CHAPTER 45
Tania paid off the taxi and walked up the stone steps to the painted door. The small panel beside the door said “Flat 3—Sam and Anna.” No surname, and somehow it seemed right to be that way.
Anna was wearing a white blouse and a black skirt and the calm beautiful face was so smooth it could have been a young girl’s face not the face of a woman in her late forties.
Anna had arranged a tray of drinks, coffee jug and cakes on a low coffee table and as Tania took her cup she smiled at Anna as she said, “I came to ask a favour.”
Anna smiled back. “Tell me.”
“Andrei said he wants to go to Brighton Beach on Friday, and he wants me to go with him.”
“What’s he want to do there?”
“I think just look around, see how it is. Maybe remember other times. Better times.”
Anna shook her head slowly, “They weren’t better times, Tania. Perhaps better in some ways. His work was less involved then. Just finding out how to go about it.”
“But he loved Chantal a lot, didn’t he?”
“Only the same way he loves you.”
“Does he love me? Or does he just put up with me?”
“You know better than that, don’t you? Why this sudden loss of confidence?”
“Tell me about Chantal.”
“She was very young, her parents were well-off but she was involved with unions and that sort of thing. She was very beautiful and they fell in love with each other very quickly. They were just kids.” She shook her head slowly. “A teenage boy whose mind was totally involved in Party affairs. A loving young girl who felt she had found a very special man.”
“Was she a good wife?”
Anna smiled. “What makes a good wife? She was totally supportive. She asked for nothing. She did all she was asked to do, without question. She was a dear girl and I loved her very much. And sometimes I felt she deserved better than she got from my brother. Watching her cured me of any faith I had in the Party and its system. To me she was a victim of the system. The prisoner of a man she cared for instead of a prisoner in a labour camp.” She shrugged. “There wasn’t much difference.”
“You make him sound almost heartless.”
“In a way he was. But you have to think of the circumstances. How could he have learned what you should do as a husband? He had never seen how a man and a woman should live together. And he was intent on saving the world. His head was in the clouds.”
“And now?”
“What do you mean?”
“How do I fit into this picture?”
Anna smiled. “It’s a different picture. I could tell he was in love with you before I even met you. He talked about you so much. Your talent as a photographer. How assured you were. You had a mind that had worked things out. You were independent and yet rather mysterious.” She paused. “I’ve seen you and Andrei together many times now. Your relationship with him is quite different. I know you care about him but you have a mind of your own. And that’s what he needs. I’ve seen the changes you’ve made in his life. He’s more alive. He was like a lost soul before you came along.” She shrugged. “Poor Chantal didn’t stand a chance. She didn’t have a chance to be independent. She just had to tag along. And if I’m honest I have to say that he didn’t make a good husband. He didn’t just sacrifice his own life to the Party but hers too. That’s why I refused to go on with Party work. I hated that system and I hated the people who made it so.”
“Why do you think he wants to go to Brighton Beach?”
“I’ve no idea, honey. But if he’s asked you to go with him then it isn’t anything to do with Chantal.”
Tania had taken her camera with her, a 35mm Nikon with a dozen Kodachrome films and twenty loads of Ilford HP5 for black and white.
They went by subway and as they went down the stairs from the station platform to Brighton Beach Avenue she stopped him and took a picture of him on the stairs. She had no photograph of him, not even an old one, and then, as they went into the street she realised why. A photograph was identification. She looked up at his face. “I’ll scrap the shot, Andrei. I didn’t think.”
He smiled faintly and nodded, and as they turned right she stood with the camera to her eye, the shutter clicking as she moved the lens from one view to another. After a dozen or so shots she turned to Aarons. “This is fantastic, Andrei. It’s like a foreign country. The people, the shops, the signs—everything’s Russian. We could be in an old part of Moscow.”
He smiled. “Or Israel.”
“Yes,” she nodded. “Will they mind me taking pictures?”
“Of course not. They may look like Russians but they’re Americans, hoping they’ll see themselves in Life magazine.”
“Where are we going?”
“Let’s carry on down the avenue.”
“Have you got something you have to do?”
“No. I just wanted to see it again. See how it’s changed.”
“Has it changed much?”
“It hasn’t changed at all. It’s just the same.”
And as if to confirm the point at least half a dozen people had stopped him to shake hands and talk. People who had known him in the old days.
They ate lunch in Café Arbat and were joined by an old man with a beard who Andrei introduced as Rabbi Godlevsky. They spoke in English so that she could join in, but when either of them was intent on making a point she noticed that they lapsed into Yiddish. It amused
