Page 256 of Edge of Eternity (The Century 3)

"Don't worry," said Dimka. "He's got mad at me before. He won't remember this tomorrow." He hoped it was true.

Khrushchev's rage was not as worrying as his misapprehensions. He was wrong about agriculture. Alexei Kosygin, who was the best economist in the Presidium, had plans for reform that involved loosening the grip that ministries held on agriculture and other industries. That was the way to go, in Dimka's opinion; not miracle cures.

Was Khrushchev just as wrong about the plotters? Dimka did not know. He had done his best to warn his boss. He could not start a countercoup on his own.

Going down the stairs, he heard applause from the open door of the dining room. Khrushchev was receiving congratulations from the Presidium. Dimka paused in the hall. When the applause died down, he heard the slow bass voice of Brezhnev. "Dear Nikita Sergeyevitch! We, your close comrades in arms, members and candidate members of the Presidium and secretaries of the Central Committee, extend special greetings and fervently congratulate you, our closest personal friend and comrade, on your seventieth birthday."

It was fulsome even by Soviet standards.

Which was a bad sign.

*

A few days later, Dimka was given a dacha.

He had to pay, but the rent was nominal. As with most luxuries in the Soviet Union, the difficulty was not the price but getting to the head of the queue.

A dacha--a weekend home or holiday villa--was the first ambition of upwardly mobile Soviet couples. (The second was a car.) Dachas were normally granted only to Communist Party members, naturally.

"I wonder how we got it," Dimka mused after opening the letter.

Nina thought there was no mystery. "You work for Khrushchev," she said. "You should have been given one long ago."

"Not necessarily. It generally takes a few more years of service. I can't think of anything I've done recently that has been especially pleasing to him." He recalled the argument about genes. "In fact just the opposite."

"He likes you. Someone handed him a list of vacant dachas and he put your name next to one. He didn't think about it for longer than five seconds."

"You're probably right."

A dacha could be anything from a palace by the sea to a hut in a field. The following Sunday, Dimka and Nina went to find out what theirs was like. They packed a picnic lunch, then, with baby Grigor, took the train to a village thirty miles outside Moscow. They were full of eager curiosity. A station attendant gave them directions to their place, which was called the Lodge. It took them fifteen minutes to walk there.

The house was a one-story timber cabin. It had a large kitchen-cum-living-room and two bedrooms. It was set in a small garden that ran down to a stream. Dimka thought it was paradise. He wondered again what he had done to get so lucky.

Nina liked it, too. She was excited, moving through the rooms and opening cupboards. Dimka had not seen her so happy for months.

Grigor, who was not so much walking as staggering, seemed delighted to have a new place in which to stumble and fall.

Dimka was imbued with optimism. He envisioned a future in which he and Nina came here on summer weekend

s year after year. Every season they would marvel over how different Grigor was from last year. Their son's growth would be measured in summers: he would talk next season, count the summer after, then catch a ball, then read, then swim. He would be a toddler here at the dacha, then a boy climbing a tree in the garden, then an adolescent with spots, then a young man charming the girls in the village.

The place had not been used for a year or more, and they threw open all the windows, then set about dusting surfaces and sweeping floors. It was partly furnished, and they started a list of things they would bring next time: a radio, a samovar, a bucket.

"I could come here with Grigor on Friday mornings in the summer," Nina said. She was washing pottery bowls in the sink. "You could join me on Friday night, or Saturday morning if you have to work late."

"You wouldn't mind being here on your own at night?" said Dimka as he scrubbed ancient grease off the kitchen range. "It's a bit lonely."

"I'm not nervous, you know that."

Grigor cried for his lunch, and Nina sat down to feed him. Dimka took a look around outside. He would have to erect a fence at the bottom of the garden, he saw, to prevent Grigor falling into the stream. It was not deep, but Dimka had read somewhere that a child could drown in three inches of water.

A gate in a wall led to a larger garden beyond. Dimka wondered who his neighbors were. The gate was not locked, so he opened it and went through. He found himself in a small wood. Exploring, he came within sight of a larger house. He speculated that his dacha might once have been the home of the gardener at the big house.

Not wanting to intrude on someone's privacy, he turned back--and came face-to-face with a soldier in uniform.

"Who are you?" said the man.

"Dmitri Dvorkin. I'm moving into the little house next door."

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