wedding. Neither of them had ever made the other feel that their little boy was the only reason they were still together. Leonid behaved himself, drank little, and treated her father with respect. Anna didn’t dream about anything out of reach; she wanted a good education for her son, her own apartment, and perhaps, eventually, a car. And she had never, at least until that day, knowingly done anything wrong. She was forced to think about some of her colleagues, who reported on casual flings that apparently enlivened their marriages. Such accounts were accompanied by declarations that an affair didn’t mean that much these days; there was a real thirst for life in the city of Moscow. Anna resolved to take the Deputy Minister’s note as a joke and his offer not very seriously. However, when she climbed out of the alcove, she avoided Leonid’s eyes and hid the book in her bag.
The following day, she worked the early shift and was home by three. At dinner with her family, she pushed the volume of poetry across the table to Viktor Ipalyevich and said, “A girlfriend from the site asked me to get your autograph.”
Still chewing, her father took his fountain pen out of his breast pocket. “For whom shall I sign it?”
“Just your name’s good enough. It’s going to be a gift.” Anna held the book open to the first page to avoid the possibility that he’d flip through it to the telltale note.
“Even on worksites, people are reading my poems,” he said. Smiling, he wrote, “With Best Wishes, Viktor Ipalyevich Tsazukhin.” Anna blew on the ink, closed the volume, and laid it on the bookshelf.
Leonid helped her do the dishes. “Maneuvers start tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll probably sleep in the barracks tonight.”
“I’ve got another combine meeting,” Anna replied, running water into the sink.
While Leonid lit up his evening cigarette, while her father got the chessboard out and shoved a pair of cushions under Petya, Anna changed into her summer dress with the brown dots, put on a jacket over the dress, and took leave of her family. As she went down the stairs, she felt incomprehensible relief at the thought that she wouldn’t have to see her husband again later that night.
The return address on the parcel indicated a street on the opposite side of the city center. Anna took the wrong bus and missed the appointed time. She hurried along the avenue and turned into a side street. The dimly lit sign read DREZHNEVSKAYA ST. The secluded place, the unprepossessing buildings threw her into confusion: It wasn’t conceivable that the Deputy Minister lived here. There was no café, there weren’t even any shops; where had he invited her to go? Anna reached the address she was looking for and stepped back. On this bright July evening, not a single window showed a light. She hoped that there had been some misunderstanding, considered once again the possibility that she was the victim of a practical joke—the big shot from the Ministry, she thought, had allowed himself a laugh at her expense.
“You’re too late, Anna Tsazukhina.” Bulyagkov, wearing a light summer suit, was coming toward her from the other end of the narrow street. “Of all bad habits, tardiness is the worst,” he said, looking at her so merrily that her confusion only grew.
Without further explanation, he unlocked the door and went in ahead of her. Anna followed him to a nondescript staircase, which he went up three steps at a time. At the door of an apartment with no nameplate, he used his key again. The opening door revealed an elegantly furnished flat; stray beams of sunlight greeted Anna as she entered. Bulyagkov tried to help her out of her jacket, but she kept it on.
As her host made no effort to begin the conversation, Anna said, “Here’s the book.”
“How is our poet?” Bulyagkov said, glancing at the dedication before laying the volume aside.
“Since his reading, my father has been interrogated several times in the headquarters of the Writers’ Association.”
“Were there accusations?” The Deputy Minister stepped over to the sideboard in the living room.
“He was asked to review the political usefulness of his poems.”
“What did you expect?” Bulyagkov uncorked a bottle of wine. “Your father behaved like a bull in a china shop. Now he’s got to bare his bottom and sit on the shards.”
The crude image startled her. “Do you think his poems are ‘unidealistic’ and ‘morally inadequate,’ too?”
“I don’t understand a thing about poetry,” he said,