Mishka Ben-David - Forbidden Love in St. Petersburg

Like spoons, Anna said in her sleep.

In the evening we went to a beach restaurant opposite the house. I wanted us to have our dessert on the chairs in the sand next to the restaurant’s orange lanterns, as close as we could be to the lapping waves and the whispering sounds of the sea.

Do you want us first of all to wipe the slate clean of all our professional secrets so we can turn over a new leaf? Anna asked on our way there as our feet sank into the soft, cool, sand. So there won’t be any more skeletons in our cupboards?

No Annushka. I loved you without knowing anything about you. Simply because of your inner and outer beauty and the solitariness and sadness you conveyed. Yes, you too.

Of the beauty nothing is left, Anna said ruefully. But the silvery grey hair, the lines, the leanness of her body, the eyes that were still beautiful despite the black rings beneath them and the loss of their sparkle, merely heightened my desire to take her into my arms and hold her tight. I kissed her forehead and then her lips.

You will always be the most beautiful and the most loved woman in my life, I told her. And no, I don’t want this past to follow us. Not these episodes from the past which life dragged us into, just as a flood plucks trees out of the ground where they had put down roots. It’s quite enough that this past hovers over both of us. But I do want to know what you were like as a little girl. Did you wear your hair in plaits? Was the skirt you wore part of a school uniform? And what kind of pupil you were. What you liked doing at school and what you didn’t like doing there. Were you sporty? When did you learn judo? I haven’t yet listened to you playing the piano. I haven’t yet heard the poems you wrote. I want to know about your first kiss. I want you to grow again in my heart, going back all the way to your childhood. There are many things we need to complete and in the meantime you won’t ask how many people I killed and I won’t ask how many spies you hunted down who are now rotting in Russian jails. When the time comes for these things to be known they will become known.

Anna rose from the chair dug into the sand, walked up to the sea, her gaze once again directed at its depths, beyond the waves. The wind blowing in from the ocean slightly ruffled her hair and her face pointed towards an undefined spot on the horizon. I, too, got up and stood next to her. Anna had never thought about this country. For her this was a penal colony, a place of punishment. I think I have never loved as much as I loved her at that moment. But could I be for her a home, a love, a family? Will we ever be more than a defeated man and woman holding on to one another like fugitives from a flood? I looked out into the encroaching darkness and saw, on the horizon, the lights of a ship.

ANNA TURNED TO me and clutched my hand.

Yogev, she said in hushed tones that were almost drowned by the roar of the waves. We have to go there.

I thought she too was referring to the ship, perhaps she had in mind some untried possibilities awaiting us across the ocean, and didn’t answer.

I have to go to Russia, she said, as I remained silent.

My heart skipped a beat. I didn’t understand. What did she mean? Was she talking about her mother and sister who’d stayed behind?

I didn’t want to say anything to you about this before knowing that you accept me as I am. But now that I do know, I can tell you.

A strange feeling began to well up in the pit of my stomach, the kind that knows a moment before the brain does. Anna continued.

When the spells of dizziness and nausea began after I was locked up in the women’s prison, I thought it was because of the food there and the conditions. When I didn’t have my period, I thought this too was connected to the tension, the malnutrition, the hard labour. One of the prisoners suggested I get myself checked and I did. The test was positive.

You were pregnant, my darling Annushka? I asked, embracing her, the profound feeling of a missed opportunity gnawing at me from within. We could have had a child! Suddenly I was seized once again by that desire that had begun to develop amid the village pathways, disappeared together with Orit, and hesitantly flickered back to life every now and then with Anna.

It was a terrible pregnancy. The morning sickness turned some of my cellmates into enemies, and the prison authorities didn’t excuse me from the hard labour. I passed out almost every day. The prison doctor pressed me to have an abortion, as did a few good souls among the prisoners. What kind of life can he possibly look forward to, they argued against my protestations. He’ll grow up in an orphanage tainted by his jailbird mother.

So you gave up, Annushka? My voice trembled, its tone a blend of sadness and hope, understanding and fear.

No, no, I didn’t give up, but it was very tough. Especially the birth.

If that’s so, there was a birth. I bit my lips and only with great difficulty restrained my questions. Anna had to tell the story at her own pace.

I was frightened that they’d kill him at birth, or say he’d been stillborn and take him away from me. I refused to have any kind of anaesthetic or be given pain-killers. I wanted to see him born, to know he was alive, to be sure that they knew that I knew. The pains were hellish. There wasn’t an ounce of strength left in me.

And what happened? I couldn’t hold back.

What happened is what happens at the end of every normal pregnancy, Anna’s eyes shone. Paul was born.

Paul?

What else?

And what–what’s happened to him?

The possibility that I’d had a child and that he was dead assaulted me from within like a blind bat colliding with the walls of my stomach.

I had no milk, they didn’t allow me to get any food supplements, nor did they let me off going out to work. I took him with me, with him crying and me crying. And during rest periods he tried to suck at my empty breast, his face becoming contorted as he bellowed, and I wept bitter tears together with him, utterly lost.

And he? I asked, impatient.

And he–a sweet, loving smile spread across Anna’s face lending it a wonderful glow. He’s molodets.

He’s great, I did my own translation, and stopped myself from rushing her.

After a month he began to be curious about his surroundings. Seeing him able to recognize me was a moment of sheer bliss. After two months he started to smile. I almost fainted with happiness when I realized that this strange grimace of his was actually a smile. It was so wonderful to see that despite everything he was turning into a little human being; inquisitive, able to understand.

Anna’s smile was one of dreamy, distant, happiness.

The first syllables. Mama. That was worth all the suffering. I told him how brave you are, and loving, and how much you wanted a child like him; if only you could also say it yourself, say that you love him and that you will never leave him. Tears welled up in her eyes. I, after all, knew that soon he’d be a year old and they would take him away from me. Prisoners such as me are not allowed to stay with their babies after the age of one.

I thought of every possible way of passing a message to you about his existence. I stuffed notes in the food I sent back. I asked prisoners who were already entitled to be visited to make the story known to every Paul Gupta and every Roger Smith in the world, but mainly in Canada and Israel. I imagined that neither name was really yours. But I knew that were the matter to come to the notice of the authorities, the name you used here and the name under which you fled, the light would dawn somewhere, the counter-espionage division would get to know about it and some double agent or other would pass the information on to your people. But you didn’t appear.