The Birobidzhan Affair: A Novel Read online

  “Come on, now! Fantastic! Splendid!”

  He grabbed her waist and lifted her off the ground. She could feel his hot breath on her bare shoulders. At no more than an arm’s length away, Stalin was lifting Egorova in the same way. The star actress’s eyes met hers for a split second. Marina thought she read encouragement in Egorova’s eyes.

  The dance stopped dead when she wasn’t expecting it. Marina tottered, sobering up, her head spinning. By reflex, she made a grab for Mikoyan’s neck. He held on to her, his hips pressed against hers, his chest closing on hers.

  She had the presence of mind to avoid lifting her face to his and to take a deliberate step back. A roar of laughter and applause broke out around them, undoubtedly as much for Mikoyan, in recognition of his skill in breaking in his partner, as for Marina.

  The glasses were filled with vodka. Voroshilov asked for a polka. Stalin laid another record on the gramophone. With his lion’s mane and princely profile, Sergo Ordzhonikidze grabbed Marina’s hand before Mikoyan could protest. Marina was surprised to find that, despite many years of handling weapons, his palms were soft. All around them, people were pairing off. This time, nobody was left without a partner. Nadezhda Alliluyeva asked Uncle Avel to dance. Her mouth open in a wide smile, she no longer seemed in the least bit angry. Egorova and Stalin were whirling around on the other side of the room.

  It didn’t take long for the hops and dives of the polka to cause mayhem, the couples narrowly avoiding bumping into one another as they whisked past. Ordzhonikidze was a more sensual dancer than Mikoyan. Marina could sense his excitement and eagerness to please.

  Inevitably, Marina and Ordzhonikidze found themselves right next to Egorova and Stalin. Egorova was sinking back into Stalin’s arms in blind submission, her head tilted back, her lips parted in a smile. He was laughing, his eyebrows raised, sharing a joke with Ordzhonikidze. At the next twirl, the two couples were so close they collided. Marina stumbled. Ordzhonikidze caught her, steadying her with one arm while he twirled around fast enough to make the light fabric of her dress billow like a sail.

  Stalin laughed, calling, “Very good, very good!”

  He twirled Egorova around in turn. And then everything went wrong. The record stopped turning, and the music slurred to a distorted mush and trailed off. The polka hadn’t finished. The pickup arm had probably not been lifted high enough.

  Still intertwined, the others shouted, “Joseph, Joseph, the gramophone!”

  But Stalin was in stitches, like a kid laughing over a good prank. He hung on to Egorova and kept waltzing around the room with her, in the silence left by the music. There were fresh clamors.

  “Joseph, the music!”

  He raised a hand, then wagged it as if maneuvering an imaginary pickup arm, while bending down to kiss the ample globes of Egorova’s bare breasts squeezed into her low-cut dress.

  “Joseph!”

  Marina jumped. Pushing her out of the way, Nadezhda Alliluyeva caught hold of Stalin’s sleeve.

  “Joseph, what are you doing?”

  “Nothing, Nadia!”

  “Do you think I’m blind?” she cried. Still laughing, Stalin looked around at the others.

  “Nadia! Nadiouchka! It’s not what you think! We’re just having a bit of fun.”

  His voice was slow and thick with alcohol.

  “Everyone’s in a party mood. It’s just a bit of fun.”

  “I know what your idea of fun is!”

  “That’ll do, Nadia! Calm down. Join in. Have a bit of fun yourself.”

  “You’ll be the death of me, Joseph! You’re a butcher! You’re torturing me like you torture everyone the world over. You’re a torturer, that’s what you are, a torturer. The worst man to ever walk the face of the earth!”

  “Hey, you! That’s enough!”

  “You be quiet! Not another word!”

  They were both yelling. Nadezhda Alliluyeva drew back. Her face was ashen. With one fist clutched to her breast and the other leveled at her spouse, she cried, “Don’t insult me. I do have a name and it’s not ‘Hey, you!’”

  For a moment, she looked as if she was going to keel over. Polina Molotova rushed forward, but Ordzhonikidze had already caught hold of Nadezhda Alliluyeva’s elbow. She shook him off fiercely.

