Boy on the Bridge (10 page)

S
he opened her eyes and found herself on the bed, on top of the blanket, in his arms. The radiator hissed. Her feet were cold. She didn’t know how much time had passed, but the room was dark. Daylight had fled and blue night pressed against the bedroom window. Outside, a dog howled and a tram clanked by on the way to its last stop.

“Hey — what time is it?” Laura lifted her head and glanced around for a clock. Alyosha checked the alarm clock beside the bed and frowned. “Oh no.” She sat up. It was almost midnight. “I missed the last train, didn’t I?” She spoke in Russian. It was automatic now.

“You’ll never make it in time.” Alyosha nuzzled her neck. “So why not spend the night here?”

“I’ll get in trouble. You don’t understand. My roommate Nina —”

“I know, she’s one of those Ninels, little female Lenins. But what choice do you have?”

“Can I get a taxi or a car or something?”

“Not all the way out here. I’m so sorry, my Laura, my little fish. I’m afraid you are stuck. No use worrying about it.” He brushed the hair off her forehead.

“But what if they kick me out of the program and send me home?”

“No one will know you are missing unless your roommate tells on you, right?”

“Right. But she’s” — here her Russian failed her and she couldn’t help slipping into English — “a total narc.”

“What is
narc
?” As far as Alyosha was concerned, the time for English was over. He stuck to Russian.

“A tattletale.”

“I know she seems like a slave to the system,” Alyosha said. “But deep down she knows the system she defends is not real. She’s just pretending.”

“She seems pretty sincere to me.”

“She’s pretending
very hard
. We’re all pretending. ‘We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.’ ”

Laura had heard that old joke before.

“You never know. Perhaps Ninel likes you. Perhaps she won’t turn you in. She just wants you to think that she will.”

“Or maybe she’s waiting for just the right moment….”

Her back stiffened as she imagined the consequences of not
showing up for the night. But as he kissed her neck and ran a finger down her spine, she gradually relaxed until she found herself lying back on the bed, resigned to her fate.

“
Rebyonok
…”

“What does that mean?”

“ ‘My little fish.’ I don’t know why, you seem like a pretty little fish to me. I could call you
kitten
or
little bird
or
tiny tiger
, but…” He studied her face, running a finger along her cheekbone. “I don’t know why, but
little fish
just came to my lips. Maybe because your eyes are blue-gray like the sea.”

She liked it, this Russian business of endearments and nicknames. “What should I call you?”

“Wait and see. Perhaps something will come to you.” He leaned down to kiss her, and she thought of a tiger.

“I’m not sleepy,” she said.

“Then let’s get up.”

He fixed them tea and sandwiches. They played all his Neil Young records late into the night. Laura explained the lyrics that Alyosha didn’t understand, though she didn’t understand all of them herself.

They finally got tired at three in the morning. He turned out the light and they lay in the darkness. Laura felt calm and relaxed. Nina and the dorm had vanished from her thoughts. Alyosha’s eyes reflected the streetlight outside. They stared at the ceiling.

“Tell me a story,” she said in Russian.

“Hmm … Okay.” He turned on his side to face her, his arm draped over her ribs. “This is a story my mama used to tell me when I was little. Every Russian child knows it. It’s an old folktale called ‘The Fisherman and the Little Golden Fish.’ ”

Laura snuggled closer. It was warm under the covers but chilly outside. The tip of her nose felt cold. She warmed it against his shoulder.

“Once, a long time ago, there lived a poor old fisherman and his wife. They lived in a little tumbledown shack by the sea. The fisherman had been having very little luck. He cast his net into the ocean and pulled up nothing but mud. He threw the net again and came up with only seaweed. At last he tossed the net in one more time. This time he caught only one fish, but it was a golden fish such as he’d never seen before.

“ ‘Put me back in the ocean, old man, and I’ll give you whatever you wish,’ the fish said. The fisherman was shocked. He’d lived by the sea all his life, but he’d never heard a fish talk before. He felt sorry as he watched the lovely fish squirm in the net, so he carefully untangled it, saying, ‘Bless you, Golden Fish, but I don’t want anything from you. Go back to your ocean realm and roam free.’ The fisherman gently put the fish back into the ocean and he swam happily away.”

A fairy tale. Laura sighed happily. Alyosha ran a finger along her forearm as he told the story.

