She ran out into the dark corridor and felt her way along the walls to the other room.
“Please, open up!”
There was no reply.
Nina hammered at the door panel with all her strength. “We need to talk! Klim, open up! I won’t leave till you’ve heard what I have to say.”
“Stop making a scene!” she heard Klim snap. “It’s three o’clock in the morning.”
“You can’t hide from me forever!”
At last, the door opened, the light switch clicked, and a flood of bright light dazzled Nina for a moment.
Klim stood staring at her with icy rage. “Do you realize I have to go to work tomorrow? I didn’t ask you to come here and have a fit of hysterics.”
“But I didn’t—”
“Go to bed now, or I’ll put you out of the house! Good night.”
The door slammed again.
Nina’s head was throbbing from all the tears she had cried.
He’s just drunk, she told herself. He doesn’t want to hear anything just now. But I’ll explain. Tomorrow, I’ll tell him everything.
Nina managed to drift into a light sleep just before dawn. She dreamed that she was trying to cross a deep river in a small rowing boat full of holes. But with every stroke of the oars, the boat sank deeper in the water. She was in some silent, misty, deserted place, and she knew she would never reach the other side.
Nina woke from a loud rattling sound as if somebody had dropped something in the kitchen. Apparently, Klim was already up.
Nina sat up and gave a shudder as she caught sight of a pink shape moving in the corner of the room. It took her a moment to realize that it was only her own reflection in a large mirror on the wall. She looked a fright: her hair was tangled, and her eyes were swollen from crying. Not ideal, given that she was planning to talk about her feelings to the man she loved.
Klim was making coffee in the kitchen.
“Good morning,” Nina said and sat down on a crooked, clumsily made stool.
Klim looked at her and nodded without a word. He was not looking his best either. He was rumpled and unshaven, his clothes in creases. Apparently, he had been up all night.
“Can I help with anything?” asked Nina.
“No.”
Klim took a spoon and began skimming the froth from the coffee.
The silence was unbearable.
“Listen,” began Nina, “don’t I deserve a bit of respect, at least—”
Klim gave her such a look that she stopped mid-sentence.
“A woman who solves her problems by hopping from bed to bed can’t ask to be treated with respect,” he told her.
“Are you trying to make me suffer on purpose?”
“You’ve done a pretty good job of that yourself. In a few years, Reich will swap you for some seventeen-year-old girl, and then, for all your fine manners and fancy clothes, you’ll be tossed aside like an old shoe.”
At that moment, the coffee boiled over, flooding the stove.
“Damn it!” Klim took hold of the coffee pot, burned his fingers, and dropped it at his feet. Coffee poured out across the floor.
Nina let out a deep breath. “Listen. I came here so that—”
“No, you listen to me!” Klim turned toward her, furious and quite unrecognizable. “It just so happens that I have met somebody else. Now would you kindly stop interfering in our lives and just leave!”
Nina’s chin quivered. “All right, I’ll leave! Don’t worry—I’ll manage fine without you. And you will curse this day as long as you live!”
14. THE RIVAL
For a little while after the night of Christmas Eve, Galina was in seventh heaven, but her joyful mood soon passed. Klim did not seem at all like a man who had found the love of his life.
She was plagued by doubts. Perhaps he did not find her beautiful? Or was Tata the problem? Klim was probably reluctant to get involved with a woman who already had a child, particularly when that child was so difficult.
What had taken place that Christmas Eve was repeated several times, and Galina cursed the infertility she had once considered a blessing. If she had got pregnant, Klim would almost certainly have married her. He had told her many times that children were the most important thing in life.
She could not understand what was happening to Klim. He had become sullen, withdrawn, and sarcastic. Increasingly, he wanted to be left alone, and it was impossible to talk to him properly about anything besides work because he refused to answer any questions.
Alov was not making things any easier for Galina.
“Have you found out yet what this Nina Kupina means to Rogov?” he asked her.
Unfortunately, Galina could find out nothing from Klim, even about matters far closer to her heart than this Nina.
“You’ll be in trouble at this rate,” Alov warned her. “I could have you removed from your post. Staff reduction.”
In order to be seen useful, Galina prepared reports on all of Klim’s acquaintances: Elkin, Seibert, Magda, and others.
Alov carefully filed them away. Galina thought he looked like a praying mantis, waiting with expressionless eyes to pounce on an unsuspecting fly.
Galina delivered a package to a censor on the other side of Moscow. On the way back home, the tram broke down, and she arrived back at her apartment exhausted and chilled to the bone.
She found her room turned upside down. Tata and Kitty had been using one of her old aprons to make a toy horse, and the room was strewn with pieces of material, buttons, and tattered bast fibers for the horse’s mane and tail.
Galina hadn’t even the strength to scold them. All she wanted to do at that moment was to drink some hot tea and crawl under a warm blanket. She shivered at the thought that she would have to take Kitty home.
The telephone rang in the hall.
“Galina, it’s for you!” called one of the other tenants.
It was Klim.
“Could Kitty stay the night with you?” he asked. “Kapitolina is out of town, and I have something to do.”
“Of course,” Galina replied.
Klim had never let his daughter spend a night away from home before now. It was all very strange.
In the morning, Galina tried several times to ring Klim, but there was no answer.
“Let’s go home, Kitty,” she said, dispirited. She could not bear the thought of waiting any longer in suspense.
All the way back home, Kitty pretended she was riding on her new toy horse. She was happy. She had gone to bed without washing her face the night before, and Tata had promised to take her to the circus the next time she got free tickets at her school.
They’re just like sisters now, the two of them, thought Galina. If only Klim could be made to see sense, how happy they could all be together!
When they reached her house, Kitty climbed up onto the hillock of snow Afrikan had made for her in the yard.
“I want my horse to slide down with me!” she said.
Galina went up onto the porch and opened the front door. “Come on, Kitty, or I’m going in without you. I’ll count to five: one, two—”
At that moment, there was a clatter of boots on the stairs, and a woman in a magnificent fur coat rushed out past Galina.
Galina’s heart leaped into her mouth. That woman had been with Klim!
Galina dragged Kitty upstairs. The door to Klim’s apartment was wide open, and from inside, there came the smell of burned coffee.
Klim was in the hall, his face ashen and his eyes like a madman’s.
“What happened?” Galina gasped, but he did not even look her way.
“Daddy!” shouted Kitty, thrusting her toy horse toward him. “Look what I’ve got!”