“I can’t imagine why not.”
But he was serious. “Are you going?” He wanted to say, You’re not going, are you? Lydia’s meetings seemed dubious things, though in truth he knew little about them.
“Do I have a better offer?” She had lowered her head before he could think of one. The window latch needed her.
“You’ve said her meetings are tedious.”
“They can be.”
“She seems to associate with questionable individuals.”
The frown returned. He changed the subject.
“Is there something I can do to help?” he said.
She seemed to give consideration to his question. “Do you have a welder’s torch?” she asked.
He shook his head.
Her hands were streaked with grime. The gadget seemed to respond and slid obediently into place.
“I think it will work now.” She rubbed her brow and it became soiled as well.
“Everything works for you,” he said.
She turned to fasten it to the window frame. She was wearing a pair of his trousers, rolled up to the knees. He liked it when she wore his clothes, her smaller form disappearing into them. She wasn’t skilled in the use of the tools, yet even they seemed to cooperate. “What happened today?” she asked.
He didn’t want to speak of the play. She would no doubt have some series of practical suggestions and he didn’t wish to argue why none of them would work.
“What makes you think something happened?” he said.
“You’re trying to pick a fight.”
“No I’m not.”
She pushed the window open; the latch grasped at the passing metal spikes, then, as she let it go, it held one fast. Abruptly, she put her head and shoulders through the opening as though she needed to be immersed in this other air, and for a moment he thought she might actually fly from it, revealing herself to be an entirely different creature than the one he knew. He was startled and excited by this thought.
She pulled her head back inside. “All right,” she said. “What have they done to it today?” The strain was gone; there was only concern. She sat on the edge of the table, waiting for him to speak. She seemed available to any question. He wanted to know why she stayed with him.
He kissed her neck. It was slick with sweat.
“You need a bath,” he said.
She slipped her hand between his thighs. “What happened?” she asked again.
Nothing, he thought, until this very moment. “I’d be lost if you left me,” he said.
She unbuttoned his shirt and began kissing his chest.
“Do you know that?” he said.
She muttered something he couldn’t understand.
He slid her across the table and she fell onto the adjacent bed. She let out a sharp noise, like the start of laughter. He toppled over beside her. She was already shimmying out of his pants. Within moments, her hands were cradling his erection as though it was some sort of religious totem.
“Do you know that?” he repeated. He held himself over her, waiting for her answer.
She smiled, her hair splayed across the pillow. “I know you’d still have a broken window,” she said.
He lowered himself over her, kissing her gently. She tightened her hold and he felt as though he could bring about the end of the world and be without blame.
Later, as she showered, he waited, lying on his back, listening to the creak of the water pipes hidden in the walls. He’d promised to take her to supper. The light in the room had shifted, deepened slightly. His thoughts unfastened themselves from the complications of the day. A small but unwieldy problem in the novel presented its solution. It slipped into place like the window latch in her hands, as though the mechanism had been there all along; it’d only required the correct pressure to be applied. He listened—the water still flowed. He got up and took the manuscript from the drawer and spread it over the table. He found the part—would this new stratagem work? He needed to know and he sat down to write.
When he raised his head, she was dressed and sitting on the bed watching him. Her expression was inscrutable. It occurred to him, as his eyes went back to the page, that its mysteries could be revealed to the person who stared long enough. Only there was a phrase he wanted to assign to the page before it eluded him. She offered to bring him something to eat.
He said something about their going out and she said it was all right.
He asked her to go by the theater and retrieve some papers he’d left behind. If it wasn’t too much trouble.
“No trouble.” Already she was at the door.
He’d let her down. He wondered how much she minded. “Marry me,” he said.
“I’ll bring you supper.” As though this was a reasonable compromise.
CHAPTER 14
The evening was unusually quiet, as though all of Moscow had spent the afternoon as they had and were now relaxing in their lovers’ arms. When she got into the streetcar that would take her to the theater, there were few other passengers and she wondered about their situations as she did her own. What was the state of their love affairs? Why were they each out in this night alone? Who loved whom more, for this was never a balanced equation.
Outside, the streets and cars and buildings glowed in the evening light, yet the windows reflected the interior of the tram and in them she could see both worlds juxtaposed. Their bodies were altered, elongated in the curved glass. They were lovelorn ghosts floating through the city. They stared from the windows as she did, searching.
Lydia had told her she was too generous. She had asked, Why him?
He worried about the play. The principal actor had quit suddenly for no apparent reason. Then one of the secondaries had become pregnant with complications that confined her to bed. The director found replacements yet every problem seemed magnified in Bulgakov’s vision. Issues so small, yet she would awaken in the night to find him on the edge of their bed, his head in his hands. He would mutter, No one wants me to do this, you know. He had told her of his past: a series of theatrical failures, novels written that then were refused. Yet she sensed his lament was more personal and she felt compelled to answer. Of course she wanted him to do this. His return each day from the theater had begun to evoke in her some vague anxiety. What fabrication would she need to dispel, what problem to resolve? Night after night it seemed it was she who coaxed him back in from the ledge. What if one night she wasn’t there? Would he climb in through the window on his own? And if he didn’t? She could think it no further.
The tram passed one of her favorite restaurants. She had lost weight these past weeks and had taken to pinning in the waistbands of her clothes every morning. Her friends brought in plates of bitki and kundumes and excuses that once again too much had been made for their own families. Some they ate, some went bad by sitting in the cooler for too long and had to be thrown away. Those who knew her a little suggested she take a vacation; or even better, they urged: go home and spend time with her mother.
She imagined Bulgakov at his table, his head bent over the page. Or more likely staring away at something she couldn’t see.
There were simpler men who would have loved her better.
How could she explain this to Lydia? She just needed to get used to the task. Who were those created to love the writers of the world if not the ones with a nature too generous?
The streetlamps were burning when she arrived and she was relieved to find someone still in the theater office. Margarita recognized the woman; she told her she needed an updated version of the script, then waited, sitting on one of the low, plush-covered sofas that lined the marble lobby. The lights had been dimmed. No one else was around. A series of double doors led to the empty theater. Quite suddenly, her skin prickled; to the far right, along the distant wall, she caught the movement of an animal, a large rat, making its way along the silvery floor. Its snakelike tail hovered over the tiles as it moved. She lifted her feet and tucked them beside her on the sofa. It then shot back across the room, behind a potted palm. There were voices from within the theater and a side door opened. The director Stanislawski appeared; he was speaking with great animation to another man. By his manner, the director seemed to be anxious to assist in his guest’s departure. Both were walking toward the exit; neither had noticed her. The other man turned as though vigilant of his surroundings; something the director said then distracted him from this—it was Ilya Ivanovich. She froze.