Archive of Our Own ^beta

I see everything. I remember it all.
Gently, lovingly, I preserve it in my heart.
          -Anna Akhmatova

It was the hair that first attracted her attention. She supposed he heard that often.

She was sitting at the window of her ground-floor apartment, watching the passers-by enjoying the warm summer afternoon, when he came hurrying up the street. He was golden in the sunlight, a beacon that caught her eye. She'd always liked shiny, pretty things, and he was very pretty indeed.

Reed-thin, all eyes and hair, he looked like an adolescent at first, especially in that over-large jacket. As he approached the small front stoop of her brownstone, the determined set of his chin and the width of his shoulders became more apparent. She watched while he stopped in front of her building and set down the worn leather suitcase he carried. He squinted up at the numbers above the door, then down at a crumpled paper he had pulled from one pocket. She lit another cigarette and remembered Evgenii, fighting the bigger boys behind the school all those years ago. This one had the same look about him, a toughness around the eyes and mouth that made her smile.

Finally he nodded, put the paper back in his pocket, and pulled out a set of keys. Picking up his bag, he nodded to her politely before climbing the short flight of stairs and pushing through the open front door.

Well, someone raised him properly, she thought. He may look all of twelve, but at least he's got manners. And he's certainly decorative. Let's hope he doesn't play too much of that noise they call music these days. Not like when I was young...now those boys in Paris, they knew how to play. She smiled and hummed a half-remembered tune as she sat, cigarette in hand, watching the lazy summer breeze stir the flowers in her window boxes.

She watched that summer as he came and went at odd hours. Sometimes he disappeared for days before stumbling back up the stairs, looking tired, hungry, and, occasionally, somewhat battered. Despite her initial twinge of worry, he didn't play the "rock and roll" that so many of the young people seemed to worship. He played jazz, the music of her youth, of those smoky nights in Paris when she'd danced until she thought her legs would turn to blocks of wood. She sat in her window and listened by the hour on those rare evenings when he came home early. He didn't seem to have many albums, and a few of those he did have were scratched, but the music still made her smile and hum along.

He entertained no visitors, and didn't seem to go out much. She knew he had offers -- the girls in the neighborhood were neither blind nor dead, and the boys! Bozhe moi, but even in Paris they'd known to be discreet. Here, though, they wouldn't know discreet without a dictionary. She watched as they stopped him on the street to ask directions, to ask for a cigarette, to ask for a light. They flirted and hinted and all but attacked him right there on the pavement. She was embarrassed -- and more than a little amused -- by their lack of subtlety.

She never saw him respond to any of the overtures. He simply smiled (or, from time to time, glared) and hurried along the street, in such a rush to get wherever he was going. Just like Evgenii, she thought fondly, and lit another cigarette.

He always nodded to her when he saw her sitting in the window. She didn't go out often these days -- it was too much work, and the bones that had been broken during the war were increasingly stiff -- but she could see the whole street from her perch. The butcher and the greengrocer delivered, and the milkman came every morning with the cream for her coffee. Such a bad Russian I am, she thought as she drank the strong, dark liquid. In love with the decadent West.

As the days grew cooler she put on a sweater to sit in the window and watch him come and go. She listened to the radio, where they talked of nothing but the World Series and that handsome young man from Massachusetts who wanted to be President.

Marie-Claire visited every day, now that Claude had passed on, and they chattered at each other in French over their café au lait and madeleines, gossiping about her handsome upstairs neighbor. They concocted outlandish plots to explain why he lived such an unsettled life, and one so alone.

"He could be a gun runner, perhaps. Do you think he is -- how do they say it now -- 'on the lam'?"

"Certainement. Does he not have that furtive look about him? And no one that beautiful would be alone, were he not afraid to drag a lover into his dangerous world."

"Of course, you are right. Clearly he fears being killed or captured at any moment. But no, Marie-Claire, I have misled you -- it cannot be guns, for he has the soul of a poet. Hmmm...wait, I have it -- he is a smuggler, returning stolen antiquities and long-lost masterpieces to their rightful owners!"

"Oui, that too is possible. But why would he live here, with all that wealth available to him?"

"Ah, that is the proof of his true character. He is in disguise, stealing from the rich to give to the poor, à la Robin Hood, yes?"

