“Galya,” he said, “I’ve been waiting for you for so long. Let’s go to the movies.”
How had he found her? It was obvious he had wanted to! Everything that followed was like the movies. And it flashed by just as quickly. The main thing was that it was exactly the way Galya wanted it to happen: at first he took her elbow, carefully, strongly, then by the hand, then he kissed her politely, without any pawing. He embraced her—again decently, without anything obscene or dirty. A month later he proposed to her. He wanted to visit her parents, with a cake and a bottle of wine, to ask for her hand. Galya warned her father beforehand:
“If you take out the vodka and get smashed, I’ll leave home.”
Her father made a dismissive gesture with his swollen brown hand:
“Oh, I’m scared! As though there’s anyplace else for you to go to.”
He was right, of course. But what he didn’t know was that his Galya now had an actual shield against the misfortunes of life.
The formal marriage proposal did not go as planned. Her mother was called in to work to sub for someone else on that evening. Her brother and his wife had been skirmishing to the point of fisticuffs for the past week, so Galya had to come clean about all her family circumstances. Gennady was understanding.
“Galya, mine are the same. Never mind them, the relatives … they just get in your way your whole life. We’ll just get married without telling them.”
Everything about Gennady was to her liking. He was quiet, didn’t ask questions, had a master’s certificate in sports, by the way, with a college degree; and with a family like his, you could forget they had ever existed.
Gennady was eager to get married for his own reasons, which he informed Galya about. Through his job he was eligible to receive housing; they had promised him a one-room apartment, but if he married, they might give him a small two-room apartment, so he could start a family.
They filed the necessary papers, and set a date for the registration of their union. Galya went to Olga and told her she was getting married. She asked her to be a witness. Olga had by this time tied the knot with Ilya. Both her girlfriends were lonely and alone. Tamara at least had her hormones to make out with, but Galya was just plain alone and unloved.
Olga was happy for her, but surprised:
“What kind of friend are you! You didn’t even tell me you had met someone.”
Now she just had to marry Tamara off, and everyone would be settled.
Olga didn’t suspect that she had also inadvertently decided Tamara’s fate. For a year Tamara had been seeing Ilya’s older friend the brilliant Marlen. At Olga’s birthday party, she had sat Tamara next to Marlen. They left the party at the same time, and Marlen walked her to the Molodezhnaya metro station. It turned out that they were practically neighbors. Tamara fell madly in love, igniting a mutual passion that was no laughing matter. For many years Marlen went back and forth between two homes (fortunately, only five minutes apart). In each home Marlen kept a toothbrush, a razor, and a clean pair of undergarments. He had always led a traveler’s existence, though now the destination of his business trips was sometimes only as far as the neighboring house, where he hibernated in quiet retreat and in love. And, of course, in secret. Tamara took a vow of silence practically from the first day they met—not a word to anyone about Marlen, especially not to Olga and Ilya. Thus, Olga, the unwitting disposer of other people’s fates, organized their lives and affairs but remained none the wiser about it herself.
* * *
Galya didn’t have a wedding party. Gennady said that it made no sense to throw money to the wind, since they would have to buy furniture. Galya just nodded in agreement. She was disappointed about it, but Gennady was right, of course. About the furniture. They registered their marriage, and she went to live with her husband in his dormitory. The room was a decent one. He gave his old bed away to the supervisor of the dormitory, and bought a fold-out divan.
That first night on the new divan, Gennady accepted an unexpected gift from his wife, a gift that required painstaking effort from the receiver, no less than the giver. It turned out that Galya Polukhina was an upright girl; she had saved herself for her husband. Only one thing cast a shadow over this great day for Gennady: Galya’s friend Olga. How on earth could he have let the wife of his target, Ilya Bryansky, whom he had been watching on and off for two years, appear as a witness on their marriage certificate? A personal connection was taking shape which was in part something of a nuisance, in part very promising.
While they were thrashing around on the new divan, while Gennady was carrying out his masculine duties and overcoming nature’s difficulties, glad for the gentle participation of his wife, a small but insistent worry hovered in the back of his mind: Had Olga recognized him?
She had. After she returned home from the marriage registry, she told Ilya that Polushka had gotten married to the Rodent. That’s what they had nicknamed Gennady when they discovered he was shadowing Ilya. The Rodent was one of the three outdoor surveillance officers whom Ilya knew by sight.
Ilya laughed at first—that meant he had married into the family! Then he started wondering. What was it you gave her to type?
In recent years Galya had often accepted work from them. She was a fast and accurate typist, without really understanding what she was typing.
“Oh, damn! I don’t remember.”
“Think! What did you give her to type?”
“Ah, now I remember! She has my Erika typewriter, and Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago.”
“Get them back right away. Today.”
Olga rushed down to the semibasement, and only remembered along the way that Galya had moved in with her husband. Her drunken father, Yury, hurt that his daughter hadn’t included him in the marriage arrangements, but had done everything herself, was unwelcoming. Olga asked whether Galya had left her typewriter behind.
“She took every last thing with her and cleared out. Didn’t even leave an address,” her father said curtly, and slammed the door in Olga’s face.
Olga went home upset, not knowing what to do next. Ilya lost no time in trying to comfort her.
“Never mind, Olga, things could be worse. Galya has been part of your family her whole life; she won’t be in any hurry to denounce you. Wait awhile—before you know it we’ll be drinking tea with her hubby,” Ilya said with a crooked grin.
Ilya wasn’t completely off the mark about the tea; but a friendly tea party was not in the cards for years to come. A good many of them.
They told Tamara about Galya’s hasty wedding to the Rodent, leaving out the part about the typewriter and the manuscript Galya was working on. Even so, Tamara was horrified.
“Don’t let her into your house!”
“Are you crazy? I’ve been friends with her practically since the day I was born!” Olga was angry.
“It’s too dangerous. How can you not see that yourself? You’ll have an informer under your own roof,” Tamara said darkly.
“Nonsense! It’s sickening, suspecting everyone in that way. Then I might as well start suspecting you!” Olga burst out.
Tamara turned scarlet, began to cry, and left.
The next day, Olga called Galya at work. They told her that she had gone on vacation that very day. Strange—Galya hadn’t mentioned anything about a vacation. In fact, Galya herself hadn’t known about this surprise from her husband. A honeymoon! Galya’s mother confirmed the information, saying they had gone on a trip to Kislovodsk. Olga asked about the typewriter, saying she had lent it to Galya, and now urgently needed it back. Galya’s mother, Nina, told Olga to wait a moment while she looked for it. She came back saying there was no typewriter in the house. She would have seen it—it was too big to miss.