The Boy on the Bridge

by Natalie Standiford

  “She knew I knew what she’s up to. That’s why she was unfriendly.”

  “What is she up to?”

  They were walking so fast — she struggled to keep up with Alyosha’s pace — that they’d already reached the metro station.

  “What are we doing now? Are you going home?” Am I coming with you? she added to herself. She really shouldn’t; she had classes in the morning, and she’d surely get into trouble if she didn’t come home yet again. But she wanted to go with him. She wanted to solve this riddle, make things happy again between them. She wouldn’t be able to rest if they left things like this and she didn’t understand why he was angry.

  “Look: You don’t understand. You can’t understand. So just forget about it.”

  He started down the metro stairs.

  “Alyosha, wait!” She chased after him, grabbed his sleeve. He stopped and whirled around. His face flashed with anger, but it softened as soon as he took in her pleading eyes.

  “Laura.” He put his arms around her. Rush hour commuters shoved and elbowed them on their way to the metro. “I’m sorry.”

  She was close to tears. “I’m so confused. You’re right — I don’t understand. Why won’t you explain it to me?”

  “Okay. I’ll try.” He kissed her forehead. “I don’t like for you to meet people like Lena, because I don’t want you to think all Russians are like her. Some are — maybe even a lot — but not all.”

  “Like her how?” Laura asked.

  “Dishonest.” He frowned. “Greedy. Willing to use people to get what they want.”

  “How do you know Lena is like that?”

  “It’s in her attitude, her posture. The way she looks at your friend Dan. Whatever is between them, it isn’t love. I can see it. Any Russian could see it. Americans don’t seem to recognize this look so well. Maybe they are used to falseness, I don’t know. Maybe they like it….”

  Now that he’d drawn her attention to it, Laura could see what he meant about Lena, her haughty attitude hiding a desperate unhappiness. Lena imagined she belonged somewhere else, in the glamorous West, where she’d live as she was meant to in a fine house and beautiful clothes, a dancer on an international stage. If Dan could take her to that wonderful world, what did it matter whether she loved him or not? The most important thing was to get to that place where she belonged, however she could.

  “We don’t like falseness,” she said. “Not all of us, anyway. I feel the same way you do. I don’t want you to think that all Americans are like Dan. He knows Lena is using him, so he is using her right back. You’re right, that isn’t love.”

  He put his arms around her. “I know you aren’t like Dan.”

  “I know you’re not like Lena. They have nothing to do with us. We have to stop thinking of ourselves as Russian and American. We’re just Alyosha and Laura.”

  “If you were Russian, I’d love you just the same,” he said. “You could be Chinese, Indonesian, Kenyan, Peruvian … it wouldn’t change anything.”

  He kissed her again, on the lips this time, and she believed him. A babushka loudly clucked her tongue at them and smacked Laura’s leg with a string bag full of onions. Laura felt her leg buckle but ignored it, giving all her attention to her lips.

  He released her and looked at her tenderly, still holding her close. “I heard what your friend Dan said: You must go to class. I’ll go home alone tonight and think of you.”

  “When will I see you again?” Tomorrow, she thought. I want to see you tomorrow.

  “Call me tomorrow.”

  One more kiss, and he turned and joined the stream of people flowing toward the metro. She watched the escalator carry him deep under the ground and far away from her.

  Phonetics is the best,” Karen said as they left Semyon Mikhailovich’s class Friday afternoon. She stopped short, adding, “There’s a sentence I never imagined myself saying.”

  It was Laura’s favorite class, too. That day they’d read Anna Akhmatova’s poem “The Summer Garden.” Their assignment was to memorize it by next week. Laura had already memorized it. She had her own poignant memories of the Summer Garden, and it made her miss him.

  “I’m going to go call Alyosha,” she told Karen.

  Karen laughed. “Didn’t you just see him yesterday? Dan said his ballerina friend didn’t like him.”

  “Yeah. That was weird.”

