A Hero's Daughter Read online

  In the morning they let him go. He walked along slowly, not really knowing where he was going, taking in gulps of fresh, blue air through his parched lips, his eyes screwed up against the dazzling March sun. He only desired one thing: to buy a bottle of liquor quickly and, without a glass, drinking from the neck, choking on it, to ingest a few lifesaving drafts. He felt through his pockets and took out the medals and the Order, unable to believe his luck. “They haven’t taken them,” he thought happily. “Hey! Don’t they search you anymore at that station …?”

  The militiaman detailed to catch Ivan red-handed made his move too fast. Ivan had just unwrapped his treasure. The dealer had not yet taken out his money. He saw the militiaman in plain clothes looming up in front of them and began yawning in a bored manner. “My, my, little father, so those are war medals that you’ve got there! No, that doesn’t interest me. That’s a recipe for ending up in the clink, you know. It’s not my bag.”

  The militiaman swore in frustration, flashed his red card and indicated to Ivan a car that was waiting for them.

  That evening he went home to Borissov. At the police station they had decided not to pursue it. To begin with he had not been caught red-handed. Besides, he was a Hero, after all. He traveled back on an overcrowded train. Sweating heavily and dazed with exhaustion from standing in line in Moscow, people were carrying great bundles of provisions. March 8, International Women’s Day, was drawing near. Standing there, squeezed against a creaking door, Ivan was absently drumming on the smooth, round medals in his pocket and thinking: “If only someone would speak to me…. There they all are, with their sour faces…. Their mouths shut tight and their bags crammed with fodder…. It’d be good to kick the bucket here and now. They’d bury me and it’d be all over and done with. Spring’s on the way now, the earth’s good and soft already. It thaws quickly….”

  From Moscow they sent a report on Ivan to the District Committee of the Party. They recounted the episode at the sobering-up station and the trafficking in medals. The matter went all the way up to the Party’s Central Committee. “How’s this! The Hero of Stalingrad has become an alcoholic who sells his war medals! And just as we’re coming up to the fortieth anniversary of the Victory!” Furthermore Gorbachev’s magic tricks were turning out not to be magic tricks at all; heads were beginning to roll. It was Year One of the Gorbachevian Revolution.

  From the Central Committee they had telephoned to the Regional Committee, from the Regional Committee to the District Committee. The reproaches snowballed. The Party District Committee Secretary, having received a warning shot, nervously dialed the number of the Regional Military Committee. Ivan was summoned to it by a simple notice. The officer who saw him instructed him to hand over his army documents and his Hero of the Soviet Union certificate. “They’re going to stick another bit of anniversary scrap metal on me,” thought Ivan.

  Without even opening the army papers, the officer handed them back to Ivan; the Hero’s certificate he tossed into the safe with a brisk gesture and slammed the thick little door shut.

  “For the time being your certificate will stay with us,” he said drily. And in grave tones he added: “In accordance with the instructions of the Party District Committee.”

  In a futile impulse, Ivan gestured toward the safe, as if reaching for the little door. But the officer stood up and shouted into the corridor: “Sergeant, escort this citizen to the exit.”

  At the District Committee Ivan thrust aside the switchboard operator who tried to bar his way and burst into the Party Secretary’s office. The latter was talking on the telephone and when Ivan accosted him with a shout he put his hand over the receiver and said in a low voice: “I’ll have you thrown out by a militiaman.”

  Having finished his conversation he gave Ivan a nasty look and intoned: “We shall be addressing a request to the higher authorities, Comrade Demidov, to seek the revocation of your award as Hero of the Soviet Union. That’s all. This interview is at an end. I shall detain you no further.”

  “It wasn’t you that gave me that award and it won’t be you that takes it away from me,” muttered Ivan dully.

  “Precisely. Its not my responsibility. Its within the competence of the Supreme Soviet. That’s where they’ll review whether a depraved alcoholic has the moral right to wear the Gold Star.”

  Ivan greeted these words with a heavy shout of laughter.

