The Russian Affair

by Michael Wallner

  His dispassion irritated her. Was he insulted to hear that the affair was still going on? Didn’t he understand from her behavior that his homecoming had changed everything? Anna wasn’t used to talking about feelings with Leonid. The signals between them had always been sent by other means—a good meal, a song on the radio, a smiling gaze at their son. Alexey, not Leonid, was the man who’d encouraged Anna to name her wishes and her fears. And now she was standing before her husband, unsure of how to proceed. She said, “I’ve decided, Leonid, and I know everything’s going to be all right.”

  She moved toward him, the potato bag toppled over, and the first tuber spilled out, followed by several more. With his foot, Leonid prevented a potato from rolling under the cupboard. Anna knelt down. He didn’t want to see his wife scooting around on the floor and bent to help her. They met in front of the sofa, still gathering up potatoes. Holding one in each hand, she crawled to his side, embraced him, sought his mouth, and pressed him against the sofa.

  She couldn’t understand why she was now wild for the very same man she’d scarcely desired during the course of the previous five years. What tricks emotions play on people, she thought; the Party was right to demand that individual passion be placed in the service of society as a whole. While Anna was considering what ideal she subordinated her own passion to and concluding that her attitude vis-à-vis politics was deficient, Leonid pulled his sweater off and unbuttoned his shirt. How simple it had been to live right when she was a Pioneer Girl: a camp filled with girls, a well-regulated daily routine, political instruction every morning and evening. Anna had known since those days that the Party’s directives were like so many bridges and handrails that could assist a person in negotiating the complexities of daily life. The simplification of the data helped one to keep the goal in sight, to overcome setbacks, and to learn to deal with one’s own demons. Meanwhile, things had progressed to the point where Leonid was sitting beside her on the sofa, half-naked, and she clambered over him. Despite her excitement, she couldn’t ignore the musty old man’s smell that emanated from the sofa cushions. It was as if Viktor Ipalyevich were there with them. Anna shut her eyes and caressed her husband.

  The sight of the letter on the table a few feet away made Leonid feel ashamed. He’d hardly begun to write an amorous note to Galina, and now he was betraying his lover with his wife. Although he’d wanted to give his letter a simple opening, the first few sentences had turned out unusually ardent; Leonid didn’t recognize himself as the author of such lines and couldn’t imagine what had become of his vocabulary. The revival of his married life distressed him, and he’d felt the need to write straight from the heart, to cry out to Galina and implore her to return his love. If he didn’t receive some sign from her, and very soon, he’d lose himself completely in his old life, and his psychological homecoming would be allowed to follow the physical one. Sex with Anna was unavoidable, but even after their long separation, sleeping with her brought him nothing more than ordinary pleasure. They’d never introduced much variety into their lovemaking; in the afternoon, the sofa had always been their chosen venue, so as not to rumple the freshly made bed. Leonid listened to the pitiful springs, doing their duty, and watched the lovely breasts, soft and full, bouncing up and down before his eyes. He tried to force himself not to think of Galina, as decency required, but his efforts failed. The images, the smell stole upon him, the inadvertence with which he’d thrown himself into her embrace, the intoxication that had sprung from it. He longed for Galina, right then, and his longing shamed him.

  The sound came from just outside the door, and in the next moment someone entered the apartment. Before Leonid could snatch up his pants or Anna climb off of him, Viktor Ipalyevich was in the living room. Reflexively, with the movement of a character in an animated cartoon, he pivoted on his heel; the look of embarrassed surprise crossed his face only after his body had already reacted. He vanished as he’d appeared, with spectral swiftness.

  “It’s such beautiful weather,” they heard him say in the foyer. “Why should we come back to this stuffy apartment so soon?”

  “I’m hungry,” the child’s voice said.

  “Is that a reason to stay inside?” There was a sound of rustling fabric, followed by the jingle of keys. “What do you say we go to the old Antler bakery and get some blini?”

