The Birobidzhan Affair: A Novel Read online

  And there she was playing mouse to the political big cats.

  What did they expect of her? Where was the trap?

  Thoughts such as these and her state of confusion must have been written all over her face. Beside her, Egorova dissolved into peals of laughter. The others followed her lead, the men more than the women, truth be told.

  A man in a black tunic and high boots, his teeth as white as snow, stepped forward. As if he had read her mind, he said, “My dearest Marina Andreyeva, you’re going to be the belle of the ball tonight!”

  He took her hand and turned to the others.

  “Our young comrade here is playing our sadly missed Larissa Reissner in Vishnevsky’s Optimistic Tragedy. Larissa in her prime, of course. After I saw her performance, I said to Galia Egorova, ‘Comrade Stalin simply has to meet this gem!’ And here she is!”

  He was “Uncle Avel.” A look from Egorova confirmed as much. He was bragging about his find like a market trader. The effect was instantaneous. The women turned their backs on them in unison, whereas the men drew nearer. Avel Enukidze made the introductions. Marina’s head reeled at the big names: Comrades Lazar Kaganovich, Anastas Mikoyan, Semyon Budionny, Grigori “Sergo” Ordzhonikidze, and Nikolai Bukharin, to name a few.

  Dropping curtsy after curtsy, Marina stammered, “It’s a great honor, comrade.” Their names were forgotten as soon as heard, or else muddled. Finally, old Kalinin rescued her from Uncle Avel’s clutches as he might have pulled her out of a whirlpool. With a gleam in his eye, he squeezed her hand in his soft warm palms.

  “Comrade Marina Andreyeva, were you aware that I knew your heroine, Larissa Reissner, well? Oh, I knew her all right! I knew her like the back of my hand. … ”

  “You weren’t the only one, Mikhail. With all due respect, all of us here knew the beautiful Larissa!” Budionny mocked.

  Buttoned stiffly into his Cossack commander uniform, he roared with raucous laughter, his lips pink under his English mustache.

  “Semyon is right,” Voroshilov chimed in.

  Jovial and still slim in his marshal’s uniform, he closed the circle around Marina.

  “And I do believe I knew Larissa better than you, Comrade Chairman. In 1921, I was with her and her rascal of a husband in Afghanistan. Now that’s what I’d call a real adventure. Is it mentioned in your play, Comrade Marina Andreyeva?”

  “Stop trying to impress our comrade from the theatre, Kliment!” old Kalinin rasped before Marina could reply. “You weren’t the one who knew Larissa best.”

  He brusquely pushed Budionny and the hero, Voroshilov, aside.

  “Polina! Polina Molotova, could you come over here for a minute, please!”

  A fairly tall woman, more elegant than the others, turned around. A lace ruffle fluttering at her chest softened her hard face. She stalked over, tight-lipped.

  “Polina, do you remember Larissa?”

  “How could I forget her, Mikhail? We were both commissioners in the Fifth Army. … ”

  “Well, now’s your chance, Marina Andreyeva!” exclaimed Uncle Avel. “Isn’t that the period of her life you act out in Vishnevsky’s play?”

  “Really?” Polina Molotova looked at Marina with distaste. “The play must be pure fantasy then. I don’t see much of a resemblance between you and Larissa. She was as blonde as blonde can be, with highly intelligent black eyes, not at all like you. She would never have worn a dress that … ”

  Polina Molotova stopped short. She was looking over Marina’s shoulder. Around them, people had stopped listening to their conversation.

  He was there. Marina knew it even before she turned around.

  He was a small man, smaller than she would have imagined, and was dressed in a plain green wool jacket. His pants billowed out over his high boots. The boot leather was impeccable, as shiny as a mirror, and so were his eyes, curiously jaundiced and slanted under his thick brows. She was shocked at how pale he was, incredibly pale. He had the chalky complexion of a bureaucrat who never saw the light of day, and pockmarks didn’t help. Damaged and pitted skin that never showed up on the photos or posters reflected the light in a strange way. His face was younger-looking than in the pictures though, much more alive, despite its pallor, and his hair shone under the lamps like a fine fur coat.

  His wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, was on his heels. Marina didn’t catch more than a glimpse of her at first. She lost sight of her amid the uniforms and jackets already swarming around Stalin, but Polina Molotova had tracked her down.

  “Nadia! Dear Nadiouchka! You’ve dressed up. Don’t you look beautiful?”

  Nadezhda Alliluyeva made her way around the long table, smiling. Nipped in at the waist but flaring out from the hips, her black dress flattered her slim figure. Its modest trapeze neckline, accentuated with soft gathers and pinned with a cameo, modestly hinted at the curve of her bust. The delicate skin of her neck was bare, with no necklace. Her face was not what you would call pretty. Her jaw was too heavy and her nose too blunt, making her mouth seem curiously small. Nevertheless, when she smiled at Polina Molotova, her long lashes fluttered like swallows’ wings. The shadows under her eyes lightened, and her lips gave a childlike twitch that was not without its charm.

  She had pinned a silk tea rose in her hair. For once, she wore it loose. That was what had won her Polina Molotova’s admiration and compliments. The other spouses vied for her attention. The room was soon ringing with voices again. Marina began to approach Nadezhda Alliluyeva to convey her compliments.

  “No!” Egorova’s fingers dug into Marina’s arm. “Don’t move. Wait. We’ll see him first.”

  Egorova fastened her gaze on the group of men. They disbanded. Stalin was laughing into his mustache over some witty remark Voroshilov had made, but Marina could tell that he was watching her like a wildcat from his half-closed eyelids.

  He padded swiftly up to them as if on ice, bringing with him the acrid odor of tobacco that Egorova had warned Marina about.

  He had to lift his head to look at Marina. She attempted another curtsy.

  Egorova made small talk about Vishnevsky’s play.

  He said, “Ah! Larissa!” Then nodding his head, he said, “Very good, very good!”

  That was all. Anyone might have thought that he wasn’t remotely interested in Marina. Nadezhda Alliluyeva was watching them while listening to Polina Molotova. Stalin grabbed a chair, and that was the signal.

  The next minute, Marina found herself once again sandwiched between old Kalinin and Anastas Mikoyan. Mikoyan was very handsome but had the cavalier attitude of a man who knew he was attractive to women. He had the dark looks of a thoroughbred Armenian and sensual lips under his long English mustache. Stars glittered on his jacket collar as well as in his black eyes.

  Nadezhda Alliluyeva sat opposite her spouse, a couple of places down, beside Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin. He was precisely the antithesis of Mikoyan. Under his receding hairline, his gray face was gaunt with fatigue and coarse like tobacco. He smiled at Marina, revealing a gap where one of his canines should have been. But it was the grin of a kind man.

  Or he looked kind, at any rate. What did she know?

  Later, in the years that followed, when she had had more time to reflect on how crazy that meal and the ensuing events had been, Marina often thought that it had all happened exactly as if it were onstage. They had all affected feelings, feigned expressions, and recited lines for appearances’ sake, some of them better actors than others. Was that why she had been invited, because it was all theatre at the Kremlin?

  But that brand of theatre came at a price, the highest there was.

  First, a beautifully choreographed troupe of women made an entrance, balancing mountains of food. There was beetroot soup, cured meats, eels in cream sauce, beef tongue with horseradish sauce, ravioli stuffed with veal, and pork sausage, not to mention the roasted pâté dumplings, the salad bowls of gherkins marinated in maple syrup, and hors-d’oeuvre dishes brimming with caviar—black caviar that
Marina had never tasted before. The carafes emptied as the glasses were filled. The heavy scent of Georgian wine and Crimean vodka mingled with the mouth-watering aroma of the dishes. Such unfamiliar excesses were enough to make the head spin. Everyone ate and drank to their heart’s content, and while they ate, they laughed and slurped. At first, a pleasant tipsiness spread, the kind of warm convivial atmosphere that always prevails at the beginning of a party.

  For a while, Marina did nothing but gorge on food and drink with feverish appetite. She felt a little giddy. The gallant Mikoyan replenished her plate and poured her glasses of wine. No doubt he guessed that she was hungry, and so did the others. They smiled as they watched her. A couple of times she felt Stalin’s eyes rest on her but she did not dare to meet his gaze. Besides, she never held Stalin’s attention for long. Egorova and some of the others had taken it upon themselves to entertain him.

  After a time, old Kalinin started asking her about herself. Where did she come from? How long had she been in Moscow? Were her parents proud of her?

  She swallowed and had to take another gulp of wine to pluck up the courage to mumble, “I don’t have any parents.”

  “Oh … ”

  “My father was killed in the Great War. He fought on the Hungarian front at Mezo Labores, where he was awarded the Cross of St. George, but died a few weeks later. That’s what my mother told me. I was only seven at the time.”

