Infidelities Page 15

  When the bell rang, we walked back to our box. We sat down, and our neighbor put the letter away, and asked, Where are you from?

  The States, I said. Chicago.

  Do you know any mafia men?

  I laughed.

  That is what people think of us here now, but you invented it.

  Don’t blame me. Are you from St. Petersburg?

  No, Toko. Oh, you wouldn’t know it. It’s deep in Siberia.

  How much snow do you get? (I asked that question so I could report it to my son, who was crazy about snow, and on Yahoo always looked for the coldest towns, and those with the most snow.)

  How come your English is so good? I asked.

  I spent a year in Texas as an exchange student in high school.

  High school? I was surprised. That would make her older than I thought.

  Yes, I am done now, and next fall I’ll be studying medicine at the university here. I have just moved here for my studies, and I’ll be living with my aunt. There she is—she pointed to the box on the other side of the theater.

  The lights dimmed. So, there’s a future doctor, maybe a surgeon. So it’s not a little girl from Siberia, it’s a beautiful woman. She beamed at me as though guessing that I was recovering from the information.

  Am I in your way? she said, as I gazed at her profile, straight lines of the nobly tall forehead and thin nose, and the curvy ones of her lips and chin.

  No, I said.

  I’ll clear the view for you. She leaned her head on the parapet and turned her face toward the stage. Her hair fell over the parapet, and her long neck was nakedly clear. True, I could see the stage above her head, and the leaping swan dancer, named Kim, who indeed was spectacular, with his bulging balls and twirling muscles and Jordanesque ability to hover. In the first act the ballerinas had worn long white dresses, but now they came out in fluffy short ones, and as they twirled, you could see that they were no victims of fashionable starvation. They had thighs, flesh. They contorted, tensing alternate groups of muscles into definition.

  Ana had taken off her cashmere sweater, and the outline of her body showed itself, like a nascent creature cocooned in a white haze.

  Tina was totally rapt. A dimple showed on her left cheek as she stared adoringly. She whispered and gave me a kiss on my ear. She was charmingly grateful for the paradise.

  Ana sat back and took up her opera glasses, made of white bone, or plastic that looked like bone. Several minutes later, she offered Tina the glasses. I taught Tina how to look, and Ana helped out, leaning over my legs, touching my forearms. It crossed my mind that it would be wonderful if Ana could babysit. Or was she way too elegant for that? Maybe she was rich. Maybe her father was one of those Mafioso oilmen who had deals with Yeltsin’s son.

  I borrowed the opera glasses, too. Where should I look? The tensing buttocks of the male lead dancer? No, thank you. How about the female dancer? All right, I don’t mind that. Wherever I looked, wonderful legs. What’s the point of looking? Of course, sex is too primitive a thought, but then, why are they so pretty, and (s)exposed? Sure, art is a sublimation of sensuality, but this was pure sensuality. And then my neighbor. I touched her shoulder slightly to give her the opera glasses back. She looked for a while, and gave them to Tina. Tina liked flipping them backward, so the stage would look far away.

  It was totally wonderful to look at Tina’s enjoyment. Three years old and watching live ballet. Hopefully, this would have no harmful effects. Wouldn’t it be terrible if she wanted to become a ballerina? Too much work. Plus, would I like old bastards like me to stare at her crotch through opera glasses?

  Another intermission. We walked with Ana. Strangely enough, Tina did not seem to notice Ana probably because Ana was not a ballerina. Tina hopped on tiptoe, twirled, and did one split on the carpet. Several people stopped and laughed and applauded her on the little performance. Tina could capture attention, mine included, so I didn’t notice when Ana left. A minute later, I noticed Ana holding hands with a middle-aged silvery-haired woman, a flight of stairs above us, ascending rhythmically, their backs turned to us.

  Tina and I found Joan and Alex at a round table. Guess what, Alex, I said. We are sitting together with a Siberian. Much of the winter they have–40°F, and a yard of snow on the ground.

  Where is he? Alex asked.

  There. I pointed her out in the line. She was presently getting a glass of red wine. She’s just a high school kid, I said to Joan, as though apologizing. Maybe sixteen. Babysitting potential.

