Boy on the Bridge (9 page)

“We will absolutely return in the spring,” Alyosha promised. “It is a requirement of your Russian education.” He paused in front of one of the boxes. “This one is special — my favorite as a boy. I will make a special point of showing it to you when we come back.”

“What is it?”

“I can’t tell you. I must show it to you. It’s too soon to share such a thing, anyway.”

“Share what?” She stared at the brown, snow-stained box and wondered what could be living inside it that meant so much to him, yet was too sensitive to talk about.

“Another poem has spontaneously erupted in my brain,” he announced. “But if you are tired of poetry, I can suppress it.”

“Don’t suppress it. It’s not healthy to suppress things,” Laura said.

“This poem is by Anna Akhmatova and it is called ‘Summer Garden.’ ”

Laura listened, straining to understand the unfamiliar words. She liked the last part the best:

“My mother liked to bring me here in the summer,” Alyosha said. “When I was older I sat on this bench and practiced drawing the statues. Once, I saw a man get arrested right there, near the fence.”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know. He was young, but he had a long beard, which looked strange. His legs and arms twitched nervously, as if it took all his strength not to bolt out of the park. He restrained
himself from running, but his eyes darted around in a panic. Suddenly three men in suits surrounded him. It was very subtle. They spoke quietly to the bearded man, and all three walked calmly out of the park and got into a car.”

“Then what happened?”

“That was it.”

“Did anyone say anything?”

“No one else seemed to notice that anything unusual had happened. Though maybe they were just pretending not to notice. Everyone here learns to pretend. If you notice what they’re doing, they might come after you next.”

In spite of the cold, they sat on a bench. Laura thought of the man who’d followed her off the tram and she shivered. This place was full of hidden dangers, and she hardly knew how to recognize them.

“Are you going to tell me your sad love story?” she asked.

“Maybe later.”

She wondered who the star of that story was. Olga? Or maybe Tanya, the girl Olga hinted was a prostitute?

“What do you do when I don’t see you?” Alyosha asked. “Have you made any friends?”

“Lots of new friends,” she said. “Karen and Dan and all the other American students, and the Hungarians in the dorm, and some of the Soviet students…” She laughed. “Then there’s my other roommate, Ninel. She’s such a…” She slipped into English to find the right word. “A pill.”

“A pill?” he echoed.

She tried another English word. “A drip?”

“Like water?” Alyosha asked, returning to Russian.

“She likes to follow all the rules, to the letter.”

“Ah, a real Ninel. I always feel sorry for those girls named Ninel.”

“Her brother is named Traktor.”

Alyosha shook his head. “She has serious Communist Party parents. Either they really believe in the system, or they think giving their children patriotic names will protect them.”

“Protect them? From what?”

“From trouble. Who ever heard of a traitor named Traktor?”

“I’d never heard of anybody named Traktor till now.”

“Don’t you have people named Lincoln and Washington?”

“Yes, but … that’s different.”

“Different how?”

“Lincoln and Washington were people, not farm machinery.”

“And everyone in America has a gun. Right? Do you have a gun?”

“A gun? No! No one I know has a gun.”

“That cannot be true. Statistically, there’s at least one gun for every person in America.”

“Maybe so, but in that case a few people are carrying the majority of the guns.”

“So it is not true? Many Americans do not have guns?”

“Yes. No. It’s not true.”

Alyosha looked pained for a minute, but then he said, “I’m sure you are right. Here, television always gives the wrong idea about everything.”

“Don’t feel bad. Our TV is not so trustworthy, either.”

He looked sad. “When I was little, I believed everything. I lived in the best city in the greatest country on Earth. My father was a captain in the greatest navy in the world. I went along with it all, the whole thing. I was a Young Pioneer, a Komsomol Youth leader, I wore my red kerchief. My parents were proud of me….”

His voice trailed off. A seagull squawked from a floe of river ice.

“Then what happened?” Laura asked.

“My mother died. She went into the hospital for a routine surgery and got an infection there. It killed her.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Her doctor was incompetent, but my father refused to admit it. He can’t admit anything is wrong with our system, with the government, with anything — ever.” He touched his upper lip, as if it felt vulnerable. “I think he blamed my mother herself for dying. Like it was her fault. A heroic Soviet doctor could never make a mistake.”