  “No. Not the Star. You won’t take that away from me, you bunch of bastards. Even the Fritzes at the camp never found it on me. Though they searched me enough times! I screwed it into the palm of my hand. They shouted: ‘Hands up!’ And I spread my fingers but it stayed in place. Look! Like this!”

  And with a bitter smile Ivan showed the Secretary the five points of the Star embedded in his palm. The Secretary was silent.

  “That’s how it is, Citizen Chief,” repeated Ivan, who was no longer smiling. “What? You didn’t know I’d been a prisoner of war? Well, no one knew. If it had come out I’d have been rotting in a camp at Kolyma long ago. Go ahead! Call the Military Committee. Let those rats do a bit of research. They might find a little two-month gap in ‘44. And as for the Star, you’ll never take it from me. You’ll have to rob my corpse for it….”

  Ivan could not bring himself to go home. He dreaded seeing again the empty coat stand in the corridor, the gray pile of dirty linen, the washbasin yellow with rust. For a long time he walked around in the muddy spring streets, and when he noticed someone coming toward him turned aside. Then he made his way around the furniture factory, beyond which there was already an expanse of open country, and emerged in a wasteland that smelled of damp snow. Close by, beneath a layer of spongy ice, a stream murmured softly. On the sloping verge the snow had already melted in places, uncovering dark, swollen earth. This earth gave way underfoot in a soft and supple manner. And once more it seemed to Ivan not frightening but warm and tender, like river clay.

  “I’ve lasted too long,” thought Ivan. “I should have gone sooner. They’d have buried me with full honors.” He realized that throughout that time he had been hoping for a brutal and unexpected end, an end that would have happened of itself and would have swept everything into the void, the dead apartment, the dark entrance where drunkards lingered, himself. That was why he was destroying himself with such abandon, almost joyfully. But the end did not come.

  When dusk was beginning to fall Ivan went back into the town, walked along the streets once more — the “Progress” Cinema, the District Committee, the militia. Beside the Gastronom store there was a long, serpentine line. One of the men at the end of the line dropped a bag full of empty bottles. He started picking up the pieces, cut his fingers, and swore in a weary, monotonous voice. “If only I could buy half a liter and down it first… otherwise I don’t think I’ll have the courage,” thought Ivan. But he had nothing to pay with. ‘Okay, I’ll try to find the sleeping pills. But it’ll have to be done later, or else the neighbors will suspect something.”

  And he continued wandering. When night came the cold made the stars glitter. The icebound snow crackled underfoot. But there was already a smell of spring on the wind. Close to his home Ivan lifted his head — almost all the windows were already dark. It was dark, too, in the courtyard beside the apartment building. Dark and silent. In the silence Ivan heard the light crunch of the snow beneath the feet of a stray dog. Happy at the thought of being able to stroke it and look into its anxious, tender eyes, he turned around. The night wind was causing a ball of crumpled newspaper to roll along the ground….

  Ivan went in through the main door and was preparing to climb up to his apartment on the third floor but remembered he should look at the mail. He hardly ever opened his box for weeks at a time, knowing that if something was dropped in it, it was almost certainly by mistake. His daughter sent him three cards a year: on Soviet Army Day, his birthday, and Victory Day. The first two dates were already past, the third was still a long way off. This time he found a letter. Only the upper floors w
ere lit, and where the box was almost total darkness reigned. “Moscow,” Ivan made out on the envelope. “It must be the bill from the sobering-up station. Hell’s bells! They don’t waste any time. That’s the capital for you. …”

  In the course of his wanderings through the town he had had time to gather his thoughts. He had been thinking about it all with surprising detachment, as if it concerned someone else. He recalled where there was a razor amid the chaos in the kitchen, and in which of the drawers in the chest the pills were kept. He was no longer on good terms with his neighbors on the same floor. Which is why he decided to slip the note asking for someone to come and see him under the door of the apartment below, where Zhora, a robust warehouseman lived. He got on well with him and occasionally they had a drink together. “It’s all right, he’s tough. He’s not one to be scared,” thought Ivan. “That’s important. Someone else might have a heart attack.

