Purging the Party

Fortunately, Regional Secretary Basil von Fresser received the official letter ordering him to screen the ranks of the Communist Party membership before the envoy from Moscow arrived. No doubt the chistka (purge) had come to Brovensk because the town had been elevated to the status of a territorial seat. The letter ordered him to think like a tovarishch (comrade) in ridding the local party of undesirables. Secretary von Fresser, whose own preening behavior could have landed him in trouble, reminded the party faithful how he had protected them against the “death trains” and had gladly issued them membership cards, albeit for a price, a fact he preferred to ignore. As he spread the word of the official visit, he made a point of extolling the value of membership in the party and the privileges that belonging bestowed, like keeping one safe from purges.

“It allows you all manner of liberties,” he harangued his listeners, “and provides special food rations and clothing. Even now, as collective farms promise a bright new future, we still need the protection of a party card. It provides immunity from arrest by the civil authorities, and the guarantee of a good job, as well as the respect of the community.” He held up his card. “This marks me as a trusted tovarishch, wherever I go. Therefore, we must be ever vigilant to keep the party card from those who have been disbarred from holding it: terrorists, White Army officers, Tsarist officials, Old Believers, Trotskyites, and Mensheviks. And we must, as Comrade Zhdanov in Moscow orders, strip the card from those unworthy of it.” He paused. “We will be examining party members as soon as the GPU men arrive.”

But only one person stepped from the train, Irina Vostoyeva. The two policemen accompanying her had left the train when diagnosed with whooping cough. A stalwart party member, proud of the brave new Communist world that treated men and women equally, she had come from a long line of priests; in fact, her father had held a prominent place in the church before he stood up and renounced the cloth. His public renunciation had won favor for his daughter because it reinforced the Soviet position that religion was a superstitious habit that had been discredited by modern science. Her father had claimed that religion deceived the gullible and that he no longer wished to serve enemies of the people. At that point, he had thrown off his vestment, passed down the aisle, and left the church, accompanied by the wails and lamentations of the fanatical old women in the congregation.

Tall and bony, with closely cropped red curly hair and black-rimmed eyes that peered out of caves, Irina had honed her ripsaw cross-examining skills in Tashkent, prosecuting Islamic separatists. In Uzbekistan, her great talent was to make defendants think that she was a kindred spirit. Wearing a head scarf in court to give the impression of female modesty, she removed it when pulling off her mask and closing in for the kill. Her insomniac habits included the dangerous pastime of translating into German, under the assumed name of Katerina Tershina, the banned and self-exiled Russian writer Ivan Bunin, a critic of the Soviet system. To smuggle her translations into Germany—the Soviet postal system routinely opened the mails—she used couriers who moved translations of forbidden books between Odessa and Istanbul. Although a devoted Communist, her love of Bunin’s work transcended her political convictions, even though she was risking her freedom and perhaps even her life.

Irina Vostoyeva requested a private meeting with Secretary Basil von Fresser. She came to his office dressed austerely in black with a high collar, white and starched, that accurately reflected her pinched moral views, except of course for her translations. Basil tried to make light of her visit, though he knew from her demeanor that she had come bearing complaints. “You’ve probably discovered,” he said laughingly, “that our party membership has been swelled by dead souls.”

“That and worse.” She seemed to rise on her toes. “I have unearthed treachery.” Basil looked at her uncomprehendingly. “Hundreds hold party membership cards that have been bought or stolen or forged. Children use the cards of deceased relatives. In the provinces, I learned that people routinely carry the card of a father, uncle, or brother. You know the conditions of membership: sobriety, familiarity with socialism, activism, probity. Among the peasants I have seen anything but.” She clicked her heels. “We will have to institute a chistka and rid the party of all those who do not meet our high standards. Call your typist!”

Boris summoned Natasha, whose loveliness even Irina paused to appreciate. Looking at the girl and the party secretary, Irina immediately began to spin webs. Surely, here was a conspiracy unlike any other. In return for favors rendered to the party secretary, what did the girl receive? No doubt, all of her relatives owned party cards and received untold benefits.

“You do take shorthand?” asked Irina curtly.

“N-n-no,” she stuttered, “but I can type.”

Before a dumbstruck Irina could respond, Natasha had wheeled the portable table with its typewriter next to the prosecutor’s chair.

“I can type over a hundred words a minute, so please start.”

“Incroyable!” said Irina.

“How do you spell that? It’s not a word that the secretary uses.”

“Never mind. Just take down the following.”

The typewriter sounded.

“What are you writing?”

Again it sounded.

“Stop!”

And again.

Irina leaned over and pulled the sheet of paper from the typewriter and read out loud: “Never mind. Just take down the following. What are you writing? Stop.” Irina sighed. “My dear child, put a new piece of paper in the machine and type only when I say go. But you needn’t type the word ‘go.’”

Natasha shook her head in agreement at this frightening woman.

“To all party members.”

Natasha’s hands didn’t move.

“Well, why aren’t you typing?”

“You didn’t say go.”

Irina chafed at Basil’s chuckling. “You ass, leave us alone.” Quickly turning to Natasha, she said, “Don’t take that down.” Once Boris had left the room, Irina composed herself with a cigarette; in fact, she smoked three. Finally, extinguishing the last cigarette and taking a deep breath, she laid a hand on the typewriter and said softly, “Go.”

Natasha smiled and readied her hands like a pianist poised to begin her concerto.

