Boy on the Bridge (3 page)

I
n Laura’s Literature class the next day, they read a Pushkin poem, “To a Foreign Lady.” Her classmates were her fellow Americans: Karen, Binky, Dan, and a few of the other undergrad language students. By college, a Russian student would know most of Pushkin’s work by heart. Laura was reminded of Alyosha when she read the lines, “In language you won’t comprehend, I write this verse to say good-bye …”

Not that she needed a reminder.

Don’t call him today
, she warned herself.
It’s too soon. Wait until next week.

But she felt restless, and she didn’t trust herself to heed her own advice. Here she was in a foreign country, sitting in class with a bunch of other Americans, just like she would be at home. Reading about love.

Pathetic, that’s what it was. Timid. Boring. She was wasting her youth — her “fleeting youth,” as Pushkin might have said.

Fleeting. No time to waste.

She longed for something to happen to her. Something exciting. It was up to her to make it happen, to take chances. Take action.

If she couldn’t find an adventure in Russia, she deserved to be bored.

When classes ended for the day, she left the university without stopping for lunch. She bypassed the pay phone in the hall, bypassed the phone booth outside the cafeteria. Karen caught up with her at the
OGNEOPASNO!
sign and asked, “Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

“No hurry. I’m just restless.”

“I know what you mean; I can’t get out of class fast enough.”

Laura wanted to tell Karen about Alyosha. She ached to tell someone. But it was better to wait. She’d only known Karen a couple of weeks. What if she called Alyosha and he didn’t remember her? What if they planned to meet and he stood her up? There were so many ways this situation could turn out to be humiliating. The fewer people to witness it, the better.

She was glad to have Karen’s company for the trek over the Builders’ Bridge, though. The gypsies didn’t bother them now. They cowered on the other side of the bridge, their long scarves flapping in the wind, and did not approach.

“What’s up with the gypsies?” Karen asked. “I’ve been practicing my brush-off. Look.” Karen walked briskly forward,
swinging her arms and keeping her eyes straight ahead, muttering, “No, no, no, sorry, no.”

Laura laughed. “Impressive.”

“Right? So now they’re not going to give me a chance to brush them off? How diabolically clever.” Karen dared to glance back at the coterie. “They look almost … spooked.”

“Weird,” Laura said. She smiled to herself. They were afraid of her now.

Russian gypsies afraid of
her
.

On the other side of the river, Karen turned toward the dorm as usual, but Laura paused.

Walk five blocks past the dorm
, she thought, remembering his instructions.
At least five blocks
…

“Home sweet home,” Karen said. “Aren’t you coming?”

Maybe she shouldn’t call him. What was with the secrecy? Who was he, really?

“Hello? Laura? It’s freezing out….”

Maybe he was a womanizer, racking up notches on his bedpost. Maybe he was a spy. A double agent! Or just a jerk.

She shouldn’t call him. But she would anyway.

“I’m going to go for a walk,” Laura said.

“A walk?” Karen pulled her scarf over her nose and shivered. “In this weather?” It was getting dim, and the moisture in the air sparkled and bit at their exposed skin. “You’re either part polar bear or you’re crazy.” She hurried inside without waiting
for an answer from Laura about her possible ursine parentage or mental illness.

“I’m crazy!” Laura shouted after her, but Karen disappeared inside without looking back, the heavy brown door slamming shut behind her.

Laura walked down the street, away from the river, glancing around to see if anyone was following her. People gaped at her in her sheepskin coat, but no one seemed to be trailing her.

She passed a line of men waiting for kvass to be dispensed like oil from a tanker truck. She passed a busy bakery and a tobacco shop. She walked five blocks, then one more for good measure, until she found a red phone booth. She looked around once more for spies, but the coast was clear. She pulled Alyosha’s number from her coat pocket, slotted a two-kopeck coin into the phone, and dialed before she had a chance to change her mind.

“Allo?”

“
Allo
. Is this Alyosha?” Laura asked in Russian. It felt strange to speak Russian over the phone. She had to concentrate to remember the words.

“Is this Laura?”

Her accent must have given her away. “It’s Laura. How are you?”

“I’m very well. And you?”

It was just like a practice conversation in class. “I’m fine, thank you.”

A silence followed. She thought he’d know why she was calling, but if he did, he didn’t say so.

“Um, so, I’m calling to see if you would like to meet with me sometime. To practice speaking Russian. As you can hear, I need practice badly.”

“Not so badly. Yes, let’s meet. When are you free?”

“Every afternoon after three.”

“Okay, how about Tuesday, then?”

“Tuesday is good.”
Four days away, though.

“Do you know Dom Knigi?” Everyone knew Dom Knigi, the House of Books. It was the biggest bookstore in Leningrad, a nineteenth-century landmark on Nevsky Prospekt topped with a bronze-and-glass globe. “Meet me in the poetry section at three thirty.”

