“Of course,” he said, forcing out a smile, then added, desperate to rescue something at least of his perfect evening, their first evening alone, “You know, maybe—maybe we could even go together, you and I—”
“I would love that,” she said, and looked away. “I would love that, but you see, the ticket’s not for me, I’m doing this for—for someone else. I’ve been meaning to tell you—”
“Oh,” he said, his voice deadened. “Oh, all right.”
She embraced him, quickly, fleetingly, a brush of her hand on his shoulder; he barely felt it. “Thank you anyway, I know you tried.” She was unlocking the front door now. “Here is the record, your friend must not have realized… Well, good night, see you tomorrow.”
The elevator opened on her floor, swallowing him, then hung without going up or down for a long while, or not that long perhaps, he did not care, he did not notice, until, for no reason, the doors slid back open, regurgitating him on her threshold. He stared at the number of her apartment for a heavy minute, thinking of that seed of something small and dark and imploring he had imagined in her eyes the instant before she had averted them.
Then he turned, and trudged down the stairs. He stopped on the second-floor landing to stomp on the record, throw its pieces into the trash chute. He cut his palm on a jagged edge, and for another stretch of time stood still, pressing his forehead against the sweating concrete wall. It was past midnight when he finally stepped outside. He could not face the thought of going home. The park where he was supposed to meet his son two hours earlier was quiet now, and he stumbled along its unlit paths, scraping pebbles in his wake, smashed his knee on a bench, sat down. Someone had abandoned a nearly full bottle on the ground, next to the shed skins of what looked like silk stockings. At least somebody was having a good time, he thought, suppressing a sickened laugh. The unsteady boat of the crescent moon swayed in the pale waves inside the bottle; he picked it up, pulled out the cork, sniffed it mechanically, but, of course, smelled nothing. It was too dark to read the label. He wiped its neck with his sleeve, then carried it to his lips, and drank, and looked at the bottle again. It was wine—a strange thing to find unfinished in a public park in this city, he thought with indifference, and drank again, and again, deeper now, until, gradually, his eyes adjusted to the shadows, and his hand stopped bleeding, and he remembered that for the first time tonight she had called him Serezha, just Serezha, and found that everything was shifting into focus at last, becoming clear.
She wanted to hear Selinsky’s music. He would make her a gift of it. He would wait in line, however long it took, and when he finally had the ticket, he would give it to her. He would give it to her, and this time, he would be worthy of her, he would expect nothing back, for she did not owe him any answers, did not owe him anything, he told himself sternly. But as the moon boat glimmered at the bottom of the bottle, rocking up and down in the sea breeze, smelling of all the wonderful things he had never smelled, the salt, the sand, a woman’s damp hair, he could not help thinking of their hallway reflections embracing in a different world, a silvery mirror world where things were simple, where an embrace became a kiss, where a kiss deepened, natural as a bud opening, and a man’s old-fashioned hat hanging on a nail transformed into a large shaggy bird and flew out the window, and a coat closet swung its doors wide, inviting them into its depths, and its depths were dark and soft, darker than the fur of a hundred fur coats, softer than the fluff of a hundred feather beds, and the softness, the darkness accepted them, two people who, in this simple mirror world, were not afraid to tell each other how they felt.
5
ANNA HAD BROUGHT her mother two full cups of tea, yet the old woman would not leave the room, and by half past nine Anna had grown restless. Liuba had advised her to wait until some minutes after ten (“You should be a bit late,” she had said, “it’s better to keep him in suspense”); but at nine-forty, unable to bear the insidious whisperings of the clock any longer, she stood up to go. Already at the threshold, she heard at last her mother’s light steps in the corridor outside, the lavatory door swinging and closing, water gushing into existence. Relieved, she ran into the empty room, tore at the drawer. The box of dark green velvet was there still; as its lid flipped open with the softest of plops, the trapped diamond light, in escaping, scratched at her eye.
The water stopped with one last noisy eruption. Anna shut the box, pushed it back into its musty grave, and hurried out.
