apartment was small, but neat and cozy. The furniture was simple, but Alyosha had warmed the place up with a red rugon the wooden floor and books and art everywhere. In the hall just inside the door, Alyosha helped her off with her coat and winter boots and gave her a pair of slippers to wear. She followed him down a short hallway past two doors — the toilet and the shower — to the tiny kitchen. He put the Berioska bag on the little kitchen table. She glanced out the window, which looked out at a garbage-strewn lot dotted with an overturned couch, a dresser splintered into pieces, the burned-up frame of a Soviet Fiat.
“Come to the living room. I’ll get our picnic ready.”
Back up the hall to a larger room, the living room/bedroom, across from the bathroom. The bed, covered in a red wool blanket, was at the back of the room near the window. In the corner stood a drafting table with a ruler, a large drawing pad, and lots of colored pencils and paints. The front of the room was lined with shelves full of books, records, and paintings, with an East German record player holding the place of honor. Three chairs sat around a low coffee table that had been painted blue, trimmed with tiny white flowers.
“It’s nice,” she said. The Russian words came more easily now that they were relaxed and quiet.
“Sit down anywhere. I’ll be right back. Would you like some tea?”
“Yes, please.” Instead of sitting, she looked at the photos and paintings that lined the walls. The paintings were precisely rendered scenes of Leningrad street life, full of tiny details: a blackcat skulking in the background; an old man’s hunched posture; a pinched cigarette burning in a gutter; the porous, shell-chipped texture of an old wall. There were oil portraits of young people who looked like they might be art school friends: an arrogant young man with a walrus mustache and a kerchief around his neck; a beautiful blond boy with full lips and sensitive eyes; two lovely girls, one blonde, one brunette. The brunette was dark and smoky-eyed like a silent film actress, a beret perched jauntily on her wavy hair. The blonde looked bored and naked.
Alyosha returned with a tray of snacks and tea. “Did you paint these?” Laura asked.
“All except those two.” He pointed to a watercolor still life of fruit and flowers, and an oil portrait of himself in a style very different from the others — more disjointed and Cubist. “Tanya painted the watercolor, and Roma painted the one of me.”
Roma? Tanya? She guessed she’d find out who they were eventually.
He set the tray on the coffee table and nudged it closer to the bed. She reached down and took a handful of macadamia nuts as he showed her the photographs. “This is my school photo from first grade.” Six-year-old Alyosha — a red Young Pioneer kerchief knotted around his neck like a Boy Scout tie — grinned at the camera, missing his two front teeth.
“This is Mama and Papa.” They posed in a photographer’s studio, stiff and gray-haired, a stern, square-jawed man and a woman in her forties with kind eyes like Alyosha’s.
“This is my mother with her parents at their dacha, right before the war.” His mother, a little girl with a huge white bow in her hair, sat on her father’s knee in a blooming garden, while her mother shelled peas into a basket. The little girl and her mother stared solemnly at the camera, but the man smiled with fatherly pride.
“This is my father with his parents during the war.” This picture, in grainy black-and-white, was startling. Alyosha’s father was a skinny boy of twelve, his pale eyes as large as planets in his shorn skull. His parents were skeletal, eyes shadowed and exhausted. No one smiled. They posed on a rubble-strewn street in Leningrad, a bombed-out building smoking in the background behind them. Passersby walked past the building with barely a look, as if the destruction was nothing unusual, just part of their day. Alyosha’s
“Come to the living room. I’ll get our picnic ready.”
Back up the hall to a larger room, the living room/bedroom, across from the bathroom. The bed, covered in a red wool blanket, was at the back of the room near the window. In the corner stood a drafting table with a ruler, a large drawing pad, and lots of colored pencils and paints. The front of the room was lined with shelves full of books, records, and paintings, with an East German record player holding the place of honor. Three chairs sat around a low coffee table that had been painted blue, trimmed with tiny white flowers.
“It’s nice,” she said. The Russian words came more easily now that they were relaxed and quiet.
“Sit down anywhere. I’ll be right back. Would you like some tea?”
“Yes, please.” Instead of sitting, she looked at the photos and paintings that lined the walls. The paintings were precisely rendered scenes of Leningrad street life, full of tiny details: a blackcat skulking in the background; an old man’s hunched posture; a pinched cigarette burning in a gutter; the porous, shell-chipped texture of an old wall. There were oil portraits of young people who looked like they might be art school friends: an arrogant young man with a walrus mustache and a kerchief around his neck; a beautiful blond boy with full lips and sensitive eyes; two lovely girls, one blonde, one brunette. The brunette was dark and smoky-eyed like a silent film actress, a beret perched jauntily on her wavy hair. The blonde looked bored and naked.
Alyosha returned with a tray of snacks and tea. “Did you paint these?” Laura asked.
“All except those two.” He pointed to a watercolor still life of fruit and flowers, and an oil portrait of himself in a style very different from the others — more disjointed and Cubist. “Tanya painted the watercolor, and Roma painted the one of me.”
Roma? Tanya? She guessed she’d find out who they were eventually.
He set the tray on the coffee table and nudged it closer to the bed. She reached down and took a handful of macadamia nuts as he showed her the photographs. “This is my school photo from first grade.” Six-year-old Alyosha — a red Young Pioneer kerchief knotted around his neck like a Boy Scout tie — grinned at the camera, missing his two front teeth.
“This is Mama and Papa.” They posed in a photographer’s studio, stiff and gray-haired, a stern, square-jawed man and a woman in her forties with kind eyes like Alyosha’s.
“This is my mother with her parents at their dacha, right before the war.” His mother, a little girl with a huge white bow in her hair, sat on her father’s knee in a blooming garden, while her mother shelled peas into a basket. The little girl and her mother stared solemnly at the camera, but the man smiled with fatherly pride.
“This is my father with his parents during the war.” This picture, in grainy black-and-white, was startling. Alyosha’s father was a skinny boy of twelve, his pale eyes as large as planets in his shorn skull. His parents were skeletal, eyes shadowed and exhausted. No one smiled. They posed on a rubble-strewn street in Leningrad, a bombed-out building smoking in the background behind them. Passersby walked past the building with barely a look, as if the destruction was nothing unusual, just part of their day. Alyosha’s
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