The Boy on the Bridge

by Natalie Standiford

  “Don’t worry.” She spoke Russian to make sure he understood. “Just keep to the plan. Remember: You are not Alyosha. You’re Skip.”

  “Okay.”

  The girl — Marina — repeated her question. “Alyosha?”

  Laura said in English, “I’m sorry — are you talking to us?”

  Marina left the German woman with her dolls and came out from behind the counter. “It is you.” She spoke to Alyosha in Russian. “Alyosha, what are you doing here?”

  Laura squeezed his hand hard, reminding him not to speak. “We’re Americans. Do you speak English?”

  “Yes, of course,” Marina said. “I’m sorry.” She stared at Alyosha, certain she knew him.

  “I’m Laura, and this is my friend Skip. He’s been sick — laryngitis — so he can’t really talk today.”

  “Oh. I see.” Marina stepped back, returning to her professional demeanor. “It’s funny, but he looks just like a boy I went to school with. Very much like.”

  “Really?” Laura faked a light laugh. “That’s so funny, because he’s not the least bit Russian. He’s full-blooded Irish. Skip O’Rourke is his name. His ancestors came from, uh, Tipperary.”

  Marina looked baffled. The German woman beckoned to her impatiently. “Miss, will you please come back and help me?”

  “Excuse me.” Marina hurried back to the counter. Alyosha’s stiff smile relaxed a bit.

  “We’d better get out of here,” Laura whispered. She paid for the loot with traveler’s checks. As they started out the door, Alyosha stopped, turned, and waved at Marina.

  “Good-bye, Marina!” he shouted in Russian. “See you around!”

  Laura yanked him away and they ran through the hotel lobby, slowing down to approach the guard at the front door so they wouldn’t look suspicious. Safely outside on the street, they ran around the corner, laughing so hard they couldn’t breathe.

  “I can’t believe you did that!” she gasped in English.

  “I know,” he replied in Russian. “It was foolish.”

  They had developed a kind of crisis pidgin language, half-English, half-Russian, depending on what popped out of their mouths first. Awkward, but it worked.

  Laura walked with him to the metro stop and handed him the fancy plastic Berioska bag. “Your loot, sir.” She had learned the Russian word for loot from an article they’d read in Translation class on race riots in the US.

  “Thank you. Thank you, Laura, for taking a risk with me.”

  “It was fun.”

  “Sorry if I ruined everything with Marina, but I couldn’t help myself.”

  “I think we’ll be okay.”

  “You know, I can’t enjoy all this food by myself. I think you should come home with me and have some.”

  “Now?” It was late on a Tuesday afternoon. She had homework to do, and there was a class trip to the ballet that night.

  “It’s too cold for a picnic in the park,” Alyosha said. “But we could have a picnic in my apartment. If you’d like to.”

  “Well …” She made a pretense, to herself, of thinking over his offer. But in reality, she knew exactly what her answer was.

  “I am in the mood for some macadamia nuts.”

  “Let’s go.” He took her hand and led her deep down into the metro. Off they went to Avtovo.

  Alyosha lived on the outskirts of the city, the second-to-last metro stop on the Red Line. He led her past an empty supermarket, down a winding path lined with piles of gray snow like Styrofoam, past block after block of run-down apartment towers that looked like housing projects. This part of the city had none of the beauty of downtown Leningrad — no prerevolutionary mansions, no palaces or churches, no river or canals draped with iron filigree bridges. But Alyosha held her hand for the whole walk from the metro, and suddenly Laura loved Avtovo.

  They went into one of the high-rise buildings and rode a rickety elevator to the sixth floor. Alyosha kicked aside a wad of greasy paper littering the hallway and unlocked a door: 6A. Laura stepped inside, took a deep breath, and felt immediately at home.

  The apartment was small, but neat and cozy. The furniture was simple, but Alyosha had warmed the place up with a red rug on the wooden floor and books and art everywhere. In the hall just inside the door, Alyosha helped her off with her coat and winter boots and gave her a pair of slippers to wear. She followed him down a short hallway past two doors — the toilet and the shower — to the tiny kitchen. He put the Berioska bag on the little kitchen table. She glanced out the window, which looked out at a garbage-strewn lot dotted with an overturned couch, a dresser splintered into pieces, the burned-up frame of a Soviet Fiat.

