He ordered a vodka from the bartender, a slender man with dyed white hair and a pleasant country face, wearing a white sweater and slacks. The room was almost empty of customers, just two couples chattering at a distant table. It was decorated in the style of an upscale watering hole—deep comfortable chairs, padded stools, paneled walls—but the ambiance was more exotic than one might expect. White leather upholstery, thick white carpeting. The paneling was fashioned of what appeared to be ivory planks, though they were patterned with a decidedly un-ivory-like grain reminiscent of the markings on moths’ wings; the bar itself was constructed of a similar material, albeit of a creamier hue, like wood petrified to marble. The edging of the glass tabletops and the frame of the mirror against which the bottled spirits were arrayed—indeed, every filigree and decorative conceit—were of silver, and there were glints of silver, too, visible among the crystal mysteries of the chandeliers. In great limestone fireplaces at opposite ends of the room burned pearly logs that yielded chemical blue flames, and the light from the chandeliers was also blue, casting glimmers and reflections from every surface, drenching the whiteness of the place in an arctic glamour.
Mounted above the bar was a television set, its volume turned so low that the voices proceeding from it were scarcely more than murmurs; on the screen Aleksander Solzhenitsyn was holding forth on his weekly talk show, preaching the need for moral reform to a worshipful guest. Amused to find the image of the Nobel Laureate in a place whose moral foundation he would vehemently decry, Chemayev moved closer to the set and ordered another vodka. The old bastard had written great novels, he thought. But his sermons needed an editor. Some liked them, of course. The relics who lived in the krushovas sucked up his spiritual blah blah blah. Hearing this crap flow from such a wise mouth ennobled their stubborn endurance in the face of food shortages, violent crime, and unemployment. It validated their mulelike tolerance, it gave lyric tongue to their drunken, docile complaining. Solzhenitsyn was their papa, their pope, the guru of their hopelessness. He knew their suffering, he praised their dazed stolidity as a virtue, he restored their threadbare souls. His words comforted them because they were imbued with the same numbing authority, the same dull stench of official truth, as the windbag belches of the old party lions with dead eyes and poisoned livers whom they had been conditioned to obey. You had to respect Solzhenitsyn. He had once been a Voice. Now he was merely an echo. And a distorted one at that. His years in exile might not have cut him off from the essence of the Russian spirit, but they had decayed his understanding of Russian stupidity. People listened, sure. But they heard just enough to make them reach for a bottle and toast him. The brand of snake oil he was trying to sell was suited only for cutting cheap vodka.
“Old Man Russia.” Chemayev waved disparagingly at the screen as the bartender served him, setting the glass down to cover Beria’s upturned face. The bartender laughed and said, “Maybe… but he’s sure as shit not Old Man Moscow.” He reached for a remote and flipped through the channels, settling on a music video. A black man with a sullen, arrogant face was singing to tinny music, creating voluptuous shapes in the air with his hands—Chemayev had the idea that he was preparing to make love to a female version of himself. “MTV,” said the bartender with satisfaction and sidled off along the counter.
Chemayev checked his watch. Still nearly three-quarters of an hour to go. He fingered his glass, thinking he’d already had too much. But he felt fine. Anger had burned off the alcohol he’d consumed at Polutin’s table. He drank the vodka in a single gulp. Then, in the mirror, he saw Larissa approaching.
As often happened, the sight of her shut him down for an instant. She seemed like an exotic form of weather, a column of energy gliding across the room, drawing the light to her. Wearing a blue silk dress that revealed her legs to the mid-thigh. Her dark hair was pinned high, and, in spite of heavy makeup and eyebrows plucked into severe arches, the naturalness of her beauty shone through. Her face was broad at the cheekbones, tapering to the chin, its shape resembling that of an inverted spearhead, and her generous features—the hazel eyes a bit large for proportion—could one moment look soft, maternal, the next girlish and seductive. In repose, her lips touched by a smile, eyes half-lidded, she reminded him of the painted figurehead on his Uncle Arkady’s boat, which had carried cargo along the Dvina when he was a child. Unlike most figureheads, this one had not been carved with eyes wide open so as to appear intent upon the course ahead, but displayed a look of dreamy, sleek contentment. When he asked why it was different from the rest his uncle told him he hadn’t wanted a lookout on his prow, but a woman whose gaze would bless the waters. Chemayev learned that the man who carved the figurehead had been a drunk embittered by lost love, and as a consequence—or so Chemayev assumed—he had created an image that embodied the kind of mystical serenity with which men who are forced to endure much for love tend to imbue their women, a quality that serves to mythologize their actions and make them immune to masculine judgments.
“What are you doing here?” he asked as she came into his arms.
“They told me I don’t have to work tonight. You know… because you’re paying.” She sat on the adjoining stool, her expression troubled; he asked what was wrong. “Nothing,” she said. “It’s just I can’t quite believe it. It’s all so difficult to believe, you know.” She leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth—lightly so as not to smear her lipstick.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Everything’s taken care of.”
“I know. I’m just nervous.” Her smile flickered on and off. “I wonder what it’ll be like… America.”
He cupped the swell of her cheek, and she leaned into his hand. “It’ll be strange,” he said. “But we’ll be in the mountains to begin with. Just the two of us. We’ll be able to make sense of it all before we decide where we want to end up.”
“How will we do that?”
“We’ll learn all about the place from magazines… newspapers. TV.”
She laughed. “I can’t picture us doing much reading if we’re alone in a cabin.”
“We’ll leave the TV on. Pick things up subliminally.” He grinned, nudged his glass with a finger. “Want a drink?”
“No, I have to go back in a minute. I haven’t finished packing. And there’s something I have to sign.”