The Bookworm

by Mitch Silver

  “You’re at some man’s place? At his dacha?”

  “It’s not like that. Look, I’ll call you back.”

  “Larissa Mendelova, as long as I’m still your—”

  Flipping the phone closed ended the noise.

  Lara prided herself on the ability to compartmentalize, to put her personal life in a mental cubicle as she plowed on in her work. Now was just such a time. A wayward husband, hiding behind his Army uniform as he broke his marriage vows in one former Soviet Socialist Republic after another … no, she wouldn’t let herself think of that now. She had work to do. Azerbaijan, Chechnya, Georgia, everywhere he went … no, she wasn’t going to get into it. That’s what divorce lawyers were for. After she got the back rent, she would wring Katrina’s neck.

  Lara looked up and was startled to find Grigoriy Gerasimov standing there, a slightly rained-on paper bag of groceries in his hands.

  “Who was that?”

  “My husband, though I don’t see—”

  “You seemed upset, that’s all.”

  “Viktor and I, we have … issues.”

  “You mean the divorce.”

  She was startled. “You know about that?”

  “Separation decrees are public documents. And I’m … the public.” When he saw her expression darken, he quickly added, “If talking to him bothers you so much, why do it?”

  “Can I help it if the phone rings?”

  “You can keep it turned off. Or …” he said quickly, seeing her brow start to furrow again, “… you can give each of your callers a different ringtone. Then you’ll know right away which to answer and which to let go to voicemail. May I show you?”

  Putting down the groceries, he took her phone and punched in some buttons. “Let’s say I’m calling you from my mobile. What ringtone should I get?” The phone’s screen displayed a list of possibilities, most of them from current pop songs.

  Through gritted teeth, Lara said, “It should be something subtle. Maybe cannon shots from the ‘1812 Overture.’”

  Unfazed, Gerasimov clicked onto the “Classical” list. “Tchaikovsky. Good Russian choice.”

  He scrolled down a little more, clicked on a listing and entered his phone number before handing her mobile back. Then he took his own phone out of his pocket and called hers. It rang with the first nine notes of the “Hunters’ Theme” from Peter and the Wolf.

  Lara answered it, and spoke into the phone to the man standing next to her. “I thought you’d give yourself the Wolf’s theme.”

  He said, “Me? I’m one of the good guys,” and, smiling, closed his phone.

  Under duress, Viktor acquired the old Red Army Hymn for his future incoming calls. But Gerasimov wasn’t satisfied until she had assigned individual ringtones to her ten most recent callers. Her friend Vera was assigned Swan Lake and Pavel, who’d called again, got something called “Pavel’s Song” from the Pop list.

  Gerasimov was taking things from the grocery bag: a container of Georgian chicken satsivi and a box of toothpicks, the better to pluck the cold chunks of white meat from the walnut sauce; little lingonberry cakes; a half bottle of wine. Outside, afternoon had turned to dusk.

  He sat down opposite her. “I gather you’ve met Nikolai.”

  Lara pulled herself together. “We weren’t formally introduced but, yes.”

  “Nikki … Nikki’s a good kid.”

  He was staring at her. Lara had a small dark spot on her cheekbone a couple of centimeters under her left eye. When she thought about it at all, she usually told herself it was a beauty mark. Now it felt like a flaw, a weak place. A way in.

  Gerasimov spread a bit of the Vologodskoye maslo he’d brought on a thin slice of coriander-studded rye bread. He handed it to her. Not cheese but a nutty-flavored butter, it was sumptuously creamy, a true Russian indulgence. He poured them both some wine and held up his glass.

  “To the interesting Dr. Klimt. Welcome.” He took a sip and said, “There’s something I don’t understand about you, Lara.”

  She took a sip from her glass. “Oh, what’s that?”

  “You spent a dozen years, almost your whole adult life, living and teaching in America. Why come back?”

  Yes … why had she? “It was strange at first, to be a Russian in America at the end of the 1980s. The Iron Curtain was torn, but it was still up … the Berlin Wall … everything—and to be free to think what you wanted, to say what you wanted, it was all so seductive.

