“I do,” Alexsi said.
“Enough, you two,” said Aida, taking Alexsi’s arm.
Alexsi allowed himself to be led across the room. “Interesting fellow. I don’t want to spoil Nadia’s birthday, but if he keeps poking at me something bad will happen.”
“He’s always like this when he’s drunk,” Aida said.
Now Yuri sat back down and pouted some more, shaking off the two girls who tried to comfort him.
“We saved you a piece of the cake,” Nadia said to Alexsi.
“Oh, please, everyone get their fork and have another bite,” Alexsi said. “I already had my cake today with Aida.”
At that moment Dmitri with the guitar spoke for the first time. “Aida told us the story of the cake.”
“Did she?” said Alexsi, as if he didn’t care for that at all.
“She did,” said Dmitri. “My question is, why would you take such a risk?”
Aida said, “Dmitri…”
Ah, so he wasn’t the shy one after all, Alexsi thought. “I wanted a cake.”
“No,” said Dmitri. “I mean—”
“I know what you mean,” Alexsi said. “I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen in years. I wanted a cake to make Aida happy, so I got one. I do what I please, but I know what I’m doing. I know every waitress in a place like that is an informer for the bluecaps. So I scared her so she’d only call them after we left. And even so she probably thought twice because she’d have to turn over the money.”
“And what if someone here should denounce you?” said Dmitri, as the girls tried to shush him.
“Who cares?” Alexsi retorted. “You see, my friend, the Chekists would still have to find me. And they won’t.”
“What if they do?” Dmitri asked.
Alexsi just snorted through his nose. “If I hear their boots on the stairs I won’t be hiding under the bed praying they go to someone else’s door. And I won’t accept it as my Russian fate and open up with my hands out for their cuffs. I’ll go out the window and I’ll turn up in Leningrad or Yekaterinburg with another name. And if one day they do get me I’ll tell everyone I had a great time and I lived well and I said what I pleased and did what I pleased. And I’ll be in the exact same place as the sucker who kept his mouth shut and ate shit and did what he was told and got the knock on the door at midnight anyway.”
“So if I asked you your full name?” said Dmitri.
“Don’t concern yourself because I’m sure you don’t know my family.”
“And if I asked what you did for a living?”
“I would say, without anger, that it’s none of your business.”
“And if I asked if you could get me a wristwatch like yours?”
“I would say sure. But, no offense, I doubt you could afford it. And not having the money, I also doubt you’d take the risk to get it another way.”
“I must have another drink,” Dmitri said. “If I keep talking with you any longer I will have no principles left.”
“Yes, please,” Nadia said nervously. The discussion was taking place in her room, after all. “More vodka for everyone.”
“Except Alexsi who doesn’t drink,” said Dmitri. “I see it now. A man needs a clear head if he’s going to be leaping from windows.”
As the vodka dwindled again everyone began falling asleep on the beds. Alexsi had been sitting there like a scientist observing a laboratory experiment.
Aida had disappeared one of the times he was in the toilet, and he assumed she’d left to see a boy. But the door opened and there she was with a tray of glasses she’d washed. “We seem to be the only survivors.”
“Walk you home?” said Alexsi.
“That would be nice.”
As they crossed the courtyard outside with arms linked, they both gave each other a tug in the opposite direction. “I live over there,” Aida said, pointing.
“I didn’t mean your home,” Alexsi said.
She took her hand out of the crook of his arm and looked up at him with a searching expression.
Alexsi just held his arm out to her.
Aida took it.
* * *
SHE GASPED as he opened the door of his apartment. “Look at this! I live in a wardrobe in comparison. With another girl.”
Regardless of passion, Russians didn’t go tearing each other’s clothes off. Clothes were too hard to come by. Aida stood naked before Alexsi and said, “Have I changed much from the little girl you used to know?”
