The Russian Affair - By Michael Wallner Page 0,121

getting leave to fetch Petya from Moscow every time. He’d formulated his idea—the boy would spend the warmer months in Yakutsk—as vividly as if there were no doubt about its realization. He’d remained vague on the matter of whether or not divorce should follow their de facto separation. How heavily all this must have been weighing on his mind, Anna thought, and what kind of woman could have motivated him to make such a momentous decision? While marching at double time through an alley of acacias, Anna tried to picture the woman she’d just learned about for the first time. How extraordinary this Galina must be, she thought, to put the sober Leonid in such an agitated state.

She looked up. The deep blue of the sky was tinting the treetops, and all at once evening flooded the park. In spring, of all seasons, she had to get dumped! The fearful certainty that the whole thing was her fault, that she bore all the guilt for it, suddenly gave way to self-pity: Was she jinxed, or what? Could anyone imagine worse confusion than what she was floundering in? Was there an unluckier person in the whole blessed city of Moscow?

“The wind’s going to carry you away, girl!” she heard a powerful voice say.

The fact that someone had called her “girl” made Anna turn around. Not far away, she saw a couple, the weatherproof kind of people who come out when the seasons change. Snow still lay in spots shielded from the sun, some patches of ice were not yet completely thawed, but these two had already come out to the park and built a fire, and now they were roasting shashlik on spits and baking potatoes over the hot embers; a supply of dry branches lay nearby, fuel for the fire. The two were comfortably ensconced in a pair of lawn chairs.

“Come over here! Why are you running around like that?” the woman said. “Sooner or later, you have to come to a stop, so why not here?”

Before she knew it, Anna had taken the first steps toward the fire.

“That’s better.” Despite the man’s furrowed face, there was no telling whether he was forty or sixty; his beard grew from his throat to his cheekbones. “We’ll eat in a minute. How about a little drink first?”

They pointed to the bottles standing at the ready behind them. There was no reason to refuse, not today, and so Anna allowed a beer to be pressed into one hand and a generous glass of home-brewed liquor into the other.

“What could make a pretty comrade run around in circles instead of strolling calmly on this lovely spring evening?”

“My husband wants to leave me.” The answer was out before she’d formed the thought.

“What a dumb guy he must be!” the woman answered impassively. “Doesn’t he have eyes in his head?” She cast a meaningful glance at her own husband. “A few years ago, this comrade here thought about moving on to greener pastures, too.” She pointed a shashlik spit at her husband.

“That’s not true anymore, hasn’t been true for a long time,” the bearded man said soothingly.

“What did you do about it?” Anna asked the woman.

“I let him starve.” The woman held the meat over the flames. “The pantry was off-limits to him. If he needed food, let him get his fill from the other woman! You can’t imagine how fast he came back.”

“Obviously, none of that is true.” The man clinked glasses with Anna. “The only reason I’m keeping quiet is so I won’t spoil my darling’s lovely story. Do I look like a man who would cheat?”

“You all cheat when you get the chance.” The woman coerced Anna into lifting her glass. “If a pretty little mouth attracts you, or a skirt is lifted a few inches, you all start running like donkeys chasing carrots.”

“My case is more complicated.” The warmth of the liquor spread through her like a shiver, and Anna squatted down on her haunches.

“No, it’s not,” her hostess contradicted her. “It all just seems complicated. Men’s heads are constantly throbbing with the fear of missing something. The gentlemen get a nice hen to share their nest, but after a few years, they want to see whether they’ve still got some rooster credibility. They flap around and crow, their combs swell, and they’re grateful if they can mount another hen.”

“The way you talk, Galina, light of my life. Always full of surprises.” The bearded man opened his next beer and drank from