Part Three
ISLAND
1962
14
Dimka and Valentin rode the Ferris wheel in Gorky Park with Nina and Anna.
After Dimka had been called away from the holiday camp, Nina had taken up with an engineer and had dated him for several months, but then they broke up, so now she was free again. Meanwhile, Valentin and Anna had become a couple: he slept over at the girls’ apartment most weekends. Also, significantly, Valentin had told Dimka a couple of times that having sex with one woman after another was just a phase men went through when they were young.
I should be so lucky, Dimka thought.
On the first warm weekend of the short Moscow summer, Valentin proposed a double date. Dimka agreed eagerly. Nina was smart and strong-minded, and she challenged him: he liked that. But mainly she was sexy. He often thought about how enthusiastically she had kissed him. He wanted very much to do that again. He recalled how her nipples had stuck out in the cold water. He wondered whether she ever thought about that day on the lake.
His problem was that he could not share Valentin’s cheerfully exploitative attitude to girls. Valentin would say anything to get a girl into bed. Dimka felt it was wrong to manipulate or bully people. He also believed that if someone said ‘No’, you should accept it, whereas Valentin always took ‘No’ to mean ‘Maybe not yet.’
Gorky Park was an oasis in the desert of earnest Communism, a place Muscovites could go simply to have fun. People put on their best clothes, bought ice cream and candy, flirted with strangers and kissed in the bushes.
Anna pretended to be scared on the Ferris wheel, and Valentin went along with the charade, putting his arm around her and telling her it was perfectly safe. Nina looked comfortable and unworried, which Dimka preferred to phoney terror, but it gave him no chance to get intimate.
Nina looked good in a cotton shirtwaist dress with orange and green stripes. The back view was particularly alluring, Dimka thought as they climbed off the wheel. For this date he had managed to get a pair of American jeans and a blue checked shirt. In exchange he had given two ballet tickets that Khrushchev did not want: Romeo and Juliet at the Bolshoi.
‘What have you been doing since I saw you last?’ Nina asked him as they strolled around the park, drinking lukewarm orange cordial bought from a stall.
‘Working,’ he said.
‘Is that all?’
‘I usually get to the office an hour before Khrushchev, to make sure everything is ready for him: the documents he needs, the foreign newspapers, any files he might want. He often works late into the evening, and I rarely go home before he does.’ He wished he could make his job sound as exciting as it really was. ‘I don’t have much time for anything else.’
Valentin said: ‘Dimka was the same at university – work, work, work.’
Happily, Nina did not seem to think that Dimka’s life was dull. ‘You’re really with Comrade Khrushchev every day?’
‘Most days.’
‘Where do you live?’
‘Government House.’ It was an elite apartment building not far from the Kremlin.
‘Very nice.’
‘With my mother,’ he added.
‘I’d live with my mother for the sake of a place in that building.’
‘My twin sister normally lives with us, also, but she’s gone to Cuba – she’s a reporter with TASS.’
‘I’d like to go to Cuba,’ Nina said wistfully.
‘It’s a poor country.’
‘I could live with that, in a climate where there’s no winter. Imagine dancing on the beach in January.’
Dimka nodded. He was thrilled by Cuba in a different way. Castro’s revolution showed that rigid Soviet orthodoxy was not the only possible form of Communism. Castro had new, different ideas. ‘I hope Castro survives,’ he said.
‘Why shouldn’t he?’
‘The Americans have invaded once already. The Bay of Pigs was a disaster, but they will try again, with a bigger army – probably in 1964, while President Kennedy is running for re-election.’
‘That’s terrible! Can’t something be done?’
‘Castro is trying to make peace with Kennedy.’
‘Will he succeed?’
‘The Pentagon is against it, and conservative Congressmen are making a fuss, so the whole idea is getting nowhere.’
‘We have to support the Cuban revolution!’
‘I agree – but our conservatives don’t like Castro either. They’re not sure he’s a real Communist.’
‘What will happen?’