  She’s not going to babysit.

  How do you know? I haven’t asked her yet.

  Joan laughed. No, I don’t want her to, and I am sure she wouldn’t want to, either.

  Aren’t you impressed by the Siberian snow? I asked Alex. When he didn’t answer, I tried another line. Do you like the ballet?

  It’s okay, but the sword fight was lame. I liked the sword fight in Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet much better. And Prokofiev has a lot of the bass and drums—very exciting.

  AT THE BELL, Tina and I went back to our place. You are sure you can stand more of this, I asked?

  Yes, I won’t talk, she said.

  There were hardly any other kids in the theater. In the box next to ours, there had been a kid, but he laughed and squealed, and his parents dragged him out, and he did not reappear. So Tina’s self-discipline was remarkable. She sat on my knee, and gazed in wonder as a moving picture of swans appeared against a glimmering lake. And then the ballerinas—Tina smiled beatifically. I wished I could enjoy something quite that much. I cast my glance at Ana’s face outlined in clear lines against the fluffy background.

  After the overly long end-applause, Ana said, I enjoyed talking with you like I know you for many years. Would you like to give me your email address?

  Oh, I’d be delighted to correspond, I said. I sat down with her, and tore the program page, and wrote my email address, hurriedly, since I could feel Joan’s and Alex’s presence in the back. How did it look, sitting down with her and exchanging notes?

  I can write mine for you, too, she said.

  I turned around.

  Daddy, let’s find Mommy, said Tina.

  I saw Alex running in the corridor outside our box.

  When you email, I’ll have it, I said to Ana.

  Tina and I walked out and Ana stayed back, placing her opera glasses into their box. Outside of our box waited Alex and Joan. What took you so long, said Joan.

  Wonderful, wasn’t it? I said.

  Yes, a little long, but lovely, said Joan.

  What a bore, said Alex. Tchaikovsky is not as good as Prokofiev.

  I agree, I said. Two acts would have been enough.

  One would have been enough.

  On the main staircase, we ran into friends of ours, who also taught at Herzen, and their son. I had looked forward to getting together with them. We stood in the middle of the crowd walking down the carpeted staircase. Let’s have a late snack, said Tom.

  I looked to my left. There was Ana, several rows of people away from us, smiling and waving.

  I waved to her.

  That seemed to make an intermission in our conversation with our friends. Ana waved again, and I did not know how to ignore that.

  It took me a second to recover, while we walked to the Idiot, on the Moika, a block away from where Rasputin had been shot and drowned in the river.

  Maybe I should have written down her email address as well, just to make sure, I thought. Even as we sat and slurped borscht, and ate the special of mushrooms, potatoes, and cheese, I could not concentrate. Ana’s profile superimposed itself over the scene and dissolved it into darkness. Why don’t I have self-discipline? This leads nowhere, this imaging of a Siberian cat. Cut it out. But I didn’t cut it out. Now, I was not sure whether I could will to cut it out, or whether I simply did not wish to will it since I enjoyed the enthrallment of my visual brain. It was a simple intoxication with beauty; I tried to define it that way. I drank three sho
ts of vodka in quick succession. At the Idiot everybody got a free shot. I drank everybody’s vodkas but didn’t feel drunk.

  It’s getting late, Joan said. Let’s go home. And we did. Outside, the golden dome of St. Isaac’s Cathedral was still bathed in the light of a bygone sun, while amidst the sooty buildings, we were sunk in a gloom, above the Moika, with the bad spirits of Rasputin under our feet, laughing in the dark. No, nothing so dramatic or quite so drunken.

  The following day I visited Boris, in his hotel room. I woke him up. He rubbed his hairy chest, stretched, yawned, and then showed me Infinite Jest…. It’s great, he said.

  I retold him the rough outline of what had happened at the ballet.

  Just forget it, my friend. Don’t do anything with her.

  I agree. Maybe I should just write a novel.

  A novel? A poem, at the most, he said. Look, I am not impressed. That’s been done. You yourself have quoted from Laughter in the Dark. And such stupid moments are the staple of bad poetry.

