Suddenly she takes my head in her hands. Through her gloves I feel the awaited tenderness at last.
"This is an enormous step for you," she murmurs. "Are you certain you want to take on so much?"
The very predictability of my protest betrays its vulnerability. Questions I believe silenced forever are already drifting back, like Petrushka's ghost gone haywire.
"Don't be silly, it's you who's taking the giant step. . . . I've never been happier. I'm proud of having asked, proud of being accepted, proud of you."
The reward for this comes on her night-cold lips. I feel a tremble in her mouth. We want very much to have a place to ourselves now, but merely cross under Prospekt Marx to circumvent the Metropole, the clamminess of the underground passageway pulling us together, yet apart.
"If I weren't Russian," she says. "If I weren't Russian, would you have thought twice about me as your wife?"
Anastasia "^279
I think twice now. "But thank God you are Russian, you'd have been something different. You're you, the only one."
"All the same, there's an old Russian saying: 'Measure seven times before cutting the cloth.' "
How odd this sounds on her impulsive lips! How I admire her for giving me this escape, for considering my interests at this crucial moment more than her own. What better proof that she isn't heedless of others? It is the ultimate testament of her goodness and the wisdom of my decision.
Yet strangest of all this evening's strangeness is the slight ambiguity precisely this wise counsel leaves me in. I've broken my emotional barrier. Asked and been accepted. Volunteered to tackle the bureaucratic procedures tomorrow. Yet it's far lessJinal than I'd pictured; I am less changed.
Are we engaged? It is too raw to walk, too hard to get a taxi, too late to wangle a restaurant table. How can we have a fitting celebration?
Wary of Soviet feints, I sought preliminary counsel about marriage applications in the American Embassy. The cultural attache, who doubled as exchange students' advisor, knew me from the Harvard gym. My news swept away his chumminess; he went straight to a warning tightly laminated of political gravity and personal concern.
Marriage to a Soviet girl would make me suspect in America forever. Any girclass="underline" the KGB had a lien on them all. As a favor to him, might I "rethink the whole situation" for twenty-four hours? Meanwhile he'd bend the rules for an old friend and postpone informing Washington, in case I wanted to "contain" my youthful impulse.
I wandered among pensioners in the zoo, trying to think of what to say when Anastasia emerged from classes, feeling the awkwardness of last night's anticlimax thicken in the January day like leftovers in a refrigerator. Having agreed on our bold venture—if that is what we did; it was still less than absolutely clear—ordinary conversation with her seemed paltry. I wanted to say something that would stave oflf the descent to our previous imperfection.
280^MOSCOW FAREWELL
The attache's discouragement wouldn't do for this, of course— nor my response to it. Instead of blazing up at his cold-blooded Washingtonese, which I'd do one day when I needed to shunt the blame for my spinelessness, I agreed to his suggestion. Despising myself, I thanked him—even hoped, somewhere, that he would take over my responsibility.
The squeak of my boots pinched my nerves. Each hour apart from Anastasia increased the importance of producing tidings big enough for our new roles. I decided to wait until I could announce that at least my Embassy end was straightened out. I knew I wouldn't hear from her: she was giving me time to reconsider.
Next morning I shared the elevator with an older Embassy official who quipped about tying the knot to a Russian maid. I demanded to know how he'd heard.
"The outgoing Washington cables—isn't it official?"
I pushed the ground-floor button and left. The attache's betrayal was so shaming, I told myself, that I couldn't see him, let alone tell Anastasia. Explaining my reaction in the Evgeniya affair, I used to say that a free country's respect for the individual had badly prepared me to cope with double-dealing. Far more than clothes or meals, it was this I wanted to give my bride; this promise the Embassy had smeared. The less certain I was of myself, the more my country mattered. I felt I could not introduce it to her by way of official guile.
Another day passed in limbo. More ebb after the Bolshoi crest; even stronger presentiment that the longer the silence, the more necessary to break it dramatically. Hoping her eyes would prompt the necessary words, I went to the institute. She descended from the building alone, wrapped in thoughts and scarves. The very need for me undisguised on her face unmanned me; calling out to her mentally, I backed away. If my most mellifluous voice were asked, it would say that I truly wanted her for my wife, but wasn't ready. If it were the most honest, the answer would be in terms of girls and goodies too yummy to sacrifice. But there was no such questionnaire; I simply sensed a distance between us—which is all I felt; the rest of me was desensitized. Her hair fell over her eyes. She was so lovely in her faint melancholy that I feared to disturb it.
AnastasiaX281
I now left my room in early morning, and to kill thoughts of what to do, spent my waking hours with Alyosha. One day, I knew, Anastasia and I would laugh at the sorry functionary called a cultural representative. We'd thank him, too—for providing a background of his shabby sense of bureaucratic loyalty against which the importance and beauty of our own would more brightly shine. Meanwhile, I thought of how best to protect her from reprisals when we did go to the marriage office—which would be soon. And of how to make unimaginative me good enough not just for glittering theater evenings with her, but for a lifelong commitment of weekdays.
Soon I sensed that my absence itself was taking care of this. Our communion in such things was so strong that there was no need to say when I'd return, even why I was away. Her sense of dramatic timing would tell her how a temporary separation now could only increase the romantic tension, enhance our mutual dependence, make my heart even fonder.
And despite this self-deception put out to cover my mangy retreat, I'm foresighted at least in this: by the end of the week, I cherish her more than ever. I know her so intimately, am so certain of the affinity of our reactions, that I can feel her attachment growing in step with mine.
Evidence appears of precisely this: worried about my whereabouts, she discreetly telephones Alyosha. As I've asked, he says only that I'm well—and brooding.
She surely still feels I'm trying to copy him and that this is a mistake. More and more certain that we're sexual twins, Alyosha, by contrast, can't understand my "hypertensive" interest in her when "you'll only be bored soft in the end." The truth is that neither is right. I have long wanted two lives, one to dedicate to family and utter constancy, and the other for the opposite ultimate of abandon and debauch. Anastasia and Alyosha have been revealed as the two summits I must attain, but a beneficent god—which is what my guilt calls my duplicity —has arranged it that both can be squeezed into my single lifetime.
More—that one will prepare me for the other. For I'm hooked now on the intoxicating round of fetes and syllogize that far from spoiling me for my one true love, the profligacy is purifying me