  “Blini?” the two on the sofa heard their son say. His grandfather’s answer was overlaid by the closing of the door.

  Leonid had a sudden mad desire to top off the already ludicrous situation. “So you’re going to see that CC member,” he said. “Where is it that you two meet?”

  Anna, who’d been holding her breath, exhaled with a gasp. “Stop it, Leo,” she said, jerking his head down to her chest.

  “But it interests me.” Now, he thought, I’ve got to ask some questions that have been unspoken for a year and a half. “How often have you two been together? All told, I mean.”

  Her upper body sagged. “I don’t know how often.” Like so many questions, this one couldn’t be answered.

  “Only once a week, or more than that?”

  “Stop it! Stop it!”

  “Would you say every three days?”

  “He doesn’t have much time,” she let herself be coaxed into saying. “And he’s married.”

  “So … once a month?” Why am I tormenting her? Leonid thought. Wouldn’t this be the time for him to say, “I’m no better than you, I was lonely, and now there’s this woman, and I want her. Unlike you, I can’t say I’ll never see her again, because I will. She’s the reason why I applied for this new transfer”? Sensing that the interruption had incapacitated him, Leonid pushed Anna gently aside, stood up, and adjusted his clothing. She’d torn a button off his shirt; reproachfully, he showed her the spot.

  She was as unhappy as she could be. Why couldn’t she manage to convince him of her good intentions? From now on, all her efforts would be dedicated to the family; why wouldn’t he believe that? She found the button and presented it to him as if it were a symbol of her honesty. Leonid gave her a fleeting kiss and sat down to his writing again.

  “You must be hungry.” She was concerned about reestablishing the good mood. “I’m hungry, in any case,” she said with a laugh, gathered up the bag of potatoes, and sprang into the kitchen.

  Leonid pulled out his partly written letter from under the envelope, read what he’d written, and felt the impossibility of writing anything more with Anna in the kitchen, just a few steps away. He folded the sheet of paper, slipped on his shoes, and announced that he was going out for cigarettes. On the way downstairs, he met his disgruntled son, who in the end had rejected all his grandfather’s proposals and insisted on returning home. Leonid evaded the old man’s knowing, fellow-male look, set the fidgety child on his shoulder, and brought him along on his cigarette-buying mission; Viktor Ipalyevich continued up the stairs to the apartment while father and son went galloping down. Petya squealed and dug his fingers into Leonid’s hair. They ran outside into the bright daylight and reached the tobacco shop on the corner. When Leonid tore open the packet and put a cigarette between his lips, he remembered that what he’d actually set out to do was to finish writing his letter to Galina. He decided to put it off until that evening and offered Petya his hand. Smoking, he strolled with his son down the Mozhaisk Chaussée.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Anna could barely make out the sign for the narrow and dimly lit street: DREZHNEVSKAYA ST. She turned into it furtively, like an adulteress. She’d insisted that she didn’t want Anton to drive her. She wanted to go to the meeting alone, say to Alexey what needed to be said, and disappear into the darkness again.

  During the course of the day, familiar things had cheered her—the ladder, the paintbrush with the broken handle. She’d hung her bucket on a hook and painted the wall from top to bottom. By noon, three rooms were finished, and her shoulders ached from painting surfaces above her head. When her shift had ended, she’d been happy to be so exhausted; w
eariness reduced her nervousness.

  She rang the bell. A while passed before the buzzer sounded. On the stairs, she considered whether there wasn’t something she hadn’t thought about. This would be their last time together; they’d drink a few glasses of wine, and she’d give Alexey her “farewell gift.” Had the situation not been so dangerous, Anna would have found it more strange than anything else. She was acting like a double agent: Instead of reporting to her case officer with information, she was about to give it to the person under observation.

  Although Alexey must have known that she was waiting outside his door, he didn’t open it until she rang again. He looked haggard, his face was drawn, and he hadn’t shaved for their appointment as he usually did. “There you are,” he said. He sighed and without embracing her led the way into the apartment. She closed the door and took off her coat.

