Beautiful Assassin Read online

  After I graduated secondary school, I took a job for a while at an arsenal factory. I worked a lathe, making artillery shells, as unpoetic an occupation as there is. I recall coming home one evening, and over dinner my father casually telling me that my former teacher Madame Rudneva had been arrested. “Arrested!” I cried. Despite knowing the danger she’d always put herself in by her candor, I was shocked. I begged my father to use his influence, to try to find out where she’d been sent, to see what he could do on her behalf. But he told me that that was impossible, that he wouldn’t put himself or his family in je0pardy for such a person. That night I remember crying myself to sleep.

  When I grew bored with factory work, I decided to go to the university, where I studied Russian history and literature. I also shot competitively in the Osoviakhim, even winning many medals for my shooting, including being the best marksman in the entire Ukraine. In my spare time I read whatever I could get my hands on. A group of us shared books smuggled in from the West, rough, handwritten translations of T. S. Eliot and Walt Whitman and D. H. Lawrence, as well as banned volumes of our own countrymen, Pilnyak and Pasternak, and the great soul herself, Akhmatova. I also continued to write my own poetry. I showed it among my friends and even managed to publish some poems in small underground newspapers and in anonymous samizdat literary journals circulated in manuscript and read by a handful of like-minded people. Though, of course, you had to be extremely careful about what you wrote and with whom you associated. The editor of The Workers’ Voice, which published one of my poems, had his apartment broken into by the secret police. His mimeograph machine and typewriter were smashed to pieces. Like Madame Rudneva’s lover, though, he stubbornly refused to take the hint and continued to publish articles and poems against the government until finally he was arrested.

  Still, it was good to feel a part of something important, a community of kindred spirits who wanted to think and speak and write freely. My father and I grew more and more distant, divided politically as well as emotionally. While I still deeply loved my country, believed in what the revolution had promised and the aspirations of the people, I had grown discouraged, even angry, with the Party, which I came to see as oppressive as any czar. My father and I began to argue, sometimes so heatedly that my mother would have to intervene. He thought I was associating with a decadent crowd, and that if I wasn’t careful I would find myself like Madame Rudneva, which would reflect badly on him and my mother. I didn’t want to hurt them, so I moved out and got a room near the university. I supported myself by working nights in the factory and going to school during the day. I gravitated toward a small circle of bohemian friends. We wore outlandish clothing and smoked and frequented a café down near the river where students and intellectuals and artists gathered. I struck a pose that suited me, fostered a romantic notion of myself as a poet. I liked to believe I’d be the next Akhmatova. That I’d write fearless and daring poems that would touch the heart, that would make people stand up and take notice. Like her, I would write the truth no matter the cost. Like her, I would live a life filled with intensity. I would live dangerously, love passionately. I was young and foolish and thought that one could control one’s destiny.

  Then I met a man named Nikolai Grigorovich. Nikolai—Kolya to those few friends he had—would sometimes come by the café and sit in the corner with a book and sip a cup of tea. He was older than I by some dozen years. He wasn’t handsome, at least not in the traditional sense, but there was something about him, a seriousness of purpose, I found appealing. Those brooding, blue-gray eyes of his, a neatly trimmed beard, the complete focus with which he read his book so that he was oblivious to anything else around him. I had heard his name bandied about, an important Party member, they said. I would sometimes sit in the café, a volume of Akhmatova in front of me, and glance over at him.

  “What is it you are reading?” he asked me one time out of the blue. I was startled actually that he even noticed me. After I told him, he said, “Oh, a shame what befell her.”

  “The shame is on those who persecuted her,” I said.

  He smiled, stroking his beard. “Your father works for the kolkhoz?”

  I nodded.

  He sat and introduced himself, in that formal way that he had. To my surprise we spent a pleasant evening conversing. Unlike so many of the dolts who were Party members, Kolya turned out to be bright, open-minded, well-read. We discussed history and philosophy, politics and poetry. I recall he even quoted some lines from Pushkin, which impressed me no end.

  I loved you silently, without hope, fully,

  In diffidence, in jealousy, in pain;

  I loved you so tenderly and truly,

  As let you else be loved by any man.

  He told me he was an engineer, one whose specialty was building bridges. Such a vocation, I would come to learn, suited him perfectly. He liked connecting objects, bringing disparate sides together. He talked about the revolution, the new world order that would in time emerge from it. When he spoke, his voice wasn’t that of the zealot or an ideologue, one of those who could kill in the name of the revolution. No, his voice was soft and calm, filled with gentleness, though at its core it had the strength of conviction, the passion of one who believed in helping his fellow man.

  “What of the lives it has ruined to achieve this new order?” I said.

  He nodded patiently. “Yes, many mistakes have been made,” he agreed. “And many terrible things have been done in its name. But in the future, we will all be equal and no one will have power over another.” Then, smiling, he added, “And poets will be our sacred priests.”

  “That I would very much like to see!” I replied with a laugh.

  He was different from most men I’d known, and certainly most Party members. Quiet and self-effacing, not needing to prove something to himself or to others. He was generous and unselfish, almost without ego. He hardly ever began a sentence with I. A good listener, he would nod thoughtfully, even if he disagreed with you, his brows knitting themselves in concentration as I spoke. On days I didn’t work, we would talk well into the night at the café or after going to the symphony or an art exhibit. We played chess, and while I thought I was good, he would drub me soundly each time, and then patiently try to show me my errors. Sometimes we would sit quietly reading, not uttering a word. Other times I would read to him, Pushkin or Akhmatova, sometimes even my own poetry. He took an interest in my poetry, read my work with the same seriousness that he perused his engineering textbooks. We took long walks through the city, with Kolya occasionally stopping near a bridge to admire its construction. He would bring a pad and sketch the bridge, its configuration, its trusses and support. Sometimes he would sketch landscapes or children playing in the park. He was a very skilled artist. Occasionally he would even draw me. Once when he showed me a sketch of myself, my breath was literally taken away.

  “What’s the matter, Tat’yana?” he asked. “Don’t you like it?”

  It wasn’t that. Actually, the sketch was quite remarkable, showing just how talented he was. But it was as if he had reached into my very soul and pulled out a kind of wistful yearning, something I hadn’t even been aware resided there.

  “No, I think it’s wonderful, Kolya,” I said. “I just didn’t recognize myself.”

  “You’re lovely, Tanyusha,” he said. It was the first time he had called me that, or said that I was lovely.

  Looking back, I think he would misinterpret what that longing in my eyes bespoke. And for me, it hinted of something decidedly missing, something absent in my life or in my heart.

  Still, for a while things between us continued along in this comfortable vein, a closeness and easy familiarity developing as with longtime acquaintances. In time I came to think of him as my dearest friend, someone whom I could trust, share my innermost thoughts with. That Akhmatova poem about friendship that Madame Rudneva had read to me made me think of our relationship: Oh, how differs from embraces, The easy touching of these hands. It was easy be
ing with Kolya, the first time I’d felt such a feeling with anyone. In some ways, he seemed to me like the brother who had died.

  Then one evening we were walking along the river. It was winter, the snow crunching under our boots. The Dnieper was frozen over and people were skating on it, carrying torches. It looked like something out of Brueghel, a still life in winter. We’d stopped along the way to admire the spectacle. Kolya was especially quiet, I’d noticed, seemed nervous about something. I asked him if anything was the matter, but he shook his head. After a while I couldn’t help but notice that he was gazing at me in an odd fashion, as if I were a math problem he was puzzling over.

  Finally, I grabbed his collar playfully and stared into his face. “For God’s sakes, Kolya, what’s the matter?” I cried, unable to keep from giggling.

  Yet he continued silently to look at me with that odd expression. Then he leaned toward me and gave me an awkward, fumbling kiss on the mouth.

  “Kolya!” I exclaimed. “What has gotten into you?”

  Perhaps I should have seen it coming, but I didn’t. In life, most of the time you see what you want to and are blind to the rest. We go about stumbling in the dark, until someone wiser than we turns on the lights.

  “I love you, Tanyusha,” he blurted out.

