Boy on the Bridge (17 page)

I
f you look for the answers to your soul’s deepest problems, your everyday happiness will be destroyed.

This thought occurred to Laura during a discussion in her Monday afternoon Russian Literature class, so she scribbled it down in her notebook. They were reading
Oblomov
, by Ivan Goncharov, a nineteenth-century novel about a “superfluous man” who did nothing but lie on a couch all day long, eating, sleeping, and fretting about the changes imminent around him. He was paralyzed by his fear of change, and that paralysis eventually killed him.

But if examining your life led only to misery, what was the alternative? Stumbling blindly along, hurting people and being hurt without thinking, without learning how to live better?

“Laura, your problem has nothing to do with the unexamined life,” Karen said. “Or the examined life. It has to do with material reality. You have something someone else wants: a US
passport. He does what he can to try to get it. You decide whether you want to share it or not.”

Karen had not turned out to be the type of friend who resists saying “I told you so” when she is right. Laura couldn’t blame her. Now that she saw the Alyosha situation for what it really was, what it had been all along, she felt like an idiot.

Because she had been an idiot.

And she was still an idiot. Because even though she was furious, angry, humiliated, and ashamed … she still loved him.

And if she could carry a contradiction like that inside her, maybe he could, too. In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, she couldn’t quite believe that he didn’t love her. Her head repeated it like a drumbeat —
he doesn’t love me, he doesn’t love me, he doesn’t love me
— but her heart could not accept it.

When classes ended, she and Karen walked across the campus, past the
OGNEOPASNO!
wall, and through the university gates. Laura paused involuntarily — half expecting that Alyosha might be lurking nearby, waiting for her. Karen read her mind and tugged at her elbow.

“Come on,
devushka
. No moping, no hoping. Just keep walking.”

They crossed the Builders’ Bridge, where the gypsy women gathered, their babies all still babies, not one of them having gained a pound.

At the memory of that first day with Alyosha, her heart lurched and ached. She’d treasured that memory, the meet-cute story she would tell her children, and now it was a sham.

“What did you do to these poor gypsies, anyway?” Karen asked. “They won’t even look in your direction.”

“The secret password is
militsia
,” Laura said.

“Hmm.” Karen nodded as a truck loaded with clean-shaven, uniformed young militiamen rumbled by. They lounged in the back of the truck, machine guns resting casually over their shoulders. “Makes sense.”

Below the bridge, the gray waters of the Neva River flowed smoothly at last to the sea, free of ice and smelling of brine. The city sparkled in the sunlight, pastel walls and golden spires glinting like jewels. “Too bad we have to leave now that it’s finally warm,” Karen said. “In January I couldn’t wait for May, but now that it’s here —”

“I know,” Laura said. “We feel like we belong.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but yeah, sort of.”

When they reached the dorm she paused at the door, staring down the street toward the phone booth, blocks away, that she had used to call Alyosha. The man with black glasses — was that him? He looked different without his fur hat — rounded the corner with his dog, ambling in the direction of the phone booth. He stopped to let the dog pee in the gutter. He was just a dog walker, she decided. No threat to her at all.

Karen put an arm around her and led her gently inside. “You’re better off this way, and you know it.”

* * *

Before school, after school, she looked for him every day, but he was never there. Soon all she cared about was seeing him again. She was heartbroken and angry and she wanted to confront him one last time. Let him try to explain his way out of it. She would tear his explanation to shreds and then leave, finally satisfied. On Friday, she took the keys he’d given her and went to find him.

A
lyosha was usually home from work by that time, playing records and painting before dinner. She paused outside his door, took a breath, listened. The hallway was quiet, the apartment was quiet. She knocked.

Quiet.

No one came to the door. She knocked again.

The elevator clicked, hummed, rattled. She heard the car rising through the building, stopping somewhere, perhaps the floor below. The door clanked open, clanked shut.

Silence.

She took out her key and unlocked the apartment door. It swung open, bumped the coat rack with a muffled
ump
. A pale square of sunlight leaked into the hall from the bedroom window.

“Alyosha?” she called. She stepped inside.

The apartment was empty. The breakfast dishes — a tea
glass, a small plate, a knife and fork — were clean and dry in the dish drain beside the sink. The bed was neatly made as always. Everything looked fine. Surely he would be home soon. She took off her jacket and shoes and sat on the bed to wait for him.

A painting stood propped on an easel in the corner across from the bed. It was a new one; she’d never seen it before. It was a portrait of her.

She sat motionless in the silence, staring at the picture. He’d painted her in her favorite blue sweater against a bright background of heavenly blue. Light glowed behind her head, giving her a halo. She was half smiling, not happy, not sad, but confused and thoughtful.

