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She goes to bed alone, shivering under her sheets in the ambience of the late summer air. The gauzy fabrics rise with her shallow breath, seemingly floating for a moment in the soft moonbeams before falling back down to blanket her body.
When she awakens, three hours before expected, she is most certainly not alone. She startles at the rough hand grazing the freckled skin of her back.
“mmm, ’s just me, dear, my pодна́я,” he whispers, groggily but affectionately. He trails his fingers across her shoulder blades to toy with the short, wispy curls at the nape of her neck. The room is dimmer now, thinly-woven curtains having been hastily closed sometime after Svetlana had first fallen asleep. The bedroom air feels stale as it buries her lungs, seeding roots of sick desire in the spongy tissue.
“I missed you,” he sings into the juncture of her sloping shoulders, nosing his way to her jawbone. He can’t just do this again, leave for months on end then nose his way back into their bedroom like nothing had happened. She can’t let this happen again.
But then he starts kissing at her cheekbone, counting the freckles and moles dotting the broad stretch between her shoulder blades, letting his fingers dip below the trim of her lacy nightgown for шесть, семь, восемь.
The pads of his fingers are sharp and calloused. She couldn’t guess from what. The man hadn’t worked a day in his life… no. That’s not right. Before all this, he had been something. It’s been so many years, though, she couldn’t be bothered to remember.
Svetlana swallows delicately, feeling the hands tracing nonsense patterns along her spine, considering them, then pointedly ignoring them. She closes her eyes and goes back to sleep.
When she awakens for a second time, the curtains are open again. The sun is rising and fills the room with a pale pink hue, different from the dull blue-grey of last night, but not altogether more comforting. The breeze filtering in through the screen window forces the hairs on her arms to attention. Even the summer is cold in Leningrad. She doesn’t like it here.
There is a cup of tea on the nightstand, she notes—full, but cooling. She sits up in bed, letting the thin sheets pool around her waist, and looks out on the gardens. It’s too early for people to be truly filling in, but a businessman or two will occasionally stroll across the green, toting a leather briefcase and unruly haircut. She thinks she spots a student, clad in a bright jacket and Levis, but the relative solitude is more a comfort than anything. Then, she looks too hard and starts to think that he looks like him—tall and mischievous with chestnut brown curls and a beautiful woman at his side. Her blonde curls reach down to her waist, bouncing in time with every step the two take. When they turn to each other, they seem happy. She has to look away from the window for a while.
Something falls in the kitchen and she winces, almost getting up to fix whatever he had surely fucked up, but thinking better of it. That would help neither of them. She does her best to block out the clamoring, instead choosing to sip at the lukewarm zavarka. That was nice of him, she thinks. The brew is stronger than she likes and the mug he used had a chipped rim which worries against her lip and makes the whole experience decidedly rather unpleasant. For now, though, it remains the lesser of all evils and she is grateful for that. If she twists it hard enough, she is grateful for him.
Time falls from her perception as the sun eventually takes its place in full and the gardens grow lively with pedestrians.
Sometime after that, he enters, awkwardly nudging the door open with his hip and carrying in plates upon plates of pastry and porridge. He smiles. His face is red and his bright eyes have lost their spark, now more grey than blue. The dark, purply bags lining his lower lids age him well beyond his years and, despite the sharp, masculine contortion of his features and undeniably charming grin, he looks like shit. The silver hairs taking root at his temples are new and so are the small wrinkles at the furrows of his brow. Svetlana has her own grays too, no thanks to him, but she likes to think that she wears them with pride. He, on the other hand, seems ashamed. He should be. He’s let himself go. His hair is much longer than she remembered. How long has it been since she’s seen her husband, again?
“Родна́я, breakfast in bed?” He smiles, dark curls billowing in the light breeze. For a moment, it is attractive, but then she looks closer and finds his hair frizzy and unkempt. He’s wearing a wide-collared linen shirt, buttoned to just below his collarbones, tucked into a pair of light-wash jeans. The look in effect is very… western, she decides. Perhaps this past tournament was in America? Or maybe just Europe. She honestly doesn’t want to know anymore.