‘It depends on the Americans. They may leave Cuba alone. But I don’t think they’re that smart. My guess is they’ll keep harassing Castro until he feels the only place he can look for help is the Soviet Union. So he’ll end up asking us for protection, sooner or later.’
‘What can we do?’
‘Good question.’
Valentin interrupted them. ‘I’m hungry. Have you girls got any food at home?’
‘Of course,’ said Nina. ‘I bought a knuckle of bacon for a stew.’
‘Then what are we waiting for? Dimka and I will buy some beer on the way.’
They took the Metro. The girls had an apartment in a building controlled by the steel union, their employer. Their place was small: a bedroom with two single beds, a living room with a couch in front of a television set, a kitchen with a tiny dining table, and a bathroom. Dimka guessed that Anna was responsible for the lacy cushions on the couch and the plastic flowers in the vase on top of the TV, and Nina had bought the striped curtains and the posters on the wall showing mountain scenery.
Dimka worried about the shared bedroom. If Nina wanted to sleep with him, would the two couples make love in the same room? Such arrangements had not been unknown when Dimka was a university student in crowded accommodation. All the same he did not like the idea. Apart from anything else, he did not want Valentin to know just how inexpert he was.
He wondered where Nina slept when Valentin stayed over. Then he noticed a small stack of blankets on the living-room floor, and he deduced that she slept on the couch.
Nina put the joint in a big saucepan; Anna chopped up a large turnip; Valentin put out cutlery and plates; and Dimka poured the beer. Everyone but Dimka seemed to know what was going to happen next. He was a little unnerved, but he went along.
Nina made a tray of snacks: pickled mushrooms, blinis, sausage and cheese. While the stew was cooking they went into the living room. Nina sat on the couch and patted the place beside her to indicate that Dimka should sit there. Valentin took the easy chair and Anna sat on the floor at his feet. They listened to music on the radio while they drank their beer. Nina had put some herbs in the pot, and the aroma from the kitchen made Dimka hungry.
They talked about their parents. Nina’s were divorced, Valentin’s were separated, and Anna’s hated one another. ‘My mother didn’t like my father,’ said Dimka. ‘Nor did I. Nobody likes a KGB man.’
‘I’ve been married once – never again,’ Nina said. ‘Do you know anyone who is happily married?’
‘Yes,’ said Dimka. ‘My Uncle Volodya. Mind you, my Aunt Zoya is gorgeous. She’s a physicist, but she looks like a film star. When I was little I called her Magazine Auntie, because she resembled the impossibly beautiful women in magazine photos.’
Valentin stroked Anna’s hair, and she laid her head on his thigh in a way Dimka found sexy. He wanted to touch Nina, and surely she would not mind – why else had she invited him to her apartment? – but he felt awkward and embarrassed. He wished she would do something: she was the experienced one. But she seemed content to listen to the music and sip beer, a faint smile on her face.
At last supper was ready. The stew was delicious: Nina was a good cook. They ate it with black bread.
When they had finished and cleared away, Valentin and Anna went into the bedroom and closed the door.
Dimka went to the bathroom. The face in the mirror over the washbasin was not handsome. His best feature was a pair of large blue eyes. His dark-brown hair was cut short in the military style approved for young apparatchiks. He looked like a serious young man whose thoughts were far above sex.
He checked the condom in his pocket. Such things were in short supply and he had gone to a lot of trouble to get some. However, he did not agree with Valentin’s contention that pregnancy was the woman’s problem. He felt sure he would not enjoy sex if he felt he might be forcing the girl to go through either childbirth or abortion.
He returned to the living room. To his surprise, Nina had her coat on.
‘I thought I’d walk you to the Metro station,’ she said.
Dimka was baffled. ‘Why?’
‘I don’t think you know this neighbourhood – I wouldn’t like you to get lost.’
‘I mean, why do you want me to leave?’
‘What else would you do?’
‘I’d like to stay here and kiss you,’ he said.
Nina laughed. ‘What you lack in sophistication, you make up for in enthusiasm.’ She took off her coat and sat down.