“How old were you when she died?”

“Fifteen. That’s when I started drawing — I mean, seriously drawing. I’d always liked it, but I never thought of being an artist. My father denounced art as a waste of time. But after Mama
died, the only thing that made me feel better was drawing. So I drew constantly. I did nothing but draw. I neglected my schoolwork, my friends, everything….”

She touched his hand, glove on glove. He took off his glove and slipped his hand into hers. The two hands merged inside the warm cocoon.

“It was as if a veil fell from my eyes. Suddenly I saw everything differently. The hospitals are dirty, the stores are empty, the people are poor while the Party takes everything. The hypocrisy, the secrecy, the lies, the bullshit … I saw it all very clearly. I couldn’t pretend to be a part of the system anymore. But that’s what’s required of you here — you don’t have to believe the lies, but you must pretend you do. That’s all that matters: the pretending. That’s what keeps the whole system going.”

“No one believes in it?” She touched a callous on his index finger, a rough bump.

“Maybe a few do. It doesn’t matter. We don’t get punished for what we believe; we’re punished for what we say we believe. If people started telling the truth, what’s really in their hearts and minds, the house would collapse. That’s why dissidents are exiled or put in prison or into mental hospitals. If you dare to criticize the system, you must be crazy. You must be denounced. That belief is all that’s holding this empire together.”

The wind picked up and scraped Laura’s cheeks. She knew all this. She’d heard it before. But she’d never met someone
who’d been personally hurt by it before. And that made all the difference.

“Papa expected me to be an engineer, but I went to art school instead. After art school, the Artists Union would not accept me. They said my paintings were subversive, and consigned me to a menial job painting signs. Everyone must have a job of some kind, but we don’t always get to choose what it is.”

“Has your father seen your paintings?”

“Yes. He agreed with the Artists Union and called me decadent. He called me a parasite, a traitor. We had a big fight. He hasn’t forgiven me or spoken to me since.”

“So you’ve lost both of your parents.”

“I understand how Papa feels. He lived through the war, starved in the siege, sacrificed everything for the good of his country. He has to believe in it. He can’t allow himself to think it’s all a sham. That would mean his life had been wasted.”

“But what about you? You’re his son. He’s sacrificing you, too.”

Alyosha smiled ruefully. “A small price to pay for the glory of the Motherland.” His nose was red. He rubbed it. “You must be cold. Let’s walk.”

They left the park, keeping both hands inside her glove, and started for the Palace Bridge. Everything — the river, the bridge, the buildings, the snow — looked dreamy and half-formed, veiled by the dusk.

They paused at the bridge. She would cross the river, and he would go underground into the metro.

“I wish you could come back with me,” he said.

“I do, too.” She wished she could go anywhere but Dormitory Number Six. Someplace where she could be with him just a little bit longer.

“Call me soon.” His hand still warmed hers inside the glove. She pressed her fingers against his.

“I will.”

He pulled his hand out of the glove at last. She immediately felt its absence, cold air where his warm skin had been.

He put his hands, one gloved, one bare, on her shoulders, and bent his head toward hers. He kissed her, just a touch on the lips, but slowly, lingering there for a second longer than she thought he would. Then he raised his head, tilting it slightly to the left, and looked into her eyes as if searching for something.

His were brown, flecked with green and gold, and very sad.

He removed his hands from her shoulders with effort, as if resisting a great magnetic force. He turned and walked away to the metro. She stood on the edge of the bridge for a long time, watching him.

C
heck it. Mail from home.” Karen tossed a thin bundle of letters onto Laura’s bed.

Laura flipped through the mail: three letters from her parents, two from her Brown roommate, Julie, one from her little brother, Sam, and one from Josh. She opened Josh’s first.

Laura couldn’t read further without pausing to mumble, “Ugh.”

“I heard that.” Karen was lying on her stomach, reading her own mail.

“Listen to this.” Laura read Josh’s letter out loud.

“Obvious semiological reasons?” Karen mocked. “Laura, you are not looking that guy up in June. I don’t care if I have to go to Providence myself to stop you.”

“He’s smart,” Laura said. “I mean, he’s kind of intellectual.”

“Yeah, his Theory of the Faded Jeans is absolutely brilliant.”

