Though their affair had already spanned a decade, Pasha discovered that Sveta spent most of her life in this nightie when they convened domestically last November. By all means an incredible surprise. The nightie had a tattered lace trim and stretched-out shoulder straps worn to a thread. It wasn’t unusual for a breast to pop out. Sveta’s avoidance of bras was as fundamental as her avoidance of complete sentences, black anything, and public functions, and her breasts, though not large, were demanding. They required attention. Basically she was always naked, yet she moved too nimbly and constantly, blurred by motion. The nightie was like a veil being deftly maneuvered. You were never sure if you saw what you thought you saw. If Sveta ever came to a complete stop, the nightie would’ve been revealed for what it was — a worn scrap of fabric insufficient to cover a child’s torso. Pasha had taken it once for a dishrag. He’d wiped his soapy hands on it.
There was really just one problem with the nightie: Sveta smoked. She had crates of long, slender, minty cigarettes. Pasha’s sensitive lungs deterred her from puffing away in the house. Not even in February had she bothered to throw something over her alabaster shoulders, softer and whiter than the lightly powdered snow, as she stood out on the porch, sometimes wandering into the courtyard if a friendly cat presented itself, and got her fix. The nicotine’s effect was to calm and focus — Sveta was at her most inert when she smoked. The neighbors got a show. On the floor above lived a cadaverous old widower who would’ve kicked the bucket long ago if Sveta in her nightie didn’t revive his pulse on an hourly basis. And to be honest, it was in their interest that he not delay, as he had the more desirable apartment.
Sveta stood in the doorway, telephone in extended hand. Pasha, piled under three plaid blankets, shivered just from looking at her. What a phenomenon it was, the shiksa constitution.
Is it Tochka?
It’s your sister.
Say I’m not feeling well.
Sveta covered the mouthpiece. I did. She’s insisting.
Pasha took the phone, looked at it for a moment, and pressed it to his ear, conchlike, as if awaiting the sounds of the sea.
Hello-o. Anybody there? asked Marina’s voice, which seemed to live naturally inside the plastic receiver.
Where else? said Pasha.
You could speak up. Sveta says you’re still not better. It’s because you don’t take care of yourself.
Sveta’s taking care of me.
There was a split second of silence, registered like a pinprick, and a subject switch. Papa’s doing fine, she said. He’s out for a walk. At first he protests, No, I won’t go, I don’t feel well, my hypertension, my constipation, leave me alone, it’s muggy out, but then he thanks me, So nice outside, the sunset, the seagulls. Anyway, he wanted me to ask when you’re planning to go check on the dacha.
I’ve been bedridden for a week!
He doesn’t mean right this second. He’s just wondering if you know when you might—
That man is a broken record.
That man is eighty years old. Besides, you can’t deny that you’ve hardly spent any time there this year.
The summer’s barely begun!
It’s August.
In my condition, said Pasha, the city’s safer. He was coming to dread these communications, in which the dacha was invariably mentioned — when would they be going, how were the raspberry bushes faring, what about Bym, the neighbor’s blind golden retriever? The Nasmertovs had been gone almost twenty years, yet their questions grew increasingly elaborate, as if they’d gone on a brief vacation and left Pasha the designated caretaker of their property in the interim. Now they were getting suspicious. Throughout the previous summers, when he and Nadia had resided at the dacha, there had been plenty to report about the state of the crops and the neighbors. This year Pasha had no choice but to lie about his visits. Just as Nadia had kept the Potemkin apartment, she had claimed the dacha, which Esther’s parents had purchased with their life savings and considered their treasure, the only valuable possession they could pass on to their daughter. Esther had loved that dacha almost as if it had a heartbeat. Perhaps Nadia had the capacity to feel a measure of shame — Pasha had surmised this when his father called last week to ask why the dacha’s landline had been disconnected. Pasha was a terrible liar, but his father was begging to be duped. So Pasha obliged. The line had been severed during a freak storm, and they had yet to install a new one. Robert was satisfied. No one would doubt Pasha’s capacity for procrastination. This meant that Nadia — a woman who barged in on Pasha’s poetry seminars at the university to tell him off in front of his impressionable students — didn’t have the courage to inform Robert that she was effectively stealing the dacha from them, that from then on in it was to be a rehabilitation home for her cousins. Nadia had never enjoyed spending time at the dacha herself. It took weeks just to persuade her to leave the city. Her cousins, however, were in permanent need of convalescing by the sea.
There’s a reason I called, and it wasn’t just to nag, said Marina.
That’s a relief.
After a momentary pause, she resumed. It’s about Frida.
Dad’s briefed me.
Marina exhaled. Then gave a lighthearted laugh. So you already know?
That she’s—
Coming.
I was under the impression that she was already home. Dad told me she’s not so fond of medical school.
She’s been home for a while. Summer break in this country begins in the winter and ends in the fall. What I meant was that she’s coming to Odessa. I hope you’re free on Thursday to pick her up from the airport.
Thursday! cried Pasha.
TWELVE
RUSSIAN POETS DIDN’T do airport pickups. They sent their new wives to fetch long-lost nieces. Sveta was more than happy to do it. She didn’t have a car or a driver’s license, but she had an industrious half brother, Volk. He took care of things. He made a cardboard sign that Frida passed by four or five times in a benzodiazepine haze before realizing that the emaciated man with the deviant’s ponytail and mesh camouflage vest was welcoming her.
He wasn’t quick on the uptake. Frida’s attempts to relate that she was the person for whom the sign was intended weren’t as effective as she might’ve hoped. Once Volk finally apprehended that the disheveled lady wasn’t distracting him from the task but was the task itself, he shook off the shackles of concentration that had been keeping him static and grew animated and twitchy. Apologies began to issue. He was sorry for motioning her away as she’d tried repeatedly to introduce herself; for his poor vision and laziness, as he’d been due to make a visit to the oculist for decades; for his cardboard sign, which was too small and in Cyrillic; for the airport personnel and security guards, who were giving her such awful stares. (Really? All of them?)
Her heart intensified its drum as she charged at the automatic doors separating her from Odessa air, like Moses marching at a sea that didn’t split. Momentum brought her cheek up against the glass. Peeling herself off, she stepped back, dumbstruck. Volk whipped out a pocketknife. He inserted the blade into the crack between doors and flipped his wrist, creating a space that his fingers could squeeze through, and proceeded to very unautomatically pry apart the doors. He led her to a woman who was an amalgamation of so much color, fabric, mood, and texture that the eye refused to absorb her as one whole. Sveta leaned against the railing, puffing on a cigarette. She took the apologizing torch. She was profoundly sorry for not waiting inside, she hadn’t expected Frida to come out so quickly, usually they detained Americans for at least an hour. You must seem extra harmless, she said. She was sorry for the air so saturated with exhaust — no regulations in Ukraine — and the lack of wheelchair-access ramps. Not that we need them, knock on wood.