Long Made Short

by Stephen Dixon

  Svetlana shows up on the dot next morning. We see things by foot, trolley, metro, occasional cab for a five-dollar bill Marguerite was told to bring about twenty of to Moscow for just something like this. Svetlana says once “Am I talking too much?” She is but I say “Nope.” “I’ve tendencies towards talk, possibly for being sequestered in my slight space the rest of the days and the one woman I see most to take care of doesn’t say three words a time. But I’m an honest person, you’re visiting a culture where honest persons with words is almost a belief, so you want to be an honest person too, don’t you? Tell me to my face if I’m twisting your ears as the English like to say, and perhaps the Americans too, or showing you too many things too fast to digest.” “No no, I mean it, everything couldn’t be better, thanks.”

  I don’t want to be with her for lunch so I say I think I’m still suffering from jet lag and would like a nap at my hotel, would she mind eating alone? I give her money for the first-floor café, go upstairs and lie on my bed and drink coffee and read, she rings from the lobby an hour later. More places and constant information and chatter. “Are you sure I’m not talking too much?” “Why, do you think you are?” “Well, I might be.” “No, absolutely not, it’s all fine.” Every monument and theater and famous person’s birth or living place and also every building we pass by foot, trolley and cab that looks interesting architecturally or stands out because of its size she has something to say about. “That so? Yes, hmm, so this is where it is, I didn’t know that.”

  We meet Marguerite for dinner at a Georgian restaurant she had to make reservations for two days ago, and in the cab back to our hotel we drop Svetlana off at a metro station. She hands us each several candies. “Special, hard to get because individually wrapped and the ingredients very select. They’re made by an acquaintance of mine in the Kremlin’s confectionary kitchen and often given in droves to dignitaries and diplomats. We ought to export them simply for their colorful wrappers. Bears and squirrels—children would love them.” “That’s very kind, thank you,” I say. “I don’t eat candy myself but will definitely try one, though not now because I’m too full, and save the rest for my girls.” Marguerite’s told her tomorrow will be a paid day off and asks if she’d like the first three days’ pay now. “All at once, please. I wouldn’t want to ride the metro with it. Too much in dollars and one of our now many clever Moscow thieves might see it on my face.” “And on the fifth day?” I say. “Will he see it on my face you mean? No, since that day I’ll hire a taxicab or continue with yours, flush like an American tourist or spending as freely as one. But because I’m Russian, all for the sum or extra one of a dollar, and then hide the money in my room for one of your rainy days. That is yours?” “Ours and probably the English’s too.”

  Later I say to Marguerite “Know why she wants all her wages at once?” “Something disparaging, I suppose.” “No, just conjecture born out of insight or something. Because she thinks we’ll have to give her a bigger tip for the whole fifty than if we only gave her her last day’s pay on Friday. She’s a shrewdie all right, and even shrewder how well she disguises it.” “Disguises what?” “Everything. Or just things—some. Holding back—being extra gracious to me when we’re alone when I know damn well what she thinks of me intellectually, or maybe just culturally—we’ve spoken of it. And this not wanting her pay day by day because of the increment, the incremental—because with more…well, you know—or maybe I’m being far-fetched on this. But other things.” “That’s what I’m asking, what? Did she ever do or say anything in particular to make you question her motives this way?” “As I said, just little things I’ve picked up but nothing right now, other than what I’ve mentioned, that comes to mind.” “Well I think you’re way way off about her. She’s a touch sad but decent, and energetic and enthusiastic. And I only wish I had the time to be taken around by such a knowledgeable person who knows the city so well, even if she is so garrulous, and you were the one doing the bookwork all day. Actually, I think you’d like that more.” “No, I’m enjoying my rest away from work. And true, I suppose I should feel lucky having her for so little money. But the greater truth is I feel luckier being on my own tomorrow. Anyway, not to change the subject, I was thinking just now: ‘da, da‘—what a nice soft way to say yes.”

