She looked at him long enough for Jack’s blue eyes to make her hesitate, then glanced at her little watch and screwed up her lips. She accepted Jack’s invitation, but on one condition. “I choose the place,” she said.
Following Natasha’s directions, Jack drove the Ford Model A down various roads until they reached a ramshackle farm several miles north of Gorky. When they parked, she quickly got out of the car to greet the farmer, who had stopped digging when he saw the strange car arrive. “By Lenin’s whiskers! Natasha! Is it really you?” The man dropped his hoe and hugged the young woman. “Come on, come into the house! Who’s your friend?”
Natasha kept smiling as the man bowed in front of her again and again, as if he owed her his life. When he’d finished making a fuss, the young woman introduced Jack. The farmer greeted him and guided them into the little home, where a woman surrounded by small children was busy stirring a stewpot on the fire. When the woman saw Natasha arrive, she took the pot from the fire and ran to kiss her.
“Here. They’re for you,” said Natasha, handing Jack’s bunch of flowers to the woman, who celebrated the gift as if she’d been given treasure. “Sorry, Jack, but it’s the price of our dinner,” she whispered to him with a smile.
They both sat at the table as the children screamed with excitement at the candy that Natasha brought out from her pockets. As they tucked into a bowl of hot soup, Jack listened to the stream of compliments that the married couple had for the young woman. He was told how the doctor had saved the lives of the youngest kids during an outbreak of smallpox.
“She’s an angel!” the farmer couple repeated between spoonfuls.
Jack smiled. As well as sincere, these people seemed happy. The four children never stayed still, playing among themselves while the parents encouraged them with their laughter, and Natasha got involved, sitting them on her lap and tickling them. When they’d finished their dinner, the farmer opened his only bottle of vodka, and though Natasha initially refused, in the end it was impossible to say no. They drank a toast to the future, to the family, and to the children. Natasha laughed as the vodka warmed her stomach. Then, while the woman went to find something sweet, Natasha checked the kids for lice.
“That’s how I like it! Clean!” she said with pride.
When the farmer’s wife returned with three cookies, she apologized for the lack of treats. Almost everything they harvested from the kolkhoz went to supply the Avtozavod.
“The cooperative’s left with almost nothing,” the farmer grumbled, but instead of complaining, he stood and picked up an old balalaika. “Does your friend know how to dance?”
Without waiting for Jack to answer, the farmer broke into a catchy melody, prompting the children to form a ring and improvise a circular dance.
“Come on, Jack! We can’t let those little tykes show us up. Let’s show them what we’re made of!” said Natasha, and she grabbed Jack by the hands and made him take a few steps. He was still hindered by his limp.
Jack barely felt the pain. He had eyes only for Natasha, who seemed to be enjoying his company as much as the music. He held her close enough to feel her chest against his, and she let herself be led. They danced and laughed until a stab of pain in Jack’s hip forced him to stop. Seeing this, she took a step back.
“Are you all right? How daft of me. I—”
“Your daftness is wonderful,” he said without letting her go.
“And it’s wonderful seeing you so happy, with so little.”
“Who says it’s ‘so little’?”
For a moment Natasha blushed, but then she let herself be carried along by the excitement of the children, who tugged on her uniform to make her keep dancing. Jack sat down and continued to enjoy the spectacle as night fell. When the kids collapsed exhausted, Natasha sat beside Jack, who celebrated her return by offering her a piece of his cookie. Her face flushed and her breathing labored, she nibbled on the treat and drank from her glass of water. She was out of breath but laughing heartily. Jack thought he caught a sense of well-being in her face that he had never seen before. He was about to tell her, when the farmer’s wife approached her husband and asked him to play the “Gliding Dance of the Maidens.” The woman crossed her hands over her chest and waited.
“Listen to this,” Natasha whispered in Jack’s ear. “The music’s fabulous.”
Jack nodded. The peasant farmer was silent while he carefully retuned the balalaika. He took off his hat and stroked the strings with a slight tremor. Then, accompanied by the crackling flames, he began to reel off a torrent of notes that seemed to bounce off one another to create the most nostalgic and heartfelt melody that Jack had ever heard. For a while, the music continued to fill the room with sadness and yearning, as if each chord were imbued with the fragrance of memory. When the farmer finished his performance, his moist eyes sought those of his wife, who was drying her own with a handkerchief. Though age had wizened the woman’s face, Jack could see that to the farmer she was as beautiful as the first day they’d met.
“Fabulous, but sad,” Jack whispered back to Natasha.
“It’s not sad. It’s a song about love. Melancholic, perhaps. But full of hope.”
“Is that what the lyrics say?”
“There are no lyrics. You hear the hope in your heart.”
Jack contemplated the poverty that surrounded him. Even if these farmers loved each other with the immensity of the snowy plains around them, he couldn’t see how they could hold out any hope. When he shared his observation with Natasha, she gave him a pitying look.
“That’s how we love in Russia, Jack. If you find true love, you never lose hope.”
They said good-bye with another toast. The farmers toasted family, Natasha, and the Soviet Union, and Jack raised his glass to Natasha.
Back in Gorky, Jack followed the doctor’s directions to central Cooperative Street.
“This is where you live?”
“Yes. It’s quite an old house, but pretty.” She gestured at the nineteenth-century fa?ade of a two-story building.
Jack nodded and looked at her for a few seconds in silence, not knowing what to say. The more he looked at the young woman, the more she captivated him. She remained in her seat, as if waiting for something to happen, but time just passed. Finally, she went to open the door, and Jack, seeing this, got out and rushed to do it for her.
While she searched for the keys to her front door, Jack asked her when he would see her again. Natasha smiled. “Soon,” she replied, and kissed him on the cheek. Her lips burned his skin, and he searched for hers. For a few seconds, he savored them as if they were the first he’d ever kissed. Then they separated, embarrassed, mute.
Back home, still in the American village, Jack was surprised at his behavior. He’d forgotten to ask her anything about her father, but instead had enjoyed one of the best evenings of his life.