the district. He entered one of the classroom buildings and moved through the corridors and up and down the staircases in a tight press of humanity. When he finally left the building, Fat-face was gone. Perhaps he had given the whole thing up, Khristo thought, humiliated by student derision at his colossal suit, and defected to the registrar. Khristo glanced behind him-not even deigning to use the standard shop-window-as-mirror-and saw that Bullet-head was sweating up a storm, the last man left. A passenger got out of a nearby taxi and Khristo waved it down. Then watched through the rear window as the NKVD man ran in frantic circles looking for another. He rode three blocks, paid the driver, and stood back in a doorway as Bullet-head sailed by in his own taxi, terrified, surely, that such an expense would not be approved by his bosses.
Later that morning, Khristo stood in the bookstore, browsing among the thick, uncut volumes on surrealism and Marx. On the far wall was a poster, in livid red and black, celebrating the Republican effort in the Spanish war. There were stark crosses above graves and a shadowed face of great determination and strength looking into the near distance. In fiery letters, lines from the poet John Cornford were spread across the paper. Cornford, a poet and Marxist from Cambridge, had died at twenty-one, a machine-gunner in one of the international brigades. “Nothing is certain, nothing is safe,” the lines read. “Everything dying keeps a hungry grip on life / Nothing is ever born without screaming and blood.”
He watched the clerks in their blue smocks, moving about the store. How had Aleksandra fitted into this milieu? Her politics, he knew, were the politics of survival, her own survival. Larger questions were not germane- theories bored her; passions belonged in bed, not on the speaker’s platform. Her absence stabbed him suddenly, and he said her name silently and dropped a book back onto a table.
“Captain Markov?”
At that name-his cover in Spain-he froze.
Turned slowly to the source of the voice and found Faye Berns. His first impression of her was long hair, washed and shining, and jade-colored eyes, lit up with recognition, meeting his own. On second glance, he saw that her face was sallow and exhausted, that life had not been easy.
“Did I startle you?” she said.
“Yes,” he said, “a little.”
She took his arm as they crossed the street to a cafe. The touch, at first, made him feel guilty, as though it desecrated his sorrow, as though it betrayed Aleksandra. But he could not deny its warmth, he could not deny how good it felt. They sat beneath a striped awning and drank cup after cup of coffee. She told him the story of her life those past few months, her eyes shining with unshed tears as she spoke.
Andres had died.
He had spent a long time dying, as doctor after doctor paraded through a rented apartment near the Parc Monceau that her father had paid for. Their plan, originally, had been to travel to Greece, where Andres had friends who would take them in. Perhaps they’d get married; at times they talked about it. Somehow, the tickets were never bought, there was always something else that had to be done. Renata Braun had left Paris in February, promising to write as soon as she was settled. They waited anxiously for a letter as the weeks went by, but it never arrived. Then Andres came down with a fever.
At first they ignored it. The Paris damp-one had to grow used to a new climate. But the fever was stubborn. Various doctors were consulted, medicines of all sorts were prescribed, but nothing seemed to work. Slowly, the sickness grew worse, until she had to stay up with him all through the night, sponging the sweat from his body, changing the wet sheets. At times he fell into a delirium, shouting and whining, often in languages unknown to her. He was in Anatolia, he thought, and pleaded with her to hide him from the Turkish soldiers-he heard them coming up the stairs. She would go to the door and look out, reassure him that they had just left. She said anything that came to mind, anything to calm him, because his terror broke her heart. She wept in the bathroom, washed her face, went back to the bed, and held his hands until dawn.
In times of clarity, he told her the truth about himself in great detail-where he had been, what he had done. His only regret, he said, was that the one thing in his life he had cared for, the Communist party, had turned on him. She argued with him about it-one could always care for humankind, could work for the oppressed. It had nothing to do with a printed card. But this line enraged him-she did not understand, he claimed-so she dropped it.
He became sly and strange. Would hide his medicine spoon among the covers so she couldn’t find it and accuse her of telling the concierge his secrets. When she cleaned the apartment in the morning, he would not permit her to leave his sight. On his good days, he spoke of marriage. Passionately. They must have a child, he said, to continue his work. He begged her to bring a priest, a rabbi, whatever she wished. She told him it would be wiser to wait until he felt better and was his old self again. Her hesitancy angered him, and he accused her of infidelity.
Then, with the coming of spring, he seemed to grow stronger. She took him on outings to the Parc Monceau, where he would walk with a jacket over his shoulders and lecture her on a range of political matters. He read the newspapers avidly and explained to her the historical implications of every event. Now, instead of hostility and suspicion toward her, he began to plot revenge against certain individuals in the Comintern who he believed had betrayed him. He became obsessed with the Russian poet Ilya Ehrenburg, claimed he was under strict NKVD supervision, and planned to write an article for a Parisian quarterly-the
But then, suddenly, on a day when he’d planned a visit to a museum, on a day when he’d made a telephone call, eaten an omelette, laughed at one of her jokes, he died. She returned from shopping and found him sitting on the couch with an open book in his hand.
The tears came when she finished the story, and she was hunting through her purse when a waiter appeared with a clean white handkerchief, handed to her silently. “My God,” she said, “I will miss this city.”
“I am sorry,” Khristo said, “for Andres. And for you. For what happened. If my English was better …”
“Oh please,” she said, “I understand. And I didn’t mean to cry in front of you. It’s just … When I was sixteen, I used to daydream about a lover dying, to make myself feel sad, I think. But then it happened. It actually happened.” She looked around for the waiter, in order to return the handkerchief, but he was busy at another table.
“I think he wants that you keep it,” Khristo said, searching for a word. “It is his …”
“Gift?”
“Yes, a gift.”
She nodded that she understood and blew her nose. “Tell me about yourself,” she said.
He shrugged. “Some bad things, some good.”
“Andres explained to me about not telling people about yourself, how important that was, so I understand.”
“Yes,” he sighed. He wanted to tell her everything, resisted a desire to go on and on in riddles, telling but not telling, like Sascha. “What for you now?” he asked instead.
“I am going home,” she said. “To America.”
“Ah. For the best, no?”
“I don’t know,” she said, uncertain. “Maybe. But the tickets are all bought and there’s no turning back now. I was in the bookstore looking for something to read on the boat-I really don’t want to listen to a bunch of Americans gossiping about their adventures in wicked old Europe.” She made a face at the thought. “Anyhow, I go up to Le Havre today on the train, I’m there overnight, board the
“What train do you take?”
“Five-twenty from the Gare du Nord.” She was silent for a moment, not happy at the prospect of traveling. For a moment it seemed like she might cry again, a shadow crossed her, then, instead, she managed a gloomy smile. “How like Paris this is-to meet an old friend a few hours before going away forever.”
“Some day you will come back here.”
“Do you think so?” There was a real ache in her voice when she said it.
“I do,” he said.
“Funny, I don’t even know your name. I don’t suppose it’s actually Captain Markov.”
“Khristo is my name. Then Stoianev-like your ‘Stephens.’ “
“Khristo,” she said.
“Yes. I have not heard it said for a long time. I use another name now.”