  “Come to the living room. I’ll get our picnic ready.”

  Back up the hall to a larger room, the living room/bedroom, across from the bathroom. The bed, covered in a red wool blanket, was at the back of the room near the window. In the corner stood a drafting table with a ruler, a large drawing pad, and lots of colored pencils and paints. The front of the room was lined with shelves full of books, records, and paintings, with an East German record player holding the place of honor. Three chairs sat around a low coffee table that had been painted blue, trimmed with tiny white flowers.

  “It’s nice,” she said. The Russian words came more easily now that they were relaxed and quiet.

  “Sit down anywhere. I’ll be right back. Would you like some tea?”

  “Yes, please.” Instead of sitting, she looked at the photos and paintings that lined the walls. The paintings were precisely rendered scenes of Leningrad street life, full of tiny details: a black cat skulking in the background; an old man’s hunched posture; a pinched cigarette burning in a gutter; the porous, shell-chipped texture of an old wall. There were oil portraits of young people who looked like they might be art school friends: an arrogant young man with a walrus mustache and a kerchief around his neck; a beautiful blond boy with full lips and sensitive eyes; two lovely girls, one blonde, one brunette. The brunette was dark and smoky-eyed like a silent film actress, a beret perched jauntily on her wavy hair. The blonde looked bored and naked.

  Alyosha returned with a tray of snacks and tea. “Did you paint these?” Laura asked.

  “All except those two.” He pointed to a watercolor still life of fruit and flowers, and an oil portrait of himself in a style very different from the others — more disjointed and Cubist. “Tanya painted the watercolor, and Roma painted the one of me.”

  Roma? Tanya? She guessed she’d find out who they were eventually.

  He set the tray on the coffee table and nudged it closer to the bed. She reached down and took a handful of macadamia nuts as he showed her the photographs. “This is my school photo from first grade.” Six-year-old Alyosha — a red Young Pioneer kerchief knotted around his neck like a Boy Scout tie — grinned at the camera, missing his two front teeth.

  “This is Mama and Papa.” They posed in a photographer’s studio, stiff and gray-haired, a stern, square-jawed man and a woman in her forties with kind eyes like Alyosha’s.

  “This is my mother with her parents at their dacha, right before the war.” His mother, a little girl with a huge white bow in her hair, sat on her father’s knee in a blooming garden, while her mother shelled peas into a basket. The little girl and her mother stared solemnly at the camera, but the man smiled with fatherly pride.

  “This is my father with his parents during the war.” This picture, in grainy black-and-white, was startling. Alyosha’s father was a skinny boy of twelve, his pale eyes as large as planets in his shorn skull. His parents were skeletal, eyes shadowed and exhausted. No one smiled. They posed on a rubble-strewn street in Leningrad, a bombed-out building smoking in the background behind them. Passersby walked past the building with barely a look, as if the destruction was nothing unusual, just part of their day. Alyosha’s father clutched a ball as if it was the most precious thing he owned, as if that ball could save the world.

  Laura had seen pictures of her own parents f
rom this same period — her mother in saddle shoes on a swing with her best friend, her father posing outside his parents’ drugstore, a lollipop in his hand — but this looked like a different century, a different universe. Alyosha’s father and grandparents looked like refugees, which, in a way, they were. Leningrad was under siege by the Germans at that time, and people were starving and dying by the thousands.

  Alyosha plucked an even older photo out from behind this picture. “I hide this picture here,” he whispered. “Shhh. Don’t tell anyone.”

  “I won’t.”

  The older picture showed three pampered children in rich satin clothes — two boys and a girl with a little white dog on her lap — posing on a velvet couch before a painting of a man on a horse. “This is my grandmother, my father’s mother, as a little girl, with her brothers, before the revolution. Around 1915, I guess. Their father was a merchant. He was killed by the Bolsheviks a few years later and their house was taken by the government and divided into tiny apartments. Grandmother’s brothers were killed as well. They let Grandmother live because she pretended to be the family maid.”

