pleasant household chores with Katerina and Mother, for explorations of language with Katerina and Father. Now Ivan spent his days at the computer terminal in his bedroom, linked to the university computer system and through it to the rest of the Internet. He wrote thirty emails to various people he knew, and began to get answers: How gunpowder was made, how to make a match, where deposits of the necessary minerals were known to have been located in the Carpathian foothills, or how they could be extracted from plants or what substitutes might do almost as well. Constantly he quizzed Katerina about materials, though most of the discussion was always spent trying to find language to describe exactly what he was trying to find out about. Father even got into the fray, querying his own network of friends.
They didn't stray from the house, Ivan and Katerina. Mother and Father were safe enough, Mother decided - though she insisted that Father wear a charm, which just about killed him from shame; but he went along. Ivan and Katerina, though, walked only around the back yard - which was large enough at first, but seemed to grow smaller as they spent day after day unable to leave it. The only consolation for Ivan was this: If he had to be trapped on a desert island, at least he had Katerina for company.
Partly it was the project they were working on. As he made his first batch of gunpowder - which nearly blew his hand off - she began to gain new respect for him; but he also gained respect for her, as she insisted on learning how to do everything herself, as well. "What if one of us is killed?" she said. "Does she then win the victory?" And then she made him take her hands and guide her through the process of grinding the material to powder. He was terrified of killing her with a mistake, but she joked all through it, teased him about how protective he was. He was close to her hour after hour, the smell of her, the touch of her breath on the hairs of his arms or on his ears as she leaned over his shoulder to watch. He thought sometimes he might go insane with desire for her; but he could not think of a way to change what lay between them, and though he thought she liked him well enough now, he still didn't know if their friendship was yet the thing a marriage should be made of.
Do you love me? he wanted to ask her, to demand of her. But, fearing the answer would be a wan "I'm sorry, Ivan," he did not speak.
She learned to throw practice Molotov cocktails, she learned to make and strike matches. They made a still in a Sears storage shed Father bought for that purpose, grumbling all the time about how it would look in the papers, "Professor arrested for making vodka in back-yard shed."
They decided they would test everything on the Fourth of July. "Nobody will mind a few explosions and fires that day," Father said, and he was obviously right. They'd find out then what their gunpowder could do. Minute quantities, for they didn't want to blow anything up, just to see if it would explode at all. Firecrackers, really. And a few Molotov cocktails thrown at a pile of logs, so they would be doing nothing more than igniting a celebratory bonfire. Afterward they'd roast sausages over the coals like good Americans. Well, not quite - they could never bring themselves to eat those clammy, nasty wieners Americans used as their hot dogs. Good, hearty Polish and Russian and Italian sausages, that's what they'd eat, and on a hearty bread, not those squishy spongy confections designed so that you didn't need teeth to eat them.
And then Ivan got the phone call from Ruthie.
"No one sees you anymore, Ivan. Are you hiding? Is the honeymoon still so engaging?"
Was she being bitter and nasty? Or cheerful and friendly? Hard to know. "She's learning the language," said Ivan. Which was true enough - though the language she was learning at the moment was modern Russian. As with so many Russian schoolchildren for generations, it was Pushkin who was her teacher, as they read to each other before going to bed. The stanzas of Tatyana's dream had disturbed her greatly - the girl being chased through the snow by a bear. Ivan wondered, then and now, how