She took the package. It was the length of her finger, square and flat, like a tiny painting. “Is it okay if I write to you?”
“Please write to me. I don’t know if I’ll get your letters, but try. And I’ll write to you, too, every week.”
“I promise to write every week, too.”
“You’d better go now. You leave first, and I’ll go later.”
“No —”
“Laura, don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. But you must go now. Please go. And hide the gift I gave you well. Find someplace in your suitcase where customs won’t look too hard.”
“Okay.”
“I love you, Laura.”
“I love you, too.”
She kissed one fingertip and pressed it against his cheek. Then she stood up and walked away. She wanted to turn around and look at him, but was afraid to. When she passed through the garden gates, she turned at last and saw him sitting alone on the bench.
I may never see him again, she thought, and her heart cracked like a mirror.
* * *
Back in her room, she unwrapped the package. It was a tiny painting of her and him, standing together in an airy apartment, in front of a window. Nearby was a table set for dinner with golden plates and lots of food — a whole fish, green salad, a bottle of wine, a bowl of grapes. He had his arm around her and she fitted against his side, her head on his shoulder. He kissed the top of her head and she glowed like a saint in an icon. Through the window behind them: a broad blue sky with two puffy white clouds, a bay dotted with sailboats, and the Golden Gate Bridge.
Her end-of-term report card was mixed, to put it politely. She got a 5 in Phonetics and Conversation, a 3 in Translation, a 4 in Grammar, a 2 in Composition, and a 1 in Literature. Semyon Mikhailovich, her Phonetics professor, wrote: Laura clearly enjoys learning idioms, songs, and poetry and takes great care with her pronunciation. Somehow she picked up a lot of idiomatic Russian phrases and slang on her own. She was a delightful student.
Yeah, somehow. On the other hand, her Literature professor commented: Laura Reid missed almost half her Literature classes, particularly when they fell on Friday afternoons. When she was present, she rarely participated in discussion because she hadn’t done the reading. Therefore, I failed her.
This was the first failing grade Laura had ever received, but she accepted it with a shrug. She had missed half her Lit classes — she’d developed a habit of slipping away to see Alyosha on Fridays. It was worth it.
The Americans gave away almost all their clothes and anything else they didn’t need — disposable razors, books, cassette tapes, soaps, shampoos, and toiletries — to their Russian friends, who accepted them gratefully. Laura gave Nina her favorite sweater, two pairs of corduroys, and the five pairs of nylon stockings she’d been told to bring before she left. She wished she had more to give her, so she and Karen made a last-minute trip to the Berioska Shop for a jar of instant coffee, a tin of sardines, and some fancy chocolate.
Nina gave Karen and Laura each a copy of Don Quixote translated into Russian and a watercolor she’d painted of a church in her hometown in the Ukraine.
“I didn’t know you could paint,” Karen said. “It’s very good, Nina.”
Nina smiled shyly. “Thank you.”
The painting was graceful and sweet: onion domes glittering in the summer sunshine, surrounded by leafy green trees. It showed a side of Nina that Laura hadn’t noticed in the five months they’d lived together. There’d never been any evidence that Nina had ratted on Laura’s bad behavior — at least, no one from the program had scolded her for staying out overnight and breaking so many rules. It was possible she’d somehow turned in Alyosha, but Laura didn’t think so. She didn’t think Nina knew who Alyosha was. Laura still didn’t know how Alyosha had come to be arrested. It was one of the many mysteries of life in Leningrad.
“Thank you, Nina,” Laura said. “And thank you for putting up with us.”
“Oh, you are joking….”
Laura was touched: Nina actually seemed choked up to see them go. And all this time Laura had thought Nina hated them.
“I hope you get that teaching job you want in Siberia,” Karen added.
When Laura first heard that Nina was hoping to teach Spanish in Siberia, she thought it was absurd. She still thought it was absurd, but after five months in the Soviet Union she no longer thought it strange. It made its own, weird kind of sense.
* * *
It was raining the day they left Leningrad. Laura rode through the city one last time on a bus headed for the airport, staring out the window at the pastel buildings set off against the gray sky, the gray river.
“I heard that if it rains when you leave town, that means someone is sad to see you go,” Karen said. “It’s an old Georgian superstition.”
“I’ve heard that, too,” Laura said. Roma had said it as they left the dacha. That weekend seemed far in the past.
