Yet he had justification for limitless vanity: Alexander was as dazzlingly handsome as his photograph, and his uniform, in sharp contrast to most Army officers’ crumpled sacks, was as neatly pressed. The body underneath was proudly carried and obviously solid - perhaps two or three inches short for Greek-statue perfection, but with a gymnast’s proportions.
His face was even more impressive: the classic Nordic type, garnished with flaxen hair. From head to toe, Alexander was the picture of the glowing, resolute-yet-carefree young proletarian soldier of propaganda posters, standing guard over the map of the Soviet Union - or the grateful world, depending on the theme of the campaign - with a
collection of serene children playing at his feet.
And in fact, Alexander had been a model for one of these very tours de force on the cover of a magazine called Soviet Warrior. It was a copy of this very photograph, smiling and invincible, that Oktyabrina cherished. Alexander had presented it to her on the afternoon of their first meeting, having penned an inscription in a loose hand over the lower corner: 'In War and Peace, in Our Metro and With Our Missiles - On Guard for You Always, Sasha’.
Alexander’s splendor prevented me from getting a more comprehensive impression of him, especially as our first meeting was so brief. He had to report at his dormitory by seven o’clock sharp. 'Regulations are regulations,’ he informed me with an ambiguous wink, adding that 'Chipmunk’, bless her, understood nothing about military timing and discipline. He adjusted his cap so that - or was this accidental? — a lock of lemon hair fell effectively across his forehead.
Alexander offered me his hand again, pivoted and stepped briskly off. Oktyabrina shouted after him petulantly: he’d forgotten her goodbye kiss. He hurried back to peck at her loftily offered cheek. When he strode off again, the sight of him caused a succession of double-takes from passing pedestrians. A little Irish-looking imp in a school uniform tagged by his side.
When he had finally passed from sight, Oktyabrina confessed that the meeting had not gone as well as she had hoped. Alexander was terribly distracted by his work at the moment; it was something fiendishly important and dangerous, which naturally made him appear preoccupied. Besides, he was actually very shy - with strangers, that is. Which made his passion for her - when they were all alone, one and together - all the more precious arid unique. 'And when you take all these difficulties into consideration, the romantic brilliance of our first meeting was all the more . . . well, frankly transcendental.’
For the next two weeks I was to hear about Sasha and nothing but Sasha. He was ‘delicious’, ‘madly gallant’, ‘sensitive in a very special natural way’ and, of course, ‘the absolute quintessence of manliness’. Oktyabrina’s day was a lingering preparation for the evening - not the entire evening, alas, but for the few minutes that Alexander squeezed from his exhausting training schedule. If he couldn’t manage this, Oktyabrina planned and primped for the following evening, or the one after, keeping up a steady stream of talk to herself at the mirror.
Several facts were repeated often enough to seem reliable. Alexander was in training at a new, highly prestigious establishment called the Tactical Missile Academy. The curriculum was merciless. And although young officers merited liberal passes, this had to be understood in the context of Soviet Army traditions - which meant a precious few hours a week. Alexander’s rusty mathematics and physics sometimes made him forgo even that. This is what kept him from seeing Oktyabrina ‘as much as he was burning to’.
When they did meet, it was usually for a few moments at Kirovskaya metro station. Sometimes Alexander brought along a somewhat younger officer named Petya, in which case the conversation, understandably flowed largely between the two soldiers. Oktyabrina came to have mixed feelings about Petya’s presence.
In fact, she had mixed feelings about certain aspects of the romance itself.' ‘I’m going to be excruciatingly honest with you, Zhoe darling,’ she said one morning, ‘because you know me best. This entanglement is not idyllic, and I’m not the kind to build castles in the air. Because one part of me has remained entirely clear-headed while the other part is hopelessly swept off its feet.’
I checked the wire services. When I returned, her monologue seemed grounded at exactly the same point.
‘The sober part tells me he worships me and rejoices. He even has the grace to court me patiently, I mean for my carnal favors. Which is simply inspired for a warrior -
they’re usually so animal... are you listening, Zhoe darling? What’s that dreadful cackle on the radio? . . . But I do recognise that our affair has imperfections. For one thing, it requires utterly fantastic patience from me. And positively superhuman love from him — because the trouble is, there s no time to kindle the ardor. I sometimes don’t know what’s greater, my happiness or suffering.’
However, she had one source of comfort. ‘At least my Sashinka doesn’t look at other women. That’s probably his clean country upbringing. It’s so terribly vulgar, the way city-bred men ogle every passing skirt.
At this point she was silenced by a blast of Tschaikovsky on the radio. It was the opening bars of the First Piano Concerto, which resound four or five times a day to diverse patriotic themes, this time was as background music to a story about Lenin’s First Reading of Marx. But the crashing chords were oddly appropriate because Oktyabrina was preparing to narrate the story of her own discovery again: the First Meeting with Sasha.
Oktyabrina recounted the story - ‘the incredible saga of that first meeting almost daily. But the account finally made sense only after my second meeting with Alexander, at a cafe on Kirov Street, of the same class as those on Petrovka and elsewhere. Because I’d come along, Alexander was able to free himself for a full half hour. His cap lay on an empty chair to avoid smudges on the plastic visor. While Oktyabrina performed the narration, he studied her; his open face expressed a slight amusement that made it more handsome and likable than ever.
It happened on Alexander’s first day in Moscow - his very first day in the capital, and one of his first in any metropolis. He’d arrived by train in the morning from a base in the western Ukraine, on orders to the Academy. He reported to the duty officer and was given an afternoon pass to see the city.
He was overcome by its fantastic size and sweep. He walked from one comer to another, drinking in the famous 136
landmarks and fabulous sights. At last he understood the Red Army saying: ‘Give your life for Mother-Moscow, the jewel of the whole wide world/ Thrilled, exhilarated, awed and (yes, he confessed it) slightly nervous, he sat down on a park bench to rest. For he was also exhausted — more so by the asphalt sidewalks and city noises than by a week of maneuvers. And when a sad peasant woman pleaded with him to buy her flowers, he succumbed, even though he’d never done anything remotely similar in his life. He bought her largest bouquet, simply because of his triumphant mood and eagerness to share his good fortune. The old woman blessed his kindness and promised the flowers would bring him love.
As the time to report approached, he found his way to a metro station. He d never seen anything like it in civilian life; the expense and engineering, the incredible sweep of the concept! And the hydraulic mechanism of the escalator! It could only be compared to the artillery’s best shellhandling equipment. But on his way down to the trains, a power failure occurred - the first one, Oktyabrina later established, in over a decade. (It was all undeniably fated.)
The escalators stopped dead; everything was plunged into total darkness. No panic threatened among the crowds, but on the up escalator just below Alexander, a girl began whimpering in fright. Gently but firmly, he directed her to take control of herself: Soviet citizens, after all, must be courageous and self-disciplined in any emergency. But the girl’s sobs grew louder, and he felt her trembles from the opposite stairs.