Mishka Ben-David - Forbidden Love in St. Petersburg

Annushka? Annushka?

Her hair was grey, her shoulders visibly bony under the threadbare coat, her posture stooped. As I got a little closer what I recognized first of all were her almond eyes which now had large black rings under them; eyes that were open so wide as to stretch right across the tormented face. For a brief moment there was a glint, a flicker of recognition, and then it was gone. A two-edged sword embedded itself in my heart–one blade of love, the other of pain.

What have they done to you, my Annushka? I ran towards her and cradled her head in the palms of my hands. Her eyes were dead, simply two gaping hollows. Then, from the corners, droplets of tears began to flow.

When I hugged her I could feel the fleshless bones jutting out. Holding her close to me in an embrace I could see the many white hairs interlaced with the remnants of black. Her cheek bones protruded and her face was etched with wrinkles. She was a different woman, a shadow of the woman I’d loved so much. In an involuntary movement, her tongue wet the edges of her chapped lips and the sword, already sheathed in my flesh, was drawn and stabbed me once more. I brought my face closer to hers, wetting her lips with my tongue, pulling her towards me, kissing her with all the pain pent up inside me during all those long bleak years I’d been without her.

She responded apprehensively, hesitatingly, unsure of my love.

I had no desire to force myself on her.

My Annushka, at last, was all I managed to say before I choked up, lifted the plastic bag, gently wrapped my arms round her scrawny shoulders, and led her slowly down the long passageway to passport control. She had absolutely no energy, and very nearly collapsed in my arms. Her feet, clad in a pair of ungainly overshoes, barely carried her.

Her eyes darted from side to side, finding it hard to absorb the dazzlingly bright light, the array of colours, and the multitude of sounds all around. Some twelve hours had passed since the circular prisoner swap in which her name had been included a long time ago, and she was unexpectedly taken out of her cold damp prison cell, dressed, and driven off to the airport.

Waiting at passport control was a Shin Bet agent who escorted us to the other side of the counters. I’ll leave you alone now, he said, but tomorrow you have to come to us together with her, OK? We can’t do without the minimum of debriefings.

Do you have a suitcase? I asked as we went past the luggage carousels, and Anna smiled in embarrassment.

They let me out just like this, even the clothes aren’t mine, apparently they belong to another prisoner who was jailed not long ago. There wasn’t time to look for my things in the storage room. They gave me a bit of money and I bought a blanket so I’d have something to cover myself with if there wasn’t anywhere for me to sleep.

Didn’t you know I’d be here?

I knew nothing. Even when I tried to follow you I didn’t know if you’d really be here. I had theories and I had hopes but you left without saying a word.

Annushka, my poor thing, I halted again and held her tight, covering her head with kisses. Without knowing anything for sure, you simply tried to follow me? And how did you know to come here? I was confused.

You disappeared, I didn’t think our people would arrest you without saying anything to me, and I thought that perhaps your friends had kidnapped you, and that this was the only place where I could find you again. And then I made some mistakes…

My Annushka. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to atone for that moment of weakness when I believed them, and not you. What a price you’ve paid for that lapse of mine!

Only then did her words sink in, and my heart dropped. Our people, she’d said. Our people; arrested you. If so, then she really was one of them, as the Mossad had said. As I hadn’t dared to even suspect. On our way to the car, the feelings in my heart ran wild, collided, and shattered into fragments of fear and doubt; the fear that she’d been sent to entice me as part of her job; the belief that she’d fallen in love with me and duped her employers; the catastrophe that my innocent love had brought on her and very nearly also on me and my colleagues. And all of these were overshadowed by the big questions that had completely preoccupied me from the moment I saw her at the gate: Did I still love her, and if so, how much? Did she still love me, and to what extent? We had a long way to go before we could get back to the way we were.

When we came out, the bright light hit the car and Anna shielded her eyes, eyes that had barely seen sunshine for three years and had never been exposed to anything as dazzling as this. Very slowly, like a baby peeping through the fingers of its hand, she let the vistas in, and only when we’d left the airport area did she remove the protective hand from her eyes.

She stared, wide-eyed, at the gleaming freeway, at the interchanges, at the green fields and the city’s houses rising up in front of us, and didn’t say a word. As we flowed with the traffic along the Ayalon highway, I saw Anna looking in wonder at the structures surrounding it, a mixture of old buildings and newly erected skyscrapers. And when we passed the Azrieli Towers, the highest of them all, I could see her turning her head back, gazing at them in amazement. What sort of visual image does a Russian who doesn’t know a thing about Israel have of the place? A desert? Camels and tents? A Jewish shtetl? Will Anna be able to live in this hot, harsh country?

We drove west along Arlosoroff Street and I began to talk. I explained that this was the Israeli style of building, functional, not the grand façades of St Petersburg, and avoided adding that here the buildings’ interiors weren’t neglected. I turned at Hayarkon Street in the direction of my building.

I tried to decipher Anna’s expression as we parked under the new building, went up in the elevator to the sixth and top floor, and then finally as we entered the spacious but sparsely furnished apartment. I saw the look of relief on her face when she realized that there wasn’t another woman in the apartment.

This place is longing for a woman’s touch, I said to remove any lingering doubt she may have had, and so am I.

Anna dropped to her knees, bursting into bitter tears, relieving the mass of doubts she’d lived with not only over the previous twenty-four hours but during the three years of her imprisonment. I too went down on my knees at her side, embracing her. I am not a woman anymore, my love, she wept. Not only is my soul dry, but so too is my body. It was hunger.

For me you are more of a woman than any other woman could ever be, I said, wiping away her tears. And what am I if not an emasculated man? I gave into them over there, and I even allowed them to quash the plans I’d devised to rescue you.

What tortured me more than the conditions in prison, Anna said quietly, more than the cold, the damp walls, the thin mattress, the bucket full to the brim with faeces, the rats, the hunger, the drug addicts sharing my cell, was the question of why you left.

Her eyes, which could have looked at me reproachfully, were lowered. I wanted to care for her, to offer her sustenance, a shower, a change of clothes, but I knew that her desperate need to understand why I had disappeared was paramount. And I, who’d been hearing a voice inside me asking the very opposite question–what made her come to me in the first place–waited with bated breath for what she was going to say next.

I imagined that in the end the ex-KGB agent your bosses sent to find out who I was told them that I was an FSB agent and that you were then promptly ordered to come back home. But I didn’t know, nor could I understand, why you’d agreed to their demands. Did you believe that I was still spying on you and trying to trap you, I asked myself? Could it possibly be that you’d not yet realized that even had I known you were a spy I couldn’t have betrayed you because I loved you so much?