  “You’re getting attached to him, aren’t you? What are you going to do when we go to Moscow tomorrow night?”

  “That’s tomorrow night?” She’d almost forgotten about their spring-break trip to Moscow. Everyone was looking forward to the break from classes and the change of scenery. And staying in hotels instead of the crappy dorm. But a week away from Alyosha … She counted how many weeks were left in the semester. Eight weeks. Not many.

  Eight weeks until she had to leave him forever.

  Now she really needed to see him. She’d explain about the trip, how she wouldn’t have another chance to see him before she left. She dropped Karen at the dorm and walked to her special phone booth. The man with the dog wasn’t around. She dialed Alyosha’s number, but there was no answer.

  He was probably at work.

  Then she remembered: his keys. She had his keys.

  She could go to his apartment and wait for him. Surprise him. She could even have dinner ready for him.

  He wanted her to. That was why he gave her the keys.

  She trotted back to the dorm, excited about her plan. Nina was in the kitchen with her friend Alla. Karen was sitting at the table in their room, doing homework. She looked up when Laura bounced in.

  “What are you so happy about?” Karen asked.

  “I’m going to see Alyosha.”

  “For a change. Don’t forget to come home before midnight.”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  She changed into fresh clothes; took the keys from their hiding place within the Laura/Alyosha doll, which was hidden in one of her socks in her armoire; and set off for Avtovo.

  * * *

  She arrived at his door loaded down with a bundle of food. She’d found a stand selling oranges near the metro station, and the line wasn’t even that long, so she bought as many as she could get. She stopped for bread and cheese and a bottle of kvass. She was getting the hang of this Soviet shopping thing.

  She put down her bag in the hallway outside his apartment and fumbled in her coat pocket for his keys. She found them and paused. She thought she heard a noise, a thump, through the door. He must have come home. She jangled the keys in her hand, then decided to knock.

  She waited for him to throw the door open, cry “Laura!” and pull her inside with a bear hug. But he didn’t. Nothing happened.

  She knocked again and listened at the door. She thought she heard another thump, couldn’t be sure … but no one answered her knock.

  Could someone have broken in? Was there a robber inside? Did they even have robbers in the Soviet Union?

  Or what if it was the secret police, searching his place? The KGB?

  The apartment was quiet. She put the key in the lock and turned it.

  She opened the door and stepped inside. “Hello?”

  Nothing.

  Not bothering to take off her wet boots, she took two steps down the hall and peered into the living room, terrified of what she might find.

  “Laura! What are you doing here?”

  Olga was stretched out on the bed, a notebook open in front of her. From where she stood in the doorway, Laura could see sketches and scribbles in Alyosha’s blocky handwriting. Olga was barefoot and wet-haired, wearing one of Alyosha’s long shirts, a throw blanket tossed over her legs.

  “Didn’t you hear me knock?” Laura asked.

  “I thought it was a neighbor, so I didn’t bother to answer. I wasn’t expecting you!”

  Obviously. “I came over to make dinner for Alyosha. What are you doing here, Olga?”

  Olga sat up and shut the notebook she’d been
reading. She pulled the blanket around her shoulders. “I come over here sometimes to get away from Roma,” she confessed. “We live with two other families. There’s no place to be alone in our apartment, and Lyosha has this whole place to himself.”

  This explanation didn’t seem like enough, somehow. “But how did you get in?”

  Olga waved her hand dismissively at the doorway. “I picked the lock. That lock is worthless.”

  “Oh.” Laura let her bag of groceries sink to the floor. “Do you do this a lot?”

  “When I can get away.”

  “Where is Alyosha?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But if you don’t know where he is, how do you know he won’t come home and find you here?”

  Olga shrugged. “If he finds me, he finds me. He won’t mind. We’re old friends.” A sly smile tainted Olga’s pretty face.

  “Maybe I should go —”

  “What?” Olga jumped up. “No. Stay, Laura. We can talk together until Lyosha comes home. Girl talk.”

