because the vendor threw in five packages of birdseed. Anton paid, picked up the cage, and followed Anna and Alexey as they continued to stroll around the enormous market. They passed paddocks with sheep and goats; a young elk was on display as an attraction. Anna was beginning to fear that she’d never have a chance to speak about the real reason for their meeting when Alexey took her hand. “How much time do you have?” he asked. “Shall we get something to eat?” He turned to Anton: “Do you know a restaurant around here?”
“I’d like to speak to you in peace,” Anna said.
“You can’t do that while we eat?”
“Couldn’t we sit in the car?”
“Then Anton will have to pick up something for us,” Alexey said, grumpily complying with her request. “Where did we leave the car?”
Anton went ahead of them, clasping the birdcage to his chest. The black ZIL was parked in a side street.
“Make sure you get some shashlik,” Alexey said to Anton as Anna climbed into the limousine. “And beer would be a good idea, too.”
Anton put the birdcage on the front passenger’s seat. Suddenly plunged into semidarkness, the birds fell silent. The Deputy Minister sank down on the seat next to Anna, and the door closed. “These Central Committee sessions are killing me,” he muttered. “I never used to be affected like this. I could work night and day when we were preparing a Five-Year Plan.” He turned his head. “Can you tell me why I’m so tired?”
“You eat the wrong things.” She noticed how heavily he was perspiring and pulled the scarf off his neck.
“I’ve done that forever. It’s never hurt me.”
“When the Party Congress is over, you should go out to the dacha and take some time off.” Anna was nervous; one ill-judged word in the beginning could ruin everything. “Spring’s coming,” she said, stroking his temples. “Maybe what you’ve got is springtime lethargy.”
“In March? That would be strange.”
Anna made a first, oblique attempt to steer the conversation: “Have you ever hinted to Medea that you see other women?”
“Why should I?”
“You mean you’ve never had the urge to tell her the truth?”
He raised his head. “And who’d be served if I did that?”
“Isn’t the truth desirable in itself?”
“In most cases, the truth hurts. It can only benefit the person who tells it.”
His sober tone unsettled her, as did the way he suddenly started scrutinizing her.
“It takes strength to keep quiet, Anna.” He drew her to him; her head sank against his shoulder. “Maybe keeping your mouth shut is a stupid male virtue, but it’s a virtue all the same.”
She was tempted to leave it at that. Why did she want to ease her conscience? Because she was hoping for Alexey’s forgiveness. Would she actually be telling him anything new? Of what use would it be to him to know that Anna reported their conversations to the KGB? And yet, it didn’t make very much sense to keep up a lie just because the truth was unattractive.
She tried another tack: “The only person I ever see around you is Anton,” she observed. “Don’t you have any protection besides your driver?”
“How do you mean?” He smiled, but she could sense the alertness in his gaze.
“I never see any security people around you.”
“Do you have the impression that I’m in danger?”
In the long silence that followed this question, Anna realized that the time for innocent chatter had passed, and that she couldn’t go back. “After all, you’re … you’re an official of the Soviet Union, a bearer of state secrets.”
“I was in danger once upon a time, many years ago now. And ever since then, everything that’s come afterward has seemed harmless.” He undid the top button of his shirt. “I’ve never told you about my family.”
His offer to talk about himself was so unexpected and direct that Anna could muster only a mute nod.
“My father was a civil servant in Kharkov, in Ukraine. He carried out the land surveying for the kolkhozes in an enormous area between the Donets and the Don. His frequent travels and his influence as a survey official made him a prominent person. He was a veteran member of the Party and presided over the provincial government.” Alexey looked outside, where a group of young people was strolling toward the limousine. Not imagining that they were being observed through the window, the youths stopped right in front of Bulyagkov.
“Then came the time when Vradiyev’s show trial was being prepared. He’d been relieved