A Train to Moscow(81)
There are skewers of lamb and flattened halves of chicken tabaka on their plates, the food of Georgia; their glasses are filled with red wine to celebrate Kolya’s newly discovered existence. The Georgian wine, despite their waiter’s recommendation, tastes like syrupy compote made from a cheap port called ink. Nevertheless, it slides down her throat in harmony with the pomegranate sauce, making her head feel light and her body weightless, making her balance, for a little while at least, on the sweet, opaque edge between the harsh light of being sober and the blackness of being drunk. It is the edge where her love for Andrei begins to pulsate with such intensity that it nearly burns, her passion for him freed from its cage by the sweet Georgian wine, just the two of them in this empty restaurant where the present seems to run on a parallel course with the past.
Suddenly Andrei rises from his chair, leans across the table, and kisses her on the lips. It is a mature kiss, longer and more passionate than anything they exchanged in Ivanovo, deeper than the nervous kisses of the first night they spent in Suzdal, more melancholy than the blissful tumult of the few hours in her apartment before he suddenly announced he was married. It is a microcosm of every unfulfilled desire they have ever harbored for each other, the happiness they both know is no longer possible.
The waiter trudges in and looms by their table, forcing them to separate. He doesn’t look at all embarrassed; on the contrary, he probably timed this moment to let them know that it is late and he wants to go home.
“We know it’s late,” Andrei says. “But we’re not yet finished.” His voice is not commanding, but there are distinct metallic notes in it. It is the voice Party leaders always have in textbooks, firm and assertive. “Why don’t you clear away all this,” he says and waves at the wreck of the breadbasket and plates and slips a bill into the waiter’s pocket, “and bring us some good cognac. And something to chase it with.”
A woman in an apron lumbers out of the kitchen and starts piling dirty dishes onto her forearm. A few minutes later, a bottle of cognac arrives, along with small plates of red beans spiced with tarragon and chicken in walnut sauce. He pours, and they drink. This day is ending with cognac, the same way it started. A few sips of alcohol in this empty restaurant remove the last bricks to the wall between them, loosen their muscles, untie their tongues. Sasha feels she may even be able to confront Andrei, tell him she knows the truth about his father’s death.
As she weighs the glass of cognac in her hand, she feels words crowding in her head, demanding a release. Is it the alcohol that’s prodding those words to break out of her mouth or the kiss she still can taste? Or is it Kolya’s voice reaching from the other side, the voice of honesty and Grandma’s softness? She doesn’t know, but she hears herself begin to speak.
“My grandfather told me what happened on the day of the fire,” she hears herself say. “What really happened.” She watches Andrei’s face tighten up as he leans back. “He was in the garden and saw it all. Your father was the one who set the fire. He didn’t die from the fall.” She pauses, as she paused before opening the box where Kolya’s letter had been hidden. “You killed him.”
Andrei balls his fists under his chin and stares down at the stained tablecloth. Does he see what she sees in her mind, the charred carcass of his house, his mother’s grave? Does Sasha want him to admit his guilt? Does she want him to repent, to say anything at all? For what feels like several endless minutes, he stares at the tablecloth, and she stares at his face. When he finally looks up, his gaze has lightened. He remains silent a few minutes longer, but she can see that his face has softened, eyes lit with relief.
“I did what I’d wanted to do ever since my father returned from the camps. Ever since I remember.” He speaks hastily, words rolling down his tongue, as if all these years he has been waiting for this moment to tell her his story. “As he stood there swaying and bragging about how she finally got what she deserved, all I could think of were those times when I tried to protect her from him. So just as the burning house crashed behind us, as I saw blood soaking his shirt, I knew exactly what I was going to do. For the first time, I knew I could be free of him.” Andrei rubs his forehead, shielding his eyes with his palm. “I felt no guilt at that moment, no shame. But I must have felt shame because I drank for weeks. Every night when we returned from work, Vadim—my future father-in-law—set a bottle of vodka on the kitchen table. We drank from tea glasses, just the two of us.”
Sasha remembers this from their talk in Ivanovo, when Andrei told her his father’s camp stories. The two of them, he and his boss, hozyaeva, the masters of everything.
“I don’t remember how long I stayed with Vadim and his family. I don’t know how many times we left for work and came back together, how many bottles he set down on the table, how many times Natasha and her mother ladled soup into my bowl.
“What I do remember is that on one of those nights, I confessed to him what really happened. I told him I’d killed my father.” Andrei props his forehead with his hand and looks down. “And he told me that I was a hero. That I did what I had to do, what he would have done, what any man would have done. That was when he gave me a promotion. He said the Party needed strong, determined men like me.”
Andrei stops, presses his palms over his eyes, as if he wants to black out what he saw.
“With the promotion, they gave me an apartment, but I still went to dinner at Vadim’s at least once a week, an invitation extended by his wife, without fail. And every time, without fail, I felt Natasha’s liquid gaze on me, the heat emanating from her body when she stood close in the hallway to say goodbye. Why am I telling you all this? It doesn’t change anything. It can’t. Then one day she came to her father in tears and begged him to do anything to get me to marry her.” He pauses. “That was when Vadim gave me a choice”—the word echoes in Sasha’s head, in sync with her pulse—“a choice between a life of hard labor for murder and a life of privilege with his daughter.”