Laura sighed. She saw it now. Josh wasn’t an intellectual. He
posed
as an intellectual, spouting made-up theories and shallow opinions made to sound contrary and smart.

Alyosha didn’t do that. He didn’t have to. All he had to do to live a principled life was be himself. That act alone took courage. And he didn’t expect anyone to applaud him for it. In fact, he was being punished for it.

“What are you thinking?” Karen asked.

“Nothing.”

Providence seemed far away. It
was
far away. Josh was like a character in a movie she’d once seen, not a real person. Reality was this narrow bed she was lying on at that moment, with its thin, lumpy mattress. Karen, her friend, on the next bed, kicking her feet in thick hiking socks. The chipped wooden floor of their room. The tidy corner where Nina slept. Alyosha’s hand inside her glove.

She was starting to like it here.

“Now for something completely different.” She opened the first letter from her parents.

She read all three letters from her parents, which ran along the same lines, with weather reports and bits of news about her little brother’s school exploits tossed in.

“Laurabear? Snort,” Karen said.

“Okay, Miss Ohio. What’s in your mail?”

Karen glanced at the letters spread out on her bed. “I got the usual crap from my parents about how being in the USSR is a unique opportunity and pay attention to everything. A letter from my roommate describing all the new bands she’s into and all the great shows I’m missing, and one from Roy.” She handed Roy’s letter to Laura so she could see for herself. Roy was Karen’s boyfriend from Oberlin, who was spending the semester abroad too — in Rome. “They’re living in a villa or something, eating mind-blowing Italian food and guzzling wine.”

Laura skimmed the details about the glories of fresh Parmesan cheese and real Italian pizza. Her stomach growled.

“It’s not fair,” she said.

“So not fair.”

But, inexplicably, Laura was still happy to be in Leningrad.

* * *

“I have the whole day off on Monday,” she told Alyosha on the phone the next time she called him. “For Women’s Day.”

“So do I,” he said, though she had the impression that he pretty much worked whenever he felt like it. “Will you celebrate with me?”

“How do you celebrate Women’s Day?”

“You’ll see.”

She had been lazy that day — it was snowing hard — and didn’t bother walking the extra blocks to the farther-away phone booth. The man with the glasses was back, walking his dog in the blizzard.

She put it out of her mind.

* * *

“Happy Women’s Day!” Nina had set flowers on the table and presented each of her roommates with a card. Laura opened hers. On the front was a painting of a red rose and the words
MARCH 8
. Inside it said,
Congratulations on Women’s Day!
and it was signed,
Affectionately, Nina.
Karen got a similar card, and then Nina presented them with a box of chocolates to share.

“Thank you, Nina,” Laura said. “Happy Women’s Day to you, too.”

She and Karen gave Nina a card and a box of Celestial Seasonings tea bags in assorted flavors.

Nina smiled and thanked them. She glowed happily as she bustled to the kitchen to make them all a pot of cinnamon tea. Everyone loved Women’s Day. Or, anyway, the women did.

“I got you something, too,” Karen said when Nina was out of the room. She gave Laura a handmade card, hastily drawn in
pencil. On the front was a cartoon of Laura dressed like a babushka in an apron and head scarf. Inside, Karen had written,
Dear Comrade Laura: May I congratulate you on being a woman. Now get off your ass and shovel some snow! Love, Comrade Karen.

“Very touching.” Laura made a show of clutching the card to her heart. “Thank you, Comrade Karen.”

“Natia invited me over for tea. Want to come? You’ll like her.”

“Can’t. I’m going to Alyosha’s.”

“Shocker.”

Maybe Laura was revolving her schedule around Alyosha, but she didn’t care. There was no one she liked better. And Alyosha had a place all to himself — however he’d managed to get it — even if it was all the way on the outskirts of the city.

* * *

He opened the door holding a large bunch of blue flowers. “Mademoiselle.” He kissed her hand. “I congratulate you on Women’s Day.”

“Thank you.”

He stepped aside to let her in. The apartment was warm and smelled deliciously of butter and onions. He put her flowers in a vase and set them on the kitchen table.

“What are you making?” Laura asked.

“
Pelmenyi
. Have you ever tried them?”

“No.” She’d heard of them but never tasted them.