  No man had ever said those words to me before, and I’d always thought that when they were finally uttered my heart would leap up with joy, that I would feel such wondrous bliss. But I did not. Instead, I felt my face flush, my stomach twist itself into knots. I didn’t know how to respond. I cared for him, very much in fact, though now I realized not in the same way he did for me. I felt suddenly uncomfortable and was about to say something regarding my deep friendship for him, but he put a finger to my lips and told me I didn’t have to say anything.

  This, of course, changed things between us. Soon after this, he asked me to marry him. Trying to do the kind instead of the honest thing, which meant I would eventually be doing something very cruel to both of us, I didn’t outright refuse. Rather, I told him I was too young, that at twenty I wasn’t ready to get married, that we should, for now at least, continue just as friends. I thought by putting him off, he would understand that I didn’t see the two of us in that way. He told me that he just wanted me to think about it, that he was patient and could wait. Kolya was extremely patient, but also persistent. He viewed me, I think, in the same way he did his engineering problems, as an obstacle to be overcome, a distance to be closed, that with a bit more bolstering here, a little more buttressing there, he could join us, put us soundly together so that our souls could cross over to the other. I don’t say this to suggest that he was cold or unfeeling. Only that he saw problems and tried to fix them. He would ask me to marry him again, several times in fact. He told me he would take care of me, that I wouldn’t have to work, that I could simply concentrate on my studies, on my poetry. Each time I told him as gently, as kindly, as I could that I wasn’t ready to get married.

  My father thought Nikolai Grigorovich had a very bright future in the Party, and my mother had become very fond of Kolya. Always the pragmatist, she said he would make a favorable match and that it was both foolish and wrong of me to keep him dangling on a string, that I should either tell him yes or no.

  “I am quite fond of him, Mama,” I explained. “But…”

  “But what?”

  “I’m not sure I love him. Not as a wife should love a husband.”

  “Ach, love,” my mother scoffed, waving a blunt finger of scorn in my face. “You sound like a silly girl, Tanyusha.” To my mother, a good match was something only a foolish woman turned down. And Kolya was, to her mind, a decidedly good match. He was educated, had a wonderful career ahead of him. “Look at all the rivers this country has. At how many bridges we are going to need. How can you refuse a man who will be such a success someday?”

  “But is that enough? That he will be successful.”

  “You and Kolya are friends, no?”

  “We are.”

  “Friendship is a start. Many couples do not even have that.” She looked toward the kitchen, where my father sat reading.

  “What of love, Mama?”

  “You can learn to love,” she said to me. “And if not, you can’t eat love. It will never put a roof over your head or food in your belly. Besides, Nikolai’s a good man, one who will make someone a good husband. And he won’t wait around forever while you’re dillydallying.” Then, her tone softening, she took my face in her callused hands and said, “Tanyusha, don’t think so much, or your life will be very hard.”

  I couldn’t disagree with what she’d said about Kolya—he was a good man and would make someone a good husband. And the other thing was that he adored me, loved me unconditionally, as I had always dreamed one day of being loved by a man.

  I felt an unstated pressure from my father to agree to the marriage, since Kolya was an important Party figure. And my mother was right, I couldn’t just keep Kolya hanging on. That wasn’t fair. If I’d been more honest with myself and with Kolya, I would have said no. Harder at first perhaps, but less painful in the long run. But I didn’t want to hurt him. I told myself, I was very fond of him, liked his company, his friendship. Maybe my mother was right, that I was being naïve, hoping for too much. What was more, a part of me, a selfish part I must admit, was attracted to the notion of someone taking care of me, allowing me to write my poetry and not having to worry about getting by in life. So, when I couldn’t find a good enough reason to tell him no, I took the coward’s way out and surrendered finally—and it felt very much like a surrender. My mother hugged me, my father nodded at the rightness of my choice and went back to reading his newspaper.

