A Question of Return Page 2

  * * *

  Somebody began to read Solzhenitsyn’s letter and Laukhin knew that he was next. He stepped out from behind the potted plant. Everybody had moved closer to the platform to hear better. Not far from him Galya Baker was whispering in the ear of a particularly attractive woman. Mid thirties? Alluring. How had he missed her? A black pantsuit hugged her waist and hips. If this was a female tux, he was all for it. Without thinking, he took a few steps toward the two women. She had dark brown hair pulled back in a chignon. A strand fell delicately in front of her ear, and he wondered whether it had escaped or had been carefully placed there. Earrings that seemed vaguely Egyptian, not unlike her profile. Endless eyelashes. Her mouth half open.

  He stepped back. He’d soon be asked to say his bit. Anyway, no more follies with young women at his age. Fifty! Well, not really, not even forty-nine yet. He shouldn’t think of himself as being fifty, especially not while admiring younger women. Besides, she wasn’t as young as mad Erika Belov-Wang who was probably still in her twenties. Good God, such recklessness. He should have sniffed something was up when she suggested that for the second day of his interview for the Paris Review they move to his office at Alumni Hall, so that she could better understand his working environment. He didn’t get it even when she asked him, after they’d talked for two hours and as he was about to suggest a lunch break, to shut the door to his office because of the noise. It’s true that he had ogled Erika Belov-Wang’s legs, long and in long boots, and had speculated what lay farther up, but he didn’t realize he’d have an answer so soon. By the time he shut the door and turned back, her boots and skirt were off, and her panties too, if she had been wearing any. He found himself looking at a skimpy, lacy garter-belt, stockings, and a small puff of pubic hair. She said she needed help undoing her belt. He lost it, and he shouldn’t have. He couldn’t lock the door because he had misplaced his key the previous week and had forgotten to ask for another. He pointed to the door and said, “The door isn’t locked.” But she had already turned away and was stepping past his desk. She was a thin young woman. Tightly fit just under her small waist, the black garter rode two unsettling white buttocks. A familiar witches brew. When he reached her, she pulled him down with her on the small carpet and whispered, “Even better.”

  Somebody came into the room while they were going at it. He heard a gasp of a sufficiently high pitch that it could have been a woman, although it was more likely a man. He had not heard the door open, but he heard it shut. That was a month ago and he hoped, even prayed, that the intruder had been Colson, whose office was next to his. Colson Emslie often came in without knocking.

  He heard Ian Baker mention his name, there was clapping, and he made his way through the crowd to the platform.

  * * *

  In time the soirée lost its colour, and people’s faces grew out of focus. The Bakers moved through the crowd with practiced ease. He was introduced to a genuine Russian prince—very old and wrinkled, barely breathing. A woman who seemed as ancient as the prince looked around and remarked, “Not enough frivolity and frippery here.” Then, having forgotten who he was, she asked, “Are you with the KGB? No?” He had a long conversation with the very proud architect of the house and got a whole lecture about symmetry and the hierarchy of spaces. A welcome distraction from the polite nonsense about poetry and literature, but it was hard to get away from him.

  Kate Emslie slid her arm under his and leaned on him. She had gained weight.

  “A bit squiffy, Kate?” Laukhin asked.

  “Squiffy?”

  “Squiffy, squiffed. Happy with drink.”

  “Joan Geraldine taught you nothing worthwhile. Yes, squiffed I am. I better stop, I’ve got to drive Colson home.”

  Colson was talking to Ben. Ian Baker, separated from his wife, approached them with the woman Laukhin had admired earlier. He had followed her with his eyes after he’d finished his reading. From her body language he surmised that she knew hardly anybody that evening and wondered how she had ended up there. He discerned, or thought he discerned, a flirtatious side to her, the way she moved, the way she tossed her head back with laughter, the way she touched her hair. He felt melancholic and offended—his youth had passed.

  “Take your eyes off that shapely young woman,” Kate said.

  “It’s that body-molding tux.”

  “Art, it’s not a tux.”

  “Let’s join them.”

  He pulled Kate along. Ian made the introductions. Her name was Audrey Millay. Laukhin asked her if she had known the Bakers for a long time.

  “Not until today,” she said. “It’s an accident I’m here, an accident I’m in Toronto. Well, temporarily here. I’ll go back to England in a few months.”

