Boy on the Bridge

  “Okay, how about Tuesday, then?”

  “Tuesday is good.” Four days away, though.

  “Do you know Dom Knigi?” Everyone knew Dom Knigi, the House of Books. It was the biggest bookstore in Leningrad, a nineteenth-century landmark on Nevsky Prospekt topped with a bronze-and-glass globe. “Meet me in the poetry section at three thirty.”

  “All right.” She paused, waiting for him to say something more. She tried to remember what he looked like but could only see his brown eyes. A long stretch of seconds passed in silence. At last he said, “I’m glad you called, Laura. See you then.”

  “Good-bye.” She hung up the phone and stood in the narrow red booth, staring through the glass at a stray dog skulking down the street, hugging the wall of a building, tongue hanging out.

  Her heart was racing, and she wasn’t sure why. They were just meeting for coffee, meeting for language practice. What was so adventurous about that?

  She left the phone booth and, checking once more for spies and finding none, started back for the dorm. On the way, she stopped to buy a loaf of bread and a bag of strange, hard little mini-bagels. She wondered what kvass tasted like — it was made of fermented bread — but there were no women in the line, only men; grizzled, wino-type men. If she joined the line, it would surely cause some kind of stir. Maybe someday Alyosha would get some for her to taste. Someday, if they became friends.

  On Tuesday afternoon, Laura crossed the Palace Bridge over the Big Neva River, passed the Hermitage with its parking lot full of tourist buses, and made her way down Nevsky Prospekt. She’d dressed with extra care that morning, although the weather was so cold there wasn’t much choice — she pretty much had to wear corduroys, a turtleneck, boots, and a warm sweater under her coat. But she made sure to pick the black turtleneck that had no holes under the arms, and her favorite blue sweater with the buttons at the neck.

  The streets bustled with shoppers, mostly women in bulky coats and children leaving school, the girls’ hair braided and tied with oversized white bows. She passed the Aeroflot office, glamorous in a sleek, space-age, 1960s-stewardess way, like the Pan Am building in New York. She crossed intricate iron bridges over winding canals, thinking about Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who once paced these very streets, tortured by thoughts of good and evil, holiness and sin.

  The giant globe on top of Dom Knigi gleamed, a beacon over the Griboyedov Canal. The bookstore ruled its corner of Nevsky Prospekt like an Art Nouveau duchess, guarded by a bronze eagle and crowned with a glass-and-bronze tower that lit up at night. Two bronze nymphs hoisted a globe on top of the tower like a cherry. Laura pushed through the door and wandered the aisles of books until she found the poetry section. Alyosha leaned against a shelf, absorbed in a volume of Vladimir Mayakovsky: A Cloud in Trousers.

  He sensed her, though. When she appeared, he looked up from his book with genuine pleasure — pleased to see her, pleased with life.

  “You came!” he whispered in Russian. “I wasn’t sure.” He leaned forward and kissed her on both cheeks. “Zdravstvuitye, Laura.”

  “Zdravstvuitye.” The kiss startled her. His cheek was smooth but the mustache tickled. “What are you reading?”

  He chose a line from the open book. “ ‘If you wish, I shall grow irreproachably tender: not a man, but a cloud in trousers!’ ”

  She laughed at the image of a man so transformed by love that he became as delicate and wispy as a cloud.

  “Want some coffee? Let’s go.” He replaced the book and led her outside. They walked up the street to a busy café. She followed him to the cashier, where he paid for two coffees and a roll and took the receipt to a steamy counter where women in stained white aprons sloshed milky coffee out of large vats and into glasses.

  There were no tables, so they took their coffees to a counter by the fogged-up window. He set the roll in front of her. “For you.”

  “Thank you.” The roll was warm and sweet.

  “How do you like our beautiful city?”

  “It’s very cold,” Laura said. “But it is beautiful. Like a big frozen cake.” She decided not to mention how grimy and depressing she found it. That would be rude.

  “Maybe I could take you on a tour. You’ve been to the Hermitage by now, I guess?”

