Leninsky Prospekt. Katherine Bucknell
tongue, John. You know you’re exaggerating. Mother would do anything to avoid speaking Russian, and there weren’t even many Russians living in our building.’
But John went on with his flattery, courting her with his eyes, ‘To me, you seem most yourself when you speak Russian. Enchanting, passionate, bracingly coherent.’
She wagged a blushing finger at his nonsense, and he grinned.
‘Nina, you just don’t realize how over-awing this town can be. You’ve never had to do it as a real outsider, a stranger. What they know how to do is dance. They aren’t supposed to be linguists or diplomats. They’ll be able to relax and have a little fun with you along to show them around and explain things. Just be a friend. Frankly, we all have a lot on our minds at the office right now, and I know the ambassador feels reassured having you with that group. It’s a serious business, this tour. A showcase. And you should speak up, too, if anything doesn’t seem right.’
He stopped suddenly, looked around warily, as if there were presences floating above them on the ceiling, listeners. ‘What am I saying? This isn’t the office.’
Nina laughed. ‘You’re still OK, I’d say – just. But wait. I’m about to start banging a few pots and pans. I couldn’t bring myself to cook supper without you.’
And she set to, clanging a black cast-iron frying pan, a shiny aluminium saucepan, a lid. She chopped an onion, sizzled it in butter, opened a can of chicken broth from Stockman’s in Finland, ran cold water over a small bunch of beets and rolled up her soft pink sleeves to scrub the dirt from the voluptuous red-purple curves.
‘Aren’t these gorgeous?’ she said as she tossed the beets into the saucepan to steam them. ‘I got them from a babushka outside the Metro. Everything else is already starting to look shrivelled. It’s going to be a long winter. Just you wait.’
Then she smiled at John because she knew these bitter little comments of hers worried him. She knew he wondered every single day what he had done bringing his new wife back to the USSR, wondered whether she would make it. She gave him a loopy, lips-together grin and clowned for him a little, shuffling her feet, waving her wooden spoon gaily like a flag, tipping her head coquettishly from side to side. ‘I promise to do something about my hair right after supper, John,’ she said sweetly, pulling the wet, heavy strands away from her face. ‘I must look like a madwoman.’
Now John laughed, just a little. ‘Do you want some Scotch?’ He was reaching for the bottle on the wooden shelves above the table.
‘Love some.’
He poured them each a drink, and they clinked their glasses, just barely, almost stealthily, near the rim, as if they were sharing a secret. They had reached a moment which they reached most evenings alone together when they felt a confident harmony with one another and with their nearly year-old marriage, a harmony which drowned out everything else. They both knew perfectly well how it had come about that they were here together in Russia, of all difficult places; they knew they belonged together, that they had no choice. They had talked about it often, the fact that the love sensation was still bigger than any other sensation either one of them could lay claim to ever having felt. Everything else had to fall in line with that. They would say things to each other like, A whole lifetime isn’t enough time to spend with you. And they understood the meaning of what they were saying, meant it. The newness, the feeling of desperation, was still kindling between them; they were happy, but they were not yet satisfied; married, but still trying somehow to catch hold of each other entirely. When they were alone together, they forgot about everything else. They were building a private world for themselves.
John took off his dark grey suit jacket, loosened his dull blue, paisley tie, settled his long bony frame awkwardly at the little wooden table. ‘Your hair’s fine all mangled,’ he said. ‘I love it however.’ Then he put his fingers in his own close-cut, light brown hair and rubbed it hard, grinning. ‘See mine? Madwoman’s spouse. Let’s just have a nice supper and go to bed. You can fix your hair tomorrow.’
Nina lifted her glass, toasting his appearance. ‘Very attractive.’ And she smiled down at him, sipping, stirring, lifting lids, peering under them. ‘What’s keeping you at that office so much, anyway?’
But John held a finger in the air, alert, reminding her to take care what she said.
She turned on the radio, then the water in the sink, and threw open the window above it, letting the wind and rain blow in along with the faint blare of street noises from far below.
‘Have to clear the smoke out,’ she said brightly. She went back to the stove, checked again under all the lids, then walked to the table and perched on John’s lap, laying her head on his chest with her ear beside his mouth.
He plucked at her wet hair without saying anything until she rolled her head around and looked him in the eye.
‘You’re making me burn the beets.’
He laughed, just a sniffing laugh, and murmured very quietly, ‘Oh, sweetheart – letters, teletypes. We meet, we talk, we translate, we explain. God knows if anyone hears or even listens. Khrushchev never stops thinking about how to get our troops out of West Berlin, and the president is never going to abandon the West Germans. It’s much more interesting here at home, since you are so pretty and, at present, so vulnerably déshabillée.’ He twitched the lapel of her bathrobe, as if to look inside, and she trapped his hand and pressed it flat, helpless, against her breast.
John leaned closer, sealed his lips against Nina’s ear to say something more, then instead took the curling top edge of her ear between his teeth and bit it so that she suddenly sat up. They both laughed.
She gathered her robe around her, stood up with exaggerated, mocking caution, kissed his forehead crisply and said, ‘I’m going to give you supper straight from the stove. Do you mind? No serving dishes?’
‘Of course I don’t mind.’ He picked up his glass of Scotch and drained it.
As she lifted the meat onto the plates, ladled the sauce, fished for beets, John muttered, ‘The thing about democracy is of course that everything gets dropped for these damned mid-term elections.’ Then suddenly, he spoke up loudly, lifting his chin, and called out tauntingly to the walls and to the ceiling, ‘You hear that? It’s not such a perfect system, Western democracy.’
Nina put his plate in front of him, amused, stepping back to let him rant. But he wrapped a long arm around her light, bundled torso, pulled her close, and went on in a loud whisper, ‘A few pretty loud-mouthed Republicans have been sounding off about how the president should be more aggressive on Cuba. Nobody likes the fact that the Russians have been shipping military equipment in there all summer, but the Cubans are entitled to defend themselves. And the president’s so busy dealing with that kind of criticism that he really doesn’t listen to anything else. All his time and energy just now is aimed at making sure his side stays in power; forget foreign relations.’
Nina leaned down and whispered back, ‘It can’t be any different in this country, my dearest. Just because there are no elections doesn’t mean people don’t have to fight and compromise to hold onto power. Everyone struggles to stay in power.’
‘You are so damned smart, Nina. Yup. So maybe that explains why our Russian friends are being so sympathetic to the president’s plight. They’ve promised, on the quiet, to just lay off until after the November elections, especially on Berlin.’ He shrugged a little, in mild surprise. ‘The president will give them another summit if they don’t stir things up.’
Nina took a step towards the stove, reached for her plate, and brought it around opposite him. ‘Sympathetic – just to be nice?’ It made no sense to her at all, a sympathetic Russian leader. She raised her eyebrows cynically. ‘You’re kidding, aren’t you?’
There was a pause, and then she leaned right across the table, her thick bathrobe almost touching the food on her plate. With a babyish pout, her lips pushed out as if to be kissed, she crooned very low, ‘Don’t let your fetching American sense of fairplay and your boyish