Wrong Country

PART IV, CHAPTER 2

FALLING in LOVE

I

No one took anything away-

I am delighted that we are apart!

I kiss you across the hundreds of

Divided us miles,

I kiss you across the hundreds of

Divided us years.

Marina Tsvetaeva

Leningrad, Liteiny Prospect, Big House- Administration building of the KGB, now- FSB.

It all had begun as a game, or more precisely, as a one-act play. The stage for this one-act play happened to be my 23rd birthday party. The party was a present from my new boyfriend, who, getting rid of his mother on that occasion, held the party in their apartment with wine, food, and music- all on his own. Mine was only an invitation to my guests. We were still on polite “you”; we parted without the close “thou” after this unforgettable party, for good. I do not even remember his name.

It was supposed to be a small party. I invited only two girls, but suddenly I saw two of them with unknown men. Party crushers, but one of them — with a guitar! It always happened at our students’ parties.

My party was progressing rather well. I felt unusually alive and in high spirits in my old ‘Natasha Rostova’ chiffon pink dress. I couldn’t imagine why I chose this dress. I never wore it after my school graduation seven years ago, but strangely, I brought it to the University dorm. I stopped before a mirror in a hall to freshen my hair. I didn’t squirm when I heard from one new guest his trivial: “Venus is at her Toilet.” But it was in bad taste.

With his charmingly boyish, shy smile, the tall, lanky man, the other new guest, invites me to dance. Sasha (his name) holds me in his hands carefully, tenderly; we dance, and as he brings me closer to him, he blurts, I think I love you. I smile ironically but embarrassingly, and we continue our dance. Another bad taste?

After the dance, he stops the party by offering me his present: he plays guitar and sings “Les Feuilles Mortes” in beautiful French. (Was it Paul Verlaine’s poem?) At that time, Ives Montagne made this song popular in Russia and —my favorite. Not even thinking about the beginning of our affair, just listening to this song, I could already sense the ending of it: the cold autumn evening, the empty city streets, and the strong wind carrying away the falling leaves. And I am alone. So much beauty and so much sadness… But I enjoy the lovely singing of my new guest and scarcely think of the second or even third act of a play.

The following morning, Sunday, our dorm. Knock at the door. I am still in bed. One of the girls opens the door. I look at the entrance: Sasha. I am surprised and not ready to see him. He has to wait in a corridor while I am doing my morning grooming. Not a very pleasant picture of a young woman with a sleepy, unwashed face in a dressing gown running back and forth between her room and the washing room. But he waits. We are spending most of the day together. The next day, Monday, at the University, my girlfriend tells me about their taxi ride back to their dorm with Sasha, and Sasha tells everybody, including his girlfriend, with whom he came to my party, that he is in love. And everybody understands, not her, but me, the birthday girl.

Next Sunday, late afternoon, he comes with his friend Felix and a guitar. Luckily, none of the girls are at home, and I have a wonderful evening with their concert of Russian romances. The best one, “Glow, glow, my star,” I hear for the first time, and it becomes my favorite to the end of my days, I imagine. I love their singing together. Sasha’s soft baritone and Felix’s tenor interlace or merge heavenly. I am sitting on my bed in my favorite style, my legs curl under my behind, my chin leans on my fists, I am listening to them, and I am on the seven skies.

Gradually, I learn that Sasha is the father of a three-year-old son and is in the process of a divorce. He still lives with his wife and her parents’ apartment on Nevsky Prospect. It means he cannot bring any woman there, and we are doomed to stay on the streets, drinking one cup too many black coffees in cafes. This is our fate. We survive on hot coffee during cold November, seeing each other often. (I am surprised how we stayed healthy, swallowing up so much black coffee every day and night, especially me, during exams. I, perhaps, can compare myself with the other famous coffee drinker, Honoré de Balzac, who died as if of the complications of countless cups of strong black coffee.)

I know nothing about Sasha’s work. And I am surprised by his excellent knowledge of French. Where did he study French? Does he use it at work? Where does he work? He is so artistic- he sings to me, and recites French poetry by heart, knowing it so well. During our walks, he reads me Charles Baudelaire’s “Les Fleurs du Mal” by heart.

Once, on Neva’s embankment, close to the University and my dorm, he stops me, babbling: “Perhaps, we should marry.” I do not answer, as I didn’t answer his strange declaration of love. I smile back, and he does not continue. I am beginning to grasp that he is between Scylla and Charybdis, looking for a way out, but he does not know how or with whom.

I don’t think he is really in love with me; he may be looking for some help from me, not precisely from me, but through me- from my father (?). He, evidently, knows from my friends that my father is a writer and is working on a novel about English spies in the Baltic with Yuri Sturitis, Riga’s KGB.

His friend Felix, a journalism student, lives in the same dormitory as my girlfriends. He talks with them about me. Maybe Sasha plays up to me and - successfully because I am falling in love with this charming, elusive, needy, I feel it, man.

Cold November changed into freezing December; our meetings became rare. They depend only on Sasha's wish and his spare time. Meantime, the less I see him, the more I would like to see him. We do not have the dates, as regular couples do. We are not a couple at all. He can come suddenly to my dorm in the evening or on Sunday afternoons. I always have to keep it in mind. My life depends on those rendezvous now.

During one of his ‘raids,’ he tells me he has a key to his friend’s apartment, and we go there. I am becoming nervous. I suspect sex. I don’t feel ready for sex. Even with him, I am in love. Our trip to this room is short because a street on the Petersburg side, close to our dorm. We reach the street. He finds a building, then an apartment. We enter a room. I see a bed. We undress. We have sex- I have no desire for it. “It’s too much labor,” I say to Sasha when it’s over. That is how I consider sex in my 23 years of life. Now it’s not Sasha’s wish to answer me.

