The Nesting Dolls Page 20

  Dima reminded for the umpteenth time, “The only way we’ll ever get out of this prison country is by decisive action. Let cowards like your Boris—”

  “He’s not my—”

  “Let cowards like them play nice. It’s your choice which side you prefer.”

  The grim look on Mama’s face when Natasha came home triggered her to fear the worst. She imagined both parents losing their jobs. She imagined exile to the Arctic—without a troupe of international poets clamoring for their release. She thought of Papa, not only forced to give up his hard-won medals but forbidden from marching in the Victory Parade every May 9. Papa pretended it was just another duty to fulfill, but Natasha saw how his eye filled with tears as the children ran up to him, handing him bouquets of flowers and thanking him for his service.

  Natasha was prepared for anything. Except Mama offering Natasha her papers, signed by Mama, Papa, and even by Baba Daria.

  “What changed your mind?” Natasha managed to choke out, a maelstrom of conflicting feelings clogging her throat.

  Mama held up a crumpled envelope, the address on the front inscribed in an elegant, if shaky, hand, its flap sealed and resealed several times by censors. “Baba wrote that what you need should take precedence over what we want.”

  Chapter 28

  Natasha knew she should be ecstatic. Finally, her file was complete. She turned it in to OVIR. There was nothing to do but wait.

  Her days fell into a routine. Mornings were spent with Dima making love. Afternoons were for OVIR, reading a book, waiting for the lists to be posted of those who’d been given permission and those who’d been denied. Some cooled their heels for years. Most waited months. With a mere few weeks under her belt, Natasha barely gave the results a perfunctory glance. Until she caught sight of her own name.

  Under those who’d been refused.

  Slava bogu. Thank God.

  The words flashed through Natasha’s mind before she had the chance to censor herself and recall that she was disappointed. Crushed, really, by the latest turn of events.

  “What reason did they give?” Dima demanded.

  “My association with you.” Natasha secretly crowed at the notion that even the government was blessing their relationship—in its own way.

  “Damn it! And we were so careful, too.”

  Natasha thought now might be a good time to bring up another issue about which they thought they’d been so careful. Except Dima was in no mood to hear it.

  “At least we don’t have to sneak around anymore,” Natasha said, offering what she hoped would be a silver lining. “It might be for the best. Now I can be free to help you in all sorts of ways.”

  Dima nodded absently, prompting Natasha to wonder if what she was saying was actually what he was hearing. Dima pinched the bridge of his nose, squinted his eyes, and mumbled, more to himself than to her. “We’ll have to change strategies, add another person.”

  Was Natasha supposed to know what he was talking about?

  “Do you trust me?”

  “Always,” Natasha swore, happy finally to be telling the truth, especially to herself.

  “Good. Because what we’ve got planned, we can’t risk a single detail going wrong.”

  “Are you going to tell your parents?” Boris sneaked up on Natasha when she thought she was home alone.

  “Tell them what?” It had been a week since Natasha had received her refusal, and she had yet to fill her parents in. It should have been good news for them, yet Natasha couldn’t shake the suspicion they’d be disappointed. Once they’d committed to their sacrifice, they’d be expecting her to make it worth their while.

  Boris blushed and waved his hand in the direction of Natasha’s waist. “The baby.”

  It was the last thing she’d expected him to say. Natasha was operating on the premise that as long as she refused to acknowledge reality, it wouldn’t manifest as a concept identifiable by others. It wasn’t denial or wishful thinking. It was quantum mechanical thinking. The USSR was famous for erasing individuals and events from existence. She was being a patriotic citizen.

  “How did you know?”

  The blush acquired a second, even redder layer. Boris’s arm jerked upward in the vague vicinity of her chest. “You’re . . . um . . . bigger.”

  “You’ve been tracking?” she asked, incredulous.