“Dear Members of Our Beloved Communist Party, I hail you, comrades, for your tireless work on behalf of the motherland. We have before us yet another task, one that may prove far greater than any previous work we have undertaken. Saboteurs, spies, foreigners, and counterrevolutionaries have insinuated themselves into the party and must be purged. We will therefore, two days from now, be reviewing party membership cards. You who live at a distance from Brovensk need not worry. The period of review will take place for a week.

“Please come to party headquarters with your membership card and any documentation that will prove that you are the person whose name appears on the card. Your local registrar or Communist manager can give you a letter certifying your identity, if you have no documents.

“To guarantee the purity of the party, this purge is necessary, though not punitive.” Irina smiled at her alliteration, knowing that few party members had the literary sophistication to appreciate its effect. “Comradely yours, Irina Vostoyeva, Moscow Prosecutor for the Tenth District, USSR.” She lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.

Natasha handed Irina the piece of paper. After looking it over, Irina complimented the comely young woman on her flawless typing, eliciting a blush from the amanuensis.

Natasha hazarded, “If I may be so forward . . .”

“Yes?”

“Most of the people in this area, including the party members, are illiterate. They can’t read or even sign their names. No one will read it. Secretary von Fresser has often complained about the difficulty of reaching the masses.” She would have continued, but Irina slumped in her chair, her posture signaling defeat. Lighting another cigarette, she said, “Govnaw (shit)!”

The woman from Moscow, determined to clean up the Brovensk Party, announced she would be staying in town until every family in the province knew her mission. To her question, “Is there a boardinghouse nearby?” the party secretary told her no but she was welcome to stay at his home. Not wishing to incur the taint of compromise, she thanked Basil and inquired if another family would be kind enough to board her. Natasha volunteered the Lipnoskii house, to the chagrin of her mother, who regarded all authority with suspicion. Irina readily accepted, convinced that by keeping an eye on “Miss Prettiness” she would be led to all manner of official mischief.

Over dinner the first night, Irina met the family still resident in Brovensk: Anna, Razan, and Pavel. From the oldest boy, she learned that his father, Pyotr, had died from a surfeit of drink and that Razan had moved in with the mother shortly before they had married. Her nose for wrongdoing at first made her think that perhaps Razan and Anna had plotted Pyotr’s demise; after all, Razan had almost immediately found accommodation in the house and a bed that Pyotr had ruled. So Irina, who foraged for fault, plied Anna for details of Pyotr’s drowning. Anna repeated the story that she had pitifully shared with her neighbors and the local officials. When Pyotr failed to return, she had taken her coat and looked for him along the footpath that he normally followed. But though she crossed the icy stream in which he had drowned, she never saw him. Irina condoled with her hostess, smiled at Natasha, and asked, “How late does the local tavern stay open?” She lit a cigarette.

“It’s not really a tavern,” said Pavel, “so much as a roadside inn for travelers heading east.”

“So they serve at all hours?” she said, exhaling smoke.

Pavel knew in fact that one could purchase a drink at any hour of the day but did not wish to make trouble for his fellow townsmen. “By midnight the inn is usually dark.”

“Usually?”

“I’d say almost always.”

“Then your poor father had to make his way home in the early hours. Did no one help him?” she asked with alarm.

“Not that we know of,” replied Natasha.

“What are comrades for?” Irina said loudly, but to no one in particular.

Razan sat sipping his tea, fascinated by Irina’s probing of the dunghill that was Pyotr. Anna, though, felt the air charged with suspicion, and took care not to fall into some Bolshevik trap designed to catch the unwary. She knew these officials for prigs, and wondered whether her having shared her bed with Razan before marriage would render her morally unfit in the eyes of the party, which paid lip service to proper behavior.

“You must have been worried to death when he didn’t return,” Irina continued, “especially when the inn closed at midnight and at one o’clock he still wasn’t home. You did say that it was shortly after one that you put on your coat to look for him along the road?”

“Yes,” Anna said, volunteering no more than a syllable.

“The creek, I gather, isn’t very deep. But how does one cross it? There’s no footbridge.” She extinguished her cigarette.

Pavel answered, “We step on the rocks.”

“In spring, when the water is high, are the rocks covered?”

“No,” Pavel said, as Irina watched Anna’s face, “but they are slippery when wet.”

“Presumably a slick rock caused the accident.”

“It was winter,” Pavel replied. “The rocks were icy.”

“And you, Mrs. Shtuba, do you agree?” She lit another cigarette.

“Yes.”

As Natasha began removing the dishes, her mother rose to help.

“Permit me, Mrs. Shtuba, to ask your opinion about one point.” Anna resumed her seat. “Might the poor man have been alive but unconscious for some length of time?” Smoke issued from her nose.

While Anna pondered the question, Pavel rushed in to dispel the silence. “Not with his head face down in the freezing water.”

Losing patience, Irina asked, “And if his head had originally been face up, is it possible that someone turned him over?”

“Why in the world,” Anna said heatedly, standing up, “would anyone do that?”

“Ah! The very question I’ve been asking myself.”

Razan, fondly devoted to his wife, finally spoke. “Are you suggesting a murder was committed?”

“Your use of the passive voice suggests your unwillingness to give the murderer a name.”

“Murderer!” several people said in unison.

Spreading her hands and stroking the air, Irina tried to indicate that she had no family member in mind. “I am still concerned that a comrade would let this man leave drunk without accompanying him home. And if a tovarishch was at his side, which one, and why did he not extricate the poor man from the creek? Comrades do not let other comrades suffer.” She paused, clearly struck by an idea. “Perhaps then that explains what happened. The drunken man was so badly hurt that his fellows could not stand to see him suffer, and turned him over so that he would die without pain.”

