Irina Muravyova is an award-nominated Russian author whose prose has been shortlisted for the Russian Booker Prize and the Bunin Prize. She was born in Moscow and currently lives in the United States.

John Dewey’s translations of Russian prose and poetry have been nominated or shortlisted for various awards. ‘Mirror of the Soul’, his biography of the poet Fyodor Tyutchev, was published in 2010 to critical acclaim.

Day of the Angel

By Irina Muravyova, John Dewey

Wimbledon Publishing Company

Copyright © 2009 Irina Muravyova
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78308-012-0
CHAPTER 1

Diary of Yelizaveta Aleksandrovna Ushakova

Paris, 1955

It’s nearly a month now since we found out that le bébé est en route. This had the immediate effect of completely transforming my and Georgiy’s life. We have become calmer, more considerate towards each other. It’s even difficult to explain this change. Lyonya, as far as one can judge, is a bit embarrassed by the prospect of becoming a father, and he and Vera kept the news from us for as long as they could. There’s something of the child in my son, and Vera plays along with it, pretending to be more naïve and helpless than she really is. I went to see Mama and Papa in Toulouse. Thank goodness they’ve finally moved, as Mama was almost going out of her mind in our village. She’s developed a pronounced stoop, but still looks at you with those same eyes: bright blue, a touch dazzling even.

I said to her, “Just imagine: you’re almost a great-grandmother!”

She replied, “Great-grandmother, so be it. But what about you, poor thing? How can you be a grandmother already?”

My life has gone by so quickly! Vera’s stomach seems to grow bigger by the hour, and her whole face is covered with dark yellow blotches. Sometimes I have the feeling that she doesn’t like me. Could it be she’s aware of this? Once she asked me how it was that Georgiy is a whole generation older than me. I had to tell her that he also lived in Tarbes and to begin with helped my father break in horses. He came there in 1925 when I was twenty-three and he was forty-five. Vera couldn’t understand that. Weren’t there any younger men? I tried to explain to her that there were plenty of young men, but mostly French, and my parents wanted me to marry a Russian, one of our own kind, and I went along with that. She just didn’t believe me. I have no bad feelings towards Vera, God forbid! As long as my son is happy I’ve nothing against her. She’s very attractive. Her body could be that of a negress, with the slim waist and rounded derrière they so often have. Her eyes are almost violet in colour. My son probably feels a strong physical attraction towards her. I certainly sense that. Only I don’t know if she feels the same way about him, whether she’s happy with him.

Tomorrow I’m going away with N. for three days on the pretext of having to visit Didi. God! And here’s me about to be a grand-mami!

CHAPTER 2

Anastasia Beckett – Yelizaveta Aleksandrovna Ushakova

Moscow, 1933

Liza, here we are at last in Moscow, worn out from our exertions. We arrived towards evening on Saturday. They’d sent a Cadillac to pick us up at the station with a driver who surprised me by not uttering a single word during the whole journey. For the first two months we’re staying at the Hotel New Moscow, with a view of the Kremlin and the Moscow River. The hotel décor is sumptuous: mirrors everywhere, lots of red velvet, bright lights. However, we couldn’t fill the bathtub because there was no plug. Patrick got the man on duty to come and have a look. He was clearly alarmed at the thought of having upset the foreigners. He said they’d come and put it right tomorrow, and for the time being suggested either sitting on the hole or plugging it with one’s heel. When he’d gone Patrick and I burst out laughing and compared heels to see whose would do a better job of plugging the hole. That night I had a migraine and found we’d left all our medication in London. Patrick gave me some cognac to drink.

Next morning at nine we went for breakfast. There’s red carpet all along the corridor, lots of potted palms, and the chambermaids all have white aprons and little caps so stiffly starched they look like marble. To begin with we were the only ones in the large overheated dining room. We were served fried patties with a very tasty filling, black caviar, butter, jam and pineapple compôte. I was shocked by this display of luxury: after all, the country we’d come to is a proletarian state where it goes without saying that the common people are used to a quite different way of life, so what was the point of all this charade? Soon after us some other guests came in, possibly Germans or Swedes: very well dressed, sleek, spotlessly clean, with supercilious grins on their faces as if convinced that this magnificent display had been laid on especially for them, judging it for that reason no more than right and proper and allowing themselves to be fed black caviar and pineapple compôte. Patrick and I quickly finished our breakfast and returned to our room.

Through our windows we could see the vast city spread out before us, with an iron bridge spanning the river, and the blue and green onion domes of St Basil’s Cathedral. Suddenly we heard the sound of a brass band just below our windows, and a lorry drove slowly past carrying an open coffin and relatives in black seated on wooden benches. Clearly visible from above were the immobile features of the deceased, who lay covered to the chin with a red drape strewn with small white asters. The bandsmen marched out in step behind the lorry, blowing their gleaming trumpets. I was unhappy that our first morning in Moscow should have begun with this funeral, which filled me with a sudden dark foreboding. But Patrick, who can always tell what’s on my mind, argued that we’d arrived in one of the world’s most exotic cities, where so much building was going on and so many changes were taking place before our very eyes, and that we’d find everything fascinating. No doubt he’s right.

