Boy on the Bridge (7 page)

Everyone chattered and laughed in Russian. Laura sipped a small glass of vodka, struggling to keep up with the conversation. It went faster than she was used to, peppered with unfamiliar slang and expressions she didn’t understand. She glanced at Karen, who looked a little blank, too.

Roma refilled Laura’s and Karen’s shot glasses with vodka. “Don’t sip it,” he warned. “That’s how you get sick. Down it all at once —
oop-ah!
” He threw his head back and tossed down another shot to demonstrate. “Go on, girls.
Oop-ah!
”

Laura looked to Karen, but she was no help, saying, “Come on, girl.
Oop-ah!
” They clinked glasses and drank their shots in one gulp. Laura gasped and reached for a slice of cucumber. She felt a surge of warmth.

Alyosha turned his Neil Young record over and “Southern Man” played. “I heard Kukharsky sing this song at Café Bluebird,” Vova said.

“He sang Neil Young in public?” Grisha asked. “And it was okay?”

“I hate Neil Young,” Olga said. “His voice is whiny.”

“This song is government approved,” Vova said.

“Because it criticizes the American South,” Karen guessed. “I can see why they’d like it.”

“Exactly.” Vova nodded.

“Alyosha, take this whining record off and put on the Beatles.” Olga pouted.

“It will be over in a minute,” Roma said. “Did you girls know that the Beatles played a secret concert here in 1970?”

“It was 1969,” Alyosha said.

“I heard ’68,” Vova said.

“What happened?” Laura had never heard this story.

“Their plane landed at Pulkovo” — the Leningrad airport — “very briefly,” Roma explained. “And the Beatles climbed out onto the wing and played three songs.”

“With acoustic guitars,” Alyosha added.

“Very fast, before the guards snapped out of their stupors and stopped them,” Vova finished.

“Wow,” Karen said.

“It isn’t true,” Olga said.

“It is,” Vova insisted. “My friend Kolya saw the concert himself.”

“The Beatles were very taboo back then,” Grisha said. “My uncle was kicked out of the university just for having a Beatles tape in his room.”

“They’re more tolerated now,” Vova said. “A little bit.”

“The police used to arrest guys for having long hair,” Roma said. “They’d arrest you and cut your hair, then let you go. After giving you a scare.”

“They still do that sometimes,” Alyosha said.

“Not as much,” Vova said. “But sometimes.”

Olga feigned a yawn. “Let’s talk about something else.”
Her eyes took in Laura’s corduroys and Karen’s jeans, their bulky sweaters. “What are they wearing in America these days, girls?”

Karen shrugged. “This, I guess.”

Olga scowled, not believing her.

“Have you heard this one, girls?” Grisha asked. “A man walks into a butcher shop and asks, ‘Do you have any fish?’ ” The Russians laughed in anticipation of a punch line they already knew. “So the butcher says, ‘Here we don’t have any meat. Fish they don’t have across the street!’ ”

Everyone laughed and toasted Grisha. Laura started gulping mineral water; the toasts were catching up to her.

“Now tell us an American joke,” Vova said.

Laura tried to think of a joke that would work in Russian, but all the ones she thought of depended on plays on English words, like “Because Seven ate Nine” or “I left my harp in Sam Clam’s disco.”

“Here’s one,” Karen said. “But I think it will only work in English.”

“Go ahead,” Alyosha said. “I’ll translate.”

“Okay.” Karen cleared her throat and said in English: “A nose walks into a bar and asks for a drink. The bartender says, ‘Sorry, I can’t serve you. You’re already off your face.’ ”

Laura laughed. The Russians gave her blank stares.

Karen tried to explain in Russian. “See, in English
off your face
is slang for
drunk
…. I thought you might understand
because of the Gogol story, you know, ‘The Nose’? Where a man’s nose detaches from his face and walks around town …?” Karen trailed off.

The Russians nodded. “Oh yes! Gogol. Great story.”

Karen sighed. “Jokes never work if you have to explain them.”

Alyosha got up and slapped Karen on the back. “No, no! It was funny! Very, very funny.”

He went into the kitchen to get more food. When he came back, he squeezed next to Laura on the bed. Their arms touched, elbow to shoulder. Karen sat on her left side and their arms were touching, too, but somehow it didn’t have the same electric feeling. Vova was on Karen’s left, but their arms weren’t touching … yet.