“Is this the way prosecutors split hairs and shave facts?” asked Razan. “Because if it is, then no man is safe from the law.”

“Charles Dickens said the same thing,” Irina observed, with a knowing smirk, and put out her cigarette.

That night, as Razan and Anna lay in bed, neither could sleep. He kindly tried to comfort his wife by assuring her that just as a barber wants a face to shave, a prosecutor wants a case to solve. But Anna kept returning to the fact that for some reason, Irina Vostoyeva refused to use Pyotr’s name.

“She must have a reason,” said Anna, rolling over to face her husband, “and I can’t get to sleep until I’ve worked it out.”

* * *

The chistka took place on the second floor of a storehouse, smelling of grain dust and exhibiting a large picture of Stalin. No one had thought to remove the cobwebs or to sweep the floor. In the stifling air, the light from the one window illuminated the millions of motes and admitted from outside the constant sound of chatter and animal noises, reminiscent of a scene from the Middle Ages. A long table covered with a green felt cloth that Basil supplied—he thought it gave the provincial proceedings an air of authority—rested in the center of the room. Three chairs stood behind the table, for Irina, for Party Secretary von Fresser, and for Natasha, who was present to record the proceedings on her typewriter. Two chairs faced the table: one for the party member and, if needed, one for his witness. The party secretary had arranged for the hammer and sickle, like the sword of Damocles, to hang from the ceiling, while another flag fluttered outside the building.

In the front yard, dozens of people waited to be called. Some had come with their families, some with witnesses, some with a faithful pet, like a dog or goat or pony or pig. Dressed in khaki green, Irina evinced austerity, while Natasha wore a flaming red dress and colorful babushka. For the occasion, Basil had brushed his brown gabardine suit, polished his black shoes, and oiled his hair.

Irina had looked over the list of party members the night before, noting the absence of last names. How was the party to tell one Ivan from another? When she asked Basil this question, he had replied: by their village, their street, or their occupation. Ivan the mason, with his immense hands, now stood before them, tipping his cap and waiting for his superiors to tell him to sit.

“We are all comrades here,” said Irina, striking a note of equality. “Sit and relax. I have just a few questions to ask you.”

Ivan perched on a chair, twisting his cap in his hands.

“May I see your party card?” she asked, as the typewriter began its interminable clicking.

“Which one?”

“Yours.”

“I have several. From my dead father and uncle and brother.”

“Your own.”

“Why do I need my own when I have three others?”

“Please give me all three cards.” Ivan passed them across the table. “Thank you.” Turning to Basil, she said peremptorily, “Strike his name from your membership list.” Straightening her back, she said to Ivan, “As you leave, please send in the next person.”

The tanner, Jury Stas, smelling of some chemical, explained that he had lost his party card and had been too busy to request a new one.

“Comrade Stas, tell us,” said Irina, “who was Karl Marx?”

“Sounds German to me.”

“He was.”

“Maybe a friend of the kaiser. Yeah, I think I heard that from my wife. He was the kaiser’s friend.”

Disgusted, Irina baited him. “Which one, Wilhelm the first or second?”

Basil held up two fingers on the side of his cheek farthest from Irina and mouthed the word “second.”

“The second.”

“Good. To have your membership card restored, you will have to take classes in socialism. Please take note, Secretary von Fresser.”

“Right. We will offer courses starting next month.”

Stas exited dispirited but not completely discouraged. In no time, word spread that to pass the purge a person would have to identify Karl Marx and answer questions about socialism. Outside, the few literate peasants shared what they could with the others, as fear gripped the group.

“What was your father’s occupation?” Irina asked the next man, Ivan Merski, who had lost his left thumb in a sawmill.

“A farmer.”

“Did he own his own farm?”

He laughed. “Peasants don’t own anything.”

Irina shuffled some papers in front of her and replied, “According to local land deeds, your father owned sixty acres.”

“My father? He never told me.”

“He was a kulak.”

“What’s that? I never heard the word.”

“A landowner, a moneylender, a parasite, an enemy of the people.”

“If he owned land, how come I have to work in a sawmill?”

“The government confiscated his property. Hand over your card.”

Natasha couldn’t keep up, though she kept typing as rapidly as her fingers could cover the keys. Taking one sheet of paper from the machine, she quickly replaced it with another, dropping the finished sheet in a wooden box, bearing an official seal.

Bogdan, a drunkard with a long-suffering wife, asked Irina to repeat her question, as he slouched in his chair.

“You are accused of passivity. How do you plead?”

“My papers are all in order,” answered the red-faced and bulbous-nosed former shoemaker, passively ignorant of the word.

“Yes, I can see that for myself, but the party secretary tells me that you show no enthusiasm for party activities and, in fact, you have never attended a party meeting. Slackers and shirkers forfeit their rights, unless of course . . . you can identify any Trotskyites, Mensheviks, White Army officers, or Tsarist police among the local population.”

Bogdan sneezed, held a forefinger to his nostril, blew the mucus on the floor, and considered Irina’s offer. “I can point out some drunks and womanizers, but those other kinds I don’t know.”

“Give us the names of the drunks and womanizers, and don’t fail to include yourself.”

Bogdan reeled off several names and rose to leave.

“Your card, please,” said Irina.

“You said I would get to keep my card!”

“Only if you become active in the affairs of the party.”

He handed her his card and spat on the floor.

“Basil,” Irina ordered loudly for Bogdan’s sake, “I want that man punished for a lack of hygiene. Understand?”

