“You’re not Russian, are you?”
She hesitated. “I’m Scottish,” she said.
“You have only the faintest accent.” He wanted to ask how she’d come to live in Irkutsk. One might wonder that of any of them.
“This place is a long way from Moscow, I have to say,” he said. “I guess even further from Scotland.”
Her expression shifted a little. Perhaps, like him, she’d come here for love. Perhaps she’d been traveling through the region and had stopped, expecting to move on, yet still had not. The place itself seemed a midway of sorts; a point of pause in one’s journey, one’s life; not somewhere one would intend to stay. It struck him that despite the years which had passed, she was still quite homesick.
A curl of hair had escaped her cloth; what he’d thought was chestnut-colored from their evening together was nearly grey.
“I’m here because of my fiancée,” he said. “I told you of her—she’s innocent, of course. I’m hoping that I may see her.”
The woman nodded politely.
“Perhaps there is a story as to why you are here as well,” he said.
Behind her, a figure, her husband, passed between rooms. She gave no reaction to this. She gazed pointedly at Bulgakov as though challenging him in some way. As if to say that not all stories end well; some end poorly in fact. Was this something he wished to know, and he felt a strange chill, as though he’d just witnessed the passing of a ghost.
“My husband is planning to varnish the stairs,” she said. She nodded to the space behind him. “If you don’t mind; it can take some time to dry. We wouldn’t want shoe prints in the treatment.” He heard the lilt in her speaking of these words.
“I suppose next time I can simply slide your mail under your door,” he said. “Now that I know you are home.”
“That would be kind,” she said.
“Once the floors have dried.”
She had already closed the door.
The next morning Bulgakov noticed a dark sedan in front of the house. Moments later there was a knock at his door. The driver indicated that Bulgakov was to pack a small bag and accompany him. Pyotrovich was in the backseat. As he got in next to him, Bulgakov recognized the leather valise upright on his lap.
Bulgakov was to visit Margarita. “Here?” he asked. The driver was negotiating the smaller side streets. Had they brought her to Irkutsk? Was she with Ilya?
No; Pyotrovich indicated he was to travel to the camp. He wiped his nose with a handkerchief repeatedly. It was swollen and chapped. Each time he returned the cloth to his pocket as though determined to maintain some tangible hope for wellness.
It would take three days to get there. Possibly longer depending on the weather and conditions. This was an important opportunity, Pyotrovich emphasized, as though any amount of time or distance should not dissuade.
“We are certain now that Ilya intends to help her escape. Convince her to give herself up. Once she has escaped, of course. To give them both up. There will be any number of opportunities. Convince her that such cooperation will be rewarded. Previous offenses pardoned.” He waved his hand as though he would say more, but instead retrieved the cloth from his pocket and hurried it to his nose.
“Then she will be released,” said Bulgakov.
“Of course.” Pyotrovich nodded. The cloth fluttered as it moved. “He’s the one we want.” Pyotrovich glanced at him, then away as though he did not care to remember his face. “Promise whatever you feel is necessary. Tell her we are capable of such.” The cloth went into his pocket again. “Then you may be together.” He spoke cheerily at the street before them; he had no interest in knowing what those words might actually mean.
“What if I can’t convince her?” said Bulgakov.
“Of course you can,” he said, and Bulgakov sensed some vague annoyance with the suggestion. Pyotrovich then added, perhaps more to himself, “We’ll get them regardless.” His tone now carried a cold assuredness. He studied the sooty snow-banks with a general expression of disapproval and it struck Bulgakov that he might wish for all of them, the snow, the driver, Bulgakov as well, to be eliminated, if for no better reason than the tidiness of it.
Ilya had said that she’d refused to save herself before. What did she know about that kind of bargain that he’d not considered? Why did he think she would make it now? What rationalization might he have her practice?
“I do hate traveling during this time of year,” said Pyotrovich. As though even he could be demoralized by the continuous winter. He sniffed.
“I’ll convince her,” said Bulgakov.
