By the time Olga’s train arrives, she will have been traveling for four days. From Potma, she will have marched, then taken a train, then another train before reaching Moscow.
Boris gets out of bed and dresses in a clean white Oxford shirt and brown homespun pants with suspenders. Careful not to wake his sleeping wife, he walks down the stairs, slips on his rubber boots, and leaves the dacha through the side porch.
The sun’s crown appears over the tips of the budding birch trees as Boris walks the path through the forest. He hears a pair of magpies chattering somewhere in the branches and pauses to look up but can’t locate them. The path weaves its way toward a stream that’s risen considerably from the newly melted snow. Boris stops on the narrow footbridge and takes a deep breath. He loves the smell of the cold water flowing below.
From the sun, Boris estimates the time to be six o’clock. Instead of walking through the cemetery, around the perimeter of the Patriarch’s summer residence and down to the writers’ club, as he usually does, Boris cuts over to the main road to take the faster route home. He wants at least an hour or two to write before leaving to meet Olga’s family in Moscow.
There’s a light on in the kitchen as he approaches. Zinaida’s heating up the stove and cooking Boris’s usual breakfast: two fried eggs with dried dill. Despite a chill in the air, Boris strips and washes himself in his outdoor tub. Even after his dacha was winterized with a new bathroom and hot water, Boris still prefers to bathe outside, the cold water a pleasant shock to the system.
As Boris dries off with a musty towel, his old dog greets him by licking the drops of water trailing down his long, skinny legs. Boris pets Tobik’s head and chides the half-blind mutt for not joining him on his morning walk yet again.
Boris’s ears are assaulted by the sound of the television as he enters the dacha. Zinaida had insisted on having a television installed. He’d fought it for months but gave in when she threatened to stop preparing his meals. The television, a luxury, is replaying Stalin’s funeral for the hundredth time. Boris pauses to watch as the camera focuses on the most grief-stricken faces in the crowd. He grimaces, then turns it off.
“What’s that?” Zinaida calls from the kitchen.
“Good morning,” Boris answers. He’s not hungry but sits anyway. She sets his plate down and pours him a cup of tea. She doesn’t join her husband at the table, instead turning back to the sink to wash the frying pan while smoking a cigarette, letting the ashes fall into the drain.
“Could you open the window, Z?” Boris asks. He hates the smell of cigarettes, and although Zinaida promised to cut back, she has yet to. She sighs, stubs it out, and finishes washing the dishes. Boris looks at his wife in the morning light streaming in from the window above the sink. The lines on her forehead and rolls of skin banding her neck are blurred for a moment and she looks just the picture of the woman he’d married twenty years earlier. He thinks about telling her she looks lovely, but a pang of guilt because he’s about to meet Olga stops him.
The clock in the hallway chimes seven. Olga’s train arrives in four hours. Boris forces himself to finish his breakfast. Swallowing the last bite of eggs, he pushes his chair back from the table.
“Off to write?” Zinaida asks.
With the question, Boris begins to suspect his wife already knows his plans. “Yes,” he answers. “As always. But just an hour or so. I have business in the city.”
“Weren’t you just there yesterday?”
“That was two days ago, dear.” He pauses. He’s out of practice in lying to his wife. “I’m meeting with an editor at Literaturnaya Moskva. He’s interested in some new translations.”
“Perhaps I’ll join you,” she says. “I have some shopping to do.”
“Next time, Zina. We’ll make a day of it. Maybe take a walk and smell the budding lime trees.”
Zinaida nods. She takes his plate and washes it in silence.
* * *
—
Boris sits at his writing desk. From the wicker basket at his feet, he takes the pages he wrote the day before. He frowns and strikes through a sentence with a fountain pen, then a paragraph, then a page. He pulls out a fresh sheet of paper and