  She nodded. “But I plan to go again, lots of times. I love the Leonardos.”

  “And have you been to the Russian Museum?”

  “The icons. Yes.”

  “St. Isaac’s Cathedral?”

  “Very impressive.”

  “The Fortress of Peter and Paul?”

  “Yes.”

  “Here’s one place I think you haven’t been: the Museum of Hygiene. Have you been to the Museum of Hygiene?”

  She laughed. “No.”

  “They have a wonderful exhibit on the physical consequences of bad habits like smoking,” he said. “Disgusting! And they have Pavlov’s dog — the original! Stuffed.”

  “I’d like to see that.”

  “I don’t know…. The anatomy displays might be too gruesome for you. Next time we meet, I’ll take you to the Museum of Religion and Atheism.”

  “Um, okay.” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Why was he acting so stiff and tour-guidey? This wasn’t what she wanted at all. She got enough of that cultural-exchange stuff at the university. Everyone she met hid behind an official happy face: See our historical wonders, let’s have a cultural exchange, the youth of the world must find common ground, blah blah blah …

  The café was steamy. She unbuttoned her coat. She didn’t really know anything about this boy, so she decided to start with the basics — which suited her vocabulary.

  “Are you a student?” she asked.

  “No, I’m an artist. A painter.”

  “Oh.” The blunt tips of his long fingers tapped the glass of coffee — they looked like an artist’s hands. One nail was smudged with a chip of bright blue. Under his coat he wore a V-neck sweater and an orange T-shirt.

  “I paint signs for movie theaters. The names of the movies, the times they are playing, maybe a scene from a film. That’s my job. Very boring.”

  “It doesn’t sound too bad. You should try working at McDonald’s.”

  “McDonald’s?”

  “It’s a restaurant.” She tried to translate fast food and chain into Russian but he looked blank. “They sell hamburgers.”

  “It’s good to work in a restaurant,” he said. “You have access to all that food.”

  “Um … yeah.” She wondered if anyone ever took a job at McDonald’s because they wanted to eat more of it.

  They sipped their coffees and watched the fur hats bob past the steamy glass window. The silence grew, a barrier between them. Finally, Laura said, “We are supposed to be practicing speaking, but we are not saying much.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not good at this. All I can think of are the English dialogues we learned in school.” He switched into stilted English: “ ‘Good afternoon. My name is Mr. Smith. I would like to buy a train ticket to Boston City, please.’ ‘Yes, Mr. Smith. One-way ticket to Boston City. Pay me two dollars, please.’ ”

  Laura laughed. “Boston City! Where’s that?”

  “In the Republic of New England, of course. Don’t you know your American geography?” He didn’t smile, but his eyes sparkled just a little, so that she couldn’t tell if he was teasing her or not.

  “Why don’t you teach me some Russian vocabulary?” she suggested. “For example … what’s that?” She pointed to her glass.

  “Shchenok,” Alyosha said.

  She squinted skeptically at him. She was pretty sure he’d just said puppy, not glass or coffee or anything close.

  “Okay … what’s this?” She held up her glove.

  “Flower,” he replied in Russian.

  “It’s not a flower,” she said.

  “Which one of us is the native speaker here?” he asked.

  “You are, but —”

  “It??
?s an idiom,” he insisted.

  “If you say so.” She pointed to her right eye, which she was absolutely sure she knew the word for. “What do you call this?”

  “A star,” he said.

  “Now I know you’re teasing me,” she said. “It’s my eye.”

  “To you it may be just an eye. To me it is a beam of light from galaxies away.”

  She stared at him, taken aback. She didn’t know whether to feel flattered or foolish. “Is that from a poem?”

  He only smiled mysteriously. Then he looked at their empty glasses and asked, “Want to take a walk?”

  They left the café and pressed up along Nevsky against a stiff wind. Alyosha pointed out landmarks: the Museum of Religion and Atheism, the Stroganov Palace, the Barricade Cinema, the Moika Canal, the yellow Admiralty building with its pointed golden spire. They passed an old school where flowers had been laid at the gate. Painted on the wall was a pale blue rectangle with the Russian words for Citizens! In the event of artillery fire, this side of the street is the most DANGEROUS! Next to that was a marble plaque: This notice has been preserved to commemorate the heroism and courage of Leningrad’s citizens during the 900-day blockade of 1941–1943.