  Girl talk wasn’t what Laura had pictured when she’d planned the evening.

  “No, I’ve got to get back. I can’t stay out late anyway.”

  “That’s right, you live in a dormitory. You have rules to follow. Oh well. I’ll just stay here until Lyosha comes back. I’ll tell him you stopped by —”

  “Um, okay.” Laura left the groceries on the floor and fled. She ducked her head against a brisk spring wind as she walked to the metro. The cold air stung her eyes, made them water. She reached the metro station, descended, and tried not to think of what was happening back at the apartment without her.

  * * *

  The next morning Laura hopped the tram to school, running late and in no mood to face the gypsies on the bridge, even if they did avoid her now. The day was frosty and gray, and so were the faces around her. The tram was crowded. A little girl clutched her mother with one hand and a blue balloon with the other. A scruffy man with wild, haunted eyes and bits of egg yolk in his beard stared at Laura as if she were the devil. Just as she was about to get off the tram, he leaned close and whispered, “Beware.” At that moment, the little girl’s balloon popped.

  Laura jumped, her nerves rattled. The bearded man followed her off the tram. She ran through the university gates, and he kept going down the embankment toward the choppy water, mist rising off the ice.

  She’d hardly slept the night before, imagining Alyosha coming home to find Olga wearing his shirt and … what then? Wasn’t Olga married? She sure didn’t act like it.

  Laura could call Alyosha and ask him what had happened. But would he tell her the truth?

  She didn’t know. She didn’t want to risk getting the wrong answer.

  Maybe she’d never call him again.

  Still she thought about him every minute, every second. He might have an explanation for Olga’s behavior. Maybe he hadn’t slept with Olga after Laura left. Maybe he’d asked her to leave. If he really wanted Olga hanging out in his apartment, he could have given her keys.

  Maybe Olga didn’t want to sleep with him.

  Laura laughed. Obviously she did want to.

  She dazed through her classes. Her Composition teacher returned her Women’s Day essay, dripping in red pencil and graded a 3, the equivalent of a C. Laura had never received a C in a non-math class in her life. At one time, getting a C on an essay would have hurt. But she felt nothing. She didn’t care about school, didn’t care about grades, didn’t care what her teachers thought of her.

  Russia was working its black magic on her spirit. For good and for ill.

  She didn’t wait for Karen after classes ended. She trudged across campus to the Builders’ Bridge to pack for the trip to Moscow.

  As she approached the arc of the bridge, she saw someone standing there, right in the middle, blocking the way. A young man.

  She walked closer and knew just from the way he hunched against the wind, his hands in his pockets, that it was Alyosha. The gypsy women fluttered nearby like nervous birds.

  Without thinking, without knowing what she was doing, she ran to him and flung herself into his arms. He held her close, pressed his lips to her cheek.

  “Why didn’t you call me?” he asked.

  “I was mad. I’m sorry.”

  “Because of Olga?” He took her hand and they walked over the bridge toward the dorm. “She’s crazy. Pay no attention to her.”

  “But … I think she loves you.”

  “So? I don’t love her. She comes over to make Roma jealous. He came and got her soon after I got home. I made dinner for all three of us out of the delicious things you brought and wished for you to call.”

  She felt terrible for leaving him hanging like that, when he had no way of reaching her. No way but this: showing up and finding her. Which was risky for both of them, so close to the university. Her professors or chaperones might see them and demand to know who he was…. They might tell her to stop seeing him, or they might look into his background, or bring him in for questioning. She didn’t really know what could happen, and it was hard for her to imagine, but there was an air of danger when she was with him.

  He put his arm around her as they walked, in spite of the risk. “Tomorrow is Saturday. Let’s do something together. Maybe go to a concert. If I tell the box office I’m a tour guide and you’re my guest, we could get great seats —”

  “I can’t.” She could hardly look at him.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m going away tonight. We’re all going away. The American students. To Moscow.”

