I gulped.
“Hi,” I said, trying to look friendly. “So, what brings you to Saint Petersburg? Business or pleasure?”
He looked up from his in-flight magazine in surprise.
“Business,” he replied tersely.
“Oh, I see,” I said, focusing everything I had on my next question. “Me, too. What do you do?”
He hesitated a little.
“I work for the Kongsberg Group.”
“Ohhh,” I said, trying to keep from screaming.
Did they keep straitjackets on planes? I had to avoid losing it. I tried to think of something I could ask Mr. Kongsberg about.
“How exciting,” I said enthusiastically. “Is that a big company?”
He looked taken aback.
“You haven’t heard of the Kongsberg Group?”
I shook my head.
“Oh. It’s one of the biggest companies in Norway. We have seventy-five hundred employees.”
“Wow, that’s a lot. What do you do for them?”
“I’m in charge of their weapons systems group.”
“I see,” I mumbled. “I see. Like for hunting and fishing?”
“Not exactly.”
“No?”
“No.”
“War?” I asked and laughed loudly.
“Defense systems.”
“Right, defense systems, of course.”
Now would be a really good time for me to wrap up this conversation, but the iron fist was still squeezing. And I felt like I was hyperventilating. If only I could faint.
“And what about in your spare time?”
“Uh, why are you so interested?”
“Oh, no reason. Long flight. Nice to chat. Get acquainted. With new people. It’s normal.”
“I’d prefer to read, if you don’t have any objections.”
“No! Being well read is the foundation of culture.”
I laughed again, way too loud, and on top of that gave him two thumbs-up, but Mr. Kongsberg didn’t see that, because he’d already turned back to his in-flight magazine. And so I, too, bent over my book, which was now just a smear of ink and wet splotches. I pushed the button as hard as I could to call the flight attendant. Multiple times.
“Could I please have some wine?”
“Of course,” she said. “What kind of wine would you like?”
“Red,” I said. “No, wait. White. No, wait. Red and white. And champagne.”
“We only have prosecco.”
“Prosecco is fine.”
Two minutes later she returned with the bottles, which I emptied in record time. In reverse order. And the last thought that crept into my mind before I fell asleep was that resolving a panic attack with alcohol definitely marked a new step toward the bottom.
19
It was clear the woman in the passport-control booth wasn’t particularly eager to let me into the country, and I wondered if that was because I seemed drunk or because I didn’t seem drunk enough. Still, my visa obviously checked out, so she didn’t really have any grounds to deny me entry. All I could hope now was that the return trip would go just as smoothly.
I shared that thought with Peter and Ingvill when I met them at the baggage claim carousel.
“What do you mean?” Ingvill asked.
Peter scoffed.
“I’d just like to see them try! I’m a British citizen. Still, I get your point, Ingrid. The whole system is reactionary after all.”
“Are you talking about gay rights?”
He waved me off.
“Everything happening here in the Soviet Union is part of the same ideological battle that has gone on for ages.”
“Uh, I think it’s called Russia now?”
He scoffed again.
“Really, Ingrid, you can be so naive! Do you really think the Russian Bear ever planned to put up with the structural fragmentation that took place in the nineties? Open your eyes! There’s every indication that the Bear is waking up, and at the end of the story, there will be a new, and possibly even stronger, Soviet Union. Mark my words. They don’t have anything to gain from holding political prisoners at the moment, so we ought to be pretty safe in any case.”
Ingvill nodded frenetically.
“After all, we’re here to promote academic cooperation with the state university,” she reminded us. “Internationalization and bilateral ties. That’s the only thing we need to think about.”
I studied her. She’d obviously dolled herself up for the trip, settling on a tropical-fruit-salad-meets-Captain-Hook theme. She had something that looked like peacock feathers dangling from her ears and wore her hair up with a heap of bobby pins that were jutting out all over the place. The rest of her outfit consisted of black pirate boots, blue tights, a purple cape-like sweater, and a yellow Gore-Tex jacket.
For his part, Peter had gone with an English lord-of-the-manor theme with brown corduroys, tartan dress shirt, green V-neck sweater, and the kind of traditional oilskin coat you might see a duke trout fishing in. In his hand he held a wool herringbone deerstalker cap.
I had selected exclusively black clothes, for obvious reasons. Ebba had walked in the evening before as I was laying out my clothes on the bed.
“Is that what you’re going to wear?”
“Yup. Does it look OK?”
“Mm. You always wear black when you have to do something you’re nervous about.”
I thought back to when she was in preschool.
“She empathizes with other people’s feelings so much,” her teacher had explained. “She’s always trying to comfort the other children. Sometimes we’re almost concerned that it’s a little too much.”
I felt the tears coming, and I tried to concentrate on the luggage that was now rotating by on the carousel in front of us. I also caught myself wondering if she could see us now, would the chair be satisfied with her delegation?