  “The Great Patriotic War,” Alyosha said. “To the rest of the world, it ended forty years ago, but here we still live with it every day.”

  Laura knew that over twenty million Soviet people died during World War II, and as many as two million died — from disease, hunger, or bombs — during the German siege of Leningrad. “I can feel it. The sadness, I mean. All over the city.”

  “Of course you can. Russians hate to let go of suffering. They will hang on to it forever if they can.”

  He scowled, and she knew he was angry about something, but she wasn’t sure what. She had a feeling they weren’t talking about World War II anymore.

  That was okay with her. What she really wanted to talk about was the day. The walk. The two of them.

  It was dark out now, and the wind off the river chafed their faces. Alyosha stopped for a moment to look at her. She waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. Her eyes watered from the cold. He lifted her woolen scarf and pulled it up over her chin to warm her.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He smiled a wry, off-center grin that held a hint of sadness in its playfulness. Something twinged inside her, like the snapping of a wishbone.

  They walked a little farther until they reached the Palace Bridge. Had something happened between them just then? She felt it, but couldn’t articulate it, even in her own mind. Every few steps she stole a glance at his face. She could swear she saw him wrestling with the same questions in his mind.

  Or maybe she imagined it. Probably. That would be like her.

  At the bridge, he said, “I’ll leave you here.”

  “You go your way and I’ll go mine,” Laura replied, keeping her tone light.

  He took both her gloved hands in his and kissed her stinging cheeks. “Will you call me again?”

  “Yes.” Yes, yes, for sure, yes.

  “Good-bye.”

  She crossed the bridge, while he turned back and walked down Nevsky to the metro, his head ducked against the sharp wind.

  Binky Binkowsky, the yellow-haired girl with the moon boots, had mentioned something about a five-day rule. First, she said, you should never call a guy, but always wait for him to call. But Alyosha couldn’t call the dorm, so Laura asked, “What if you have to call him for some reason?”

  “Then wait at least five days from the last time you talked to him or saw him,” Binky pronounced. “Unless it’s an emergency.”

  “Let me ask you something, Binky,” Karen said. “How many guys have you dated?”

  “Not very many.” She pressed on her oversized pink glasses. “Okay, none. But when I find the right guy, I will know exactly how to handle him.”

  Karen nodded, but later she said to Laura, “I wouldn’t take love advice from a person named Binky.”

  There was another reason to be cautious. The Americans had been warned during orientation, before they’d even arrived in Leningrad, to beware of falling in love. For most Russians, there was only one way to leave the Soviet Union, and that was to marry a foreigner. Some of them would do anything, say anything, to get to the West, especially America. “Be on guard!” her chaperones had told them. “Don’t fall for it.”

  Nevertheless, two days after her first coffee with Alyosha, Laura found her feet moving down the street by themselves toward the faraway phone booth, a two-kopek coin burning in her hand. The paper with his number on it was smudged, as if she’d worn out the ink just by looking at it too much.

  She dialed the number. No answer.

  Laura cursed the Soviets and their lack of answering machines.

  She waited a few minutes. Maybe he was in the shower. Maybe he was just about to walk in the door. She stepped outside the phone booth and looked around. The street was quiet, but a man in a fur hat and black-rimmed glasses loitered on the corner. Was he watching her? No, he had a dog with him, on a leash. Just out walking his dog. Probably. Unless it was a front. Dog-walking would be the perfect spy front. Maybe she should try another phone booth.

  She crossed the street and walked even farther from the dorm. Two blocks later she found another phone booth. She glanced back. No sign of the man with the glasses.

  She stepped inside and dialed Alyosha again. Still no answer. She’d just have to wait another day.

  Maybe this is a good thing, she told herself. Maybe the universe is protecting me from my own worst instincts. If Binky’s right, I’ll seem overeager.

