Grigory waits until her tears lose their force, then takes her hand.
“I’ve just realized you’ve never told me your name.”
“Tanya.”
“I’m sorry, Tanya.”
“Thank you.”
She wipes away her tears with the base of her palm.
“Enough. This is a celebration, and I’m under orders.”
He sits up, his shoulders pushed back.
“Orders?”
“Of course. There’s endless speculation. They want me to find out something. You think a disaster like this is enough to keep us from gossiping? We embrace any distractions.”
He smiles. “What kind of speculation?”
“The only kind there is.”
“You want to know if there’s someone back home?”
“Well, there’s no one here—look at yourself, that’s obvious. I’m asking the why. You came here to help, I know this, we all appreciate it. But there’s always something else.”
He cradles his glass, eyes downturned.
“I don’t mean to pry.” A mother’s voice, soft with concern. “It’s just harmless chatter.”
THERE WAS THE VASE exploding against the wall. There were the remains of their kitchen chair, a pathetic, desultory thing that lay beaten beside his legs as he sat near the stove. Walking in, she already knew—of course she did; she had placed the note that morning. Not seeing anything—not noticing the wreckage of their home—other than his look, the rage in his eyes.
He thinks of their relationship as one composed mostly of afternoons. Work consuming both of them; he arriving at the hospital in the early evening, attending patients into midmorning; she leaving the apartment early, writing her articles before the offices filled up with talk and distraction, before editorial meetings devoured her time.
But there were afternoons. Late breakfasts on their days off. Waking to the midday sunlight, sheets contorted around them. Her smell at its fullest at this time. He would run his neck and face along her glistening body, harvesting the glorious odor of her sweat. He would lift her arm upwards, pressing her wrist against the headboard, and linger in the warm nest of her smell, first running the tip of his tongue along the shy stubble, then lapping up the fullness of her in long, wide strokes, repeating it all again below her waist.
Afternoons wandering through bookshops, her giving him a guided tour of the printed word. Then reading in the hours before supper as he lay with his head on the centre of her, her leg draped over his shoulder, claiming him.
The afternoons changed then, out of nowhere.
Afternoons when the weather was too harsh to leave the apartment and they would swap rooms, avoiding each other. He would move into the bedroom, she would move into the living room. He would shave at the sink and exit as she entered for her bath.
When she became pregnant, he thought it would be a new beginning, would cast away the gloom that had settled over them. Instead she sank further into herself.
Then came the afternoons when she covered herself in the protective wall of a book and he would snatch it from her hands and throw it against the wall, shouting, “Talk to me! Look at me! I’m standing here. Don’t treat me like a fucking ghost!” and she would rise from her chair and gather the book from the corner and select her page again and sit as though she had dozed off for a minute and lost her place.
Afternoons when they would walk through the streets in a rage and then dampen down in tearooms, where the presence of others would force them into civility, and he would tell a joke or a story from his childhood and a smile would skim across her face, a sunburst over a dreary, grey sea, and then pass again, serving only to taunt him with what they had once had.
The afternoon of irreparable damage. A lunch in the Yar—a rare thing, no alcohol, obviously, but a good steak with Fyodor Yuriyevich, then chief of surgery. Comrades dropping by to slap him on the arm. Horse talk, football talk, advice on which seminars to attend, which periodicals to submit work to. Questions about his paper on cardiomyopathy. A refrain from Fyodor on what it must be like to be young. Working, publishing, so much to come, family and all that entails. A new premier elected. A strong, vital man. Charismatic. A man who would renew the Union, usher it into the modern age. So much to look forward to, Grigory. Praise on his technique. Fyodor had scrubbed in on a recent case, a crash victim, not an easy procedure, not by any means.
“But you handled it well, Grigory. Your surgical team never exchanged a glance. Total calm, that’s all you need. Hands of ice. Never rush. Although you could bring your times down. What’s your best time on an endotracheal intubation?”
“Never as quick as you, sir.”
“Damn right. Beat me on that and I’ll transfer you to Primorye.”
Winking at Grigory, friendly but not without challenge, half meaning the threat, which obviously was the best compliment of all.
And after Fyodor had left and no one approached the table anymore, Grigory reached into his jacket to pay the bill and pulled out an envelope. High-grade paper. No handwriting or address. A promotion? A bonus? A proclamation of love from some junior nurse? He unfolded it there on the table and recognized her handwriting and felt a rush of hope: finally, some clarity; all that she couldn’t say wrapped into a letter. Of course this was how she would communicate. She would explain it all, lay it all out on rich paper, put it all between the margins: her perspective, the inner workings of her mind, her apology, her thirst to renew herself once more, the consolation she felt in him.
The letter contained none of these. The language was formal and businesslike, as though she were apologizing for turning down a job offer or cancelling the rental contract on their television set. So clear and brief that he didn’t need to read it again. A delineation of facts. She had decided not to keep the child. No emotion, no regret, no apology or explanation.
Grigory left without paying. The waiter followed him into the street, calling after him, and Grigory turned and pulled out whatever notes were in his pocket, stuffed them into the waiter’s fist, and walked north. He walked and turned corners and walked again, often returning to his own footprints, and he stopped and considered them, then headed in the opposite direction.
At home, washing his face in the bathroom, he looked down at the plughole, a small, dark circle surrounded by white porcelain. That first night together, their meeting at the lake, the white plateau stretched before them in endless, flawless possibility. Now their relationship resembled that environment: cold and hard; whatever life still existed lurked only in the dark waters below. He would gladly smash the surface and plunge himself into the depths, drag her to warmth, but all she would allow him was a thin line of connection, and he waited in vain hope, stooped above it, dependent on her to show the merest flicker of need.
GRIGORY HEARS the closing of a door, transporting him back from his thoughts.
Tanya has called next door to the nurses’ quarters and convinced them to part with another bottle. She pours, and they drink and open out the plains of their lives to each other, speaking of their pasts.
When the conversation eventually comes to a pause, she sits up suddenly.
“I almost forgot.”
She walks to a press near the cooker and returns holding something wrapped in sackcloth. She lays it on the table between them.
“It’s a gift.”
Grigory stiffens. “That’s very kind of you, but I can’t accept gifts.”
“You gave my son a dog. I’m just returning the gesture.”
“I kept the dog. Your son merely looks after him.”
“Well, then, I’m giving you something to look after. I can’t work it myself. I don’t know how to take care of it.”