“Really? Why not? He’s handsome.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Actually, I think he might be gay.”
“Why do you think that?”
“He’s really interested in Jackie Kennedy.”
“Hmm. That’s interesting.” Svetlana said that she had a gay friend in the Serbo-Croatian Club, and that she had thought a lot about Jackie Kennedy, Maria Callas, and Marilyn Monroe—about how they were performers, aesthetic beings, close to powerful men, and unhappy.
? ? ?
The next day when Ralph and I were having dinner, Svetlana came to our table. “Mind if I join? I’m not interrupting anything?”
“Sure,” Ralph said. Svetlana plunked down her tray and told us about Valerie’s friendship with a deaf girl called Patience from her physics class. “I don’t think Val even likes her that much, but you can’t exactly diss a deaf person called Patience. But it is so exhausting to hang out with her! Okay, she can read lips but you have to be standing right in front of her and speaking distinctly, and meanwhile you have to worry about not looking patronizing. With some people, she can’t understand at all, so Valerie translates. Valerie makes all her phone calls, too. It’s very stressful for her. I don’t know how long it can go on.
“As for Fern, she has a rash on her neck because of her biochem midterm. She always gets a rash, but this time it’s more like hives, all down her back. It’s pretty gross, so I won’t go into details while you’re eating. Naturally, she refuses to see a doctor. Hi, I’m Svetlana, you must be Ralph. I would shake your hand but I think I’m getting Fern’s cold. That’s the other thing—she has a cold. Sorry I’m talking so much. It’s just such a relief to not have to worry about lip-reading.”
After dinner, we ended up going to see Fellini’s Casanova at the film archive. The path was too narrow for us all to walk together, so I walked with Ralph, and we talked about how Jackie hadn’t wanted to read Casanova’s memoirs because she thought he was a rogue, but Cassini had convinced her, and then she had written him a charming thank-you note.
After a while I felt worried about leaving Svetlana alone, so I let Ralph walk ahead. “I definitely see what you mean, about how he might be gay,” Svetlana said. Dread shot through my chest. The feeling of having betrayed someone was just as bad as the feeling of being betrayed. It was worse.
“Svetlana!”
“What? He can’t hear me, don’t be paranoid.”
Nothing about Ralph’s back indicated that he had or had not heard her.
How could I have talked about him to Svetlana—how could I have given her any information about him at all? It occurred to me how sorry I would be if even Hannah heard the way I talked about her sometimes. How were you supposed to talk about people?
Casanova seemed somehow vindictive, as if Fellini were jealous of Casanova for having so much sex and was trying to make him look stupid. I didn’t understand why the women laughed so much.
3. Fate in Novosibirsk
“Excuse me—do you go to the collective farm ‘Siberian Spark’?” Nina asked the bus driver. She was at the Novosibirsk airport.
“No,” said the driver. “You need a taxi.”
“You’re going to the ‘Siberian Spark’?” someone asked. Nina turned and saw a young man with a suitcase. “I’m going that way, too,” said the young man. “Let’s go together.”
“Okay,” said Nina.
In the taxi, Nina took Ivan’s letter from her physics book and reread it.
“Look,” said the young man, pointing out the window. “Do you see those lights? That’s the center of the city, where more than a million people live.”
“Oh,” said Nina.
The young man looked at her. “I notice you have a physics book. Are you a physicist?”
“Yes, I’m a graduate student.”
“I’m also a graduate student. Let’s get acquainted. My name is Leonid. I study at the Irkutsk Scientific Center.”
“I am Nina,” said Nina. “I study at Moscow State University.”
“Goodness, a Muscovite! Why are you in Novosibirsk?”
“I am studying the question of the physics of the locomotion of reindeer,” said Nina. This was a lie.
Leonid looked thoughtful.
Nina was silent.
?
“Ivan Alexeich Bazhanov?” repeated the directress of the “Siberian Spark.” She looked in a big book. “There’s no Bazhanov here. However, there is a Boyarsky, also Ivan Alexeich.”
“Has he worked here for a long time?” Nina asked.
“No, not long. Only three weeks.”
Nina’s heart beat faster. Ivan had disappeared exactly three weeks ago! “I would like to meet him,” Nina said.
“You can meet him at five o’clock,” the directress promised. “But now he’s at the experimental farm.”
“What kind of work is done at the experimental farm?” asked Nina.
“Important questions are studied. For example, what is the best food for reindeer? Which foxes have the warmest fur? Unfortunately, visitors are forbidden.”
“I understand,” Nina said.
In fact, Nina didn’t understand. Why was the study of reindeer food a secret? Was it possible that the “experimental farm” was actually a nuclear physics laboratory? Could Ivan be hiding there under a pseudonym?
? ? ?
“I told you it would happen,” Angela was telling Hannah when I came in. They both turned to look at me.
“We’ve been robbed,” Hannah said.
They had taken my peacoat, Angela’s Harvard scarf, one of Hannah’s plaid shirts—she said it was her favorite—and all of Hannah’s socks. She had been sorting her socks in the window seat and someone had just taken them all.
“I told you guys to lock the door when you go out. I told you,” said Angela.
“I went down the hall for five minutes! Anyway, I thought you were home. How was I supposed to know? Even when you are home you just sit in there with the door shut.”
“So lock the door anyway!”
The stolen peacoat had originally belonged to my mother, who had worn it for many years until she finally bought a shearling coat. I had taken it from her closet when I was fifteen, and then when she had seen me wearing it she said I could keep it. I had loved that coat—its square shoulders, big buttons, and faint smell of perfume.
? ? ?
Ralph was the one I immediately wanted to tell about the coat, because I knew he would make me feel better. He said we should do a shopping trip. He needed some shirts anyway. We decided to go to Filene’s Basement, which was said to be an important part of Boston life.