It was strange seeing her like that, in a place where I was no longer myself, where she was no longer herself. Reality had shifted. And so much time had passed. Over the last year, I’d let myself come to believe I’d gotten over her. Maybe, I’d told myself time and again, there was never even anything to get over.
But there she was. She’d finally come for me.
Sally tilted her head, as if she could feel me notice her. She didn’t turn around to see if I’d seen her, but she didn’t have to. She knew I would. Of course I would. Should I join her in line? Run up from behind and put my arms around her? Or wait for her to come to me?
I got out of the food line and shifted a few steps over to the line for the Ferris wheel, cutting in front of a group of French-speaking students who paid me no mind.
I inched forward, several spots behind Sally. When she reached the ticket booth, she removed her wallet from her purse. But just as she was handing her money to the woman in the booth, a tall man with salt-and-pepper hair came up and plucked it out of her hand. He paid and she kissed his cheek.
She didn’t even have to turn completely around for me to know.
I watched as the man with salt-and-pepper hair opened the door to the enclosed red gondola for the person who wasn’t Sally. I bought a ticket anyway and boarded by myself. I looked up to see if I could see the Sally look-alike again, hovering somewhere above me. I couldn’t. The ride rocked as we left the ground. I leaned out the open window and watched as the world below became quiet and small.
* * *
I saw her again and again. Long after I’d handed out my last copy of Zhivago in Vienna and gone on to the next mission, and the one after that. Our time together had been brief, but that didn’t matter. I’d see her for years to come: hailing a rickshaw in Cairo, her red manicure a flash of color in the dusty street; boarding the last train in Delhi, her matching luggage held by a man twice her age; in a New York bodega, petting a cat who was standing atop a stack of cereal boxes; in a hotel bar in Lisbon, ordering a Tom Collins with extra ice.
And as the years passed, her age always stayed the same, her beauty sealed in amber. Even after I met a nurse in Detroit who opened doors inside me I hadn’t known I’d locked. Even then, I’d still see Sally sipping coffee at a diner counter, or sticking her arm out of a dressing room for another size, or in the balcony at a movie theater watching a picture by herself. And each time, I’d feel that same inner gasp, that exquisite anticipation—that moment the lights go down and the film begins, that moment when, for just a few seconds, the whole world feels on the verge of awakening.
EAST
1960–1961
CHAPTER 28
The Muse
The Rehabilitated Woman
The Emissary
The Mother
The Emissary
The Postmistress
THE ALMOST WIDOW
He was all apologies when he arrived late at Little House. “All is forgiven on your birthday,” I said, helping him off with his coat.
He joined our friends in the sitting room and I brought out another bottle of the Château Margaux I’d purchased on the black market, reasoning that Borya’s seventieth birthday made a fine excuse to crack open the brown suitcase. I’d also purchased a high-necked red silk dress—the finest I’d ever worn.
We ate and drank and Borya held court as in old times. He was in high spirits. He’d begun writing again and told everyone about his new project: a play he was tentatively calling The Blind Beauty. He laughed and smiled as he opened his presents and telegrams from well-wishers around the world. I watched him from across the room, warmed by the light he radiated, a light rekindled after all that time languishing in the dark that had settled over us both. It was the same glow that had first attracted me to him so many years earlier.
Our guests stayed late into the night. When they finally left, Borya made a show of begging them to stay. “Just one more glass,” he said, blocking the coat rack.
Once we were alone, Borya sat back in his big red chair, holding an alarm clock given to him by Prime Minister Nehru, who’d voiced his support for Zhivago. “How late everything has come for me,” he said. He put the clock down and reached for me. “If only we could live forever like this.”
I held on to that night. How healthy he’d looked on his birthday, how happy. But his light began to dim almost as quickly as it had returned.
His appetite went first. He began accepting only tea or broth when he came to dinner at Little House. He complained about leg spasms that kept him awake at night and a numbness in his lower back that made it hard to sit.
Exhausted, he had trouble concentrating on his play and couldn’t respond to the hundreds of letters that still came to him. His bronze complexion faded to a bluish gray, and his chest pains became more frequent.
One night, as I was cooking mushroom soup, he came to Little House with his unfinished play, pleading for me to take it for safekeeping. He looked so sickly I told him he must see a doctor immediately. “Tomorrow, Borya. First thing. How could your wife not see…”
“There are more important matters.” He held up the play manuscript. “If something were to happen…This will be your insurance. Something to support your family when I’m gone.”
When I told him he was being dramatic, he pushed the play into my hands. When I refused it, he broke down and sobbed. I rubbed his back to calm him, shocked at the feeling of his spine underneath my hand. It both repulsed me and filled me with a new tenderness, the kind reserved for an ailing parent. I promised to take the manuscript. He straightened and took me in his arms, kissing my cheek and neck. We retired to my bedroom, eager to shed our clothing, to feel our skin against each other’s, his skeleton against my flesh. At the beginning of our courtship, I’d always kept the lights on, pleased with his seemingly never-ending surprise at my body. Now, so many years later, I turned off the light.
I hadn’t known it would be our last time. If I had, I wouldn’t have rushed it. From the bedroom, I could hear the soup boil over onto the stove, so I moved my hips in the way I knew would cause him to finish.
After he dressed and went home, I dined alone. It would be the second-to-last time I’d see him alive.
The last time, I almost didn’t recognize him. He was an hour late for our meeting in the cemetery, and when he approached, I first took him to be a stranger. He walked so slowly—his footing unsure, his back bent, his hair uncombed, his skin even paler. Who was this old man coming through the gate? As he approached, I hesitated before embracing him, partly because I was afraid of hurting him with my touch, but, shamefully, more because I realized in that moment that my lover was gone for good. This was not him; how could it be?