Sanya probed her bare arm.
“Debbie, you’re simply the dream of my life! When I get tired, you can bring me up in your arms!”
Marvelous, fluent English.
“Oh! You made a mistake! To ‘bring up’ is what a mother does. You know, nursing your young, and all that. ‘Carry me’ is what children say!”
Putting down her suitcase, she placed both palms on her heavy breasts to illustrate her point.
Sanya was somewhat alarmed.
Sanya took his bride to the Berlin Hotel. Before Debbie went to sleep—for about twelve hours straight, a logical consequence of jet lag, her revels with friends in New York on the eve of her departure, and a healthy nervous system—they drank vodka downstairs in the bar. They chatted. Then they kissed, and parted until the following morning.
The next day, Sanya had planned to show his bride Moscow, and to take her to the Conservatory in the evening. He hadn’t prepared any other surprises for her. There was just one thing on the agenda: submitting papers for registering their marriage at the Palace of Matrimony, the only place that accepted documents from foreign citizens.
Their morning stroll through Moscow began after lunch. Sanya had put together the itinerary. Debbie had seen the Kremlin the last time she was there, and now she wanted to see what she called “real life.”
When they left the hotel, the weather was magical: frost and sunshine, a marvelous day, a remarkably blue sky and snow. In the bracing cold and frigid sunshine, the Irish girl from Texas experienced such a corporeal joy and exhilaration that Sanya, who didn’t like winter, looked around and was forced to agree: it was great!
Still, winter induced no ecstasy in Sanya, and, unconsciously wishing to deflate his bride’s euphoria, took her to the most terrible place of all—to Dzerzhinsky Square, where the bloody knight of the Revolution stood in the middle like a column.
He pointed to the building at his back.
“That’s the Lubyanka. Our own Judgment Day.”
“I know, 1937!”
He took Debbie’s hand.
“Why 1937? That monster is still alive today. And now that I’ve managed to spoil your good mood, let’s walk around some more.”
He spoke his textbook English well, and his keen ear immediately picked up on her slightly lisping Texas drawl.
They went to Pushkin Square, stopping at the very beginning of Tverskoy Boulevard. How often the LORLs’ excursions had begun here in years gone by! Victor Yulievich would arrange for them to meet at the Pushkin monument, and from there they would take excursions into the past: Ilya with his camera, Mikha with a notebook, and ten other inquisitive lads …
Debbie turned out to be an absolute novice, a clean slate, when it came to Russian culture—so much so that it was difficult to know where to begin.
“Have you read Tolstoy?” Sanya asked.
“Oh, yes! I saw the movie War and Peace. Two movies! I adore them! Audrey Hepburn, she’s just gorgeous! And your Pierre Bezukhov, Bondarchuk, of course. He got an Oscar! I wrote a review!”
“That’s a start. I’ll show you the house where the family of Count Rostov lived,” Sanya said with a sigh.
What a simpleton she is! he thought, and took her to look at the famous mansion.
For four days the bright cold weather held, and for four days they wandered through the city. The bride, despite her naïve simplicity, turned out to be quite capable of sensitivity and sympathy. She was, in fact, a wonderful traveling companion, animated and curious. Her astonishing ignorance about everything concerning Russian culture gave way to a passionate interest in it, which took hold on the empty spot. This interest extended to Sanya.
During the sunny days, they walked through the icy streets, and in the dim, poorly lighted evenings they shivered and stopped into cafés, which were hard to find back then, for a warm-up and a snack. For Debbie, this was the most romantic trip of her life. With the exception of Spain—ten years before, she had spent a month there, and a handsome Spaniard had turned up, shown her Madrid and Barcelona, and then run off with all her money. There hadn’t been much of that anyway …
After visiting the museum in Khamovniki, where Debbie was so moved she nearly cried (“Sah-nee-a! Your Lev Tolstoy is every bit as great as Voltaire!”), freezing, they had taken shelter in the entryway of an old building. On a third-floor windowsill, they sat down to warm themselves over the radiator. Sanya took a flask out of his pocket—Ilya’s example!—and both of them took a gulp right from the bottle.