  Laura took the picture from him and stared at it. “That is so sad. But why do you hide the picture?”

  “It’s not good to have aristocratic roots. You know that.”

  “But you can’t help what your grandparents and great-grandparents were.”

  Alyosha smirked. “Tell that to the KGB.” He replaced the secret picture and took a silver-framed photo down from the shelf. “This is my father as a young navy captain.” There was the square-jawed man again, steely blue eyes, in navy whites and a captain’s cap with a gold insignia.

  “Do you see your parents often?” Laura asked.

  Alyosha shook his head. “My mother died a few years ago. And my father isn’t speaking to me.” He put the photo back on the shelf and sat down to pour out the tea. Laura sat beside him on the bed. She waited for an explanation, but he only smiled wryly and added, “Long story. Let’s eat.”

  He’d made a plate of little open-faced sandwiches: tuna, sardines, a dollop of caviar on a thick bed of butter. The black bread was tangy and chewy. While she tasted the caviar, he put on a record. “Do you like Neil Young?”

  “I love him.”

  “So do I. He is my favorite American rock musician, the greatest.”

  The warm, rich, funky-sad music filled the room. Alyosha’s hand brushed her forearm as he reached for the samovar. The fine hairs near her wrist rose as if pulled by a magnet. She suppressed a shiver and sipped her tea.

  They sat quietly listening while Neil sang about how only love can break your heart. “I was whistling this song the other day,” Laura said, as if that had been some kind of premonition. Her heartbeat grew heavier, thudding in her chest along with the music. There was an electric tension in the air, magnetizing the foot of space between them so that she felt she couldn’t have pulled away from him if she’d wanted to. And she didn’t want to.

  She wanted to kiss him.

  This feeling caught her off guard. She hadn’t come to his apartment, as suggestive as that might have sounded, with the intention of kissing anyone. She hardly knew him. She had no idea if he liked her that way.

  But there it was. The feeling. Wanting to kiss. Him.

  She dared to shift her head the quarter turn it took to face him. His profile was dramatic, almost Roman: a long straight nose, curving lips, deep-set eyes. She was glad he’d shaved off the mustache.

  Now his head turned, too. Only inches separated their faces. She felt the faintest trace of his breath on her lips. If she leaned forward just a little bit, her lips would touch his….

  Bzzzzt.

  The sound jolted both of them, a quick intake of breath, their spines shooting upward, stiffening. “What’s that?” she asked.

  “The doorbell.” He stood up, paused a moment as if he needed to catch his balance, and went to the door. He put his eye to the peephole. “Oh!” He opened the door.

  “Hello!” A woman — the dark woman from Alyosha’s painting — leaned in to kiss him on each cheek. “Look what I have for you! I wanted to show it to you right away.”

  “Olga, hello!” Alyosha stepped aside to let her in. She pressed a rectangular package wrapped in rough gray paper into Alyosha’s hands, took off her coat, and was unzipping her boots when she finally noticed Laura sitting on the bed in the main room. Laura could almost feel Olga taking in every detail of her hair and clothes as a slow smile spread across Olga’s face.

  “Hello.” She took her time removing her boots and sliding her feet into a pair of slippers. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you had company.”

  “This is Laura.” He led Olga into the main room. “Laura, this is Olga. We’re old friends.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Laura said.

  “Likewise.” Olga took a chair across the table from Laura and reached for a caviar sandwich. “Mmm, so tasty! Sardines! And tuna! Alyosha, where did you get all this?”

  “Laura brought it over.” Alyosha wasn’t going to tell Olga about the Berioska adventure. He must have had his reasons.

  Olga eyed Laura with more interest now. “Let me guess. You are Finnish? Or no — German?”

  “American,” Laura replied.

  Olga clapped her hands together. “How exciting! Alyosha, you have a real live American in your apartment!”

  Laura tried to interpret Olga’s tone. Her voice rose as if she really were excited to see an American, but her sly eyes told a different story.