  “Take your hands off me! Leave me alone. … ” Scattering the couples in her path, she hurtled toward the end of the room, still shrieking, “Leave me alone! Don’t speak to me again. … Ever!”

  Polina Molotova ran after her. They disappeared.

  An embarrassed silence fell over the room. Marina heard Stalin grumble, “What a fool! What did she do that for? What an idiot!”

  Cossack Semyon Budionny picked up some glasses and a carafe of vodka. He had an enormous gray mustache, and his eyelids were drooping as he approached Stalin. His boots thudded on the parquet.

  “Nadezhda Alliluyeva is too high-strung. She should know better than to speak to her husband like that.”

  He filled the glasses and handed one to Stalin.

  The next few seconds were as intense as they were strange. Stalin took the glass from Budionny, never taking his eyes off the door through which Nadezhda Alliluyeva had disappeared. All traces of fury vanished from his stony face. His cheeks and temples relaxed into an unexpected expression of dismay and pain. Suddenly he looked younger. This new mask was a pale echo of the Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili of long ago, the young man he had been before he had reinvented himself as Stalin.

  Perhaps at that precise instant, he sensed Marina watching him. He turned to face her. Their eyes locked as those of lovers might. Her wrist gave a jolt. The alcohol sloshed in her glass and spilled. He lifted her hand to his lips and licked off the drops of vodka. In the eyes of the most passionate man in the USSR, the wildcat in charge, there lurked the childlike incomprehension of a man who knew he had been rejected, denied a love that he still believed in. Oh, it was over in a flash, scarcely a thunderclap, but Marina felt the force of it.

  A lump of sadness formed in her throat. She had known that same pain. An orphan, she had always gone to such lengths to win love and admiration onstage and knew how to read the look that she had unexpectedly been privy to. Without thinking, without calculating, acting purely on instinct, she smiled. It was a genuine beautiful smile of encouragement, the kind that a woman gives a man when she catches a glimpse of his true self behind all the masks. Stalin’s eyes twinkled in reply. At least, she thought they did. Truth be told, she was never quite sure. Around them, the tinkle of glasses, the laughter, and the clamors of “Joseph, the music!” were already well on the way to restoring the noisy party atmosphere. Everyone wanted to forget about the scene that Nadezhda Alliluyeva had made.

  The inevitable events that followed happened in a blur. It might have been the effect of the alcohol. Everyone had his or her glass and nobody’s stayed full for long. Marina gave up resisting and drank the same as the others. Stalin went to get the gramophone playing again. Once the music had started, Egorova led him over to Marina. She put them together, thrust them into each other’s arms, so to speak, then whispered in Marina’s ear.

  “Be gentle with Joseph, Marinotchka. He needs a gentle hand.”

  The first dance was followed by another, then another and another … Marina and Stalin no longer danced with anyone else. Between dances, Stalin would go and restart the gramophone. He would then grab a glass and drain it as he made his way back to where she was waiting for him. The others—Mikoyan, Kalinin, and Ordzhonikidze—gave her a wide berth. She had become invisible. Even the women stopped stealing sidelong glances at her. She existed only for Stalin. He took to kissing her hand before taking her in his arms, his steps slower now, sometimes out of time with the music.

  In the end, she couldn’t even smell the tobacco on him anymore. Even though the windows were open, cigarette smoke hung stagnant around the chandeliers. Heavy with vodka, her breath became as thick and pungent as her partner’s. It was a miracle that she manag
ed to stay standing. She felt as if it was a real battle to get her jaw to move to answer Stalin’s sudden burst of questions. What parts had she played? Did she get stage fright? What techniques had she developed to overcome it? Had she already been in the movies? No? Why not? She should be. The cinema was the art of the century, a revolutionary art, the art of the people for the people, the ideal art for educating the masses.

  He talked as they whirled, making her head spin with words. Then, suddenly, he fell silent, watching her reaction from behind half-closed eyelids. Although they were more or less the same height, she felt incredibly small in his arms. They must make an odd couple, if you could call them a couple. Their duet was more like the lunge and lurch of a large clumsy cat and a mouse that had so far escaped its jaws.

