Afterward, things happened as though in a fairy tale. Her brother Mark arrived from Petersburg to visit his family. Mikhail visited more often, so his visits seemed less momentous. Mark was only home for four days, and Marusya, from his very presence in the house, noticed how much everything had changed since he had left home. The whole apartment seemed to have shrunk, and, most surprising, her parents themselves seemed to have become more diminutive. They had never been large people, but when Mark, tall and broad, stood next to his father and bent his head down to him, and his father craned his neck, lifting his handsome head up to Mark, Marusya almost cried, realizing how much older her parents had grown in the last five years. Mark moved in an aura of prosperity and success. He announced that he was moving to Moscow, where he had been appointed to a new position. Now he would be working as an attorney in an insurance company; it was a challenging job, and they were offering him a large salary. He had already rented a furnished apartment in Moscow, and, by the way, the apartment had two bedrooms, so Marusya could come whenever she wished to stay with him. She gasped and said she was ready to leave immediately. There was no “let’s wait and see”—everything simply took off—and the next day he bought the train tickets. He put them on Marusya’s desk—two long, stiff cardboard tickets, and two pale-green slips of paper, the reservations for the sleeping car.
On the evening of the same day, Marusya met Jacob and, beaming, told him she would be going to Moscow for an audition with Rabenek herself. Jacob was not glad. He took her hand, held it, then pressed it hard—not so that it hurt, but the gesture was charged with meaning.
“You’re leaving for Moscow? We have to say goodbye?”
“It’s only for a few days,” she said, and realized that she wasn’t telling the truth. If Ella Ivanovna accepted her, if she could find the money for the classes, she would stay in Moscow. It had never even entered Marusya’s mind before that her departure would mean she wouldn’t see Jacob for a long, long time.
“I will wait for you to come back, if you ever decide to return,” he said with a somewhat theatrical gesture, himself aware of the theatricality, and wincing at his own hypocrisy.
“No, no, don’t say that! After all that binds us together”—she didn’t say what “all” was, because they were bound both by spiritual discussions and by a deep attraction, which seemed somewhat shameful to both of them—“we will never lose each other.”
They sat in the Royal Garden. Marusya was in a hurry—she needed to pack her traveling bag and run to say goodbye to Madame Leroux. Jacob struggled, because he had still not been able to carry out his intention—to kiss Marusya. He said to himself, It’s now or never, turned to her, moved his face close to hers, and kissed her … cheek. It was not at all what he had been dreaming about all those weeks. She laughed and said, “Later, later … Now please walk with me.”
The next day, Marusya was sitting in a second-class compartment, in a window seat, next to her brother Mark, with a respectable married couple sitting across from them, older Kievans on their way to Moscow for a family celebration. They talked deferentially to her brother. The conversation was inconsequential, completely vapid, but very genteel. Marusya watched her brother silently, with the same merry spite that had been so characteristic of her in her childhood, but which had diminished somewhat during the years of her studies and her pedagogical activities.
Thus, Marusya and Jacob parted for the first time. Although she regretted every day spent apart from him, the trip to Moscow, a city she had never visited before, and the opportunity to experience the highest achievements of world culture (which is how she envisioned this trip for herself), was something she wasn’t willing to pass up. Poltava was as far as she had ventured beyond Kiev, and the dreams and visions she and Jacob shared about traveling together to Germany, to Italy, to France, paled in comparison with this first real journey. In short, her great life plans had already begun to be realized. It was a pity that Jacob could not be with her this time, but this was nonetheless the start of that great and serious shared life that they had summoned up so quickly in their minds and hearts. It was the first way station on the road they had mapped out in such great detail in their imaginations.
Marusya looked out the window, intoxicated by the breathtaking speed at which the train moved, almost flying over the ground, and feasting her eyes on the sights flashing by. She thought of it as a humble prelude to the enormous adventure of life, in which she had already found love, and her studies. Learning to understand the world, and active, exciting creative endeavor, all lay ahead.
At the station in Moscow, her brother hired a cab, and soon they arrived at an enormous building on Myasnitskaya Street, unprepossessing by Kiev standards, with a gloomy aspect and no intriguing architectural details or flourishes. It had towering entrance doors that looked like they were made for a giant. Inside was a vestibule, a mirror, and an elevator, behind a severe wrought-iron door of simple design.
Her brother was immediately waylaid by a huge gentleman in a fur coat, who slapped him on the back amiably and began talking in a voluble, lisping stream of words. Marusya turned away tactfully so as not to disturb their conversation. Mark nodded to her gratefully, called out, “Just a second,” and stepped aside with the gentleman. They talked for quite a while, but Marusya was not at all bored. She watched the people entering and leaving. Some people got into the elevator; others chose to walk up the broad, shallow staircase. This building made the first and most lasting impression on Marusya during her visit to Moscow: the men and women who bustled through the lobby dressed differently, rushed headlong, with purpose and confidence, and spoke rapidly, animatedly, as though they were all actors. The house itself was “modern,” and the people who lived there were “modern,” and the whole of life in Moscow was also “modern.” From the very first, it was clear to Marusya that Moscow was where she had to live, not in provincial old Kiev, stuffy and second-rate. Jacob should finish his studies and come live here. Both of them would live here together, in a house just like this one, and they would have a “modern” life, not a vulgar, pokey existence among Jewish relations, craftsmen, merchants, and bankers.
Her brother finished his conversation with the man in the fur coat, ending it in a strange way, with some sort of double handhold and a clap. Mark grabbed Marusya under the arm and guided her not to the lift but to the stairs, saying, “Hurry up, hurry up, Marusya. The elevator is too slow, and we’re just on the second floor.”
The apartment was wonderful, and also, in keeping with the whole building, unique, with an enormous alcove, and wood paneling—but no kitchen, just a stovetop in a small recess. There was, however, a real bathroom. Mark took some papers out of a desk drawer and whistled under his breath while he perused them. Then he picked out a clean handkerchief and said, “Marusya, I’ve got to rush. I’ll be home in the evening; here’s a key, here’s some money; don’t do anything foolish.”
When she was alone, Marusya stood for a while in front of the window, which was protected by wrought iron in a simple, stylized pattern. She imagined how she would look, with her upswept hair held by a velvet ribbon, if someone outside could see her. On the opposite side of the street, there was an identical gloomy building, but the snow that had just started to fall obscured the view into the windows. That meant no one could see her, either. Marusya fixed her hair, securing it more firmly under the ribbon. She exchanged her old dress for a skirt and a roomy blouse cut in the latest fashion, put on her little boots and an unseasonably light coat. She had left the despised winter coat at home; there was no place in her new life for that frightful old thing.