“They’re good. They’ll be ready in a minute.”

He sautéed some onions in butter while some kind of dumplings boiled in a pot on the stove. She sat and watched him. He wouldn’t let her do anything to help, not even hand him a spatula.

“But I can’t just sit here,” she complained. “I feel useless.”

“All right,” he said. “Since you can’t stand being waited on, you can give me an English lesson.”

“Good. We’ll speak English all through dinner.” They were still speaking Russian.

“You’ll tell me the words I don’t know, though, right?” he said. “Because there will be many.”

“I’ll be your human dictionary. Starting … now.”

Now that they were suddenly supposed to speak English, she didn’t know what to say. She’d grown so used to speaking Russian with him that English felt unnatural. And that thought — along with the steam that filled the tiny kitchen when Alyosha drained the
pelmenyi
from the boiling pot — made her glow. Somehow along the way she’d become nearly fluent in Russian, even though she’d skipped a lot of language classes.

“Hey,” she said in English. “I just realized my Russian’s gotten pretty good.”

He tossed the dumplings in the butter sauce. “Um … slower?”

Speaking English with him was not going to be so easy. “Dumplings. Mmmm.” She smiled and rubbed her stomach, greedy with hunger.

He served her a plate of them drenched in butter. “Yes. Dumplings.”

She sniffed the steam that rose from the plate, fragrant with butter and onions. “Butter.”

He lifted the butter dish to show that he understood. Then he joined her at the table. She ate a dumpling. He waited for her reaction. “Tasty?” he asked in Russian.

She wagged a finger at him flirtatiously. “Uh-uh-uh. English only, please.”

“Good?”

She ate another dumpling. They were slippery, with little meatballs inside. “Very good.”

Slowly they ate. He watched with satisfaction as Laura finished all her
pelmenyi
. “Good job,” he declared. “Now you are member of Lenin Clean Plate Club. Wait — I get your … prize? No. Wait. I bring.”

He ran into the other room and soon returned with a star-shaped tin pin, enameled red, with a gold portrait in the center of Vladimir Lenin as a child. Underneath the portrait it said,
Lenin Clean Plate Club
in Russian. “From kindergarten. Age five.” He pinned it to her sweater. She laughed.

“So the legends are true. There really is a Lenin Clean Plate Club.”

“For real.” He took a sip of beer. “I have idea.”

“I have AN idea.”

“I have an idea. You read me in English. English book. After dinner.”

She liked the idea. “Which book?”

“You choose.”

So, after dinner, he refused her pleas to help him clean up and sent her into the other room to pick out something to read. She studied his short shelf of English books: Hemingway, Kerouac, Shakespeare, Jack London, Dickens. The movie tie-in paperback of
The Great Gatsby
he had mentioned before. She pulled out
Great Expectations
and opened it to the first page.

“ ‘My father’s family name being Pirrup, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.’ ”

Alyosha wouldn’t understand much of it, but the prose was so beautifully English. If he relaxed and let the words wash over him, he’d enjoy the sounds even if he didn’t know what they meant.

He came into the room with tea, and they settled on the bed to read. He nodded happily at the book she’d chosen. “I read book in Russian. In school. So I know story of Pip.”

“You need to work on your definite and indefinite articles,” she teased. “The. I read THE book. I know THE story.”

“You are THE bitch.”

She laughed. “No, there you need an indefinite article. A bitch.”

He leaned against the headboard with his mug of tea, unfazed. “Please to begin.”

She cleared her throat and began to read. The words tumbled out of her mouth like cinnamon candies. He closed his eyes and listened.

“ ‘Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening.’ ”

She paused to turn the page. He bolted up as if she’d presented him with an opportunity that he must immediately seize.

“Laura.”

She looked up from the book.

“I love you.”

He put down his tea and took the book from her hands. She was too startled to resist. He leaned forward across the bed and kissed her. It was gentle, but she felt the urgency behind it. He would not stop kissing her unless she made him stop.

“
Liublyu tebya
,” he whispered.

“English —”

“
Nyet.
English lesson is over.”

She didn’t want him to stop. She let herself fall back onto the bed and he followed, falling with her.

For the rest of the evening they spoke no more Russian, or English, but a language that they both understood completely.