Debbie chattered almost nonstop. But now she was very quiet, and when they were by the hotel, saying good-bye, she said:
“Sah-nee-a! I can’t understand how I have lived without all of this! When I get home I’m going to learn Russian!”
“Debbie, why would you need to do that?”
Debbie blazed up. Her temper was not merely Irish (though that would have been enough), but downright Italian.
“Ya lublyu! Ya lublyu the Russian language! You are, of course, very cultured, and I understand! But I am perfectly capable of learning myself! I learn fast! I learned Spanish! I learned Portuguese! I will learn Russian! You’ll see!”
Sanya got nervous, and adroitly changed the subject.
“Debbie, do you know who Isadora Duncan was?”
“Of course! Of course I do! I’m a feminist! I know all the extraordinary women! ‘The Dance of the Future’! A new style of dance, barefooted and wearing tunics! And her lovers were Gordon Craig and a Russian poet, I forget his name.”
“Look, Debbie, they stayed in this hotel in 1922. This is where her love affair with Sergei Esenin began!”
Debbie lifted her hands to the sky in a gesture of prayer.
“My God! It’s unbelievable! And I’m staying here, too! And I’m not even having a love affair!” She laughed. “No, I’m having a love affair with Russia!”
The following day, accompanied by Olga and Ilya, for moral support, they went to the Palace of Matrimony on Griboyedov Street, the only place where male foreigners could solemnize their marriage to a Russian woman. This was a rare instance in which a Russian man was marrying an American woman. Debbie’s American documents were so well prepared that she even had a few papers too many. Sanya didn’t have his birth certificate with him, so he had to take a taxi and go home to find it, not very confident of success. But Anna Alexandrovna didn’t let him down now, either. On the shelf with his favorite books, between the French novels, in a folder that was very familiar to him, Sanya found all his documents, arranged in perfect order, beginning with his birth certificate and ending with his Conservatory diploma and certificates of vaccination.
The documents were accepted. The wedding date was set for May.
“Our Fanya always said that you shouldn’t marry in May, or you’ll rue it the rest of your life,” Olga said.
Ilya and Olga fully backed this marriage venture. Olga was eagerly taking part in establishing the matrimonial union: she made borscht and cooked dumplings.
Debbie was over the moon about Moscow, and about borscht, and the Russian people she met. She loved everything about the Soviet country except the position of women. She came to her conclusions after observing how Olga prepared dinner, washed the dishes, and took care of their adolescent son, and Ilya didn’t lift a finger to help her. When she tried to express her indignation about this, Olga simply didn’t understand.
On her last day in Moscow, Debbie ended up at Sanya’s apartment. The visit was unplanned. They had been walking around Kitai-gorod, and she desperately needed to use the bathroom. The closest one, it turned out, was at Sanya’s. Neither his mother nor his stepfather were home. Debbie threw her mink coat on Nuta’s chair, and proceeded to walk through the communal apartment to the communal WC. After her rest stop, she glanced into the communal kitchen.
The Texas native experienced another shock. She had not been sympathetic to communism before now, and a single WC and kitchen for twenty-eight people did not increase her regard for
the social system. The next shock came when she sat down in Anna Alexandrovna’s armchair and looked around: an old piano, a voluptuous dressing table on claw feet, painted with flowers and birds, bookshelves containing books in three languages, sheet music, paintings, a valuable chandelier gleaming with crystal … She found it hard to reconcile the poverty of the shabby communal apartment with the splendor of Sanya’s room.
“Try to warm up. Do you want some tea? I’ll put on some music.”
“Why don’t you play something yourself?”
She took the gnome’s cap off her head, and her red Irish hair crackled with dry static.
Sanya sat down on the round piano stool. He thought a bit, and began to play Prelude no. 1 in C Major.
Debbie sat listening, her hands folded over her stomach like a peasant, and analyzed the situation that had unfolded. She was not as stupid as Sanya thought she was. She liked this Russian boy—he was over thirty, and three years younger than she was—very much.
