We parted before supper and I went to Alyosha's alone. The comforts and distractions oihis house were growing daily. He had a bottle of Polish vodka. The main thing to forget was why, those few days after witnessing my obscenity from the kitchen floor, she was in a mood to lash out at the bus inspector. The remark of hers that rasped loudest in my ears was the reference to "who does the real cheating around here."
Alyosha and I went to a movie. Anastasia continued to ignore the cash boxes of buses and trolleys. On principle.
The following weeks the weather was dismal. Days passed like a column of prison coats in a labor camp. A combination of normal cold and unusual damp pained fingers and toes, no matter how you dressed. The stufl'in the air and on the sidewalks
268^MOSCOW FAREWELL
was Russian slyakot rather than ordinary "slush" or "slime." Little relief could be found indoors. The movies and plays were bad: we'd already seen almost everything of interest. Returning to the circus was a disaster. And the restaurants had turned depressing.
The same meals in the same handful of places had lost all their exhilaration. The objective reason was Russian gastronomy's winter decline. Even in The Berlin, our "Old World" favorite, the service wore at our nerves. Waiting the sweaty hour between courses, I occasionally had to choke down the bile of frustration that had been my prevailing taste in Intourist restaurants before meeting Anastasia. The music gave us headaches, the chairs cut into our thighs. We used to drop such evenings in the middle, but now we stayed, prolonging our unhappiness: the small things were working in reverse. We caught each other's eyes as they returned from observing other tables and shuddered with a common, unspoken vision of our relationship's flimsiness—based, as it was becoming, on the sham luxury of these socialist bordellos. Their link to real Russian life was providing three wretched hours of escape from its deeper wretchedness.
"If only we'd had our own apartment!" I entreated under my breath to the strangers sharing our table. Hers, mine, her uncle's; anywhere to be in bathrobes, alone with a book or a television movie. The artificiality of those long evenings out would evaporate; we'd be ourselves—which was still best friends, although our passion was subsiding. Meanwhile, we saw ourselves as victims of winter and Soviet circumstances, and waited to be nuzzled by spring.
Soon we were returning for second viewings of our favorite plays. Her spontaneity in the audience still sharpened my senses, and I had the added pleasure of being seen with her on my arm. Half the orchestra of the best houses is occupied by members of the Western colony who know only a handful of especially authorized Russians encountered in their work and value the most casual social contact with the least prepossessing nonofficial citizen as evidence of penetration into native life. Anastasia's obviously Russian loveliness produced gratifying whispers and stares. It was the same winter and same Soviet circumstances, but
Anastasia "^269
the same me—with my blocks to going deeper—enjoyed the shallow pleasure of flattery to my vanity.
One evening in late January, we went to three one-act ballets at the Bolshoi, the theater we loved more than all the others together, including the shinier new ones. From the outside, the building is smaller and less impressive than its name implies, and triumphant Russian disorder asserts itself even here to dent the roof and send streaks from rusty gutters down the yellow plaster. But the interior exudes other-worldly magic. Russians would trudge the snow barefoot to reach its lavishness.
It was the only place in Moscow that allowed me to forget I was there. The thick crimson velvet, friendly gilt, fusion of opulence and intimacy are more warming on a black winter night than the extravagant performance itself We were lifted from seediness and sadness into the kingdom of illusion the moment we entered.
I loved Anastasia again in these surroundings. She wore a black jersey dress I'd bought from a French diplomat, which deepened the white of her skin and the sheen of her hair. She was fairer than ever, as ethereal as a fable. I walked down the aisle behind her to her seat with a premonition that something extraordinary was going to happen. The first ballet was Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kije. Unplayed through much of the Stalin era, the score, with its echoes of Kurt Weill's sardonic jazz, helped make it an "avant-garde" favorite when revived forty years later. Delighted with the respite from its Swan Lake-Les Sylphides-Giselle treadmill, the company enlivened its usual technical skill with verve. Anastasia gurgled.
I went for something to drink during the intermission. To my disappointment, she insisted on staying in her seat. When I returned, she was at the opposite end of our aisle, laughing with Joe Sourian.
"He's invited us after the theater," she said when resettled in her seat. "To an American correspondent's. They're having a party."
"How do you know Joe?"
She chuckled. "Who doesn't?"
Again my twinge of irritation. Or jealousy—but of Joe Sourian?
270^MOSCOW FAREWELL
"What party? I don't think we should go."
"Why do you always assume you'll decide for us both? You still picture yourself dispensing goodies to native girls. Arranging their movements."
She was always wrong about content, feeling out my weak spots in order to belittle my advice; but right about me. Here we were trying to forget our last row, but starting another one— which might be our last.
"Please spare us an argument this evening. I just think it's foolish for you to be reported with other Americans. One's risky enough."
"Nonsense."
"You know it's good sense."
"But not the real reason. You have something against Joe. Maybe even that he's broken your 'monopoly' on Russian friends."
"Oh Nastya."
"I accepted. I haven't danced in ages. Some of your countrymen know how to have fun."
I didn't answer. Nor reply to her "last word" on the matter: that I was purposely playing up the danger of informers; she knew her own country, thank you. But she'd never been near a diplomatic compound, let alone had any idea of the surveillance.
I wanted to pull her out of her seat and take her . . . where? If only she weren't so beautiful tonight. Too splendid to lose, too exasperating to be with; full of unique qualities that only I could appreciate—and of lapses from what she should be. She was so close to what I needed; the perfection she almost gave me made me want it—and resent her—all the more.
The house lights went down. Geologists, the second ballet, was a hackneyed propaganda piece about steadfast prospectors discovering mineral deposits for the Motherland. Anastasia's squirms produced the usual indignation in the people near us, while her attitude toward me, indicated by an arched back and refusal to look, was the equivalent of a mild pout for being held back by some "sensible" restriction.
She came to the buffet with me during the second intermission and for the first time in my life I ordered champagne. If I'd thought about it, I might have done this to effect a reconciliation
Anastasia X 2 71
in style—to best my countrymen who "knew how to have fun." But I couldn't think. After the first glasses, I was already succumbing to an overpowering spell. Everything irrelevant faded into the background as I moved toward my true thoughts.