  “Since I was twelve.” Did he seem proud of himself? Natasha’s stomach churned as she recalled all the opportunities he would’ve had, starting from when they were still young enough to go to the beach only in their underpants and ending with how often Boris still saw her laundry drying on the clothesline. She would have never guessed he had it in him.

  “It’s none of your business.”

  “Were you hoping to emigrate before your parents figured it out?”

  Natasha hadn’t been thinking that far ahead. Not that it mattered now. “I got rejected.”

  “You don’t seem too upset about it.”

  First her breasts, now her emotional state? What else did Boris think he knew about her?

  “You seem relieved,” he added.

  Natasha did her best to snort derisively. “About being trapped here for the rest of my life?”

  “With Dima?”

  When had Boris become so perceptive? And when had he become so assertive?

  “How do you know I’m with Dima?” Natasha challenged. And stalled.

  Boris’s derisive snort proved much more successful. “Every word out of your mouth the past few months has been a diluted echo of his. Who else would you be so happy about staying for?”

  “You think I’m happy about a future where the two of us are constantly watched, unable to trust anyone but each other, exiled someplace so remote we might go days without seeing another soul? Does that sound romantic?” Natasha hoped she injected enough sarcasm into her words to keep Boris from suspecting she might be sincere.

  “Plus, it lets you off the hook,” he said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” The only hook Natasha had been thinking about was the one the abortionist used.

  “It means you don’t have to try. The last thing you tried was getting into university. When that didn’t work out, you gave up. On everything. You’re certainly not trying to be a good teacher.”

  “When those brats try to be good students, I’ll try to be a good teacher.”

  “You haven’t tried to get another position, one you’d like more.”

  “Like you? Tell me again how writing strings of numbers to make machines buzz is math.”

  “You didn’t even try that hard to emigrate.”

  “I got refused,” Natasha reminded, then added proudly, “due to my subversive activities.”

  “You could reapply, but you won’t. Because then you’d have to live up to other people’s expectations. Your parents’, Dima’s. You’d have to justify their faith in you. This way, you can keep criticizing how other people live without having to do anything yourself.”

  “You think it’s easy to get permission to emigrate?”

  “Not if you self-sabotage.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I filed every document they asked for. I paid the official fees, and the unofficial bribes.”

  “While hanging around a group of known troublemakers, playing at being rebels.”

  “What qualifies you to judge? You’ve never broken a rule in your life,” Natasha taunted, even as she knew it wasn’t true.

  “Maybe that’s why I got permission to emigrate.” Boris reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper, presenting it to Natasha for inspection.

  She accepted it gingerly, convinced he was lying, tricking her to make a point. But the papers looked exactly the way Natasha had imagined her own papers would look. The ones she hoped to bring triumphantly to Dima. The ones she was terrified of bringing triumphantly to Dima.

  “I didn’t know you’d even applied.” Her head was spinning. How co
uld Boris have pulled this off? Natasha thought she knew everything about him. That she could predict everything about him. It was the reason she dismissed Boris as being dull and reactionary. He wasn’t capable of surprising her, of exciting her. Yet here he was, revealing facets of himself she’d never imagined. How could Boris have succeeded where she—and Dima—had failed? “This can’t be legitimate. You didn’t lose your job . . .”

  “I went to my boss, told him about it beforehand so he wouldn’t get caught unawares. I offered to quit. He asked me, ‘What? You don’t need money anymore?’ He said he’ll keep me on until the day I leave, if I want.”

  “You have a departure date already?”

  “Not yet. Mama and Papa have a few loose ends they need to tie up first.”

  “They’re going?” Amazing how many secrets six people could keep in four rooms.

  “I couldn’t leave them behind to fend for themselves.” Like Natasha was planning to? “I can take you, too,” Boris added, though it came out as a question.

  “How?” The prospect was so preposterous, Natasha was sure he was teasing.

  “If we were married.” Now he had to be kidding. “It would solve several problems at once.”

  “For whom?”

