by Shamim Sarif
“Her parents were very dear to me. Atheists, you know – intellectuals often are.” Dimitri gives a chuckle that ends in a wheeze that comes up from the bottom of his chest. Alexander smiles. “But they were good people. They helped me to hide, for a while. When the trouble came. And then, they themselves…” he does not finish the sentence, for the wheeze has turned into an unhealthy cough, and Alexander nods to indicate that he understands, and at the same time tries to pull back slightly from the hacking breath that is invading his own.
“Good luck to you, my son,” he sputters, finally, dabbing at his eyes with the handkerchief that Alexander has given him from his own top pocket. He raises his trembling hand and pats Alexander on the back. Alexander thanks him, and straightens up, and together they walk back to the bench that sits before the registry office door, where Misha stands waiting.
People are coming inside. Only one or two, here and there, but then, there will not be so many people at the wedding anyway. More will come afterwards, to his parents’ apartment for the celebration lunch. Now, suddenly, after a slow beginning, things seem to be happening. Misha has found an official to open up the door to the small room where the wedding will be held and Alexander’s parents have arrived, calling to him from the top of the stairs and he turns and comes to meet them, watching his mother quieting his father, who is apt to talk too loudly when he gets excited.
“My son,” says his father, embracing him heartily. His mother’s greeting is more delicate, more hesitant. She is conscious of her makeup and her clothes, concerned that they should not become creased. They ask if Alexander is well, and he tells them that he is, and then he leads them in and looks for where to seat them, for he has no idea of the formalities and protocol of a wedding, and behind him Misha comes up, moving languidly as always, and without an effort he takes over the parents, and guides them to their places. Alexander watches them as they sit down and arrange themselves, watches his mother trying to reclaim parts of her own seat that his father has somehow spread himself over, watches her fidgeting, and his expansiveness, and he smiles. It is not how he sees himself with Katya in thirty years time; but his parents’ movements are familiar to him, and they are reassuring on this day, in this unfamiliar place, where suddenly he feels very much alone.
He turns and looks about. There are people nodding and smiling at him. Several young men of his own age – his work colleagues and a few friends – come up to shake his hand and he accepts their congratulations, happily and without speaking much. His mind is filled with her now, with the thrilling fact of his impending marriage, he is finding it hard to articulate anything else, and so he just nods and smiles. He looks at his watch, and is surprised to see that she should be here within five minutes, and when he looks up, with the astonishment still upon his face, he sees Misha, and Misha laughs slightly and shakes his head.
“What happened to your handkerchief, my fastidious friend?”
Alexander smiles. “Dimitri Petroyavich needed it more than I did.”
“Here,” Misha says, tucking his own handkerchief into Alexander’s top pocket.
“Thank you, Misha.”
“You are welcome, my friend.”
Twenty minutes have passed, and Alexander has felt them like twenty lashes on his back. He stands facing the registrar, and alongside him he can feel Dimitri, with his trembling hand and beaten mouth, while his own naked back, wearing its wedding suit, lies exposed to the eyes of the people now sitting in two orderly, murmuring rows behind him. She has not come. He feels Misha tug at his arm, a firm pull, and he turns, relieved to have some diversion, to have someone to look at, someone who can tell him what to do. He has never been good at acting, at pushing his own raw emotions down so that they do not crack the façade of his expression. Misha can do it, many men he knows can – but he has never learned the trick.
“What is it?” he asks.
“Come and sit down with me,” says Misha. “Let’s sit down till she comes.”
Alexander obeys placidly. His heart is so heavy that he can feel it resting like a leaden mass in the base of his stomach... She has not come. He looks at Misha, who shakes his head.
“No way, my friend. She’s coming. Trust me.”
Misha is not at all sure that she is coming. He is beginning to worry that she has had a change of heart. That at the last moment, after all the encouragement he has given her, she has been unable to reconcile this marriage, which he knows has become a love marriage, with her work. Misha is momentarily annoyed. He has invested a lot of time recently in making her see that this is the best way she has to make a difference, to help kill the system that killed her parents. And it has not been easy because she is emotionally aware of all his psychological tricks, and because she is intelligent and worst of all, has a stubborn integrity that she is now focusing on the wrong things.
Misha sighs and puffs his cheeks. Perhaps, he thinks, this way would be better for them both in the long run. It will certainly save Alexander possible heartbreak. But the opportunities we will miss, Katya... Misha shakes himself inwardly and tries to remember that today he is the best man. He looks at Alexander with concern, and sees that his friend is looking down, his eyes fixed on the floor beneath his feet. Alexander is deeply wrapped up in the misery of betrayal, in a cold mist of sorrow that envelops him like a shroud. Then, to his right, he feels a movement, and a sideways glance reveals that Misha is standing up. He pats Alexander on the back and leans down to whisper in his ear.
“I’m going to find her. Give me a few minutes. I’ll be back.”
A tiny tremor of anticipation ripples through the assembled company as Misha turns and walks easily down the centre of the room and outside, leaving the metallic door to slam behind him.