  He stopped, his expression tightening, and removed his arm from her shoulder. “I don’t understand. What do you mean, you are going away?”

  “It’s our spring vacation. Our chaperones are taking us on a trip.”

  “For how long?”

  “A week.”

  “But you can’t leave. I can’t live without you for a week.”

  “I have to go. I have no choice.”

  The look on his face nearly broke her heart. The tightness around his mouth melted into sadness, and his brown eyes seemed to search the air around her, looking for a safe place to land.

  “I’m afraid something will happen to you if you go away from me for so long,” he confessed.

  “What do you mean? Nothing will happen to me —”

  “I mean, you will fall out of love with me. You’ll fall for someone else — one of your American boys, perhaps. Like Dan.”

  “Dan? We’re friends, that’s all.” She couldn’t resist adding a tiny jab. “Like you and Olga.”

  “That’s exactly what I mean! People can be treacherous. I don’t want to lose you.”

  “You won’t lose me.”

  “Someone might try to talk you out of seeing me. Your chaperones, maybe.”

  “They can’t talk me out of anything. Besides, they don’t know about you.”

  Two young men strolled by, and Alyosha took half a step away from her. He waited until they passed, and then studied them as they walked away. “Don’t let your chaperones know.”

  “I won’t. I promise. But we’ll be back, and you and I can do anything you like.” And by then — she couldn’t help calculating — how much time would she have left? Seven weeks.

  “We see each other so little,” he said. “Every moment is precious to me.”

  “To me, too.” She watched his sad eyes, trying to get them to settle on hers, to reassure him. She couldn’t make him feel better if he wouldn’t look at her.

  “Then don’t go away.”

  “Alyosha, I have to.”

  “All right. I must accept this, I suppose.”

  They started walking again. She told him a little about her itinerary, so he could imagine her there while she was away. “We’re staying at the Hotel Rossiya — have you ever been there? It supposed to be the biggest hotel in the world.”

  He’d never stayed there, though he’d seen it the last time he visited Red Square, on a sch
ool trip. They walked past Dormitory Number Six without pausing. They knew they couldn’t be spotted near there. A few blocks away, they stood in the gated doorway of an old house. Alyosha pressed his back against the gate and pulled her to him. “Rebyonok…”

  They kissed in the doorway. The day was dying. Laura had to pack for the trip and get ready to leave on the midnight train.

  “I have to go,” she said. “I’ll miss you.”

  “I will wilt without you.”

  “I’ll call you as soon as we get back. It’s only one week.”

  “One endless week.”

  She walked back to the dorm alone, just to be safe, in case Ivan the guard happened to be looking out the window. He might notice Laura and a strange Russian boy walking down the street at the same time and call it a coincidence; but if he saw them coming back together, he’d know that wasn’t by chance. She could feel Alyosha a few yards behind her, following her down the street like a guardian angel. She didn’t dare turn around and look. She didn’t have to. His presence was tangible. When she reached the front door of the dorm, she paused. He strolled by as if he had nothing to do with her, but she saw his quiet smile, the sparkle in his eye.

  At ten P.M. the American students and their chaperones, Dr. Stein and Dr. Durant, boarded the midnight train to Moscow. Laura and Karen shared a sleeping compartment with Binky, and Dan sneaked in with them.

  Dan whipped out a bottle of pale yellow vodka and rubbed his hands together. “Party time! We drink, we pass out, we wake up in Moscow.”

  “What is that stuff?” Karen asked.

  “Bison Piss,” Dan said. “I got it special at the Berioska. It’s flavored with buffalo grass, or something, that grows in Poland.” He produced a stack of short paper cups and poured out shots for all of them.

  Binky stared dubiously into her cup. “Looks like a urine specimen.”

  “Don’t look at it — drink it. Na zdorovye.”

  They tossed back the vodka. Dan grunted, “Akh!” Russian style.

  “You’ve really gone native,” Laura said.