  “A vacation?” Kate asked.

  “I thought I’d take some time off.”

  “From?”

  “Oh, I don’t know … mainly from married life. A sabbatical, in a way.”

  Audrey Millay sipped from her champagne flute. A droplet left hanging from her lower lip was unhurriedly reclaimed by her tongue. A beautiful woman, the body of a fashion model, but not the toothpick variety so common in the West.

  Ben said, “And a good thing it is. More women—what am I saying?—all women should consider it. A sabbatical from married life. Brilliant. The mind fogs up in marriage. Have a few affairs for a year and then, refreshed, duly return to your hubby. Civilized and practical. I wager it will lower divorce rates. My sister is toying with the idea, although she might have a permanent sabbatical in mind.”

  Ben was squiffed too. Everybody was, except Audrey Millay.

  “Is she here?” Audrey asked.

  “My sister? No, she’s probably in Corby Falls.”

  “Corby Falls?”

  Galya Baker joined them. “Audrey, my dear, you must meet some good friends of ours from England. Colson, please join us. He claims he was in school with you.” She hesitated, and then told her husband to come too. She smiled at the rest of them, took Audrey’s arm, and walked away with her. Colson and Ian followed her.

  Jean Lezzard, older and shorter than he remembered him, was chatting with Paul on the platform, although his student was mainly listening and shaking his head. It wasn’t easy to keep Paul quiet, and Laukhin surmised Lezzard was practicing the quaint, before-the-revolution Russian he’d acquired from his émigré parents. He’d seen the gallery owner earlier near the bar and delayed replenishing his drink until Lezzard moved away. Paul began to look around as if trying to get away, and then pointed to where he and Kate and Ben were. Lezzard waved his hand in their direction and began making his way toward them.

  “Shit, here he comes,” Laukhin said. “I’ve been trying to avoid him all evening.”

  “Who?” Kate Emslie asked.

  “Jean Lezzard. He’ll ask again to see my father’s journal, won’t take no for an answer. Change the subject, Kate.”

  “He looks like a desiccated beetle.”

  From the way he approached them, Laukhin guessed Lezzard also had many drinks that evening.

  “Artyom Pavlovich,” Lezzard said, “a beautiful poem, and so well recited. It brought tears to my eyes.” He repeated Kate’s name after Laukhin introduced her and kissed her hand. Returning to Laukhin, he added, “You haven’t dropped by my shop in a long while.”

  As he had feared, Lezzard began without pausing, always the same words or almost. A great admirer of Laukhin’s poetry, and fully aware of his many years of toil on his father’s journal, Lezzard, couldn’t wait to read it. He had always been intrigued by the artistic life in Russia during Stalin’s years. Alas, he was old. He certainly wouldn’t live long enough to see all the volumes of Pavel Laukhin’s journals published. In fact, he wasn’t sure he’d even see the first volume. Yes, he knew he had made this request many times already, but why not let him see the journals? Why not make an old man happy? He was ready to make a significant contribution to Laukhin’s department—within his means, of course.

 
He spoke a mixture of English and Russian, both with a French accent. Sighing, Laukhin repeated what he’d always told Lezzard—that his father’s notebooks were not at all readable, that they were now being deciphered and transcribed, but that the first volume of the journal meant for the public would be out soon. Listening to the abominable English accent of his own words, he thought that he and Lezzard were like two destitute vaudevillians who, desperately or inadvertently, had strayed into another country.

  “I’ll be long dead and buried by the time it’s all out,” Lezzard said. “What about the draft of the first volume? Humour an old man. What do you have to lose?”

  “Art is a stubborn mule,” Kate Emslie said. “Better tell us about the gallery, Mr. Lezzard. What’s new and—”

  Lezzard ignored her. “The galley proofs?”

  “An advance copy, that’s the best I can do, and only if I have enough of them.”

  “When will that be?”

  “The advance copy? End of the summer.”

  Kate excused herself.

  Lezzard turned his back on Ben in an attempt to get Laukhin’s full attention. “I stumbled on some old letters belonging to my mother. Letters sent to her during the late twenties and the thirties. We were in France then, in Paris, as you know, and my father was already dead. Some of the letters are of literary interest.”

  “In what way?” Laukhin asked.

