2008
I went to Odesa on my boss’s orders. Two coordinators had lost their tempers with an American couple arriving in the city, and my boss didn’t trust anyone else but me to handle them. Daria’s move to the Silverleaf villa was still in the future, so I couldn’t turn down the assignment. It wasn’t the best time of year for a visit. The fishing season was over, but Turks were still all over chasing Ukrainian women, and cameras were snapping on the Potemkin Steps regardless of the fog and rain. The weather didn’t bother the couple I was hosting. Their plan was to build a large family at a fast pace, and the fee was commensurate.
By evening, I was exhausted. After escorting the Americans to their room, I wanted to be alone and crept toward the kitchen. My boss had come up with the idea of setting up a firm that operated like a romance travel agency: we would escort clients on a tour of the companies working in our industry and then take a cut from whichever of our competitors they settled on. The couple was one of the first customers for this new product, and they were the type of people who acted the same way whether they were buying shoes, cars, or children. They didn’t just touch the surrogates, they also went for the nurses, and the only thing missing was that they didn’t actually look for a price tag hanging from each woman’s skirt. Reassuring all parties and acting as an interpreter had kept me so busy that at dinner I hadn’t had time to eat.
Opening the fridge, I took out a plate of sliced salo fatback and went to the table. I didn’t take a bottle. The couple might wake up in the night and need me, either to verify some trivial detail or to calm their nerves. I couldn’t smell like liquor if they did. We’d renovated one floor of a tsarist-era palace for girls and clients to use, and it was cared for by an energetic housekeeper who had done an admirable job filling the cupboards. As I pushed a can opener into the lid of a tin of caviar, I heard the couple’s exclamations of delight. They must have just entered the bathroom with its ancient Grecian decor, rose petals, essential oils, and whirlpool bath. It had been installed in the apartment when it was still being used by bachelor travelers.
I didn’t hear the doorbell in the kitchen or the housekeeper going to answer it. I didn’t notice you until you were standing on the threshold and wiping the rain from your hair, and in an instant my fatigue was gone. I hadn’t prepared for surprise guests. My hands smelled like caviar, and I felt my naked skin, my unshaven legs, the film on my teeth, and how thin my kimono was. Too thin. Droplets of water fell on the oak parquet from your jacket. With greasy fingers, I pulled my belt tighter.
“I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Just then the lights went out without warning, and I think I squealed. I couldn’t see anything, and all I could hear were your words saying that it was just a power outage, and they were delivered in the voice of a man accustomed to unexpected situations, in a calming way like evening tea, and nothing in it allowed for the possibility that it was anything else. But still my heart pounded, and my eyes took a moment to adjust to the darkness, until I gradually made out your silhouette as you opened cupboard doors searching for candles. Taking out a saucer and producing a lighter from your pocket, you said that it must have hit the whole block. I didn’t see your face until you brought the plates, which you had melted wax onto and used that to affix the candles in place. I couldn’t interpret your expression. The flames made the high walls of the room a church. The weather had silenced the hum of the traffic and now the refrigerator. The branches of a tree split by lightning scraped at the backyard window and made me remember my guests. Hopping up, I held one of the edges of my kimono as if not trusting the belt.
“We have American clients,” I said.
You laughed, but I didn’t. I remembered how the couple had suspiciously eyed the labyrinth of electrical wires winding around the gate. Every wrinkle of a nose had made me somehow smaller, lowlier, and I didn’t understand why the local genome was good enough for them if they despised everything else. They would be talking about the blackout at breakfast.
“I’ll go tell the housekeeper to take them candles.”
But the capable woman was already on her way to rescue the Americans and waved me away from the corridor. Sitting back down, I curled my toes, which were protruding from the ends of my slippers. I hadn’t been for a pedicure in ages. I would have liked to care for our clients, so I could also put on more clothing, or at least brush my teeth. I tried to think of a suitable excuse to get me out of the kitchen. I couldn’t think of anything.
“Has something happened?” I managed to ask. “Why are you in Odesa?”
“The boss has a meeting here. We’re returning to Dnipro tomorrow.”
Behind me I heard clinking. You’d found the bottle of Sarajishvili. I wiped my fingers on the hem of my kimono before I took the glass you offered. Your leisurely manner didn’t suggest any emergency. If the Kravets princess had a problem, you would have told me already, and we wouldn’t be drinking, let alone snacking on slices of salo. It couldn’t be about Snizhne, could it? Had you somehow found out and wanted to see for yourself how the rat would try to wriggle out of the trap? In my mind I recited the Lord’s Prayer a few times, hoping not now, not today, not this night. Looking at the salo sweating on the table, I felt sick. The mound of lard that the housekeeper had so skillfully arranged on the plate had begun to collapse.
The draft blew out the candle. You relit it and closed the kitchen door. In the silence, my swallowing was clearly audible. And my breathing. Your breathing. The wind. And rain. The Sarajishvili pouring into two glasses again. The squeaking of the oak parquet. The expression I saw on your face was the oldest in the world. It was the expression with which men have always looked at women.
In the morning, I escorted you out. Traffic signs blown down by the wind lay on the sidewalk, and the trunks of the plane trees still shone from the rain. The electrical lines hanging above the gateway had turned into wreaths bedecked with raindrop pearls, and the mat of autumn foliage covering the street was so bright that it could have been taken to a circus. The city was as silent as if it existed just for us. I went back up and out onto the balcony to watch you, not knowing it would become a habit. Whenever you left me, I would have to stop to watch your receding back, because it could always be the last time I would see you.
I’d imagined I would be able to escape Lada Kravets and her world by ushering the process to its desired conclusion. The new mother would keep to the nursery, and I would only ever run into her at Kravets Foundation functions, and gradually I could also distance myself from the responsibilities that came along with them. But after Odesa, I realized that would never work if I wanted to keep you.
You were part of the family, and through you, the world they represented became my world with all its by-products, the greatest of which was a constant, gnawing worry. If I didn’t hear from you for a day, I began to think something had happened. If you forgot to call despite your promises, I remembered how Daria’s mother had beaten her son who had forgotten to tell her about working a double shift in the mine. I thought about your girlfriends, your wives, your mother, and your lovers, and my own mother, the sound of her slippers pacing in a circle at night. I wondered how any of them slept and how they didn’t all become alcoholics. I started to suspect that I was an exception. That there was something wrong with me that would prevent me from being a soldier’s wife like Maria Kirillovna, who had been married to Veles for decades. They were still alive. Not everyone became a young widow, or a widow at all. Maybe it would be possible for me, too. I didn’t hope for anything more than that, because a star had fallen from the sky into my heart just when I least expected it.