“All right.” She paused, waiting for him to say something more. She tried to remember what he looked like but could only see his brown eyes. A long stretch of seconds passed in silence. At last he said, “I’m glad you called, Laura. See you then.”

“Good-bye.” She hung up the phone and stood in the narrow red booth, staring through the glass at a stray dog skulking down the street, hugging the wall of a building, tongue hanging out.

Her heart was racing, and she wasn’t sure why. They were just meeting for coffee, meeting for language practice. What was so adventurous about that?

She left the phone booth and, checking once more for spies and finding none, started back for the dorm. On the way, she
stopped to buy a loaf of bread and a bag of strange, hard little mini-bagels. She wondered what kvass tasted like — it was made of fermented bread — but there were no women in the line, only men; grizzled, wino-type men. If she joined the line, it would surely cause some kind of stir. Maybe someday Alyosha would get some for her to taste. Someday, if they became friends.

O
n Tuesday afternoon, Laura crossed the Palace Bridge over the Big Neva River, passed the Hermitage with its parking lot full of tourist buses, and made her way down Nevsky Prospekt. She’d dressed with extra care that morning, although the weather was so cold there wasn’t much choice — she pretty much had to wear corduroys, a turtleneck, boots, and a warm sweater under her coat. But she made sure to pick the black turtleneck that had no holes under the arms, and her favorite blue sweater with the buttons at the neck.

The streets bustled with shoppers, mostly women in bulky coats and children leaving school, the girls’ hair braided and tied with oversized white bows. She passed the Aeroflot office, glamorous in a sleek, space-age, 1960s-stewardess way, like the Pan Am building in New York. She crossed intricate iron bridges over winding canals, thinking about Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who
once paced these very streets, tortured by thoughts of good and evil, holiness and sin.

The giant globe on top of Dom Knigi gleamed, a beacon over the Griboyedov Canal. The bookstore ruled its corner of Nevsky Prospekt like an Art Nouveau duchess, guarded by a bronze eagle and crowned with a glass-and-bronze tower that lit up at night. Two bronze nymphs hoisted a globe on top of the tower like a cherry. Laura pushed through the door and wandered the aisles of books until she found the poetry section. Alyosha leaned against a shelf, absorbed in a volume of Vladimir Mayakovsky:
A Cloud in Trousers
.

He sensed her, though. When she appeared, he looked up from his book with genuine pleasure — pleased to see her, pleased with life.

“You came!” he whispered in Russian. “I wasn’t sure.” He leaned forward and kissed her on both cheeks. “
Zdravstvuitye
, Laura.”

“
Zdravstvuitye
.” The kiss startled her. His cheek was smooth but the mustache tickled. “What are you reading?”

He chose a line from the open book. “ ‘If you wish, I shall grow irreproachably tender: not a man, but a cloud in trousers!’ ”

She laughed at the image of a man so transformed by love that he became as delicate and wispy as a cloud.

“Want some coffee? Let’s go.” He replaced the book and led her outside. They walked up the street to a busy café. She
followed him to the cashier, where he paid for two coffees and a roll and took the receipt to a steamy counter where women in stained white aprons sloshed milky coffee out of large vats and into glasses.

There were no tables, so they took their coffees to a counter by the fogged-up window. He set the roll in front of her. “For you.”

“Thank you.” The roll was warm and sweet.

“How do you like our beautiful city?”

“It’s very cold,” Laura said. “But it is beautiful. Like a big frozen cake.” She decided not to mention how grimy and depressing she found it. That would be rude.

“Maybe I could take you on a tour. You’ve been to the Hermitage by now, I guess?”

She nodded. “But I plan to go again, lots of times. I love the Leonardos.”

“And have you been to the Russian Museum?”

“The icons. Yes.”

“St. Isaac’s Cathedral?”

“Very impressive.”

“The Fortress of Peter and Paul?”

“Yes.”

“Here’s one place I think you haven’t been: the Museum of Hygiene. Have you been to the Museum of Hygiene?”

She laughed. “No.”

“They have a wonderful exhibit on the physical consequences of bad habits like smoking,” he said. “Disgusting! And they have Pavlov’s dog — the original! Stuffed.”

“I’d like to see that.”

“I don’t know…. The anatomy displays might be too gruesome for you. Next time we meet, I’ll take you to the Museum of Religion and Atheism.”

“Um, okay.” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Why was he acting so stiff and tour-guidey? This wasn’t what she wanted at all. She got enough of that cultural-exchange stuff at the university. Everyone she met hid behind an official happy face:
See our historical wonders, let’s have a cultural exchange, the youth of the world must find common ground, blah blah blah …

The café was steamy. She unbuttoned her coat. She didn’t really know anything about this boy, so she decided to start with the basics — which suited her vocabulary.