  But to move along. She doesn’t call Wednesday morning as she said she would to find out what time she should come Thursday morning. Marguerite calls her and she doesn’t answer. She doesn’t call Thursday morning. Marguerite calls her every fifteen minutes, thinking maybe she was out all night, slept at a friend’s—has a secret life she never gave us a clue about, she says—or got in after midnight last night, when Marguerite stopped calling, and didn’t call us after that because she felt it was too late, and was up and out for groceries or something early this morning. We leave the phone off the hook—each room has its own number, so it’s all direct—when we go to the hotel restaurant for our complimentary breakfast. Marguerite calls when we get back, then asks me to stick around an hour more before going out on my own if that’s what I plan to do. “When she was outside she might have had trouble getting a pay phone or misplaced our number or didn’t have the two kopecks on her and nobody could give her change—anything, and she just got hold of a phone. If you want, which you probably won’t, call every fifteen minutes or so—she might have just got home. But I’m a little worried about her, aren’t you?” and I say “Of course, it doesn’t seem like her, but I’m sure it’s nothing,” and she leaves for her appointment. I wait but don’t call, figuring if she just got home first thing she’d do would be to call. I leave after an hour, walk around the old section of the city, try to find some buildings in War and Peace Marguerite said are still supposed to be here—the Rostovs’ mansion, Pierre’s house—but can’t find the streets, even though they’re on my map, and no one, if they’re hearing me right and understanding the few Russian words Marguerite taught me yesterday to make myself understood in something like this, seems to have heard of them; stop in a café for “odin kofe, mineralenaya voda and dva bulka”—woman shakes her head—“bulki, bulka, two,” holding up two fingers and then pointing to some rolls on the counter behind her, “mais—but not sweet ones, nyet sakhar, pzhalesta,” and she gives me mineral water and coffee without the lump of sugar that usually comes with it and takes enough change out of my palm to pay for it while I’m trying to find in it what amount I think she said.

  Marguerite calls Svetlana before we go to the hotel restaurant for dinner, calls when we get back to our room. “I’m really worried now,” she says, “I know something’s wrong. We know she isn’t the type to promise to come—to say she’ll call the night before to see precisely what hour we want her—and then just to disappear. And with that stroke she had two years ago—” “Oh yeah, that’s right, the stroke, I forgot. So what do we do?” She calls a scholar she met the other day who said he knows of Svetlana but he only has her phone number, not her address, and doesn’t know anyone who does; but he’ll make some calls. “Even if we had her address,” I say, “what would we do with it? She told me it’s about an hour’s metro ride to her stop—lots of changes and at the end of the line. Or a couple of changes, but anyway, ‘couple’ meaning what to her—two, three, four? We’d go out there at this hour when people all over the city are getting bumped on the head and robbed? Even by cab—or of course by cab if we could get one or one would take us that far—we’d be sure he’d wait? If he didn’t we’d be screwed.” “Not that. But say we found someone who knows her and lives near her? Or someone who doesn’t but as a favor to us might want to help her. Maybe that person could phone a friend and go over—two men. Or just you and him. What I’m saying is Russians still do that, put themselves out for strangers, especially one intellectual for another. And if this person didn’t want to do it but lived fairly close to her, which would mean you wouldn’t go because he couldn’t come in for you and then go back there and so on, I’d say we’d pay the fare—cab, anything. And wou
ld a carton of Marlboros—a few weeks’ salary for some at the regular exchange—encourage a friend of his to go along with him? Meaning, would it encourage him? But I’ve seen the way they’ve helped me. With leads, contacts, books, unpublished papers and notes and tapes very few American scholars would let me see and hear and copy down. And accompanying me clear across town for something and then waiting there while I worked or saw someone so they could take me back here.”