“The fisherman went home and told his wife about the golden fish. ‘He offered to grant me whatever I wished, but how could I ask for anything? I had to let him go.’

“ ‘You fool!’ cried the wife. ‘You could have at least asked him for a new washtub. Ours is falling apart!’

“So the fisherman returned to the sea and called to the fish, ‘Little golden fish, grant me a wish….’ The fish appeared in a blink and asked, ‘What is it? What do you want?’

“The fisherman bowed. ‘Forgive me, Your Majesty Golden Fish, but my wife wants a new washtub.’

“ ‘Your wish has been granted. Go home and there you’ll find a new washtub.’

“ ‘Oh, thank you, kind fish!’ cried the fisherman as the fish swam away.

“The fisherman ran home, and behold! There was a new washtub. But his wife wasn’t happy. ‘All you asked for is a washtub, when we could have had anything? You could have at least asked him for a new cottage. Look at this ramshackle dump we live in!’ ”

Laura laughed.

“So the fisherman went back to the seashore and called to the fish:
Little golden fish, grant me a wish
…. ‘Forgive me, Your Majesty Golden Fish, but my wife won’t stop scolding me, and now she wants a new cottage.’

“ ‘It is done. Go home and see.’ ”

Laura yawned and grew sleepy as Alyosha went on, telling how the fisherman’s greedy wife kept asking for more. First she wanted a cottage, then to be a fine lady in a mansion, and then to be a
czaritsa
in a palace, and the richer and grander she became, the meaner she was to her husband — except when she wanted him to ask the Golden Fish for more.
Little golden fish, grant me a wish….

By the time Alyosha finished the story, Laura was asleep. She didn’t hear how it ended.

A
beam of sunlight lasered through a crack in the curtains. Alyosha kissed the spot where the light landed on Laura’s cheek. “Happy Day-After-Women’s-Day,” he said.

He got up to open the curtain, and the room flooded with sun. She smiled and stretched. “I’m going to be so late for class.” She wished she could stay there forever, nestled in that small apartment with Alyosha.

He got back under the covers with her. “Don’t go.”

“I have to. They take attendance. Anyway, don’t you have to work?”

“Yes, but I move from one theater to the next, and no one is ever sure where I’m supposed to be at what time,” he said. “And no one really cares, either. So I can pretty much do as I please. And what would please me right now is to make you breakfast.”

He made tea and toast with gooseberry jam. He put the jam on his toast
and
in his tea, instead of sugar. “Try it, it’s good.”

She dipped a spoonful of jam into her tea and drank it. It immediately became a sweet berry tea, the most delicious tea she’d ever tasted.

“Oh! I forgot to give you your Women’s Day gift yesterday.” He went into the other room and returned with a small package wrapped in coarse gray paper. He’d decorated the paper with flowers drawn in blue pencil.

“You didn’t have to do that.” She touched the flowers.

“You might not like it. Open it.”

Laura opened the package. Inside was a
matryoshka
, one of those nesting dolls that could be found in any Berioska Shop or souvenir stand. But this doll was not the usual smiling babushka in a head scarf. It was a close likeness of Laura. Laura as a
matryoshka
doll. Alyosha had painted her onto the doll, from her straight brown hair to her sheepskin coat and heavy rubber boots. Every detail was exactly right.

Laura opened her mouth. But she couldn’t speak.

“There’s more,” Alyosha said. “Look inside.”

She pulled off the top of the Laura doll. Nestled inside was a smaller doll, a little guy with brown eyes, brown hair, and a familiar blue parka that didn’t look warm enough for winter. She gasped. It was Alyosha.

Alyosha bounced on his toes and rubbed his hands together. “Keep going…”

She pulled off the top of the Alyosha doll and there, resting at the bottom, were two keys on a Fiat keychain.

“What is this?”

“Keys to my apartment. So you can come over anytime. And if I’m at work or out shopping, you can just wait for me to come home.”

She was stunned into silence. She didn’t know what to say.

She tried to imagine Josh knowing her face and clothes so well he could paint a perfect likeness of her onto a doll from memory. She tried to imagine him giving her the keys to his apartment, telling her to come over anytime.

All she could see were his eyes like slits, smoking a joint, not meeting her gaze.

“You trust me with the keys to your apartment?”

He laughed. “Are you planning to rob me? There’s nothing to steal!”

“No, but your —” She searched for the Russian word for
privacy
, but there wasn’t one. She let the sentence hang unfinished.

