My uncle had told me so himself.
A sudden flood of warmth fanned the air as one of the cinema lobby doors was pulled back and Joachim sauntered in.
I watched the smile fade a little on his face as he scoured the room, a frown forming between his dark brows. He was dressed in a white shirt and grey suit, a tie knotted loosely at his throat; the same outfit he’d been wearing when we met in the courtyard of the Café Stolovaya months ago. The suit had been his father’s; a gift from the film institute to congratulate him on the release of his third film. Sorkin Snr had worn it to the film premiere and then passed it on to his son. If it hung a little loose on Joachim’s thin shoulders, what did that really matter? His pleasing features more than made up for his lack of muscles. Dimpled cheeks. A slightly crooked nose. A dazzling smile with just a hint of sardonic humour lurking behind it. My breath shortened. Pins and needles spread in a tingling arc down my back and made me shiver. Seeing him always evoked the same reaction; a mixture of excitement and pleasure, underscored by guilt.
A twist of hair fell over one eye; he smoothed it back, his gaze lingering for half a second on two girls about my age giggling and flirting with a soldier nearby while their ice cream cones dripped unnoticed onto the carpet. One of the girls leaned forward boldly and kissed the soldier on the mouth, which led to more giggling. I saw Joachim’s lips compress and knew exactly what he was thinking.
Young fools.
With the possibility of war threatening like storm clouds on the horizon, could anyone really afford to make attachments they did not intend to keep? Love was a dangerous game. It was not for the faint-hearted. Only the strongest relationships would survive something as ugly as the separation of war. It was lucky, then, that what Joachim and I felt for each other was more than just a passing attraction. The very moment our eyes had met as he introduced himself in the café, it was as if a rebellious longing had roared to life inside me. Until that moment I’d been sitting alone in the café’s courtyard, waiting for an old school friend who had not shown up; not altogether surprising, considering my past history. As my uncle’s ward, I was used to people getting cold feet or staying away because they were afraid I would feed information back to him. Often, they would cancel at the last second or make up stories about traffic delays. I knew what I would find when I returned home; a note in a cream envelope, hurried lines of apology. It was nothing new at all but it did not stop the disappointment from blossoming as I drained the bitter coffee in my cup and prepared to leave. That was when I noticed him walking towards me, the first moment I felt the spread of pins and needles down my back.
He’d paused beside the table and asked if he could sit down.
When I told him my name, who I was, his eyes had widened just for a moment, and I felt my muscles tense as I waited for him to make excuses and leave. When he stood up, I stayed sitting, determined to preserve the little dignity I still possessed. Instead of walking off, he threw down some roubles and asked if I would stroll with him to the Tretyakov Gallery on Lavrushinsky Lane. In a blissful dream, we spent the afternoon chatting until the ring of the guard’s bell alerted us that the gallery was closing. We’d parted after agreeing to meet for coffee and a movie the following week and I had taken the trolley home in a daze, unable to remember any of the paintings we’d seen, my thoughts too preoccupied by the handsome, mysterious young man I’d just met, who did not care at all who my uncle was or how he could benefit by association.
Three months had passed since that day. I knew now that he was not only handsome but principled, too, and interesting with a dry sense of humour. What I liked most about him was that he was living his own life the way he wanted, shunning his parents’ comfortable apartment in favour of a communal flat. He wanted to live the same way ordinary people did, without the comforts awarded to the privileged few. It made him more attractive, in my eyes. I wanted nothing so much as to be normal. Being with Joachim made me feel as if such a thing might one day happen; as if it were not such an impossible dream.