“By all means,” said Basil, putting a black mark next to Bogdan’s name. “For starters, I’ll require him to sweep out this warehouse.”

Before Arkady Ivanovich entered the cavernous room, Basil said, to the surprise of Natasha, who looked up from her typewriter and gaped, that Arkady’s membership card was probably forged.

“How do I know?” he asked rhetorically, troubled by Irina’s comment in private that the books failed to balance. “Isn’t the man a printer, with ink-stained hands, and didn’t you imply, Comrade Vostoyeva, that the local membership rolls were padded?”

When confronted by Secretary von Fresser’s accusation, Arkady Ivanovich stared at him incredulously. But when Irina pressed him with questions, Basil repeatedly winked at Arkady behind her back.

A moment later, Arkady admitted his forgery and added, “Now that I got that off my chest, I feel much better.”

“How many cards have you forged?” asked Irina.

Behind her back, Basil held up both hands and opened and closed them three times.

“About thirty or so,” Arkady said.

“I want the names,” Irina ordered, nearly touching him as she reached across the table with an extended arm and pointed finger.

Basil interrupted. “Arkady, get someone to record them tonight, and I’ll collect them in the morning.”

“Your card!” Irina demanded.

Arkady passed it to her, apologized, and bowed out of the room.

“Thirty forgeries still doesn’t account for the discrepancy between members and dues.”

“Brovensk,” said the secretary, “is not without thieves. Though I am reluctant to admit it, we have our fair share.”

“How many people have keys to the files?”

He could have implicated his wife and Natasha, but he chose to limit the damage. “I have the only key.”

That evening at dinner, Irina Vostoyeva imbibed plum brandy far more potent than her usual glass of white wine. In a slightly tipsy state, she told the family that she loved them and asked Anna and Razan to join the Communist Party.

“I’ll spoon . . . sor you. No one would drear . . . dare doubt my word.” Her eyelids drooped, and her jaw sagged.

Razan pleaded that he was a foreigner, and Anna said she would think it over.

“What’s to wink over, what with all the prib . . . ledges you’ll . . . an-joy.” She would have continued had she not slipped from her chair to the floor and passed out.

Pavel lifted her onto his huge shoulders, as a child might a rag doll, and put her to bed. A short time later, Anna crept into her room and removed her briefcase, which she searched and then returned to its former place. In the morning, Irina complained of a migraine, but she managed nonetheless to take her briefcase and stagger off to the warehouse.

Party Secretary Basil von Fresser had spent the evening in the company of Arkady Ivanovich, the two of them composing fictitious names in faraway villages and hamlets. Basil also assured his good friend that after the woman from Moscow had left, Arkady would be given a real membership card, one from the dozens stacked neatly on his desk.

Irina’s foul mood colored her questioning. Poor Petrovich, the tailor, had the misfortune of facing her first. Fingering a thimble, his constant companion and, until then, unfailing talisman, he faced Irina’s withering interrogatives.

Previously, he had counted his worst moments as those coming from Razan, who had hounded him for months to make an overcoat that would be the envy of all. Money, the barber had said, was no object, and insisted that the coat be fashioned from sable and reach his knees, with a fur collar of marten, a hood lined with velvet, and a thick padding of calico wool sewn with fine double seams of heavy silk thread. The tailor could hardly believe his ears. In front of him stood a Jewish barber who had taken up with Anna Lipnoskaya and was now requesting an overcoat fit for a Tsar. When the tailor tried to dissuade him, Razan had answered, “I found it in a book.” Although Razan was Albanian, he believed, like most literate Russians, that the ideas found in books enjoyed a divinity not found anywhere else.

Agreeing to make such a coat, Petrovich had opened the door to the very devil. Hardly a day passed that Razan did not stop to ask about the progress of the great creation or insist on yet another fitting. The coat, after all, had to be perfect. Nothing less would satisfy this crazy barber. What could explain Razan’s obsession?

How could Petrovich have known that as a young boy, Razan had been given a blue snowsuit—the talk of his friends—made from the skin of a bear, with a zipper running from neck to knee? But one day, after the school bell had sounded, when he slid back the door of the cloakroom, he discovered that his coat had been stolen. So distraught was the little boy that he swore to himself that someday he would own the grandest overcoat in Kishinev. But living now in Brovensk, he would settle for the handsomest work that Petrovich the master tailor could make. And so it was that Razan hounded the poor man until he had produced what Petrovich himself admitted was his masterpiece.

“Identify Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, V. I. Ulyanov . . .” Two other names, forbidden names, flowed from Irina’s lips, though she couldn’t remember summoning them forth: “Ivan Bunin and Osip Mandelstam.” She attributed this slip to the plum brandy. To protect herself, she said, “Forget the names and tell me about the socialist theory of value. Is it the labor that goes into the manufacture of an object that determines its worth, or supply and demand?”

At a complete loss, Petrovich started to explain patiently how he fashioned trousers and dresses. “After measuring the person, I make a pattern, which I lay on the cloth and copy with chalk. Then I take my scissors . . .”

Irina interrupted. “Answer the question!”

A terrified Petrovich replied weakly, “I don’t always get what I think I deserve, but then the customer is always right.”

“So you believe that the buyer and not the worker determines the worth of a thing?”

“I know only what I know. If I ask for too much, I don’t get paid.” He shrugged. “So I take what’s given to me.”

“Under socialism a worker should be paid a fair exchange for his labor. If you are not, you should complain to the party, which will act on your behalf. That is one of the glories of socialism.”

“If I complained, no one would come to my shop. You see . . .” He paused. “What you say sounds good, but in practice . . .”