“Privacy?” he said in English.

“Yes! You read my mind.”

“I don’t need
privacy
from you.”

Maybe Olga wasn’t such a threat after all.

“Thank you.” She put the doll back together and leaned across the table for a kiss. “This is the most beautiful gift anyone has ever given me.”

And it really was.

* * *

She had an essay due for Grammar class that day. She scribbled it on the metro while she rode from Avtovo to school.

Family Traditions and Holidays in America

By Laura Reid

She didn’t have time to proofread it before she turned it in. She’d missed Translation and was five minutes late for Grammar as it was.

Karen looked up with relief as she slipped into the classroom and took the seat next to her. Galina Petrovna, their Grammar professor, didn’t look so pleased.

“Laura Reid, you missed class on Friday and now you’re late. Do you realize that your grade depends on attendance, promptness, and participation?”

“I’m sorry, Galina Petrovna. I’ll try to do better.”

“Have you done the homework?” Galina Petrovna glared at her as if she expected the answer to be no. Her expression didn’t soften when Laura tore three scribbled pages from her notebook and turned them in.

Karen wrote
We’re back in high school
in her notebook and tilted it so Laura could see.

“You lose a grade for sloppiness,” the instructor continued. “And that’s just to start.” She dropped the pages on her desk. “We’re going over the exercises on page thirty-five of the text. Continue, Maureen Binkowski.”

Binky read the lesson on verbs of motion. Karen scribbled another note.
Where the f were you all night?

Laura wrote back,
Later
.

* * *

“You lucked out.” Karen pushed a tray along the cafeteria counter, sighing at the unappetizing lunch food: a blob of gristly meat, milk soup with scraps of bread in it, and cabbage. “Nina came back from a Women’s Day party a little tipsy and passed out early. I mussed up your bed before she woke up this morning so she’d think you slept in it last night.”

“You’re the best.” Laura took a roll and a glass of milky coffee.

“Then I told her you left early for class. Like that would ever happen.” Karen reached for a coffee and looked hard at Laura’s face. “You are blissed out.”

Laura nodded at a table in the corner of the cafeteria and they sat down. “He said he loved me.”

“Alyosha?”

“Of course Alyosha.”

“And — ?”

“I think I love him too,” Laura said.

“Laura, no…”

“Why not? He’s wonderful!”

“Yeah, he’s great, but are you sure you can trust him? He’s got a huge ulterior motive.”

“It’s not like that.”

“You’re not the only one who thinks she’s in love. Some ballerina’s got Dan wrapped around her bony little finger, Clara has fallen for a dissident folk singer, and Mark Calletti, world’s biggest geek, is in love with three different girls. And some guy proposed to me on the street the other day.”

“So?”

“So, don’t you think it’s a little suspicious that we are so irresistible to Russians? That within a couple of months half the group is practically engaged? Remember what Stein and Durant told us at orientation?”

Laura hesitated. She remembered, and it wasn’t as if she hadn’t thought about this before. Many Russians were eager to leave the Soviet Union, and the easiest way out was marriage to a foreigner. She knew.

But then she remembered Alyosha on the bed, listening to her read, and then not listening to her read….

The night she’d spent with him did not feel like a lie.

“Laura?”

“Okay, it’s a little suspicious. For everybody else. Alyosha is different.”

“Laura, come on. Keep your head. You know what’s happening here.”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Laura insisted.

“It always is.”

“He hasn’t asked me to marry him —”

“— yet —”

“— and I’m not planning on marrying anyone. But how can I make friends with anyone here if I’m always suspicious of their motives?”

Karen sighed, releasing a little steam from her argument. “You can’t, I guess. But, listen — you can’t stay over at his place all night anymore. You got lucky this time, but next time Nina’s going to report you, and you don’t know what will happen then. You could get kicked out, or maybe they’ll just put somebody on your tail. They’ll find Alyosha, and he’s the one who’ll pay the price.”

A sobering thought. She imagined a man in a suit knocking on Alyosha’s door, going through all his Western treasures, his books, his records, his clothes — just having those things was enough to make him suspect — and taking him away somewhere, never to be heard from again. Like the man Alyosha saw as a boy, arrested in the Summer Garden. His life ruined.

She didn’t want to be responsible for ruining anyone’s life.

“I’ll be careful,” she promised. “From now on.”