She also knows what being alone with Andrei means, how this banquet is likely to end, and knowing it makes the hours of sitting at the table even more intoxicating. They eat the pig and the swan until only their carcasses are left, devouring their flesh made succulent by spices she doesn’t know, sucking on the bones when there is no meat left. They are insatiable and hungry, as if they haven’t eaten in a year, as if this first meal together is also their last. She feels conflicted, not wanting this gorging frenzy to be over and counting the minutes until it ends.

22

22

He now tastes of the aged Armenian cognac he toasted her with, no longer of the sweet cough medicine that made Sasha dizzy a year ago. He unzips and unbuttons her, carefully, and he doesn’t seem to notice what she wears underneath her dress. She wishes she had worn something prettier, something that only exists in her imagination, but he doesn’t seem to care. His eyes are black, all pupils, and he smells of cigarettes and roasted meat. “Kra-sa-vi-tsa,” he spells in little puffs of air on her shoulder, “a beauty.”

The only light in the room is a narrow streak that reflects on the wood boards of the floor, a streetlamp sifting a yellowish glow through the slit between the curtains. This hotel room undoubtedly belongs to the Party Committee; the curtains are thick, and the sheets are crisp. She has never been certain of what she’s been aching for, but being with Andrei in this room has sharpened the focus and honed it down to this moment, reckless and electric. After almost two years of tiptoeing around, this is the moment they have yearned for, the moment that will bind them forever by blood. She is not afraid of blood or pain, a small price to pay for the intoxication of the two of them finally becoming one. She knows what she wants: his mouth and his hands, his weight on her, the taste of his sweat. This is the beginning of her adult life, and they are writing its first chapter together—in this town full of white churches and dark saints—with their hands and their lips. They are both stripped of clothing, stripped of their shells, exposed to each other. She wants him to keep saying “I love you” in his new voice, a voice that makes him as vulnerable as she is now, a voice that forces the familiar pain that has churned inside her for a year to boil and explode, making her feel certain she is going to die.

“Are you all right?” Andrei asks, pulling the blanket over them. “Did I hurt you?”

She still feels the echo of the ache, but it is dormant now, all gathered in one place, no longer demanding attention. “No,” she says. “I feel good, for the first time.”