Irina rounded on Basil, wanting an explanation. “How could you allow any man or woman to be exploited?” She lit a cigarette. “In addition to having inaccurate records, you permit capitalism to flourish here in Brovensk. The Central Committee shall hear of this!”

A cowed Basil said that Irina’s presence would serve as a prod to purge from the party double-dealers, moral degenerates, exploiters, the undisciplined, and party officials who had been turning a blind eye to malfeasance and worse.

“Thank you for the wake-up call,” Basil said.

She studied him for several seconds, particularly his bull-like neck, which brought to mind fragments from Ivan Bunin: “The stud pinched the sagging skin under his chin, strangling him . . . his eyes shone from exertion . . . his face was livid . . . he saw his ridiculous self in the mirror.”

“Comrade, have you ever looked at yourself? Have you ever honestly assessed your behavior? I ask because I may have to recommend that you be removed as party secretary.”

Natasha stole a glance at Basil, who was shaking his head sadly and looking like a beaten dog. Even with all his posturing, he had tried to improve the lot of his town. She felt sorry for him. No one should have to suffer public humiliation. Couldn’t Irina have told him in private about her reservations? Why speak in front of others?

Kirill the baker had about him the sweet smell of cinnamon. His buns were a delicacy in Brovensk and carried by horse cart to nearby villages. Wisely, he came prepared, offering a sweet roll to each of the three people seated at the table. At first, Irina resisted, but the aroma finally drove her to enjoy the tastiest pastry she had ever eaten. Her mood immediately brightened.

“Tell us about your origins: your parents, their occupation, their house. According to the land records, a wealthy family, a noble one, owned thousands of acres not far from here. The family had six children, one of whom was christened Kirill. Kirill Glebovich Antsyforov, to be exact. You wouldn’t be the same person?”

The baker knew that the party had access to the church registry of births and deaths. He would just make matters worse if he denied coming from a noble family. To the shock of Basil and Natasha, he declared, “I am a bastard son, who has renounced his family. I even paid to have a personal statement printed in the newspapers.”

“So you have denounced your family?”

He pretended to wipe a tear from his eye. “I have.”

Irina found herself at a loss. The children of nobility, legitimate or not, were always denied party membership. But the taste of the cinnamon bun lingered, so she boldly, and illegally, declared that a bastard son couldn’t be held responsible for the behavior of his father. Kirill was therefore entitled to party membership, and could he, by the end of the day, please drop off a few cinnamon buns for the hardworking committee? He agreed and departed.

Several women then appeared before Irina; all but two of them, Mary and Oksana, were fieldworkers, deeply tanned, with calloused hands and muscular bodies. The daughter of a priest, Mary explained that because she was unable to support herself, she had gambled that by becoming pregnant, the young man would have to support her. Instead, he abandoned her and the baby. She bravely admitted that she had been reduced to prostitution “to make ends meet.”

This explanation actually brought a rare smile to Irina’s face as she considered the pun. “Where do you . . .” Irina paused out of tact.

“Do it? In a room behind the Borodins’ barn. Either there or in the barn itself.”

“And the baby . . . while you . . .” Again she interrupted herself.

“He’s still in a cradle. I just tuck him in. I’m only gone a few minutes.”

Irina gave this comment some thought. The few times that she had slept with a man, she had resented when he quickly came and went. She thought them unmanly, anti-Bolshevik, not to be more considerate of the woman. Now sitting in front of her was a woman who contributed to the diminishment of love, in both senses, feeling and time.

“How did you earn a party card when you’re a . . . um, a woman of no visible means of support?”

Mary bit her lip, but said nothing. Her paleness made her look ghostly, and her gauntness, a skeleton. Irina wondered why men paid her for sex. There was so little of her.

“Please answer the question!” she said, pounding the table. “It bears on my trip to Brovensk and this chistka.”

“I can’t,” she wept.

“And why not? Is the card forged or stolen?”

“No.”

“Let me see it.”

Mary handed over the card and wiped her eyes.

“It looks perfectly in order. So how did you obtain it?”

Mary just shook her head.

“Did Party Secretary von Fresser give it to you?”

“No.”

“Then who did? Perhaps it’s the young man who got you in trouble. He’s the one, isn’t he? He wanted to make it up to you.”

“No, I haven’t seen him since I told him I was pregnant, and he was the father.”

“Then you refuse to tell me how you got the card?”

“I can’t,” she said and wept anew.

Irina scribbled a note and stamped the membership card invalid. “You can leave.”

“Even with the card I was barely able to clothe the baby.”

“Tell me who gave you the card, and you can keep it.”

Mary slowly rose from her chair and like a holy penitent, with bent back, shuffled from the room.

A seething Irina couldn’t quite locate the source of her anger, though she vaguely knew that it had something to do with herself.

Oksana, whose name indicated that she came from Ukraine, caught Irina’s attention because of her golden braids, looped lyrically over her ears, and because she had lived in Kiev during the Civil War.

“You have only in the past ten years come into this part of the country,” Irina observed, “so you must have been a teenager when the White Army occupied Kiev.”

“Yes.”

“Were you employed or in school?”

“Employed.”

“Where?”

“In a Jewish home.”

“As what?”

“A Sabbath goy.”

“Religious imbeciles.”

“They treated me well.”

“No doubt they reeked with money.”

“They never went barefoot.”

“Why did you leave?”

“Jews were dragged into the street and shot when General Kornilov’s White soldiers overran the city.”

“Who is your current employer?”

“I work for Kirill the baker.”

