Mishka Ben-David - Forbidden Love in St. Petersburg

It was very pleasant.

For me too. Thanks for the company.

I thought of getting up and helping her on with her coat but she indicated gracefully that there was no need and went towards the door, walking the few steps in her upright manner. She made her exit without looking back, leaving behind only a slight trace of the fragrance of her exquisite perfume.

I remained sitting in the restaurant for quite some time. I was enchanted. This beautiful and clever woman had become even more mysterious. I tried to imagine her at work, but couldn’t. There was something else about her, something that wouldn’t permit her to sit for hours each day in a small bookshop.

THE NEXT MORNING I was surprised by a new feeling stirring within me. I couldn’t yet give it a name but the vague unfocused sense of expectation with which I had been wandering around over the previous few days was beginning to take shape. As I waited for the sausage and onion omelette to cook, I noticed my fingers drumming a melody. I used to think that the songs buzzing around in my head and the way my fingers responded were a sign of some kind of disorder. Mostly it was the last song I’d heard, sometimes even the tune of a cell phone that had sounded off near me. Seems like I’ve swallowed a radio, I once said to Orit when she asked where the music my fingers were strumming on her thigh was coming from. But at some point this radio had gone silent. That morning it sounded the first notes of revival.

The hours in the office passed more quickly. I felt less alone and less cold even though the day itself was chillier than those that preceded it. A company from Tajikistan and another from Dagestan decided to join the party by asking to buy a canning production line which I’d offered at a slight loss to me–altogether a thousand rubles below the Russian manufacturer’s price. Accepting the suggestion of my Mossad controllers, I even included an annual inspection in the price. This gave me cover periodically to visit these Republics, where Iranian influence was significant, and to tour the shores of the Caspian Sea, Iran’s unguarded back door. I quickly forwarded a contract and the details of the Letter of Credit required by my bank, advanced the time of my weekly briefing to HQ, and announced, with a degree of satisfaction, the opening up of the Tajiki and Dagestani markets.

At lunchtime, the thought of returning to the neighbourhood restaurant momentarily crossed my mind–I didn’t, after all, know whether or not my beautiful bookseller also ate there during the day. But I quickly realized that I was being overly enthusiastic and held my curiosity in check till the evening.

That night I learned that I had to delete the word ‘my’ and make do with just ‘beautiful bookseller’. Anna was already sitting at her regular table by the window with a bowl of soup and Saul Bellow. When I entered, she glanced at me briefly, smiled a tentative smile, acknowledged my presence with a slight nod of the head, and promptly returned to The Adventures of Augie March .

Seeing that she was immersed in her book all I could do was to make my way to my regular seat, which this time was free. I forced myself to disregard the feeling of slight disappointment that had somehow sneaked in. Realistically, nothing that had happened the previous day could possibly justify my hope for a continuation of some sort in my relations with Anna. A set of circumstances had led to us sitting together and the conversation we’d had was the minimum to be expected given those circumstances. Nor did the interest that Anna had shown in Demons go beyond what a Russian bookstore owner was likely to exhibit in such a situation. And in any case, her curiosity was not about me but about the book. I recalled that yesterday Anna had also maintained her boundaries and shown no interest or provided any information that went beyond basic good manners. The fact that she was alone gave no grounds for optimism. She had spurned a suitor who might have been seen as more fitting than me with his Mercedes jeep, the price of which was undoubtedly equal to the profits made by a small bookshop after decades of trade. The fact that she’d shifted the iceberg creature inside me was an altogether different story and one that must not cause me to lose sight of the direction and purpose that I was here to pursue.

Only after I’d finished consuming my roast, reading the same page three times over without remembering a word, did it enter my mind that Anna, as befits a principled woman whose presence was forced upon me the previous evening, wouldn’t make a move towards me even if she wanted to. If, indeed, she was at all interested, she would surely hope that I would make the first advance. What a fool I am! I can at least suggest that she join me to drink the tea/coffee each of us is about to order.

But as these thoughts raced through my mind Anna was readying herself to leave. As she stretched to put on her coat, I noticed that she was wearing a thin, close-fitting sweater that exposed the outline of her breasts. If I can see them from where I’m sitting, I thought to myself, they can’t possibly be small.

As she turned towards the door, our eyes met. She nodded her head in my direction, completed her turn, and went out.

The following two evenings Anna didn’t turn up. I tried to shove her into my missed chances drawer where, because of a certain clumsiness on my part, many lost opportunities had accumulated over the years. But thoughts of Anna forced themselves on me and made me lose my concentration. So as to avoid wandering aimlessly around my office or through the streets, I crossed over to the Zheton, the casino on the other side of the road. I read the name of the casino in Russian, practising the new and strange letters, the ZH that looked like a multi-legged cockroach, and the N that looked like an H and the E that looked like an error in the diagonal of an N.

I was one of the very few customers–after all it was the middle of the day. Yet again my passport was photocopied and I was asked to smile into the camera in the wall. I was then able to enter the gaming room, disturbing the peace and quiet of some workers playing poker around one of the tables. The only game I knew was roulette: I decided that I would not allow myself to lose any more than five hundred rubles but, after an hour’s worth of systemless yet successful gambling that had the workers gathering around me in appreciation, I stopped, a pile of jettons worth more than a thousand rubles to my credit–the price of a good meal in a fine restaurant.

For the first time since moving into the neighbourhood I headed north until I reached a large, square, brown building that almost bordered the banks of the Neva. In my guide book it was listed as the ‘former courthouse’ and since it was square and very ordinary I didn’t bother studying it with the same interest as I did the rest of the street’s buildings, all of them very beautiful. I noticed that security cameras were peering out from every corner of the structure, as well as from above the side entrance which abutted a small, enclosed car park. Curious, I walked past the heavy wooden doors at the front and paused to read what was written on the iron plate attached to them. It took me some time to connect one word to another. I understood the word ‘federalni’, thought that the second word ‘Sluzhba’ meant office or ministry, but couldn’t decipher the last, very long word. I did, however, manage to link the first letter of that word to the first letters of the previous two, and all of a sudden the initials FSB leapt into my mind. The Federal Office of Security, the successor to the KGB.

The situation was so bizarre that I burst out laughing. Other pedestrians passed by on their way from the Neva to the city centre, some wearing brown uniforms. None of them entered the building, none paid any attention to me, and I simply kept on walking towards the parapet that runs along the length of the Neva. I took a moment or so to observe the branching of the river into the big and small Neva, trying not to let on that I was in any way connected to the office building across the road.