hard hat brim knock against her forehead, then the light brightening around them both as he dropped the hat on the floor, then his grip so muscular that it seemed at odds with his office clothing, his professional demeanour.
How weird, she thought, as she swayed towards him with her contented heart, that he carries a briefcase, knows how to read. And she had often thought this before about John, that the accessories of modern life were beside the point with him, that he was a roving magnetic field, hot energy, barely contained by his lanky physique; that the uniform of adult duty and conventional public tasks couldn’t conceal the natural boy, mostly coursing blood and febrile enthusiasms, on the brink of running wild. His gift with languages, for instance, didn’t seem to be the result of bookish inclination. It had nothing to do with all those years at Dartmouth, at Columbia. It was just an expression of his instinctive chemistry with all mankind. He seemed to feel someone else’s speech from underneath his skin, to sense what was trying to pass back and forth in the words; he learned the book side afterwards, as if to check whether his gut was right, his articulate gut. Nina thought that language was really a sport for him, something that he had picked up through natural athletic gifts, observing it, getting it, joining in the game.
‘Yum,’ he smacked his lips at her. ‘There’s a tender morsel to warm a working man’s belly. Or tender damsel is maybe more the phrase. You smell like a newly washed pullover. You’re not drowning yourself in there in that bath, Nina? Slashing your wrists over my protracted absence?’ He turned her wrists over and held them up to the light from the bathroom door, lightly mocking, then kissed them by turns. ‘Survived another day of Soviet solitude?’ She felt the rough of his upper lip against the blue veins of her wrist; his bleached hazel eyes glowed under their shaggy, slanted brows, filled the doorway, warmed her chest.
‘I’m OK, John,’ Nina laughed. ‘Thanks for asking. The ballet dancers arrived today, you know. So that was fun. Well – interesting anyway. Certainly took up plenty of time, waiting at the airport, going to the hotel with them. Though who knows what help they really need from me. And the airport kind of gives me the creeps – getting in, getting out, the frontier thing.’
She freed one of her hands and reached down to pick up his hat, then pulled him back along the hall towards the kitchenette. John dragged playfully against her weight, then gave in and followed, shrugging off his coat to hook it over one of the pegs on the wall as they passed. It dripped a little on the linoleum floor.
‘How’d you get them to include me, John?’ There was tension in her voice, and she tried to conceal it with busyness. He watched her rummage through a basket of clean laundry for a dish towel, press the folded towel carefully against the wet felt of his hat, then walk back to the hall to dry the floor under his coat.
At last, looking around the doorframe, he said, ‘Don’t be silly, Nina. What American embassy wife speaks mother-tongue Russian, trained at the Bolshoi, and is a Wellesley graduate on top of all that? They leaped at the chance.’
She interrupted him, embarrassed, trying to be light-hearted, ‘Russian is really not my mother tongue, John. You know you’re exaggerating. Mother would do anything to avoid speaking Russian, and there weren’t even many Russians living in our building.’
But John went on with his flattery, courting her with his eyes, ‘To me, you seem most yourself when you speak Russian. Enchanting, passionate, bracingly coherent.’
She wagged a blushing finger at his nonsense, and he grinned.
‘Nina, you just don’t realize how over-awing this town can be. You’ve never had to do it as a real outsider, a stranger. What they know how to do is dance. They aren’t supposed to be linguists or diplomats. They’ll be able to relax and have a little fun with you along to show them around and explain things. Just be a friend. Frankly, we all have a lot on our minds at the office right now, and I know the ambassador feels reassured having you with that group. It’s a serious business, this tour. A showcase. And you should speak up, too, if anything doesn’t seem right.’
He stopped suddenly, looked around warily, as if there were presences floating above them on the ceiling, listeners. ‘What am I saying? This isn’t the office.’
Nina laughed. ‘You’re still OK, I’d say – just. But wait. I’m about to start banging a few pots and pans. I couldn’t bring myself to cook supper without you.’
And she set to, clanging a black cast-iron frying pan, a shiny aluminium saucepan, a lid. She chopped an onion, sizzled it in butter, opened a can of chicken broth from Stockman’s in Finland, ran cold water over a small bunch of beets and rolled up her soft pink sleeves to scrub the dirt from the voluptuous red-purple curves.
‘Aren’t these gorgeous?’ she said as she tossed the beets into the saucepan to steam them. ‘I got them from a babushka outside the Metro. Everything else is already starting to look shrivelled. It’s going to be a long winter. Just you wait.’
Then she smiled at John because she knew these bitter little comments of hers worried him. She knew he wondered every single day what he had done bringing his new wife back to the USSR, wondered whether she would make it. She gave him a loopy, lips-together grin and clowned for him a little, shuffling her feet, waving her wooden spoon gaily like a flag, tipping her head coquettishly from side to side. ‘I promise to do something about my hair right after supper, John,’ she said sweetly, pulling the wet, heavy strands away from her face. ‘I must look like a madwoman.’
Now John laughed, just a little. ‘Do you want some Scotch?’ He was reaching for the bottle on the wooden shelves above the table.
‘Love some.’
He poured them each a drink, and they clinked their glasses, just barely, almost stealthily, near the rim, as if they were sharing a secret. They had reached a moment which they reached most evenings alone together when they felt a confident harmony with one another and with their nearly year-old marriage, a harmony which drowned out everything else. They both knew perfectly well how it had come about that they were here together in Russia, of all difficult places; they knew they belonged together, that they had no choice. They had talked about it often, the fact that the love sensation was still bigger than any other sensation either one of them could lay claim to ever having felt. Everything else had to fall in line with that. They would say things to each other like, A whole lifetime isn’t enough time to spend with you. And they understood the meaning of what they were saying, meant it. The newness, the feeling of desperation, was still kindling between them; they were happy, but they were not yet satisfied; married, but still trying somehow to catch hold of each other entirely. When they were alone together, they forgot about everything else. They were building a private world for themselves.
John took off his dark grey suit jacket, loosened his dull blue, paisley tie, settled his long bony frame awkwardly at the little wooden table. ‘Your hair’s fine all mangled,’ he said. ‘I love it however.’ Then he put his fingers in his own close-cut, light brown hair and rubbed it hard, grinning. ‘See mine? Madwoman’s spouse. Let’s just have a nice supper and go to bed. You can fix your hair tomorrow.’
Nina lifted her glass, toasting his appearance. ‘Very attractive.’ And she smiled down at him, sipping, stirring, lifting lids, peering under them. ‘What’s keeping you at that office so much, anyway?’
But John held a finger in the air, alert, reminding her to take care what she said.
She turned on the radio, then the water in the sink, and threw open the window above it, letting the wind and rain blow in along with the faint blare of street noises from far below.
‘Have to clear the smoke out,’ she said brightly. She went back to the stove,