  “Have I come at a bad time?” she asked, glancing into the kitchen, where this time no wine was standing ready.

  “You’re probably the only thing that hasn’t come at a bad time today,” he said with a tired smile.

  “The Five-Year Plan?”

  “It’s finally concluded, over and done with.” He turned to the glasses, and had Anna not sprung into action, his coattails would have swept the plate with the tsarina’s portrait from the sideboard to the floor. Alexey took advantage of Anna’s nearness to give her a quick kiss. “Excuse me—there are too many things going through my head.” He opened the refrigerator, took out a half-empty bottle of white wine, and left it to Anna to bring the food.

  “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, too,” she said, introducing her subject. She put the dish on the table and arranged the little sandwiches more attractively.

  Alexey poured the wine, and they took their first sips.

  “Leonid has come home,” Anna said, sitting down across from Alexey.

  He scrutinized her, not like the “other man” in her love triangle, but rather like a trainer wondering whether his fighter has the stuff to go the distance. “Has Leonid come home for good?”

  “No.” A cold spot in the pit of her stomach began to spread out. “He’s trying to get transferred to Yakutsk.”

  Alexey’s eyes narrowed. He wasn’t prepared for such a conversation, and the prospect of it certainly gave him no pleasure, so Anna came swiftly to the point: “I don’t want to lose him.”

  Alexey picked up his glass and made the liquid sparkle in the light. “Looks to me as though your captain doesn’t exactly yearn to come back to you.”

  He made the remark jokingly, but it went through her like a knife. “For a year, Petya’s had no father, and I’ve had no man.”

  “No man.” They exchanged a brief glance, and Bulyagkov nodded. The lack of physicality in their relationship had never been an issue for them; now they were both thinking the same thing.

  “We both knew we couldn’t last the way we were. Something had to change one day.” She put her hand on his.

  “And now it’s over?” Was his weird calm due to exhaustion?

  “My love, my dearest,” she said sadly. His sallow face, his disordered hair, the old eyes, and the melancholy that filled them combined to take Anna’s breath away. “We were a good team.”

  “Are you breaking off our friendship, too?”

  “Our friendship, never,” she answered vehemently. He’d understood what she meant; why didn’t she confess that she’d come expressly to break it off? “But I don’t know where that will lead us. We were never what’s called a couple.”

  “I suppose not.” He leaned back with a look of serious consideration on his face. “I love you, Anna. Maybe I love you so much because we were never able to spend much time together. Maybe things were good for us for so long because there was always the temptation of thinking something more might come of them.”

  She thought about Kamarovsky, the other creator of this relationship, and about Leonid, who, this one time, knew where she was spending the evening. Alexey’s woefulness overcame her, too.

  “I’ve been saddled with taking a trip,” he said in a different tone of voice. “I’ll have to leave very soon.”

  “A trip? Where?” The change of subject had rattled her.

  “Please let everything remain the same between us until I get back.”

  “Why? What’s the difference if we say good-bye now or then?”

  “A big difference, as far as I’m concerned.” He rolled his wineglass around on its base. “Could you do that for me?”

  “My husband’s back at home, playing with our son. I want to straighten everything out.” When he said nothing, she went on: “I can’t do what you want me to do unless you tell me the reason for it.”

  Cautiously, as though he were afraid of breaking it, he placed the glass to one side. “I wouldn’t like to cause Comrade Kamarovsky any unnecessary concern.” The eyes of the Arctic wolf gazed at her.

  The hanging lamp suddenly seemed to Anna like a sun shining in her face. Her mouth went dry. She stared at Alexey as though, in that instant, he’d been transformed into a dangerous predatory beast.

  “Since when … ?” she whispered.

  “Since when have I known?” He reached for her hand; she jerked it back. “Since before you knew, Anna.”

