A Shadow in Moscow, page 6
Every bit of these halcyon days is slipping away and I need to grab them, hold them tight, and savor them. I’ll miss them desperately. But I’ll miss him more.
Noting the time, I pick up my pace. The sidewalk feels hot through my thin espadrilles. They’ve stretched and are beginning to slip off my heels, but they match the roses in the dress perfectly. There’s no way I’m not getting one more evening out of them. I turn the corner and find Scott sitting on his building’s front stoop. He doesn’t notice me, so I take a moment to study him. He’s dressed in his usual khakis, a wrinkled blue oxford that sets off his light eyes, and his ubiquitous brown loafers. His blond hair hasn’t lightened in the sun as much as it did last year. He’s been working indoors too much.
Scott pops up the instant he sees me. “Well, if it isn’t the lovely Miss Kadinova.” He lopes down the stairs.
“Good evening, sir.” I try not to grin. I really do. I grin anyway.
He closes the distance between us and kisses me longer and better than I expect. I wonder if I’ll ever stop being surprised and delighted with his love.
He tucks a strand of dark hair behind my ear. “Hey, beautiful.”
I melt a little more. Despite working in an office all day, he smells like grass, lemons, and something woodsy. I have no idea what soap or cologne he uses, but it is the best clean, honest smell in the world. I love it. Nothing at home ever smelled so good.
Trying to hide my reaction, as I’m not sure he feels quite the same anymore—why did he stop trying to convince me to stay?—I weave the strand into my scrunchie.
“It’s not good form to have you walk here, but I suspected they’d keep me late. And they did.” Scott frowns, trying to sound disappointed. He fails. Each syllable drips with satisfaction.
“You love it,” I tease. “Tell me about your day.”
“No way.” He grabs my fingers and swings our intertwined hands like a pendulum between us as we walk toward Wisconsin Avenue. “I am not spending one of our last evenings together boring you with work.”
“But I want to hear.” I pitch my voice to sound light, but it hurts. Ever since Scott started this job, that’s his constant refrain. He doesn’t want to bore me in our last months, weeks, and now days with “international debt margins and capital differentiation.”
Scotts turns the corner and stops. It takes me a second to guess where we’re headed.
“Martin’s Tavern?”
“It seems fitting.”
I don’t ask what he means. Fitting because Jackie and John Kennedy became engaged here? Fitting because he wants to find our own Camelot? Fitting because it’s my favorite restaurant but way beyond my budget? Fitting because it’s our last dinner together? I try to silence the questions and let the restaurant work its charm. To me, it is Camelot—cozy, colorful, loud, full of magic and history, good food and great music. I didn’t even know about Jackie and John Kennedy until that first Comparative Politics course.
Scott leads me to one of the booths tucked right against the window. While the tables, with their white linen tablecloths pressed under glass, look more refined, the wood-benched booths feel more intimate. Tucked within one—Booth 3, no less, the actual one in which the famed engagement occurred—we’re in our own world and the warm yellow glow of the Tiffany lamp suspended above is our sun.
I order a tavern favorite, fish and chips, because I’m already feeling nostalgic. It’s a delicate dish I won’t find at home. We have fried fish, of course, but not fresh halibut battered so light it melts in your mouth. My mother makes an amazing fried sprat with eggplant, but when the salty sprats come from a can and get deep-fried in their packing oil, it’s not quite the same.
Dinner is quiet. Not the restaurant but us. We barely speak and it feels like I’m already gone. It feels like he’s already gone. I want to rage and cry: “We’re wasting our last days! We have to be real! We can’t end like this!” But I say nothing because maybe this is exactly how our last days need to go—and maybe Scott has been preparing himself, and me, since March. After all, isn’t that what Rick did? He always knew Ilsa needed to get on that plane in Casablanca, no matter what either wanted.
Scott finally addresses the elephant in our booth. “You leave right after graduation?”
I nod. “My flight’s at eight o’clock that night. A driver from the embassy will pick me up at four.”