  As he climbed up the stairs he was fingering his neck, trying to find where the blood throbbed most strongly. “That must be it, the carotid. Oh! It’s really pounding away there. The main thing’s to hit it first time off. Otherwise you’re going to be running around like a chicken with its throat half cut!”

  In the apartment he took out the razor and found the sleeping pills. On a piece of paper he wrote: “Zhora, come to number 84. It’s important.” Then he went and slipped the note under the door.

  Back at home, he made a tour of the apartment, glanced at a photo in the wooden frame: Tatyana and himself, still very young, and in the background palm trees and the misty outline of the mountains. Then, he filled a glass with water from the tap and began to swallow the pills one after the other.

  Soon Ivan felt a thick fog that muffled all sounds revolving slowly in his head. He opened the razor and, as if to shave himself, lifted his chin.

  At that moment he remembered he had slammed the door shut and that he needed to leave it unlocked, otherwise Zhora would not be able to get in. His mind was still functioning and this afforded him an absurd satisfaction. In the entrance hall he took the medals, wrapped in an old piece of newspaper, out of his coat pocket, together with the letter from the Moscow sobering-up station. He tossed the medals into the drawer and, holding the letter up to the light, opened the envelope unhurriedly. There was nothing official there. The page, covered in regular feminine handwriting, began with these words: “Dear Dad! It’s been a long time since I last wrote you, but you’ve no idea what life is like in Moscow….”

  Ivan picked up the envelope and read the sender’s address with difficulty: “Moscow, 16 Litovsky Avenue, Flat 37, Demidova 0.1.” Feverishly, muddling up lines of text that were already growing blurred, his eye seized upon fragments of sentences: ‘Tve got to know a nice young man…. We’re thinking of getting married in July … His parents would like to meet you. Come for the May celebrations…. You can stay with us for a week or two. …”

  Ivan could never recall the very last sentence in the letter, even though he saw it absolutely clearly, even repeated it, as it seemed to him, whispering, “The bells are ringing in Moscow…. The bells are ringing…. And who’s going to hear them?”

  It was not until the afternoon that Ivan came to. He opened his eyes, then screwed them up against the blinding sunlight beating on the window panes. He was lying on the floor. Above him crouched Zhora, shaking him by the shoulder.

  “Dmitrich, Dmitrich! Wake up now, you goddamned veteran! You’ve sure been boozing it up! Where did you get plastered like that? No, don’t shut your eyes, you’ll nod off again. Why did you send for me? What’s this urgent business, then? To wake you up? Eh? D’you think I’ve got nothing better to do than come and sober you up?”

  Listening to him and scarcely grasping the import of his words, Ivan smiled. Then just as Zhora was preparing to go, Ivan forced open his swollen lips and asked softly: “Zhora, let me have five rubles. I’ll pay you back next pension day.”

  Zhora whistled softly to himself, got up and thrust his hands into his pockets.

  “My lord, Dmitrich, you’ve got some nerve! Now you’ve found yourself a Pioneer who’s done his good deed for the day, I guess you’ll be wanting me to bring you the occasional bottle and give you the nipple to suck….”

  Then he glanced around the shabby, empty apartment and at Ivan, his thin face devoured by his beard, and said in a conciliatory voice: “Look, I don’t have five rubles. Here’s three. That’ll be enough to take care of your hangover. Yesterday at the Gastronom they had a strong one in at two rubles seventy a bottle. The guys say it’s fine.

  Feeling a little better, Ivan doused his head pleasur-ably under the cold tap for a long time, then went out into the springtime street and made his way unhurriedly to the store, smiling at the warm sunshine.

  On his return he cooked some noodles in a saucepan. He ate them slowly with some cheap canned fish. After the meal he emptied a whole packet of washing powder into the bathtub, gathered up all the linen and clothes and did a great, clumsy wash, the way men do.