  She calls several people she’s met, and through them friends and colleagues of theirs, but the one person who’s heard of Svetlana doesn’t even know her phone number. The first scholar she spoke to calls back and says nobody he contacted knows where she lives or how to find out. “I give up for now,” she says. “Maybe she’s okay and off doing something we haven’t thought of yet, but I seriously doubt it.” “I hope we’re wrong,” I say. “You mean you think it’s no good too?” “Looks it. But as you said, we’ve only just met her so there’s lots we don’t know.”

  Little past midnight, we just got into our beds and shut the night table lights, the phone rings. A woman says “Abel, yes? Hello, I’m Katya Sergeyeva, very good friend of Svetlana. Pardon me for upsetting you if this is nothing, but I’m extremely worried for her. Was she with you all of today?” “Let me put my wife on please. This is very important so if there’s any language problem, she can speak Russian.” She tells Marguerite she and Svetlana have spoken every day with each other since Svetlana’s stroke. Yesterday she thought Svetlana went with us someplace outside of Moscow and got back late or stayed overnight at a hotel with us there. Now that she knows we haven’t seen her for two days she’s sure something’s wrong. She’s going to go over to her apartment now with a friend. If Svetlana doesn’t answer she’ll get the police to break down the door. Marguerite tells her we’ll do whatever we can to help so please count on us and call anytime tonight, no matter how late. We read for a few minutes, then she yawns and hearing it I yawn right after and we agree we should try to nap. I wake up once thinking maybe Katya called but we didn’t hear it in our sleep, though the phone only rings loudly, and cover Marguerite up and turn off the lights.

  Katya calls just when Marguerite’s about to dial her. She didn’t get back to us last night because it was very late and things were still so unresolved. They got to the apartment, knocked, nobody answered and they didn’t hear anything behind the door so they called the police who said they couldn’t get there till ten this morning. “They couldn’t get there?” I say when Marguerite translates it for me while still on the phone. “What if she still has some breath this minute but dies a few seconds before they get there?” “Shh,” she says, signaling she can’t hear what Katya’s saying. Katya says she and several friends are going to meet the police now at Svetlana’s and she’ll call soon as she has some news, but she’s convinced now Svetlana’s dead. She also told Marguerite that after they knocked and called through the door last night they went to about twenty apartments in the building and nobody had seen Svetlana for two days. “They went around asking at one and two in the morning?” “I told you, people here do that. Not the police, as you heard, but you can call on your friends and most of your neighbors anytime.” “So why didn’t they all get together last night and knock down the door? Police wouldn’t come, hell with them, or is it it’s really maybe some highly penalizable crime?” “Possibly. Probably.”

  Phone rings two hours later. Marguerite stayed around long as she could but then had to leave for an important appointment that couldn’t be rescheduled. “Abel, yes? Katya here, most unexpected news,” and then her voice cracks and she speaks excitably in Russian. “Speak English, please, I understand very little Russian. Nye govoryu po russki, nye govoryu po russki,” and she says “Nyet, nyet, not okay, can’t. Wait.” A woman gets on and says “Hello, I am Bella, good friend of Katya and Svetlana. It is terrible to speak to you, sir, only this once with only this terrible news for you. I speak English not good but try. Svetlana is dead. She has stroke Wednesday, your day, she must have, we and police today believe, that made her that way, killed her. Great pity. Much sorrow. Wonderful woman. Intelligent and kind and so nice to this building and people and everywhere she goes. It is very very sad.” “Very. I’m terribly sorry. Please tell Katya that. And what is her phone—telephone number, please, even though I think my wife took it. But what is it if she didn’t take it so she can phone Katya later,” and she gives me it.

