She saw Klim opening the letter with the state emblem.
“What is it?” she asked.
He held out a piece of thick paper with a typewritten message on it:
Unfortunately, due to other demands on my time, I am unable to grant you an interview. I hope that the situation will change in the future.
Galina stared in amazement at the signature, written in blue ink.
“He sent you a personal answer?” she gasped. “Even though you’re considered an ‘enemy journalist’?”
“I’ve got a Christmas present after all,” said Klim with a mirthless laugh.
“Look,” said Galina, “he’s written here that the situation might change in the future. You can’t leave Moscow now! You’ll lose your chance to somebody else.”
“Galina, you don’t understand—”
“And I never will!” she broke in. “Your life here is fine. You have a house, work, and friends. If you go abroad, you’ll have to start all over from scratch. How do you think you’re going to pay the money owing on the apartment? Right now, you have it on credit, and don’t think Elkin will give you anything back—he’s sunk everything into his business. Good god! You can’t just ruin your whole life like this!”
Galina went up to Klim and put her arms around him. “Whatever happens to you, I’ll be by your side. I’ll always do what I can to help you.”
“Thank you,” he said and gave a deep sigh. “It was foolish, of course, to talk about leaving. All of this would pass eventually.”
Galina suddenly realized that Klim was looking at her scar. In her haste, she had forgotten to button her dress.
Klim also had a scar on his chest from a deep wound, which, by the look of it, had not been stitched and had healed haphazardly.
“Do you mind me asking what that is?” Galina asked him now. “If I don’t know, I won’t be able to stop staring at it every time I see it.”
“Spoils of war,” he said.
“It must have almost hit your heart.”
“Something like that.”
Galina breathed a sigh of relief. She had hinted that this was not the last time she would see the scar, and Klim had not said anything to contradict her.
How could she find out what had happened? It was wrong to leave Klim all alone with his gloomy thoughts, but Galina understood that he did not want her around.
“All right. I’m going,” she said.
Klim took Galina by the shoulders, took a step back, and looked at her as if for the first time.
“You know, you’re a fine woman, Galina,” he said.
She kissed him on the lips. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
So, Klim had become her lover after all, and Galina found it almost impossible to believe. She had to do her best not to ruin everything, not to make the mistake of blurting out something that would annoy him.
She should buy a new brassiere and new underwear too. Damn it all—she would have to get a loan from the OGPU cooperative again!
At the thought of the OGPU, Galina cringed inwardly. Would Alov realize that she had allowed this foreigner to take his place? Alov was terribly possessive and took the view that it was acceptable for men to be unfaithful, as it was in their nature, but that women should remain devoted all their lives to a single man.
What would happen now when Alov called her in to his office? It would be unthinkable to let him have his way with her now that she had become romantically involved with Klim. But should she try to make excuses, Alov would immediately suspect something was up.
I’ll tell him I have women’s problems, she decided. I’ll get a doctor to write me a note if I have to.
As the sleigh took her home past the Church of the Archangel Gabriel, Galina lifted her eyes to the gold cross gleaming faintly in the darkness and swore that never again would she smoke or beat Tata.
This was the beginning of a new life filled with excitement, fear, and an amazing sense of hope.
Klim shut the door after Galina and went back into his room. He sat at his desk and opened the “Book of the Dead.”
The entries in his diary did not correspond with the dates printed on the pages, and the last notes he had made in December had been written under April dates:
15 April, 1881: Execution by hanging of the revolutionaries who took part in the assassination of Tsar Alexander II.
17 April, 1912: Massacre of goldfield workers on the Lena River.
Klim dipped his pen into the inkwell and wrote beneath: “Nina is dead too.”
He sat for some time looking at the damp violet letters. It was hot from the light of the electric lamp.
He noticed that his fingernails still bore the traces of dried blood from the man who had tried to kidnap Kitty. In his haste, Klim had not even had time to wash his hands properly.
Disgusted at the sight, he tried to wipe away the blood with blotting paper but soon gave up. What difference did it make anyway?
He remembered how Galina’s kisses had smelled horribly of tobacco and some sort of medicine. She was no more than a dismal substitute, and what had happened between them had been a desperate attempt to burn his bridges and show himself that he had put the past behind him.
But Galina would not be disloyal to him, he felt sure. Or was it a mistake on his part to trust her? After all, she had already reported on him to the OGPU, and disloyalty was her professional duty.
The front door creaked open.
“Why aren’t you in bed, sir?” he heard Kapitolina’s voice. “Are you still working?”
She put her head around the door and looked with quizzical merriment at Klim. “Happy Christmas! I made you a new towel.”
She ran back to her room and came back with a hand towel and a pair of mittens. “This is for you, and these are for Kitty. If I had any more yarn, I’d have made some for Tata too. Galina says the poor little one hasn’t any mittens, and that’s why her nose is always running.”
Klim gave Kapitolina two rubles and then added another so she could buy some yarn and make Tata a pair of mittens.
“Oh, sir, you’re too kind!” Kapitolina exclaimed. “You’ve made our day—all of us girls, I mean!”
She unwound her shawl, wrapped the money in it, and hid it beneath her shirt.
“I’ll go to a witch and ask her for a love charm so as I can find me a husband,” she said, blushing. “The best thing would be to get a worker from the state catering department or the member of some factory committee. I’ve got my eye on a soldier too—one of the guards at the Lenin Mausoleum. I’ve been twice now to stand in the queue and get a peek at him. Such a job he has, standing stock still all day and making sure nobody runs off with the body of our leader!”
“Don’t tell me you believe in witches?” asked Klim.
Kapitolina put her hands on her hips. “There are some very powerful witches out there, you know! They can cast all sorts of spells.”
She looked around the room for a fitting example and saw a book of fairy tales lying on the carpet. On the cover was a picture of Snow White sleeping in her coffin.
“You see what a spell can do?” said Kapitolina.
Klim gave a grim laugh. That was a good comparison. His Nina, the Nina he had once known, had tasted the forbidden fruit, and her true self had died. She was still breathing, her heart was still beating, but there was nothing left of his wife but an empty shell.
That night, Klim could not get to sleep. He kept remembering Nina standing next to her new husband, clear-eyed, gorgeous, and unattainable. He remembered how she had pounded with her palm on the window of the taxi, wanting, for some reason, to explain something to Klim.