He was younger, better educated, and, besides, he clearly came from a higher class of people than she had ever had anything to do with.
By the time Sanya had finished playing, Debbie had made a decision: since this strange and absurd proposition had already come about somehow or other, let it not be merely for show. She would marry this boy for real.
Sanya had not suspected that things might take such a dangerous turn.
* * *
The weather broke on the last evening, as though Moscow had grown sick of trying to make a good impression on Debbie. A damp wind began to blow, it grew warmer, and icy snow started to fall. Sanya wanted to take Debbie to a Richter concert, but it was canceled. They went to Olga and Ilya’s on foot.
Olga fed her friends what she called a “prenuptial dinner.” By that time, Sanya had grown weary of the endless walks with his bride, and even the idea of the marriage had begun to pall. It hadn’t even been his idea in the first place!
Olga served salads and pies. Ilya brought the vodka out of the cupboard built into the kitchen window—the original refrigerator from the time of the building’s construction, before the advent of modern fridges.
Debbie ate a lot, and drank a lot as well. She sat next to Sanya and kept trying to tickle him and paw at him; but she did this as though in jest, as if it were all a game. She pushed her smiling face into his, and he noticed, all of a sudden, the glistening pink strip of her gums above her upper row of teeth. It prompted a sharp adolescent memory—Nadia’s gums! Potapovsky Lane!
“Sah-nee-a! Why do you resist? If you are so cold toward me, I won’t marry you! But if you are a good boy, I’ll just put you in my bra and smuggle you out as contraband!”
“Debbie, that wasn’t our agreement! When we get married I’ll be an ideal husband—you won’t even see me at all!”
“No, no, I’ve reconsidered! I think you might suit me both in the kitchen and in the bedroom.”
* * *
The next day, Sanya took her by taxi to Sheremetevo Airport. They kissed when they said good-bye. Before she disappeared down the passageway, she waved her hand, clutching the red gnome cap, at him. Sanya went back home by bus. Outside, a snowstorm raged, and snowy porridge stuck to the bus’s windows.
* * *
I won’t go home. I don’t want to go to Ilya’s. I’ll go see Mikha, Sanya thought.
And then it hit him again. Mikha was gone. Anna Alexandrovna was gone. His mother was all but gone, too.
What is left is the unhappy Alyona, and Maya, and my mother, who is nothing like me; and the horrible Lastochkin. And a bit of music, that absurd circumstances deprived me of. So Pierre must be right, and his only choice was to flee all of this. Or should he lie down and stare at the tapestry pillow again? Or, like Mikha?
He shuddered. Depression was stalking him.
* * *
Debbie arrived in Palo Alto without warning.
The California winter did not resemble the Russian winter in the least: 59 degrees Fahrenheit. While she was trudging up to the third floor, dragging her mink coat behind her, she tried to remember the formula for converting Fahrenheit to Celsius. She remembered precisely that in Moscow it had been minus 25 degrees Celsius.
She pushed on the door to the apartment. It was open. She called out from the doorway.
“Pierre! Russian minus twenty-five Celsius—how much in American degrees?”
Pierre knew the formula.
“Well, about minus thirteen.”
From the doorway Debbie flung her fur onto a chair, and it slithered onto the floor.
“Are you crazy? You should have called, I just got home! I might not even have been here,” Pierre said angrily.
“I just flew in myself! I don’t need your old fur coat! It’s totally useless in our climate, anyway! It’s insulting, actually!”
“Wait a minute! Have you changed your mind? What’s insulting? We agreed about all of this!”
On a small table stood a bottle of whiskey, already opened. Debbie rushed over to it. Pierre grabbed the bottle from her hand, and poured a third of a glass.
Debbie tossed off all of it, then slammed the wet glass down on the glass table with a dangerous, earsplitting crash.
“After all, he could marry me for real, couldn’t he? Why not? Why doesn’t he want to marry me?”
“Hold on, hold on. We had a formal agreement—the mink coat as an advance, and the money after the marriage takes place. What is the problem?”
Debbie quickly took another tack, and started crying.