“Are you a student?” she asked.

“No, I’m an artist. A painter.”

“Oh.” The blunt tips of his long fingers tapped the glass of coffee — they looked like an artist’s hands. One nail was smudged with a chip of bright blue. Under his coat he wore a V-neck sweater and an orange T-shirt.

“I paint signs for movie theaters. The names of the movies, the times they are playing, maybe a scene from a film. That’s my job. Very boring.”

“It doesn’t sound too bad. You should try working at McDonald’s.”

“McDonald’s?”

“It’s a restaurant.” She tried to translate
fast food
and
chain
into Russian but he looked blank. “They sell hamburgers.”

“It’s good to work in a restaurant,” he said. “You have access to all that food.”

“Um … yeah.” She wondered if anyone ever took a job at McDonald’s because they wanted to eat more of it.

They sipped their coffees and watched the fur hats bob past the steamy glass window. The silence grew, a barrier between them. Finally, Laura said, “We are supposed to be practicing speaking, but we are not saying much.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not good at this. All I can think of are the English dialogues we learned in school.” He switched into stilted English: “ ‘Good afternoon. My name is Mr. Smith. I would like to buy a train ticket to Boston City, please.’ ‘Yes, Mr. Smith. One-way ticket to Boston City. Pay me two dollars, please.’ ”

Laura laughed. “Boston City! Where’s that?”

“In the Republic of New England, of course. Don’t you know your American geography?” He didn’t smile, but his eyes sparkled just a little, so that she couldn’t tell if he was teasing her or not.

“Why don’t you teach me some Russian vocabulary?” she
suggested. “For example … what’s that?” She pointed to her glass.

“
Shchenok
,” Alyosha said.

She squinted skeptically at him. She was pretty sure he’d just said
puppy
, not
glass
or
coffee
or anything close.

“Okay … what’s this?” She held up her glove.

“Flower,” he replied in Russian.

“It’s not a flower,” she said.

“Which one of us is the native speaker here?” he asked.

“You are, but —”

“It’s an idiom,” he insisted.

“If you say so.” She pointed to her right eye, which she was absolutely sure she knew the word for. “What do you call this?”

“A star,” he said.

“Now I know you’re teasing me,” she said. “It’s my eye.”

“To you it may be just an eye. To me it is a beam of light from galaxies away.”

She stared at him, taken aback. She didn’t know whether to feel flattered or foolish. “Is that from a poem?”

He only smiled mysteriously. Then he looked at their empty glasses and asked, “Want to take a walk?”

They left the café and pressed up along Nevsky against a stiff wind. Alyosha pointed out landmarks: the Museum of Religion and Atheism, the Stroganov Palace, the Barricade Cinema, the Moika Canal, the yellow Admiralty building with its pointed golden spire. They passed an old school where flowers had been
laid at the gate. Painted on the wall was a pale blue rectangle with the Russian words for
Citizens! In the event of artillery fire, this side of the street is the most DANGEROUS!
Next to that was a marble plaque:
This notice has been preserved to commemorate the heroism and courage of Leningrad’s citizens during the 900-day blockade of 1941–1943
.

“The Great Patriotic War,” Alyosha said. “To the rest of the world, it ended forty years ago, but here we still live with it every day.”

Laura knew that over twenty million Soviet people died during World War II, and as many as two million died — from disease, hunger, or bombs — during the German siege of Leningrad. “I can feel it. The sadness, I mean. All over the city.”

“Of course you can. Russians hate to let go of suffering. They will hang on to it forever if they can.”

He scowled, and she knew he was angry about something, but she wasn’t sure what. She had a feeling they weren’t talking about World War II anymore.

That was okay with her. What she really wanted to talk about was the day. The walk. The two of them.

It was dark out now, and the wind off the river chafed their faces. Alyosha stopped for a moment to look at her. She waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. Her eyes watered from the cold. He lifted her woolen scarf and pulled it up over her chin to warm her.

“Thank you,” she said.

He smiled a wry, off-center grin that held a hint of sadness in its playfulness. Something twinged inside her, like the snapping of a wishbone.

They walked a little farther until they reached the Palace Bridge. Had something happened between them just then? She felt it, but couldn’t articulate it, even in her own mind. Every few steps she stole a glance at his face. She could swear she saw him wrestling with the same questions in his mind.

Or maybe she imagined it. Probably. That would be like her.

At the bridge, he said, “I’ll leave you here.”

“You go your way and I’ll go mine,” Laura replied, keeping her tone light.

He took both her gloved hands in his and kissed her stinging cheeks. “Will you call me again?”

“Yes.”
Yes, yes, for sure, yes.

“Good-bye.”

She crossed the bridge, while he turned back and walked down Nevsky to the metro, his head ducked against the sharp wind.