Boy on the Bridge (4 page)

B
inky 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 once, 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.

“Have you been here before?” Alyosha asked.

“No. But it looks a lot like the dining room in the Astoria Hotel.” The Astoria also had high ceilings, gold-trimmed walls, and gleaming chandeliers, though when you looked closely the walls needed painting, the linens were worn, and the chairs a bit shabby.

“My father used to bring me and my mother here on special occasions.”

Interesting. Not just anyone could get a table at a fancy Nevsky Prospekt restaurant. Laura had heard that if you
weren’t a foreigner, a celebrity, or a Party big shot, they’d tell you the place was booked, while you stared at a roomful of empty tables.

So who was Alyosha’s father?

A man in a tuxedo, his dark hair slicked down, greeted them. He looked them up and down — Laura hadn’t dressed for a fancy restaurant, and neither had Alyosha — and asked how he could help them.

“I’m an Intourist guide,” Alyosha explained. “And this is an American tourist.”

Laura caught on right away. “Hello,” she said in English.

The host gave her a once-over again, his eyes settling on her dark blue corduroys and unfamiliar boots.

“Follow me.” He led them to a table beside a stained-glass window and left them with two menus. Laura opened hers and gasped.

“Look at all these dishes they have! Chicken Kiev! Beef Stroganoff!” Sadko also offered less familiar dishes like Cold Boiled Beef in Jelly and Herring with Boiled Potatoes. Laura had seen some of these dishes on the menu at the Russian Tea Room in New York, but since she’d arrived in Leningrad she’d only eaten in cafés where the menu featured Russian vinaigrette salad (potatoes, beets, and sauerkraut), meat and cabbage pies, and
shchi
, or cabbage soup. There seemed to be no shortage of cabbage. Alyosha nodded. A waiter arrived and Alyosha ordered a bottle of champagne.

“What are you going to have?” Laura asked.

“I’m going to ask for the stroganoff and go from there.”

She wasn’t sure what that meant. “I have to try chicken Kiev. That’s the one where you cut into the chicken breast and butter squirts out?”

The champagne arrived. The bottle had a generic label that said
Soviet Champagne
. The waiter opened it with a flourish and poured them each a glass.

“To your health.” Alyosha clinked her glass.

“To your health.” She took a sip. A little sweet, but the bubbles were pleasantly tickly.

“May I take your order?” The waiter stood in front of them with a white napkin draped over one forearm. This restaurant was like something out of an old movie, so formal and stiff.

“Do you have the beef stroganoff?” Alyosha asked.

“No. We’re out of that.”

“What about the chicken Kiev?”

“Sorry, we don’t have that today.”

“That’s a shame,” Laura said. The waiter gave her a strange glare.

“Hmm …” Alyosha scanned the menu. “Do you have any chicken dishes at all?”

“No. No chicken.”

“Beef?”

The waiter shook his head.

“Fish?”

“We have pickled herring with cream sauce.”

“Ew.” Laura made a face. The waiter’s glare intensified.

“What else do you have?”

“Potato salad, borscht, and cabbage soup.”

“And that’s all?”

“Who are you to complain?” the waiter snapped. “That should be enough for anyone.”

“Okay, okay. Bring us some borscht.” Alyosha closed the menu. The waiter stalked away.

“That’s disappointing,” Laura said.

“It’s always this way,” Alyosha said. “If they get anything good, the waiters take it for themselves.”

“At least they have this lousy champagne.” Laura took a sip. “Which I like anyway.”

Alyosha raised his glass. “How do you toast in America?”

“Cheers,” Laura replied in English.

“Cheers.”

The tables around them emptied. Lunchtime was over. The waiter returned and set two bowls of lukewarm borscht in front of them. The huge room was hushed. The chandeliers seemed to be listening in.

“Why did you do it?” Laura asked.

“Do what?”

“Shave off your mustache.”

“I don’t know. A voice inside my head told me to do it.” He crossed his eyes to indicate insanity.

She laughed. “No, really.”

He put down his spoon. It clanked loudly against the china bowl. He looked at Laura’s face with an almost quizzical expression, as if he might find the answer to a question there. “I had a reason, which I won’t tell you yet.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, a mustache always grows back.”

“That’s true.”
What could the reason be?

“I thought it might make me look … more American.” He concentrated on his soup now. “Like the Great Gatsby.”

Laura nearly spit magenta soup across the table. “What?”

“I have an American book,
The Great Gatsby
, by F. Scott Fitzgerald,” Alyosha explained. “It’s in English, and it has the face of a very handsome man on the cover. He’s blond, with a square jaw and a straight nose and no mustache or beard. He looks so American. He’s the ideal American man, I think.”

“Is it a photograph?” Laura wondered if he was thinking of Robert Redford, who’d played Gatsby in the movie. He looked nothing like Alyosha, with or without facial hair.

“Yes. At first I thought it was a photograph of Fitzgerald, but someone explained that it’s actually an American movie star.”

“Robert Redford.”

“Do you think he’s handsome?”

“Sure. He’s not my favorite, though.”

“Who is your favorite?”

Laura had to think about it a minute. “Al Pacino.”

“Al Pacino? What does he look like?”

“He looks a little bit like you. Only darker, and with a bigger nose.”

“Does he have a mustache?”

“Not right now.”

“Then I will go without one, too. For you.”

For her! So Continental and un-American. So romantic. The idea of a boy doing something just for her was so unfamiliar she couldn’t quite relax. “Don’t do it for me. Don’t do anything for me.”

“Why not? I can’t think of a better reason to do anything.” He ducked his head and went back to his soup.

She took a minute to let a fizzy feeling dissolve like champagne into her bloodstream. This boy was very charming.

“Did you like the book?
The Great Gatsby
?” she asked.

“Yes, what I read of it. I can’t read very fast in English. I have to stop and look up a lot of words in the dictionary, and some of the words aren’t in there.”

“I have the same problem in Russian. Maybe you could read the Russian translation.”

“That is very hard to find.” He tapped his spoon against the bowl.

“I’m pretty sure I saw one last week,” Laura said. “At the Berioska Shop.”

Alyosha shrugged. “I’ll bet you see a lot of things at the Berioska Shop.”

Laura felt a twinge of guilt. The Berioska was a special store for foreigners only. Along with a range of tourist souvenirs, it was stocked with luxuries that ordinary Russians could hardly imagine: the best caviar, furs, wines, meats, amber jewelry, hard-to-find books and music, fancy lacquered boxes. They didn’t accept rubles, only US dollars, German marks, French francs, British pounds, and so on. The windows were shaded and the door guarded to keep ordinary Soviet citizens out. The government didn’t want them to see the luxuries they were deprived of — but everyone knew about them anyway.