Debbie wants the wedding. Sanya wants to disappear. Debbie wants a honeymoon. Sanya wants to bury his head in the ground. Debbie wants a wedding night. Sanya wants to fall off the face of the earth.
Olga throws together a wedding party at her place.
Over the past six months, Debbie has learned to speak some Russian. She talks incessantly. Sanya remains silent, in both Russian and English. Toward evening his temperature shoots up, and a headache takes hold.
Ilya takes him to Chernyshevsky Street. Nadezhda Borisovna does everything that Anna Alexandrovna used to do: she presses a hot towel to Sanya’s head, gives him sweet tea with lemon, and two Citramon tablets. As always, in such cases, his temperature is near 104 degrees. Nadezhda Borisovna continues to do everything that Anna Alexandrovna did in this situation. She covers his shoulders and chest with vodka, then rubs it in with a woolen rag. No, Anna Alexandrovna did everything much better.
Sanya is sick for the usual three days. Debbie spends these three days in Olga’s apartment: the first day she sobs; the second she chats animatedly with Olga. And, on the third day, Ilya takes her to Sheremetevo Airport. Sanya languishes on Nuta’s divan with his high temperature.
The farce called a “wedding” is over. The only thing that remains to be done is submit the application for a visa to the American consulate. And then wait, wait, and wait some more.
Eight months later, Alexander Steklov landed in New York. Pierre Zand met him at Kennedy Airport.
By this time, Debbie spoke Russian very well. She met Sanya a year and a half later at the lawyer’s, after she had found a real fiancé for herself (also Russian, by the way), and she needed a real divorce to make him her real husband.
Debbie refused the five thousand dollars that she was supposed to receive for the fictitious marriage. She also refused to keep the fur. In the end, she got the fur anyway. Pierre kept the coat in cold storage in Palo Alto for a few years, and gave it to Debbie for her second, real wedding. By this time she had moved to New York, where winters are sometimes cold enough to wear a fur coat.
Sanya lives in New York, too. He teaches the theory of music at a world-famous music school.
Ende gut, alles gut.
EPILOGUE: THE END OF A BEAUTIFUL ERA
They met. They embraced—right cheek to right, then left to left. It was effortless. They were the same height. The woman’s face was narrow, her nose aquiline; the man’s face was angular, with high cheekbones and a snub nose. The rain suddenly turned white, and it began to snow. The wind blew from all directions at once, whipping itself into a breaker right above the square where they had agreed to meet. Cold moisture blew up from the bay, while, from the other side, from the river, the air seemed to blow stale decay.
“Doesn’t it smell like Chistye Prudy, Sanya?”
“Not at all, Liza. Not in the least.”
He ran his hand over her hair. It was cold to the touch.
“Let’s hurry. Are you cold?”
“I haven’t had time to freeze yet. But it’s damn cold.”
“I made you a tape of Beethoven’s Thirty-second, Eschenbach’s performance in Madrid in ’86. You’ll understand what I mean…”
He took a cassette tape out of his pocket and put it in her hand.
“Thank you, Sanya. I’m not arguing with you, for the most part. But Eschenbach always has something of the tongue-twister about him. Sviatoslav Richter has a different articulation altogether, much cleaner…”
They had parted a year and a half before in Vienna, where Sanya had traveled to hear her perform. Now, on the way to visit a home to which they had been invited, they were picking up the conversation where they had left off in Vienna.
Maria opened the door.
Obligatory air kisses.
“Good evening. Anna is sick. I put her to bed downstairs. Take off your coats, and go upstairs. I’ll be right up.”
Somewhat distant and disengaged, as always. Of course, her child was sick. It was natural for her to be preoccupied.
Maria’s collarbone jutted out of the low-cut collar of her blue dress. Her Venetian glass jewels rolled across it with every movement she made.
“Is the weather awful?”
“Worse than awful. Windy, cold, and damp,” Sanya affirmed.
“This weather pursues me everywhere this year. It seems that my performance schedule has coincided with some sort of low-pressure atmospheric system. Wherever I happen to be—Milan, Athens, Stockholm, Rio—there is rain mixed with snow. It started in the middle of November.”
The master heard their voices and came out to greet them. The stairs leading to the upper floor were rather narrow, and he stood at the top, smiling.
They went upstairs. Sanya glanced at the table in the room—a Roman anthology was lying open on top of it. It was another coincidence, as so often happened. At home, Sanya was reading Ovid.
“Come in, come in. You see, Liza? We’ve gotten to see each other again after all.”
They kissed.
“I’ve been hearing that phrase from you for the last twenty years. Do you say it so that I’ll value you more when next we meet? That isn’t necessary. I value our meetings without being reminded of it!”
“No, I’m just letting you know that we don’t have another twenty years,” the master quipped.
In his hand he held an unlit cigarette that he lit up and began to smoke after they had kissed.
“You still haven’t quit?”
“No, I won’t quit smoking. Just wait a while, it will quit me soon enough!”
“But you were going to try!” she said in an old woman’s plaintive voice. “You’re cutting short your last twenty years!”
The master laughed.
“Liza, I’m cutting into them from the other end, not from this one. Maybe it’s not so bad for me. Besides, these years are a gift.”
“A gift?”
“If I had stayed in our homeland, I would have died of poverty, frayed nerves, and poor medical care long ago.”
Sanya turned away and looked at the heavy curtains, as though he could see out the window.
Yes, even with the best medical care imaginable, my end is not far to seek, Sanya thought.
He must have known that his own illness, already with him for the past eight years, was incurable.
On the table were takeout cartons from a Chinese restaurant. The door opened up just a crack. Maria appeared out of the semidarkness, like a photograph developing.
“Anna won’t settle down. She wants to see Sanya before she goes to bed.”
“May I?” Sanya stood up.
“Of course,” Maria said, nodding.
“I’ll go down, too,” the master of the house said.
With Maria leading the way, and the rest of them walking in single file behind her, they went downstairs and along a hall, then stopped in front of a door that was slightly ajar. A little girl was sitting on the bed, radiating fever. The light of a lamp that stood behind her next to the bed turned her tousled hair golden. It sparkled like Christmas tree tinsel.
“Papa, you promised…”
“What, my kitten?”
My God! This child doesn’t speak Russian! Liza thought.
“I don’t remember what it was, but you promised,” she said, her mouth crumpling. She began to cry.
“Look, here it is,” Sanya said, holding something up to her in his closed fist.
The little girl took his hand and tried to pry his fingers apart, but Sanya kept them closed.
“Careful, Anna. This little thing might break.”
Then he opened his palm, on which lay a small glass mouse.
“Do you remember what I promised you? That Sanya would come and bring you a glass mouse.”
“That’s not true! You didn’t promise me Sanya’s mouse! It’s not a promised mouse, it’s just a plain mouse. Thank you. No one ever gave me a mouse before.”
“Will you go to sleep with the mouse now?” Maria asked.