“I don’t know about ‘your’ communists. I only know what is scientific laws of history,” Fyodor said.
“Well, if that sorry bunch is who’s bringing us the revolution, then we can wait another hundred years,” Florence said. The Coca-Cola and moonshine were sending a primal warmth down her veins. She felt a combative urge to keep talking. “What riles me is how we pretend in this country that everything is just dandy. ‘Good Times Just Around the Corner!’?” she said, quoting the headline on the fish-stained Plain Dealer that had been lying at Sergey’s feet. “And now everyone is cheering Mr. Roosevelt. Praise be! He’s signed the Agricultural Adjustment Act! He’s putting Americans back to work! But tell me what Americans. Not the women. No one’s talking about the women who’ve been losing their jobs thanks to the anti-nepotism laws he’s signed. If your husband works in the government and so do you, well, then, you can kiss your job goodbye. One of the spouses has to go, but do you think anyone’s discharging the men? No, sir. It’s the wives who are being given the boot. Because in this country, if a woman works, she’s un-American. A money grubber.”
She was conscious of Sergey listening from inside the screen door. She raised her voice. “It’s the whole damn attitude here. The eminent Mrs. Gompers, widow of the leader of the biggest union that’s ever looked out for the rights of workers—that silk-stockinged ninny has the nerve to tell women: A home no matter how small is large enough to occupy a woman’s mind and time. And this from one of the so-called progressive women in our country—the heroic first lady of the AFL!” She felt unable to stop herself. How delicious was the pleasure of letting your convictions rip, of holding nothing back. Washing down the last of the booze and cola, she said, “And my own landlady, she says to me: ‘Sweetie, I don’t see how it’s right for a girl to work when so many of our fellas have to feed their families.’ She looks at me like I’m the reason all the fine boys of Cleveland aren’t making a living.”
“You are the reason,” said Sergey, coming back out to the porch.
“How?”
“Because women will work for less money. Your bosses keep them when they cut payrolls. And men then also have to accept low pay to stay. Marx wrote about all this already. When wages are set by your ‘free market,’ men and women are natural enemies.” Sergey delivered these self-evident principles without passion, as if he were reciting building codes.
“If you want to work so bad, come to Russia,” Fyodor suggested. “We’ll put you to work in no time. Our gals are regular horses—you ought to see them shoveling gravel, slapping paint on buildings. We’ve put them into production and taken them out of reproduction.”
“What he means,” said Sergey, “is that a woman with your energy would be valued, not made ashamed.”
“You don’t have to translate, Casanova,” Fyodor responded. “I know what I meant. All right, children, our fish is ready.” He laid the last of the trout on a wooden board, sat on a porch step, and washed back his second glass of moonshine. “Why does a girl like you want to work so much, anyhow? I know girls your age been married and divorced twice already.”
“Let her be,” said Sergey.
“Why? She ought to be able to find herself a fellow.”
“Not every woman can find herself a Fyodor,” Florence said, smiling at Sergey.
“My wife’s not complaining,” rejoined Fyodor. “Lives in our engineers’ compound in Magnitogorsk, doesn’t lift a finger. Spends half her morning putting on perfume, and the afternoon bossing around the maid.”
Florence took a piece of fish. “Lucky her.”
“Don’t get smart. She’s damn lucky. I got her set up like a countess in an English cottage.”
“An English cottage in the empty Russian steppe,” remarked Sergey.
“Listen to this high-hat! Member of the former exploiting classes!”
“You’re drunk stiff, Fyodor.”
“Sure, I am. Sure, I am.” He turned to Florence. “Ask this exploiter why his English is so good.”
“Never stops babbling, does he? He’ll gab his whole life away.”
“I know what I’m talking about,” Fyodor said, turning away petulantly. “I don’t wish to have this chat in front of our female company.” He refilled his glass and lifted it once more. “Let us drink to women. When they love us, they forgive even our crimes! When they don’t, they do not credit even our virtues!”
Florence raised her nearly empty glass. “I’ll drink to that.”
Fyodor smacked his lips and looked at Sergey again. “You know who said that, lyceum boy?”
“I don’t have any idea.”
“Honoré de Balzac!” Fyodor pursed his lips to mimic French.
“Enough posturing, Fyodor. Why don’t you play us something already?”
Fyodor finished what was left in his glass and went inside. By the amber backlight through the screen door, Florence watched him take down a guitar from the wall. He carried it out under his arm and sat down to tune the strings. And then he began to strum a soft, melancholy tune. From the plaintive gravel of his voice, she could make out a few stray words of a love song.
Sergey had seated himself on the floorboards by her feet. “Do you understand what he’s singing?”
She shook her head.
Quietly, over the sound of the music, he said: “My dear, please do not deceive me so my heart does not break. Geese—swans in the sky—it was not your fault that we cry.”
Fyodor’s eyes were closed as he strummed, and the chirping of grasshoppers seemed to grow louder as he sang, as though they feared being outdone. Moths circled the porch lantern and made weird shadows. She stared at the top of Sergey’s head. In the dim porch light his hair looked like baled hay. Her fingers tingled with an almost irresistible desire to comb it.
“I have put on my old vest,” Sergey translated quietly. “Sweetheart, where have you gone?” He circled his thumb and forefinger around Florence’s naked ankle and, smiling, closed and released his grip around it as if he found its narrowness a structural curiosity. And she let him, as they both listened to Fyodor’s tune of unrequited love.