Running down the front steps of the building, Misha looks around. He has no idea where Katya might be; she may be at home, having changed her mind, for all he knows. He turns left onto the street, and he almost knocks over Maya, who is coming along the pavement from the opposite direction. He stops and watches her, and she stares back, her breath short from her hurried walk, pooling into the cold air in clouds. He waits silently, for even though she is Katya’s roommate, her name has somehow escaped him at this critical moment.
“She wants to see Sasha,” she offers, finally.
“Where is she?”
“Down there, by the metro.”
Misha nods, and moves aside for the girl to pass him, before he walks very quickly down the street and around the corner. He can see Katya standing outside the metro station entrance, her eyes already looking for Alexander. When Katya sees him she gives a rueful smile, but also takes a small, unconscious step back. She has not expected to see me out here, Misha thinks, and she would probably prefer not to. He shakes his head and gives an easy laugh when he reaches her.
“They don’t perform weddings at metro stations,” he says. She makes a good attempt at a smile. Her dark hair is pulled back from her clear-skinned face and her haughty cheekbones. Her eyes look almost liquid, and they are slightly red around the edges, but he cannot tell whether this is from crying or sleeplessness or the cold. She glances at his watch, and rubs at her temples. Misha watches her, trying to maintain a semblance of sympathy in his expression, when in truth he is already beginning to lose patience. He will not speak and help her. Let her think, and then say what is bothering her.
“I don’t think I can do it,” she says, finally.
“Your fiancé is not going to be happy,” he observes, but she shakes her head, and he frowns, a sense of misgiving hitting him in the gut. She is looking down at her feet when she speaks again.
“No, not the wedding, Misha. The rest of it.” Now she looks up at him, unflinching. “The work. I don’t want to do it any more.”
He puts a hand over his eyes – he feels tired suddenly, and this is not at all what he was expecting to deal with. Never in all the time he has known her did he seriously suspect that she would want to stop working against th
e government. Not completely. Not for some man. It has always been too deeply a part of who she is. It has been all that she is.
“You’re not thinking straight,” he tells her. “You’re emotional and confused.”
She shakes her head, and gives a short laugh. “Yes, I am, but it’s more than that, Misha. Please try and understand. I can’t explain it to anyone else. I love him. And I can’t lie to him. It doesn’t feel like the right thing to do anymore.”
With a considerable effort, Misha manages to bite back a sarcastic response, but it hardly matters, because she knows him well enough to guess what he is thinking. He takes her by the shoulders and looks at her face, pinning her down with a firm gaze.
“I thought this was your life’s work?”
“It is.”
“You mean, it was.”
Her eyes look pained, as though he has forced a realisation upon her. He waits, certain that he has pulled her back. But she nods, and frowns.
“Yes. I mean, it was.”
“My god, what has happened to you?” He sighs, unsure of what tack to try next. Then he has an idea. Perhaps honesty will work. For a moment, he tries to focus hard on what he is really feeling.
“You know, Katya, I’m surprised. For me, this work has always been important, always meaningful, but I do it for reasons that are intellectual. Well thought out reasons. To be simplistic about it, I have political convictions and passing whatever secrets I learn at work out to the other side is the best way I know, the most efficient way, to fight for those convictions.”
She nods, listening.
“But you. You have a drive that even I don’t have. For you, it’s personal. They took a gun and shot your mother and your father through the head, for nothing. Never mind that they had young children crying for them back home. Never mind that they were honest, decent people. Never mind that they were probably sick and crying with fear. They shot them anyway. And left you with no-one. Now that’s a basis for conviction.” He shrugs, shakes his head, paces a little. “I’m surprised at you, that’s all.”
He has touched nerves with his brutal, obvious depiction, he is sure of that, because she will not meet his eye for a few moments.
“Misha,” she says finally. “I’m just not sure it’s the right thing to do. Not this way. Not like this. You see, I always thought I would end up with someone like myself. Or like you, who is on our side, against the government. Not someone inside the government, who I can’t say anything to, and who can’t help me, or understand. It’s ironic, I know. Believe me, nobody has laughed and cried more about this than I have. But in the end, I love him. There is something very good and decent about him. He represents this terrible system, but he is not an evil man. . I have a feeling there is another way to fight this battle…”
“Really?” he says with exaggerated interest. “And tell me, what is that way?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Ah. Well, then.”
She looks at him angrily. “I don’t want to hurt him, Misha. I won’t hurt him.”
“Of course you won’t. He’ll never know…”
She shakes off his wheedling, and he stops short. Then tries again.
“Don’t lie to him, Katya. I’ve told you already, you have nothing to do for two years. Two years. I don’t want you to do anything except run your school. Nothing else.”
“We only agreed that to avoid suspicion. So he doesn’t find me out at once.”
Misha shrugs. “Yes, whatever. But you have two years, and in this time, you don’t have to lie to him. Then, when the two years are up, we’ll talk. See how you feel then.”
