case with the medic at her bedside using words such as “paint fumes” and “poor ventilation” and “obvious malnutrition.” These were the words of the factory doctor and it was decided that her paperwork would be given to the local authorities to determine if there was need for further investigation of him. The physician and the medic looked to her as if she might have an opinion. Margarita pretended not to listen. Birds, words, any of them could lead one astray. They left her alone. Later, Anyuta came to visit.

A new woman had been assigned to their block, she told Margarita. She sat on the edge of the bed. The newcomer had tried to take Margarita’s bed board. “I told her you had lice,” said Anyuta gleefully. She played with the bedsheet.

“I need a job in town,” said Margarita.

“Her name is Klavdia Lenkaevna,” said Anyuta. “She’s from Moscow. Like you.”

“Moscow is a big place.”

Anyuta went back to the sheet.

“I did know a Klavdia Lenkaevna,” Margarita said. “I think that was her name.”

“Were you friends?”

“Not really. No.”

Anyuta pressed her hand against the mattress. “I haven’t slept on a bed in years.” She said this as if it surprised her as well.

“What happened to her?” To Klavdia.

“Nothing.” Anyuta made a face. “They took her clothes, of course. Or most of them. The nicer ones. I didn’t help her, though.”

Margarita slid over and Anyuta lay down next to her. They both stared at the ceiling.