The whole centre of Moscow has been dug up and hacked about like something disembowelled. At every turn one stumbles on yellow heaps of half-frozen earth, and half the streets are covered in a morass of dark-red clay. Whole areas are impassable on foot or by transport. Everywhere there’s the din and racket of excavators, the anxious faces of men in grimy caps and women in quilted jackets and red headscarves. Here women work on an equal footing with men, all building the metro which they say is due to open in time for the anniversary of the Revolution. Patrick and I went for a walk around the city, and I was struck by how people look when you see them up close. Their tired grey faces have nothing in common with those depicted on the cheerful posters which add dashes of colour to the city. Everyone’s clothes are shabby and inadequate, the streets are incredibly congested and the trams jam-packed. People all charge into each other, bite each other’s heads off, push the weak and less agile to the walls of buildings, leaving them standing there until they manage to find a way back into the merciless flow of human bodies. But do you know what struck me immediately? One is aware of a certain tense discipline in people, as if all the time they sense they’re being watched and could be punished. Patrick and I decided to take a tram back to the hotel. There were only five people waiting at the stop when we got there, but even so they’d lined up in orderly fashion, one behind the other. It’s the same at newspaper and tobacco kiosks. Nobody just stands there by him- or herself, everyone rushes to form a queue, as if without queues life would immediately descend into chaos. There are many beggars, so many! The homeless children make a particularly distressing sight. We were warned at the embassy of their great skill as petty thieves and told to keep a tight hold of our handbags, but now I’ve seen these children – emaciated, pale-faced, grubby, utterly neglected – I feel such shame as if I were personally to blame for them roaming the streets and begging for bread.

On Wednesday we were invited to dinner at the American embassy. I’d already heard in London that Bullitt and his wife host these incredible banquets and parties in Moscow. In the morning I sorted through and tried on everything I have, finally deciding on a long grey silk dress I’d had made in Riga. Soon after breakfast it started raining, giving rise to a pungent smell from the decaying leaves covering the streets. At six o’clock a car came to pick us up, and over the dress I put on a thick woollen coat trimmed with silver fox fur which I’d also had made in Riga. Our car stopped in front of a magnificent illuminated villa which looked a real palace.

What I saw vastly exceeded in opulence and splendour anything Patrick and I had imagined beforehand. The women were sumptuously attired. Many were showing a lot of bare flesh adorned with jewels and furs. What’s more, pearls and beads are not worn now as they used to be, but slung over the back to draw attention to the woman’s bare body. Silver fox and white fox were the most commonly worn furs, although I have to say there were a few bright-ginger, very fluffy ordinary fox furs there too. Make-up is different from what it used to be, too. Dark eye shadow and claret lipstick are out, and now it’s all thinly pencilled eyebrows and bright scarlet lips shot with gold or cherry. Nearly all the ladies were wearing very high heels. And you should have seen the food, Liza! The tables were literally groaning with it: mountains of black caviar, pineapples, grapes, bananas. In my grey dress and with nothing more than Mama’s little locket on display I felt like Cinderella. Near me all the time was a woman with a mousy face, flashing her diamonds so much it hurt your eyes. I learnt that she was the wife of some high-up military commander.

In the large white marble colonnaded hall several very elegant couples were dancing. Liza, j’ai halluciné! Imagine a window in the shape of a gigantic fan, a high vaulted ceiling, and in the middle of it a huge crystal chandelier blazing with lights! Patrick said the orchestra had been brought over specially from Stockholm. With his tail coat down to the ground and red hair in a short prickly crew cut the conductor looked like some fantastic hedgehog.

Then we went into the dining room. This was very bright and colourful, decorated in the style russe. In the corners were cages with newborn lambs and kids and even a bear cub. There was a marvellous winter garden in an indoor conservatory, with gorgeous flowers and ripening oranges and lemons. It was just like a fairy tale! Each table had large blue and white flower arrangements on it: roses, lilies and narcissi. Poppies imported from Holland had been laid on the tables, one to each place setting. The knives, forks and spoons were of solid silver with gold monograms. My head was spinning from all this splendour, from all the sounds and scents. At three o’clock in the morning accordions struck up, and from finely worked gilt cages suspended from the ceiling cocks began to crow. All the guests laughed and clapped their hands, and Bullitt, red-faced and perspiring from drink, stood up and took a bow.

