He smiled a bit wryly and touched the lapel of his suit.
“And why do you think I’m wearing these clothes? I’m rather an oaf where clothes are concerned. I’m wearing them because I didn’t want to look like a peasant in your eyes. I’m wearing them because the salesman told me they made me look younger, which is ridiculous, but I wanted to look younger for you. Why do you think I look like an idiot when I’m with you? And talk like an idiot when I’m with you? And almost drove like an idiot a few minutes ago? I’m in love with you, Ruth. I have been almost from the minute I met you.”
Ruth was staring down at her hands clasped tightly in her lap. She thought she had never felt as happy in her life, but when she looked up, rather than the radiance Gregor had expected, had hoped for, she looked almost sad.
“And now?” she asked softly.
“Now,” Gregor said with a rare insight into the words the occasion seemed to call for, “I shall put the car away in the garage until morning, after which we shall have dinner, with a good wine to offset what I suspect will be a terrible meal—”
“I’m not hungry,” Ruth said in a small voice, and suddenly smiled her gamine smile.
“Then we shall merely have the wine — or possibly not even that — after which” — he reached over and took her hand — “we shall go to my room and discuss many things. Including the future...”
They made love with a fierceness, a passion, that Gregor had thought a thing long of the past, and that Ruth had never known. Often she had tried to imagine total commitment to a person, but nothing had ever prepared her for the height of ecstacy, the sweeping fulfillment of just giving and wanting to give more, the sweet absolutes of total receiving. She clung to Gregor hungrily, part of him as he was part of her, knowing that whatever followed in their lives, nothing would or could take this moment from her. Afterward they lay quietly, holding hands like children, reveling in their feeling for each other, content to touch and to love. Ruth turned on her side, stroking his cheek.
“And now?”
He said it, attempting lightness, although he did not really believe it. It would have been more than he could ever have hoped for. “Now, as they say in the novels, we get married and live happily ever after.” It could be, he said to himself fiercely. Why couldn’t it be? He turned to Ruth, trying to sound convincing. “You will love Leningrad. It’s truly a beautiful city. We shall work together at the Hermitage, and make trips together, and excavate in strange places together, and in the evenings” — he reached over with his free hand to touch one of her full breasts almost wonderingly — “we shall make love together. But it will always be—”
“No.”
“—together.” He frowned slightly, as if in non-understanding. “Did you say no?”
Ruth pulled herself up to kiss him on the lips, a long tender kiss, and then laid her head on his chest.
“Darling, you’re dreaming. I couldn’t possibly live in Russia. You must know that as well as I do.”
“Why not?” Gregor was trying to convince himself as much as Ruth, but he could not help but sound a bit irked. “My Lord, Ruth, you don’t believe those stories that we’re all ignorant peasants living in caves, wearing long beards, and carrying bombs, do you? Or tossing children from the backs of troikas to satisfy the wolves? Darling, Leningrad is a beautiful, modern city. We’ve got traffic lights, and paved streets, and indoor toilets,” he finished a bit tartly.
She laid a finger across his lips, smiling at him lovingly but sadly. “My darling, I’ve been to Leningrad and I know it’s a beautiful, modern city — although the less said about your indoor toilets the better.” Her smile disappeared; she became serious. “But you know my living there is impossible. I’m the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I’ve worked all my life to reach that point, and I couldn’t possibly leave it or give it up. The museum is my home. It’s my life.” A thought came, another dream as she knew, but she had to voice it. “Why don’t you come to New York? I know people in Washington and I’m sure we could arrange it. And the Metropolitan could always use a fine curator—”
He grinned, but it was a tight grin. “My darling Ruth! Haven’t you heard that it’s bad policy to work for a relative? Unless, of course, you were planning on our living in sin.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t leave the Hermitage. The antiquities section is largely my work. And my plans for it mean many years of things I want to do. It’s the greatest museum in the world and I’m part of it, I helped make it what it is. Besides, I have a baby dinosaur—” He stopped abruptly, feeling somehow a bit guilty. He realized he hadn’t even thought of his baby dinosaur for days.
Ruth leaned over to kiss him again. Oddly enough she felt relaxed, and not at all as miserable as she would have imagined she might have felt. “My darling,” she said, “neither of us can leave what we have, but we both now have something extra, something we never had before. I will always love you, I’m sure of that, and I hope you will always love me. We will meet at conferences, and archaeological congresses, and we will greet each other very formally, and discuss our respective papers in deeply scientific and dull terms, and then when we’re alone” — she ran her hand lightly down his stomach to his crotch, gathering him into her hand, amazed at herself for her action but feeling completely natural and good about it — “we shall go to my room—”
“Or mine—”
“Or both, in turn, and make love all night.” She kissed him again and sat up in bed, her gamine smile on her face. “And now, for reasons I cannot imagine, I’m hungry.”
Gregor sighed and swung his feet from the side of the bed, shaking his head. “Maybe it’s better we’re not getting married,” he said thoughtfully. “On my salary I probably couldn’t feed you.”
Their meal had been consumed with little idea of what they were eating, which was probably just as well. The only other person in the dining room with them at that late hour was a military-looking gentleman drinking schnapps with beer. The waiters in their unaccustomed stiff formal clothing would have liked nothing better than that the three would go about their business and allow them to clean up and go home, but the military-looking gentleman did not appear the type to rush without possibly undesirable consequences, so Ruth and Gregor were able to stare at each other in their increasingly growing wonder at their love, and finish their coffee and brandy without snide hints from the staff.
Ruth suddenly frowned. “It wasn’t always like that.”
Gregor stared. Ruth, he realized, would have been fascinating to live with. Her mind went off at odd angles without warning, like a firecracker controlled by an infant. “What wasn’t always like that?”
“Warnemünde. It wasn’t always like the Manhattan docks and the Boston docks and the Baltimore docks all rolled into one.” She thought about it a moment and then nodded in positive conviction. “Thirty-five years ago it may have been like those Portuguese fishing villages!”
“Except, of course, for the war, which Portugal was smart enough to avoid.”
Ruth refused to be distracted. “I mean, there were probably fishing docks like that thirty-five years ago. For all we know there might still be some out on the coast, past all that steel and concrete.” She stared at Gregor thoughtfully, her eyes narrowing. “And the sea was pretty choppy today, wasn’t it?”