  She laughed at the thought of it, much to Stalin’s pleasure. They laughed together, suddenly lighter.

  He started talking again, speaking faster than he danced. Theatre tended to dwell too heavily on the enemies of the Revolution, but it was still enjoyable. Nobody enjoyed it more than he did. What sort of thing did she like? Panferov’s Bruski or, better still, Gorky’s Egor Bulychev, or Dovzhenko’s adaptation of Earth?

  He reeled off a seemingly endless list of titles. And what about Bulgakov’s plays? No, she had never been in one of Bulgakov’s plays. Of course she hadn’t, she was still too young. She had time. You needed time with Bulgakov. He was a difficult man, a baffling genius. If Stalin liked him, it was against all the odds. The writer had contributed to an article in Pravda, “The Vertigo of Success,” about the outcome of the Revolution, also touching on Russian art. Wasn’t she familiar with it? She ought to read it the very next day; she would find it most instructive.

  “Bulgakov is a great man, Marina Andreyeva, a very great man, but don’t let that intimidate you. Never let yourself be put off by greatness, ever. Remember that.”

  She was too exhausted to reply. He seemed to understand. She bungled a step. Her shoe came off. She teetered like a sparrow, flailing wildly with one hand while clutching on to his sleeve with the other. He laughed like a kid. They had another fit of giggles. He clasped her waist with a kind of tenderness. His palm no longer felt heavy on the small of her back.

  He said, “I’m going to drop Bulgakov a line to tell him about you, Marina. He’ll see what you’re made of. If you really are a great actress, he’ll want you.”

  Did she murmur a thank-you? Perhaps not. She couldn’t remember, but she understood the significance of his promise and his more familiar form of address.

  Soon there were only two other couples left on the dance floor. Voroshilov and Maria Kaganovich were dancing cheek-to-cheek like companionable old lovers, Molotov and his wife in the old style, their hands joined over a handkerchief. Egorova seemed to have disappeared.

  That was the last dance. Stalin didn’t pivot the gramophone’s pickup arm back into place. He took Voroshilov aside. They were joined by a tall, thin man whom Marina hadn’t noticed until then. Later, she found out that his name was Pauker and that he was Joseph Vissarionovich’s bodyguard. They talked in hushed voices. Pauker was sizing her up. Marina turned her back on him and went over to the table but didn’t sit down, afraid that she wouldn’t be able to get up again if she did. After pouring herself a tall glass of water, she looked around for Egorova again, but her chaperone had disappeared, and so had Kaganovich and Uncle Avel.

  Marina thought longingly of her room and her own bed. Both seemed unreal, and she knew that both were more out of reach than a dream.

  When Stalin came back over to her, she was surprised at how natural it all seemed. It didn’t even occur to her to take her cloak with her when they left the Voroshilovs’ apartment. Side by side, they made their way down an arched passage. Pauker was close on their heels, but he suddenly vanished as if by magic.

  Their fingers intertwined of their own accord. Intoxication lent their gait a curious grace. She stopped thinking about who he was and what an odd couple they made.

  They hadn’t gone far when he took hold of her shoulders, spun her around, and clapped his hands over her eyes.

  “Don’t look! Don’t look until I say.”

  She obeyed. He pushed her forward. His arm slid round her waist and his hand pawed her stomach, where lingering beads of perspiration from the dancing had made the light fabric of her gown cling to her skin. She sensed a door opening. Cooler air wafted over her forehead. She yielded to the pressure of his hand. A different kind of silence hung around them, even smothering the sound of their breathing.

  He ordered, “Open your eyes, now.”

  They were in a movie theater. It was a tiny room, only just big enough for a dozen armchairs. A long couch was pushed against the curved back wall. Their feet sank into a Caucasian carpet. The cushions and seats were covered in green velvet overlaid with golden moiré. Framed by thick black cloth, the screen reflected the ochre light from the wall sconces.

  The door swung closed behind them as if on a spring. For the first time, Stalin pressed his lips to her bare shoulder.

  “If you’re ever in a movie, I’ll watch you on the big screen here.”