One of the other Sundays, we go to the House of Writers for Fyodor Abramov’s readings. He is a well-known ‘village’ writer and the husband of my Modern Literature professor. After reading, we feel hungry; it’s time for dinner, and we count our money, but it’s not even near enough to pay for the House restaurant. We leave the House; Sasha leads me to Liteiny Prospekt, two blocks from the Writers’ House.

He stops across the Bolshoi Dom-Big House, the KGB building, well known to everybody in Leningrad. He says, “Wait for me here. I will be back in five minutes”. He crosses the street, opens a building door, and enters it. In three minutes, I see one window on the corner of the fifth floor is lit by electricity. The rest of the building is dark because of Sunday. In two minutes, this window will be dark as well. Then I see Sasha coming out of the building. He smiles. We are going to a restaurant for our dinner.

Now, I know where Sasha works. K. G. B.-- Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti-Committee of State Security. Sounds serious. But what do I know of this organization? Almost nothing at the time. Besides the enormously popular spy novels of Yulian Semionov and many movies of the Great Patriotic War. Soviet spies amaze us as the invincible heroes of our country. In films, they all speak fluent German, so they are unrecognizable as Russians; they penetrate the enemy’s military headquarters, crack all the enemy’s secrets, and sometimes lose their lives defending our Motherland. I do not read this kind of literature or watch this kind of movie, but I know some legends about Soviet spies from my childhood. In formal language, we do not use ‘spies.’ They are called counterintelligence officers. Is Sasha one of them?

I try to create a clearer picture of Sasha for myself. First, he shows me a KGB building; later, he even gives me his office phone number, but he never talks about his work or the KGB. What is he doing at his office? Sometimes, when I call him during his working hours, he does not answer. What is the meaning of it? Where does he go? To spy on somebody? Why? I get no answers. I call, actually, quite seldom.

His friend Felix, whom we considered a Journalistic student, disappeared after one semester of living in the student dormitory, leaving his girlfriend pregnant; my girls told me this sad story. The poor girl tried to commit suicide but was saved, had an abortion, and spent two months at the psychiatric hospital. When I told Sasha of his friend’s irresponsibility, he answered, “Felix is out of the country.” That is that. Thus, Felix was never a student: he was spying on some international students. We have many of them in our dorms. So, the KGB sent him to live in the same room with a foreign guy; I am curious, who was that student?

KGB would never send Sasha out of the country with any assignment. And the blame for it –his divorce. Of course, he doesn’t tell me such things. I deducted it from all the snippets he told me. He divorced his wife because she had had some foreign friends, which is prohibited for the wife of a KGB man. Why did she let herself do such a heretic thing? She knew the rules of marrying a KGB man. His career was at the bottom now. He has no career and no home. He told me he was waiting to be dispatched from Leningrad to elsewhere.

2

I realize he belongs to the first postwar generation of KGB men with the unique intelligence service training – the special school of Counterespionage. Once, he told me about the infamous but very famous English spy Kim Philby, whose lectures he was listening to at his KGB school. In addition to intelligence training, they study foreign languages. Their linguistic education is much better than ours at the university level. If Sasha’s foreign language is French, his friend Felix speaks perfect English. Their third friend, whom Sasha introduced me to, also speaks excellent English. He is the Director of Foreign Relations of our university’s whole foreign student body. One afternoon, Sasha brought me to his cabinet to be acquainted. I would never guess about the KGB’s office at the university.

Their KGB school is located near Moscow, he told me. The students are the sons of professional KGB people of wartime, semi-educated, uncultured people of the Stalin KGB. I guess his father was a KGB man. Son followed his steps. Working in Foreign Intelligence was the most desirable job for a young man- the crème de la crème, posted abroad, paid in foreign currency, belonging to an elite.

Several years ago, this artistic KGB guy happily married a talented girl from a creative family. She graduated from the Conservatory in piano class. Her father was a known music critic in Leningrad. Her younger sister married a repatriate from Greece, an extremely popular singer (forgot his name, some Armenian name, like Tatlian, or not, I wasn’t interested in the popular music) in our country. That- is why –foreign friends and relations! Unfortunately, Sasha said that the guy is ‘gomik’- homosexual, and the girl is depressed. But he, himself, got messed with this family, and his career is ruined.

One day after our classes, my friend and I were hanging out on Nevsky Prospect. I showed a building and the windows of Sasha’s former wife’s apartment. Alia immediately decided to look at one of the family, who would have opened the door. Returning, she enlightened me: a beautiful young woman opened the door, and on Alia’s question if Aleksandr Ivanovich was available, the beautiful girl politely answered, “No, he was not.” Behind her, in the corridor, Alia heard a boy's cheerful calls. I already knew that boy. Sasha sometimes invited me to walk with his son in the park.

I was accepting his sudden comings and goings. But I had my own life, after all. On the other hand, when I missed his coming, I was upset to tears. Like I missed the best moments of my life, my longing for him was intense. And I wasn’t sure that was not his last visit.

Pondering on one of those missed meetings:

One hot spring day, Nelia takes me to the Bay of Finland to go boating. Our dormitory is close to the bay, but we never go there; Nelia is a very sporty girl and a good rower. But it’s my first time on the boat, and I am a little afraid. When we return, Alia meets me: “Sasha was looking for you. I even took him to the bay, and we went boating, but didn’t see your boat anywhere. So poor pregnant Alia, with a balloon of her belly, went boating. And I missed Sasha! All my beautiful mood of boating, blue water, and blue sky disappear instantly. I feel so aggrieved. I don’t know when I will see him again…

Approximately three years have passed in this way.