  “They are from artists, well, mainly writers. I don’t know how it happened, we were fairly young then, my brother and I. She had literary friends, my mother. You know, the intelligentsia, the cultured old layabouts, do-nothings all of them, but lovers of the arts. I think there are letters to her from Pilniak, and Mayakovsky, and also Babel.”

  Ben appeared from behind Lezzard. “Sorry, who sent these letters to your mother? Did you say Babel? Isaac Babel?”

  Kate was right—Lezzard did look like a beetle, an annoyed beetle. He was short, bald, with a pointed nose, skinny limbs, and a protruding belly.

  Lezzard half-turned to Ben. He said he didn’t remember all of the names, but, yes, Babel was one of them. His mother had left an extensive correspondence, and he’d gone through half of it a year or so ago, when he had been close to moving house and had thought of getting rid of things. He had changed his mind, but the letters were still there. He was reminded of them tonight seeing Professor Laukhin. He’d have to go back and look at them again.

  Laukhin moved a couple of steps away. Lezzard talked too much, and he was blocking his sight line.

  Helen reappeared and said, “It’s time to go, Artyom Pavlovich. The bus is leaving.”

  “One more drink,” Laukhin said.

  Helen frowned. “I am tired. Help me here, Ben, you seem ready to go too. Where is Paul? I saw him ten minutes ago and he seemed wasted.”

  All right, they’d leave. It was one way to flee Lezzard.

  “Let me know if you’re interested in the letters,” Lezzard said to him.

  “Of course he’s interested,” Ben said, “very interested.”

  Lezzard stared at Ben, nodded and, moving carefully, left them.

  “He’s had much more to drink than I have,” Laukhin said. “Admirable at his age.”

  Paul joined them, and he had had his fill too. A fine scholarly group they were, Laukhin reflected, the professor and his students, all squiffy. Well pregnant Helen wasn’t, sober as a nun. He said, “If you want a ride back, boys, get ready.”

  As they lined up to get their coats, he asked for a couple of minutes. He walked around the emptying rooms but did not see Audrey Millay. She was gone, and he knew nothing about her. He was an old, certifiable idiot. This would never have happened to him in the past. When he got back to the other three, Helen looked crossly at her watch. Paul said it was snowing outside.

  “Snowing?” Helen scowled. “I thought we were done with it for this year. When will it end? I can’t walk in the snow with these shoes.”

  The car was parked up the street. Laukhin couldn’t see the neighbouring houses, only trees and the white road. The snow was heavy. It was quiet, with only the muffled sounds of slammed doors. The cars passing them seemed to have their engines off, as if being pulled along by invisible ropes.

  Ben sidled up to him. “Do you believe the old man? I mean, about the letters of literary interest?”

  “You heard him. Letters from Russian and Soviet writers, never published, never seen by anybody. Letters written to his mother. The mother lode. Bad joke? But a mother lode, nonetheless, if it’s true. I have my doubts, but we should check them out. From what I understand he’s willing to give them to me. He was half-drunk, mind you.”

  2

  Laukhin was in his office on St. Joseph Street, holding his regular Monday morning hour with Ben, a rather quiet, low-key session because he was nursing a hangover. He described his mood for Ben’s benefit—both exasperated and elated. Exasperated with his constitution, upset nowadays after an evening of only moderate drinking. Elated because the first volume of his father’s journal was almost ready—true, three years later than the date stipulated in his contract—only a few months away from the printing press. The 1936 – 40 volume, the first one chronologically, and the one Ben had mostly been working on.

  “The worst is over, Ben, I’m certain. I always believed the first volume would be the most difficult.”

  There was another cause for his elation. On Friday he had rung Bart, his agent, in New York and convinced him that there was much to be gained from the extensive introduction he had been working on. As he was about to hang up, Bart told him he just learned that the New Yorker had agreed on Marina Tsvetayeva as the subject of the next bundle. The journal excerpts on Tsvetayeva, Laukhin relayed to Ben, were needed by the end of August, at the latest, and would appear in an October issue.