  I know, it’s been done, I said. It had been done even before Laughter in the Dark, many times.

  So, why bother?

  You know, that kind of objection has been done.

  Of course, because it makes sense.

  See, a theme happens, and it can recur. Look at the Variations on a Theme of Paganini by Brahms. You could say it’s been done, but I am certainly glad it’s been done once again. You never get such obsessions with a beauty?

  Sure, they happen to everybody. I fall asleep and they go away. You got to be mature about it. Boris pointed to another metafiction book, which I was supposed to admire. I said, That’s been done. I am tired of metafiction.

  True, true, he said.

  Two days later, after sleeping badly, I walked to Herzen and Idealnaya Chashka, the coffee shop, but before that, I stopped by at the cemetery.

  There was a huge line, on both sides of the entrance. I was scared I could not get in, but the line was for the Nevsky Cathedral. What is going on here? I asked, and from what I could gather in the reply, there were bones of a Greek saint from the third century AD, and people lined up, hoping to be healed. Were all of them sick? There were at least four thousand people waiting, some mumbling prayers, others smoking, some yawning. Enough people to start a revolution, or enough to end a revolution.

  I passed through one flank of the line, nudging my way, and then through an iron railing gate.

  I paid my entrance, the tourist rate, and passed by the cats that I knew. Koshka, I said to the chubby tabby and petted him. On my right was Dostoyevsky’s bust in blackened bronze, for his gravestone. Not a cross, but himself. Was he a god to himself? Wouldn’t he have preferred a cross?

  I walked to Tchaikovsky’s bust against the walls of the cemetery.

  And there she was, sitting on the rock next to Borodin’s grave, and hugging her knees, dressed all in blue. Amazing. How did she get here? Did she email me? Did we arrange this?

  She stood up and as I walked to her, without much ado, she opened her arms and kissed me. She kept looking into my eyes, her pupils seemed to grow larger and larger, diminishing the blue circles around them. Her mouth tasted of red caviar, salty, osmotically touching my tongue, so that particles of me merrily leaped out of my tongue into hers. Actually, wouldn’t it be simpler to have caviar? Why are we doing this, I thought.

  Suddenly, she began to chuckle and pulled back.

  Why, what’s so funny?

  I always wanted to kiss a Westerner, and I did it!

  That’s silly. Didn’t you get a chance to do that in Texas?

  No, there I kissed only Bulgarians. We had a clique going.

  And so, how is it kissing a Westerner?

  Just like kissing a Russian. No different. I expected more. I don’t know what, maybe that you’d taste like kiwi.

  I reached with my fingers to touch her blue-black hair, but I couldn’t reach it—I kept stretching my arm, and losing my balance, while my vision turned green and blurry. I inhaled deep, and though I could see well again, I did not see her. She had vanished. I turned around and saw her hopping away, skipping her steps, past Mussorgsky, past Borodin, all the way to Dostoyevsky. There was the somber Tchaikovsky’s bust of white marble and nothing between it and me. He was not interested in this at all. He kept frowning in his dignified manner, thinking who knows what, pretty notes or Michelangelo’s David, the perfect torso, maybe lifting him in the air, letting him hover. Wasn’t his main inspiration the beauty, not of maidens, but of lads? Amidst the furrowed frown, the furrows may not lead to deep thoughts, but to obsessive, recurring images of a profile, a line of the nose, the curving of the upper lip.

  Actually, although the theater encounter had happened, the cemetery one didn’t; however, I did walk there. I imagined the futility of an encounter there as I crunched the dusty white marble gravel under my black shoes on the cemetery paths. I did have the salty aftertaste in my mouth. It did not prove Ana’s existence. The salt came out of my flesh; I spat a streak of scarlet spittle which stained the white gravel pink. Exhaustion combined with aspirin made me bleed. I closed my eyes. No pictures in my head. No black hair contrasting with pale skin and luminous eyes. I couldn’t recall what she looked like. Maybe I should go thank the Greek saint for coming to my senses. I would still have to touch his bones to heal my teeth.