He says nothing more as we pay the check and leave the restaurant. In the gloaming Georgetown is waking up.
“I won’t ask you to meet my parents again, but—if I leave them at their hotel—can I take you to the airport?”
My stomach drops. Throughout the past two years Scott has asked to introduce me to his parents no less than ten times—and I’ve refused every one. I thought he understood, but when he asked again last month, I tried to explain more clearly. I don’t want to meet them because I don’t want to lie to them. I don’t want to be West German, but I can’t be Soviet either. To see even a flash of fear, distrust, or pure hatred in their eyes would devastate me. They might forever envision me as the Communist who ruined their son, left their son, didn’t love their son—despite how much they’d want me gone.
“No.” I reach for his hand but withdraw at first touch. “It’s better this way, Scott. Truly it is.”
I also don’t want to reveal that postgraduation, post my last exam, I will report for a final meeting with Sasha and then be under constant surveillance. The prevailing thought is that earning a degree is sufficient inducement for students to stick around and behave. We have to check in, of course—the monthly-turned-weekly meetings—but we aren’t tracked twenty-four seven. But once that degree is earned, the temptation to defect might lead to “foolish behavior.” It’s happened before. Sasha has my course schedule, and as of 10:00 a.m. tomorrow, I will have earned my degree even if it hasn’t been awarded yet. Hence our quick “reminder” meeting at 2:00 p.m. and the watchful eye.
We weave our way toward campus, and rather than turn left to my dorm, Scott tugs at my elbow and leads me to a bench on Healy Lawn. We sit in silence, listening to the sounds of the evening: traffic, crickets, distant laughter, and Journey’s “Any Way You Want It” blasting from an unknown and faraway location.
“Do you remember that question I asked you last year?”
I keep my eyes trained ahead, seeing nothing. “As if I could forget. But we agreed—”
That’s all I get out before he’s kissing me. Really kissing me. And to be fair, I’m kissing him right back. It’s like a champagne cork blew and passion is spilling over and out of us. For a second I let myself get swept away with the fantasy that our long-ago conversation ended differently and that our lives could go differently, and that he can be mine forever.
Moments or minutes later, he pulls away and rests his forehead against mine. “What are we going to do?”
The dream dissolves and we sit surrounded by night once more. Night and that same speaker now blasting Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust.” The irony brings tears to my eyes.
“Nothing.” I touch his lips with mine. “You must understand.” I kiss him again. “This is goodbye. A true goodbye.” One more kiss. “Now you’ll forget me and someday, maybe soon, you’ll marry and raise 1.81 beautiful children.”
I feel rather than see his smile as I kiss him once more. It’s my best party trick. Everyone in the Foreign Studies program has to memorize pertinent data for their host country. I can name every US state, along with its population, number of House representatives, capital, bird, flower, and unofficial nickname—along with the US birth rate.
“I can’t do that.”
Just as I tilt forward for another kiss, Scott pulls back to look me in the eyes.
“You must,” I counter. Something quickens within me. Our romantic goodbye feels like it crossed the line into something dangerous. And it’s a danger he could never expect, anticipate, or understand. Here our world experiences divide us more decisively than the ocean will after Saturday.
“You make it sound like a prison, Anya. It’s not. It’s a country. I get what you say. But they can’t keep you there. Not if we’re married.”
I want to laugh, but this isn’t funny. Scott studied international economics, and while a few of his classes compared and contrasted political systems, he’s clearly only been following the money.
I put a hand to his cheek to soften the blow, but I must make myself heard—for his sake. I feel the slight scratch of stubble and the line of his jaw under my fingers. Two more details I tuck away for Someday Soon.
“It is a prison. A 280-million-person prison with a million KGB guards on patrol. The only thing Professor Wilton got wrong is that the KGB is far more ruthless and draconian at home than abroad. There are no rules for them. No limits. Who do you think will drive me to the airport Saturday?”
“A KGB officer?”
