The Secret Speech Read Free Page A

interjected, trying to keep her voice friendly:
    – Maxim, you must go.
    He reacted sharply:
    – I want to stay.
    Slighted by her earlier laugh, he was stubborn and indignant. Speaking in a double meaning invisible to her husband, she said:
    – Please Maxim, forget everything that has happened, you will achieve nothing by staying.
    Maxim shook his head:
    – I’ve made my decision.
    Anisya noticed Lazar smile. There was no doubt her husband was fond of Maxim. He’d taken him under his wing, blind to his protege’s infatuation with her, alert only to the deficiencies in his knowledge of scripture and philosophy. He was pleased with Maxim’s decision to stay, believing that it had something to do with him. Anisya moved closer to Lazar:
    – We cannot allow him risk to his life.
    – We cannot force him to leave.
    – Lazar, this is not his fight.
    It was not her fight either.
    – He has made it his. I respect that. You must too.
    – It is senseless!
    In modeling Maxim on himself, the martyr, her husband had chosen to humiliate her and condemn him. Lazar exclaimed:
    – Enough! We don’t have time! You wish him to be safe. I do too. But if Maxim wants to stay, he stays.
    Lazar hurried toward the stone altar, hastily stripping it bare. Every person connected to his church was in danger. He could do little for his wife or Maxim: they were too closely connected to him. But his congregation, the people who’d confided in him, shared their fears-it was essential their names remain a secret.
    With the altar bare, Lazar gripped the side:
    – Push!
    None the wiser but obedient, Maxim pushed the altar, straining at the weight. The rough stone base scratched across the stone floor, slowly sliding aside and revealing a hole, a hiding place created some twenty years ago during the most intensive attacks on the church. The stone slabs had been removed, exposing earth that had been carefully dug and lined with timber supports to stop it subsiding, creating a space one meter deep, two meters wide. It contained a steel trunk. Lazar reached down and Maxim followed suit, taking the opposite end of the trunk and lifting it out, placing it on the floor, ready to be opened.
    Anisya lifted the lid. Maxim crouched beside her, unable to keep the amazement out of his voice:
    – Music?
    The trunk was filled with handwritten musical scores. Lazar explained:
    – The composer attended services here, a young man-not much older than you, a student at the Moscow Conservatory. He came to us one night, terrified that he was about to be arrested. Fearing that his work would be destroyed, he entrusted us with his compositions. Much of his work had been condemned as anti-Soviet.
    – Why?
    – I don’t know. He didn’t know either. He had nowhere to turn, no family or friends he could trust. So he came to us. We agreed to take possession of his life’s work. Shortly afterward, he disappeared.
    Maxim glanced over the notes:
    – The music… is it good?
    – We haven’t heard it performed. We dare not show it to anyone, or have it played for us. Questions might be asked.
    – You have no idea what it sounds like?
    – I can’t read music. Neither can my wife. But Maxim, you’re missing the point. My promise of help wasn’t dependent on the merits of his work.
    – You’re risking your lives? If it’s worthless…
    Lazar corrected him:
    – We’re not protecting these papers; we’re protecting their right to survive.
    Anisya found her husband’s assuredness infuriating. The young composer in question had come to her, not him. She’d then petitioned Lazar and convinced him to take the music. In the retelling of the story he’d smoothed over his doubts, anxieties-reducing her to nothing more than his passive supporter. She wondered if he was even aware of the adjustments he’d made to the history, automatically elevating his own importance, recentering the story around him.
    Lazar picked up the entire collection of