  “Well, you,” Boris offered. Then, seeing that rationale wasn’t picking up much traction, he switched tactics. “And your parents. We can apply for them, too. Your father has already been publicly shamed. He doesn’t have much left to lose.” Facts not in evidence. In Natasha’s experience, matters could always get worse. “As soon as we’re married,” Boris added, which created a confusing synergy between the two sentences.

  “Dima,” she began.

  Boris cut her off. Which was good, as Natasha had no plans for any words after that.

  “What you said before, about being constantly watched and possibly exiled. Is that the kind of life you want?”

  She’d been imagining the romance of her and Dima allied together against the world. Like Lenin and his wife, the formidable Krupskaya. Napoleon and his beautiful Josephine. Franklin Delano and his homely but progressive Eleanor. There’d been no child in the picture. No boiling of dirty diapers, no scrounging for milk, no being left behind to rock a cradle while Dima continued his battle for freedom. Suddenly, instead of Krupskaya, Josephine, and Eleanor, Natasha considered Jenny von Westphalen, Karl Marx’s wife, who bore him seven babies and lived in filth and poverty while her husband wrote about the workers’ struggle and why his own work should be limited to thinking.

  “It won’t be like that,” Natasha said, responding more to the clash in her head than to the question Boris actually asked.

  “Not if you marry me,” he confirmed.

  Chapter 29

  “There might be another way,” Natasha told Dima, “for me to leave the country.”

  It wasn’t her imagination. Since learning of Natasha’s refusal, Dima had taken less of an interest in her. Not in the sex. He was still interested in the sex. But before, pillow talk consisted of Dima’s plans for Natasha in the West. Now he lay on his back, arm over his face, and sermonized about the growing Free Soviet Jewry movement, the protests outside Lenin Library, the Belgian and French scientists demanding a reversal of sexologist Michael Stern’s hard labor conviction (had he pushed back on the socialism-leads-to-better-sex concept?). Dima talked about a Passover service broken up at Moscow Synagogue, about hunger strikes and the international Day of Solidarity with Soviet Jews on April 28, 1974, where 125,000 allies turned out to protest in New York City alone. Natasha figured if her lying there naked couldn’t compete with the daily news, maybe her latest bulletin would.

  It did manage to capture Dima’s attention. He rolled onto his side, propping his head up with his palm while he rested his elbow on the pillow. “How’s that?”

  “Boris received permission to emigrate.”

  “Of course,” Dima snorted. “The authorities know he’ll cause them no trouble overseas. Instead of advocating for the rest of us, he’ll keep his head down, make his money, get fat, and give no thought to those who struggled to make his easy life possible.”

  Natasha tried to imagine telephone-pole Boris fat—but that image was overwritten by the Boris who’d confronted her in their kitchen, the Boris who was confident and imperturbable and in a much better political position than either of them. “If I were to marry Boris—”

  “Marry him!” Dima yelped, the first show of interest he’d directed Natasha’s way in ages. It made Natasha’s heart spin in her chest, only to skid to a grinding halt when Dima added, “How in the world would you get that ninny to do it?”

  “Well,” rather than confess he’d already asked, she played it coy. “I could seduce him.”

  “How long do you think it would take?”

  Less time than with you, Natasha thought, then chastised herself for thinking Boris could be superior to Dima. The reason Boris was quicker to recognize Natasha’s pregnancy was that Boris’s head was filled with commonplace thoughts, while Dima’s was generating subversive ideas. He had more important things than Natasha’s breasts to mull over.

  “Not too long.”

  Dima thought for a moment, then shook his head. “We can’t risk it.”

  Natasha exhaled. Dima didn’t want her sleeping with another man. Dima wanted Natasha all to himself.

  “There isn’t enough time,” he explained. “Remember when I told you we were planning a major act of resistance? We’re going to hijack a plane. Take it to Israel.”

  Her eyes widened. “You can’t do that!”