* * *

The last to leave the warehouse, Irina sorted through her briefcase and discovered one missing sheet: the first page of the introduction to her current Bunin translation. She would have to ask the family members if they had seen it.

After dinner, Irina declined the offer of peach brandy. She had enjoyed two glasses of Chardonnay and had no desire to repeat the previous night’s misadventure.

“You didn’t by any chance come across a sheet of paper that I left in my room?”

Anna shrugged, and the men said they had seen nothing.

“Strange, I could have sworn that I saw it in my briefcase. Perhaps I set it aside and you took it for rubbish.” She cast her eyes on the trash bin. “The writing was not in Cyrillic script.”

Irina stayed up late, studying every piece of paper she had brought, including those secreted behind her small portrait of Stalin. No luck. Shortly after 1:00 a.m., she heard the backdoor softly open and close. On previous nights, she thought she had heard footsteps on the back stairs. Turning off her light and drawing back the window curtain, she saw Natasha leaving the house. Did Natasha regularly go out and, if so, for what reason? Irina’s investigative instincts led her to dress and follow “Miss Prettiness” through the dark streets, fully expecting the girl to rendezvous with some handsome lad. But Natasha made directly for the warehouse, unlocked the door, and disappeared. Irina stood outside the building, brooding from behind a hay wagon.

When a light appeared on the second floor, her suspicious nature drove her to follow. Knowing that the stairs creaked, she removed her shoes and picked her way to the top, where she paused and gently turned the door handle. Natasha was seated at her typewriter. On seeing Irina, she ripped a sheet of paper from the typewriter and tried to stuff it down her dress. Irina intercepted her, asking, “And what is our dear Natasha typing?” As she read it, her black look boded ill for “Miss Prettiness.”

“Arkady never said these things!” Irina thundered. She opened a folder and read the contents. “Nor did Bogdan or Dimitri or Ivan or any of the others. You are forging transcripts. I see it all clearly. You intended to replace the official transcripts with these, and I wouldn’t know until reaching my desk in Red Square. Well, your treachery has been exposed, and I can assure you that you will lose your lovely looks in a work camp. Why this deceit?”

Natasha rested her head on the typewriter and cried so copiously that she ruined the ribbon. “I have changed the transcripts,” she sobbed, “because I was incapable of not changing them.”

“The Communist Party is no place for bleeding hearts. You must be strong. No compromises, no wavering, no favors.” She removed a cigarette. “I cannot bring myself to believe that you acted on your own. Who asked you to falsify the records?”

Natasha arrested her convulsive shaking and replied through her tears, “It was my own idea. I swear!”

“Socialism has put an end to blat. No more pull. Connections with black marketeers and speculators will no longer get you special treatment. Thieves, cheats, toadies . . . they are all wreckers. Bolsheviks proudly look truth in the eye and act accordingly!”

“These people have large families,” Natasha pleaded, “and depend on their membership cards for rations and clothing.”

“If we are to create a world in which people aren’t always dreaming of a better future, we have to perfect our current state.”

“What will you do?”

“When I board the train for Moscow, you will as well.” She fiercely pulled back her shoulders. “Brovensk lacks the judicial apparatus to hear your case properly. My guess is that you will be found guilty and sent to a camp near Lake Baikal or to one outside of Voronezh, for ten years. With good behavior, perhaps five.”

Natasha’s tears increased. But Irina ignored her, gathered up the incriminating documents, and left the warehouse.

The next morning, as the family sipped tea and nibbled on the cinnamon rolls that Kirill’s assistant had left on the doorstep, no one spoke. Natasha had staggered home after 3:00 a.m., awakened her family, and confessed her forgeries. Pavel, hearing his sister’s crying, joined the others in the bedroom. His first instinct was to suffocate Irina. Normally gentle, Razan raged and volunteered to slit her throat with his razor. But Anna persuaded them to wait until she had spoken to the party secretary, Basil von Fresser.

“He excels at only one thing,” Pavel objected, “womanizing.”

“What you say is true, but I know the man to have a heart.”

“If he won’t help . . .” threatened Pavel, “I’ll . . .”

“He’ll help,” Anna assured him.

Natasha clung to her mother like a needy child, while Anna gently stroked her hair.

“Should all else fail,” Anna said, “we will hide you in a hayloft and, when the time is right, move you to another town. I promise, you will not be leaving for Moscow with Irina!”

Anna put on a freshly starched apron and babushka. Opening the bottom drawer of her dresser, she removed the icon of Saint Julianna. She kissed the icon in its imitation-gold frame and whispered:

“Most Pure Julianna, You are of the righteous, and are therefore worthy of glorification by Christ God. You trample underfoot the destroying passions of evil, bringing health to the faithful.” She knelt. “Protect my daughter, Natasha. Blessed be your name. Amen.”

Returning the icon to its hiding place, she left the house.

Basil answered the door in a foul mood. Who could be ringing his bell at five in the morning? He wished for a servant, but to have one would have cost him his party membership. Damn those busybodies! But once Irina had left Brovensk to torment other towns, he would adopt a child as a way of showing his concern for the dispossessed and downtrodden. He knew a twelve-year-old girl whose father had been a Menshevik, thus making employment for her virtually impossible. By doctoring her papers, he would give her a different past. And then, in the future, she could answer the door and run errands and bring him his tea.

“Shh,” said Basil, as Anna entered the house, “Mrs. von Fresser is still sleeping and doesn’t take kindly to rising before nine.”

Anna followed him to the door of his study, which he unlocked with a key that he fumbled out of his pocket.