“I know how I’ll feel then. I won’t want to do it, and you’ll try and make me…”
Misha smiles, his look almost indulgent. Oh no, Katya, you don’t know how you’ll feel. You imagine you will feel just as you do now. But in two years, Katyushka, the delicate bloom will be off your new love. You will be used to each other, and beginning to be irritated with his fastidious ways, and tired of having someone with you all the time. You, who are so jealous of your privacy, of your solitude, have chosen a man who is passionate and probably obsessive. He will drive you mad. Yes, in two years, it will be so different. He will probably have moved up in the world, and his information will be all the more valuable, and you will be tired of him Katya, you will be ready to remember who and what you are. My recruit, my agent, my source.
“Fine,” he says, his tone entirely reasonable. “Just marry him. You love him, he loves you, it’s all beautiful. Marry him now, and we’ll talk again in a couple of years, and we’ll decide then. If you don’t want to, you don’t want to. Okay?”
Alexander tries to slow down as he approaches the metro station, to give himself a few moments to think, but he sees her standing there, with Misha, the two of them looking at each other, neither speaking, and he finds himself by her side in a second. Around them people hurry up and down the metro stairs, or walk purposefully along the street. He sees all these moving bodies around him dimly, as scattered blurs, and as Katya takes his hand and looks at him, their stillness amid the bustle gives him the feeling that their private world has stopped and that time has halted with it. From outside his consciousness, Misha puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes reassuringly.
“I’ll leave you two for a moment. See you inside,” he says, and he is gone, absorbed into a body of people that have just spilled out from the exit.
Alexander takes her hand and waits.
“I’m sorry, Sasha,” she says. “I knew you must be waiting for me, but it didn’t seem real. It felt so peaceful and isolated out here. I almost couldn’t move.”
She hears her own words and laughs quickly. “I mean, the street is not peaceful, and there are people all around, but…”
“It doesn’t matter,” he tells her. “You don’t have to explain.”
But she owes him something, they both know, for being late, for making him come to see her on the street when by now they should already have been married.
“I just had to see you,” is all she can say, and her fingers tighten around his, a desperate grasp, like that of a scared child.
“You would have seen me in there. I was waiting for you.” He has only wanted to be understanding and kind, and he is disappointed at the petulance he hears in his own voice. She looks down, ashamed.
“I know. I wanted to see you alone, though, not in front of all those people.”
“You’ve changed your mind?”
But she shakes her head. He is momentarily grateful, but forces himself to focus on the fact that she has still not explained herself. “You don’t seem certain about this,” he says. It is better to call it off if you...”
He trails off, inviting her to fill in the rest, for he cannot fathom what it is that troubles her. But she says nothing, just stands watching him blankly. In her mind is a series of sentences, phrases and unconnected words that are telling him things about herself that she has never spoken before. She takes a breath, lets her lips part slightly. If she exhales, gently, without thinking, will any of those words or explanations begin to emerge from her mouth so that he can hear them? She waits. Nothing comes. He is looking at her and his eyes are probing, trying to read thoughts that he cannot guess at. She presses her lips together and then smiles at him, slightly. It will be all right. She has told Misha her view of it, and he knows she is serious. The confusion in her mind about her work, her life, her parents – there will be time to consider all of this. After they are married. She takes his hand and puts it to her face then turns her mouth into his palm to kiss it. The love she feels for him is wondrous, amazing to her. She cannot believe that leaving it behind would be better than embracing it. Embracing him. “What is it?” he whispers.
“Can we go and get married?” she says.
He watches her still. It is not enough for him.
“I am so sure of you,” she tells him, her face serious, earnest. “I love you so much.”
> “Then why are you out here?”
“I was worried. There is so much you don’t know about me. So much I haven’t let you know.”
She can hardly believe that she has spoken the words. That she has brought herself this close to the point where she will have to reveal her secrets. The idea elates her, and then drops her again. For he will never marry her if she tells him.
“I want to know everything about you, Katya. And there will be time for that. Our whole lives are for that.”
He has not pressed the point, probably because he does not understand it; so instead, he is giving her a way out, andhastily, she takes it.
“Yes, you’re right. I think I’m just feeling too emotional. No-one has ever come as close to me as you have, Sasha, not in my whole life. It’s wonderful, but there are times when I’m afraid.”
“Of what?”
“That you’re not real. That what we have found together is too good to be real.”
He lifts her hand, and raises it to his lips, and holds it there. His eyelashes close, and brush against the warm skin, and he holds his eyes shut against the noise about him, and concentrates on the scent of her and the taste of her. She reaches out to stroke his head, but he does not look up, or move at all. In the pause that follows she can hear the low rumble of a train arriving under the ground beneath them. A gust of wind whirls up and into the street. His head is warm against the skin of her hand, and inside the recesses of her mind, she hears again that childhood tune, played by the balalaika that they heard at the dance on the first night that they met.
After a few moments, she tugs at his hand and as he looks up, she starts walking, back towards the registry office, pulling him with her.
“Wait, Katya. Are you sure you will be happy with me?” he says.