On the landing, she unclenched her hand, the sharpness of the clasps imprinted on her palm like a snakebite. The jabs through her earlobes were painful—she had not worn earrings in a long while—and she was still gasping, wondering whether she had drawn blood, when the elevator spilled her son straight into her. She saw in his face one instant of blankness, a perfect lack of recognition, and felt a sudden thrill. Anya, is that really you? Sergei’s amazed voice said in the recesses of her mind. She stepped into the elevator smiling.
Outside, the city closed around her, dark and cool; the last bits of summer lay resting in buckets of roses sold at a night kiosk by the tram stop. She teetered along the streets as quickly as she could, though her ankles, unaccustomed to heels, kept betraying her. She imagined her shoes tattooing a graceful rhythm across the velvet underside of late August, carrying echoes to expectant girls who sat dreaming about life by their cracked windows; imagined, too, the shallow perspectives of the park already stretching deeper to admit her. Drumming on the back of his bench, bored by the prospect of a conversation with his son, he would see the silhouette of a lovely (if somewhat full-hipped) woman at the end of the alley and, intrigued, watch her approach through the leafy shadows, until slowly, slowly, his appreciation would deepen into astonishment and an exclamation would escape his lips.
“My God,” he would breathe out, “is that you? Oh Anya, you’re beautiful.”
And then—then the faint scents of grass and flowers and the golden bouquet of a wonderful wine, its grapes ripened by the southern sunshine in some mythical land where storks flap their weighty wings in nests made of cart wheels, and meadows sway in the breeze, and donkeys tread up winding mountain tracks loaded with jugs of the purest chilled water. A clinking of glasses coming together, his whisper in her ear, the tender cooing of dreaming pigeons. I wanted to surprise you, Serezha, the ticket you’ve been waiting for all this time—the ticket is for you, it’s yours, my gift to you, you can hear your music now, can’t we be happy like we used to be, or were we ever—Of course we were, we still are, thank you, thank you, Anya, I love you.
The park’s approaches yawned with blackness. She hurried along a deserted alley, saw, at its end, the outline of a man sitting on a bench. It was not yet ten; he had come early. Her heart licked at her breast with a few tentative, hopeful shudders.
The gravel crunched under her heels; the invisible pockets of intimate darkness on both sides of the path smelled damp and full, promising to disclose some soft, unbearably poignant secrets as soon as she stepped off it, dissolved in the night. The man rose, squinting at her across the late hour; the nearest streetlamp had gone out. Glad of the shadows, she took another wavering step, and another, and there was the bench, and the man lunged toward her, his fingers clamping down on her wrist.
“Well, well,” he said. “Just as I was getting lonely.”
His voice exhaled soured drink into her face. It was not Sergei. The darkness was packed tight around them, but accidental moonlight leaked through the trees, and his face skipped in and out like a voice nearing and fading. She glimpsed his youth, eighteen maybe, maybe twenty, and a vicious puckering under one eye, and an insolent, inebriated tilt to his mouth, and she wanted to scream, she screamed, she screamed louder, but no one was around, and already his face was shoving hers toward the bench, his hands groping at the seams of the dress that was not hers. She thought, as if from some other, safe, suspended place, It’s a lovely dress, I can’t damage it, she’d never lend me anything again. Then there were steps echoing along the boundary of the park, Sergei coming, she knew for one vast exhalation of relief, but the steps did not move closer, two sets of steps skirting the boundary of normal life, somewhere out there, and the brutality of it all swung at her like a fist, and she was screaming again, hoping someone would appear, someone would shake her awake. But the steps were retreating already, and the opened bottle of wine she had brought along tumbled out of her bag, rolled over her foot, and the darkness was blinding, thrusting toward her, and the man, the boy, was ripping, tugging, pulling at her edges, and she began to weep, “I’m a mother,” she sobbed, “I have a son your age, about your age,” and as the silk stockings Liuba had given her split open to let the night in, she collapsed onto the bench, crying, “Please, please, take these instead, they’re worth a lot of money—”