  For a couple of days after I think how I would have liked it to turn out. I wouldn’t show any signs I disliked her, was annoyed or irritated by her. If I did and it was evident to her I’d quickly apologize, saying it was something in me, personal, being away from my work maybe, maybe worried about my kids, too much of that good lemon vodka last night or bad sturgeon, other excuses, but nothing she’d done. If she apologized for being such a chatterbox, as she said of herself once, covering her mouth with her hand, I’d say “Great, chatter away, don’t hold back for my sake, because most of what you’re saying is interesting and new to me, and better someone who talks and makes sense than keeps sullen and still.” We’d go here, there, lunch, dinner with Marguerite, stop for coffee, tea for her, bulki, torte or whatever the plural for them, which I’d ask her for, I’d suggest she take me inside the Kremlin, the Tolstoi and Chekhov museums, whatever church and monastery she wants me to see in the city and outside it. At lunch I’d give her some of the plastic sandwich bags I brought from New York and would say “Butter all the bread you want and stick them in the bags and the bags into your pocketbook. Less messy, and the food’s only going to go to waste or be taken home by the kitchen staff. I’d take some myself but we do all that kind of buttering and cheese-taking and other secret hoarding at the hotel’s breakfast buffet every day.” Children’s toy store, Pushkin museum again, where I might say maybe she has a point about the Van Goghs and I’ve been duped as much as the next guy about his work, since I’m no art expert, exhibition hall of contemporary Russian painting she spoke about and I’d wanted to see but begged off because I didn’t want her lecturing me. I’d take her up on teaching me ten Russian words and a couple of phrases and one complete sentence a day and testing me occasionally on the Russian alphabet till I could read or at least sound out all the stores’ names and street signs. We’d talk about books and stories we’ve read, plays we’ve seen, she here, I in the States. Farewell dinner at a Czech restaurant Marguerite and I had talked weeks ago about ending our trip with. We’d toast to one another, to good literature, to Tolstoi and Chekhov and Babel, Ahkmatova and Tsvetaieva and the endurance of all great art, to the success of Marguerite’s project, to my work at home, to Svetlana and everything she does and for being such a fine interpreter and companion and friend and showing and teaching me things I never would have seen or known, to our two girls and all our families and friends, to returning to Moscow soon, to her visiting America and our being her sponsors and me her guide for a day or two, to continuing good relations between our countries, democracy in hers, to eternal peace between them, peace and disarmament everywhere and good health and happiness and cooperation everywhere too and more dinners for the three of us like this one, future toasts. Then we’d ask the restaurant to order a taxi and we’d drop her off at a metro station, kiss each other’s cheeks, give her her five days’ salary and a twenty-dollar tip and some kind of present—one of the scarves Marguerite brought as presents from America, cologne from America or probably both if she hasn’t given them away yet. Or I’d get out of the cab and help her out and then kiss her, or we’d drive her home no matter how far out of the way and wait in the cab till she got in her building. Or I’d walk her to her first-floor hallway and stay there till she was upstairs and in her apartment or had enough time to get inside. Or we’d cab straight to our hotel and give our presents and enough extra fare in dollars for the cab to take her home.

  Back in New York Marguerite says “It’s so strange to think the last day you see some person, very active and energetic and seeming
ly healthy, is the last day of that person’s life, or the last night.” “Very odd,” I say, “very.” “And I forgot to tell you. That Katya—you remember her, Svetlana’s friend who went over there with the police? Well she said Svetlana was planning to give us a little party at her place after her last workday, or really not so little. After dinner, that she would invite some of her friends-interpreters and people in teaching and editing—and ask me for names of people I’d seen who might want to come, or anyone I wanted. I doubt many of them would have come, unless they lived close by. And I would have done what I could, without hurting her in any way, to dissuade her. But that’s something for her to want to do, since she was short of money and you’d think she’d be too tired that day to give it. I’m thinking now though. I’m having this very bad thought, without wanting to sound as if I don’t appreciate what she wanted to do, but that her stroke saved us from it. It would have been the last thing I wanted, at her place or any place but, to be honest, less at her place. Her friends were probably bright and nice but a bit dull. Or maybe not, but you know, I just wouldn’t see the reason for the party. I don’t know how we could have refused it though, do you?” “Too tired and busy. We were leaving in a day and a half and you needed to see some more people or do research or go over your notes or something. And we also had to pack and were almost too tired for even that.”