Mishka Ben-David - Forbidden Love in St. Petersburg

But Anna shed her expression of sadness and said, so let’s talk a bit about the Pathétique .

The Pathétique ?

The Sixth Symphony which we’re about to hear. This was Tchaikovsky’s last before he succumbed to cholera here in St Petersburg and died. In this symphony you can trace virtually the entire story of his life and glimpse all his talents and weakness. From gross sentimentality to the peaks of melodiousness and majesty.

And all in one piece? I wondered.

Just as all are to be found in the life of one man; a man who was both ridiculed and admired, who was a homosexual yet was married to an admiring and crazy young woman. A wealthy widow was his patron yet she refused to meet him face to face. Life showers us with the good and the bad; and we take a bit, avoid some of it, and for the most part, whether we like it or not, are hurled into this centrifuge, right? she asked. And when I didn’t reply and only smiled to myself, she asked again, is that not so?

A particle accelerator more than a centrifuge, I said. At the end there is a crush.

When we returned to our seats a couple sitting in the row behind us leant forwards and expressed to Anna their sorrow at the death of her husband which they’d only recently become aware of. For years we’ve been seeing each other here once a month, and it hurts, Anna explained to me in a whisper.

Immediately after the Pathétique , another ten or so woodwind players came onto the raised stage clutching their silver and gold wind instruments. The orchestra played the overture to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 . I was particularly moved–not so much by the familiar passages but by that part in which only the large string instruments with their deep bass tones filled the hall with a resonance that made my whole being quiver. I held Anna’s hand. She didn’t push it away, aware of my emotion and, indeed, encouraged it. But as we left the hall, she told me that anyone who knows anything about contrapuntal music could weave together the Marseillaise and the Imperial Russian Anthem and write such roaring and nationalistic marches.

I suggested that we take a taxi back together, surely we didn’t live far from each other if we regularly ate at the same neighbourhood restaurant, and the prices of the few taxis that still ran at this time of night were crazy. She agreed.

Anna directed the driver. As we passed the main avenue close to my apartment she told him to turn into a side street shortly after which we came to a halt. We were indeed not far from my apartment but the buildings here were large, square, ugly blocks. I asked if I could accompany her to her door.

Anna hesitated and taking advantage of her hesitation, I paid the driver, and sent him on his way.

Anna lived in an enormous twelve-storey, brick building with five or six entrances. I estimated it to be no more than a kilometre from my house. The further away the construction was from the main avenue, the more the euphoria of victory over the Germans subsided, the economic failure of communism became more apparent, and as the great leaders gave way to lesser ones, so the buildings became drabber and drabber. The small lift dipped slightly as we entered it and then ascended at a snail’s pace.

In the limited light, as Anna busied herself with the key, I saw peeling walls that projected shadows and stains. The door creaked a bit and Anna went in first to put on a light in the bleak entrance to the apartment.

Books. That’s what I saw all around me. In the entrance hall and in the small guest room further down the hallway. Bookshelves from floor to ceiling, inside cupboards and behind glass panels.

Perhaps you should keep your coat on until the heater warms up the room, Anna said, directing me into the living room and to the two-seater of the standard three-piece suite that took up most of the room. She lit a small electric fire and drew it close to me. Even in such a small apartment the building’s central heating system clearly wasn’t up to the job.

Anna seemed edgy and embarrassed.

I’m putting on the kettle for tea, I’m sorry but I don’t have any coffee in the house, neither I nor Mikhail drink coffee. Didn’t drink. I mean he didn’t drink and I don’t drink, she said, getting all tangled up with her words.

It’s OK, Anna, I’m not cold and in any case I don’t feel like drinking anything.

But we have to have something, she decided, and disappeared into the small kitchen which I could see on the other side of the hallway.

The walls on which there were no books were covered in old and fading wallpaper, the sort that disappeared from apartments in Israel many years ago. The wooden floor was also scratched and worn.

On the table facing me there was a picture of Anna with a mustachioed man in some garden or other. She looked much the same as she did now. The man was tall, well built, with slightly Asiatic features that reminded me of Stalin. Feeling somewhat uncomfortable, I got up and scanned the books, most of them in Russian, a small number in English. Displayed between them were some certificates which informed me of the man’s full name, Mikhail Starzav, from which Anna’s family name, Starzava, also derived. Only now did I understand that she was named Petrovna after her father.

You also read German? I asked, noticing that among the books on the shelf were the works of Heine and Schiller and more modern writers such as Heinrich Böll and Thomas Mann.

Just a little, came the answer from the kitchen.

I prefer to read what I can in the original rather than in a translation, she added as she arrived bearing two cups of tea and a small plate of biscuits on a decorated tray. You know what they say, the poetry gets lost in translation.

Was your husband also a book person?

More than me. Mikhail taught literature at the university here. What I know comes from what I learned at the Institute for Russian Literature, then at the Institute of Philology and now as a bookseller.

No small achievement, I said.

As she sat next to me on the sofa and drank her tea, she became less reserved and a bit less fidgety. I could well understand what she was going through, letting a strange man into her dead husband’s apartment for the first time. But I also knew that I didn’t want to let go of this woman with whom I was falling in love.

Anna asked about my musical preferences, she wanted to put on a record, to break the silence a bit. When I said Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty , she stood up and on her way to the record player stretched out her hand and brushed it affectionately against my cheek.

If such joyful and charming music is on your list, she said, you must be an incurable romantic.

We didn’t ask any questions as we finished our tea or when the few words we exchanged ran out. The wall clock had long since struck twelve. We got up, suddenly held hands like two youngsters, and stepped slowly towards the bedroom.

I don’t want to put the light on, OK? Anna said and I mumbled my agreement.

A double bed filled the narrow bedroom and in the dim light that filtered in from the hallway I could make out a cupboard against one wall and, on the other, pictures that were something of a blur though I did make out a figurine of Jesus on the cross, something I thought unusual in Russia.

At the foot of the bed Anna stopped, turned towards me and moved her lips close to mine. She was the same height as me and we arched our heads to the left and to the right until our lips met with ease. I couldn’t avoid recalling Orit’s observation about the advantages of an equivalence in height, and then quickly suppressed the memory. Anna’s kissing was light at first; I didn’t feel her tongue but clearly heard the beat of her heart and of mine as her breasts pressed against me. I also felt the stirring in my loins as she pushed her hips close up to me and her kisses became more passionate. I saw that her eyes were closed as she sucked at my lips and her tongue began to slide in through them. Her dry lips welcomed the wetness of our tongues, hers introducing the taste of a different world into my mouth, a world that totally vanquished me.