Page 408 of Edge of Eternity (The Century 3)

Uncle Volodya came in. He was on his way to some army ceremony, wearing his general's uniform. Tanya realized with a sudden shock that this was the first time he had seen his real father. Lev stared at the son he had never met. "My God," Lev said. "He looks like you, Grigori."

"He's yours, though," said Grigori.

Father and son shook hands.

Volodya said nothing, seeming in the grip of an emotion so powerful that he could not speak.

Lev said: "When you lost me as a father, Volodya, you didn't lose much." Keeping hold of his son's hand, he looked him up and down: gleaming boots, Red Army uniform, combat medals, piercing blue eyes, iron-gray hair. "I did, though," Lev said. "I guess I lost a lot."

*

As she left the apartment Tanya found herself wondering where the Bolsheviks had gone wrong, where Grandfather Grigori's idealism and energy had been perverted into tyranny. She went to the bus stop, heading for a rendezvous with Vasili. On the bus, thinking over the early years of the Russian Revolution, she wondered whether Lenin's decision to close all newspapers except the Bolshevik ones had been the key error. It meant that right from the start alternative ideas had had no circulation and the conventional wisdom could never be challenged. Gorbachev in Stavropol was exceptional in having been allowed to try something different. Such people were generally stifled. Tanya was a journalist, and suspected herself of egocentrically overrating the importance of a free press, but it seemed to her that the lack of critical newspapers made it much easier for other forms of oppression to flourish.

It was now four years since Vasili had been released. In that time he had shrewdly rehabilitated himself. At the Agriculture Ministry he had devised an educational radio serial set on a collective farm. As well as the dramas about unfaithful wives and disobedient children, the characters discussed agricultural techniques. Naturally the peasants who ignored advice from Moscow were lazy and shiftless, and the wayward teenagers who questioned the Communist Party's authority were the ones who were jilted by their boyfriends or failed their exams. The serial was a huge success. Vasili returned to Radio Moscow and was given an apartment in a block occupied by writers approved by the government.

Their meetings were clandestine, but Tanya also ran into him occasionally at union events or private parties. He was no longer the walking cadaver that had returned from Siberia in 1972. He had put on weight and regained some of his former presence. Now in his midforties, he would never again be movie-star handsome; but the lines of strain on his face somehow added to his allure. And he still had buckets of charm. Each time Tanya saw him he was with a different woman. They were not the nubile teenagers who had adored him in his thirties, though perhaps they were the middle-aged women those teenagers had become: smart females in chic clothes and high-heeled shoes, who always seemed able to get hold of scarce nail varnish, hair dye, and stockings.

Tanya met him secretly once a month.

Each time he would bring her the latest installment of the book he was working on, written in the small, neat handwriting he had developed in Siberia to save paper. She would type it for him, correcting his spelling and punctuation where necessary. At their next meeting she would hand him the typescript for review and discuss it with him.

Millions of people around the world bought Vasili's books, but he never met any of them. He could not even read the reviews, which were written in foreign languages and published in Western newspapers. So Tanya was the only person with whom he could discuss his work, and he listened hungrily to everything she had to say. She was his editor.

Tanya went to Leipzig every March to cover the book fair there, and each time she met with Anna Murray. She always came back with a present for Vasili from Anna--an electric typewriter, a cashmere overcoat--and news of even more money piling up in his London bank account. He would probably never get to spend any of it.

She still took careful precautions when mee

ting him. Today she got off the bus a mile from the rendezvous, and made sure she was not being followed while she walked to the cafe, called Josef's. Vasili was already there, sitting at a table with a vodka glass in front of him. On the chair beside him was a large buff envelope. Tanya waved casually, as if they were acquaintances meeting by chance. She got a beer from the bar, then sat opposite Vasili.

She was happy to see him looking so well. His face had a dignity he had not possessed fifteen years earlier. He still had soft brown eyes, but nowadays they were keenly perceptive as often as they twinkled with mischief. She realized there was no one, outside her family, whom she knew better. She knew his strengths: imagination, intelligence, charm, and the gritty determination that had enabled him to survive and keep writing for a decade in Siberia. She also knew his weaknesses, the main one of which was an irresistible urge to seduce.

"Thanks for the tip about Stavropol," she said. "I've done a nice piece."

"Good. Let's just hope the whole experiment doesn't get stamped on."

She handed Vasili the last episode, typed out, and nodded at the envelope. "Another chapter?"

"The last." He gave it to her.

"Anna Murray will be happy." Vasili's new novel was called First Lady. In it the American president's wife--as it might be, Pat Nixon--gets lost in Moscow for twenty-four hours. Tanya marveled at Vasili's power of invention. Seeing life in the USSR through the eyes of a well-meaning conservative American was a richly comic way to criticize Soviet society. She slipped the envelope into her shoulder bag.

Vasili said: "When can you take the whole thing to the publisher?"

"As soon as I get a foreign trip. At the latest, next March, in Leipzig."

"March?" Vasili was disappointed. "That's six months away," he said in a tone of reproof.

"I'll try to get an assignment where I could meet her."

"Please do."

Tanya was offended. "Vasili, I risk my damn life to do this for you. Get someone else, if you can, or do the job yourself. Hell, I wouldn't mind."

"Of course." He was immediately contrite. "I'm sorry. I have so much invested in it--three years' work, all in the evenings after I come home from my job. But I have no right to be impatient with you." He reached across the table and put his hand over hers. "You've been my lifeline, more than once."

She nodded. It was true.

All the same, she still felt cross with him as she walked away from the cafe with the ending of his novel in her bag. What was bugging her? It was those women in high-heeled shoes, she decided. She felt that Vasili should have grown out of that phase. Promiscuity was adolescent. He demeaned himself by showing up at every literary party with a different date. By now he should have settled down in a serious relationship with a woman who was his equal. She could be younger, perhaps, but she should be able to match his intelligence and appreciate his work, perhaps even help him with it. He needed a partner, not a series of trophies.

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