  The whole image-obsession thing was part of the ballet swirl and twirl, after which vague impressions stayed with me enough to demonstrate my folly, and vivid ones stay with Tina even now, days later. That was her evening out, not mine. I look at her and admire how lightly she hops, and how she smiles with a dimple, and shines. She dances, shouting, un, deux, trois before she lands in a heap on the floor weightlessly, all feathery, and comes up as a swan.

  The Bridge Under the Danube

  After a prayer meeting for peace in the Balkans, Milka and Drago Zivkovic were walking home in Novi Sad at quarter to five in the morning through the narrow and elegantly cobbled streets of the East Bank, the Petrovaradin side, where ordinarily the old castle would be lit up. Instead, only tall darkness loomed, hiding the nascent blue light of the eastern horizon. They could barely see the yellow stone cobbles, for people were taking air-raid sirens seriously, turning off the lights.

  “Are you sure we should be on the streets at this hour?” Milka asked.

  “No, I am not.”

  “Maybe we should have kept praying till dawn.”

  “Several people were falling asleep in the middle of the prayers—and I don’t think the Rankovices had enough rug space for all of us. So, this is the right thing to do.”

  “I’m still terrified.”

  “Even though the Lord says, Fear not those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul? And even though NATO’s bombs are so precise?”

  “That’s the part that worries me. We are supposed to pass by the Vojvodina parliament.”

  Now they had come almost to the old Petrovaradin bridge. The sliver of the moon resembling a melon slice briefly shone through the crack in the clouds, and the waves in the river showed their blue teeth in response, glimmering.

  Milka paused for a second to admire the beauty of the river in the sparse light. She had never seen the river in the natural night light. She turned round; the castle silhouetted itself against the black-blue sky, in an orange tone. The old town looked the way it had two hundred years ago. Would not the world be beautiful without electricity? Why did that Serb from Croatia have to meddle with nature, and find out how to control and transmit electricity? How did Tesla dare play with God’s power—wasn’t electricity God’s? All the same, she was proud to come from Tesla’s region in Lika, and wondered whether Tesla believed in God or whether the devil helped him.

  “What did you stop for?” Drago asked impatiently. “I thought you were scared, and here, you linger and dawdle in the street. We must…”

  Just then there was a sudden burst of light. An explosion of sound followed, and the earth shook, the cobbles mo
ved, grinding against one another. Milka felt a terrible pain in her ears and noisy crashing sounds surrounded her, sifted through a high-pitched buzz. She smelled burning, and looked up to see the bridge bursting, crashing into the river, while cement particles hit her face and smarted. Yet the sound of the crash was somehow soft, a distant crackle and a splash, and seemed not to concern her ears at all, which were busy with their own violent sirens. When she wiped the dust from her face, she felt a warm sticky liquid on her cheek. Her blood was recementing the bridge dust, on her. Where did the blood come from? She could not find a cut on her jaw. Blood trickled from her left ear.

  But even all the pain was a blessing of sorts; for had they progressed some hundred paces more, their own particles would have been flying.

  Dazed, they walked back to the Rankovices, where a discussion was in progress, about whether it was a NATO bombing that made all the amazing thundering, or whether the sky was cracking open for the second coming of Christ. More voices supported the latter theory.

  As Milka and Drago entered the curtained candlelit room, the discussion subsided, and the pious gazed at the entrants who were grayed by the concrete dust, caked in blood, and paled by horror. The candles, deprived of air, which was almost entirely consumed by sighs and sweat, eked out a dark and hissing light, revealing the couple’s faces, from below.

  The gathering prayed again, quietly, in whispers, and with each human gasp, the candle flames winced, and one of them sputtered, giving up its ghost as a thin trail of black waxy smoke. But perhaps it only seemed to Milka that the pious whispered; her ears would not allow the voices to get into her in any other form than the low whisper. Whispering prayers sounded more intimate than voiced ones, and she thought, from then on, that she would whisper to God. He ought to hear well; he could hear thoughts, so the voice was simply for those who prayed, and the whisper would be for her.