Mother Russia (11 page)

“You don’t really believe in all that nonsense?”

“I most certainly do,” Zoya replies indignantly. “What was the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night that led the Israelites out of Egypt if not some kind of rocket? What about the Tibetan books that describe prehistoric machines as pearls in the sky? What about the Samerangana Sutrodhara, which has chapter and verse describing spaceships whose tails spout fire and quicksilver? What about the Mahabharata, which talks about machines that could fly forward or upward or downward? Ha! What about that?”

“What about, what about,” Pravdin mimics. “What about the prosecutor making another appointment to see me?”

“Shhhhhhh,” Zoya whispers. She lays her bony forefinger against her lips. “You’ll put a hex on it.”

“Help, help, waak, waak,”
cries Vladimir Ilyich from the other room.

Mother Russia and Pravdin attack the soybean soup; Pravdin meets his spoon halfway, blows noisily, swallows. After dinner Zoya abruptly excuses herself to put the finishing touches on another zinger to Singer.

“She’s the only person I know who’s obsessed with a
sewing machine,” Pravdin tells Nadezhda when she arrives with a satchel full of tins of Norwegian sardines.

“Every healthy person needs an obsession,” Nadezhda writes. “Zoya’s body is too old for sex.”

“Nobody’s body is too old for sex,” Pravdin fires back. No sooner have the words passed his lips than blood rushes to his face.

Nadezhda turns to stare at him, her head cocked co-quettishly,
“Tiens”
she writes, “there are parts of you we haven’t been to yet.”

“The same needs everyone has are what I have,” Pravdin gives ground grudgingly.

Nadezhda scribbles furiously, taunts him with a slip of paper on which she has written:

“Power, prestige, money, money, money.”

Pravdin stubbornly defends himself. “What you don’t know, it’s easy to make fun of.”

“What makes Pravdin run?” writes Nadezhda.

“It seems to me,” Pravdin answers, his face twisting into a crooked smile, his voice thick with self-mockery, “that my whole life I’ve wanted to do an exploit. Like those knights in shining armor with long lances riding animals they could identify.”

“That’s for the ego,” Nadezhda writes. “What’s for the body?”

Pravdin reads the note, crumples it, flings it across the table at Nadezhda. “Sex is what’s for the body!” he cries.

Nadezhda regards him for a long moment, comes to a decision, leads him by the hand into her room, locks the door behind her, pulls back the cover from the bed, kicks off her sandals, turns on the radio, begins to remove her clothes.

“Sex is an idea whose time has come,” Pravdin explodes jubilantly, flinging away his Eisenhower jacket. “Thesis: the male organ, erect. Antithesis: the female organ, moist. Synthesis:”—he
shouts it out in a voice raw with lust—“sexual intercourse!”

They make love, guided by instinct more than ardor, in the light of the small bulb that illuminates the radio dial. The springs of the bed and the floorboards squeak beneath them. Their bodies become slick with sweat; there is a sucking sound when their chests press together. Pravdin kisses her with lips that have lost their erogenousness from disuse, feels her wet palms on his bony flanks pulling him inside her and off he comes—too soon, too soon!

“Too soon, sorry,” he mutters as he collapses on her, dizzy with effort and gasping for air. Nadezhda twines her arms and legs around him and holds him close.

After a while she shifts uncomfortably under his weight. He rolls off her and they lie side by side staring at the ceiling until they are dry. Then Nadezhda props herself up on an elbow, makes him hard, climbs on top and they make love again, this time slowly, meticulously, as if tuning an instrument. The squeaking of the bed springs and the floorboards is more rhythmic. The second coming, a triumph of technique, is at hand. Pravdin utters a long low moan of pleasure and sinks bade onto the mattress; the squeaking continues for a few seconds, Nadezhda arches her back and then silently folds herself into the angles of his body.

Somewhere in the building a toilet flushes; water rushes through pipes in the walls. Nadezhda leaps lightly from the bed, rummages in a dresser, returns with a towel, wipes Pravdin and then the sheet. She settles cross-legged on the bed, her back against the wall, writes something and passes him the note. He leans closer to the radio to read it in the light from the dial. She has written: “Love making makes time stand still for me.”

Pravdin borrows her pad, scribbles, “Pleasure is a clock like any other,” tears off the page, passes it to her.

While she is reading that he hands her another page that says, “Imaginary conversations are what I have with you all day long.”

“What do I say?” she writes.

“I tell you,” Pravdin writes, “there are between us simple things that have the possibility of becoming complex. You think a moment, reply, ‘Yes, there are things between us, but they are complex and have the possibility of becoming simple.’ “

“I look young but I talk old,” Nadezhda writes. “What else?”

“I tell you,” Pravdin writes, “there are between us simdevelop. You think a moment, reply, “Emotion is what we must develop. Philosophy attacks like erosion, emotion like a chisel.’ “

“I tell you,” Pravdin writes, “emotion is what I’m not comfortable with. You think a moment, reply, Tour problem is you try to pry apart an emotion with words when you should be riding it the way a surfer skims along on a wave.’ “

“I tell you,” Pravdin writes, “people are hooked on words. You think a moment, reply, ‘People exist, like minnows between rocks, swimming in the spaces between the words.’ “

Pravdin reaches out with his primitively long, broken, badly set thumb and presses Nadezhda’s nipple as if it is a doorbell. With the other hand he passes her a page on which he has written: