he peered into the darkness of the parquet and at the packed rows of seats beyond it.
“The weathercock rotates. That’s his line of work …” he began. The microphone sent his words all the way to the last row.
Anna leaned on the balustrade. Viktor Ipalyevich wasn’t like the young Moscow literati who looked upon the cat-and-mouse game with the Soviet state censors as good sport and were content to publish clandestinely. He wasn’t one of those writers whose works appeared as closely printed typescripts and got passed from hand to hand and whom neither jail sentences nor publication bans could intimidate. Viktor Ipalyevich Tsazukhin figured in official Soviet literature; the state had seen itself represented and embellished by his work. Anna knew the program for the reading. In accordance with the wishes of the literary committee, her father was to begin with the conformist verses of Sling and continue with some longer passages from The Red Light. Now, however, he was declaiming a poem, “The Weathercock,” that he’d only recently written. No one had ever heard these verses.
Tsazukhin’s voice rose as he spoke the last lines:
I do not hold
with the cock on the roof,
yet I know which way the wind blows.
The silence in the auditorium was palpable. He marked a pause, and then, when he opened the folder to begin the scheduled reading, spontaneous applause interrupted him. This time, he didn’t accept it, waving the plaudits away and reading the first lines while some in the audience were still clapping. The people understood: first a bit of provocation, followed by adherence to conventions. The official program was under way.
During the intermission, Anna and Leonid strolled around the upper foyer. Leonid wanted to get them something to drink, so he joined the line for the bar. Anna took a few steps with him and then stood still, listening to what the people around her were saying. “Viktor Ipalyevich challenges our feelings,” she heard someone say. “He elicits our humor.” A man quoted a passage in which the poet brought his irony to bear on the tactic employed by people who, while waiting in a line, jot down their place number on their wrist so as to keep pushy interlopers from getting ahead of them. Amused, Anna turned her head and saw a large, powerful man with a blue tie bearing down upon her.
“Are you enjoying the evening?” he asked.
She needed a few seconds to recognize him as the man who had stood under her ladder a few weeks earlier.
“Your father is an exceptional poet,” said Alexey Maximovich Bulyagkov.
“Do you like his poems?”
“I don’t think I do.” He examined the people around him. “But they touch me. Judge for yourself which is more important.”
At that moment, Anna felt as though a ray of light had gone through her. It came from the magnificent chandeliers, from the excited chatter of the large crowd, and, above all, from the marvelous experience she was sharing with her father. At the same time, she wondered how the Deputy Minister had recognized her without her work overalls on and with no scarf on her head; she was wearing the lime green dress she’d bought with a month’s salary.
“Are you here alone?”
“My husband’s over there.” She pointed to the commotion in front of the drinks bar.
“What does your husband do?”
“He’s an officer in the armored infantry, stationed in north Moscow.”
Bulyagkov bowed and walked over to a lady in a floor-length gown, who greeted him volubly.
Two weeks later, Anna received a small parcel in the mail, a copy of a volume called My Beloved Does the Wash, which was a collection of all her father’s love poems. When she deciphered the sender’s name, she hurried to the apartment and withdrew into the sleeping alcove. Leonid was sitting at the table with Petya, cutting his bread into bite-sized pieces; two arm’s lengths away, Anna read the Deputy Minister’s letter. He requested that her father write a personal dedication and sign the book, and he suggested that Anna look at the poem on page 106. Strangely excited, she turned to the page and read these verses:
Come see us tomorrow, uplift and gladden us!
Today’s rain refreshed us, and the forecast is glorious.
And should we want stormy weather,
We’ll make some together!
There was a handwritten note on the margin of the page: “Would you return this volume to me personally tomorrow evening at seven o’clock?”
Anna and Leonid had been married for three years; Petya had come into the world a few weeks after the