At the airport they picked up their luggage and lined up to be inspected by Passport Control. For such a serious business, the actual, physical setup of the airport was pretty flimsy. Customs was divided from the waiting room by cardboard screens, and that was all. Passengers lined up in the waiting room, and when it was time for their luggage to be searched, an officer beckoned them to a table beyond the screen.
Laura had hidden Alyosha’s painting — and Nina’s, for it was illegal to take any art out of the country — in her luggage. Alyosha’s fit nicely in a tampon box, surrounded by tampons. She hoped the customs officers would be too embarrassed to look closely in there. She’d rolled up Nina’s watercolor and stuffed it in a pair of tights. She didn’t want to lose either picture, but if they confiscated Alyosha’s San Francisco icon, she’d be devastated.
The waiting room was crowded with passengers and people saying good-bye. In a corner, deep inside the crowd, Laura thought she spotted a familiar pair of sneakers. A babushka who was sweeping up dust moved out of the way and there he was: Alyosha. He kept behind the crowd, watching the group of Americans from a discreet distance.
He shook his head at her, ever so slightly, and she got the message: Do not openly acknowledge my presence. So she didn’t. She gave him a sad smile, the tiniest smile, an ambiguous, Mona Lisa smile like the one he’d painted in his portrait of her.
He smiled back, also sadly. He raised one hand, almost a wave, but after holding his palm up to her for a split second, he rubbed his bare lip where the mustache once sat.
“Next!” a guard shouted at her. “Come on!” He waved her over to a table beyond the screen. Laura braced herself for the scrutiny.
Two men in uniform unzipped her suitcase and riffled through it. They patted the pile of tights without seeming to notice the paper hidden inside. They glanced at her school notebooks without catching the diary she’d shuffled among them. They opened the cardboard tampon box, peered delicately inside, and put it down.
She put away her things and zipped up her suitcase. She couldn’t resist taking one last peek at the waiting room before boarding the plane.
She looked for Alyosha, but he was gone.
LOVE AND DEEPEST GRATITUDE TO:
DAVID LEVITHAN, BECKY AMSEL, ERIN BLACK, AND EVERYONE AT SCHOLASTIC;
SARAH BURNES, REBECCA GARDNER, LOGAN GARRISON, WILL ROBERTS, AND EVERYONE AT THE GERNERT COMPANY;
RENE STEINKE;
WILL AND BETTY STANDIFORD;
AND ALEXANDER IVANOV.
ERIC WEINER, I SALUTE YOU.
NATALIE STANDIFORD IS THE AUTHOR OF THE ACCLAIMED NOVELS HOW TO SAY GOODBYE IN ROBOT, CONFESSIONS OF THE SULLIVAN SISTERS, AND (FOR YOUNGER READERS) THE SECRET TREE. SHE GREW UP IN MARYLAND, WENT TO SCHOOL IN RHODE ISLAND, AND SPENT A SEMESTER IN LENINGRAD DURING COLLEGE. SHE NOW LIVES IN NEW YORK CITY AND CAN BE FOUND ON THE WEB AT WWW.NATALIESTANDIFORD.COM.
ALSO BY NATALIE STANDIFORD
Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters
How to Say Goodbye in Robot
The Secret Tree
Copyright © 2013 by Natalie Standiford
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Standiford, Natalie.
The boy on the bridge / Natalie Standiford. —1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: It is 1982 and nineteen-year-old Laura Reid is spending a semester in Leningrad studying Russian, but when she meets Alyosha she discovers the dissident Russia — a world of wild parties, underground books and music, love, and constant danger.
ISBN 978-0-545-33481-5 (hardcover)
1. American students — Soviet Union — Juvenile fiction. 2. Saint Petersburg (Russia) — Social life and customs — Juvenile fiction. 3. Soviet Union — Intellectual life — 1970-1991 — Juvenile fiction. 4. Soviet Union — Social life and customs — Juvenile fiction. [1. Foreign study — Fiction. 2. Dissenters — Fiction. 3. Saint Petersburg (Russia) — Social life and customs — Fiction. 4. Saint Petersburg (Russia) — History — 20th century — Fiction. 5. Soviet Union — History — 1953-1985 — Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.S78627Boy 2013
813.54 — dc23
2012033037
First edition, August 2013
Cover art by Pierre Doucin
Cover design by Nina Goffi
e-ISBN 978-0-545-53907-4
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
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