Ya’ara stood up and approached Katrina. She reached out and embraced her warmly. Katrina rested her head on Ya’ara’s shoulder, allowing her arms to hang at her sides and losing herself in the touch and lemony fragrance that enveloped the young woman. Ya’ara tightened her embrace for a moment, feeling the bones of Katrina’s slender shoulders. She lifted Katrina’s head and kissed her closed eyes.
Aslan was outside, standing on the edges of the thick vegetation in front of Katrina’s home, his person blending with the shadows and broken branches. His head was covered with a gray fur hat he had bought in Moscow, and his eyes watered from the cold.
34
It was only seven in the evening, or so said the clock in the small living room, but it had been dark for quite some time already. Katrina washed her face with ice-cold water and felt a little more refreshed. She glanced outside, through the living room window, and couldn’t see a thing. It was pitch black out, with mounds of dirty snow painting murky white stains in the sea of dark ink that surrounded the house. A reflection of the reading lamp appeared in the window, as did the figure of Ya’ara, who emerged stretching from the study where she had been resting. Katrina grabbed hold of the thick curtain and closed it completely. She went over to the radiator and turned the dial. “I’m turning up the heat a little. It’s cozy under the comforter, but the cold gets into my bones like this,” she said, tightening her shawl around her. “Come, sweet child, let’s sit in the kitchen.”
They sat on either side of a small table that was covered with a red cloth. Alongside the steaming cups of tea stood a squat jar filled with black cherry jam. “Have a little. Taste some. Jams I’m good at. It’s excellent.” Their fingertips met in the center of the table, and Katrina suddenly clasped her two hands around Ya’ara’s one.
“I want to tell you something. It’s important for me to tell you, because I couldn’t tell Igor the truth. And the lie, the lie”—her throat tightened for a moment—“it weighed heavy on all we shared, our true love, our destitute love.”
Ya’ara looked into Katrina’s face and whispered almost inaudibly: “I’m listening.”
“I fell in love with your father, Galinka, out of the blue, in an instant. Without intending to. He wasn’t a strikingly handsome or tall man with a particularly impressive physical presence. But you know that naturally. A thin man, not very tall, modest and gentle. After you got to know him you learned of course that he had the eyes of an artist, and a beautiful soul and enthralling passion, too. Perhaps I shouldn’t be saying such things to his daughter, but we don’t have time for niceties. When I first saw him at the museum, I could see the way in which he was conversing, talking without words, with the painting hanging there in front of him, a work by a Russian artist, I think, or French. Those kinds of things had never concerned me. I was at the museum only for the peace and quiet it offered. And suddenly I wanted—desperately wanted—him to speak to me just like that, too. To be able to listen to me and see me, and to be able to give me things I’d never had before in my life.
“I told your father that I was married and worked as an interpreter. That wasn’t the truth. I do indeed earn a living today as a translator, as I’ve already told you, translating technical material. But that’s the present. Back then, I worked for the KGB. I’d been a part of the organization for almost twenty years already when I met your father. I was recruited at a very young age, immediately after I graduated from university. I studied foreign languages and literature. I was very beautiful back then, and adventurous, and I loved my country. Still today, here in this remote location, and maybe even because I’m here in the middle of nowhere, I love Russia. I was assigned to the First Chief Directorate, which was responsible for KGB operations abroad. I was a dedicated and loyal field operative. We worked hard. The things I did! But that’s not what I want to talk about. I was never married. The opportunity never arose, and perhaps I never met the right man. Work always came first anyway. And second and third.” A small glint appeared in Katrina’s eyes. A tired smile. “But I fell pregnant. The result of a brief and whirlwind relationship with a handsome military officer, ten years older than me. He was in the fast lane. And married, of course. He got a slap on the wrist when the story emerged, a letter of reprimand in his file, his promotion put on hold for two years, but he was talented, and well connected, and they didn’t want to ruin his career. And me, stubborn me, I rejected the warm offer of those who knew about the affair, to have an abortion and move on. Having an abortion in Russia at the time wasn’t a problem, and I don’t think things have changed. A woman in Russia has say over her own body, and she and no one else decides what she does with it. She, and sometimes the party. They didn’t make things difficult for me, they just wanted the mishap to be resolved quickly. I went on leave for a few months, moved in with my mother, had the baby, and we raised Natalya together, my sweet mother and I. And after four months, my mother continued to take care of my beautiful baby and I went back to work. I used to spend weeks at a time outside the Soviet Union, one trip after another, operation after operation after operation.
“One day, toward the end of the 1980s, just a few months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, I was summoned to a special meeting. I reported to the offices of the directorate’s Tactical Planning Division. I learned later that the division was responsible for special, highly classified undercover operations. The division wasn’t even based there. It was a cover office of sorts inside the Lubyanka headquarters. I got there and a young man immediately asked me to accompany him. We went down to the underground parking garage and left from there in an unmarked car for a different facility, in southern Moscow. Oh, Galina, I don’t even know if any of this interests you, but at my age—who’s left for me to talk to? Anyway, we arrived at an industrial building in an area of garages and workshops. That’s where I met the colonel. His name isn’t important just now. He was dressed, of course, in civilian clothing, and told me after politely introducing himself that from that moment onward I belonged to them. I was a part of them and was now working with them. He told me I’d been drafted into the division responsible for handling a small and particularly classified group of spies working for the Soviet Union in key locations around the world. Top-level agents, he termed them. A special committee headed by the commander of the directorate himself decided which agents were transferred to the division. My job would be to provide cover, security, and operational assistance to the agents’ handlers. Every case is a unique case, he said, and my role would be determined in keeping with the special requirements of each operation. And that’s how I met your father.”
“I don’t understand,” Ya’ara whispered. “Are you saying my father was a top-level KGB agent?”
“No, no, don’t be crazy! Your father an agent? Are you serious? What would he have filed reports about, the deliberations of the Bat Yam Artists Association? Don’t get me wrong, my dear. Your father was an innocent and honest man. He was an artist. Period. You knew him better than I did, after all, even though you don’t look like him at all. Anyway, my work took me, among other places, to Israel, too, and so, only because I was in your country on a mission that had nothing at all to do with Igor, only because of that did fate bring us together.