  When Ivan caught sight of Olya at the railroad station, in the middle of the dense, teeming crowd, she had changed so much it took his breath away As they made their way toward the subway he could not get used to the idea that this svelte young woman was his daughter. Everything about her was so simple and naturally harmonious — neat light gray shoes, black stockings, a full jacket with broad shoulders.

  “Goodness, Olya! You’ve turned into a real westerner!” he said, shaking his head.

  She laughed.

  “That’s right, Dad. ‘When in Rome do as the Romans do’! I can’t help it. You know what big fish I have to deal with. Only yesterday I was just having my last session with a capitalist who’s got factories in seven different countries. With people like that we have to look reasonably presentable or they don’t sign our contracts.”

  “And look at me, a real peasant. You must be ashamed to walk beside me.”

  “Nonsense, Dad. What are you saying? Not at all! Your Star alone is worth all the rest of them. And as to clothes, don’t worry. Tomorrow we’ll sort things out. You see, you couldn’t visit Alexei’s parents in that suit. And, most of all, you need a new shirt.”

  Ivan actually thought his shirt was the best thing he had on. He had bought it some days before his departure and trying it on had cheered him up — he had felt rejuvenated and dashing, like in the old days. What he liked particularly was that the shirt did not constrict his neck; although he buttoned it up right to the top.

  During the past few weeks he had tidied up the apartment and one warm April day had even washed the windows. He washed them slowly, delighting in the freshness and lightness of the air coming into the rooms….

  * * *

  On the following day Olya took him into a big store where a sickly-sweet, suffocating scent hung on the air.

  “You know, Dad, we could have bought everything at a Beriozka, of course. I’ve got vouchers for that. But, you see, first of all my parents-in-law are such snobs that nothing impresses them. And secondly, your Star wouldn’t look right on an imported suit. So we’ll find something made at home but good quality.”

  Wearing this navy blue suit that fitted him well, Ivan looked in the mirror and did not recognize himself.

  “There we are,” joked Olya, “a real retired general. Now we’ll go and buy a couple of shirts and some neckties.”

  Back at home she tormented him by tying and untying his tie and searching for the best place to fix the Star.

  “Leave it, Olya,” Ivan finally begged. “It’s fine like that. You’re fussing over me as if I were a young lady. Anyone would think I was the one getting married….”

  “Oh, if only you knew, Dad.” Olya sighed. “Nothing’s simple. You have to think of everything, plan everything. You have no idea of the circles these big fish move in. They’re forever traveling abroad. Their apartment’s like a museum. They drink coffee from antique china and the people they mix with are all like that: diplomats, writers, m
inisters … Hold on a minute, don’t move! I’m going to take a little tuck here, while you’re wearing it and I’ll stitch it up afterward; otherwise the shirt will gape and that won’t look very nice…. You see, they’re really the cream of Moscow society. Alyosha’s father went to college with Gorbachev at Moscow State and they’re still on first-name terms. Just think! There, one last try and I’ll leave you in peace. Goodness, Dad, you’re very thin. You’re all skin and bone. I suppose you can’t find anything in the stores in Borissov…. There. That’s it. Take a look in the mirror. A real superman! Tomorrow we’ll go and buy you some suitable shoes. Then I’ll take you out. No. The Star’s too high up. Hold on. I’ll move it down a bit….”

  The visit to the future parents-in-law was due to take place on May 9, Victory Day. Olya had thought this date an excellent choice. They would be showing some documentary or other on television. Her father would recall the old days and would talk about his memories. This would be a good topic of conversation. They certainly wouldn’t be discussing the latest Paris exhibition with him….

  It was true. Nothing was totally simple.

  When she had written to her father that the wedding was planned for July she had been slightly anticipating events. Alexei talked about this marriage in a somewhat evasive manner. His parents, for their part, were very kind to her. But in their very worldly kindness Olya scented the risk of all her plans collapsing. Indeed it would not even be a collapse as such. Simply a friendly smile, a sweet and mildly surprised look from beneath a raised eyebrow. “But, you poor little idiot, how could you ever hope to take your place in our milieu?”