A Train to Moscow(48)
ACT 3
LENINGRAD
28
Leningrad is more dignified than Moscow, its low skyline letting the winds from the Baltic Sea bloat the Neva in the fall when the water rises and floods the streets, closing schools but never canceling performances at her theater. The Bolshoi Drama Theatre is in the center of the city, on the Fontanka embankment, an imposing building with white columns along the facade. It is this theater that Sasha, Lara, and Slava have been invited to join upon graduation.
She could have stayed at her school’s Vakhtangov Theatre, along with Sveta, but after years of studies, Moscow felt too familiar, too provincial, too much like Ivanovo. She knew exactly what roles she would be playing, all Russian classics; she knew her future acting partners, all her former classmates. She also knew she would be expected to come to Sergey’s apartment every time his wife went on tour; she even knew what pastries he would carefully arrange for her on a dish with the lily-of-the-valley border.
Leningrad, on the other hand, is an enigma, and the Bolshoi Drama Theatre, a legend. She has always wanted to live in Russia’s only European city where art graces every street with the curved facades sculpted by architects from Italy and France who reinvented their designs for this northern climate, where the air is grainy with the afternoon twilight in winter and the milky nightglow in June. Besides, she has wanted to live in the place where Kolya studied art; she has wanted to stand on the bridge where he met Nadia. She has wanted to see with her eyes what she has only pictured in her mind: the building on Herzen Street where Nadia lived with her parents, Leningrad University on the Neva embankment where she studied philology and, not far from it, the Academy of Arts where Kolya learned to draw and paint.
She now has her own place to live. After the first six months of work, when she lived in the dormitory, her theater gave her a one-room apartment, perhaps to offset the dismal salary of all stage actors in repertory theaters dictated by the state.
A week after Sasha moved to her new apartment, Aunt Luba, who guards the stage-door entrance, yells for her to come to the phone. When Sasha mutters a tentative “hallo” into the receiver—no one has ever called her there—it takes a few moments to recognize Sergey’s voice. He is in Leningrad, for a meeting with a screenwriter, he says, but the introductory pleasantries sweep past her ear.
The following evening, she is free, and they meet at the lobby of the hotel where he is staying. When he sees her, he gets up and beams and stretches out his arms, so she has no choice but to hug him, even though she doesn’t want to. He holds her in his embrace for a long time, too long it seems, before she can free herself and sit down in an armchair across from him. In the time they haven’t seen each other, he seems to have aged: his glasses magnify the bags under his eyes, and his hair is longer and more tangled than she remembers, with little sprigs of salt and pepper, all white around the temples.
After a few compulsory questions about her work in Leningrad, he grows silent for a minute, as though contemplating something important. When they said their goodbyes in Moscow, a month or so after her graduation, she thought it was a farewell. Their meetings in his apartment lasted as long as they did, and Sasha never planned to see him again, so sitting across from him in Leningrad now seems odd and out of place. His being two bus stops away from where she is working seems inappropriate, or maybe it is she who is inappropriate sitting in this hotel lobby, so close to a man for whom she is no longer able to muster even a semblance of affection, not one little tingle in her veins.
Sergey takes off his glasses and starts deliberately wiping them with a handkerchief, as if a great deal of what he is about to say depends on his clarity of vision. Without his glasses, his face appears even older and somehow more vulnerable; he looks like he is planning to reveal something she doesn’t know about him, something fragile that will make her want to protect him.
“I’ve realized something,” he begins in a small voice, as though afraid to warp the words with sound. “I hope you understand. It’s quite simple, really, so I hope . . .” His voice trails off, and he pauses to take a breath to start again.
“In these six months—and I counted each day—I’ve realized how much I miss you. I’ve realized that seeing you, being with you, was my happiest time.”
A nauseating sensation stirs in the pit of her stomach. The words Sergey is saying, is about to say, are beautiful and delicate, but to her, they only sound objectionable and distressing. They are the words that should be directed at someone else, someone who would appreciate their generosity, someone who would love this upcoming revelation and, by extension, love him. They are words completely wasted on her thick, impermeable skin.
Sergey must sense her tense posture implying rejection, but she guesses he wants to be certain, so he continues, racing to the crux of this encounter and the objective of his speech. “I’ve separated from my wife,” he says and swallows so hard, she can see his Adam’s apple move. “So now you and I can be together.”
Sasha can no longer look at him, his exposed face, his naked eyes. She lowers her gaze and peers at the red carpet under their feet, her head shaking slightly, delivering her answer.
He leans back, his body suddenly slackening and turning pliant, like a rag doll’s.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers and gets up. What else can she say? “I’m so sorry.”