“There’s no problem. Just explain to me why I’m not good enough! He’s the one who’s not good enough for me: he’s little, and he probably doesn’t have a penis at all! And he’s useless—and he has some weird profession!”
“Debbie, what does his penis have to do with anything? Or his profession? We had an agreement…”
“To hell with the agreement!” Debbie burst out. “What’s wrong with me, Pierre? Why doesn’t anyone want to marry me? Even your little Sanya? I am an independent, self-respecting woman! I don’t give a damn about men! But why don’t they want to marry me? Maybe I don’t even need to get married! But why? I just want to know. Why?”
Pierre realized the whole endeavor might be in jeopardy. He picked up the fur from the floor and threw it on the couch. He poured two more glasses of whiskey. He sat down next to the large woman and placed a glass in her hands.
“Debbie, I can’t answer for all men. You know yourself that you’re an extraordinary woman. But everybody’s different. I can tell you something about Sanya. Sanya is depressed. I told you he was an extremely talented person. He’s special. Have you ever lost anyone who was close to you? In the same month, he lost his grandmother, who raised him, and his best friend, who committed suicide. He himself is … on the edge. He’s just not up to marriage. And the problem is not with you. He has to save his own life.”
“Yes, but he could marry me, and I would save his life. Why doesn’t he want to marry me for real? Not a fictitious marriage, but a real one?”
* * *
Now there was just one last chance.
* * *
“Debbie! Did it never occur to you … Ilya always had a lot of women. Mikha, his dead friend, was deeply in love with his wife. He never had any other women. But I’ve never seen Sanya with a woman at all.”
Debbie’s eyes grew wide with sympathy.
“Oh, do you think he might be gay?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t say that. I just said that I’ve never once seen him with a girl or a woman.”
Debbie made a new decision: “That changes the picture. Then it doesn’t hurt me. If he’s not gay, then he’s just afraid of women. And maybe he’s a virgin?”
“I wouldn’t rule it out. But that doesn’t affect our agreement.”
Debbie calmed down and began to think about the future. She had an intriguing task before her.
* * *
“Well, tell me, how was your trip? How’s Euge
ne?”
Debbie pulled a packet of photographs out of her purse.
“Here you go! Photographs! Eugene took them. They’re funny. Pierre, the city is amazing! And the people are amazing! I was only there for four days, but it felt like I was there for a whole month. So much happened, and I saw so many new things! Oh, and did I say that the wedding is in four months? So long to wait! You have to wait in line to get married! And then we’ll have to file Sanya’s application with the U.S. Embassy. For a visa. And he’ll have to wait for that, too; they explained it all to me.”
Debbie was a little tipsy.
“Listen, Pierre, I want to learn to speak Russian. Will you give me lessons?”
“Why do you want to do that? It will be expensive. You’ll have to spend a lot of money on gas, driving back and forth. It’s an hour and a half one way. I’ll find you a teacher in San Francisco.”
“I need a good one!” Debbie pouted.
“Fine, I’ll get you a good one.”
Pierre realized that his male honor would not be lost if Debbie would get good and drunk, and she was halfway there already.
He poured her another glass.
“I want Sah-nee-a! If I can marry him for real, I won’t take the money from you.”
“But we made a deal about a fictitious marriage!” Pierre was doing his best to protect Sanya’s liberty.
“What do I need the money for, anyway? I have money! I want little Sah-nee-a as my husband!” Debbie wailed, and burst out in hysterical weeping.
Looks like there’s only one way out, Pierre thought, and put his arm around her. Instantly she went quiet, and became pliant and limp.
Pierre didn’t approve of adultery. He had sown his wild oats before he married, and he took his family commitments very seriously. But his wife and his daughter had been staying with his in-laws in Milan for the last three weeks. Moreover, he attributed his fall solely to his devotion to his Russian friend and the furthering of his friend’s interests. Still, the lack of spontaneity of the situation did not detract from its pleasantness.
“If you marry Sanya for real, you’ll owe me for both the plane tickets and the hotel!”
The Big Green Tent Page 61