  A brilliant idea, the bundles—each one a collection of entries from the journal related to one writer or poet—he had to give it to Bart. The agent had explained the bundled excerpts were a way to keep the public’s interest in Pavel Laukhin’s long overdue journal, and had promised the New Yorker material that was gripping, poignant, novel, and self-contained. The Tsvetayeva bundle would be the second one. The previous year, with his students’ help, he had linked many of the Fadeyev-related entries into a coherent narrative. The Fadeyev bundle turned out to be, judging from the letters to the editor, extremely successful. Long dead, Fadeyev may have been largely forgotten in the West, but his wild drinking, hard-line Stalinist positions, bouts of unexpected kindness, bitter last letter to the Politburo, and his suicide, provided ample drama. Whatever the reasons, it had been a pleasant surprise for everybody, and now there was pressure to prepare another bundle, one to come out just before the first volume of the journal. Pasternak had been considered, but such a bundle would have been impractically large. He was also too well known. Laukhin had proposed Marina Tsvetayeva and now they had the green light.

  He and Ben talked about Tsvetayeva as they went through the first of the excerpts in Pavel Laukhin’s journal involving the poet. Tsvetayeva had been a tug of war between them—a reverse kind, of pushing instead of pulling—and Laukhin felt he was slowly winning. Finally.

  Ben had been dithering for a long time over the exact topic of his thesis, although he knew it would be the Russian literature of the thirties. His best student was fascinated by the first reactions to the 1932 decree “On the Reconstruction of Literary and Art Organizations” (unveiled by Stalin himself at a meeting with Soviet writers held in the grand house of a vain, callous and declining Gorky), the slow loss of an already restricted freedom of expression and the gradual imposition of the rigid aesthetic rules of Socialist Realism, the paralyzing terror following the assassination of Sergey Kirov, and the arrest and execution of many writers. Yet Ben wasn’t sure whether to keep his thesis general or focus on one or two writers. He had Isaac Babel in mind, but Babel had written little in the thirties, or at least little that had surfaced or was known. Babel had even turned his
deficient literary output into a bitter joke at the 1934 First Congress of Socialist Writers when he said, “I have invented a new genre—the genre of silence.” To Ben’s disappointment, there was hardly any mention of Babel in Pavel Laukhin’s journal beyond trite notes like “Babel was sitting two rows in front of me, alone, chin down as if asleep,” and “Babel came late, had a quick drink, exchanged a few words with Fadeyev, and left.” Laukhin was pushing Tsvetayeva on Ben, convinced it was in his student’s interest. He felt Tsvetayeva had been the best of that remarkable generation of Russian poets first heard at the dawn of the revolution. He argued that as she was not well known in the West—less than Akhmatova or Pasternak or even Mandelstam—Ben could make a name for himself in academia with a thesis on her; and that there were excerpts on Tsvetayeva in his father’s journal that contained new and scholarly material. He badgered Ben relentlessly about her and her poetry, and told him to translate and research all of Pavel Laukhin’s entries that mentioned her.

  Laukhin’s arguments made sense to Ben, or at least that was what his student would say. But in the next sentence he’d add that he didn’t trust his critical appreciation of poetry, that he belonged, resolutely, in the prose camp. And yet, Tsvetayeva’s life had all the drama a scholar could wish for, and he was beginning to lean toward her as well. But he couldn’t decide. “Procrastinator,” Laukhin had sneered at Ben in the fall. “You’re dragging your feet, like a Soviet bureaucrat, afraid of consequences. Don’t worry. Whatever you decide, I won’t put a bullet in your neck at dawn.”

  Toward the end of their session the discussion drifted to Ehrenburg, whose name appeared frequently in the journal’s early entries. In the spring of 1938 he, Artyom, was almost two years old, the Laukhins were living in two tiny rooms on Merzlyakovsky Lane, and his father’s sister was dying of cancer in one of them. The bathroom and kitchen were shared with another family. His father had nowhere to write except at night, in the ill-lit, cluttered kitchen, the overpowering smell of unwashed dishes left in the sink. His distress was obvious in the many sarcastic remarks about family life that he jotted down. Ehrenburg was in Moscow at the time, hoping to be posted back abroad as a correspondent for Izvestia. For Ehrenburg the wait was long and unnerving, his fears and frustrations expressed in somber monologues. A couple of times he carried on about the last meeting he had had with Tsvetayeva in Paris. Ben knew that Laukhin had Ehrenburg’s memoirs and asked for them to do some crosschecking.