“Ben,” Sasha interrupted, putting on his coat. “Father’s partner’s name was Ben not Boris.”
“You are changing the subject,” Maya said. “Your mother asked if Anna Timofeyeva’s niece was pretty.”
“Is Comrade Anna pretty?” he asked.
“Can you answer a question with an answer instead of a question?” asked Maya in a louder voice.
“You are upsetting your wife,” Lydia said.
Pulcharia began to cry.
“She is beautiful,” said Sasha. “She is ravishing. She is a painting by … Rubens. I want to make passionate love to her. We are supposed to go to the Nikolai Café on Gorky Street looking for a missing Arab girl tonight, but the hell with it. We’ll go make love in the snow.”
“What are you talking about?” Lydia cried. “It’s not even snowing.”
“You’ve made the baby cry,” said Maya. Pulcharia climbed onto her mother’s stomach and stuck her thumb in her mouth.
Sasha stood at the door, facing three generations of women who determined the course of his life, a life that was moving much faster than he wanted it to move. He wished that Maya would lose the child she was carrying. No, no. He wished no such thing. Instead he suddenly ached for a son.
“Your wife needs calm,” Lydia shouted.
“All right,” he said, opening the door. “I’ll give her a night of calm. I won’t come home tonight. I’ll sleep at my desk.”
“Sasha,” Maya said, shaking her head as she patted Pulcharia’s head and comforted her. “Don’t be …”
But he was in the hall and slamming the door before she could say more.
“What’s wrong with him?” asked Lydia.
“He will be thirty in two days and he doesn’t want to grow up,” said Maya, running her finger along her daughter’s nose.
“But he can speak French,” said Lydia. “And he did not finish his borscht.”
There was nothing to say to either comment by her mother-in-law, so Maya simply shrugged in resignation. She was reasonably sure her husband would be back, would climb into bed next to her, would hold her, would apologize even if he was sure she did not hear him. And if once he did spend the night at his desk, it would not be such a bad thing for him, though it would mean that Maya would have to face Lydia alone in the morning.
“I’m very tired,” said Maya. “I’ll help with the dishes, put Pulcharia to bed, and then go to bed myself.”
“I’ll do the dishes,” said Lydia, reaching for the borscht no one had eaten. “You put my precious child of the summer into bed. I have to go out tonight, anyway.”
Maya stopped herself from asking where her mother-in-law might be going. An evening with no talk would be a luxury she dared not hope for. Lydia had, in fact, been very helpful since Maya had been ordered to stay at home in bed, but the price that had to be paid for such aid was almost more than Maya could bear.
Nonetheless she did wonder where Lydia had suddenly decided to go.
Going to a play or a movie was a problem for Porfiry Petrovich, which was why he seldom went to either, though he enjoyed them both. During a movie he could at least stand, move about a bit, coax his leg back to life. It was difficult to stand during a play, or even to shift about to find a less painful position. The audience would be disturbed and his movements, even if he were in the rear of the theater, would distract the actors.
But this was a play written by his son, and Rostnikov was determined to attend the first performance, even though he didn’t take seriously Iosef s remark that there might not be a second performance.
The train from Arkush had been late arriving in Moscow and Rostnikov had decided to take a taxi home, which had been a mistake. Traffic was heavy, the fare insane.
When he entered the apartment on Krasikov Street after climbing the six flights of stairs, he reluctantly admitted to himself that he was tired.
Sarah was seated at the table near the window, drinking a glass of tea and watching the news on their little television. The room was cold, but something was cooking that he did not immediately identify because he was absorbed by the sight of his wife. She was wearing her orange dress, and her red hair was long enough, four months after surgery, to wear swept up. In her ears were the dangling blue earrings he had given her for her last birthday. Her face was made up and her eyes were bright with anticipation. She looked like the Sarah of a year ago, before the disappointments, the pain, the tumor. Rostnikov, in spite of his weariness, felt a definite physical undulation of desire.
“You look beautiful,” he said.
“Flattery?”
“No,” he said. “No. Had we time and you the inclination, I could prove what I say.”
“Thank you, Porfiry Petrovich.”
How long had it been since he has seen such an open smile on Sarah’s face? She had worried through Iosef s tour in the army, his time in Afghanistan, and the threat of assigning him to duty near Chernobyl, which was a direct result of Rostnikov’s too-frequent clashes with the KGB. She had been depressed when he failed to get the government to allow them to emigrate. She had abandoned her determination, put on a few pounds, and lost her job in the music shop. For almost a year, before the tumor, she worked only now and then, selling pots and pans for one of her cousins.
But Iosef was back now. Iosef was safe, a playwright, an actor. And Sarah was growing healthy and was not gaining back the weight she had lost after surgery.
Her determination had even begun to return and she had decided that when she felt completely well, in a month or so, she would again bring up to Porfiry Petrovich the possibility of leaving Russia. The borders were open. Perhaps even a policeman could now leave.
“Aren’t you going to tell me I’m late?” he asked, heading toward the bedroom door.
“You know you are late, but not too late to eat if you hurry.”
“What is that smell?” he asked from the bedroom. “Is that …?” He stepped back into the room with his shirt off, a hairy barrel of a man with a smile on his face and a sweatshirt and towel in his right hand.
“I could only get half a chicken,” Sarah said. “And as for the prune sauce, I had to improvise and use-”
“Chicken tabaka,” he said. It was his favorite dish, chicken fried under a heavy metal plate weighted down by a hand iron. Sarah served it with a special prune sauce and pickled cabbage.
When she served this dish, it usually meant that she wanted something. Rostnikov decided that whatever it was, he would certainly try to give it to her.
On the television a man said something about the death of Father Merhum while in the corner of the screen a woman within a circle used sign language to translate for the deaf.
“Is sign language the same all over the world?” he asked. “Can deaf Chinese understand deaf Latvians?”
Sarah reached over and turned the set off.
“You went shopping?” he asked.
“With Sophie.”
Rostnikov moved to the cupboard in the corner of the room and looked at his wife.
“I have time?” he asked.
“Would I be able to tolerate you tonight if you didn’t?” she asked.
“Ten minutes,” he said. “Maybe twelve. No more.”
“Twelve will be fine,” she said.
“You are beautiful.”
“And you look like a small bear. You are fortunate that I have always loved small bears.”
“I am fortunate,” he agreed. He opened the cupboard and removed the rolled-up mat, the weights, and the bar. He took the blanket off the weight bench in the corner and began to set up for his routine. “Any calls?” he asked.
“Nuretskov on the fourth floor. Toilet is making noise.”
“Toilets are a challenge,” Rostnikov admitted.
“And Lydia Tkach.”
Rostnikov sighed deeply.
“No message,” said Sarah.
“Twelve minutes,” Rostnikov said, reaching for a cassette.
For many years Rostnikov had done his routine to the music of Bach or Rimsky-Korsakov, but lately, since Sarah’s illness, he had found himself attracted to plaintive songs, melancholy arias from operas, laments by Edith Piaf, blues sung by American women, particularly one called Dinah Washington. Even though he was a policeman, Rostnikov had paid dearly for the cassettes, but the price was of no consequence when it came to one of his few indulgences.