Read Online The Russian Affair by Michael Wallner - Free Book Online

and struck her, first gently, then harder and harder, on her back andher legs. Anna flinched at the initial blow but quickly began to feel an agreeable tingling and closed her eyes. After a while, she rolled onto her back, and Rosa continued the procedure. It didn’t bother Anna to feel her friend’s eyes on her body. Eventually, Rosa dropped the twigs and lay down on the stone herself. Anna seized the bundle of oak twigs and brought them down sharply on Rosa’s posterior.
    “Harder.”
    Anna struck harder. A while passed in which the only audible sounds were Rosa’s quickened breathing and soft groans. Anna brushed the twigs over her friend’s flat belly, over her muscular thighs and calves.
    “Star-Eyes wants to see you,” Rosa said. The bundle of oak switches stopped in midair, shivering. “I was going to call you today. You beat me to it.”
    “About what?”
    “Your report.”
    “But just last week …” Anna laid the twigs aside.
    “He has questions.” Rosa sat up. “You behave like somebody afraid of failing an exam. Star-Eyes is satisfied with you.”
    “Where?”
    “You’ll learn that later.” Rosa licked her lips. “We should have brought something to drink. They sell bread and chicken in the foyer.” She stood up and wrapped the towel around her chest. “How would you like a bottle of beer?”
    “Isn’t alcohol prohibited?”
    “For a Russian, you know surprisingly little about the difference between utopia and reality. They sell vodka in half-liter bottles, too, and with any luck there will even be some lemons.”
    Anna watched Rosa disappear into the steam and then followed her, as though walking into clouds.

THREE
    A nna stopped in front of the Pushkin monument. During the day, the sun had melted the snow on the pedestal, and now the stone looked clean. She sat down. She still had errands to run, soon the shops would close, and yet she lingered on the dark stone. She couldn’t yet bring herself to enter the building on the quay and go up to that eighth-floor apartment where everything appeared normal and logical and was in fact the opposite. Anna needed more time.
    Suddenly, she heard a woman’s voice: “My sweetheart, you poor little thing, you must be all worn out, and so tired, so sad. Come on up.”
    Pushkin’s bronze trouser legs concealed the speaker. Anna leaned over, propping herself on her elbows, and saw a heavily dressed woman with a knitted scarf on her head. She was bending forward and helping someone to climb up beside her. Anna thought she might be a grandmother on an outing with her grandson, but in the next moment a mongrel dog leaped into sight, his hind legs slipping helplessly on the smooth stone.
    “That’s too high for you, all stiff and frozen as you are.” The woman grasped the dog’s chest with both hands and pulled him up. “I’m helping you, look, I’m helping you, my little friend.” Befuddled by his new vantage point, so high above the ground, the dog shook himself and looked at the old woman. She stroked his head between his shaggy ears,opened her cloth bag, and took out some food scraps. Anna watched as the woman, chattering nonstop, fed the dog bread and cold potatoes.
    “You’ve found yourself a good spot, at the feet of the great philanthropist. Nobody wants to act heartless here. You’ll find compassion here, little one, yes, that tastes good, doesn’t it?” As the old woman took another potato out of her bag, she noticed that she was being observed. “My Tasha died,” she went on, as if she’d included Anna in the conversation right from the start. “A female poodle, she was. I made lots of pretty things for her—I didn’t want my Tasha to be cold, ever. All the same, she often got sick, her eyes never stopped running. She died from something else, though.” The dog gave the woman a nudge, because she’d forgotten to keep feeding him. “I don’t have any more,” she said, patting him hard on the head. “Tomorrow