Page 253 of Edge of Eternity (The Century 3)

Because Grandfather Grigori had stormed the Winter Palace in 1917, a lot of people had showed up to say a last farewell to his wife. Some were important Soviet dignitaries. Here was the bushy-eyebrowed Leonid Brezhnev, secretary of the Central Committee, glad-handing the mourners. There was Marshal Mikhail Pushnoy, who had been a young protege of Grigori's in the Second World War. Pushnoy, an overweight Lothario, was stroking his luxuriant gray mustache and turning his charm on Aunt Zoya.

Anticipating this crowd, Uncle Volodya had paid for a reception in a restaurant just off Red Square. Restaurants were dismal places, with surly waiters and poor food. Dimka had heard, from both Grigori and Volodya, that they were different in the West. However, this one was typically Soviet. The ashtrays were full when they arrived. The snacks were stale: dry blinis and curling old pieces of toast with perfunctory slices of boiled egg and smoked fish. Fortunately, even Russians could not spoil vodka, and there was plenty of that.

The Soviet food crisis was over. Khrushchev had succeeded in buying grain from the United States and elsewhere, and there would be no famine this winter. But the emergency had highlighted a long-term disappointment. Khrushchev had pinned his hopes on making Soviet agriculture modern and productive--and he had failed. He ranted about inefficiency, ignorance, and clumsiness, but he had made no headway against such problems. And agriculture symbolized the general miscarriage of his reforms. For all his maverick ideas and sudden radical changes, the USSR was still decades behind the West in everything except military might.

Worst of all, the opposition to Khrushchev within the Kremlin came from men who wanted not more reform but less, hidebound conservatives such as preening Marshal Pushnoy and back-slapping Brezhnev, both now roaring with laughter at one of Grigori's war stories. Dimka had never been so worried about the future of his country, his leader, and his own career.

Nina handed the baby to Dimka and got a drink. A minute later she was with Brezhnev and Marshal Pushnoy, joining in their laughter. People always laughed a lot at funeral wakes, Dimka had noticed: it was the reaction after the solemnity of the burial.

Nina was entitled to party, he felt: she had carried Grigor and given birth to him and breast-fed him, so she had not had much fun for a year.

She had got over her anger with Dimka for lying to her on the night Kennedy died. Dimka had calmed her with another lie. "I did work late, but then I went for a drink with some colleagues." She had remained angry for a while, but less so, and now she seemed to have forgotten the incident. He was pretty sure she had no suspicion of his illicit feelings for Natalya.

Dimka took Grigor around the family, proudly showing people his first tooth. The restaurant was in an old house, with tables spread through several ground-floor rooms of different sizes. Dimka ended up in the farthest room with his uncle Volodya and aunt Zoya.

That was where his sister cornered him. "Have you seen how Nina is behaving?" Tanya said.

Dimka laughed. "Is she getting drunk?"

"And flirting."

Dimka was not perturbed. Anyway, he was in no position to condemn Nina: he did the same when he went to the Riverside Bar with Natalya. He said: "It is a party."

Tanya had no inhibitions about what she said to her twin. "I noticed that she went straight for the most high-ranking men in the room. Brezhnev just left, but she's still making eyes at Marshal Pushnoy--who must be twenty years older than her."

"Some women find power attractive."

"Did you know that her first husband brought her to Moscow from Perm and got her the job with the steel union?"

"No, I didn't."

"Then she left him."

"How do you know?"

"Her mother told me."

"All Nina got from me was a baby."

"And an apartment in Government House."

"You think she's some kind of gold digger?"

"I worry about you. You're so smart about everything--except women."

"Nina is a little materialistic. It's not the worst of sins."

"So you don't mind."

"No, I don't."

"Okay. But if she hurts my brother I'll scratch her eyes out."

*

Daniil came and sat opposite Tanya in the canteen at the TASS building. He put down his tray and tucked a handkerchief into his shirt collar to protect his tie. Then he said: "The people at New World like 'Frostbite.'"

Tanya was thrilled. "Good!" she said. "It took them long enough--it must be at least six months. But that's great news!"

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