  “Everybody there is part American and part something else: In New York you’re Italian- or Irish- or African-American. My parents were so different from each other, one a Muslim, the other a Jew … I guess I’ve always been a hyphenate, so I fit right in.”

  Even as she was speaking, the answer came to her, surprising her with its simplicity. “When the Soviet Union was gone, the Wall down, the Curtain opened, I was free to be all of something, just another Russian in Russia. So I came back.” She took a bite of the buttered bread and then looked back at Gerasimov. “And, well, I like it.”

  He was sipping his wine and looking at her, the lines around his eyes crinkled in an odd expression. Interest? Skepticism? She couldn’t tell. All he said was, “Shall we get to work? Take your wine. The media room is upstairs.”

  As they walked up the flight of stairs, the rain beat a tattoo on the roof just over their heads. But inside the padded door at the top of the landing, it was just a whisper. He answered her unspoken question. “Soundproofing … it actually works.”

  Gerasimov’s “media room” would have made an American anchorman jealous. There were huge flat-screen TVs, laptop and desktop computers, scanners, the works. Gerasimov picked up a remote and suddenly the TVs were playing a dozen different broadcasts at once: A Ukrainian soap opera, a pitchwoman selling earrings, a newscast showing the Russian president walking alongside his American counterpart up the fifty-eight steps of the Red Staircase where, four centuries earlier, Ivan the Terrible killed the messenger who brought him bad news.

  A variety show was playing on the bottom monitor, with Alla Pugachova, the most popular singer in Russian history, crooning her biggest hit, “Dreams of Love.” As Lara watched, the picture froze with Pugachova’s mouth open grotesquely wide.

  “Grisha, look! You have a problem on that network!”

  He smiled indulgently. “That one’s off-line. It’s the pre-build for Friday’s Conception Night telecast. She’ll be the second act to go on live, so they slugged in what they had of her in the archives and extended it another forty-five seconds to make the schedule work.”

  He clicked all the screens off with his remote. “As the director, I get to approve the various stages of a production in progress. Now, over here, please.”

  He was standing in front of a pull-down, three-meter-wide screen of light blue material in the corner. Lara joined him, and saw they were facing a small television camera whose red light was on.

  He said, “Look to your right.”

  She did and saw herself on a TV monitor as her host stepped out of the picture. She ran her hand over her hair to tuck it behind her ears.

  “Now look back at the camera. I’m going to type in something for you to read.”

  Instead of doing as she was told, Lara looked to her left, where the man was now hunched over a keyboard, his fingers flying, faster even than Lara could do it.

  “Don’t look at me, look at the lens.”

  She did, and saw the words in Russian appear in a small window built into the camera. She said, “Good day, I’m Dr. Larissa Mendelova Klimt, and it’s my honor …” She turned back to Gerasimov, who was watching her on the monitor, and asked, “How’s that?”

  He paused. “Well, we’ve established that you can read. Now, let’s see if you can manage an entire sentence. Ready?”

  She faced the camera. “Ready.” She could hear Gerasimov clicking away on the keyboard. “Good day, I’m Dr. Larissa Mendelova Klimt, and it’s my honor to be very beaut—”

  S
he stopped and turned toward the man at the keyboard.

  He smiled and moved toward her. “Was there a typo? The word should read, ‘beautiful.’ Let me see if I got it right.” Now he was next to her, pointing to the words on the camera’s screen. “’Dobryĭden, ya Larissa Mendelova Klimt, i eto menya bolshaya chest byt ochen krasivyi.’ Yes, it’s perfectly correct. The word you stumbled over is ‘krasivyi’ … it means lovely, beautiful, gorgeous, with intriguing almond-shaped eyes. Repeat after me: “… very beautiful.”

  “Do you always soften up your translator this way?”

  “You mean Boris, the guy with the flu? If he had your legs, maybe.” He grinned. “Okay, back to work. This time, I’ll type in a sample question. After you say it out loud, look over at the monitor as if the president is sitting there, and translate the words into English. Wait for his answer, and then turn back to the camera and translate it back for your viewers.”

