Kseniya Melnik - Snow in May - Stories

“Galochka looked at me askance. I felt scrambled inside. I just couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud. I was afraid, perhaps irrationally, that once I let the wild animal out of the cage, everything would fall into chaos. Our harmony at work. Our friendly, productive kollektiv . Of course, many knew, but it was all underwater. It wasn’t an issue. At the same time, I realized that no matter what I said, it wouldn’t change the truth.”

“‘His compass is broken,’ I blurted out. ‘Instead of women … it’s the other way around. He likes men. It’s a disease.’

“Galochka didn’t fall into hysterics like I’d expected. She didn’t even look very disappointed or betrayed. She asked me to please keep her confession in confidence. As you see, I’m only breaking my promise more than thirty years later.

“A few weeks after our conversation, Galochka came to my office again. She was pale and had even lost several kilos.

“‘Mikhail Pavlovich, I decided,’ she said dramatically, like the wife of a convicted Decembrist. Have you studied the Decembrist uprising at school yet, Sonya, when many wives had followed their husbands to exile in Siberia? ‘I’ve thought hard,’ Galochka said, ‘I understand that with Makin I wouldn’t get the kind of love women expect in a marriage. Besides, many husbands, normal husbands, beat their wives—’

“Here I lost my temper a bit. If my workers let their arms loose, I could call a disciplinary meeting and strip them of northern coefficient pay. She wasn’t talking about my workers, she said. Her heart was telling her that she had to be Makin’s companion, to love and serve him selflessly. Her life would be full, and they both would be happy. This was love between souls, bypassing the body, she said.

“I dismissed her. Told her that she’d been reading too much Turgenev.

“‘A person always knows when someone loves him,’ Galochka insisted. ‘I will take care of him, and if one day he is able to return my love like a husband, to my joy there will be no end. If not, it won’t change my feelings for him.’”

Sonya held her breath. The story was beginning to sound like one of Baba Olya’s favorite soap operas — full of amnesia, misunderstanding, and love for the wrong people.

“‘Enough with the decorative language,’ I said to her strictly.” Deda Misha shook his finger. “To be honest, I thought she must be a little abnormal. Unwed and childless at thirty-five, living in her dream world of books and piano. Lost in her head. Of course, such marriages weren’t unheard of. On the contrary, they were viewed positively, as a documented effort to change, to start a new life.

“I decided that Galochka needed to spend some time away from Makin, while I determined the feasibility of their union. My head began to work, tik tik tik . I surveyed my, so to speak, vast empire: there were gold mines all over Kolyma, and to each mine was attached a village, a camp, and an electrostation.

“‘I have a great idea, Galina Fyodorovna!’ I told her. ‘I can send you on a monthlong assignment to audit our accounting at the electrostations up north, and while you’re gone, I’ll talk to Makin. Don’t send him letters or call. Let me sort this out and let him think.’

“Galochka liked my plan very much. She left my office with her beatific smile. But I had a heavy heart.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to happen. On one hand, I hoped she would come to her senses and give up on Makin so he could live out his days in peace. I even considered keeping her up north indefinitely.” Deda Misha smiled sadly. “Time cures everything, except, I guess, Makin’s disease. On the other hand, this could be his only chance to rejoin Soviet society as a full member.

“The following month, Galochka began her work above the Arctic Circle, and I looked for the right time to talk to Makin. I turned over and over in my head how I would present to him such a marriage proposal. I still hoped that he might get himself fully rehabilitated as a man. For that, Galochka wouldn’t have been my first choice.… I lost hours of sleep thinking over this.

“Makin was not easy to catch in those days. Gumenyuk finally got the central arts committee to approve a solo tour outside his exile zone. Not Moscow or Leningrad, but Makin was moving inland, reconquering his former territories. He was rehearing all the time. He had ordered a new tuxedo at the local atelier, which, by the way, was stolen from his room the night before he left on tour.”

“How could someone do that?”

“Jealousy. Black-heartedness, small-heartedness. Makin returned home from the theater late, and I, let’s not forget, had my own family to take care of. Galochka wrote to me every week asking about the progress of our scheme. We petroleum engineers know that we’re always one mistake away from an explosion. I extended Galochka’s assignment for another month.

“I decided to talk to Makin after he returned. I meant to stop by and wish him good luck, but there was an accident at the port.”

“What happened?” Sonya said.

“An oil tanker was cleaning its pipes and flushed so much water—”

“No, Deda, with Makin. What happened with Makin?”

“What happened with Makin, what happened with Makin!” Deda Misha looked gratified. “It was equally shocking and predictable. His first stop was Sverdlovsk — now Yekaterinburg — a town east of the Urals. After a sold-out concert, he was caught red-handed at his old crime. In his hotel room, with a young man.” Deda Misha ran his hand through his white mane. “Makin, so naive. The KGB had been watching his every move. He was returned to his old camp, and my decision was made for me: there would be no wedding.”

“That is horrible. He should have been more careful. He should have known!”

“Yes. A tragedy for the country, to lose such a talented singer twice. He squandered the chance most other prisoners and former prisoners, millions and millions of them, never got — a second chance at life. To me, only one thing that could explain his behavior — madness. Perhaps he and Galochka weren’t so different in the end.

“After this, a wave of gossip and paranoia rolled through Magadan. Those who had advocated for the relaunch of Makin’s career got very nervous. People still remembered the years of repression, Stalin, Yezhov. Kazakov, the radio director, destroyed all the recordings of Makin’s new songs. My own fears subsided a bit when Baba Mila was appointed official witness while the KGB inventoried Makin’s property in his room, but you never knew whom they might play against whom.”

“And you never saw him again?”

“I did. Once. A year after his second arrest. I was looking for the supervisor at a construction site for one of my depot workers’ houses and instead found Makin. He sat at a desk in the corner of the room — well, you could hardly call it a room at that point, it was just a concrete box.”

“Dedushka! What was he doing there?”

“He was the timekeeper. His job was to record the hours of the other inmates who worked toward shortening their sentences. My first impulse was to pretend not to recognize him, to save our dignities. He looked up at me and smiled like at an old friend. I smiled in return. Genuine smiles are contagious, Sonya. I instantly forgot everything.

“‘Vadim Andreevich, I’ll try to do something to get you out sooner,’ I said. ‘Did you know how much Galochka loves you? She wants to marry you and take care of you as if you were her own child. We will restore you as the director of our musical ensemble at the Workers’ Club. You will be rehabilitated.’ I didn’t have the power to do what I was promising. In fact, my rambling probably sounded crazy and foolish, too. I tell you, Sonya, he had a witching influence over me, just as he did over millions of Soviet people. One nod from him, and his welfare would’ve taken over my life again.