“Are you all right?” Andrei asks, pulling the blanket over them. “Did I hurt you?”
She still feels the echo of the ache, but it is dormant now, all gathered in one place, no longer demanding attention. “No,” she says. “I feel good, for the first time.”
He seems unhappy with her answer, and she senses a current of tension run between them. She sees the struggle in his eyes, as if he were not sure whether he could believe what she just said, as if he wanted to be guilty. It is the same struggle she sensed in him when she announced she was going to Moscow, a struggle to believe what she was saying. Or maybe it is much simpler than that. Maybe, as all provincial men, he thinks that a proper virgin should whimper in pain or squirm in shame, instead of feeling satisfied and happy. She wants to tell him that she is certain she could reach into the place where she stores other people’s emotions and find the requisite pain. But she knows it would be someone else’s pain, not hers. She wants to feel what she feels, to be content for the first time, to prop herself up on the Party pillow with a smile on her face, the smile that makes his face tense.
She rolls to the edge of the bed and lifts the blanket. There is no blood on the sheet, not even a drop. She has no idea what this means, and she wishes she could ask her anatomist mother later, but she knows, of course, she can’t.
“It is my first time,” she says, her voice already defensive. “You are my first.” She wants to say “my first man,” but that would sound as if she were putting him into some grotesque line with men she hasn’t yet met who are going to queue up to have sex with her next.
He draws his arm around her and presses her face into his neck. It smells like marzipan she tasted once, a gift from a Georgian student in her dorm, a sweet and sweaty smell. “I love you,” he says, “no matter what.”
“No matter what?” she asks.
He doesn’t answer. He has already closed up, retreated into himself. He strokes her hair, then winds it around his hand. “Let’s go to sleep, krasavitsa,” he says. “It’s late.” He kisses her on the cheek and turns away.
She wants to object, to clear the air between them, but when she turns to Andrei, he is already asleep.
Sasha opens her eyes and sees the streak of light on the floor, only now instead of the pale yellow, it is bright saffron. Andrei, dressed, is packing his suitcase. She sits up in bed, rubbing open her eyes to face the first day of her new life.
“Do you have to leave so soon?” she asks as he pushes the clasps on the suitcase closed.
After a minute of silence, he speaks reluctantly. “I have to go back to my life. And you must go back to yours.”
There is a shadow now that dims everything in the room, as if the curtains were suddenly pulled closed. The street below is empty except for a blue Moskvitch parked at the curb below their window, probably an official Party Committee car waiting for Andrei. “Why did you come here,” she asks, “if you only intended to stay for a night and run out at the crack of dawn?” He straightens up but doesn’t turn to her and doesn’t answer. “Why did you go to all the trouble to find me? There are other women, I’m sure, women you could’ve had with much less effort.”
From his tense shoulders, she knows he is back to being as closed as he was in Ivanovo, as guarded as the borders of their motherland. Sensing her anger, he turns and sits in an armchair by the bed. With morning light flooding into the room, he is no longer Andrei. He is Andrei Stepanovich, a Party functionary.
“Is that car downstairs one of the Party perks?” she asks, sharpening her voice to counter his silence. “Am I just a perk, too?”
“Leave the Party out of it,” he snaps. “There are things about the Party you’ll never understand. The Party isn’t a concept; it’s made up of people, flesh and blood. And these people trust me. You might even say they love me. They were my family when I no longer had a family.”
She walks around the bed and sits on the arm of his chair, hoping that he will stop talking about the Party and pull her into his embrace. For a moment, he hesitates but then holds her tight.
“I saw you at the train station when I was leaving Ivanovo,” she whispers into his neck. She can’t see his face, but she can hear a sharp exhale.
“I wanted to say goodbye to you before I left. The real you, not a mirage hovering at a distance I could only see through a cloud of smoke.”
“You always expect too much of me, Sashenka.” He releases her from his embrace. “You—more than anyone else—know who I am. My father was a criminal, and my mother swept the streets. I live in the provinces. I have provincial blood running through my veins.” He looks down, searching for words. “I didn’t say goodbye to you at the train station because I was confused and scared. Because I did something I’m ashamed of. Something I couldn’t tell you about.”