He loved her. The love was in the picture. He’d painted love all around her, on her face, in her hair, in the shade of blue he chose, in the light that bathed her.

Her anger melted away. She didn’t care why he had asked her to marry him. She didn’t care whether his love was real or tainted by his desire to leave.

She still loved him.

She felt ashamed. Alyosha was good. She understood why he wanted to leave, and she didn’t blame him for doing anything he could to get out. She could still help him, if he let her.

She would wait for him.

My time in Russia is coming to an end
, she thought as she sat and stared in a trance.
Soon this will all be gone.
The rough wool blanket on the bed. The low tea table. The guitar in the corner, the old
folk songs. The carefully tended shelf of rock-and-roll records, the well-dusted East German stereo. The tiny plaster squares painted with exquisite scenes of Leningrad street life: stray cats; bloated babushkas sweeping rubbish in alleys; mysterious archways and doors; old men in wool caps smoking
papyrosi
; girls looking beautiful in ill-fitting clothes.
I will leave, and this will all disappear in a cloud, like a dream. This room will be a place I once saw in a dream, and perhaps will see again in a dream, but never as real and solid as this. I will go back to my world in another dimension, a parallel world where none of this is real.

She sat and waited as the evening light faded and grew fuzzy. She lay back on the bed and fell asleep.

She woke up suddenly in total darkness, except for two glowing lights in the room — the clock radio beside the bed and the green light on the stereo. It was nine fifteen.

She sat up. Alyosha had not come home.

She crossed the room to the stereo. A Neil Young record sat on the turntable. It was not like him to leave the stereo on, or even to leave a precious record out of its case.

She pushed the
OFF
button and the green light went out. She turned on the overhead light. Alyosha had not been there all day.

She had to get back to the dorm. Maybe he’d gone to Olga and Roma’s after work, for a party or something, she told herself as she put on her sneakers and coat. She tried not to worry. But something wasn’t right.

* * *

She went back the next afternoon. Everything in the apartment was just as she’d left it. The same dishes in the drain. The same record on the stereo. He hadn’t been home.

Where was he? She didn’t know what to do. She looked in the refrigerator and took out some eggs. She made eggs for herself, and tea, and spent the evening watching the light fade over the trash-strewn field outside his window. She propped one of her shoes against the door, in case someone sneaked in while she slept — she’d know the door had opened if her shoe moved. When it was completely dark, she got undressed, slid under the covers, and went to sleep.

She woke up early in the morning. No one had come in while she slept. Her shoe was propped against the door right where she’d left it.

Anxiety gnawed at her. Could he have gone to the dacha? But what about his job?

She dressed and hurried to the subway to get to the university in time for her first class. The metro was packed for the morning rush. The metro car smelled like sausage and stale breath and tobacco. Two old men stood near her in dirty work clothes, pickled in vodka. Everyone stared at her, just as they always did. She wanted to glare back, to stick out her tongue, to spit at them, to kick their fat shins. She hated them. She was so tired of being watched, of feeling strange, of smelling their stinky body odors. She was sick of their bad teeth, the fatigue on
their faces, their weary slumping and pushing and shoving. Peasants. That’s what they were. Peasants who didn’t know how to take care of themselves, who needed authoritarian father figures to tell them what to do, who worshipped order and control over everything else, who had no imagination, who wouldn’t know what to do with freedom or choice if they had it. Their leaders bossed them around, and in turn they bossed one another around, passing brutality down from stronger to weaker until the weakest could barely stand being conscious and took refuge in a fog of drink. If they had heroin here, Laura thought, this would be a land of junkies.

She ran to the Philology Department and reached her Phonetics class just as the last bell rang. Karen waited for her in the hall, worry on her face.

“What happened last night? Did you find him?”

“No.”

“So what were you doing? Nina went to Dan’s room and saw that you weren’t there. She said she’s going to report you this time. She’s probably already done it.”

“Let her. What can they do to me now? We’re leaving in a week anyway.”

Semyon Mikhailovich came out and prepared to close the classroom door. “No gossiping, girls. Let’s get ready for class.”

Karen and Laura went in and sat down with Dan and Binky.
Where do you think he is?
Karen wrote in English in Laura’s notebook. Laura just shook her head and wrote
?????

T
his happens, you know.” Dan walked back to the dorm with Karen and Laura after class. “People disappear. Sometimes they come back, shaken and cowed. And sometimes they don’t.”

“But why him?” Laura had heard plenty of scary stories about people being arrested for no apparent reason. But she still wanted a reason. “He hasn’t done anything wrong.”

