Not two years earlier, she had wanted to be “among the people,” the great Russian narod, and now that she was forced into close quarters with this behemoth abstraction, she had to learn to suffer its all-embracing ignorance and malice, the grand scale of its pettiness, its envy. She seemed to have no gift for the sort of deflection Leon could carry off with breezy charm: flirtatiously flattering the old crone who called their corner of the common kitchen “the kikes’ table,” responding to the woman’s provocations with theatrical benevolence until the nasty old bitch scuttled out of the kitchen completely confounded and muttering hateful nonsense to herself. Nor was Leon beneath having a drink late at night with Garik, the flabby-cheeked Armenian who worked at the chicken plant. “Putting a request in at inventory” was what Leon called these late nights over vodka and pickles, while Florence sat up in bed waiting for him, like some lovesick girl, to come back and lay his hands anywhere on her body. Indeed, days later, the reward of a young chicken would arrive as promised. But Florence wasn’t fooled: none of his repentant joking about the necessity of these manly labors could camouflage the fact that Leon seemed, at heart, to enjoy them.
She was aware of this fundamental difference between them: Leon had always lived the way they lived now. In tenements, in poverty, in hideous overcrowding. He had learned early on to make his way through the world by cajoling and charming and wheedling. Her pity for such a childhood had played a part in her love for him, and she feared that complaining too bitterly about their living conditions would expose her vanities. Yet she could not deny how irritated she was that Leon found nothing wrong with the way they lived, exposed to so much prying and spite. In America, such complacency would have signaled a lack of ambition. But here, no amount of ambition would alter anything. Everyone lived like this, stirred into one big pot (everyone except of course the big wheels, like Timofeyev). And that was the whole sickening, unsolvable problem: the fact that Leon couldn’t be blamed for being unable to give her any other kind of life did not lessen her longing to start afresh. She vowed to take a long walk today, alone, to clear her head.
Florence returned from her lukewarm shower to find Leon at the table, peeling an apple into a chipped enamel bowl. He set down his knife when she removed her robe, then crept up to cradle her from behind, pressing his lips to the water-warmed skin of her shoulder blade.
“It’s half past nine, darling.”
“I’ll make breakfast after,” he offered. His voice was deep and throaty from sleep.
“Later, I promise. Now I need to get to the stores before the lines get too long.”
So much had changed in the last year. The specialty stores that served expatriates with foreign currency had mostly been shut down. The Insnab ration cards she and her friends enjoyed had been discontinued. A number of their acquaintances had found this reason enough to return home. It was obvious to Florence that these people had never really been committed to the enterprise of genuine equality. To jump ship, now, for lack of caviar and imported wine? She heard Sergey’s low warning voice in her head: “Go home, Flora.” She dressed hastily and stuffed her documents and keys into her purse.
Leon sighed. “Do you have to go today? We never have the same day off.”
“Don’t be sour. Somebody has to buy you that salty fish you love.”
For a moment, his brows perked up with pleasure. “Maybe I’ll come with you.”
“No, no, sleep in.”
The fact was that she had to stop by at the OVIR before the lines got too long. Foreigners were now required to renew their residency permits every three months. It had become her private ordeal, her own little measure of renewed commitment. She could not admit to Leon that she wondered, each time, if this stamp would be her last. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” she said appeasingly before planting a kiss on his head.
Outside, Florence flicked the lamb’s-wool collar up over her neck and crossed the leaf-strewn footpath that cut through the back courtyards of the 1st Samotechnaya Lane. She was grateful to be escaping the stuffy apartment and inhaling the raw air under the blue sky of Samotechniy Park, with its tidy pools of grass and flowers. From Samotechnaya Square, she crossed the wide avenue that turned onto Tsvetnoy Boulevard before heading down to the visa registration office. On the front steps of the OVIR, Florence patted down the errant strands of hair under her mohair kerchief and arranged her face in a vacant and submissive expression. Over the past two years, she had learned to dim down the challenging focus of her eyes whenever she entered a public office. She was enough of a Soviet now to know that the most dangerous bureaucrats were not the ones at the top but those patrolling their tiny corners of power at the bottom. She wanted no trouble with the heavyset woman behind the window.
At the counter, Florence slid across her passport, helpfully opened to the page containing her well-thumbed visa. The woman abruptly shut the passport and opened it again to the photo page, then scrutinized Florence’s face. She wrote the passport information on a slip, made a second copy, and slid the paper back to Florence without the passport. “Come back next week for your residence permit,” she said in a tone just short of a command.
“I’ll take that back,” Florence said, pointing through the glass to her passport.
“We need to keep it to issue your propiska. You’ll get it when you come back.”
“But you already wrote down all the information.”
The clerk shut her eyes in irritation. “This can be anybody’s information. How do they know this isn’t some phantom’s information, or made up?”
“I was told this isn’t necessary.” Florence smiled in perfect self-control. “If they want to check that I’m a real person, they should check with my housing committee. I am registered there.”
“They told you one thing. They told me another. I am following orders. Those are the new rules for resident permits. I cannot issue you a new propiska without this document.”
A line had formed behind Florence. The clerk glanced over Florence’s shoulder and called out, “Next!”
“All right. When will I get it back?”
“I told you: next week,” the clerk said. “We’ll have the propiska by Tuesday.”
“You’ll have my passport back by Tuesday too?”
But the woman behind the window was already absorbed in someone else’s bureaucratic conundrum. At last, Florence allowed herself to take a few steps backward. Her passport was still visible, right there, behind the glass, next to the woman’s fat elbow. Grab it! a voice pounded in her head. But her movements were already being governed by some other impulse—one so well learned that she no longer recognized it as a recently adopted habit—a wish not to buck the current, not to make a fuss. She took a final glance at the window, but there were too many people now blocking the view. She slowly retied her kerchief on her head and retreated into the morning cold.