‘There you are!’ He crossed the room quickly, his cheek grazing mine. He leaned back to admire me. I felt a blush creeping up my neck. I’d chosen my outfit carefully. It was a sweet cotton dress with a pleated skirt that fell to my knees and a frill of Ukrainian lace at the collar. None of my clothes came from the Main Universal Store. They were all specially made by a tailor in Pokrovka Street; a favourite of my uncle’s. At least I’d been allowed to pick the colour; a bright cornflower blue which matched my eyes. I’d matched it with a pair of flat sandals, instead of my usual heels, thinking wisely of the walk to the trolley car stop. It was the perfect outfit for meeting my girlfriend Sveta for coffee in the warm weather. But of course, I was not meeting Sveta. Although my hair was not as smooth as I’d hoped, I was pleased to see Joachim’s eyes darken with desire. ‘You were hiding from me,’ he said. ‘Where is Kirvenko?’
‘Waiting outside.’
‘Funny. I didn’t see him.’
‘That is sort of the point,’ I said. ‘But, then, he didn’t pass his final exams in shadowing. Remember?’ I waited for Joachim to laugh. It was a joke between us, my bodyguard’s failings. He had been assigned to me two years ago, handpicked by General Nikolai Vlasik, my uncle’s personal head of security. And despite our mocking, Kirvenko was in fact perfectly capable; an older man with hard grey eyes like pebbles who always wore a suit no matter what the weather. But despite his appearance, he was soft. Joachim and I had discovered this when our trysts began. It had only taken one pleading word from me for him to agree not to say a word to Olga. Perhaps he felt sorry for us. He likely thought our romance the stuff of children; harmless. It would blow over soon enough. Now when we met, Kirvenko made himself invisible, staying out of sight although I knew he would come running if I called him. I’d only had to shout for him once, when one of my uncle’s drunken friends cornered me one night in the pool-room of the dacha. The speed of his response as he grasped the man by his shirt and sent him sprawling into the hallway had surprised me. For all that we teased him about being dull-witted, it was clear Kirvenko could move swiftly if required.
‘I thought you might not come.’ Joachim’s smile did not reach his eyes. ‘Changed your mind.’
‘No, no,’ I said. I caught up his hand. His pulse beat, as steady as a metronome, through his palm. ‘Why would I do that?’
He opened his mouth to speak but seemed to change his mind. His gaze travelled down my blouse to linger on my waist. ‘Let’s talk afterwards.’
I watched him hurry to the ticket booth, a spill of dark curls falling across his face as he spoke rapidly to the female attendant. When he glanced back at me, he grinned, causing a swell of happiness to crest inside me. We’d been meeting here for weeks now. The last time, I had allowed him to kiss me in the shadows of the cinema while the strains of Prokofiev’s music soared around us. For hours afterwards, I could still feel the warm spots on my neck where his fingers had stroked my skin. Back in my apartment at the House on the Embankment, the grand building designed to house the families of Moscow’s elite, I hugged the memory of that encounter close. If Olga knew of my deception, she would be horrified. Although school had finished last year, Uncle had forbidden me to go anywhere other than to the dacha in Zubolovo during summer or the State-sanctioned dinners and functions I attended on his behalf. I would certainly not be allowed a boyfriend, Jewish or otherwise. I did not even dare to ask. But although I had found the courage to lie to Olga, to tell her that I was meeting an old girlfriend for lunch, not the son of a Jewish film director, I was never brave enough to forget myself entirely. There would be nothing beyond kisses, and I did not allow myself to imagine further. After all, I was Lydia Volkova, daughter of Piotr Volkov, Chief of Security, and though he was currently stationed in Estonia in a city called Tartu, I was under close scrutiny in my home city of Moscow. And as if that were not enough, I had been placed as a child in the hands of one of the most powerful men in the world. I called him ‘Uncle’ but in fact he was my father’s employer. They had fought together in the Revolution as young men and spent some time wrongly imprisoned for treason against the Tsar. It was my ‘uncle’ who had overseen my schooling after Mama’s sudden death from appendicitis when I was eleven. Uncle who even now controlled what I ate and where I went and whom I saw. I imagined it was my uncle who would be most displeased to know I was stepping out with a Jewish boy, but I hoped that in time he would come around to my way of thinking, that he would begin to see me not as a child, but as a girl on the verge of womanhood. Until then, I would have to keep my rebellion a secret.