But he knew he did not have the words for that either. Or to tell them that he had waited a long time for this day, dreaming of it, when he knew in his intellect that no sane, decent man should wish for anything but peace.
He touched the Soviet greatcoat he still wore, feeling through the heavy material to the place where he had nestled the old cavalry guidon. It was still there, he reassured himself.
He did not draw it out. Instead, he began to unbutton the greatcoat, looking out at the rows of officers similarly dressed.
"Let's get out of these godforsaken rags," he told them, "and get to work."
13
"You don't have to do anything," her friend told Valya. "Just talk to them, have a drink or two. Come for the fun of it."
Valya told herself she could not go. There were countless reasons to decline the invitation. Since her visit to the clinic, she had resolved to behave as a wife should, to think only of Yuri, struggling to imagine that their lives together would improve. And she still had not recovered fully from the minor operation. The work had been carelessly done, and she still bled intermittently and often felt tired and weak. Standing in front of her students all day, forcing them to repeat in English, "I am pleased to meet you," took all of the energy she had. She barely cooked for herself, yet the table in the combination living and dining room was covered with neglected plates and cups. When she came home at the end of the day, she was even conscious that the tiny apartment had begun to smell unpleasantly, nursing a dreary odor of clotted broth and clothing left unlaundered. But she could not bring herself to raise her hand to work in earnest. In lieu of a proper cleanup, she halfheartedly shifted a few items about the room. At first Naritsky had phoned her again and again, but, slowly, he wearied of her unwillingness to give him an audience. She told herself that she must write to Yuri, while, night after night, she sat on the old green sofa, wrapped in a blanket, half-watching the television with its unkempt mixture of patriotic and sentimental programming punctuated by oddly fractured news reports from the war. She grasped that things were going very badly, and that Yuri might be in terrible danger. Yet, the recognition was merely intellectual. The small images had no real power to move her. No bombs fell in her street, and except for even greater shortages than usual in the shops, the war could not yet touch her. Absent, Yuri, too, was only an abstraction. She sat on the broken couch, staring at the livid rug hung to hide the disrepair of the opposite wall, while a songstress with mounds of chemical-soaked hair complained of the sorrows of love. Write to Yuri, she thought, I must write to Yuri. Yet, she did not write, and in her most lucid moments, she knew that she did not love the man to whom she had bound herself and that she simply feared being found out.
"I can't go, Tanya," she told her friend. "I really can't."
Tanya grimaced. She glanced instinctively at the random uncleanliness of the nearby tabletop, then forced her eyes back to her friend. But Valya was only faintly embarrassed. Things mattered less these days.
"You can't just sit here like a cabbage," Tanya said. "What in the world's gotten into you?"
"I've been thinking of Yuri," Valya half-lied. "I've treated him so badly. I haven't even written."
"Yuri can take care of himself," Tanya said. "You're being foolish. What's he done for you? What's so special about your life?" Tanya scanned the feckless clutter of the room. "They think they're so important. All puffed up in their uniforms. And look what a mess they've gotten us into. I always told you not to get involved with a soldier." This was not true. When they had begun going out together, Tanya had praised Yuri boundlessly, stressing the security of being an officer's wife, the dwindling but still considerable privileges, and even admiring Yuri's looks. Once, a two-room apartment in Moscow had seemed like a very great thing. Now the same living space felt like a prison to Valya.
"You were better off with what's-his-name," Tanya continued. "He at least had money. And he didn't mind spending it."
"Please," Valya said. "I don't want to talk about it. You don't know."
"Valya. For God's sake. You have to pull yourself together. I mean, look at this place. It's so unlike you."
But Valya knew that it was not really unlike her at all. She suspected that this was a truer reflection of her nature than imported perfume and careful makeup. But she also knew that she would, indeed, go with Tanya to the hotel. She only needed to delay the admission a little longer, not for Tanya's sake, but for her own.
"I haven't been well," Valya said.
"Oh, don't be a baby."
"I really should write to Yuri. For all I know, he's out there fighting or something."
"Don't be silly. Yuri's clever enough to take care of himself. Don't you believe all that talk about 'duty' and 'officer-this and officer-that.' Men love to talk." Tanya paused momentarily, as if she had to catch her breath at the thought of how many lies men had told her. Then she purged her expression of all mercy. "I'll bet he doesn't even think about you. He's probably sleeping with some nurse or with one of the local tramps. Those Siberian girls have no morals."
"Not Yuri " Valya said vehemently, certain of this one thing. "Yuri's not that way." It might have been better, she thought, if he had been that way.
Tanya laughed, a loud burlesque snort. You just don t understand men, my dear. They're all that way. You can't judge a man by the way he acts at home.
"Not Yuri," Valya repeated flatly.
Tanya sighed. "Well, time will tell. But why talk about Yuri? I came to talk about you. Valya, you simply must come out tonight. It's too good an opportunity to miss.
Valya tried to wrap herself in an aura of innocence, as though it were a second blanket. "I just don't think I can," she said. Then she glanced off toward the television. A man with silver hair called for a new era of self-sacrifice. A new spirit in the people was going to win the war. For a surplus moment of their lives the two women faced the television wearing the identical sober expressions that had allowed them to drift through hundreds of official meetings without hearing a word.
"What are they like?" Valya asked quietly, without looking at her friend. "I'm just curious."
"Well, first of all," Tanya said, "they know how to treat a woman properly. They're all rich, of course." Tanya thought for a moment. "Naturally, they're just the same as any other men that way. They just want to get your skirt up around your waist. But… well, if I can't be honest with you, who can I be honest with? At least they don't grunt once and roll off you."
"Tanya."
"Oh, don't act like the little innocent. I'm just saying I've never been so… so…" Tanya finally blushed at her own thoughts. In the moment of truth she could not overcome the force of the behavioral code. What you did was not of so much importance. But you had to be guarded in what you said. "They must study it at school or something," she giggled, as though a decade had been wiped away and they were both teenaged girls again.
The moment of silliness passed, and Tanya primped the line of her skirt. "But that's not why I came. I just thought you wouldn't want to miss a chance to talk to them. To practice your English. You know. You might learn some new expressions, the latest slang."
Valya looked down at the floor. That, too, badly needed cleaning. "I wouldn't know what to say to them," she told her friend. But she was already rehearsing verbal gambits in her mind.