better not accept,” she said. She gave Alexey a regretful look, expressing sorrow that their last date had taken such an unusual form, and put on her coat. “It would be better for me to show up unaccompanied.”
The two men followed her to the door. “Thanks,” she said as she took her leave. “Today’s lecture was certainly the most interesting of all.” She gave her hand to Lyushin and a fleeting kiss to Alexey, whose relaxed cheerfulness persisted undiminished.
Anna stood in the snow. Then she walked slowly to the gate, but as soon as she was through it, she hurried along the riverfront promenade and the main street, broke into a run at the sight of the flags over the hotel entrance, ignored the front desk manager’s look, and rushed up to her room. Her hand flew over the page as she jotted down as much as she could remember, making a special effort to record technical terms. When she laid down her pen, she heard the members of the delegation hurrying down the hall outside her room. Suitcases were being shifted, doors were slamming closed; their departure was imminent. Anna considered what excuse she might use to soothe Popov, who would want to know why she’d been absent from the official farewells. Before tossing the physics textbook into her bag, she gave the volume an affectionate pat.
NINE
Personally, I don’t like the Moskva swimming pool,” Kamarovsky said, turning to Anna as though he expected her to agree.
“Why not, Comrade Colonel?”
“Because it’s on the very spot where the Palace of Soviets was supposed to be built.”
Kamarovsky’s window offered no view of the pool, yet he spoke of it as though he had the ground plan of the city in his head. “Le Corbusier had been hired for the planning. Think about that: an international ambassador of communism. His towers would have been overwhelming—I’ll show you his drawings for them sometime. What a victory we could have celebrated for revolutionary architecture.”
Anna was standing behind the Colonel. As was the case with all her visits, this one had begun with a lecture on recent Soviet building design. There was a bowl of various citrus and tropical fruits on the table; she couldn’t decipher the composer’s name at the top of the musical score that lay on the open piano.
The drive home from Dubna had passed in silence. The bus riders turned their thoughts to the demands and requirements of their ordinary lives, from which they had been removed for three whole days. The driver stopped for gas only once; nevertheless, Anna thought the return trip longer than the outward journey. She’d never left Petya alone for so long. Viktor Ipalyevich did what he could, but he was old and unpredictable. Had he bothered to call about Petya’s test results? How serious was his condition? Did he need prolonged treatment? Who was going to pay for his medicine? As Anna’s concern grew, she began to find every mile too far, and the distance to Moscow interminable. As on the original trip to Dubna, the orphanage director had sought to engage her in conversation, and she’d pretended to be asleep. When they reached the city limits on the Dmitrovsky Chaussée, the members of the group had assured one another that they would meet again; numbers were exchanged and suitable meeting places suggested. Nobody alluded to the fact that half of the delegation was scattered over the whole country. Anna had let the orphanage director get her bag down, nodded when Nadezhda referred to the monthly gathering of the building combine, and climbed out of the bus. She’d crossed Kutuzovsky Prospekt; the weather was colder than in Dubna. It had been after midnight when she’d finally reached the apartment. The first thing she’d done was to listen hard, trying to hear whether Petya was sleeping. She’d been relieved at the sound of soft breathing behind the curtain. Viktor Ipalyevich was not on his sofa but clattering around the kitchen. She’d put down her bag, greeted him, and put on some tea for her father and herself.
“Child’s play” had been his answer to her series of worried questions. “I don’t know what’s supposed to be so hard about bringing up kids. You make sure they have enough to eat, you help them with their homework, you tell them when they’re supposed to go to bed and when to get up, and you take them to school.” From all appearances, Viktor Ipalyevich had been in a fine mood,