A Train to Moscow(85)
Then Vladimir Ivanovich will hold her and kiss her on the head, as a father would his departing daughter. He will pour them a drink of whatever is stashed in his room for her upcoming trip, for crossing the ocean to the other side. It is like crossing the River Lethe, he will say, the river of oblivion, which runs between this life and the next. Its waters will make her forget the past, he will say. They will erase all memory of her present life.
46
She can’t see Andrei as he stands in the check-in hall of Pulkovo Airport’s international wing, concealing himself behind a column in the corner, away from the counter with the handwritten sign where the words NEW YORK are scribbled in the neat cursive loops of a top English student. But Sasha knows he is there. She can sense him. He watches her walk from the customs area, dragging her half-open suitcase, which has obviously been rummaged through, and he shakes his head in frustration. This was the one thing he failed to do, to give her name to the customs director. One thing he failed to do, but not the only thing. He clenches his jaw, but it is too late now. It is too late for so much. He watches her drag her suitcase away from the door, where she starts to fold the rumpled clothes and pack everything back into the bag. When she is done, Sasha looks around, sees the loopy handwritten sign, and joins the line for check-in. It is a short line, uncharacteristic of lines in this city: not many people travel to New York from Leningrad.
He sees a red passport in her hand, which, he knows, has just been issued and still smells of glue, a special external passport granting her permission to leave for the United States of America. Sasha knows he had to cash in some huge favors he had accumulated over the years in order to have that passport issued. He even got his father-in-law involved—he had to—although he knew Vadim smelled the truth, by the way his son-in-law begged. He had never asked for anything before, so the old man looked him in the eye and said, “This is for her, isn’t it,” which they both knew was not really a question. Andrei didn’t nod or shake his head in denial. “Whoever this is for,” he replied as impartially as he could muster, “I’m sending her away. Far away.” “How far?” asked Vadim, a flare of suspicion in his eyes. “America,” he said and turned to the wall, because the sound of that destination made him have to catch his breath. That was when the old man walked over to the internal office phone, lifted the receiver, and dialed a number that only he could dial. “A visa and a passport will be issued in her name,” he said, his voice both a warning and a condemnation. “But if they investigate who authorized this, it will be you who takes the fall.”
He is ready to take the fall. He has nothing to lose.
He watches Sasha heave her suitcase onto the scale; accept a boarding pass from the clerk, a woman with doughy forearms and henna-colored hair; fit it into her passport. A week ago, at her request, he called Kolya in New York with her flight number; he was surprised that her uncle still rounded his vowels the way they all did back in Ivanovo, a dialectal peculiarity. He watches the clerk peer at her as she is looking down, a stare of recognition. Of course people recognize her; she is an actress. She is wearing a navy dress with short sleeves and a narrow skirt, a pair of high-heeled shoes that make her legs look more muscled, like the legs of a ballerina. Her hair is the color of ash, the color of burn and ruin, and is pulled back into a ponytail; her bangs come down to her eyebrows; her eyes are big and gray, like frozen water on the winter canals. He can see her eyes as distinctly as if she were standing next to him. On her arm she is holding a beige raincoat, the one he knows, the raincoat she wore two months ago when she appeared on the threshold of his office, when she brought Kolya’s letter to show him, when she thought there might still have been hope for the two of them. Or even hope for him alone.
He stands there behind the pillar, watching her walk toward the plane that will take her out of Russia, watching her leave, the same way he stood at the Ivanovo railway station when she was leaving for Moscow to study acting, the same way he stood at the cemetery at her mother’s funeral—always an observer, almost a stalker, always watching her from the sidelines, perched on the periphery of her life.
47
Andrei’s car is waiting outside the airport. He has just seen her pass through the glass door, gone through the passage to a life beyond the curtain. He gets into the front seat, next to Borya, leaning back into the familiar sweaty smell of old leather and gasoline. “To the office,” he says and stares into the rusty lock of the glove compartment as Borya steps on the gas and turns the car around to go back to the city. Wordlessly, they drive past rows of newly erected apartments that his office has yet to allocate to the best workers of this factory or that school district.
“Is it the actress?” says Borya, a question he has earned the right to ask by six years of not asking too many questions. Andrei doesn’t answer, and by not answering, by staring into the windshield, he acknowledges what Borya, who saw her get out of the taxi and enter the door of the small international wing, is asking. The actress, the airport, the final separation. All corroborated by his driver, who knows her from TV; all validated by the Aeroflot clerk who recognized her from one of her plays. They saw her leave, just as he did. They are witnesses. His feverish mind didn’t make it up. She is now waiting to get on the plane, past the passport control, in the neutral zone between the countries’ borders, unaffiliated with either land, free. She is free of him, finally. Ready to place the enormity of the Atlantic Ocean between them, as a confirmation. And is he free of her, as he has promised his father-in-law?