“Debbie! You are … I’m glad…”
Debbie, his fiancée, was no beauty, but she had a radiant smile.
“Sah-nee-a! Ya tebya lublyu!”
Pierre had managed to find an ideal bride for Sanya. She was a journalist, a feminist, and a hell-raising activist from the American delegation for the International Women’s League. A year before, she had been in Moscow for a women’s seminar organized by the Committee of Soviet Women. Where she and Sanya had met and started a romance! A watertight legend!
They embraced. From one side, the click of a camera shutter sounded—a photographer from a progressive American newspaper was documenting the meeting of Debbie O’Hara, an activist in the American women’s movement, and a young music historian. With her pudgy hands, Debbie grabbed Sanya by the cheeks and kissed him right on the mouth. The soapy taste of lipstick. Sanya put his arm around her weakly. She was half a head taller and seventy pounds heavier than he was.
Another smacking kiss. Another click of the camera. One more kiss, one more click, and Eugene Michaels left: he had accomplished his mission. Two gray suits, who blended into the crowd, crossed from two corners of the hall. They came together in the middle, by the exit, like somnambulists, whispered something to each other, and parted again.
Chirping:
“Your English is wonderful!”
“Yours is too!”
“You’re so cute!”
“And you’re my life’s dream!”
The bride and groom giggled. Sanya was covered in red lipstick. Debbie gently rubbed off the spots of faux blood with a soft handkerchief.
Sanya tried to grab the suitcase, but she pushed him away, protecting it.
“You’re a savage, Sah-nee-a! I’m a feminist! I won’t allow you to open doors for me, or to carry my suitcase. I’m an independent woman!”
Sanya looked at her, somewhat abashed.
“Well, I just thought it was heavy…”
She had already thrown the bristly dark brown fur over her left arm. She bent her right arm at the elbow, saying:
“Look at my muscles! I lift weights!”
Sanya probed her bare arm.
“Debbie, you’re simply the dream of my life! When I get tired, you can bring me up in your arms!”
Marvelous, fluent English.
“Oh! You made a mistake! To ‘bring up’ is what a mother does. You know, nursing your young, and all that. ‘Carry me’ is what children say!”
Putting down her suitcase, she placed both palms on her heavy breasts to illustrate her point.
Sanya was somewhat alarmed.
Sanya took his bride to the Berlin Hotel. Before Debbie went to sleep—for about twelve hours straight, a logical consequence of jet lag, her revels with friends in New York on the eve of her departure, and a healthy nervous system—they drank vodka downstairs in the bar. They chatted. Then they kissed, and parted until the following morning.
The next day, Sanya had planned to show his bride Moscow, and to take her to the Conservatory in the evening. He hadn’t prepared any other surprises for her. There was just one thing on the agenda: submitting papers for registering their marriage at the Palace of Matrimony, the only place that accepted documents from foreign citizens.
Their morning stroll through Moscow began after lunch. Sanya had put together the itinerary. Debbie had seen the Kremlin the last time she was there, and now she wanted to see what she called “real life.”
When they left the hotel, the weather was magicaclass="underline" frost and sunshine, a marvelous day, a remarkably blue sky and snow. In the bracing cold and frigid sunshine, the Irish girl from Texas experienced such a corporeal joy and exhilaration that Sanya, who didn’t like winter, looked around and was forced to agree: it was great!
Still, winter induced no ecstasy in Sanya, and, unconsciously wishing to deflate his bride’s euphoria, took her to the most terrible place of all—to Dzerzhinsky Square, where the bloody knight of the Revolution stood in the middle like a column.
He pointed to the building at his back.
“That’s the Lubyanka. Our own Judgment Day.”
“I know, 1937!”
He took Debbie’s hand.
“Why 1937? That monster is still alive today. And now that I’ve managed to spoil your good mood, let’s walk around some more.”
He spoke his textbook English well, and his keen ear immediately picked up on her slightly lisping Texas drawl.
They went to Pushkin Square, stopping at the very beginning of Tverskoy Boulevard. How often the LORLs’ excursions had begun here in years gone by! Victor Yulievich would arrange for them to meet at the Pushkin monument, and from there they would take excursions into the past: Ilya with his camera, Mikha with a notebook, and ten other inquisitive lads …
Debbie turned out to be an absolute novice, a clean slate, when it came to Russian culture—so much so that it was difficult to know where to begin.
“Have you read Tolstoy?” Sanya asked.
“Oh, yes! I saw the movie War and Peace. Two movies! I adore them! Audrey Hepburn, she’s just gorgeous! And your Pierre Bezukhov, Bondarchuk, of course. He got an Oscar! I wrote a review!”
“That’s a start. I’ll show you the house where the family of Count Rostov lived,” Sanya said with a sigh.
What a simpleton she is! he thought, and took her to look at the famous mansion.
For four days the bright cold weather held, and for four days they wandered through the city. The bride, despite her naïve simplicity, turned out to be quite capable of sensitivity and sympathy. She was, in fact, a wonderful traveling companion, animated and curious. Her astonishing ignorance about everything concerning Russian culture gave way to a passionate interest in it, which took hold on the empty spot. This interest extended to Sanya.
During the sunny days, they walked through the icy streets, and in the dim, poorly lighted evenings they shivered and stopped into cafés, which were hard to find back then, for a warm-up and a snack. For Debbie, this was the most romantic trip of her life. With the exception of Spain—ten years before, she had spent a month there, and a handsome Spaniard had turned up, shown her Madrid and Barcelona, and then run off with all her money. There hadn’t been much of that anyway …
After visiting the museum in Khamovniki, where Debbie was so moved she nearly cried (“Sah-nee-a! Your Lev Tolstoy is every bit as great as Voltaire!”), freezing, they had taken shelter in the entryway of an old building. On a third-floor windowsill, they sat down to warm themselves over the radiator. Sanya took a flask out of his pocket—Ilya’s example!—and both of them took a gulp right from the bottle.
Debbie chattered almost nonstop. But now she was very quiet, and when they were by the hotel, saying good-bye, she said:
“Sah-nee-a! I can’t understand how I have lived without all of this! When I get home I’m going to learn Russian!”
“Debbie, why would you need to do that?”
Debbie blazed up. Her temper was not merely Irish (though that would have been enough), but downright Italian.
“Ya lublyu! Ya lublyu the Russian language! You are, of course, very cultured, and I understand! But I am perfectly capable of learning myself! I learn fast! I learned Spanish! I learned Portuguese! I will learn Russian! You’ll see!”
Sanya got nervous, and adroitly changed the subject.
“Debbie, do you know who Isadora Duncan was?”
“Of course! Of course I do! I’m a feminist! I know all the extraordinary women! ‘The Dance of the Future’! A new style of dance, barefooted and wearing tunics! And her lovers were Gordon Craig and a Russian poet, I forget his name.”