  After that, there were a few embarrassing moments while he slipped off her gown and drew her toward the cushions on the couch. He kissed her shoulders and neck again and cupped her breasts in his hands. There was nothing brutal about it. It was just a bit awkward, a bit rushed. When she was almost naked, he calmed down. His fondling became less urgent. Without daring to look her in the eye, he asked if it was her first time.

  “No, no.”

  Her own voice echoed back at her in a low croak like a whisper coming out of a cave. He didn’t ask how that could be at her age, so much the better. But when he felt for her mouth, she started to tremble. Again, he laughed like a kid.

  She didn’t really sleep. At some point she dozed off but felt as if she had woken up almost as soon as she had drifted off. The dim light from the wall sconces still reflected on the screen. It barely reached the back of the theater where they had collapsed onto the couch.

  Although they weren’t in a comfortable position, he had gone out like a light. For a long time, he had held her clasped in his arms, pinned to him. She hadn’t dared to move for fear of waking him. She was trying not to think. Eventually, exhaustion had plunged her into a woozy sleep. It was like having her head ducked under soupy water. She was just below the surface, on the point of waking up, once again aware of a heavy body weighing on her pelvis.

  With his head resting on her bosom, he slept. He still had his shirt on, but it was unbuttoned. His torso was a darker shape, looming in the half-light. Now and then, he snored. His breath stank of vodka. She didn’t dare touch him. Not that she found him repulsive or repugnant. It was nothing like that. She simply felt as if he were a total stranger to her again, as if he were not entirely human, a kind of statue propped up against her.

  She lifted her free arm to get rid of the pins and needles in her shoulder. Her naked flesh glowed in the dark like chalk. She wished she could escape from the images flashing through her mind, wished she could stop thinking about what she must look like just then, but now was not the time to give in to sleep. She couldn’t risk being asleep when he opened his eyes.

  Perhaps she had drowsed a little when she heard a noise, a swishing sound, like a door opened carefully. Fear woke her up with a start. She sat up as much as she could and scoured the shadows for a silhouette or shadow in front of the screen between the seats.

  But no, there was nothing there. She must have imagined it.

  She flopped back onto the cushions. His heavy head had rolled onto her chest. He muttered but didn’t stir. His mustache rubbed against the tip of her breast, irritating her skin. She carefully disentangled herself, lifting him up by his thick mane. Good grief! Anyone might have taken her for a mother disengaging a greedy infant. She blinked back the tears pricking at her eyes.

  If only there were a magic spell to turn that night into nothing more th
an a folly of her imagination!

  Her hand was still in his hair. She didn’t dare withdraw it for fear of cracking his head. What was he going to think of her now? Was he really going to write to Bulgakov? Perhaps he was right, perhaps she ought to audition for film roles.

  She imagined him there in the movie theater, sitting in one of the armchairs with the others—Mikoyan, Kalinin, Voroshilov, and Molotov—when she appeared on screen. Might he want to see her again? Would he ask Egorova to bring her back?

  But she couldn’t forget Nadezhda Alliluyeva’s shrieks, her fury. Shivering, she instinctively pressed the sleeping man’s head against her. Egorova had said that Stalin’s wife was “the most jealous prima donna that Saint Lenin had ever conceived.”

  But her jealousy was far from unfounded.

  “You’ll be the death of me, Joseph! You’re a butcher! You’re torturing me like you torture everyone the world over … ”

  Marina closed her eyes and, not for the first time, wished there were a magic spell to transport her from the Kremlin back to her own room in a flash. If only that could happen!

  She had no idea what time it was since she didn’t have a watch and if he had one, it wasn’t on his wrist. It couldn’t be long until dawn now. She only had to hold out till morning. Just a few more hours, and then perhaps she would be the queen of the theater. Who could say?

  The sound of voices in the passage woke them both at the same instant. She had eventually fallen asleep. Stalin propped himself up on his elbow. His look of surprise at finding her naked beside him lasted no more than a couple of seconds. Marina avoided meeting his gaze and sat with her arms clutched over her breasts. The air in the room was stuffy and stifling.

  There was a babble of voices, male and female, on the other side of the door, punctuated by shrill, impatient interludes, followed by muttering. It was impossible to make out what they were saying.