“Sasha most likely. The one who set an informant on us in Fort Lauderdale. The one who now records my weekly interrogations. The one who may even be watching us right now and will certainly be watching me after my final exam tomorrow.”
Scott leans back. I’m pretty sure Sasha is not out there with binoculars and a Big Mac, but I made my point.
He blows out a sigh. I do the same. Scott’s comes out in a frustrated burst, mine in a long pursed-lipped breath, like air escaping a balloon. He’s letting go. I’m keeping control.
After a minute of silence, a voice deep inside, sounding suspiciously like Tracy, tells me to end it. More Casablanca than Romeo and Juliet. There’s no point in talking further, and kissing will only make the inevitable more excruciating. It’s simply time.
I stand and the skirt of my dress swishes in the breeze. The red roses dance around me and, sadly, a funeral comes to mind rather than a wedding. “Goodbye, Scott.”
He stares at me. “You’re kidding, right? Goodbye?”
I shrug.
That gets him up and off the bench so fast I stumble back in surprise.
“Don’t you dare do that. We don’t shrug at each other, remember? You don’t get to brush me off and make me wonder how you feel.”
He’s right. He—we—deserve more than the rote shoulder lift I pull out for almost every ambiguous conversational occasion. I use it to make the person I’m talking to feel like I agree with them or I don’t care. Either works for me when I have no clue what’s truly going on. But to use it on him or against him is a cheap play. We’ve always been honest with each other.
Then I feel it. A tear slides down my cheek. So much for that safe corner in my heart. What I didn’t want to happen is happening—loss of control, broken hearts, tears, and pain.
“Weakness,” Dmitri used to say, “is for the Americans, not for us. We Soviets are fighters.” He’d thump his chest. “We’re born to battle.”
Dmitri’s right. We are a fighting people at heart. Probably because we’ve been fighting some war or another since Russia’s founding over twelve hundred years ago. Our society is completely structured around the military, with a fixed hierarchy in every sector, and we even bring the guns—metaphorically speaking, of course—to the kitchen table where, in an honest argument among friends, far from prying ears and watching eyes, we rapid-fire opinions with such vehemence you’d think it was war. And while it sounds like an aggressive, odd, and cynical way to live, we pride ourselves on that too. Hard cynicism grounds our identity.
Scott likes that about me. I “think things,” he says. I defend my thoughts. But he hates the Shoulder Shrug. He claims it’s me abdicating my voice to fit in, trying to be among the 999,999 in a million when I’m the one. He’s sweet and I love him more than he’ll ever fully grasp, but being counted within the 999,999 at home is the safest place to be, and here it can feel really great.
Not now. Now it’s time to wake up and remember I come from fighters. Soviet fighters.
“Goodbye, Scott.” I shroud the word with steel and, in my father’s move, stretch tall and stare at him until he blinks. Only then do I continue. “There. I am saying it loud and clear so there are no misunderstandings between us. I will not ask you to write to me and I will never write to you.”
His eyes flicker with hurt and confusion, and I take that moment to summon the courage, even the cruelty, to do what must be done. “I will forget you, Scott O’Neill. Do you hear me? I will get on that plane in two days and everything here, including you, will become a distant memory.” I bite the inside of my cheek. The pain focuses me.
He steps back as if struck. “Is it that easy? Can you really do that?”
“It’s already done.” I stare, unblinking, a moment longer, then I turn and walk away, willing my shoulders not to shake, not to give any visible indication that I can’t breathe.
While part of me hopes against hope he’ll stop me, spin me around, and kiss away reality, he won’t. Scott always gives me the respect of believing what I say.
My heart feels like it’s back on that bench bleeding out on its own, but I keep walking. I need Scott to believe me. I need him to hate me if that’s what it takes to let me go. He can’t comprehend the precarious situation I’ve put him in. Because there are the other stories—stories of Soviet and American students doing stupid things, even getting caught talking about stupid things, when the Foreign Studies Initiative years end.
Conversations that end in torture. Pregnancies that end in abortions. And elopements that end with a single gunshot to the back of the head.
