“You’re on active duty in the army! You can fly with me!” When he hesitated, she poked him. “What are you waiting for?”
“How did you do this?” he muttered, bewildered, as he returned the pilot’s salute.
“I said you have relatives in Artyk!”
“Is that the name of the backwater we’re going to? Artyk?”
Leonid saw the pilot disappear into the cockpit and followed Galina to the gangway. As he climbed up, he thought about all the service regulations he was in the act of disobeying. He couldn’t immediately get his bearings in the dimly lit cabin; Galina pressed him into a seat. She pulled the hatch shut with one hand, gave the pilot a signal, sat down, and buckled herself in. The roar of the propellers grew louder, and then the aircraft started to move and rolled out to the runway. A few minutes later, the turboprop machine rose from the ground and climbed up toward the crystalline sky. Leonid watched the airport and the city disappear below him. He remained motionless for several minutes in his pod-shaped seat until he grasped his new situation. They followed the winding course of the river for a while and then turned toward the southeast. Except for the pilot, Galina, and Leonid, the eight-seater aircraft was empty.
“How long is the flight?” Leonid asked, calling to Galina from across the center aisle.
“Three or four hours. It depends on the wind.” Galina unfastened her seat belt. “This box can’t go faster than one hundred eighty-five miles an hour. You’re on leave—relax and enjoy it.” With that, she stretched out her legs on the seat beside her and folded her arms. “I spent half the night operating on people. Now I’ve got to sleep.”
Leonid thought about home. Up until now, everything involving Galina had been spontaneous or even accidental: an officer in a strange land, a meeting with an unusual woman, a passionate night—sometimes such things happen. But from now on, he was cheating on Anna intentionally, with premeditation. This airplane was taking Galina and him to some remote spot, and even the pilot seemed like an accomplice. While Leonid watched the flatlands disengage from the mountains, he pulled off his wedding ring and casually stuck it in a pocket, as though hiding it from himself.
All at once, he choked a little and swallowed hard. Where was this sudden anxiety coming from?
“We’re flying at twelve thousand feet. The cabin isn’t pressurized.” Galina sat up against the wall of the plane and looked at him.
A mountain peak appeared and disappeared beside the aircraft. “There are some thirteen-thousand-foot-high summits in this area,” Galina said. “But the pilot’s familiar with them.” Abruptly, she got up from her seat and took the one next to him. “Isn’t that wonderful?” She leaned against him, and they looked out. The rugged mountain crests stretched out to the horizon. “This is my homeland.”
“Does anyone live here voluntarily?” Leonid’s breath was coming in loud gasps.
“If you need oxygen, say so right away. A collapse is hard to treat when you’re up in the air.”
The conversation turned to normal topics. Galina confessed that the readjustment from Sakhalin to Yakutsk had lasted longer than she’d expected; he talked about his everyday army routine. He was mad to kiss her, but he hesitated on the incomprehensible grounds that he wanted her to make the first move. Eventually, the turning shadows signaled that they were changing direction.
“We’re descending.”
The pilot appeared in the frame of the cockpit door and explained that the weather at their destination was unfortunately not as good as in Yakutsk.
“Fasten your seat belt,” Galina said, pulling hers tight.
“Why?” He hastened to clasp his buckle, too.
“ ‘Not so good’ means it’s storming down there.”
They flew into a gray wall. From one second to the next, the small aircraft was lifted and shaken, and then it began to lose altitude. The roar of the propellers changed pitch.
“Is that normal?” Leonid asked, emphatically calm. Down below, he thought he could make out snowdrifts, but they might also have been ice crystals. Soon afterward, visibility had been reduced by so much that the only thing he could see in the window was his own reflection.
“Do they have landing beacons down there in …” He’d forgotten the name of the place.
“Ar-tyk.” The airplane was jolted mightily, and Galina’s jaws snapped shut.
“But with a storm like this,” Leonid said, clenching the armrests, “isn’t the runway snowed in?”
“We have skis!” she shouted into the ambient noise.
Seeing that he couldn’t do a thing to change whatever was about to happen, Leonid laid one hand on Galina’s lap, leaned back, and breathed regularly.
They landed safely. The airport consisted of a single runway; since Leonid could discover nothing that looked like a landscape anywhere around, he thought that the snow must be piled up several feet high. Although still early afternoon, it was already getting dark.
“Artyk’s population is only three thousand,” Galina told him. All the equipment had been transferred from the airplane to an ambulance, and they were on their way to the center of the town. “There’s no hotel, just a guest house.” With unexpected tenderness, she leaned on his shoulder. “I have to go to the infirmary immediately.”
“Shouldn’t you get a little rest first?”
She shook her head. “They’re doing the preoperative preparation now.”
He pointed at the white storm outside. “What happens if there’s a power failure?”
“The instruments run on diesel fuel.” She stroked his cheek. “You make things comfortable for us. I’ll come as soon as I can.”