Olga grabbed Alyosha’s guitar and put it in his hands. “Sing us a song, Lyosha.” Now she squeezed onto the bed, close to Alyosha. The bed was crowded. There were two empty chairs across the table. Roma and Grisha looked lonely.

“Olga, come back and sit in your chair,” Roma said.

“You’re not my boss,” Olga snapped.

“I’m your husband,” Roma shot back. “That means I am your boss.”

“Okay, then, prove it. Make me move.”

The Neil Young record chose that moment to cut off. In the tense silence that followed Olga’s challenge, Laura heard the click of the needle arm settling into its saddle. To cut the tension, Alyosha strummed the guitar.

“Move over, Olga,” he said, softly but firmly. “I don’t have room to hold the guitar.”

Olga stormed out of the room. The bathroom door slammed.

Alyosha stretched out his arm and began to strum for real.

“I didn’t know you played the guitar,” Laura said.

“There is so much you don’t know about me.” He smiled enigmatically.

“Hey — there’s a lot you don’t know about her, too,” Karen put in a little too forcefully. The vodka made her louder than usual. “Did you know Laura has a black belt in karate?”

“What?” Laura said.

“Is that true?” Grisha asked.

“No, it’s not true,” Laura told him.

“I’m just trying to buff up your image,” Karen said.

“You don’t need to do that,” Alyosha said. “Her image is nice enough already.”

Laura turned toward him, surprised but pleased. She pressed her arm against his. He pressed back. All the vodka warmth seemed to concentrate in that arm.

Olga returned from the bathroom and took her seat next to Roma as if nothing had happened. Alyosha launched into the first chords of a song everyone but Karen and Laura seemed to know. Soon all the Russians were singing an old folk song. Laura managed to catch a few phrases: “It’s evening, I couldn’t sleep … I tossed and turned, I had a dream … someone interpreted my dream and said … you will lose your wild head.”

“That is beautiful,” she said when it was finished.

“It’s called ‘Stenka Razin’s Dream.’ ” Alyosha sang it again slowly, while Grisha explained the words as best he could in English. Stenka Razin was kind of a Cossack Robin Hood, who dreamed that his horse bucked and danced and went wild underneath him. A colonel told him that the dream foretold his death. “You will lose your wild, untamed head,” he predicted. Then an evil wind blew from the east and knocked Stenka’s hat off his wild, untamed head.

“Guess who I saw the other day, Lyosha,” Olga said. “Speaking of wild and untamed. Tanya.”

That name again — Olga seemed to love to bring up Tanya. Alyosha looked down, nodding, and Roma, Vova, and Grisha stopped clapping and joking. An inch of space suddenly materialized between Laura’s shoulder and Alyosha’s.

“Well, how is she?” Roma asked. “You didn’t tell me this before.”

“I didn’t speak to her,” Olga said. “I saw her come out of the Hotel Astoria and get into a car. She glanced at me but didn’t say hello. I know she saw me but she pretended she didn’t see me. Why would she do that?”

Alyosha plucked distractedly at one string of his guitar.

“Who’s Tanya?” Laura asked.

“An old friend of Alyosha’s,” Roma said.

“An old girlfriend,” Olga corrected.

“Oh.” Laura glanced at Karen.

“Here’s a picture of her.” Olga got up and rummaged through some of Alyosha’s paintings until she found a portrait of a beautiful blue-eyed blonde with bare shoulders.

“Olga, put that away.” Alyosha thrust the guitar into Roma’s hands and snatched the painting from Olga. Too late, though: Laura had already seen it. The blonde was the same girl she’d seen in a nude painting earlier. So that was Tanya.

Roma strummed the chords of a Beatles song. “Let’s sing something the American girls know.”

Alyosha set the painting down, facing the wall. He was scowling. A triumphant smile played on Olga’s lips.

If she’s trying to make me jealous, it’s not working
, Laura said to herself. But it was working a little bit.

“Come on, girls, sing!” Grisha keened out “And I Love Her” in a nasal Russian accent. Laura and Karen belted it out along with him. It felt good to sing in English, to know the words.

Next, Roma started strumming a song that was eerily familiar to Laura. She wasn’t sure at first what it was, but she knew she knew it in some deep, unconscious way, the way you know songs that you’ve heard on the radio or in the supermarket your whole life without ever really listening to them.

“You know what this is, don’t you?” Karen grinned at her mischievously.

“It’s so familiar….” Laura strained to catch the melody in her memory.

The Russians came to the chorus, and at last she recognized it.

