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

swiftly, and little by little, Anna had admitted to herself that she felt a deep love for Alexey. She recognized that the evenings with him were what she yearned for most, that the course of her week was directed toward them, and that in the hours before Anton picked her up, she could undertake nothing of any importance. She took great care to be assigned to the early shift on Thursdays, she got home with time to spare, and she made sure she looked her best.
    “An entire bottle of shampoo in a month,” Viktor Ipalyevich said one day. “Good thing I’m bald. Otherwise, our family collective would be given a deadline and ordered to justify this extravagance.” When Anna only laughed, he spoke more pointedly: “How handy for you that Leonid spends so many nights in his barracks.” Her answer was a scared look, to which he replied, “Leonid’s not dumb, you know. And he loves you to boot.”
    “I love him, too,” she said.
    In actual fact, Anna wasn’t unfaithful; she and Alexey didn’t sleep together. However, the rules of their society forbade what they did do: They constructed a private dream, an individual world. Their conduct was “unidealistic” and “morally defective.” When a man like Bulyagkov, who had access to all privileges, engaged in such behavior, it didn’t have the consequences that would threaten a working woman. Toward the end of that summer, Anna had for the first time imagined the day when Alexey would drop her. The following Thursday, he found her uneasy; when he asked her why, she made no secret of her fears. They weredrinking port wine, and Anna was fully dressed. Alexey took the glass from her hand, drew her head close to his, and kissed her for the first time.
    “I love you,” he said, as naturally as if he were asking her to open the window. “You have nothing to fear from me, not now, not ever. And if, in spite of that, you decide to break it off someday, I’ll accept your decision.”
    “Why don’t you sleep with me, Alexey?”
    “So we can be like every other couple? So we can finally have a normal affair?”
    “No. Because you love me.”
    They went into the bedroom together. As always, the bed was unmade. “I hadn’t expected to adopt such concrete measures,” he said.
    “Makes no difference,” she replied, pulling him onto the mattress.
    Anna had seduced him and enjoyed it, but at the same time, she’d felt that she was ruining something. She’d gotten closer to the man, but she’d let the keeper of the dream escape. She’d allowed everyday air into their rarefied world. They had lain beside each other on the bed, naked. Horsehair protruded from the mattress here and there. The Deputy Minister had liver spots; his legs were sinewy and marked with blue veins. Afterward, Anna had grown sad. She’d felt that, instead of strengthening their relationship, she’d made its end more palpable. While she was in the bathroom, Alexey had put on a record; it was Shostakovich, somber music that sounded to Anna like a reproach. She’d taken her leave earlier than usual and—with her eyes—begged Alexey to pardon her.
    Anna stood up and walked away from the statue. It had begun to snow; ice crystals smudged the points of light in the windows across from her. She moved toward the building with slow steps. Her affair with Alexey had endured for a year and nine months already, longer than many marriages.And for almost that entire length of time, her “relationship” with the other older man, the one who wore the dark green suits and the eyeglasses that twinkled like stars, had been in existence as well. When they met for the first time, she thought, how paternally he’d acted toward her.
    It had been in August of that first year. On her way to meet Rosa in Arkhangelskoye Park, Anna had descended from the street into a low-lying garden, where thickly blooming flower beds and dwarf palms enlivened the grassy space. A man in a summer shirt was tearing roses off a climbing