But now for the main event of the evening, Liza: I was introduced to the famous Duranty! We were seated at the same table as him and that idiotic woman Anna Strong, who’d slapped on her orange lipstick just anyhow like some circus clown. Duranty’s face has a really sardonic expression; his eyes are grey and transparent. His face often takes on a certain peculiar hardness, or rather immobility – paralysis almost – which I think he uses as a way of deflecting unwanted curiosity. He has a pronounced limp, but that’s no bad thing at all: on the contrary, it even adds a certain manly air. I already knew from Patrick that Duranty was recently awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his newspaper reports about the situation in the Ukraine. He’s been living in Moscow for years and has travelled all over the country, and as a result his opinions are taken very seriously in Europe and America. After supper Patrick went off somewhere, the carrot-lipped Strong also scurried away, and Duranty and I were left alone at our table. Feeling awkward, I rather clumsily congratulated him on his prestigious award. At this he suddenly leant forwards very close as if wanting to sniff my eyes and hair, and with a strange unemotional laugh said:

“Never mind the reports! They’re all going to croak of starvation anyway. Ça me dit rien!“

I recoiled from him so violently that my elbow caught the half-empty bottle of champagne and knocked it over, spilling the contents over my legs. When he saw this, a kind of mad gleam came into his eyes.

“Would you like me to drink the rest of the champagne off your knee?” he asked.

“What!” By now I was really scared. I had the sudden feeling he was about to throw himself at me.

“I just want to play the gallant Frenchman,” he went on, laughing with his lips alone while his eyes retained their mad gleam. “Am I not right in thinking you claim France as your native land? But I too spent my best years in the Latin Quarter. That makes us almost fellow-nationals.”

I was completely thrown, but nevertheless did my best to change the subject:

“Are the Russian peasants really starving, then? That’s what we were told back in England. And in that case why don’t you describe things as they really are?”

He frowned and took my hand in his, as if I were a child in need of reassurance.

“First of all, I don’t write all that much. Learn to read between the lines … And secondly, what difference does it make? Europe has long been the realm of death. People have always cultivated a need for savagery and a passion for murder. Ça booste le moral! The Russians should be left to get on with it. Let them sort out their own mess. C’est le jour de la Sainte-Touche!”

I just gulped, unable to speak, unable to think what to reply; and then again he laughed and again leant up close to me, so close that I could feel the heat and tension of his body.

“Would you like me to take you for a spin about town? I have a car and chauffeur here and am at your service.”

I felt that everyone was looking at us, that they could see him holding my hand and leaning so close, as if at any moment he would put his arms around me and start kissing me.

“No, no, I don’t want to!”

“Are you really Russian?” he whispered. “Someone told me that Beckett had married a Russian. Which year did you emigrate?”

“1920.”

“And where are your parents now?”

“In the south of France. My sister and her family live in Paris: she’s married with a little son.”

“Well, see how well everything turned out. Why have you come to this Slough of Despond?”

Before I could reply Patrick returned and took me to meet a group of Moscow intellectuals keeping aloof from the general throng. I think they were quite disconcerted when they heard I was of Russian origin. I didn’t recognize any of their names apart from Meyerhold the theatre director and his wife the actress Zinaida Reich. As a couple they made a most unsympathetic impression on me. His hair stands up, and his face has an overwrought, pathetic and at the same time irate look to it, frequently assuming a haughty expression, and his eyes fall shut as if he’s about to faint. His speech is odd too: one moment he’ll be rattling along in a loud voice, then he starts mumbling to himself and a moment later stops altogether, deep in thought. His wife Zinaida Reich is a big overweight woman with expressive, somewhat hysterical eyes. You might call her beautiful were it not for her heavy lower jaw and lurid make-up through which you can’t even make out her face. Bukharin and his wife were there too. They both look old-fashioned, and she is plain and dresses like an old woman. I was in conversation with Meyerhold when I suddenly sensed with my whole back that someone was looking at me. I turned round: it was Duranty! Again that insolent gleam in his eyes, which gave me gooseflesh all over. Why was he looking at me like that? No doubt everyone had noticed it.

We returned to the hotel as it was getting light. Patrick told me that Duranty was without doubt an extremely talented journalist, but that dark things were rumoured of him. It’s known, for instance, that after the war he lived in Paris for a considerable length of time, indulging there in the most depraved debauchery, smoking opium and participating in some kind of unthinkable orgies at which sacrifices were made to the devil. He’s on his own here, without any family: they say his wife stayed behind in Paris.

When we’d gone to bed and outside Moscow was already bathed in pink light and filled with the clamour of horns, voices and other sounds, Patrick urged me several times and with great insistence to steer well clear of Duranty.

(Continues…)Excerpted from Day of the Angel by Irina Muravyova, John Dewey. Copyright © 2009 Irina Muravyova. Excerpted by permission of Wimbledon Publishing Company.
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