Three automobiles were at a standstill in the middle of Artyk’s main intersection. The drivers, whose fur hats all looked alike, were talking emphatically to one another in the light of their headlamps. The ambulance driver tapped his horn; without haste, the three men climbed into their vehicles and cleared the intersection. At the entrance to the hospital, Galina and Leonid separated. While she was exchanging greetings with the local staff, he was asking the porter for directions to the guest house. The snow fell unabated; the snowflakes were fused into curtains by the driving wind. Leonid turned up his collar and struggled to make his way past a line of low-lying buildings. Only the roofs were visible on those structures whose walkways hadn’t been shoveled clear of snow. Shortly before reaching his goal, the gusts became so strong that he had to turn his back to the wind and brace himself. He covered his eyes, because he was afraid they might freeze.
The illuminated roof sign that designated the house as a place that offered accommodations was frozen over; the letters glimmered faintly through the covering of snow. Leonid found a padlock on the front door and feared that he was going to have to find someone to open it for him, and in this weather. But the lock was only hanging loose, and he stepped into the creaking wooden house. An oil stove whose chimney pipe disappeared into the roof ridge was giving off so much heat that he removed his hat and scarf and unbuttoned his overcoat. There were two rooms off this central space, each with four beds, a bathroom, and a tiny kitchen. Leonid found some canned food and tea in a cabinet and set a water kettle on to boil. He pulled off the coverlet from one of the narrow beds and hesitated briefly as he wondered whether the invitation might not be too unambiguous; then he shoved two beds together and, with the help of every pillow in the room, made them as comfortable as possible. Without removing his boots, Leonid lay down and waited for the kettle to whistle.
TWENTY
She wasn’t used to having a man in her arms when she woke up, or to warming the soles of her feet against his calves, or to hearing his deep breathing, so unlike Petya’s soft, fluttering exhalations. Red wine had been spilled in the sleeping nook, so Anna had put fresh sheets on the bed.
It was a gray March morning, and there was no curtain to shut it out. She made an effort to keep her eyes closed so that she wouldn’t see the chaos she’d spent the night in. Viktor Ipalyevich lay o
n the sofa, half dead from liquor and exhaustion; toward the end, he’d unbuttoned his shirt to the navel and done a dance, all the while shamelessly courting the chubby Akhmadulina. When Leonid arrived, the litterateurs who were still at the party hardly noticed. Eventually, when she was more than ready for them to leave, Anna had employed the only effective stratagem: She’d hidden the vodka and pretended that the last bottle had been drained. This drastic move had been followed by excessively drawn-out leave-taking, but gradually the last hats and coats disappeared and the sounds died out, until only Anna, her intoxicated father, and Leonid were left. He would have liked to see Petya there and then, but Anna hadn’t wanted to disturb her neighbors again, especially not at that hour.
Her state of mind—her strong sense of relief—surprised Anna. She wasn’t alone in the world. Her man had come home, her husband, Petya’s father. Before his transfer, she’d often felt as though he were a stranger; the smells he’d brought home from the barracks were strange, as was the way the army barbers cut his hair. Leonid’s laughter had sounded strange to her, to say nothing of the military jargon, the man-speak so ill suited to his personality. This strangeness might sooner or later have led to a breakup, but they hadn’t broken up; instead, Leonid had gone far away. Since then, Anna thought, it had been left to her and her alone to cope with everything that needed coping with: her difficult father, Petya and his health problems, her morbid love affair, the furtiveness, the lies. All at once, however, on this unreal morning, her husband was lying beside her. Wouldn’t it be only natural to find that strange, too, after so long? Leonid’s limbs were heavy; when he rolled over, he nearly crushed her. Next to his, her legs looked as spindly as a child’s. While she gazed upon him, registering everything, feeling his breath, touching the hair on his chest, Anna suddenly, physically realized how alone she’d been. She formed no illusions about the rekindling of love, but she felt the liberation of letting go, if only for a few days, of what she usually clutched with such an iron grip. Leonid was there, he’d take care of things, she could leave the decisions to him.
So there were many reasons why Anna didn’t want to begin her day by cleaning up after Viktor Ipalyevich’s party. It would take hours to make everything tidy again—but not today. Today, she’d let the apartment keep looking like a pigsty, let her father get the tomato sauce off the radiators and bring the glasses to the cellar and the tablecloths to the laundry room. Anna wanted an entirely happy day, a genuine Sunday. And after that, who knew, maybe the happiness would last; maybe their separation would even turn out to have been useful, and out of it a new togetherness might bloom.
She carefully detached herself from her sleeping companion, put her feet on the floor, and reached for her housecoat. First she’d go and fetch Petya, and then he could awaken his grandfather. Without risking a glance at the mirror, she walked swiftly to the foyer, ran her fingers through her hair, and took the key. Sunday silence reigned in the stairwell.
If it hadn’t been for Petya, Leonid would have spoken before the night was through. But because of the boy, he wanted to be cautious, so he resolved to probe a little first, to find out how things stood. And since he was dead tired after his twenty-six-hour flight, Leonid had fallen asleep shortly after arriving home, but not so quickly as Anna. Her hair had tickled his nose, her body had seemed bulkier, and in his memory, her skin had not been so winter-white. They’d slept together every night for two years in that narrow alcove, but this time, anxiety made it hard for him to breathe. He’d always loved her “poetic” neck; on this morning, he couldn’t find anything lovable about it. When he considered how little thought he gave to Anna’s future, he had to admit that his lack of concern for her was strange in itself. His idea of Anna was that she could take care of herself, as she always had done, even when he’d been there; she’d never needed his help. And in the meanwhile, there was the KGB drama she’d gotten herself involved in. Fortunately, he’d been left in peace. He was an officer, stationed far away, but his “exile” from Moscow had proved to be a blessing.
