To go on a plane and see Kolya in America? Did he really say what Sasha thinks he said? She knows he can’t be serious, or maybe she didn’t hear him correctly, too busy staring at the blue vessel on his temple. Everyone knows that the two words, go and America, are as incompatible as acting and lying. No one can simply visit an uncle on the other side of the world, the Western, capitalist side. Even her mother, with her spotless record, wasn’t allowed to go to Bulgaria to visit the medical students she had taught, despite receiving an official invitation to meet their parents in Sofia. After a stack of letters vouching for her character, after months of meetings and committees, her request was turned down because the visit was deemed unnecessary. And that was Bulgaria, their southern communist neighbor who believes in their shared shining future. No one Sasha knows has ever crossed over to the other half of the earth. They are all huddled here, on this side of the Iron Curtain, blissfully ignorant about the rest of the world, helplessly content.
Andrei must see the confusion in her face, because he doesn’t press her for an answer. “Let’s go somewhere we can sit down and talk,” he says. “I know a place that’s open late.
“And if you like it there, in America,” he adds casually, as if in passing, as if what he is about to say amounts to nothing but a trifle, “you can do me a favor and never come back.”
44
They are in Kavkazsky restaurant on Nevsky Prospekt, a few blocks from her theater, a hangout for actors to go after a performance. It stays open late; Andrei is right. At this hour it is nearly empty, unoccupied tables with white tablecloths, a couple of potted ficus trees scattered around the grand room, an air of withered luxury more suited to a town in a Chekhov story than the first proletarian city on earth. The scene is complete with a waiter, a disinterested look on his face and an oily stain on his black jacket sleeve. Like the rehearsal space in her theater, this dining room is windowless, and all the light comes from sconces between the tables, the coned light, the trapped light.
There are skewers of lamb and flattened halves of chicken tabaka on their plates, the food of Georgia; their glasses are filled with red wine to celebrate Kolya’s newly discovered existence. The Georgian wine, despite their waiter’s recommendation, tastes like syrupy compote made from a cheap port called ink. Nevertheless, it slides down her throat in harmony with the pomegranate sauce, making her head feel light and her body weightless, making her balance, for a little while at least, on the sweet, opaque edge between the harsh light of being sober and the blackness of being drunk. It is the edge where her love for Andrei begins to pulsate with such intensity that it nearly burns, her passion for him freed from its cage by the sweet Georgian wine, just the two of them in this empty restaurant where the present seems to run on a parallel course with the past.
Suddenly Andrei rises from his chair, leans across the table, and kisses her on the lips. It is a mature kiss, longer and more passionate than anything they exchanged in Ivanovo, deeper than the nervous kisses of the first night they spent in Suzdal, more melancholy than the blissful tumult of the few hours in her apartment before he suddenly announced he was married. It is a microcosm of every unfulfilled desire they have ever harbored for each other, the happiness they both know is no longer possible.
The waiter trudges in and looms by their table, forcing them to separate. He doesn’t look at all embarrassed; on the contrary, he probably timed this moment to let them know that it is late and he wants to go home.
“We know it’s late,” Andrei says. “But we’re not yet finished.” His voice is not commanding, but there are distinct metallic notes in it. It is the voice Party leaders always have in textbooks, firm and assertive. “Why don’t you clear away all this,” he says and waves at the wreck of the breadbasket and plates and slips a bill into the waiter’s pocket, “and bring us some good cognac. And something to chase it with.”
A woman in an apron lumbers out of the kitchen and starts piling dirty dishes onto her forearm. A few minutes later, a bottle of cognac arrives, along with small plates of red beans spiced with tarragon and chicken in walnut sauce. He pours, and they drink. This day is ending with cognac, the same way it started. A few sips of alcohol in this empty restaurant remove the last bricks to the wall between them, loosen their muscles, untie their tongues. Sasha feels she may even be able to confront Andrei, tell him she knows the truth about his father’s death.
As she weighs the glass of cognac in her hand, she feels words crowding in her head, demanding a release. Is it the alcohol that’s prodding those words to break out of her mouth or the kiss she still can taste? Or is it Kolya’s voice reaching from the other side, the voice of honesty and Grandma’s softness? She doesn’t know, but she hears herself begin to speak.