Valentin’s deep cherry-pit eyes watch me from behind thick-framed glasses; he nods once at me and scrubs his black hair. He has a large frame like Sergei’s, but his muscles are lean and withdrawn. Something about him reminds me of the brooding photographs of Russian composers and poets in Aunt Nadia’s encyclopedias.
“You play very well,” I tell him. “Was that Tchaikovsky?”
He looks down like the compliment was too much to bear. “It was supposed to be Swan Lake, but … it’s out of tune.”
I shouldn’t act like I care. I don’t need any friends here; I’ll be gone at the first sign of gaps in the security. But something in his musical phrasing reminded me of the old Kondrashin piano recordings Papa and Zhenya and I listened to, Zhenya dutifully transcribing the notes in his private notation. “Have you been playing for long?”
His dark eyes meet mine again. I know that tightness around them well—the look I gave to anyone who noticed me, the slip of a girl darting along Moscow’s streets. I don’t blame him for not trusting me; I’ll use whatever and whoever I can to escape.
“All my life.” He eases his posture; I uncoil in turn. “My mother taught me so I could accompany her when she played violin.”
“She must be very proud of you,” I tell him. But it was the wrong thing to say. He drops his head and the tension returns.
“Valentin here wants to be the next … What’s his name, Valya?” Sergei nudges him in the ribs—none too gently, I suspect. “Dave Barback?”
“Brubeck,” Valentin says to the piano keys.
“Yes! Great American jazz composer, Valya tells me. But no one in the Soviet Union cares about jazz. Colored people music,” Sergei says. I bristle, though I’m not surprised. Most Russians think like Sergei—Africans, Asians, even olive-skinned people like myself from Georgia and the other southern republics are treated suspiciously.
Valentin eyes me with a slight tilt to his head. “My family is Georgian, too.”
“Did I give you permission to read my mind?” I snap. He winces and tucks his hands into his lap.
“Come on, let me show you the view out back,” Sergei says. “Valya won’t follow us out there. He hates the river.”
Sergei pulls me onto the rear balcony of cracked concrete. A long shadow in my periphery marks Boris, moving closer, but Sergei closes the door before he reaches us. My blood races when I realize that this side of the mansion is not hemmed in by the cold concrete wall. But my hope instantly deflates. It’s a sheer drop—the mansion perches on a cliff overlooking the Moskva River. We’re somewhere in the hills of southeastern Moscow. Barges chug through the oily gray water beneath us; the Metro trains clatter across the river bridge. To the north, at the heart of the city, I can make out the peaks of the Seven Sisters—Stalin’s skyscrapers capped in gold and red stars—and the pink turrets of the Novodevichy Monastery jutting defiantly above the river.
“There’s Luzhniki Stadium.” Sergei stands behind me and points around me to the low white pod just opposite the river from us. It looks like an alien craft that could take flight at any moment—sail into the stars like the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin or the Sputnik satellite. “I’m going to play for Spartak there someday. I’ll be the greatest hockey player in the world.”
I don’t mean to, but I can feel the sadness sheening his bare arms. They’ve taken something from all of us. For me, it was Mama and Zhenya, and my dreams of studying at Moscow State so I could fix Zhenya someday. What else have they taken from Sergei, besides his hockey career? But when I glance back at him, his face is blank, a frieze of the Worker as He Advances the Motherland, unmoving.
“You want to go to Moscow State?” He swings me around to my left by my shoulders. “Look.”
I stumble back into his dense chest. I can only see the top of the tower over the mansion’s roof, but I know it instantly. It’s the greatest of Stalin’s Seven Sisters; the bright red star and the golden sickle and hammer upon it are perfectly clear. The education I crave is just out of reach.
I scrub at my eyes—they’re moist from the wind, I tell myself—and look away.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” he says. “I just thought you’d like…”
“It doesn’t matter.” When I find Mama and Zhenya and run away from this place, I’ll have to leave it behind. I’ll keep teaching myself, as I’ve been doing. We’ll keep running; we’ll watch Moscow shrink to a speck over our shoulders. Always running, forever—
Sergei’s hand touches my shoulder. It burns with conflicting emotions: Sadness? Anger? “Yulia, you have to stop thinking about escape. It’s too dangerous.”
“What do you care?” A barge sounds its horn; I peer over the balcony ledge. If it were straight down, I could survive it, but the embankment slopes just enough …
“Maybe I don’t. You wouldn’t be the first to try.” He shrugs. “But believe me, if there’s one thing I’ve learned here … There are worse things than a bullet in the back, a broken neck. What they can do to your brain, or your family’s…”