"Mais non, it is as clear as the nose on your face. He must be a spy, a noble soul risking his life every day so that the innocents of the world may rest easy in their beds!"

"Marie-Claire, you are a genius!"

And they giggled like schoolgirls at their absurdity.

Once he vanished for more than a week, and she worried until she saw him stagger out of a taxi that had pulled up in front of their building. His clothing was dirty and torn, and she could see the bruise on his jaw even in the gloom of twilight. She shook her head chidingly at him as he wearily approached the door. He simply smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and pushed through into the foyer.

She limped off quickly to ring Marie-Claire with the news.

One evening as the days were growing shorter he paused on his way down the steps. "Gospozha, I am walking to the corner store. Is there anything you would like?"

She started, the honorific sounding oddly foreign to her after all these years. Ah, she realized, the names by the doorbells. (Not that his had been at all helpful; radi Boga, she would have though him capable of something more original than "Smith.") "No, young man. Thank you for asking."

He smiled and turned back toward the street.

"Wait!" she called, patting her pockets frantically. "Could I ask you to buy me some cigarettes?"

"Of course. Gauloises or Gitanes?"

She paused in her search for money and looked up at him warily. How had he known her preference for French cigarettes?

He spoke hastily, perhaps seeing the dawning caution in her expression. "I attended university in Paris. I recognized the scent."

Reassured, she smiled. "Yes, please. Either of those would be fine." She fished a crumpled dollar from her dress pocket.

"Please, gospozha, let me purchase them for you. It's the least I can do in return for all your hard work in guarding our street so diligently."

She laughed, shrugged, and put the dollar away. "Very well, mal'chik. If you insist."

He grinned at her, evidently finding it amusing to be called a boy at his age. "I do, babushka. I do."

She winced theatrically at her elevation in stature to grandmother, then winked at him. He blushed and ducked his head, looking up at her through those ridiculous lashes with the smile of a child who knows he is much in favor at the moment. I was right, she thought as he turned to go, someone raised him very, very well.

Autumn turned into winter and it became too cold to sit in the open window. She and Marie-Claire simply pulled the armchairs up to the glass. They could not see the entire street in this fashion, but it was enough, and they watched him go about his mysterious affairs. Once the weather worsened he began to make a habit of stopping by her apartment every couple of days. He brought her coffee and cigarettes, and sometimes éclairs from the bakery on First Avenue. He always found them sitting in front of the window; she smoked while Marie-Claire knitted, and they gossiped and drank their coffee.

He told them his name was Illya. He gave her a card for her name day, and wrote his signature in English. She laughed at the spelling while Marie-Claire looked on in puzzlement. "I know, it's terrible, isn't it? But that's how they wrote it on the immigration papers, and I never bothered to change it."

She had not realized that he had been born in Russia. His accent was so European that she had thought him to be the child of émigrés. He mentioned that he had left Kiev while very young, and she silently gave thanks that his family had had the foresight -- and the money -- to smuggle him out of that doomed country before the Devil came and burned the land.

He never mentioned his job. They spoke of music, of Paris, of writers and artists that they loved. He knew many of the shops and restaurants that she remembered, and Marie-Claire complimented him on his accent, though she turned up her nose at his stories of his later studies in England. "Land of barbarians," she always said with a sniff.

They cooked constantly and fed him whenever he stopped by. He devoured such enormous amounts of food, and at such speed, that they could never understand why he still looked half-starved after each meal. She and Marie-Claire began to put on weight, and were forced to limit their consumption of madeleines.

Sometimes at night he knocked on her door with a record to play on her turntable. He was not a good dancer; she had been, once, but the war had seen to that. Still, they shuffled around her tiny living room, and she patted his cheek and called him Illyushchka. She even bought some tea for him, though she refused to try to find her samovar. She wasn't that nostalgic.

With spring, the window was opened once again. Marie-Claire's rent was raised, so he helped them move her things into the tiny one-bedroom apartment that they now shared. He was gone more and more often as the weather improved; sometimes they didn't see him for days on end, and they worried each time until that taxi pulled up in front of the building.

They had long since ceased to speculate about his job. Somehow their little jokes became less amusing every time he came home bandaged and bruised. She and Marie-Claire knew better than to ask any questions. They had met in the Résistance, after all, and could recognize that bulge under his arm from many yards away. They had decided that he was on the side of the angels, and that was all they needed to know.