Pyotrovich’s car took him only to the outskirts of the town. There a troika waited. Its driver, a burly man of forty possessing a full and reddish beard, was accompanied by a thin teenage girl who giggled more than she spoke. They sat close together, high in the front with Bulgakov alone in the back. Beneath the layers of fur a coal foot warmer radiated faint heat. The driver did not give his own name but introduced her as Delilah. Bulgakov suspected this was made-up, a lusty joke between the two of them, and he avoided speaking to her so that he wouldn’t have the need to use it. Indeed, her interest seemed fixed on the driver; Bulgakov could as well have been a sack of feed.
There was no discernible road and the drifting snow lent to the landscape the quality of a frothing sea. The city behind them melted into the grey horizon. Hills rose in the distance. The troika bells jangled anxiously as they went. The driver was an enthusiastic Marxist who desired to discuss politics; however, his words were lost in the bells and the wind and the perpetual high-pitched hum of the runners and he soon gave up his attempts to converse. Bulgakov suspected the girl was distracting in her own way beneath the fur robes; he watched the two of them, their backs to him.
Soon he would be with Margarita—soon he would hold her in his arms. His thoughts wandered past their more recent troubles to pause on a distant morning. Had it been midsummer? They had resisted the call to rise, lying in bed together. He tried to remember what was particular about that day from all of the others.
Could he convince her to give up Ilya to the authorities? And if he could not—there was the certainty of Pyotrovich’s words—what price would be exacted from an escaped prisoner, from an uncooperative one? He might never see her again. The thought itself was unbearable.
And if he could not convince her—would she be willing to forego escape? He would wait for her—eight short years. That was nothing to him. Could he ask that of her? Did time move the same for her as it did for him?
The early light that morning had seemed liquid as though passing through a shallow pool. Her silky head against his cheek; her warm skin pressed to his. Would that he could go back to those hours. He would tell her of their life together; his dream for them: writing each day, sunlight washing the page. Walks together in the afternoons around the town, his arm about her waist for all to see. Listening to Schubert in the evenings. The music of crickets and frogs from the garden, the splash of a koi. The soft light from a green-shaded lamp reflecting inward from the night’s dark window-glass. Her figure in that reflection; leaning over him, her hands on his shoulders, her lips near his cheek, urging him to bed; he could feel her warmth through his shirt.
The girl’s laughter rose above the bells. They were approaching a small hut, dark against the white expanse. A thread of smoke rose from its chimney. Bulgakov’s feet tingled within his shoes. When they stopped the driver helped him down from the sleigh; supporting him across the snowy yard, until finally he carried him inside.
Bulgakov was vaguely aware of others in the room. He was placed on a bench before a tub of water. Delilah removed his shoes and socks and rolled up his trouser legs. His feet were angry red. Gently, with a hand to the calf and the other to his ankle, she took them one at a time and set them into the warm water. Her scarves removed, he could see her delicate features, the cap of red curls. He could not feel her touch.
CHAPTER 33
It was a state-run factory that produced the uppers for ladies’ dress pumps. Before the Revolution it was a family-owned business. After the dismantling of the NEP, its owner and family patriarch, a Turkestan, resisted the relinquishing of his business to the Commissat. He was taken from his office and brought to the building’s front lawn one morning as his workers were arriving. By order of the district party leader, provided on newly printed letterhead, he was shot. It was late spring. His blood spattered across the blooms of annuals his wife had planted earlier that month to give color to the grassy border. She and some of his adult children were arrested; the remainder disappeared by other means. The running of the factory was given over to a part-time machinist until he was arrested for selling materials on the black market. He was replaced by the whistle-blower, a second-line manager who had been marshaling the machinist’s shady transactions for a cut, who was shortly thereafter replaced by an illiterate bobbin spinner. The current manager was considered an excellent choice though he was not a Party member. He took the time to visit the homes of his workers after hours. He knew who drank to excess or beat their wives and counseled them against those behaviors. He was literate though had difficulty with figures. He was occasionally offered kickbacks which he refused and then reported. He never questioned the Party’s legitimacy.
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