  In the silence, the room seemed to dissolve. “But then … everything was a game, a setup from the start?” She shook her head several times, as though trying to get an unpleasant sound out of her ear. “How could you love me, if you … ?”

  “That’s what’s so marvelous.” He reached for her hand a second time. “That first time, when I saw you on the ladder, in your overalls, with paint on your nose—that first time, you conquered me.”

  “Stop making jokes!”

  “When it came to you, I was always serious.” He kissed the base of her thumb. “At our second meeting—you remember, your father’s reading—my heart was beating in my throat when I spoke to you. I was just an old guy, fat and worn out, and I had my eye on the beautiful, married house painter. I was in love for the first time in years, for the first time again, full of longing, and I felt so young it was mortifying even to me.” With every sentence, he drew closer to her face. “Do you know how much I desired these lips, these eyes, your hair, every inch of your neck? It was childish and maybe unreasonable, but wonderful, too.”

  “But why …” She realized that she was incapable of doing justice to his passionate words. “Why didn’t you ever want to make love to me?”

  “That didn’t mean I loved you any less.” He stroked her cheek. “We did make love,” he said with a smile. “I was embarrassed in front of you. I still am.”

  “And what about Kamarovsky?” she asked brusquely. Alexey’s unexpected declaration had thrown her into total disarray.

  “I knew the Colonel would set somebody on me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s what they do to anyone who has a kind of power they can’t assess. Science is such a power, Anna.” He pondered for a moment. “But maybe my dubious past was reason enough.”

  “Your father?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not a Russian. That’s still a defect, even today.”

  Involuntarily, she moved closer to him. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

  “I didn’t want to put you in a false position. It was obvious to me that if you knew what was going on, Kamarovsky would notice. He would have seen through you at once. Your ignorance was important to him.” He added, lowering his voice, “And to me.”

  “You used me the whole time.”

  In the silence, they heard an automobile stop in front of the building. Alexey stood up and pushed the curtain to one side. “I hope we can do without reproaches. Couldn’t you have said ‘No’ when Kamarovsky asked you to be his spy? You decided to do something for your father—and for Petya. I know very few people who would have refused.”

  Even though he was expressing what Anna had thought a hundred times, hearing it from him enraged he
r. “I can’t go on like this. It has to come to an end today, right now. That’s what I came here to tell you. Can’t you just let me go?”

  He closed the curtain. “All right. If nothing can dissuade you, it’s over as of today.”

  Anna heard the car drive off. As the sound of the engine faded, Alexey picked up a sandwich and bit it in half.

  She couldn’t believe she’d gained his assent so easily. “Really, Alexey?”

  He swallowed and took a sip of wine. “On one condition: Let’s keep up appearances until after I return from my trip. I once told you that you’d never have anything to fear from me. Won’t you just trust me?”

  “How can I, after two years that were one big lie?”

  Anna had never heard the doorbell ring inside the apartment. It was a loud, piercing sound, incongruous with this clandestine place. Alexey stood up and said, “Excuse me. This won’t take long.” He stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him.

  Anna guessed that he’d been expecting this visit. She heard the front door open and listened in vain for words of greeting; there was only silence. What was going on? Why wasn’t there the slightest sound of communication between Alexey and his visitor? Now she heard steps. She started to go into the next room, but the front door closed with a gentle click. She ran back and peered cautiously through the ornamental glass panes of the door to the hall. It was empty.

  Precisely then, when Anna needed a clear head and all her reasoning power to consider the situation, her nerves gave way. Suddenly, everything she was going through seemed overwhelming, and she was racked by sobs that had lain silent in her for a long time, waiting to be set off. The hand she clapped against her mouth couldn’t repress a gush of phlegm and saliva; she swallowed hard, coughed, ran stooping into the kitchen, washed her hands, and splashed water on her face. Her tears didn’t stop right away, and as she stood there weeping, trying not to make any noise, she fixed her blurred gaze on the kitchen door.