Mishka Ben-David - Forbidden Love in St. Petersburg

I apologize for all the various interrogations I subjected you to even after we’d moved into our own apartment, Anna said after satisfying her hunger. You were very convincing but I had conflicting information.

Interrogations?

Yes, but for my own benefit. I wanted to know who the man I was in love with, and with whom I was fighting the powerful forces ranged against us, really was. I was questioning you about religion and about Amos Oz and David Grossman. Tell your commanders that you are a good actor. That even though you almost choked, you didn’t break your cover.

By then I wasn’t acting, I replied. I perhaps had a few genuine responses, but for me almost everything connected to Israel was in a drawer so hermetically sealed that there was almost no chance of it getting out. And if it did, then the drawer together with the whole table would have fallen apart.

Later on Anna told me that she realized I had deserted when I closed my office, and when we moved to our new apartment and I asked the real estate agent for it to remain registered in his name. It was clear to her that I wasn’t hiding from the tax authorities in her country or mine, or from the FSB–known for recruiting every estate agent as an informer–and that I was, in fact, hiding from my own employers. Added to this was the new bank account I’d opened, which was something else she kept secret from her people.

I again believed we had a chance when Anna, wearing my track suit, asked that we go for a bit of a run on the beach. There, under the blue skies of Tel Aviv, her new home, she sped along, raising her arms above her head and breathing the clear Mediterranean air of early morning deeply into her lungs.

I was left with one more riddle that I wanted to solve. I knew why I’d fallen in love with Anna, and was aware of every step of the way. But why had the wonderful Anna fallen in love with me, nobody’s Don Juan, as Alex was quoted saying in one of the transcripts in the Cat Snow file?

A cool and pleasant breeze blew in from the sea as we strolled along the promenade hugging one another. It was then that Anna responded to my question, a question I’d had great difficulty in phrasing and had only finally done so in a twisted and somewhat sheepish way.

The personality of a spy who is sent alone to a foreign country has qualities one can easily fall in love with, she said, raising her beautiful eyes at me, revealing a hint of the sparkle I’d once known. I’ve learned this from the spies I caught in the past. One has to be made of steel to be able to survive undercover in enemy territory knowing that failure means spending the rest of one’s days in jail. I had respect for the agents I succeeded in catching in the past but with you it was different and even worked the other way round.

The blank expression on my face obliged her to spell it out.

You were so solitary and sad when I was assigned to your case, sitting evening after evening at the same table, with the same dish of food, all by yourself–reading. So different from the profile drawn for us of a CIA agent setting himself up in St Petersburg; the expectation was of a tall, handsome, slightly arrogant man, making new contacts, going to the right social events, running up against people in the army and politicians. There are solitary men, there are sad men, there are men who read, and there are men who can arouse a woman’s sympathy. But I haven’t ever come across solitary, sad, spies who read Dostoyevsky.

I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. More than once I’d heard that ‘I didn’t look like…’ which in fact was an important working tool for me in the world of deception in which I lived.

At that stage I still didn’t believe that you were a spy, she continued. But when I included in you the traits I’d seen in other spies, and which are not visible to the naked eye–courage, composure–that, of course, increased my curiosity a great deal. And then, at the concert, I discovered that you were a sentimentalist. Your musical naivety, the way you trembled during the 1812 , only increased my fondness for you. I wanted to know what it was like to be touched by you. And when I dared and tried, it was made all the more wonderful by the gentle way you made love to me. It’s so beautiful when a man who is strong knows how to make love gently. You became very anxious about ‘your performance’ that first night. But sometimes all a woman wants is tenderness.

And then came the fight with Sergei which solved the mystery for me and made everything come together. Solitary, sad, wise–and tough and knows how to fight? On that very same night I also discovered your ability for passionate lovemaking. Such combinations are rare. I didn’t want you to ever leave.

Without planning to, we reached the port and Anna looked in amazement at the shops and teeming cafés along one side of the boardwalk, and the harbour on its other side. In a café overlooking the sea we sat under the shade of a parasol having yet another ice cream. I was too agitated to talk. Anna had no way of knowing the extent to which, after Orit’s departure, I needed proof that I was worthy of a woman’s love.

In those years I was able to supply anyone who asked for it with cold and prosaic points of view on love. Love as a product of a biological need to reproduce, love as chemistry. I could provide descriptions of the hormones responsible for desire, infatuation, and lasting love, and felt deep inside that they all evaporated and left me empty and drained. There was no romance in the way I understood love during those years. Until, that is, Anna appeared on the scene, and I became immersed in the love story with her like a teenager, and was swept away by it like a man drowning.

I was silent, swamped by feelings of gratitude. I hugged her until she sighed with pain.

Be careful. There’s already no flesh to protect my old bones.

A procession of kindergarten children walking in pairs, holding hands, came down to the promenade. Some of them followed the nursery teacher in silence, others chatted to each other, there were those who looked curiously at us, and two of them were rolling about with laughter. Anna’s gaze followed the children with an expression on her face that I was unable to decipher. I assumed that, like me, she too was thinking of what we had missed, but deep in her eyes was concealed a remote smile.

Are you in touch with Orit? she suddenly asked, and I took the question to mean that it was her turn to express her fears.

I saw her once. There are chapters in life that are closed forever, and there are those that have been paused so as to be renewed.

When we got home the sun was already high in the sky. I called Gedalyahu and asked him to use his contacts with whoever it was necessary to avoid Anna having to present herself and be questioned.

It’s not up to me, he said, and gave me the phone number of the relevant man from the Shin Bet as well as equipping me with a number of suggestions which immediately helped.

Those are the rules, the man said when I called.

She was released in the framework of a deal, I replied, using Gedalyahu’s argument. In fact, she ‘belongs’ to the Red Cross. There isn’t a single clause in the deal that allows you to question her. And if there were, I would advise her simply to say nothing. What would you do then?

She wants to live here, doesn’t she? The man tried his luck.

The Red Cross certified her as a refugee. She can’t be deported. Leave her alone. Drop it.

I’ll get back to you, the man said, and I never heard from him again.

You don’t have to go for questioning, at least not for now, I gave Anna the news, and she responded with a sigh of relief that came from the depths of her heart. She took off my track suit, lay on the bed, and after almost two days spent between sleep and wakefulness she fell into a deep slumber. I sat at her side and looked at her. She seemed peaceful now, the long walk in the sun had even turned her face slightly red; her hair, with its streaks of black, white and silvery grey, having been washed, nestled in waves on her shoulders, strands of it gliding down her face. Though her cheeks were hollow, their fine bone structure, the well-defined jaw, and the straight nose, still belonged to the face of a very beautiful woman. She was wearing one of my vests from which revealed her bony shoulders, and her sunken breasts were virtually invisible. Her buttocks were almost fleshless and her thighs thinner than her knees. The fragile body only made me want to hug it, which is what I did. I slid behind her, drew close up, and wrapped my arms around her.