“I have time for reflection and the reading of mystical books which, thankfully, tend to be very short, though obscure.”
“I must go home. I called Sarah from Petrovka. She wanted to come but I told her to stay, that I would be home soon. She is waiting up for me. Iosef?”
“Anna Timofeyeva has invited me to stay here tonight,” Iosef said.
“In Lydia Tkach’s apartment,” Anna said. “Lydia is thankfully away somewhere, looking at religious paintings with her artist. She left me the key. She will not mind.”
Rostnikov looked at his son and touched the younger man’s cheek. “Elena said you will be married when she is well,” he said. “We will have a party. Who shall we invite?”
“I … just a few friends,” said Iosef.
Rostnikov nodded and moved to the door. Perhaps he would include the Yak and Pankov on the guest list. It would be interesting to see them attempting to be sociable. He doubted if either would come but the possibility intrigued him.
“Perhaps a surprise or two,” said Rostnikov.
“I can do without surprises for a while,” said Iosef.
Rostnikov nodded to Anna, touched his son’s arm, and left the apartment.
Twenty minutes later, Rostnikov entered the apartment on Krasnikov Street as quietly as he could in the hope of not waking the two girls and their grandmother, who slept in the front room. One more week and grandmother and grandchildren would have their own apartment, only a single room, but a large one on the floor above. But for now they were here. Rostnikov moved slowly and as quietly as his mechanical leg would allow.
He made it to the bedroom without awakening the sleeping trio, opened the door, and found Sarah sitting up in the bed, a book in her lap, a pillow behind her back. The only light in the room came from a small reading lamp on the table next to the bed. He closed the door behind him and stood for a moment looking at her.
She was pale, a paleness that contrasted with the darkening red of her hair, which had grown back since her operation. She wore the blue nightgown he had bought for her when she got out of the hospital. Sarah Rostnikov was still a lovely woman. She smiled and patted the right side of the bed next to her, his side.
He moved to her and sat.
“How is Elena?”
“She will be well. They want to marry soon. Perhaps next week.”
Sarah nodded.
“I told them we would have a party.”
“Of course,” she said.
“You can?…”
“Galina and the girls will help me. It will be fine, Porfiry Petrovich. Hungry?”
“No. Tired.”
“Take off your clothes and Lenin, shave, shower, and come to bed.”
“Lenin?”
“I have decided,” she said, “to call your alien leg Lenin. You should have something to call it.”
“Why Lenin?” he asked, starting to undress.
“You can engage in secret political discussion and seek cooperation to your mutual satisfaction,” she said. “And no one will know but the two of you.”
“Then Lenin it is,” he said, looking at her.
“The Korcescus on the second floor are having trouble with their toilet again,” she said.
“I will deal with that challenge tomorrow night.”
“Porfiry Petrovich,” she said. “How long has it been since we made love?”
He thought for a moment.
“You have not been …”
“I am well,” she said. “If you are too tired …”
“I am definitely not too tired,” he said.
“There is one condition.”
“What is that?”
“Lenin goes under the bed where he belongs,” she said.
Rostnikov laughed. He rarely laughed. The world was often amusing, tragic, dangerous, and touched with individual sadness, but not funny. He could not remember the last time he had laughed. Granted, this had been a brief laugh but it was a real one.
“I’ll shower first,” he said.
“Shower later,” Sarah said.
Chapter Nine
Don’t cry for me I never cried for you
Just left without the name
Of the place I’m going to
Left without so much as a whisper to remind you
I’m traveling to forget you
And to find you
In the morning the sun was shining and the snow had stopped falling. For today at least there would be a clean, soft white blanket covering Moscow. People would be polite. Some might even smile. This was Moscow weather. If there were no rain the snow would slowly take on a fragile crackling crust of gray, and if it did not melt it would begin to break out in irregular pocks of dirt and city grime. Smiles, always held dear and protected by seriousness, would fade. All would wait for, hope for, discuss the winter, the expectation of a fresh snow.
“It will snow tomorrow,” said Maya in a whisper, lying next to her husband on the mattress laid out on the floor. “The television said so.”
Sasha faced her, his head propped on two pillows.
“Yes,” he said.
They said nothing. Her left breast was exposed under her nightgown. When he had gotten home, the children had been asleep in the bedroom. His knees had threatened to give way under him when Sasha opened the apartment door.
Would she be dressed in a business suit, arms folded before her, ready for no-nonsense discussion, a laying-out of the ground rules of their fragile reconciliation?
Maya had been sitting on the sofa in her nightgown.
She had said nothing, simply stood, looking quite beautiful, her dark hair pulled back, her face clear and clean, her full lips in a welcoming smile which, Sasha was certain, carried with it a touch of caution.
Maya had come to him, moved into his arms. He had pulled her close, gently, his knees still shaking, and then he had wept.
Now, with the sun coming through the window, he knew it was time to talk, talk about more than the winter and the snow, about more than the Trans-Siberian Express.
“Your mother is coming back tomorrow,” said Maya, who still had the distinct lilt of the Ukraine in her voice. “She called. She is bringing her artist.”
“Good,” said Sasha.
Silence again.
“Maya, I … I will do better. I must do better. Just stay.”
She took his right hand and placed it on her exposed breast.
“I am here, Sasha,” she said. “The children are here.”
They had made love when he came home. He had shaved and washed on the plane wanting to look as good as possible when she saw him. They had made love. He had been afraid that he would be too tired or too frightened or that she would reject him, but they had made love and it had been good, and strong and long, and she had been satisfied.
“A new beginning,” she said as the baby began to make small whimpering sounds in the bedroom behind them.
He kissed her, remembering her smell, a special smell, not sweet but distinct. Each woman had a smell, her own smell, that came not from perfumes or perspiration but from her essence. Maya’s smell was gentle, the hint of some forgotten forest and a spice which eluded him. He put his face to her neck, pulling in her smell, savoring it.
“The baby is up,” said Pulcharia from the doorway of the bedroom.
Sasha turned on the mattress to face his daughter. She was going to be four years old in less than a month. She had been gone for more than two months. Pulcharia was the same child and yet a different one. She wore a large white T-shirt that came down to her ankles. Her hair had grown longer and was unbrushed and tumbling into her eyes. She stood looking at her father.
She is her mother's child, he thought.
“Pulcharia,” he said.
She rubbed her eyes and took a step forward, a slow tentative step, and then padded across the floor and into his arms. The baby was crying with conviction now.
“I will get him,” Maya said, getting up.
“Kiev looks like Moscow, only different,” Pulcharia told her father. “Why do you have tears?”
“I am crying for joy,” Sasha said. “I am crying because you are all back.”