The White Swan is the size of a gymnasium, with one long table stretching the length of the room covered with dishes, glasses, and platters of food worthy of the tsarist feast they just finished shooting. There are crystal vases brimming with Olivier salad; bowls with rainbow herring under a fur coat sheathed in layers of carrots, potatoes, and beets; plates with pickles, salami, and cheese; and smaller dishes glistening with red and black caviar. Sasha thinks of the sweet roll Andrei brought her from his special Komsomol store last year, a roll full of poppy seeds and raisins that caused her to salivate just as all these delicacies spread in front of her now.
For no reason at all, she turns to the door and sees a handsome man in a suit and tie shaking everyone’s hand. She knows it has to be a mirage, but even after she shuts her eyes and opens them again, Andrei is still there. She looks away, but her head turns back, like a ball of iron attracted by a magnet, and the tugging pain of the year without him suddenly swells inside her and makes her walk in his direction, as if hypnotized.
He takes her by the shoulders and kisses her on the cheeks, three times, an old-fashioned custom Grandma favors. There is a different air about him, the way he carries himself, the way he moves—an air of gravity and importance. Maybe he is no longer Andrei but Andrei Stepanovich, a man she knows yet does not know. In this byzantine room of so much excess, he seems completely at ease, introducing himself to the crew members and kissing Raisa’s hand as if she were a real tsarina. Sasha sees all this in snatches—discarded frames on the floor of a film editing room. When they are invited to sit at the table, Andrei is next to her on her right. Sasha’s first banquet is foggy, experienced through the delirium of his presence.
Someone in a gray suit makes a toast, and they all drink what has been poured into their glasses. First it’s vodka; then it’s either cognac or wine. She chooses wine. It is red and sweet, the wine from Georgia called Khvanchkara, the favorite wine of Stalin, the toastmaster proclaims. Sasha has her doubts about this claim, for whoever knew what Stalin favored has probably been dead for at least a decade, arrested and shot for knowing too much, but sitting next to Andrei makes her skepticism melt away. Despite a line of waitresses snaking through the room carrying trays of hot dishes followed by a whole roasted baby pig on a platter, she cannot but feel heat radiating from him. Neither the pig’s baked eyes nor the signature dish of Bely Lebed, a whole roasted swan, with its curved neck and a charred beak, distract her from Andrei’s hypnotizing presence.
He piles up their plates with meat and raises his glass. “To your first film role,” he says. “Drink to the bottom.”
She drinks to the bottom. She is thrilled to sit next to Andrei, their sleeves touching, their legs pressed together under the table. She feels liberated to be with him, without her mother’s condemning looks and warnings about danger, without the whole town of Ivanovo gossiping on benches about the daughter of an anatomy professor seen walking around with the janitor’s son. She doesn’t know how Andrei found out about the filming in Suzdal, but she is glad he did. She is glad she can be alone with him in this town that has been turned into a huge movie set. She is glad she is nearly eighteen, an acting student doing real acting. Today is a perfect day to celebrate all this.
She also knows what being alone with Andrei means, how this banquet is likely to end, and knowing it makes the hours of sitting at the table even more intoxicating. They eat the pig and the swan until only their carcasses are left, devouring their flesh made succulent by spices she doesn’t know, sucking on the bones when there is no meat left. They are insatiable and hungry, as if they haven’t eaten in a year, as if this first meal together is also their last. She feels conflicted, not wanting this gorging frenzy to be over and counting the minutes until it ends.
22
He now tastes of the aged Armenian cognac he toasted her with, no longer of the sweet cough medicine that made Sasha dizzy a year ago. He unzips and unbuttons her, carefully, and he doesn’t seem to notice what she wears underneath her dress. She wishes she had worn something prettier, something that only exists in her imagination, but he doesn’t seem to care. His eyes are black, all pupils, and he smells of cigarettes and roasted meat. “Kra-sa-vi-tsa,” he spells in little puffs of air on her shoulder, “a beauty.”
The only light in the room is a narrow streak that reflects on the wood boards of the floor, a streetlamp sifting a yellowish glow through the slit between the curtains. This hotel room undoubtedly belongs to the Party Committee; the curtains are thick, and the sheets are crisp. She has never been certain of what she’s been aching for, but being with Andrei in this room has sharpened the focus and honed it down to this moment, reckless and electric. After almost two years of tiptoeing around, this is the moment they have yearned for, the moment that will bind them forever by blood. She is not afraid of blood or pain, a small price to pay for the intoxication of the two of them finally becoming one. She knows what she wants: his mouth and his hands, his weight on her, the taste of his sweat. This is the beginning of her adult life, and they are writing its first chapter together—in this town full of white churches and dark saints—with their hands and their lips. They are both stripped of clothing, stripped of their shells, exposed to each other. She wants him to keep saying “I love you” in his new voice, a voice that makes him as vulnerable as she is now, a voice that forces the familiar pain that has churned inside her for a year to boil and explode, making her feel certain she is going to die.