So they watched, and they worried, and they fed him when he was in town, for he was still so alone. Occasionally he stopped by late at night after going to a jazz club -- he knew they didn't sleep much, and that they loved to hear him describe the music and the colorful characters he saw in the audience and on stage. They laughed at his stories and shook their heads at one another once he'd left. He was charming, kind, and amusing, and even more attractive now that he had put on a pound or two. Such a shame he has no one to come home to, they said to one another. They wanted him to find someone his own age, someone to have fun with. They plotted together, and considered the children of their friends.

"What about Margaret? Elizabeth's girl?"

"Non, she married that doctor -- you know, the one who looks like a pig."

"Marie-Claire! I'm sure he's a good husband."

"I hear he's cheating on her with one of the nurses."

"You're right -- he's a pig."

"Perhaps Juliette? Jacques and Brigitte's daughter?"

"No, she moved to California to try to break into Hollywood or some such nonsense."

"Ah." Marie-Claire hesitated and looked down at her knitting. "Do you think perhaps..."

She had, of course, thought of that herself. "Perhaps...not women?"

"It is a possibility, no?" They did not usually speak of such things aloud. Americans were not as cosmopolitan as Parisians.

She shrugged and reached for another cigarette.

"What about Michael, Henri's son? He lives here, and is très beau."

"Yes, but I hear he's living with an artist over near Christopher Street. Besides, we don't even know if Illya likes boys."

"I still say it's worth a try. He seems indifferent to everyone -- I hope he doesn't prefer sheep."

"Marie-Claire! He's Russian, not Scottish!"

And they gave up in a fit of giggles, as usual.

They argued, and dropped hints when he visited, and made no progress. Spring turned to summer, and the flowers in the window boxes bloomed again.

One evening in late July, they were sitting at the window watching the neighbor's children play on the sidewalk. She was smoking while Marie-Claire muttered and unraveled a mistake in her knitting. A large silver convertible pulled up in front of the building. The driver parked, got out, and strolled toward their door, not appearing to notice anything unusual in so easily finding a parking spot on their busy street.

He was beautiful: dark-haired, slim, and elegantly dressed, with the look of a matinee idol and the build of an athlete. He carried himself well, with a tangible confidence and sense of purpose. She had known a man like him once, had, in fact, been introduced to him on another warm summer's eve, at a café in Le Marais. She looked sidelong at Marie-Claire and whispered from the corner of her mouth, "Bernard." Marie-Claire's eyes widened, and she nodded slowly. They tried to look blasé as the man came up the stairs to the front door. He flashed a grin at them and nodded, "Ladies," as he pushed the door open and entered the building. She turned to find Marie-Claire fanning herself, and rolled her eyes at her friend's behavior.

"What? I'm not dead, and that is un bel homme, mon amie."

"True. And you're almost old enough to be his grand-mère."

"Bite your tongue!"

They were bickering when the door opened again a few minutes later. They turned to find Illya and the dark-haired man walking down the stairs together, shoulder to shoulder. The two men were speaking quietly, their heads tilted toward one another as they approached the car. Illya stopped and placed his hand on the man's arm for a moment before turning back to the building. He took a few steps in the direction of the window, the man following close behind.

"I'll be away for a bit longer this time. I have arranged for Tony to check in with you each evening on his way home from the corner store, so make sure to tell him if you need anything. And please, try not to worry."

The man beside Illya nudged him with his shoulder and smiled, his head tilted to one side, hands in the pockets of his trousers. "Illya, aren't you going to introduce me to your charming neighbors?"

Illya turned his head toward the man...and she caught her breath, reminded of how he had first appeared to her those many months ago, all golden in the sunlight. She had seen the blissful absorption with which he listened to a new jazz recording, the quiet warmth in his smile when she made kasha for him, and she had feared that he would know only those brief moments of tepid happiness. She realized now that she and Marie-Claire had seen no more than a hint of what he could be until this day, with this man. The look on his face was one she remembered from Paris. She had seen that same...rightness, a similar recognition, a contentment so deep it approached joy, on her brother that evening at the café, when he had introduced her to another smooth-talking dark-haired man. He and Bernard had loved for many years, dying within days of one another.

Yes, she thought, of course. Just like Evgenii after all.

Illya turned back to the window, and said, "Ladies...please allow me to present to you my friend, Napoleon Solo."