Katherine Bucknell - Leninsky Prospekt

John took off his dark grey suit jacket, loosened his dull blue, paisley tie, settled his long bony frame awkwardly at the little wooden table. ‘Your hair’s fine all mangled,’ he said. ‘I love it however.’ Then he put his fingers in his own close-cut, light brown hair and rubbed it hard, grinning. ‘See mine? Madwoman’s spouse. Let’s just have a nice supper and go to bed. You can fix your hair tomorrow.’

Nina lifted her glass, toasting his appearance. ‘Very attractive.’ And she smiled down at him, sipping, stirring, lifting lids, peering under them. ‘What’s keeping you at that office so much, anyway?’

But John held a finger in the air, alert, reminding her to take care what she said.

She turned on the radio, then the water in the sink, and threw open the window above it, letting the wind and rain blow in along with the faint blare of street noises from far below.

‘Have to clear the smoke out,’ she said brightly. She went back to the stove, checked again under all the lids, then walked to the table and perched on John’s lap, laying her head on his chest with her ear beside his mouth.

He plucked at her wet hair without saying anything until she rolled her head around and looked him in the eye.

‘You’re making me burn the beets.’

He laughed, just a sniffing laugh, and murmured very quietly, ‘Oh, sweetheart – letters, teletypes. We meet, we talk, we translate, we explain. God knows if anyone hears or even listens. Khrushchev never stops thinking about how to get our troops out of West Berlin, and the president is never going to abandon the West Germans. It’s much more interesting here at home, since you are so pretty and, at present, so vulnerably déshabillée .’ He twitched the lapel of her bathrobe, as if to look inside, and she trapped his hand and pressed it flat, helpless, against her breast.

John leaned closer, sealed his lips against Nina’s ear to say something more, then instead took the curling top edge of her ear between his teeth and bit it so that she suddenly sat up. They both laughed.

She gathered her robe around her, stood up with exaggerated, mocking caution, kissed his forehead crisply and said, ‘I’m going to give you supper straight from the stove. Do you mind? No serving dishes?’

‘Of course I don’t mind.’ He picked up his glass of Scotch and drained it.

As she lifted the meat onto the plates, ladled the sauce, fished for beets, John muttered, ‘The thing about democracy is of course that everything gets dropped for these damned mid-term elections.’ Then suddenly, he spoke up loudly, lifting his chin, and called out tauntingly to the walls and to the ceiling, ‘You hear that? It’s not such a perfect system, Western democracy.’

Nina put his plate in front of him, amused, stepping back to let him rant. But he wrapped a long arm around her light, bundled torso, pulled her close, and went on in a loud whisper, ‘A few pretty loud-mouthed Republicans have been sounding off about how the president should be more aggressive on Cuba. Nobody likes the fact that the Russians have been shipping military equipment in there all summer, but the Cubans are entitled to defend themselves. And the president’s so busy dealing with that kind of criticism that he really doesn’t listen to anything else. All his time and energy just now is aimed at making sure his side stays in power; forget foreign relations.’

Nina leaned down and whispered back, ‘It can’t be any different in this country, my dearest. Just because there are no elections doesn’t mean people don’t have to fight and compromise to hold onto power. Everyone struggles to stay in power.’

‘You are so damned smart, Nina. Yup. So maybe that explains why our Russian friends are being so sympathetic to the president’s plight. They’ve promised, on the quiet, to just lay off until after the November elections, especially on Berlin.’ He shrugged a little, in mild surprise. ‘The president will give them another summit if they don’t stir things up.’

Nina took a step towards the stove, reached for her plate, and brought it around opposite him. ‘Sympathetic – just to be nice?’ It made no sense to her at all, a sympathetic Russian leader. She raised her eyebrows cynically. ‘You’re kidding, aren’t you?’

There was a pause, and then she leaned right across the table, her thick bathrobe almost touching the food on her plate. With a babyish pout, her lips pushed out as if to be kissed, she crooned very low, ‘Don’t let your fetching American sense of fairplay and your boyish idealism blind you to the Soviet character – or to human nature, for that matter. If the Soviets think the president is seriously preoccupied, they’ll find some way to take advantage of it. And by the way, I’m not any smarter than you are, dearest. I’m just far less of a gentleman.’

John started to smile, but then looked startled, thoughtful. Silently he lifted a forkful of food to his mouth. For a few moments the only sounds in the room were the strains of a crackling, turgid symphony barely audible over the radio, the water running into the sink, and the tinkling knocks of their cutlery against the china. They glanced at each other from time to time as they chewed, then down at their plates, cutting, spearing. Suddenly, the window banged closed.

They both jumped with alarm, chastened by the frankness of their conversation. They knew they shouldn’t talk in the apartment about anything political. The trouble was that Nina loved it so much, and was so hungry for conversation of real substance, that John couldn’t bear to keep things from her. And she was astute in such unexpected, convincing ways that he couldn’t resist finding out her opinions. He felt that whatever views she had, belonged to him, that he ought to know them all, that they were a valuable resource, that they shouldn’t go to waste. He hardly realized the extent to which he was continuously at work trying to master and make use of her Russianness.

They went on eyeing each other dubiously, anxiously, as they cleaned their plates. Finally, they broke out in grim laughter.

Nina said, slowly, quietly, ‘Our guys were in here sweeping for bugs again just yesterday. I know they miss things, but maybe …’ She puckered her lips, twitched them about like a rabbit’s quick nose, nervous, as if she might smell a listening device or do away with it by magic.

‘We didn’t say anything we shouldn’t have.’ Even if they had, they couldn’t take it back now. They had to brazen it out.

‘So tell me about George Balanchine,’ John finally said with a shrug.

Nina got up, latched the window, turned off the water.

‘Well,’ she began, with a lilt of self-deprecation, hands plunged in her pockets as she stood in the middle of the floor, ‘I didn’t get to meet him personally. Not yet anyway. A real scene at the airport. A lot of press and – all the usual onlookers.’ She said this with sarcastic emphasis, not mentioning the KGB or any elements of the State propaganda machine. ‘And he was interviewed in very pointed fashion, to elicit certain – newsworthy answers. But after all, he’s a Russian. They want to look upon him as one of their own, and from what I could see, he knew exactly what he was doing. One of the reporters called out, “Welcome to the home of classical ballet,” and he said, “America is now the home of classical ballet.” Incredibly bold, as if it all belonged to him, the whole tradition, and he had just taken it all with him when he left. I think his work will make the Bolshoi stuff look fat and dull, romantic, old-fashioned. The Russians’ll be stunned.’ She paused, her eyes sparkling. ‘You remember when you went with me in New York?’

‘Not in the way you remember, Nines. It was beautiful, but I had no idea why.’