  No. There was no way Binky could be right.

  I’ll just try him one more time. One more time. Then I’ll go back and do my Translation homework.

  She slipped the coin into the slot and dialed. Ring … ring … ring … “Allo?”

  She was so startled she couldn’t speak for a second. The words caught in her throat.

  “Allo?”

  “Alyosha? It’s me, Laura.”

  “Laura! I’m so happy you called. I was just thinking about you. I went to the market and they had some very pretty blue flowers — Imagine! A miracle! — and they made me think of you. So I bought them, thinking, Laura would like these, even though I have no idea if you even like flowers —”

  “— I do —”

  “Of course you do! Who doesn’t like flowers? I’m going to put them on my kitchen table. They’re for you, even if you never see them.”

  “Thank you.”

  “When can I see you again?”

  Her heart was pounding. She wasn’t sure why. She just knew that she couldn’t wait to see him again. “Tomorrow?”

  “Yes. Perfect. I’ll meet you in the same place in Dom Knigi.”

  “Three o’clock.”

  “See you then. Good-bye, Laura.”

  “Good-bye.”

  She hung up the phone and stood in the protective cocoon of the booth for a few minutes, trying to catch her breath. His voice, those Russian words, the way he pronounced her name — Laoora, oo, oo — did something strange to her.

  She emerged from the booth. The man with the glasses and the dog turned the corner. He didn’t follow her.

  She went back to the dorm, taking the same streets she’d walked on the way to the phone booth. But somehow those very streets looked different now, as if they were part of a movie set and the director had changed the lighting. The piles of snow, which had been dirty and dingy before, now glittered like sequins. The cranky citizens trudging from chore to chore had transformed into jolly shoppers on their way to warm homes to make dinner. The mangy stray cats skittering down an alley became gleaming, graceful wild animals in an urban jungle. Laura whistled a song, “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” without giving much thought to the meaning of the words.

  * * *

  The next day, after Phonetics class, with Pushkin’s words still rolling around in her mouth (“I loved you o
nce, in silence and despair …”), Laura hurried away from the university toward the Palace Bridge. She crossed the river and walked down Nevsky Prospekt, the globe atop Dom Knigi fixed in her sights. She tried to imagine Josh saying — or thinking — or even reading aloud — lovely words like Pushkin’s. I loved you, though, with love so deep and rare … There was no way. He couldn’t say something that pure without an ironic smirk, without making fun of it. Maybe no one could, anymore. After all, Aleksandr Pushkin wrote that poem in the 1820s. People were different then. Love was different then. Maybe it meant more.

  Even that sad thought couldn’t weigh her down, because she was on her way to a tryst. A secret, possibly dangerous, romantic meeting. That’s what she told herself, whether it was true or not. She thought of Alyosha’s fine, boyish face and the incongruous brushy mustache pasted on it like a costume for a school play, and smiled. A spy meeting, that’s what it was. Two spies from different worlds, comparing notes, working to undermine the authorities …

  She pushed through the doors of the bookstore and wove her way to the poetry section. Alyosha grinned at her. But something was wrong. Something was missing.

  The mustache!

  “I shaved it off. What do you think?”

  He offered his bare upper lip for her inspection. She could see the bones of his face better. He looked younger, even younger than he was, but definitely more handsome.

  “I like it.”

  “Good.” He kissed her cheeks again, then took her hand. Her face flushed with surprise. “Let’s get out of here.” He led her out of the store and to Brodsky Street, where a neon sign blinked Sadko. “Today’s lesson: speaking about food.”

  He gripped her gloved hand in his ungloved one. She longed to pull off her glove, in spite of the cold, and let him hold her bare hand.

  He led her inside the restaurant to a large room lit by red crystal chandeliers, the high-vaulted ceilings decorated with painted-on flower garlands, the tall windows curtained with heavy red drapes. The patrons, well-groomed and expensively dressed in business suits and silky dresses, murmured in Russian, French, and German. The parquet pattern in the wooden floor was cracked in places. Laura smelled onions and browning butter.