“You’re much more beautiful now,” Alexsi said truthfully. The lithe little girl now had a woman’s breasts and hips, though the same wisp of jet-black pubic hair. And a puckered appendix scar that he found incredibly sexy. He was fully erect and, looking down, said, “You see you still have that same effect on me.”
She also looked down, and bit her lip the same way, and it was like being back in that closet again. He embraced her and they tumbled onto the bed.
He had been with other girls in Baku, girls attracted by the delicacies he stole from the special food stores. They ate what he brought and then lay back on the bed, spread their legs, and paid for their dinner.
This was something completely different. Aida was on him like a wildcat. Biting his neck between kisses. Biting his shoulders. She was moving so fast he could barely get ahold of her to caress her. And urging him on like the manager of a sports team. “Yes, yes, put your mouth on my nipple.” And in case he had suddenly gone deaf grabbed his hair at the back of his head and pulled him onto her breast. “Yes, suck gently like that. Now harder. Yes!”
In the midst of all the thrashing he finally managed to get his hand between her legs. And then things became even crazier. After only a few moments she grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him onto the bed on his back. With one hand on his cock she threw her leg over him like she was mounting a pony and plunged herself onto him.
Alexsi moaned, half in pleasure and half in amazement. No girl had ever done that to him.
Aida just rocked herself front to back and side to side. It made his thrusts when he had been the one on top seem embarrassingly inexpert. And then she began lifting herself up and letting herself fall back down on his cock. When she rose up until her pussy lips were just brushing the head of his cock, and it was in danger of falling out, and then slid back down excruciatingly slowly it was all too much—he tried to hold back but he came.
“Oh, no,” he said out loud. He could feel his face burning red. Humiliated, he went to pull himself out but Aida clapped her hands on his face and was actually holding on to his ears with both hands like the wheel of an automobile.
“That’s all right,” she said, gasping. “That’s all right. Just do what you used to do with your hand.”
“While you’re there?” he said helplessly. Meaning, while she was still mounted on top of him.
“Yes, yes,” she said. “While you’re still inside me. Hurry. Yes, that’s right. Like that. Faster, now. Yes.”
She was so urgent he was half afraid she might tear his ears off. Because of the strange angle he ended up using his thumb and the palm of his hand. And he worked so hard his wrist nearly cramped up. But it must have been all right because she bucked and moaned and came with a scream that he was afraid would bring the Chekists watching him crashing through the door.
And all her thrashing while he was still inside her got him hard again—it must have been a month since he’d been with a girl—and she felt it and went back to riding him. All he could do was hold on to the sheets as she spun around like she was doing gymnastics. He didn’t come fast this time but she did again, clutching at him so tightly he was afraid his cock would tear off. But he was still hard so she kept going relentlessly and came once again. When he finally came this time there was no hope of rousing him, and she collapsed atop him, panting hard, her face in his neck. Alexsi’s one thought was that his jailhouse knife fight had actually been less strenuous.
He awoke to the smell of toasting bread. Aida was
in the kitchen poaching eggs wearing only her slip, and a pot of tea was on the table.
Alexsi poured himself a glass, added extra sugar, and smiled ruefully at her.
She waved the cooking spoon down her body. “Your apartment is a dream. My heat is so bad I have to cook in my winter coat.”
“I know you want to ask,” said Alexsi.
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“The Chekists are out hunting the poor starving guy who siphoned the petrol from his boss’s automobile and traded it for some eggs. I’m taking truckloads. I got a big shot everything he needed for his dacha in the country. Better stuff than all his circle, and he didn’t have to wait for it like the rest. He’s got plenty of blat.” The all-encompassing Soviet word meaning connections, influence. “He pulled some strings and got me this place. It was the least he could do.”
“I nearly fainted when I saw what was in your refrigerator,” Aida said.
“Take whatever you like with you.”
“I couldn’t,” she said.
“Think about it,” he said. “I want to see you again. But now that you know a few things about me, it could be dangerous for you.”