But deep down she knew why he might be in trouble. He’d fraternized with foreigners. With her. And this was the answer she saw in Dan’s and Karen’s faces, too.

“I can’t leave without knowing he’s okay.”

“Go back and check on him again. Maybe he’s home by now,” Karen said.

“And what if he’s not?”

“Do you know any of his friends?” Dan asked. “Maybe they can tell you something.”

Roma and Olga — if anyone knew anything, they would.

* * *

She went to Alyosha’s first — one last time, hoping he’d be there. She let herself into the apartment without bothering to knock. “Alyosha?”

This time, things were different. Someone had been there.

The place had been ransacked. In the kitchen the cupboard doors hung open, broken dishes littering the floor. An egg dripped down the wall, among bits of shattered shell. In the bedroom, the drawers had been emptied, his clothes and paints strewn everywhere. Laura stepped over a pile of socks and underwear. The books and records were gone. The painted tiles were smashed, the canvas paintings ripped. The portrait of her stood slashed and tilted on the easel.

“Alyosha…” She sank onto a pile of papers and cried.

* * *

She went back to the center of town to find Roma and Olga. She remembered where they lived — she and Alyosha had stopped by their apartment on one of their walks. She rang their buzzer, and Roma let her in. He had just gotten home from work. Olga was starting dinner.

“Laurenka, Laurenka.” Olga kissed her on both cheeks. “Come in. You’ll stay for dinner.”

“I’m not very hungry —”

“Nonsense.” Olga set a third place at the table.

“I’m worried about Alyosha —” Laura began, but Olga stopped her, waving a scolding finger in her face and shaking her head.

“Not here,” Roma whispered. They assumed their apartment was bugged.

“It’s a nice evening,” Olga said. “Maybe you and Roma would like to have a walk before dinner.”

Roma led her outside. They walked along the Moika Canal, the narrow streets once prowled by a sleepless, tortured Dostoyevsky.

“Have you heard anything from him?” Laura asked. “Do you know what’s happened to him?”

“No. I tried to call him, and when he didn’t answer after two days, I went to see him. He didn’t answer the door. His neighbor, a cranky old woman, peeked out and glared at me with suspicion. I hoped perhaps he’d gone away somewhere with you, some romantic trip.”

“I was at his place just now,” Laura said. “Someone’s been in there. They tore it apart.”

Roma plucked at his mustache, nodding as if none of this surprised him. “You must stay away from Avtovo. They are surely watching his building to see who comes and goes, and you are not helping him by going there.”

“I didn’t realize….”

Roma muttered something she couldn’t quite hear.

“What?”

“Don’t look for him,” Roma advised. “He knows where to find you. Just wait. If he wants to contact you — if he
can
contact you — he will.”

“But the semester is almost over. We’re leaving next week.”

“Give me your address. I will write to you if I hear anything.”

“I can’t leave like that,” she insisted. “I can’t leave without seeing him again. I have to know what happened. Maybe we can still get married, if he comes back soon enough —”

Roma shook his head. “Not this time. You’ll have to come back.”

They walked in silence along the canal. Every curve in the water, every ripple, saddened her.

“Roma,” she pressed. “What do you
think
happened to him?”

Roma kept his eyes on the cobblestone street, his worn shoes, and their threadbare laces. “I think his life may be more complicated than you understand. His relationship with you, and wanting to leave, and all his black market American clothes and books and records, and his unacceptable dissident art — none of those things are in his favor. But anything could have happened. One of his neighbors might have seen you at his place too many times and accused him of colluding with foreigners. Someone might be trying to get at his father, or his father might have turned him in for some reason. One of his friends might have betrayed him, as revenge for some perceived slight. He might have been arrested for a crime he is completely innocent of. It doesn’t matter, because he doesn’t
look
innocent. He is not a member of Komsomol. He avoids all Party activities and in fact makes fun of them. He lives on the fringes of society. His
tastes are decadent: rock music, T-shirts, American books, American girls … If the authorities want to harass him, they have plenty of reasons to do it. And they don’t need a reason.”

He turned around and they headed back toward the apartment. “Are you hungry yet? Let’s have dinner. Olga’s making cutlets.”

“This is all my fault. I have to make it right somehow.”

“Laura, my dear, that is not in your power. You must do as you’re told. You have no choice. American temper tantrums will not do you any good right now. Accept your fate and his, and go home to your plush and easy life. You will forget about us soon enough.”

He stopped in front of his building and held the door open for her. She shook her head. “Thank you. Maybe another night. Tell Olga good-bye for me.”

She walked down the street and turned toward the river. Roma was wrong. She would never forget about them. She was insulted he would think so.