Boy on the Bridge (14 page)

I
n her sleep, Laura found herself tilting her face like a flower toward a patch of sun. She blinked and opened her eyes. The attic window was coated with melting frost. Birds chattered noisily in the trees outside, and downstairs, Olga clattered pots in the kitchen and sang to herself. Alyosha was gone, his spot on the mattress still warm. She had to pee badly, but the thought of getting up and going outside to the outhouse kept her paralyzed under the heavy blankets until she couldn’t stand it another second.

“Good morning, sleepyhead!” Olga called as Laura hurried past the kitchen to the yard. She waved to Alyosha and Roma, who squatted before a rusty grill, starting a fire. On her way back to the house, Alyosha stopped her for a kiss.

“What are you two doing?” she asked.

“
Shashlik
takes all-day preparation,” Roma explained. “The lamb is marinating, and I’m starting the fire early so the coals will be hot as the devil in a few hours.”

“I’m his helper,” Alyosha said.

“Go inside, helper,” Roma ordered. “Go have breakfast with your girl. I ate hours ago.”

Laura and Alyosha went inside and sat at the kitchen table, where Olga served them tea, toast, and kasha with milk and sugar.

“This tastes so much better than the kasha at the university cafeteria,” Laura said.

“Of course it does,” Olga said. “I’m insulted you would even mention my kasha in the same sentence as the university cafeteria.”

After breakfast, Laura offered to wash the dishes but Olga wouldn’t let her. So Laura and Alyosha dressed up in some of the crazy clothes they found in the closet, things that had been left by relatives and friends over the years — the fuzzy striped vest, a fur hat for Alyosha and a sailor hat for Laura, an old overcoat — and off they tramped, hand in hand, down the rutted, muddy road, through frozen fields strewn with cigarette butts and broken bottles, to the lake.

“Why doesn’t Olga like me?” Laura asked.

“What do you mean? Olga loves you!”

“No, she doesn’t.” She sat on a large rock and stared at the birds picking their way over the melting lake ice. “She pretends to, but it’s so transparent. She wants me to know it, too.”

Alyosha picked up a pebble and threw it at the water. “She’s jealous, that’s all. She likes to be the prettiest girl at the party, and when you’re around, she’s not.”

That sounded nice, but Laura didn’t think it told the whole story, or even part of it.

“I still think she’s in love with you.”

“Don’t be crazy.” He sat with her on the rock and put his arm around her. “What’s all this thinking about Olga lately?”

“I get a funny feeling from her,” Laura said. “She makes me uncomfortable.”

“I’m sorry. Just one more night and we’ll be back in Leningrad. Then you never have to see her again.”

“Unless I stop by your place uninvited.”

Zing
. “That’s not fair. I couldn’t help it that she broke into my apartment.”

“You didn’t exactly kick her out, did you?”

“Laura, what’s behind all this?”

“I don’t know.” To her surprise, she started to cry. He pulled her close and kissed her salty tears.

She couldn’t untangle her emotions. She was crying out of happiness, sadness, confusion, fear … and he seemed to sense this. He didn’t ask her what was wrong again. She couldn’t have given him a coherent answer. Instead, he talked in a low, soothing voice, about dreams.

“I cry a lot, too, Laura. Did you know that?”

She sniffed and shook her head. She’d never seen him cry.

“It’s true. At night when I’m home alone in my room, I wish you were there with me. And I think about the future, the future that is coming up so fast, when I will never be able to see
you or touch you, or have you next to me. That to me is a terrible future. No matter what happens in the world, if there is nuclear war or starvation or disease, nothing, to me, could be a more terrible pain than that.”

She turned her wet eyes to him. He looked back at her tenderly.

“So I cry,” he went on. “And to make myself feel better, I tell myself a story. Not a story, exactly; it’s more like watching a movie, the most wonderful movie ever made. Do you know what it’s about?”

She shook her head. But she knew.

“It’s about me in another life. I live in America — in San Francisco, where the weather is warm and there are streetcars like the trams in Leningrad, only cleaner and prettier. Every day I set up my easel on a hill and paint what I see. And what I see is the most beautiful city in the world, beauty all around me in every direction: boats floating under a swaying silver bridge, sunlight sparkling on blue water, houses in fantastic colors dotting the green hills, and beautiful people wearing wonderful clothes like I’ve never seen before.”

She pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her head on them, listening, imagining.

“Then the most beautiful girl of all walks up to me. She says, ‘It’s time to stop painting now. Come home for dinner.’ So I pack up my things and I take her hand and together we walk
home through the shining city. And I tell that girl, ‘Laura, I am so happy with you. I want our life to stay like this forever.’ ”

She could see it all. She was crying again.

“I wish that story could come true,” Alyosha said. “I would do anything to make it happen. Anything.”

She sniffed and wiped her eyes. She felt infinitely happy and infinitely sad at the same time.

“Anything, Laura.”

“So would I,” she said at last.

“Would you?” He squeezed her tighter, shook her a little. “Would you really do anything to be with me?”

She leaned over and wrote her answer with her finger in the water of the melting lake. He read the word, caught it in the split second before it disappeared: Yes. A promise written in water.

He broke into a wide, ecstatic grin and touched the cold water with one finger, tracing a heart. A cloud passed over the sun, turning the lake gray. “It’s getting cold. We should go back.” Alyosha stood and helped her to her feet. They walked back to the dacha arm in arm. Something had changed between them. Laura couldn’t say what exactly, but she felt it as surely as the quickening wind, the squish of spring mud under her boots, his warm arm in hers.

* * *

They ate the
shashlik
at sunset, huddling around the fire in their funny outfits, spearing the lamb meat with shish-kebab skewers
and gnawing at it like Cossacks. Laura wiped the grease from her chin, feeling deliciously primitive.

“Laura’s already a member of the Lenin Clean Plate Club,” Alyosha told Olga and Roma. “But for tonight’s valiant achievement in eating, she gets a special commendation.”

“Here, here!” Roma saluted Laura with a skewer.

Laura bowed. “The Lenin Clean Plate Award has always been a dream of mine. I want to thank all the little people who helped me get where I am today: my mother, who spoon-fed me mashed peas and stewed apricots; Roma, who cooked this spectacular
shashlik
which inspired me to eat like I’ve never eaten before…”

Olga, Roma, and Alyosha looked slightly baffled by Laura’s parody of an Oscar speech, having never seen or even heard of the Oscars, but they knew it was supposed to be funny and laughed anyway.

The sun went down and the cold, sharp stars pierced the blue-black sky. The fire was dying and the cold grew bitter, so they cleared away the food and went inside to warm up by the stove.

“Let’s have a seance,” Olga suggested. “I can feel the spirits circling the house, waiting to be invited in.”

“Olga, no,” Alyosha said.

“Why not?” Roma got a large piece of paper and began to draw the letters of the Russian alphabet on it in crayon in a circle. “We’ll play the saucer game. That’s what we always do in the country.” He drew a pyramid and a closed eye in the center.
Laura immediately had a flashback to third-grade slumber parties — the Ouija board. “It’s only a game.”

“It is not just a game when I play it.” Olga took a saucer off a kitchen shelf and set it upside down in the middle of the paper to serve as a planchette. “The spirits come when I call. They don’t dare disobey me.”

Roma laughed and rolled his eyes. “Queen of the Black Arts, here.”

“Queen of the Black Arts” fit Olga pretty well, Laura thought. “How do we play?”

“You go to the door and call to a spirit,” Olga explained. “Then we all touch the saucer lightly with our fingertips and wait for the spirit to come answer your question.”

“The saucer points to letters on the board to spell out the answer,” Laura said.

“You’ve done this before! I didn’t know you were interested in the occult,” Olga said.

“Well … it was more of a party game —”

“Yes! Exactly. The saucer game,” Roma said.

“No, you have the soul of a sorceress, Laura. I see it in your eyes.” Olga lit two candles and blew out the lamp. “Who wants to go first? No one? Then I will.”

She walked to the front door and opened it, calling, “Cornelius Agrippa! Cornelius Agrippa! Cornelius Agrippa!” She shut the door quickly and hurried back to the table, rubbing her shivering arms.

“Who’s Cornelius Agrippa?” Laura asked.

“You never heard of him?” Roma said.

“He was a German magician in the Renaissance,” Alyosha whispered. “He wrote books on the occult.”

“Ssshhh!” Olga hissed.

“Poor American education,” Roma muttered. Laura couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.

