Part 19 (2/2)
”You're probably the only thing that hasn't come at a bad time today,” he said with a tired smile.
”The Five-Year Plan?”
”It's finally concluded, over and done with.” He turned to the gla.s.ses, and had Anna not sprung into action, his coattails would have swept the plate with the tsarina's portrait from the sideboard to the floor. Alexey took advantage of Anna's nearness to give her a quick kiss. ”Excuse me-there are too many things going through my head.” He opened the refrigerator, took out a half-empty bottle of white wine, and left it to Anna to bring the food.
”I've been doing a lot of thinking, too,” she said, introducing her subject. She put the dish on the table and arranged the little sandwiches more attractively.
Alexey poured the wine, and they took their first sips.
”Leonid has come home,” Anna said, sitting down across from Alexey.
He scrutinized her, not like the ”other man” in her love triangle, but rather like a trainer wondering whether his fighter has the stuff to go the distance. ”Has Leonid come home for good?”
”No.” A cold spot in the pit of her stomach began to spread out. ”He's trying to get transferred to Yakutsk.”
Alexey's eyes narrowed. He wasn't prepared for such a conversation, and the prospect of it certainly gave him no pleasure, so Anna came swiftly to the point: ”I don't want to lose him.”
Alexey picked up his gla.s.s and made the liquid sparkle in the light. ”Looks to me as though your captain doesn't exactly yearn to come back to you.”
He made the remark jokingly, but it went through her like a knife. ”For a year, Petya's had no father, and I've had no man.”
”No man.” They exchanged a brief glance, and Bulyagkov nodded. The lack of physicality in their relations.h.i.+p had never been an issue for them; now they were both thinking the same thing.
”We both knew we couldn't last the way we were. Something had to change one day.” She put her hand on his.
”And now it's over?” Was his weird calm due to exhaustion?
”My love, my dearest,” she said sadly. His sallow face, his disordered hair, the old eyes, and the melancholy that filled them combined to take Anna's breath away. ”We were a good team.”
”Are you breaking off our friends.h.i.+p, too?”
”Our friends.h.i.+p, never,” she answered vehemently. He'd understood what she meant; why didn't she confess that she'd come expressly to break it off? ”But I don't know where that will lead us. We were never what's called a couple.”
”I suppose not.” He leaned back with a look of serious consideration on his face. ”I love you, Anna. Maybe I love you so much because we were never able to spend much time together. Maybe things were good for us for so long because there was always the temptation of thinking something more might come of them.”
She thought about Kamarovsky, the other creator of this relations.h.i.+p, and about Leonid, who, this one time, knew where she was spending the evening. Alexey's woefulness overcame her, too.
”I've been saddled with taking a trip,” he said in a different tone of voice. ”I'll have to leave very soon.”
”A trip? Where?” The change of subject had rattled her.
”Please let everything remain the same between us until I get back.”
”Why? What's the difference if we say good-bye now or then?”
”A big difference, as far as I'm concerned.” He rolled his winegla.s.s around on its base. ”Could you do that for me?”
”My husband's back at home, playing with our son. I want to straighten everything out.” When he said nothing, she went on: ”I can't do what you want me to do unless you tell me the reason for it.”
Cautiously, as though he were afraid of breaking it, he placed the gla.s.s to one side. ”I wouldn't like to cause Comrade Kamarovsky any unnecessary concern.” The eyes of the Arctic wolf gazed at her.
The hanging lamp suddenly seemed to Anna like a sun s.h.i.+ning in her face. Her mouth went dry. She stared at Alexey as though, in that instant, he'd been transformed into a dangerous predatory beast.
”Since when ... ?” she whispered.
”Since when have I known?” He reached for her hand; she jerked it back. ”Since before you knew, Anna.”
In the silence, the room seemed to dissolve. ”But then ... everything was a game, a setup from the start?” She shook her head several times, as though trying to get an unpleasant sound out of her ear. ”How could you love me, if you ... ?”
”That's what's so marvelous.” He reached for her hand a second time. ”That first time, when I saw you on the ladder, in your overalls, with paint on your nose-that first time, you conquered me.”
”Stop making jokes!”
”When it came to you, I was always serious.” He kissed the base of her thumb. ”At our second meeting-you remember, your father's reading-my heart was beating in my throat when I spoke to you. I was just an old guy, fat and worn out, and I had my eye on the beautiful, married house painter. I was in love for the first time in years, for the first time again, full of longing, and I felt so young it was mortifying even to me.” With every sentence, he drew closer to her face. ”Do you know how much I desired these lips, these eyes, your hair, every inch of your neck? It was childish and maybe unreasonable, but wonderful, too.”
”But why ...” She realized that she was incapable of doing justice to his pa.s.sionate words. ”Why didn't you ever want to make love to me?”
”That didn't mean I loved you any less.” He stroked her cheek. ”We did make love,” he said with a smile. ”I was embarra.s.sed in front of you. I still am.”
”And what about Kamarovsky?” she asked brusquely. Alexey's unexpected declaration had thrown her into total disarray.
”I knew the Colonel would set somebody on me.”
”Why?”
”Because that's what they do to anyone who has a kind of power they can't a.s.sess. Science is such a power, Anna.” He pondered for a moment. ”But maybe my dubious past was reason enough.”
”Your father?”
He shrugged. ”I'm not a Russian. That's still a defect, even today.”
Involuntarily, she moved closer to him. ”Why didn't you ever say anything?”
”I didn't want to put you in a false position. It was obvious to me that if you knew what was going on, Kamarovsky would notice. He would have seen through you at once. Your ignorance was important to him.” He added, lowering his voice, ”And to me.”
”You used me the whole time.”
In the silence, they heard an automobile stop in front of the building. Alexey stood up and pushed the curtain to one side. ”I hope we can do without reproaches. Couldn't you have said 'No' when Kamarovsky asked you to be his spy? You decided to do something for your father-and for Petya. I know very few people who would have refused.”
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