last week, over at the radio station. I don’t know.” He waved for another round of drinks. “It’s all right, they don’t want to mix with me either. So I figure it’s best to celebrate on my own. Or with you. No?”
“And if I hadn’t come along?”
He reached into yet another pocket and tugged out a wrinkled envelope. “I’d reread Katja’s letters. Again and again.”
Libarid
Sitting at Gate 7 among yawning travelers, Libarid chain-smokes the rest of his Carpa i and writes only five sentences to his wife: For someone who weeps so much, it’s strange to me how deeply you hate sentimentality. But you do. You call it “fake emotions.” So I won’t pad this with sentimentality. I’m leaving you.
Then he stares through the large windows at the midnight darkness where lights seemingly unattached to planes take off and land. He wonders, again, about the mechanics of later getting Vahe out, and for the first time realizes he’s been fooling himself: He’ll never see his son again.
On his way down the corridor to the duty-free shop, he spots the woman again. She’s speaking with a tall, mustached man who’s holding a black briefcase and sweating. He’s visibly nervous, though the woman is calm, her smile serene.
In the shop he finds one other customer-the woman’s big companion-also buying cigarettes. The oaf smokes Moskwa-Volga. He ignores Libarid as he leaves.
A little before one o’clock, they board, and Libarid takes his window seat in the twentieth row. He’s relieved, as they all are, to finally be on the plane. Across the aisle from him, the nervous mustached man with the briefcase is sitting down. Then Libarid hears a voice.
“This is me.”
It’s the woman, settling into the seat next to him.
Her companion is nearer the front of the plane, unaware that she’s passed him, but then he figures it out. He pushes through people to get back to her. Without speaking, she shows him her boarding pass. The man looks dumbly up at the seat numbers, then holds out his own boarding pass to Libarid. He says, “I need to switch seats with you.” He has the clotted voice of a deaf person.
“I’m comfortable here,” says Libarid.
The man leans closer, forcing the woman back into her seat. He could break most of the people on the plane in half. “I insist.”
“So do I,” says Libarid.
The man places a big hand on Libarid’s headrest. “Don’t be a nuisance, comrade. Not unless you want the Ministry for State Security on you. I’m here to protect this woman.”
Libarid pauses, unsure, but then the woman touches his thigh with the side of her hand, just briefly, and it strengthens him. He says, “I’m a lieutenant in the People’s Militia. That tough-guy talk may work for the peasants you usually run into, but not with me.”
The man recoils slightly, maybe surprised, then looks at the woman. “I’ll be seven seats up.”
“I know,” she says.
Once he’s gone, Libarid, flushed, asks if he’s really from Yalta Boulevard.
“Don’t worry about him,” she says.
Libarid stops worrying. “He’s protecting you?”
“Protecting, watching-it’s all the same, isn’t it?”
Libarid points out that it’s strange for the Ministry to send a deaf man to watch over someone; it doesn’t make much sense. The woman smiles, her pale eyes slits, and eludes him with a question. “When did the Ministry ever make sense?”
The lights dim, and they take off. She closes her eyes as Libarid takes the opportunity to look closely at her face. He lights another cigarette and feels the old pull of his checkered youth, when he had many women, before he settled down. He wonders if he’ll return to that checkered youth.
Probably.
Though he’s leaving his family, something in him believes it’s immoral to try anything yet. It’s too soon. It would prove with scientific accuracy that he never had any respect for his wife, his marriage, or his family in the first place.
So Libarid peers past her to the nervous man. He’s worse now that the vibrating plane is airborne: sweaty and pale, wiping his mustache and staring at a book he’s obviously not reading. Libarid notices that on the cover are the squiggly characters of his own native language. The Bible. Libarid leans over the dozing woman and gives a high whisper. “Parev!”
The man looks up at him, almost terrified.
“Nice to see another Armenian face,” says Libarid. “And don’t worry. The pilot may be a Turk, but he knows what he’s doing.”
The man nods, a little stunned. “ Aayo — yes, I’m sure he does.”
Then he goes back to his Bible, and Libarid looks out the window at blackness.
Eyes still shut, the woman says, “He’s not afraid of flying. He’s afraid of dying. Everyone’s afraid of that.”
Libarid turns to her. “Just trying to help him out.”
“It’s ironic.”
“What is?”
She doesn’t answer. She opens her eyes. “Are you happy?”
“That’s a strange question.”
“You’re married. You have a son. I’m just wondering if that makes you happy.”
“Sure.”
“Then why are you leaving them?”
Libarid stares a moment into her pale blue eyes, which remain steady, watching as he tries to comprehend this. The letter. She must have seen the letter. While he was buying cigarettes, she must have gone through his bag. But Libarid has been a militiaman for over thirty years. He knows not to give her the reaction she wants. He clears his throat. “What makes you think I have a wife and son?”
“It’s the way you walk,” she says. “Married men have a certain confidence that’s not for show. Single men who look confident do it for show.”
“And a son?”
She raises her shoulders. “Again, the walk. Biologically, you’ve accomplished what you were born to do. You have someone to carry on your name. As for you leaving them…well, you’re freeing yourself from the guilt of affairs by leaving. It’s obvious that if I gave you the chance, you’d fuck me in a second.”
“What a mouth.”
She smiles, and it seems like an honest smile, as if she’s been fond of Libarid for a very long time. She settles her head in the seat again.
“So who are you?” he asks.
“Me? I’m nobody. But my name is Zrinka.”
“I’m Libarid.”
“I know.”
He ignores this. “Why are you going to Istanbul?”
“The Interpol conference, just like you.”
“You’re a militiawoman?”
“Hardly.” Zrinka pauses. “But I have a feeling I won’t make it to the conference.”
“Oh, we’ll both make it. Your friend will make sure. I’ve got a couple friends, too, waiting for me. My chap erones.”
“Don’t worry,” she says. “You’ll lose them. I know it.”
“You think you know everything.”
