perfectly into the empty corridors of Texas Instruments. No one in Leningrad, I know, would bother to pull over their Lada or Moskvich and offer a ride to a total stranger lumbering through one of the hottest days of the decade. They would all be busy honking at streetcars and pedestrians, asserting their rights among fume-spewing public buses and state-owned trucks with creaky cabs and wobbling tires. Austin cars donât have to worry about any of this, gliding on roads that donât look like jagged slabs of concrete tossed together by a deranged giant, on tires with enough tread to take them all the way to New Jersey, with windshield wipers that donât have to be removed once the car is parked, as a precaution against theft.
I know, of course, that the man is not a kind stranger looking to give rides to foreigners on foot. From the way the tip of his tongue touches the corner of his mouth I can tell what he really wants.
âThank you, but I donât have too far to go,â I lie.
âWhere are you from?â asks the man, leaning his elbow on the open window. âEngland?â he ventures, squinting a little. âScandinavia?â
Despite the manâs pedestrian intentions, I wish I could say I were from Britain or Sweden.
âRussia,â I say. âLeningrad. Former St. Petersburg,â I add because the man is just staring at me, silent. His fingers stop rapping on the window frame, and I can read nothing behind his watery gray, foreign eyes.
âWell, as you wish,â he finally says and rolls up his window. As the car starts moving, I see him gazing at me in the rearview mirror.
I stand there, awash in the exhaust fumes, as his car turns a corner and disappears from view. The street is completely empty now, the low evening sun burning its last rays onto the brown patches of grass. I start walking again, the only human soul as far as I can see. I walk one block, then the next, and then another one, as if I were in a science fiction film, a survivor of an attack aimed at the entire humanity traveling by foot. I see myself the way the man in the car must have seen meâunmoored, unattached to a vehicle, utterly alone.
Nine
R obert asks if we could read a Russian book together. To practice his Russian, he says. This is a good sign, I think, that he is asking for Russian practice. Maybe it means he hasnât been seeing Karen.
Robert never mentions Karen, and I never ask. Yet, in my mind, she is always there with us, somewhere in the corner of the room, quietly observing everything that goes on, like an ever-Âpresent ghost. I canât quite make out her features or pull her into focus. But I know that she sits there and watches us: undressing in the dark, fumbling for each other dutifully, making ordinary love. Her presence is palpable and discomforting; she is a membrane between Robert and me, like a full-body prophylactic that keeps this relationship sterile of emotion. Without ever seeing her, I hate her.
I sit on a couch in the living room and try to think what parts of Russian grammar Karen would teach Robert. But instead I think of my courtyard friend Masha, the object of my childhood envy, who went to a special English school and who lived in an apartment with a living room. My Leningrad apartment had two rooms where we slept and a kitchen, where we ate. The idea of a room with no apparent function and a coffee table where no one drank coffee seemed truly decadent, and I was jealous of Mashaâs English skills and her apartment luxury. Should I feel happy now, sitting on a couch in a rented living room on the foreign side of the world?
Robert lingers in front of a shelf, picks a book, and sits down close so we can both see the text. chekhov , I read on the front. plays . As he turns the pages to The Three Sisters , I donât know if I should correct his pronunciation like a diligent teacher or cheer his fluency and ignore a foreign accent, like a
I know, of course, that the man is not a kind stranger looking to give rides to foreigners on foot. From the way the tip of his tongue touches the corner of his mouth I can tell what he really wants.
âThank you, but I donât have too far to go,â I lie.
âWhere are you from?â asks the man, leaning his elbow on the open window. âEngland?â he ventures, squinting a little. âScandinavia?â
Despite the manâs pedestrian intentions, I wish I could say I were from Britain or Sweden.
âRussia,â I say. âLeningrad. Former St. Petersburg,â I add because the man is just staring at me, silent. His fingers stop rapping on the window frame, and I can read nothing behind his watery gray, foreign eyes.
âWell, as you wish,â he finally says and rolls up his window. As the car starts moving, I see him gazing at me in the rearview mirror.
I stand there, awash in the exhaust fumes, as his car turns a corner and disappears from view. The street is completely empty now, the low evening sun burning its last rays onto the brown patches of grass. I start walking again, the only human soul as far as I can see. I walk one block, then the next, and then another one, as if I were in a science fiction film, a survivor of an attack aimed at the entire humanity traveling by foot. I see myself the way the man in the car must have seen meâunmoored, unattached to a vehicle, utterly alone.
Nine
R obert asks if we could read a Russian book together. To practice his Russian, he says. This is a good sign, I think, that he is asking for Russian practice. Maybe it means he hasnât been seeing Karen.
Robert never mentions Karen, and I never ask. Yet, in my mind, she is always there with us, somewhere in the corner of the room, quietly observing everything that goes on, like an ever-Âpresent ghost. I canât quite make out her features or pull her into focus. But I know that she sits there and watches us: undressing in the dark, fumbling for each other dutifully, making ordinary love. Her presence is palpable and discomforting; she is a membrane between Robert and me, like a full-body prophylactic that keeps this relationship sterile of emotion. Without ever seeing her, I hate her.
I sit on a couch in the living room and try to think what parts of Russian grammar Karen would teach Robert. But instead I think of my courtyard friend Masha, the object of my childhood envy, who went to a special English school and who lived in an apartment with a living room. My Leningrad apartment had two rooms where we slept and a kitchen, where we ate. The idea of a room with no apparent function and a coffee table where no one drank coffee seemed truly decadent, and I was jealous of Mashaâs English skills and her apartment luxury. Should I feel happy now, sitting on a couch in a rented living room on the foreign side of the world?
Robert lingers in front of a shelf, picks a book, and sits down close so we can both see the text. chekhov , I read on the front. plays . As he turns the pages to The Three Sisters , I donât know if I should correct his pronunciation like a diligent teacher or cheer his fluency and ignore a foreign accent, like a
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