“Let me handle it, Papa.”
“He’s not good with women.”
We were cleaning up dinner, not that there was much left. I carefully unwrapped the oranges and presented them to Marina. “For you.”
“Are you sure?”
Instead of answering, I kissed her. She slipped away. “I taste like salt—”
“I like salt.”
“You’re a sex maniac. It’s very bourgeois.”
“Hey, I’m the guy in the Komsomol. By definition, I’m not only authorized to define bourgeois, I’m also allowed to be a sex maniac.” I got my arm around her, began rubbing her hip. We kissed again.
She broke away. “Let’s finish cleaning up.” Her voice had suddenly grown husky. “When are Lev and the twins back?” My other two roommates, Mark and Sasha, were as dissimilar as two men could be: Mark was tall, brooding, thin, a bit stupid. Sasha was short, happy, fat, and brilliant. Sasha was even four years older than Mark. Nevertheless, because both of them happened to be from Omsk, Marina dubbed them twins.
“At ten.”
It was almost nine. “We’ll have to hurry,” Marina said, unbuttoning her sweater.
Early on in our relationship, Marina had decided she would be the responsible one, watching what little money either of us had (not much, given our student allowances), cleaning up the leftovers, and, most specially, worrying about appearances. Some of my roommates might blithely fornicate with their girlfriends while I was sleeping in the same room: That was a fact of life in the student apartments. To my relief, Marina insisted on privacy.
This personal dignity was one of the things I loved about her, especially since I felt I had none. I consoled myself with the knowledge that Marina was three years older, and in the fashion of women everywhere, much more mature.
We had met during my fourth year at Bauman, when Marina became my tutor in English — a subject in which, you will not be surprised, I showed great and sudden improvement. There was an undeniable instant attraction between us which, naturally, neither of us acted upon for months. I knew that she had recently ended a marriage that seemed to have been State-ordained, possibly for some diplomatic assignment in Europe. Marina was understandably very reluctant to talk about it, and I knew better than to keep asking. Her age was another early obstacle. My father, hearing later that Marina and I were getting serious, wondered how we would ever have children!
But, slowly and awkwardly, we had found each other.
Within minutes the flat was clean. I unfolded the bed as Marina drew the blinds and, magically, continued her dance of the seven veils — sweater off first, then bracelet, watch and earrings, then shoes and stockings. Only when I turned out the light did she remove her blouse and let me unzip her skirt, which I carefully folded. I took her in my arms.
In spite of the fact that she was older and had been in a marriage, Marina was much less experienced in bed than I, quite a trick given my own relative innocence when we met. Her ex-husband, she said, simply demanded sex every three days, like a clock, caring nothing for her pleasure or state of mind.
Naturally, I did my best to be nothing like this former brute. From Marina’s pleased reactions, I believe that I succeeded.
When we had satisfied ourselves, Marina rose to wash her face. From the kitchen — a few feet away — she asked me how my job with Filin was going.
“Fine.” She emerged from the kitchen, looking pink and pretty, and started gathering her clothes. As I helped her, I said, “They’re making me a junior engineer.”
Her eyes widened with pleasure and surprise. “That’s wonderful! I was worried that you wouldn’t be accepted there!” And would have to leave Moscow was the unfinished threat. “You said it was going to be impossible.”
“Something changed. I start real engineering tomorrow. When I finish my degree in a couple of months, I’ll be full-time.”
“You should have told me earlier.”
I laughed. “Why? Would you have done something different?”
She arched an eyebrow. “I guess you’ll never know.” While I was considering those possibilities, she said, “Are they going to find you an apartment in Kaliningrad?”
I hadn’t thought of that. I couldn’t stay in the Bauman student housing past spring, certainly. A good apartment was very difficult to find in the Moscow area. Marina read the confusion on my face. “You stick to the engineering, darling. When it’s time, I will deal with the apartment.”
She kissed me again, then reached for her coat.
“Do you have to go?”
“Yes.”
“It’s the middle of the night. And it’s below zero.” I got off the bed, feeling that we had unfinished business. “I’ll walk you.”
She put her hand on my chest. “I’ve done this a hundred times. And your roommates will be here any minute.” We kissed at the door. “In spite of extreme provocation, I still love you.”
“I love you, too,” I said. Then she left.
From the window, I saw her slip on the frozen street under the yellow light, then disappear around the corner.
Only then did I realize that something had changed in our relationship. I had not told her about being present at the death of the now-famous Korolev, about my other new job with Uncle Vladimir, about the fact that my new job at Experimental Design Bureau Number 1 was courtesy of Uncle Vladimir.
My father always warned me that there was a black mark against Marina. I told myself it would be better for her if she didn’t know.
But I couldn’t forget my father’s words. On my first day with State Security, I had started lying to Marina.
4
Department 90
The next morning, it took me two hours to change my status from part-time assistant to Vasily Filin to junior engineer in Department 90. Once I received my pass, I left the overheated personnel office and returned, as ordered, to Filin’s. “All set? Good. I hoped to introduce you to Triyanov personally, but now I have a meeting. Hurry over to Building 11 and you might be able to catch him.”
“Will Triyanov be in the meeting, too?”
“Yes. It’s all about our next manned space launch.”
With minimally useful directions from Nadiya the bird woman, I headed out the back of the main building, entering an area that looked like a village square, and probably served that purpose. In front of me was a huge portrait of Korolev himself, bordered in black. At the base of the portrait were heaps of flowers. As I walked toward Building 11, I wondered where the mourners had gotten so many flowers in the middle of winter.
Experimental Design Bureau Number 1 was located on the site of a former Tsarist arsenal in what used to be the village of Podlipki. Podlipki — except for its train station — had since been renamed in honor of the late arms minister Kalinin, and was, in fact, no longer a village, but merely a suburb of Moscow, just outside the planned Ring Road.
Given the size of the bureau, and my lonely mission, I suddenly felt lost, like a stranger in a foreign city.
Building 11 was a four-story pile of gray with dim corridors painted a dark green. Endless rows of office doors, with no signs to indicate what lay behind them.
Eventually I found Department 90, and Stepan Triyanov, who turned out to be a wiry, wizened man in his mid-fifties. I would later learn that he had been a glider pilot back in the thirties — just like the late Korolev; it was where they met and became friends, who wound up commanding partisan units during the war. Triyanov had won a Hero of the Soviet Union medal in combat, then gone into test flying, doing some of the first service tests on the MiG-15.