  They practiced with the TelePrompTer for another hour until Gerasimov was satisfied. “You’re not just a teacher, you’re an apt pupil.”

  “Thank you, Grigoriy Aleksandrovich.”

  “Grisha, remember?”

  “Thank you, Grisha.”

  “Now, let’s see how good you are at modeling.”

  She spent another forty minutes trying on different outfits from her suitcase for the camera, changing in the little upstairs bathroom each time, as he murmured variations of krasivyi. They settled on a cream-colored blouse and jacket.

  Then Gerasimov looked at his watch. “Is it seven already? Please stay for dinner. With Nikki here, Cook is making a little more than usual. It would be an honor to have you join us. Then I’ll run you back into town.”

  Lara said, “Your wife … will she be joining us too?”

  He didn’t look at her when he quietly uttered a single syllable.

  “Nyet.”

  Chapter 32

  Moscow

  The president’s “body man,” or closest personal aide, sat opposite him in the suite’s sitting room. “Body woman” would have been more like it: Sarah Rouke was a curvaceous blonde in her early thirties, unattached and much in demand by Washington party-givers. But today she was all business, unzipping a slim leather attaché and handing over several files to the chief executive.

  “This is your address to the G20. You won’t have a TelePrompTer, so you’ll have to go old school and read it from the lectern.”

  Her boss smiled and took the papers. “Got it.”

  “Afterward, we’ve put aside half an hour for the photo ops with the other leaders.”

  “Standing or sitting? I’m a foot taller than some of them.”

  “Sitting. There’ll be armchairs.”

  “Good.”

  “And please, Mr. President, remember: no texting during the business sessions.”

  The president briefly thought back to his gaffe at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. “Right.”

  Rouke took another set of papers from her attaché. “And here’s the latest copy of your oil agreement. The other side asked for a few minor changes; they’re highlighted in yellow.”

  Her boss cocked one eyebrow above the frame of his reading glasses. “Changes?”

  Rouke leaned forward and ran her fingernail under a highlighted area. “Who’s responsible for paying the tanker crews if they’re delayed in our waters; stuff like that.”

  The president sighed. “Lawyers.”

  Rouke gave him one more file. “We’ve put together a few toasts for after the dinner tonight. They’re in phonetic Russian, with the English underneath, so you’ll know what you’re saying.”

  The leader of the free world took off his glasses and wiped them on a little cloth he took from his pocket. As he did, he looked intently at the younger woman. “Don’t let my wife have more than two drinks. You know what she’s like when …”

  Sarah Rouke stood up. “I’m on it, sir.”

  The president got up as well. “Don’t let me have more than two either. You know what I’m like.”

  The two shared the briefest of laughs.

  Chapter 33

  Deadhorse, Alaska

  The bright green bus was warming up its engine as “Len” Klimt got on. The No Smoking sign over the driver’s head was already lit up and Lev knew he was going to need a Winston the moment he got off. To think about something else, he watched the Arctic Caribou Inn fall away behind the tour bus as it got going in the morning light.

  Comfortably seated near the rear, he turned his attention back to the Google Earth app on his recharged iPhone. The inn was the jumping-off point for the daily Wildlife Refuge trips run by Tatqaani Tours, an Inupiat word meaning “way up” or “way out north.” To prove it, the tip of the red Google arrow indicating the motel’s location touched the green-shaded land area on the phone’s screen, while most of the arrow’s shaft hung out over the blue Beaufort Sea.

  Seen from space on Google Earth, northern Alaska had sprouted major new construction just inside the nineteen-million-acre Refuge in what was called the 1002 Area, undeveloped land opened to commercial interests by the president’s recent executive order. Lev had to see it for himself; had to find out why Craig’s emails said he “wouldn’t be a party” to whatever was going on in there.

  His phone’s app showed him pumps, drilling sheds, holding tanks and sections of conduit on the screen—all the stuff you needed to get vast quantities of oil out of the ground. It was the place Lev needed to get to.

