Nights were excruciating. It was an enormous test of will to stay apart in their single bunk. But they couldn’t risk making any noise. After that first night, the musicians had settled down, and they slept sound and silent. Karen and Petr remained silent for fear of blowing their cover. But they always made up for those nights of yearning with days of romantic indulgence.
On the third day, they were almost caught. They’d found what seemed like a private corner of the baggage car. No one ever came into the baggage car, and even if they did, the young paramours’ spot was behind several stacked trunks, well hidden from view.
Confident in their privacy, perhaps too confident, they overindulged in romantic flirtation. Karen unbuttoned Petr’s shirt and stripped off his undershirt so she could feel his chest hair on her cheek and taste his nipples with her tongue. Aroused and unwilling to be outdone, Petr lifted Karen atop a stack of suitcases and lifted her skirt up over her waist so he could kiss her inner thigh. Karen closed her eyes, savoring the touch of Petr’s lips and running her fingers roughly through his hair.
Then they heard the baggage-car door slamming shut. Someone had come inside. Karen scooted off the stacked suitcases, pulling down her skirt in a panic. Petr crouched behind the barrier of trunks, holding his breath and trying to pull on his undershirt silently. They froze at the sound of high heels clicking across the metal floor. That meant the intruder could only be one person: Madame Nadia.
The clicking stopped, and Petr grabbed his shirt, fumbling with the buttons and trying to smooth down his tousled hair. By attempting to do both at once, he was accomplishing neither but was so desperate, he wasn’t thinking clearly. Karen licked her palms and brushed down his hair, letting him concentrate on finally tucking in his shirt.
With their appearances finally assembled properly, they peered out from behind the stacked trunks. They weren’t surprised to discover Madame Nadia, but they were surprised to discover a man with her. He was a portly man, with a bald patch on the top of his head, and he and Madame Nadia were acting exactly as Karen and Petr had been only moments before. The man had already pulled loose Madame Nadia’s bun so he could run his fingers through her hair, and she yanked off her steaming glasses before twisting him around and pushing him against the baggage car’s bulkhead.
“Oh, Boris,” she moaned between kisses.
“Oh, Nadia,” he moaned back.
Karen grabbed Petr’s hand and led him to the door in a crouch. With Madame Nadia so distracted, they snuck out easily. Once they were safe, they leaned against a window of the rocking train and gazed at each other.
“Oh, Boris,” Karen moaned.
“Oh, Nadia,” Petr replied.
And they both convulsed in laughter.
When they finally recovered, Karen asked, “Do you think she’s using him for his money?”
“What makes you think that?”
“He’s fat and bald. What else could she see in him?”
“She’s not exactly easy on the eyes, either,” Petr joked.
The mystery was solved that night at dinner when one of the cooks appeared to clear the leftovers. Petr recognized the cook as Boris, then noticed Boris and Madame Nadia sharing more than a few sly glances. He pointed out the spectacle to Karen, who couldn’t help but giggle.
Karen felt bad about accusing Madame Nadia of seducing Boris for his money. She’d assumed that Boris was part of the Russian delegation, a privileged politico with access to public money and expensive perks. Instead, he was a mere cook, no more privileged than Nadia herself. If it wasn’t for the money, the two must really be in love. Karen thought the whole thing was cute, and she began to think differently about her stern conductor.
Madame Nadia changed, too. Now that she was in love, she became less strict. She began to wear her hair differently, experimenting with wavy curls that draped over her shoulders. She wore her collar open, revealing the tiniest line of cleavage for the first time. She even tried not to wear her glasses, using them only when she had to identify a sign or a person far away.
But more important than her change in appearance was her change in demeanor. Once they arrived in Chelyabinsk, her youth orchestra had only a few days to rehearse. But in those few days, they improved more than they had in months. Some credit went to Karen, their new lead cellist, but it was mostly thanks to the change in Madame Nadia. That emotion she’d demanded of her students but could never force them to express now began to flow out of her while conducting, and in turn it flowed from them. Her orchestra was more a reflection of herself than she ever cared to admit. The music lacked emotion for the simple reason that Madame Nadia lacked emotion. But now that she had embraced romance and passion, those things were reflected in the music.
Their final rehearsal came on the morning before the concert. They, and Karen, sounded brilliant. They were ready.
CHAPTER 40
THE CHOIRBOY
Bobby loved Chelyabinsk’s speakeasies. Most started as tiny buds and sprouted into enormous vines, a series of adjoining apartments with their walls knocked out to provide enough space for bars, musicians, and crowds.
They were owned by collectives of factory workers supplementing their incomes with bootleg vodka. A group of ten or so workers would form the collective, giving up half their apartments to form the speakeasy, and doubling up in the remainder, sleeping on the floor. They mixed beer in the bathtubs and distilled vodka in their bedrooms.
The speakeasies were as illegal as American ones during prohibition, but not for the same reason. In Russia it was not the alcohol that was illegal, but free enterprise. The NKVD could have arrested everyone involved for participating in this black market. But the proprietors of the speakeasies didn’t care. They felt secure in their anonymity. So long as they maintained at least the facade of secrecy, they knew the NKVD didn’t really mind and wouldn’t interfere. But that facade of secrecy was important. If they were too public, it would appear that they were flaunting their illegal activities. Then they wouldn’t just be black marketers, they’d also be subversives.
Because they were secret, Bobby couldn’t have found any of the speakeasies by himself. Chelyabinsk was a boomtown, though unlike most American ones, it was planned. Wide avenues and bridges had been built to accommodate the heavy machinery required for the huge factories that gave the city the nickname Tankograd. Uniform apartment buildings, the housing units for the factory workers, lined the streets like concrete monoliths.
Yet Chelyabinsk was still a maze. So it was all the more fortunate that Bobby had Lenka and Katia as guides. The girl pilots, it turned out, were celebrities. They were welcome everywhere and treated like American movie stars. To the average Russian, an airplane was an absolute miracle, and a pilot an angel. Girl pilots, therefore, were objects of both fascination and erotic fantasy.
Bobby loved the Russian factory workers. They labored through twelve-hour shifts but didn’t go home and go to bed. Instead, they spent the next six hours in speakeasies, drinking and singing until they passed out. But there was always someone in charge of waking them up again, usually a kid about eleven or twelve years old. Armed with buckets of cold water, the kid would douse every unconscious worker, waking him or her early enough to get to work on time.