  “I know,” Alyosha said with a hint of fatigue.

  “And look at you!” She took in Alyosha, still wearing Dan’s borrowed American clothes. “Something is very different about you…. Are those new Levis?”

  “I borrowed them,” Alyosha replied.

  “Mmm.” Olga tossed Laura a meaningful look. “Lyosha, open the package I brought you,” she ordered.

  Alyosha unwrapped the package. Inside was a book of rock album cover art. “Wow!” He held the shiny book by the edges, as if he didn’t want to smudge it with his fingerprints. “Amazing! Olga, where did you get it?”

  “One of Roma’s contacts. He ran into some British kids and got a real haul in exchange for some of his Soviet army hats. I thought you’d like it.”

  “It’s for me to keep? Thank you!” Alyosha kissed Olga on the cheek, an enthusiastic smack.

  “I want some tea. Get me a cup?”

  “Right away.” He scooted into the kitchen.

  Olga curled up on her chair like a cat, her feet tucked under her. “So, Laura, is it? Where are you from?”

  “Baltimore. It’s near Washington, D.C.”

  “You speak Russian very well. Are you a student?”

  “Yes. At the university.”

  “Hmm. I thought so.”

  Alyosha returned with a teacup before Laura had a chance to find out what that was supposed to mean.

  Olga put the cup under the spout of the samovar and helped herself to tea. “I’m sorry to barge in like this, Alyosha. I didn’t think —”

  “It’s okay —” Alyosha began.

  Laura rose to her feet. “I’ve got to get back to the dorm anyway. We’re going to the ballet tonight.”

  “Oh?” Olga asked. “What are you seeing?”

  “I think it’s Swan Lake.”

  Olga grinned. “What else?” She took another sandwich.

  Alyosha walked Laura to the door. “That was fun today,” he said quietly.

  “Yes. We’ll have to do it again sometime, Skip.”

  “I don’t know about that. Marina might not let us get away next time.” He rested his hand on her lower back, then took it away quickly, as if suddenly realizing what he was doing, and reached for her coat. “Call me again soon?”

  “I will.” She shrugged into her coat, shoved her feet into her boots, pulled on her hat. Alyosha opened the door for her. She lingered in the doorway. Something was called for, a gesture of some kind, a kiss. But now
was not the time.

  “Nice to meet you!” Olga half turned and waved, her mouth full.

  “Nice to meet you, too.” Laura stepped into the hallway with one last look at Alyosha. She was leaving him behind with Olga, who was … what to him, exactly?

  “See you soon.” He closed the door.

  She rode the elevator down and found her way back to the metro. The neighborhood looked less appealing in the gloom.

  How did the Berioska heist go?”

  She met Dan in his robe and flip-flops, a towel slung over his shoulder, on his way back from the shower. His curly hair was damp and his glasses slightly fogged. Unlike Laura, he’d skipped the ballet.

  “We almost got caught. One of the salesgirls recognized him from school.”

  “Bummer.”

  “But we managed to escape without getting arrested.”

  “Thank God for that. Hate to see you sent to the gulag for helping a Russkie impersonate an American.”

  “Yeah, that probably wouldn’t be worth it.”

  Dan stopped in front of his room. “Care to come in? Sergei’s upstairs and I’m practically naked. All I have to do is let this pesky bathrobe fall to the floor and —”

  Laura laughed. “I should get to bed —”

  “That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.” He opened the door and stepped aside to usher her in. She shook her head.

  “I must be crazy to resist such a tempting offer, but not tonight.”

  “Okay. Your loss.” He tossed his towel on a chair. “Do you have my clothes?”

  Right — the clothes she’d lent to Alyosha for the heist. He’d still been wearing them when she’d left. An image of them tossed to the floor — mingled with Olga’s wool skirt and sweater — flashed involuntarily through her mind. Highly unpleasant. She shoved the image away.

  “Sorry — Alyosha still has them. I’ll get them back as soon as I can.”

  “All right, but don’t take too long. That was my only pair of sneakers.” Dan picked up the towel and rubbed his wet hair. “Sure you don’t want to come in? Last chance …”