  Her reply had attracted Ekaterina Voroshilova’s attention. Sitting across the table from her, the woman had a well-groomed face and glassy eyes, but her skin was incredibly wrinkled, from her forehead to her chin, calling to mind a wizened apple at the end of winter.

  She asked, “And what about your mother, comrade? What happened to her?”

  Marina wasn’t sure whether to tell the truth. After draining her glass, she shrugged and explained that her mother had then met someone else, a carpenter. He had wanted to leave their hometown of Koplino and make his way in the new city of Leningrad. Finding herself pregnant again, her mother had followed her new husband.

  “But the birth didn’t go well.”

  Perhaps she was prompted by Ekaterina Voroshilova’s sympathetic expression, or the wine, or the full feeling in her stomach, or Stalin’s sidelong glances. Was he really watching her like a cat from behind his half-closed eyelids? Whatever the reason, Marina suddenly slipped into the role of actress. She brushed aside the past with a shrug.

  “Of course I wish I hadn’t been left orphaned. It was difficult at first. I learned to go it alone, as they say. But relying as much on what life throws at you as on your own strength isn’t all that bad. You learn to love truth and beauty. In any case, that was the answer to my prayers. I found a new family in my comrades in the theatre. Now, I only ever think of the future. The past is over and done with, isn’t it? There’s nothing more anyone can do about it. That’s what the Revolution teaches us, to work on building a bright future and commit ourselves heart and soul to it. The future is the best possible home we could ever have. New life is already in residence there. And what more could we hope for than to live a new life?”

  Her voice had grown louder as the sentences tripped off her tongue. The words and thoughts popped into her head as if from nowhere. She blew them into the air like bubbles.

  At her side, Mikoyan burst out laughing just as old Kalinin began to clap. A ripple of laughter and applause spread across the room.

  Bukharin remarked to Mikoyan, “It must have been a long time since you heard anything that fresh and innocent, Anastas. Bravo, bravo, Marina Andreyeva! That’s music to our ears.”

  This time Stalin looked directly at Marina. His smile worked two long creases into his cheeks. There was more than just mockery in his eyes. She detected a hint of surprise, and something else too, something that gave his face a new expression quite different from any other she had seen so far. However, it was impossible to know what he was really thinking.

  Marina quickly lowered her head. Her cheeks were on fire. What had come over her? She dreaded to think what Egorova must think of her. Fortunately, she was soon out of the spotlight.

  The heroic Voroshilov got to his feet, a glass of vodka at the ready, and the long series of toasts began.

  “To the memory of Vladimir Ilich, our guide!”

  “To the success of the thirteenth Congress!”

  “To our comrade, President Kalinin!”

  “To our comrade, General Secretary Stalin!”

  “To the downfall of land grabbers!”

  “To a Bolshevik victory!”

  Hands were raised and the liquor was knocked back with satisfied grunts. The alcohol burned Marina’s insides. The icy vodka ran through her body down to her fingers. She was going to be blind drunk in no time. The old warhorses around her could drink all night without keeling over, but she would never last. She bit into a gherkin, sunk her teeth into a slice of bread and pâté, but her mouth still felt like it was on fire. Opposite her, Ekaterina Voroshilova signaled to her simply wet her lips, not to drink. Just at that moment, someone else got to his feet. The two women laughed and wet their lips together. Marina let the alcohol drip into the corner of her mouth. She stole an anxious glance in Stalin’s direction.

  No, he was taking no notice of her. Egorova had his full attention. Her coos of mirth floated like silk above the coarse laughter exploding all around the table. Egorova must have been tipsy too, but she knew how to turn it to her advantage. Stalin himself seemed merry. His face was different again, younger and not so pale. His pitted cheeks seemed more youthful and smoother. He was convulsing in fits of laughter, throwing pellets of bread at Egorova. Having built up a small pile of ammunition in front of him, he was aiming for her cleavage. It wasn’t a very ambitious target, as Egorova’s gown was cut low enough to show a good deal of her bust. Most of the balls of bread were bouncing into her plate, but some rolled into her lustrous cleavage, disappearing between her breasts. Egorova squealed and wriggled, plunging her lacy fingers down the front of her dress, revealing a little more flesh and underwear, making them laugh even more uproariously. Of course, on either side of her, the handsome Sergo Ordzhonikidze and the Cossack, Budionny, could not resist offering to help her, earning themselves sharp rebuffs.

  “Hands off! That’s strictly off-limits. What are you thinking of?”

  She implored Stalin, “That’s enough, Joseph! Stop it, or I’ll make you come and fish them out yourself, in front of everyone!”

  That only made them laugh harder than ever. Stalin fired another volley of bullets. Egorova giggled and spread out her fingers to shield her breasts.

  Marina watched them, her face twisted into a wry grimace. She was fascinated. After a while, she noticed Nadezhda Alliluyeva’s face. Her forehead and cheeks were scarlet, her lips had all but disappeared into a trembling line, and her unblinking eyes were pitch black. The silk flower in her hair quivered so violently it was a wonder the thread didn’t snap. She was pulling at her napkin as if to tear it to shreds. Polina Molotova patted Nadezhda’s wrist soothingly, but to no avail. Egorova and Stalin went on with their stupid game as if there was nothing wrong.

  Marina averted her eyes. Beside her, Mikoyan stood up to make a fresh toast. “Death to the scoundrels who take food out of people’s mouths!” And the ritual began all over again. Glasses were raised, grunts were heard. And the storm broke. A momentary silence was shattered by a voice that cut through the air like a whip.

  “Drink, Nadia!”

  It was Stalin.

  “What do you think you’re playing at? Come on, drink up!”

  He stopped playing with the pellets of bread and Egorova’s breasts. His face had changed again, as though he had put on a new mask. His lips were no longer visible under his mustache, his jaundiced eyes were unflinching, the bristles of his bushy eyebrows were askew, and his skin was now as rough and coarse as granite. Marina could not help but admire him. Few actors were capable of such radical and perfect changes of expression i
n so short a time.

  Nadezhda Alliluyeva stared at him tight-lipped. She didn’t raise her glass either. The silence brought the whole table to a standstill.

  After what seemed like an eternity, Polina Molotova whispered, “Nadia … ”

  “He knows why I’m not drinking!”

  Nadezhda Alliluyeva slammed her glass down on the table. The vodka ran over the tablecloth, waterlogging the pellets of bread that had escaped Egorova’s cleavage.

  A groan rose from Stalin’s breast, but his face didn’t so much as twitch.

  Nadezhda Alliluyeva snorted, “Death to the scoundrels who take food out of people’s mouths, indeed … ! … That’s a bit rich!”

  “Be quiet, Nadia. Don’t be a fool.”

  “You’re not the only one with eyes in your head. I go out in the streets too. And I get letters. You have to live in the real world, Joseph. Famine is a reality. Even you can’t pretend it doesn’t exist.”

  She had taken the floor, her voice shrill and a little hoarse. Her words were no longer directed at her husband alone. She raised her glass again.

  “That’s right, you just carry on drinking and stuffing yourselves while Russia starves to oblige you.”

  “Nadia!”

  Marina stared into her plate. She could tell that people were watching her. Like red-hot irons, their eyes bored into her cheeks, her forehead, and the nape of her neck. Her heart was beating so fast she thought it might burst. Waves of terror ripped through her, sobering her up. Good grief! She would happily have given her eyes and ears not to have witnessed this argument, not to have heard the General Secretary being criticized by his wife! It was beyond belief! How could she possibly just leave the room and go home and sleep in her own bed after such a scene?

  She heard Kaganovich’s voice.

  “I’ve just come back from the Caucasus, Nadezhda Alliluyeva. I was conducting a little inspection in the Kuban region. Shall I tell you what I saw? Silos brimming with wheat, rotten wheat fermenting like old apples. It had been hidden there for two years by corrupt peasant scum! Fifteen villages of kulaks, tight-fisted farmers, rotten to the core, who would sooner let our people starve to death than sell their wheat to the kolkhozy[2]. That’s what I saw, Nadia. They’re the ones who are taking the food out of people’s mouths! An obtuse counter-revolutionary rabble, obsessed with the idea of getting rid of us, a festering sore that needs to be healed urgently. But, you see, Comrade Stalin here didn’t want me to settle scores with them once and for all. Such a pity, because I wouldn’t have minded. You must remember what Vladimir Ilich said, ‘A revolution without firing squads is meaningless.’ Well, we’ve only done what we had to do, nothing more. No more than a dozen shootings. As for the rest, my Cossacks simply prodded them in the direction of our beloved Siberia. And on a train, would you believe? Personally, I’d have made them walk all the way. Those vermin will find more food right in the middle of the steppe than our comrades in Minsk or Rostov, you’ll see!”