“Roma, hush! We have to wait for the spirits in silence. Put your fingertips on the saucer.”

Everyone lightly touched the saucer. After a moment of silence, Olga intoned, “O Cornelius Agrippa, come to us. Come to me and answer my question: When will I be rich?”

“You always ask the same question,” Roma said.

Laura felt a bump under the table that she assumed was Olga kicking Roma in the shin. “Oof!” Roma grunted in confirmation.

The saucer began to vibrate, then move across the wheel of letters. It zoomed around in a circle, stopping at
S
. Then
K
,
O
… In Russian, it spelled out
skoro
: soon.

“Soon!” Olga crowed. “Soon I’ll be rich!”

“Agrippa always says ‘soon,’ ” Roma grumbled. “He’s been saying ‘soon’ for years.”

“Soon,” Olga repeated. “Now you try it, Laura. Whose spirit will you call?”

“I’ll call Anna Akhmatova,” Laura said.

“Good choice,” Alyosha said.

“She’s very popular,” Olga agreed.

Laura went to the door and said “Anna Akhmatova” three times. Then she returned to the table.

“What is your wish?” Olga prompted.

“Can I keep my wish secret?” Laura asked.

“Yes,” Alyosha said. “You can ask it in silence.”

“But I want to know what it is,” Olga said.

“Let her alone,” Roma said. “Go on, Laura.”

Laura closed her eyes and silently asked,
Anna Akhmatova, will Alyosha and I be together again someday?

She waited. After a second or two she felt the saucer moving. It landed on a letter. At first she couldn’t tell where this was going. But soon the message was clear:
Get married.

“Really, Anna Akhmatova?” she whispered in the candlelight.

“That’s a very interesting answer,” Olga remarked.

“It has nothing to do with my question,” Laura lied. Why, she wasn’t sure. She suspected that Olga controlled the saucer — Olga was the most likely suspect — and wanted to throw her off a little.

“How do you know?” Alyosha asked. “Maybe you can’t see the connection yet.”

“That’s true.” Olga’s eyes glittered in the candlelight. “Sometimes the spirits’ answers don’t seem to make sense, but they become clear in the future.”

“One day you’ll snap your fingers and say, ‘So
that’s
what Anna meant!’ ” Roma said. “Now, my turn.” He went to the
door and called Cornelius Agrippa back. “He’s one of the most powerful spirits,” he explained as he returned to the table. Then he asked, “Cornelius Agrippa, what will become of our friend Alyosha?”

They sat around the table, perfectly still, as the seconds ticked by. This question seemed to take longer to answer than the others. “Maybe Agrippa’s out answering someone else’s question at the moment,” Laura joked.

“Sshhh!” Olga hissed.

At last the saucer inched across the paper. “A —” everyone said out loud. “-m … -e … -r…”

America.

“America! Isn’t that wonderful?” Olga kissed Laura and gave Alyosha a squeeze. “Alyosha’s going to America!”

“That’s great!” Laura said.

Alyosha smiled shyly and looked pleased, but he wouldn’t quite meet Laura’s questioning look. Their eyes linked for a split second, magnets catching and pulling apart quickly.

“What are you going to do in America, Alyosha?” Roma asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe we should ask the spirits,” Laura said.

“He’ll be an artist, of course,” Olga said. “Just like here. Only famous. And rich.”

“Rich, rich,” Roma said. “For Olga, nothing counts unless you’re rich.”

They asked the spirits a few more questions — would Olga have a child someday (yes, a girl), would Roma ever own a car (no, a motorcycle), would Laura have children (Olga asked this question for her; the answer was yes, three) — until the game got old and the players sleepy. Laura helped Olga clean up before joining Alyosha upstairs in the attic.

“I warmed up the bed for you,” he said as she slipped in beside him.

“Thank you.” They huddled together in the dark. “Alyosha — what do you think about that saucer game?”

He squeezed her tighter. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, do you believe that the spirits are really answering our questions?”

“Maybe they are. I know I’m not pushing the saucer around. Are you?”

“No.”

Silence.

“But Olga or Roma could be,” she said, really meaning
Olga
.

“She wouldn’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“It’s dangerous. That’s playing with fate. You don’t play with fate.”

This struck Laura as a strange and kind of weak explanation.

“So what do you think of the answers they gave us?” she pressed on. “Do you believe they’ll come true?”