  “We can,” Dima reassured, as though Natasha was questioning the logistics rather than the suicidal lunacy of it. “I was hoping to wait until you were in the West to disseminate the news, but there’s no time for that now. You’ll have to come with us.”

  He’d said she had to. That meant he couldn’t live without her. Except, if Dima went through with this, he likely wouldn’t have a life left to live.

  “I can’t. I want to. I want to be with you—no one else—for always. Don’t worry, you’ve convinced me. I won’t marry Boris. I won’t put you through that heartache. But you can’t take such a huge risk, either. I—I’m going to have a baby. Our baby. Your baby.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Dima finally said, prompting Natasha’s heart to resume its spinning. Wonderful! He’d said her pregnancy was wonderful! “The Western press will love you!” Natasha had been hoping for a different pronoun. “A young family fleeing totalitarianism! They’ll eat it up!”

  All Natasha could hear was he’d called them a family. All she could see was the two of them escaping the USSR together, exiting, hand in hand, into a barrage of press flashbulbs. They’d be the most famous couple in the world!

  Of course, there were risks. Not just for Natasha, for her family, too.

  Then again, didn’t true love always come with risks? No matter who? No matter where? It was par for the course. Natasha couldn’t—shouldn’t—think of those now. She should focus on the reward. The reward she’d waited too long for. The reward that should have been hers all along.

  “So you’re in.” It wasn’t exactly a question.

  Which was why Natasha’s only possible answer could be, “Yes.”

  The plan was to buy out the tickets of a fifteen-seater plane, claiming they were traveling to Alm-Ata in Kazakhstan for a wedding. Considering all of them were refuseniks, it wasn’t a simple matter of walking into any tourism office and laying down enough bills to cover the cost of the tickets and bribes. The task would require finesse, quick thinking, and nerves of steel.

  “You should do it,” Dima told Natasha. “You’re still the least compromised of us all.”

  “How? What do I say if they ask questions?”

  “Tell them a good story,” Dima urged. “Convince them. You’re a pretty girl. It shouldn’t be hard.”

  Natasha, flattered, agreed.

  The morning Natasha walked into the Travel Bureau, there were tw
o clerks on duty. One was an elderly woman with eyes narrowed from a lifetime of squinting at imbeciles who dared think they deserved a chance to leave the city. The other was a middle-aged man who, while filling out papers for a dowdy couple clutching the bag of apples they’d brought him as a thank-you, looked up when Natasha walked in and gave her a smile. It was a smile similar to the look he gave the apples. It gave her hope. So of course, Natasha was assigned to the beady-eyed old lady.

  “Alma-Ata,” she repeated Natasha’s destination as if she didn’t believe the place existed.

  “For a wedding.” Natasha stuck to her script, heart hammering so madly, she was surprised no one else could hear it. Or see her chest bouncing as if a kitten were trying to claw its way out of her dress. Boris would have.

  “You have the money to purchase all the seats on a single plane?”

  “Yes.” Natasha laid the prepared stack of rubles on the table.

  The woman pawed the bills, licking her thumb each time. Natasha had given her enough to cover fifteen tickets. And an extra 100 rubles on top of that. Natasha wasn’t expecting change.

  “This is very last minute. You should have made the request months ago.”

  “The wedding was very last minute,” Natasha improvised, the kitten turning into a cougar.

  “Your friends should have planned better.”

  “I’m sure they wish they had.” Natasha burst into unexpected tears. “If they had more time, they could have planned a better wedding, something not so last minute. Or maybe they would’ve tired of each other and broken up. But it’s too late now; they don’t have any choices left. They have to get married quickly. That’s why we have to be there. What if the groom changes his mind and leaves her high and dry? What’s she going to do? Her life will be ruined. She’ll have nothing left. She’ll be stuck because she made an error in judgment. It could happen to anyone, but she’ll be the one paying for it until she dies, while he gets to walk away scot-free!”