“Important papers,” he said grandly. “I have to safeguard everything, especially with our friend from Moscow in town.” Exhausted, he sank into his overstuffed chair, behind his enormous walnut desk, made to order for the effect. He even lacked the strength to rest his feet on the green blotter, a habit that he employed to intimidate underlings. “Sit, sit!”

Anna chose the straight-backed chair with a wicker seat because it invoked India and Burma, places that teased her imagination. She had never before entered Basil’s study, and found his wall decorations captivating: family photographs, reproductions of famous paintings, a child’s drawings, a medieval leather helmet, framed certificates, and, hanging on the wall behind his desk, a large photograph of Stalin. Although she had seen dozens of the Supreme Leader’s portraits, none of them looked quite like this one. The face was undoubtedly Stalin’s, but his eyes seemed to peer in every direction. Perhaps what hung before her was an artist’s interpretation. She stared at the face, when suddenly the Stalin smiling out of the frame above Basil’s head seemed to move. For a moment, she thought the portrait, like a cancer, was infiltrating the other wall hangings and engulfing the room.

“Now tell me what brings you here in the middle of the night. It’s not about Natasha, I hope.”

“As a matter of fact it is.”

Basil rose from his chair and stood as stiff as a Prussian diplomat. “I never touched her. If she said I did, she is lying.”

“Sit down, Basil. If anyone touches her it will be Alexei, and for both our sakes, I hope he does.”

“Madam, I have plans for my son, and they do not include marriage to the daughter of a . . .”

Anna interrupted. “All those party membership cards you’ve sold for a handsome profit: Natasha knows all about them.”

“I have sold only a few during my term in office, even though the countryside seems to be rife with them.”

“Perhaps,” she volunteered, “because of Igor the forger.”

He held up a hand. “The name means nothing to me.”

“Bribery buys blindness.”

He sighed, “Natasha must have told you.”

“Yes. I even know about Mary, the priest’s daughter.”

“Ma-ry,” he sputtered. “She wouldn’t!”

“She didn’t. Mary rents her hovel from Jury Stas, and Stas and my son Pavel are friends. You want to know more.”

He sank back into the chair defeated. “I think I’ve heard enough. What do you want?”

“As you know, Natasha’s been changing the transcripts.”

Basil tried to object. “It was her idea!”

“But you,” she pointed at him, “agreed not to notice.”

“All those people ruined. How could I not?”

“Good, then we can get down to business.”

“About what?”

From her apron pocket, she removed a neatly folded piece of paper and handed it to Basil.

Reaching for his glasses, he asked, “What does it say?”

“I don’t know. The language is foreign. But I have the feeling it may be important.”

He glanced at the paper. “It’s in German.” After reading the page carefully, he dropped it on the desk, clearly confused. “Where are the other pages?”

Anna told him that she had removed the paper from Irina’s briefcase, leaving the others untouched. “If it will help, I can probably take those, as well.”

“Not necessary,” said Basil, gnawing on the end of his pencil and lapsing into a brown study.

Anna waited for Basil to gather his thoughts. Well aware of his reputation for posturing, she chose to believe that for all his preening—yes, he was a popinjay—he was not a cruel or stupid man.

“Unless I’m mistaken, this is the first page of an introduction that our friend Irina has written for one of Ivan Bunin’s novels.”

“And who is Ivan Bunin?”

“A writer on the forbidden list.”

“Nowadays everything is forbidden. What does it mean?”

“If you are found with one of his books or if you speak his name in the wrong circles, you can be sent to a work camp.”

“Just for reading a book?”

“Russians care more about the written word than the spoken, and you know how Russians love to talk.” He wiped the perspiration from his brow. “In this country, we take literature so seriously that we’ll kill a writer for any ideological deviations.”

“And those who write about forbidden writers?”

Basil drew a finger across his throat.

Anna smiled broadly. “Saint Julianna be praised!”

The party secretary and Anna remained in colloquy the rest of the morning, causing Basil to arrive late at the warehouse. A red-eyed Natasha sat at her typewriter, and a silent Irina pored over her papers. As Basil took his place, Natasha whimpered. The party secretary tried to comfort her.

“No need to fret, child. Today is the last day of the chistka.”

Irina said sourly, “For some, but not for our gorgeous Natasha.”

Basil sympathetically patted Natasha’s shoulder. “We’ll see, we’ll see,” he said, and received in return a grateful smile.

Once again, the interviews discovered numerous false membership cards, which Irina confiscated. When the last person had left, she requested a meeting with Basil, in his study, to discuss the implications of the last few days. Her severe expression told him, like storm clouds, that he would have to endure some heavy weather. They exited with a softly weeping Natasha stooped over her typewriter.

Basil made a show of taking the office key from his pocket and commenting that he always locked up his valuable documents. Irina, as if wishing to emphasize the seriousness of their business, hastily seated herself. Basil plopped into his padded desk chair and put his feet on the blotter. Irina sniffed at his poor manners, crossed her arms over her chest, and, with the authority of Moscow behind her, began.

“Let us not fence with one another, Comrade von Fresser. We both know that in Brovensk and other towns in this oblast, skullduggery is not the exception but the rule. Am I not right?” Before he could answer, she thundered, “Of course, I am right!”

Basil took an expensive cigar from a humidor. Clipping the end, he lit it and expelled a stream of smoke toward Irina. “Do you see this cigar and clipper?” he asked. “They come from a nepman who wanted a favor. In the provinces, like the city, blat greases the wheels.”

“Aha!” She pulled out a pad. “Then you admit to engaging in capitalist commerce with a merchant and taking a bribe?”