That night in Artyk, Galina hadn’t joined him in the guest house. Complications had prolonged the operation, and it had been hard to bring the patient back to consciousness. The surgeon had kept working in the little hospital until dawn. Leonid, in the meanwhile, had prepared some food, but in the end he’d eaten it himself, drinking an entire pot of tea in the process. At two in the morning, he’d started, fully clothed, out of a brief doze, undressed, and gotten into bed. Then, past daybreak, Galina had slipped in beside him. Sensing that she didn’t want to sleep, he’d turned to her. This second time, unfolding between night and day somewhere in no-man’s-land, their lovemaking had been so intense and beautiful that every individual moment remained vivid in his memory. He and Galina behaved as though that cabin, in the most godforsaken corner of the East, were their real home. She’d had to get up in a few hours to go and see how the patient was recovering from her surgery, but soon she’d returned with breakfast. They’d eaten it together, half naked, and then crept back into bed to make love and sleep. Leonid was so overwhelmed with tenderness that he could have cried, but instead he’d devoted himself to Galina with the ardor of a young lover. During the flight back, they’d sat with their arms around each other, and after they landed they’d gone immediately to her apartment. She’d read his letter, and then, after more passionate fondling, they had both suddenly grown serious. His three-day leave wasn’t going to be enough for them. They acknowledged how hard they’d fallen in love with each other, and they saw their complete intimacy as something that must have consequences. Galina had said little, letting Leonid speak, and for the first time, he’d talked about his wife and son. In describing his situation, Leonid tried to make it seem—to Galina and to himself—that he and Anna were together only because she’d become pregnant with Petya years before. Then he’d confessed how much he loved Petya and stopped pretending that he was unhappily married. He’d kept quiet about the real reason for his transfer away from Moscow. Then Galina had abruptly announced that she would not, in any case, leave the region she considered her homeland, and here lay a decisive point: Where was the place where they could both live? Moreover, would a separation from Anna mean that Leonid would lose Petya? When his thoughts about insurmountable future problems became too much for him, Leonid had fled back into the moment with Galina.
He heard the door open and close. It was Anna coming back, he could tell, and the softer footsteps must be his son’s. Leonid sighed. He’d returned to Moscow with specific intentions, but now everything looked difficult. “Petyushka,” he whispered, feeling wretched.
Despite being half asleep, the boy jumped into the bed and sat on his father’s stomach. Although Leonid knew how quickly young children changed, the sight of his son still took his breath away. In the space of several months, Petya’s features had tightened; his eyes had grown more serious and his arms stronger. “When did you come home?” the boy asked.
“Very late,” Leonid said. He was listening anxiously for telltale sounds in Petya’s breathing.
“Why didn’t you come and tell me good night?”
“Well, now I’m telling you good morning.” Cautiously, as if unsure of what he was doing, Leonid petted his little man before finally drawing him into his embrace.
“Now you can’t go away anymore,” Petya whispered.
Leonid looked up at Anna, who was standing with her housecoat open in the midst of the ambient disorder. Her nightshirt swelled a little where her slight paunch pressed against the cloth.
“Just one more time.” Leonid kept his eyes on Anna. “I flew halfway around the world to see you, my friend.”
“Why do you have to go away again?”
“I’m protecting our borders.” Tears welled up in his eyes. How stupid, how unsuited to the real purpose of his visit! Anna noticed and gave him a tender look, naturally misinterpreting his emotion.
“Why can’t you protect the border here?” asked Petya, freeing himse
lf from his father’s arms.
“That’s nonsense, Petyushka.” Leonid pretended to rub sleep from his eyes. “There’s no border in Moscow, is there?”
“The river,” came the prompt reply. “People can’t go back and forth over it, so it’s a border.”
“Do you remember when we looked at the map? Do you remember how big the Soviet Union is?” Petya nodded, unsure of himself. “In the East, where there’s always ice and it’s cold the whole year round …” Leonid hesitated. He could see Galina before him, in her apartment, in the hospital, in the airplane over the mountains of Yakutia, and the images threw him into confusion. Wasn’t a confession called for here? Wouldn’t he be doing the right thing if he admitted to his wife and son and—so much the better—the pigheaded old man, too, that he’d fallen in love with someone else, not that he’d wanted to, but these things happen? The very thought of such a confession was like a knife through his heart. The boy looked at his father, waiting for him to finish his sentence. “There are cliffs three hundred feet high,” Leonid went on, his head reeling. “And the country of Japan is only a few miles away. That’s the border I’m protecting, Petya.”
“Isn’t your year on Sakhalin almost up?” Anna asked in surprise.
The Russian Affair Page 23