“How could I stay away when you already decided you trust me?” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“You brought me here. You took a chance on hearing boots on your stairs.”
“It was a chance worth taking,” he said.
They ate the eggs and the toasted white bread with butter. “I feel like a princess,” Aida said.
Alexsi quickly brought his glass of tea up to his mouth, because he wasn’t sure that he wasn’t looking sad. “Ah, fairy tales.”
Knowing that every Russian girl had a shopping bag folded up in her purse in case she happened to pass a store that actually had something available for purchase, he filled hers up with the contents of his refrigerator.
“When my girlfriends see this, you’ll definitely have a harem,” she said.
“That would be much too tiring,” he replied with genuine feeling.
Aida just laughed. “I see you have a telephone. Is it permitted to call you?”
He wrote down his number for her. “And how may I get in touch with you?”
“That would be a maddening process for you of calling my dormitory, speaking to the witch at the desk, and her refusing to walk up the stairs and fetch me. Would a woman calling a man outrage you?”
“I’m very modern.”
“Then I will,” she said.
He went to put on his coat. “What are you doing?” she said.
“I’m going to walk you back to the university.”
She thumped him on the chest with her fist. “No, you won’t. It’s not far.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” she said. She kissed him very tenderly. “I’ll be seeing you.”
“I hope I’ll be seeing you,” Alexsi replied.
As she walked down his stairs, he was remembering the last time she kissed him, in that closet.
15
1936 Moscow
Alexsi had hoped that his long night and late morning would grant him a reprieve from his morning spy classes. No such luck. His telephone rang with a summons literally the moment Aida left his apartment.
The exercises were actually quite interesting. But the worst part was the writing. It always followed the same routine. Yakushev would provide the instruction, there would be a practical application, and then he would have to write a report on everything that had taken place. Today they met at that same apartment north of the Bolshoi, and he had to write down everything that had happened the night before.
“Unacceptable,” Yakushev said, shaking the papers in his fist as if he were trying to make them confess. “Your report is unacceptable. Insufficient detail. A thorough physical description of this cake waitress who has forgotten her socialist duty and become a capitalist, if you please. Also, if you would be so good as to provide a complete physical description of everyone at this birthday party to accompany their names.”
Alexsi had learned that when Yakushev framed orders in the form of polite requests he was only being sarcastic. And after the brutal tongue-lashing he received one day after trying to defend himself—something he was foolish enough to do only once—the only thing to do was sit quietly and take it.
“Your operational work so far is good,” Yakushev conceded, the calm after the storm. “The improvisation with the cake? Inspired. Did you know that Comrade Stalin’s bodyguards use that restaurant as a canteen?”
Alexsi shook his head, waiting to hear what trouble he was in now.
But Yakushev also shook his head, his eyes on the report. “Heads will roll.”
Yet Alexsi thought he didn’t seem very upset about it. Some kind of Chekist office politics, perhaps.
Now Yakushev looked over his reading glasses at him like a dissatisfied schoolmaster. “No matter how good the work, if it is not properly set down in a report, it is as if it never happened. And why is there nothing here of the girl Aida Rudenko’s visit to your apartment? Are you afflicted with bourgeois sensitivity?”
“I only thought to save some time,” Alexsi said. “I assumed there were listening devices in my rooms.”
Yakushev’s glare was icy enough to freeze him solid. “When I tell you to write a report with every detail included, you will write a report with every detail included. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Comrade,” Alexsi replied dutifully.
“Do not trifle with me, boy. No one is indispensable.” He crumpled up the report. “Write it again.”
Alexsi took up the pen, which felt like a stick full of thorns in his aching hand. But it did seem that he was fairly indispensable. They still spoke in German, so this thing with Aida wasn’t what he was being trained for. And now he knew they really were listening to everything in his apartment, in addition to watching his every move outside.
After what seemed like hours of writing, Yakushev took up the report again. “Better.” His eyes still on the paper, he said, “I am relieved to see that you said nothing derogatory toward Comrade Stalin or Marxist-Leninist theory.”