“Yes,” said Basil, seeming to enjoy his role as the devil, while Irina took notes. “Frankly, my position gives me influence.”

“Natasha has been falsifying transcripts, and you confess to doing business with a nepman. I am overcome by the degree of corruption that thrives here.” She scribbled more notes. “Both of you will be boarding the train with me to Moscow when I leave tomorrow!”

Basil said nothing and kept puffing on his cigar.

“Did you hear me?” she said.

“I heard.”

“Call your telegraph operator. I want to send a message to my superiors at once. We will be met at the station by armed guards. Perhaps then you will remove that smirk from your face.”

Inhaling deeply and exhaling the smoke slowly, Basil replied, “I think you’ll be making the train trip alone. I also think that you will be telling your superiors that Brovensk is a model of party discipline and order.”

“Are you mad, Comrade von Fresser?” Irina put aside the pad and opened the folder on her lap. “I have the evidence here.” She tapped the papers in the folder. “You will be convicted as an enemy of the people and given twenty years at hard labor.”

Basil cleared his throat, admired the long ash on his cigar, removed his feet from the desk, and sat upright. “Comrade Vostoyeva,” he said, “do you know the name Ivan Bunin, the man who wrote that most wonderful story, ‘The Gentleman from San Francisco,’ the story in which a man oblivious to nature and the suffering of others dies on holiday. Surely you know this Bunin I speak of.”

Irina’s face flushed, and she closed her folder. “Only by name.”

“Is he not on the forbidden list?”

“I believe so.”

“Believe so,” he chuckled, and then said sternly, “You know very well he is.”

“What of it?”

He placed his cigar in an ashtray and removed a sheet of paper from a desk drawer. “Do you know the name Katerina Tershina?”

Her folded arms dropped limply to her lap, and her hands shook. “I never heard of this person.”

“And yet her name appears at the top of this page.”

“What does that piece of paper have to do with me?”

“Come, come, comrade, you said we should not fence. You are writing an essay under an assumed name about Ivan Bunin. Worse, you are writing it for a western audience. Doubly worse, you are writing it for a German audience—in German. If your treachery is not to leave this room, I trust that we can come to some understanding.”

Irina’s silence seemed to Basil like a thousand years. At last, she put her hands to her head and, with all the self-chastisement that she could summon, asked rhetorically, “What have I done?”

“Indeed, comrade, you have asked a critical question. I will answer you. With this document, which no doubt bears your fingerprints, you have put yourself in grave danger. But I am a merciful man, a forgiving citizen, as all party members should be. So tomorrow you will board the train for Moscow—alone. You will, as I said, give Brovensk a clean bill of health, perhaps even adding that the party secretary is a particularly effective leader. In return, no one in Brovensk shall ever repeat the name Katerina Tershina. If you wish, I can have this page copied so your work may proceed without interruption, and I can accommodate you to the train.”

“The bitch! No doubt she stole the paper from my briefcase.”

“Now, now, comrade, I thought we had agreed on a peace. Let us part with smiles on our faces and sealed lips.”

“I agreed to nothing. I merely upbraided myself for stupidity.”

Basil mulled over her mulishness and decided that like so many other Communist officials, she parroted a party line without the ability or strength to defend it.

“Then you wish, Comrade Vostoyeva, to proceed with your charges?” Irina studied one of her fingers and viciously bit off a nail, but said nothing. “The one consolation, Comrade Vostoyeva, is that we may be able to share a work camp and toil side by side cutting down trees for the motherland.”

Basil could see her eyes moisten, and, though she remained mute, she rose from her chair as stiff as a ferule and nodded agreement. Coming from behind the desk, he extended his hand; she responded by clicking the heels of her ugly shoes. A moment later, a door could be heard opening and closing, but no one could actually say that he saw Irina disappear into the dark.

Her hosts, in fact, never heard her enter the house, or pack, or leave for the station. According to rumor, that night she had slept on a platform bench at the railroad, perhaps dreaming of a dead gentleman in a tarred box stored at the bottom of a steamship. She was last seen angrily shoving her bags on the train and pulling down the shades next to her soft upholstered armchair.

At dinner that evening, Comrade von Fresser sat at the head of the Shtube table for the celebration. He and his wife enjoyed mineral water, wine, and more than one box of chocolates. Before leaving, Basil requested that Natasha assist him in the office the next afternoon. “No need to get up with the sun now that the Moscow witch has taken her leave.” When the von Fressers exited the Shtube house and arrived at their own, the hour was late. Closing the front door behind him, Basil lit a cigar and said to his wife, “Now that’s what I call a pleasant evening.”

By the time Natasha arrived at Basil’s office, a line of people stretched from his desk, out the door, and round the corner. Their faces were familiar. And why not? The very people who had been asked to relinquish their party membership cards were now buying new ones, also those people to whom Natasha had once given cards that she had purloined. The party secretary asked her to record the names as he signed the cards and collected the fees. For five days, the crowds never abated, perhaps because those who held legitimate cards decided, for caution’s sake, to renew their membership. A delighted Comrade von Fresser charged everyone the same, as a good Communist should.

At the end of the week, Mary, the priest’s daughter, came to the Lipnoskii house to see Natasha. She modestly requested a new card for herself and her son. The next day, Natasha, as she had in the past, removed a card from the stack in Comrade Basil’s office, forged his signature, and gave it to Mary.

“Like a blessed saint,” said Mary, “you are deserving of glorification by Christ our Savior. Once again, you have provided me with a passport for life, even if it’s only a life of warm straw that smells like cold sorrow.”