  We were married in the beautiful Andreyevskaya Church in Kiev, on a sunny autumn afternoon. Though neither Kolya nor I were particularly religious, we decided to have a traditional Ukrainian ceremony. I wore the dress my mother had worn for her wedding, and since we didn’t have much money, Kolya and I exchanged simple gold bands and then our hands were joined by the customary rushnik, an embroidered cloth signifying our union. As I looked at Kolya, his face aglow with happiness, I told myself I’d made the right decision. That happiness could be achieved in making others happy. For our honeymoon, we went, ironically, to Sevastopol, the same city that would, in a few short years, lie in ruins. We strolled on Primorsky Bul’var. We walked hand in hand along the Grafskaya Quay. We went to the symphony. We talked and enjoyed each other’s company. At night, we made love pleasantly, in the dark, with restraint and with a certain formality, with Kolya’s head buried into the pillow next to mine, almost as if he were embarrassed by his own passion. That first time, I told myself it was not unpleasant, and besides, as my mother had reminded me before the wedding, it was my duty to my husband. Afterward, I turned and fell asleep in Kolya’s embrace. In some ways I found marriage to be a comfort—the companionship, the conversations in the evening, his loving attentions, how he would prepare me a cup of tea, give me a back rub after a long evening of study, do anything he could to make me happy. Above all was the fact that Kolya would let me have my own space within the marriage, my time to write and read and be alone. He was not one of those possessive husbands who had to have my complete attention, thank God. However, from the very first, I realized that while I cared about Kolya, deeply in fact, my feelings for him were those for a cherished friend and would never grow into love. At least not the sort I felt should exist between a man and a woman.

  After we returned from our honeymoon, we settled into our life, one filled with the slow but inexorable blunting of dreams but which most of us insist on calling an acceptance of reality—our life became our millstone. We moved into a small apartment not far from the Dnieper River. During the day he’d be off working, sometimes having to travel to distant construction sites where he’d be away for weeks on end. In some ways, I actually looked forward to his absence. I would attend classes or do research at the library or write in the tiny room off the kitchen. Whe
n he was home we would share a bottle of Massandra wine and chat about our days. Afterward we might go for a walk along the river or to our usual café or stay in and read to each other. He lavished on me small gifts, presents and things that few in the Soviet Union could afford. Below us lived Kovalevsky, who was studying cello at the conservatory. Sometimes, a few of his fellow music students would get together in his apartment, and they would invite Kolya and me down. We would talk and drink vodka and listen as they played. Later, back in our apartment, we would make love to the lilting sounds of Rachmaninoff or Prokofiev floating upward through the floorboards—sad, wistful music that filled me with unmet longing. Even then, when I was physically closest to Kolya, I would find my thoughts drifting off, seeking to be elsewhere.

  “I love you, Tanyusha,” Kolya would whisper to me before we fell asleep each night.

  He was so earnest and sweet when he said this to me, so tender and caring, that my heart welled up in my chest, not because of what I felt for him as much as because of my nagging guilt. I would smile and stroke his face and tell him that I loved him too. And I tried hard to believe this, and in some fashion I succeeded in convincing myself I did love him. Though I suppose some part of me always knew it was a conditional love, not as he loved me, with all of his heart and soul, but only narrowly, as a dear friend. Yet as the weeks turned into months, and the months to years, I slowly came to resent his touch, and when we made love, I would close my eyes and go off to my own private place. Occasionally, I would be unfaithful to him. No, I don’t mean that I took on lovers. But in my mind. I would pretend I was with someone else—a student I’d seen at the library, one of my instructors, a young man I saw in a café, even the lover in some poem by Akhmatova. Sometimes, when I couldn’t endure his touch, I would tell him I was tired and turn away. “Is anything wrong, Tanyusha?” he would ask, never in anger, only with genuine tenderness for me. To which I would reply that I was merely fatigued from my studies. The truth was, I wasn’t a good wife. No, I was never unfaithful, except for those transgressions in my mind. But I wasn’t truthful with him, wasn’t fair with him or, for that matter, with myself. I felt as if I were in a beautiful gilded cage, but a cage is still a cage nonetheless. I wish he would have gotten angry with me, wish he’d have yelled and screamed, even struck me, said he’d had enough. It would have made things much easier for me, for both of us. Or I wish I’d simply had the courage to tell him the truth. But it was equally true that he was my dearest friend, such a kind and gentle soul, and as such I had vowed never to hurt him. He seemed content enough with our unspoken “arrangement,” with that small part of me that he had access to. He was a man, as I have said, of great patience and of modest needs, and his work took much of his time. Perhaps he was just waiting for me to come around, as my mother said I would.