The tone was conversational, but Alexsi realized with a start that he had just dodged a bullet to the brain. In truth, at the party he had been tempted to use his license to say what no Russian could say. Only Soviet instinct had held him back.
Yakushev made no comment on the fact that Alexsi had obstinately included every pornographic detail, instead honing in on one aspect. “You actually told the girl Aida Rudenko that she should not see you again?”
“Yes, Comrade,” Alexsi replied.
“Since that is categorically contrary to your instructions, what possible reason could you have?”
“She had already decided to come to my apartment. I thought telling her it would be dangerous to see me again would ensure that she would want to.”
Yakushev took off his reading glasses and set them on the desk. “Clearly, despite your years, you have learned something of women.” He filed the report in his briefcase. “There will be those who will say you should be more aggressive in your approach. I do not agree. Every real intelligence operation is like a seduction, and men who only use whores know nothing of seduction.”
That gave Alexsi the impression such a criticism had already taken place.
“Hopefully you are understanding something important here,” Yakushev said. “Real espionage is not about stealing blueprints and strangling guards with wire. It is about placing yourself in the position, and creating the proper conditions, where people willingly provide you information. Clear?”
“Clear, Comrade,” Alexsi replied. He’d understood that from the start. Using the exact same tricks as the criminal, except not as a way to stay out of jail. Now you were a confidence man for the state.
“Good,” said Yakushev. “Since you have redone this report adequately, from memory you will rewrite your report from yesterday’s exercise
in how to follow in a busy area. Remember that unlike physical strength, which has finite limits, the capacity of the human memory, if properly trained, is limitless.”
Alexsi knew the number of times he was going to hear that would probably be limitless, too. And if there were any discrepancies between the two reports, there would be more abuse.
Late that afternoon, when he was back in his apartment soaking his writing hand in a bowl full of snow, his telephone rang. Alexsi just groaned, positive it was another unannounced exercise. He lifted the speaker off the hook with his left hand; with the right cramped from writing he was doing many more things with the left hand these days.
But it was Aida. “Do you like my modern ways?”
“Very much,” Alexsi said. “Are you free tonight?”
“As a matter of fact, I was calling to invite you out. How modern is that?”
“Scandalously modern,” said Alexsi. “Shall I play hard to get?”
She was laughing across the line. “If you like. It’s a full moon tonight, and we’re all going skating at the Hermitage Garden.”
“Ice-skating?” Alexsi said. “You’re inviting the boy from Azerbaijan ice-skating.”
“I know, I know,” she said, still laughing. “That’s what I was thinking also. Or is this just you playing hard to get?”
“No, this is me picturing myself ice-skating.”
“You could tell everyone you were the champion figure skater of Baku, and no one would be the wiser.”
“They’d know as soon as I fell on my arse. What about a nice, warm cinema instead?”
“I already promised I’d go. And everyone asked for you.…”
Alexsi groaned over the phone. “All right. I’ll go. Just don’t be crushed if I don’t skate.”
“I will prepare myself for the disappointment.”
“Shall I pick you up?” he asked.
“No. Meet us there. At nine.”
“All right,” he said. “Until then.”
“Until then.”
Alexsi hung up the phone and groaned again. Night, outdoors. He would have to wear every piece of clothing he owned just to survive until morning.
* * *
RIGHT BEFORE nine he stepped off the Petrovka Street tram and followed the streetlights down the shoveled path through the gardens, the snow heaped up as high as his head on both sides. The Hermitage Theater was invitingly lit up, but he honed in on the outdoor lighting to the area of the park they’d made into a skating rink. Of course, that was the thing about winter in Moscow. All you had to do was dump some water on the ground and you had a skating rink. Young people were skating and laughing and passing around vodka and huddling around fires burning in barrels to warm up. Next to the rink there was a shack to rent skates.
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