Six
Anya
Washington, DC
June 13, 1980
It’s done.
I flop onto my bed and take in my sterile dorm room. Only my bags remain. Tracy’s dad pulled his station wagon away ten minutes ago, and not even that darn fern is here to keep me company. It’s been the loneliest day of my life. There was no question of my parents attending graduation, but everyone else’s did. Yearning for any familial connection, I even spent an hour after the ceremony searching for Scott, hoping to see him with his parents, but I never spotted him. Not once. I tried to console myself that this was how today was supposed to go, and that I’m flying home tonight, and that I’ll soon be with my family. Soon I can rest.
But not yet.
Yesterday’s meeting with Sasha is still cycling through my head, and I’ll only be able to rest once I feel my mother’s hug and see my father’s eyes. Only then will I draw a real breath.
“Tell me more about your boyfriend, Scott O’Neill?”
That was Sasha’s opening question—once the door in that small room at the rezidentura clicked shut and he’d pushed the red Record button on his machine.
“What? I-I’ve told you about him. What more do you need?” I stammered, racing through what he might have heard or seen on Healy Lawn the night before.
“You never told me you loved him.”
“I never said—” I stopped. Sasha’s eyes glinted cold. “You read my letter to Dmitri—”
“Don’t act surprised, Comrade Kadinova.”
I was no longer Anya, no longer a friend. I was a problem.
“Comrade First Lieutenant Dmitri Dimitrivich Shubin is a loyal young officer. Naturally, he’d let us read anything we asked.”
“But you didn’t ask.”
“Comrade . . . ,” Sasha warned.
I closed my eyes. What a fool I was. I had written to my best friend the one thing I couldn’t tell anyone else—that I desperately loved a boy, an American boy. It meant nothing. I wasn’t going to try to defect. I simply wanted to share one true feeling with the one person I trusted most and who knew me best. And Sasha was wrong. Dmitri would never let them read my letter. He would protect my confidence to the death. Sasha only knew its contents because the censors opened it before Dmitri did—if Dmitri ever got it at all.
“Scott O’Neill was a silly infatuation, and I wanted to share it with Dmitri. It meant nothing. We say ‘love’ all the time. You loved Katya who transferred back to Leningrad last year, remember? And you loved Nikita before that. And what about—?”
Sasha cut me off with a raised hand. I let him because I was running out of air and of silly girls to mention. He glanced to the recorder and I realized how lucky I’d gotten. While I was just trying to be light, Sasha would never want anyone to hear of his flirtations. He would, most likely, destroy our recording.
I didn’t sigh. Not because I didn’t feel relief, but because I was still too scared.
“That’s what I thought, and I’ve said as much when asked about this.” Sasha smirked, knowing he held all the cards. “Don’t make me look bad, Comrade. Don’t make a liar of me. Every one of my reports has praised your dedication and your loyalty. I want to hear only glowing things upon your return to Moscow. Our futures are tied together for now, and everything you say or do reflects upon me.”
“Yes. Of course.” I tried to swallow. It lodged in my throat.
“As you like to remind me, you Foreign Initiative Studies students are the best of the best. I’d hate to see such a luminary fall.” His voice dropped low but not menacing—he didn’t need those theatrics. “Do we need to concern ourselves with Scott O’Neill any longer?”
“Not at all. I said goodbye to him last night and never expect to see him again.”
“Very well.” Sasha tilted his head to the door. “Then we have nothing more to discuss. You’ve done well here, Comrade Kadinova. I will pick you up at 4:00 p.m. tomorrow afternoon.”
“I’ll be ready.”
There was no bravado in me after that meeting. I ran from the room.
* * *
A firm three-rap knock at the door ends my musings and signals the end of my time at Georgetown. I open it and face a wiry young man, perhaps a year or two younger than I, standing in the hallway.
“Good afternoon, Comrade Kadinova.” He nods. “Comrade First Lieutenant Sergei Vasin. You are ready?” He points into the room behind me. “Let me help you with your bags.”