  The Holland America and Princess lines were finished cruising for the season and the Caribou Inn, the closest public place of any size, had transformed itself back into a remote-site camp for oilfield workers. As an accommodation to the workforce, the first roundtrip of the day set off early, dropping roustabouts at the various wellheads and collecting them again in the late afternoon.

  Lev was on the second run, the one for family members going shopping in Prudhoe, leftover tourists doing the North Slope on their own, and a handful of naturalists and wildlife photographers staying in the area who didn’t want to get up at the crack of dawn. Still sleep-deprived after the plane ride up, Lev felt his eyes closing, involuntarily. No sense calling Lara yet on his recharged phone, not when he had nothing new to tell her.

  Across the aisle, two men with their coats on their laps were speaking quietly, their words drowned out by the accelerating bus. Lev’s hand rested protectively on his backpack beside him on the seat; if anyone tried to take it while he was dozing, he’d know. Not that there was anything valuable in it—just his old metal hardhat and the camera case he’d purchased in Anchorage. And, he remembered, smiling, as his lids dropped some more … his pack of Winstons.

  When the bus shifted into cruising gear, Lev heard one of the guys across the way ask the other, “Kak dolgo vy budete nasosnoĭneft?”

  “How long will you be pumping the oil?” Nothing particularly nefarious these days about Russian being spoken on an American bus, Lev mused, almost asleep. Up here in oil country, Alaska was a melting pot of English, Inupiat, and Russian speech. But, “pumping the oil?” It was the very reason he was up here. So he turned on his phone to capture their words.

  The second man, also in Russian, asked, “What did you say?”

  “Kak dolgo vy budete nasosnoĭneft?”

  “Oh. Once they give the word, a week at the most. Depends where you are in the line.”

  The first man spoke again. “And how far back is your tanker?”

  “We’re thirtieth, fortieth, something like that.”

  Thirty or forty oil tankers in a line? Lev opened his eyes. Sure enough, a procession of nondescript oil tankers flying American flags lay at anchor for miles just off the shore. Lev switched his phone to Video and began to film them as the green bus headed east along the bumpy road that ran beside Mikkelsen Bay.

  The man by the window suddenly pointed out to sea. “There, you can just barely see it, the one with the orange insignia: The Atlantic Pioneer. If you look carefully
, you can see where we painted over it.”

  The driver announced an upcoming stop, and the two men got up to go. Lev didn’t know what to make of it.

  Chapter 34

  Uspenskoye

  Dinner was awkward. For one thing, Lara was overdressed. Underdressed actually, in her skimpy black sheath and its too-thin straps and scoop neckline. She was usually pleased with what her body brought to the scoop, but now she kicked herself for not wearing Vera’s outfit with the cap sleeves.

  The rain outside was intensifying, increasing Lara’s discomfort at being bottled up with these strangers. She sat across from the two of them, the older and newer models. Grigoriy with his remarkably handsome features and the beginnings of grey in his dark, glossy hair could have been a model. Next to him the young man, so similar in height and weight, was all neck and torso and forearms, twisting the bread in his large hands until he tore off the heel, crumbs flying everywhere except the bread plate. Openly competing with his father for Lara’s attention. Lara, a still slightly married woman.

  Was she showing too much skin? She looked down and saw gooseflesh. She could plead that it was chilly and go get her thin blue shawl. But it wasn’t chilly. It was uncomfortably warm.

  The younger Gerasimov’s mood had darkened. He began peppering Lara with questions. Who were her friends, where did she live and with whom, why did she teach what she taught, why had she gone to America to teach under the enemy, Reagan? Instead of a meal it was a job interview. Nikki asked what her father had done to get thrown into Perm.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  This boy across from her was too young to understand. So she said, “They had a joke in the camps. When a new arrival showed up fresh from the Moscow trials, he was asked at the gate what his sentence was.”

  “‘Ten years for doing absolutely nothing,’ he’d say.”

  “‘You’re lucky,’ they’d tell him. ‘For absolutely nothing, it’s usually 15 years.’”