“Родна́я?” Damn. She’s been staring too long. He’s still smiling, but it’s starting to look painful. How far could she stretch this? She wonders. How long will he stand there and play the patient husband to her unreceptive crowd? Today is not the day to find out.
She stands, dusting invisible specks from her nightgown, softly clears her throat, and speaks in a voice higher than she has in months, “Here, Anatoly, let me help.” She takes from him a large plate of сырники, topped with syrupped berries and some form of curd, and places it next to the tea (now cold and empty). He relieves himself of the other sweet dishes, including a small bowl of semolina and jam which Svetlana eyes with more hunger than she’s felt for him in years. He keeps only the plate of eggs and kielbasa for his own breakfast. Svetlana doesn’t complain at this turn of events; she’s always been the one with the sweet tooth.
She’s nearly to her first bite of сырники, pillowy crisp cake mere moments from her lips when he opens his mouth again. God damn it. “Родна́я… Sveta, my love, please. We… need to talk.” He turns to her, serious.
“We are… and now I think I’ve tired of it.” She fills her mouth with the sweet, cheesy crumb, soaked with blueberry and begins to chew. Loudly. Obnoxiously. In the way she knows he hates. “an’ now ‘mmph-I’m chewing.”
He sighs and grimaces at the sounds. “Please, Svetlana, could you please not be a child about this? Just for once.” His nose scrunches up in gross discomfort. She is darkly satisfied. “We just…” He swallows something. Maybe sausage. Maybe pride. He looks to her imploringly, doe eyes doing their work. “Please. I’m not happy.”
She swallows with a huff. “Oh. Poor you, little Anatoly Sergievsky. Unhappy. You live such a hard life.” How dare he, with all the privilege and freedom the union grants him, walk into her home—her prison—and claim that he’s the unhappy one? Another bite of сырники.
“That’s rich coming from you.” He picks at a slice of boiled carrot amongst the egg fry.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” She spears one of the blueberries and bites it off the metal tines.
He scoffs. “See? This is what I mean. I come in here with… with a peace offering, ready to have an adult conversation about this… about us, and you can’t even offer me that small concession. Every day, I wake up and force myself out of bed for you. Every month it’s a new city, a new political ploy, a new… something. Do you think I do this because I enjoy it? No. I do it for us. To… support us. It’s hard for me, Sveta. This is hard for me.” He eats the carrot.
She rolls her eyes. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Anatoly, you have no right to my sympathy. You think your life is hard? You think it’s hard to get up every day and play your little board game in some new exotic vacation each month? People are dying, Anatoly. You’re a wonder at the theatrics, truly, but life has been served to you on a silver platter.” A spoonful of porridge.
“Kettle calling the pot, Sveta. At least I work for my money.” A snarl, fork forgotten.
“Oh, I would hardly consider what you do working.” Her nostrils flare. They are not the same.
“Really, eh? Whose check pays your rent? Whose money bought that nightgown?” With his left hand, he tugs the hem of the lacy dry and perversely, as if to prove a point. “Whose fucking suffering holds this whole goddamn thing together? You’re my wife, Svetlana, the least I could ask for is fucking sympathy!” With his right hand, he throws his plate. It’s aimed across the room, opposite of Svetlana, and shatters on impact. “I can’t do this anymore.” The porcelain shards fractal onto the floor and the remaining egg is spattered against the peeling wallpaper. He recoils for a moment, then realizes what he’s done. “Fuck.” His face is red now and tears are threatening his lashes.
Svetlana blinks at him. Slowly.
She takes another bite of the porridge.
He inhales, shakily, then exhales, closing his eyes and clenching his fists. His brows pinch upward, almost reverently. His breathing speeds and his chest starts to shake as the tears begin to roll down his hot and blotchy cheeks. He gasps and whimpers, then reaches for her, softly.
“Neither can I.”
She reaches for the dishes that haven’t yet been smashed against the wall and exits to the kitchen.
The water is hot enough to burn as she scrubs incessantly at the final bits of dried jam and caked-on powdered sugar. The dishwasher is already running the bowls Anatoly had used to make the breakfast, so she is left hand-washing the most egregiously dirtied of the serving dishes. Her husband is not good at many things (physical intimacy and conflict resolution come to mind), but he is a damn good cook. The food had been nice, really nice…. then he had started talking…
She doesn’t want to think of him right now, she decides. It’s not much of a change, really. She has been decidedly not-thinking of him since last time he left… was that… Christmas? No. Easter, maybe? She has distinct memories of kissing him while decorating their paskha and getting powdered sugar all over their noses, but that could have been last year. Or the year before. They don’t kiss often anymore, so she really should be able to remember this.
She tries to tune out the sounds of Anatoly sobbing in the bedroom. He deserves, at least, that small courtesy.
She dries the dishes with a souvenir towel. “Hastings,” it says, in a bold red serif with scenes of the European countryside emblazoned behind. The material is thin and scratchy, not well suited to this kind of work, but she makes do. She always makes do.
When she finishes putting the final plate away, he is still crying, so she starts on sweeping the floor.
Svetlana is not cruel by nature, but she is only a woman and there is only so much that she can take. Last time this happened, she had stayed by her husband’s side all day, only to wake up again the next morning with an empty bed and a missing suitcase. She cried for weeks and she can’t let that happen again. Soon enough, he’ll get over it on his own and find some other woman to fuck. She doesn’t understand how he does it. Can’t even please his own wife, yet manages to pull a new fling every other Friday? Chess isn’t even an attractive sport, she thinks.
And dammit. Now she’s thinking of him again.
Sweeping finished, she goes to the liquor cabinet. It can’t be past noon yet, but she has nobody to impress. She means to make a bloody mary, but settles for celery sticks and vodka from the bottle. The burn distracts her from the unpleasant stringiness of the celery catching between her teeth. She flicks on the radio to drown out his sounds.
It’s the news. Apparently, he won the tournament and would be moving on to the world championship come winter. Good for him. Winter couldn’t come soon enough.
Eventually, once Svetlana had nibbled through her celery and drank as much as she could reasonably stomach, she returned to the bedroom. He was sitting at the foot of the bed, legs crossed like a child, leaning over a glass chess set. The board made unnatural dents in the pile of linens, weighing down the airy material and pinning it to the mattress. He had obviously been crying, but the look on his face was blank now—more numb than stoic. He toyed with the notched crown of a rook before sliding it along the frosted squares to its target. Then he reached over the board and played for the other side.
Svetlana remained in the doorway, watching. She hadn’t yet determined whether or not he had noticed her entrance. When he got like this, he rarely did. She cleared her throat and he flinched. He turns to her, slowly, and their eyes finally meet.
“Мне жаль” They say, both at once. Then, there is silence.
His breathing shudders and Svetlana walks to the bed, sitting down beside him.
He leans forward, humming at her neck. “mmm, you’ve been drinking?”
“Yes.”
There is silence. The breeze lifts the curtains into the stale air. Anatoly looks, briefly, to the window box. The flowers that he used to tend there are now dead, riddled with ivy. He’d have to get to weeding that at some point. He inhales so long his lungs hurt, then he says it.
“Do you… do you love me?”
“No.”
“Oh.” He exhales.
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
“I know. Me too.” He pulls back and breathes for a moment. “I’m going to the world championship.”
“I know.”
The sit in silence, staring at the half-finished game on the board.
“They would never let us divorce. I-I have to have a wife or… or it reflects poorly on the n-nation.” He tries between gasps.
“I know, Anatoly.” She wraps a hand around his upper arm and pulls him back into her chest.
His body is suddenly wracked with a heart-wrenching sob, shuddering in her hold. “We really tried, didn’t we?”
“Yes. We did.” She breathes against him, cradling his tall and gangly body in her soft arms, “I loved you once, you know?”
“I know. I-I think I did too. Once.” His eyes flutter shut.
“What happened to us?”
“Them.”
They both pretend not to cry for a few minutes.
Svetlana sighs. “You aren’t the same man you once were, Anatoly.” She pets his hair down, trying to tame the whispy strands.
He closes his eyes. “And you aren't the same woman.” He pauses. “I… are you a woman?”
“Hm?” Her movements stop.
He laughs, dryly. “I know I am not the most… attentive husband, but you think I haven’t noticed? You cut your hair. It’s… short. A man’s cut.”
“Oh.”
He sits up, suddenly, and dries his tears. “It looks good on you.” He makes a vaguely indicative gesture with his hands. “Masculine.”
“Go to sleep, Anatoly.”
“It can’t be much past noon, no?”
“You look tired.”
“I am.”
After all that they’ve been through, she needs to help, so she stands, soft-socked feet making a dull thud upon impact with the hardwood, and speaks. “Lie down, then. I’ll tuck you in.”
“I can do it myself, thanks.” Svetlana watches as kicks the chess set off the bed and retreats under the blankets. It hurts a little. “There’s… there’s borscht in the refrigerator and cash on the kitchen table. One can be for dinner, the other for lunch.” He yawns. “And ‘m sorry bout th’ plate… I’ll… I’ll clean ’t up t’morrow.” He reclines into the soft downy pillows and is certifiably down for the count.
She cleans up the plate.
He falls asleep.
When he awakens, she is gone. The chess set has been put away, the window has been closed, and his suitcase has been unpacked. She left a note, at least, pinned beneath a vase of wildflowers wilting on the kitchen table. He never had the decency to do that.
She’s going on holiday, it says. A season away to the dacha. Usually, that would be saved for the warmer months, but he understands her reasons for staying scarce until the winter comes. The money on the counter is gone and his checkbook is missing a few pages, but he doesn’t care. If anything, he is glad that he could at least do this for her. If nothing else, may his money provide for her comfort. Svetlana is a good woman. He is a shit husband.
He makes himself dinner (pours what remains of the borscht into a mug and drinks it cold) then sulks by the dining room window, overlooking the city. He’s never liked Leningrad. The city is grand, dripping of opulence, but lacking in substance. Its lofty brick buildings and golden spires stand monument to a dying race. He thinks of how Leningrad would look if it were still Petersburg, the grand stone architecture filled with boisterous laughter and friendly conversations instead of dead air, the lingering sunlight made more a warm glow than a nuisance. He misses the city that was. He mourns the city that could have been.
He watches as weary-eyed businessmen march back to their homes, lock-stepping diagonally through the dewy grass and guiding themselves only by the thin light of the darkening sky. He watches as the night students loiter haphazardly under the street lamps, reading and drinking under the artificial glow. He watches as the streets grow cold and empty, though they were pretty damn empty to begin with.
As much as he wants to return to sleep, his body has disallowed it. The jet lag shouldn’t be hitting as hard as it is—hell, he thinks Spain may even be in the same timezone—but he can’t bring himself to shut-eye.
He hears the red phone ring across the room, its curling cord vibrating with the bell tones, and gropes for the light switch. He settles for flicking on the floor lamp. The phone is still ringing.
He curls up on the couch and wishes he had somebody to rock him to sleep.
The phone is still ringing.
He sets his eyes again out the window, watching passively the sagging movement of the red and gold flying in the dull breeze, illuminated by the dim moonlight, blanketed in the thick silence. Or not.
The phone is still ringing.
When he awakens for a second time, he is hungry. The sun is rising, so he shuts the curtains. His socks catch briefly on the splinters of the untreated hardwood as he shuffles to the refrigerator.
The shelves are well-stocked, if not a little too heavy on the sweets, but that was just a natural consequence of Svetlana grocery shopping. There had been a point in their marriage, a point before the party got involved, where Anatoly would return from work every day with a candy for her; sometimes a small caramel or piece of taffy from the market on the corner, other times a whole bag of delicate crystal mints, wrapped in brown paper and tied with a bright silk ribbon.
Now, he reached over an ambiguous blueberry-cherry-something pie to retrieve a jar of plain yogurt. He thought, briefly, of spooning a portion into a separate dish, but ultimately eating it straight from the jar won out. Why did it matter? No one was here to watch him. He had no need to keep up appearances for himself.
In truth, Anatoly knew Svetlana wasn’t wrong. He dug into the yogurt. What she said had hurt, especially coming from the woman who had seen what his job had done to him, but she wasn’t wrong. He brought the spoonful to his lips. His job was easy; all he had to do is sit pretty and play chess. He licks experimentally at the spoon and quickly recoils. He liked the chess and, hell, he liked the attention too, but the politics and the pretenses and the Molokov make him want to… The yogurt is spoiled. He has been given the easiest job in the union and he can’t even do that right. He continues to eat, unperturbed.
What would Molokov think?
Shit. Molokov.
The red phone across the room starts ringing. Leaving the sour jar open on the counter, Anatoly runs to answer, tripping over the hems of his day-old jeans. The receiver buzzes for a moment when he brings it to his ear. Then his voice comes crackling through the static.
“Ah, Anatoly, I am glad to see you returned home alright!” Even through the telephone, his voice cuts sharp and deep.
“Здравствуйте, Comrade Molokov, I…” He stutters off and the hawk takes it as a chance to strike.
“When you didn’t pick up yesterday, well… I almost sent my men over.” His voice drips with a velvety dark smile and they both see that as the threat it is. Anatoly remains silent. “We were all so… worried about you, Tolya.” Now his voice flows saccharine over the line. No one’s called him Tolya since his mother was still alive and it makes him sick. “We, of course, care a great deal about you and simply wanted to assure that you were… faring alright.”
“I- thank you, Molokov.” The less says is always the better in these sorts of things.
“You know, when we saw your Volga jetting down Tsentralnaya last night, we were… concerned to say the least.” Shit. She’d taken his car. “But, last time I checked, you’re not a blonde… are you, Tolya?”
“No, I am not.” He tried desperately to force down the feeling of rising bile.
“As I thought. So… that must have been your wife, then? Leaving alone?”
“I suppose.”
“In your car?” He exhales, cooly and methodically. “That isn’t really a surprise, though, is it?”
He swallows, hard. “I… I don’t know what to say to that.”
“Then don’t say anything.” He pauses for a moment, then smiles deeply. “It’s a big accomplishment, as you know, making it to the championship. We are all very proud of you, Anatoly. Just a few more games and… well, you could change everything.”
He hums hesitantly into the speaker, if for nothing else than to fill the suffocating silence.
“Very good, very good… just so you are aware, we did intercept the Volga.” He chuckles for a moment and then stops, abruptly. “It’s really a wonder what the state police and elbow grease can do for a man.”
Anatoly’s mind starts racing. He thought that Svetlana would make it out, at least to the dacha. He was their chess player, she had nothing to do with it. She wasn’t the flight risk… and if he could barely endure their punishments, how could she possibly fair? It’s been, what, ten hours since she left? Fifteen? Was she still even…
“She looked eager to leave, and you know we can’t have that. It would reflect poorly on the nation…” He was going to be sick. “Anyways, she’ll be in the office on tomorrow to record the press kit. I expect to see you there, Anatoly. We leave for Merano in November and she will not be coming with us, so we will need to prepare radio advertisements and magazine covers in advance.”
Oh, god. Thank god. Maybe he had been overreacting? He and Molokov were on the same side after all; they both want the same thing. Sure, his methods weren’t the kindest, but he wasn’t needlessly cruel. Svetlana was surely safe. What the hell had he even been worrying about anyway?
“Make sure to mark your calendar, Tolya. I don’t even want to imagine what we’d have to do if you didn’t turn up.”
Before he can respond, the line goes dead, returning to the amorphous static from whence it came.
Instead of returning the phone to its rocker, he walks back to the kitchen and throws the yogurt away. His ears ring in time with the disconnect tone as he walks back to the bedroom and changes out of yesterday’s clothes. He combs through his hair, quickly and sharply, then waxes back any unruly curls. The process tugs and stings more than it needs to, but he comes out of it looking more put together. Though he still undeniably needs a haircut, this is enough for now.
In the mirror, he looks… older than he remembers, but attractive at least. Attractive enough for company, at least. That’s how he’ll get through tonight. He’ll walk to the bar on Sovetskaya and find someone to distract himself with.
Then, he’ll get through tomorrow with Molokov to guide him and Svetlana to distract him.
Then, starting the day after that, he will have 73 days to prepare for the tournament.
Which he would win because he had to.
And then Molokov would be happy because he had won.
And then, because of that, Svetlana would love him again.
Or at least forgive him.