Lili scowls. “Fine, then. Literature: Which of your comrades do you support? Rand?”
He tilts his head towards the far end of the bookshelf, behind his desk. “Not quite.”
Drifting over, she examines the books in the corner. Unfamiliar language on the spines: foreign, Cyrillic.
“Dostoyevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Bulgakov,” he translates for her. “Actual literature.”
She’s about to push him on his choices when she spots the picture frames clustered on the end of the shelf. “That’s you?” she asks.
“Yes.”
Faded snapshot, black and white. A nondescript room, maybe a kitchen or living room. Hint of a drab patterned tablecloth in the corner, a few books open. An unplanned photograph.
He looks unhappy. In the picture, Aleksandr is maybe eleven or twelve, sitting at the table. Closed expression, stiff set of his shoulders, challenging tilt of his chin, but hard sadness in his eyes.
Empathy stirs in Lili. Ignoring it, she examines the rest of the photograph: the woman’s hand on his shoulder, somewhat careless but also protective. She’s stunning, yet severe. Long black hair, hollow cheekbones. The same mouth and eyes as Aleksandr. Serious, defiant gaze.
Curiosity gathers. “And your mother?”
“Yes.”
“She’s beautiful. Is she, uh—is she still alive?”
“Oh, she’s alive. Still in Saint Petersburg, won’t leave the country.”
“Is she—ah, supportive of the regime?”
A hard exhale, close to a laugh. “No.”
It’s a dangerous interest, wanting to learn more about him, but she keeps toeing the line. “What does she do?”
“Makes my life miserable.”
Lili nudges him with her shoulder.
“A teacher,” he says. “She used to be a teacher.”
“And your father?”
“Heart surgeon. Died when I was fairly young.”
He sounds stiff, a bit reserved: It’s subtle, the sense that he doesn’t want to speak on it any further. Treading too close to common territory—lost parents, personal histories—that she does not want to forfeit on her end, Lili looks at the other photographs—and laughs. “That’s you?”
It’s the only color photograph: the lush greens of a park, a wooden bench, two young men sitting together. He’s likely her age here, she realizes. Jeans, a dark green knit sweater. Hair a bit longer than he wears it now. He’s already grown into his good looks, obviously from his mother. His arm rests over the back of the bench, relaxed but with his vaguely protective stance oriented around the younger boy beside him, late teens or early twenties. There’s a superficial easiness to Aleksandr, a smile on his face that doesn’t reach his serious gaze. It contrasts with the genuine openness, the youthful smile, of his friend. A lack of trust, guardedness.
You can start to see it, she thinks: the man he’d become, already in his face.
“Is that your brother?” she asks. The two don’t look similar, but Aleksandr’s posture is familial.
“No, a friend from home. We both went to England for university. He’s followed me into work, too. I can’t quite shake him.”
“When was this?” she asks.
“’98, I think.”
“Great, the year before I was born.”
Aleksandr laughs, sitting down in the chair behind his desk. “I’d just graduated.” He pulls her into his lap, resting his hand on her thigh as she settles against his chest. “Michael—Mikhail, he anglicized—had a few more years left, but he kept wandering down to London like some stray dog, showing up on my doorstep. Thick Russian accent, too, completely bewildered all my friends.”
