“Demanding, too,” he adds.
Distracted by his proximity, she looks up at his mouth; his lips, grinning. She wants to—
Lili clears her throat, gesturing vaguely at the bookshelf. “Rilke?”
“He’s an excellent poet.”
She rolls her eyes. “He’s alright. A bit overwrought.”
“What do you prefer instead?”
“I really like Darwish.”
His grin broadens. “Of course, you do.”
“What does that mean?”
“You have an inexplicable affinity for communists.”
She scoffs. “There’s a lot more to him than that. Have you even readhim?Memory for Forgetfulness,or ‘Out of my ignorance, I called you a homeland...’?”
“Christ, he languishes in his own romantics.”
“Don’t be reductive. It’s poetry,” she retorts. “That’s quite literally the point.”
“I prefer novels anyway.”
Lili folds her arms. “Fine. Regale me with the superiority of Tolstoy’s vision of history.”
Aleksandr makes a face. “I’m not a fan of Tolstoy.”
“No?”
“No. He doesn’t have a vision of history, just a mess of a work, but Westerners seem to think he’s the epitome of Russian literature.”
“I mean, can you even really read Russian literature right now, with everything going on?”
“I wasn’t aware Akhmatova had invaded a country recently.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Blacklisting the work of dissidents from almost a century ago because you find their ethnicity intolerable is a symptom of the same nationalist illness that leads to these invasions and wars.”
“Well, you took a few logical jumps there.”
“Do an autocrat’s actions define the people? Do you feel well represented by your government, these last few years?”
“You can protest. People aren’t exactly marching through the streets of Moscow right now.”
“That march leads right into penal colonies.”
“That sounds like an excuse for political complacency.”
“And you have no idea what type of freedom you have here.”
She shakes her head. “No, no—don’t give me that America-first bullshit. This place has deep-rooted, systemic issues. The U.S. is responsible for more war crimes, more failed states, more shattered economies than you can count.”
“Are we burning Russian literature or tearing down American hegemony? I’m losing track.”