Feelings! Whoa whoa whoa feelings … whoa whoa whoa feelings … Again in my heart …

“Oh my God, I hate this song,” Laura said to Karen in English.

“But right now, you’re loving it,” Karen said. “Aren’t you?”

“Sort of.”

“That’s a great song,” Grisha said. “I love that song.”

Karen and Laura looked at each other and laughed.

“What is so funny?” Vova asked. “It’s American pop. Super fantastic.”

Karen suddenly grabbed Laura’s wrist and looked at her watch. “Whoa! What time is it? Eleven o’clock!”

“We missed curfew,” Laura said. They’d been told they could get sent home for missing curfew. But surely they were allowed one mistake….

“What time does the metro stop running?” Karen asked.

“Midnight,” Alyosha said.

Laura and Karen stood up, and Laura said, “We better run. Sorry to leave so suddenly, but we’re supposed to be in our dorm by ten.”

They kissed everyone good-bye and promised more parties soon. Alyosha helped them into their coats and showed them to the door.

“I’ll walk you to the metro,” he said.

“We can find it,” Karen said. Laura was getting a wave of
hurry hurry hurry
from her — she really didn’t want to get caught breaking curfew.

Laura knew she had to go, but she wanted to stay. She hadn’t gotten the answer she’d come for. She’d met Alyosha’s friends, but what did that mean? Had he simply wanted to show off the random American girl he’d met, a foreign curiosity? Or was he trying to show
her
something about who he was, to bring her into his life?

It was hard to tell. But they had to leave. Karen tugged on her elbow.

“Thank you, Alyosha,” Laura said. “It was wonderful!” She offered him one last opening. “See you again?”

“Call me soon.” Alyosha kissed her once on each cheek. He hesitated for a second, then impulsively kissed her lightly on the lips. “I wish you didn’t have to leave.”

An answer at last. Not to every question, but to the one question that had most been on Laura’s mind. She still didn’t want to leave, but now she could go with a lighter heart.

“Soon,” she told him, and tried not to feel too disappointed when the door had to close.

The girls ran out into the frigid night, all the way to the metro, and caught the last train back to the center of town. “Shoot,” Laura said as they took a seat in the half-empty car. “I forgot to get Dan’s clothes back.”

“Dan can kiss those clothes good-bye,” Karen said. “And he knows it.” The lights of the subway tunnel flashed across her face. “So what was going on between Olga and Alyosha?”

“I have no idea. Do you think she’s in love with him?”

“I don’t know,” Karen said. “But that whole thing with Tanya? You got what Olga was hinting at, didn’t you?” On seeing Laura’s blank look, she added, “When she said she saw Tanya coming out of the Astoria. A foreigner’s hotel. She was implying that Tanya’s a prostitute.”

“What? That’s a pretty big leap.”

“Natia told me, and I think it’s true,” Karen said. “You know how they say if a Russian is willing to go into our dorm it means he’s either KGB or a dissident so desperate he has nothing to lose?”

Laura nodded. Their chaperones, Dr. Stein and Dr. Durant, had warned them about this.

“According to Natia, you can also add that a Russian woman hanging around a tourist hotel is either a tour guide, an informant, or a hooker.”

“So maybe Tanya’s a tour guide.”

“Maybe. But Olga’s tone suggested otherwise.”

“So you’re saying Alyosha’s ex-girlfriend is a hooker.”

“I’m not saying that — Olga is.”

Was Olga trying to hurt Alyosha, or was she telling the truth? And what did it matter? Alyosha couldn’t control his ex-girlfriend’s actions.

“Whatever. I don’t care.”

The walk from the metro stop to the dorm felt endless. The night air had a bone-rattling dampness, a frozen fog that enveloped them as they walked, filled their lungs and made it hard to breathe. At last they reached Dorm Number Six. The guard’s light was out. It was midnight.

“We’re going to catch hell for this,” Karen predicted.

“What are we going to do?” Laura asked.

“You want to sleep outside tonight? We’re going to wake up Ivan.”

They pressed the buzzer and waited. Nothing happened for a while. They rang again. A light came on, and soon the door was opened by old Ivan, who scowled at them in his nightshirt and felt slippers.

“You’re late,” he grumbled, locking the door behind them as they scurried inside and tried to warm up. “I’ll have to report you.”

“We’re sorry! We’re sorry!” the girls cried. “It won’t happen again.”

“That’s right, it won’t,” Ivan said. “Next time I won’t let you in. Good night.” He stomped away into the back room where he slept.