Chapter Thirty Ginevra

He-hello,” Ginevra stammered, face-to-face with the most breathtaking human she’d ever encountered. Speaking to her now, his name and other foggy words that he expected her to reciprocate.

“Ginevra. That’s my name, I mean. Nice to meet you, Anatoly. It’s a pleasure.”

She felt proud of herself for managing to eke out that sentence.

“The pleasure is mine.” Anatoly took Ginevra’s hand in his and shook it solemnly. “Would you like to—?” He gestured up, toward the balcony with trees of life painted on the walls.

“Oh? Yes.” Ginevra followed after the man as if swept by an unseen force. She passed through the aisle, up the stairs near the front door, her heart thwacking her chest. Finally, she had the bandwidth to take in her companion, not worry that she would be observed assessing him. He was dressed similarly to the boys in Rome—flared blue jeans and platforms. He had thick black hair brushed across his forehead, which she caught a look at when he turned and flashed a smile.

“Just checking you’re still there.”

“Still here,” she said, shocked at the fact of it herself.

He was hands down the most handsome and magnetic man she’d ever seen.

She tried to root herself back to earth as they mounted the stairs. Heknows you are a tourist. He probably wants something from you—help to get out of the Soviet Union, or he suspects you have goodies in your handbag.

Upstairs, Anatoly led Ginevra over to two wooden chairs in a vacant corner. Immediately he sat and leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees in the manner of a man who was comfortable in his surroundings because he was innately comfortable in himself.

“I don’t bite.” He smiled, gestured toward a chair.

She smiled, too. “I know.”

“You don’t know.” He shook his head, serious now. “You never know. You shouldn’t trust anyone in this country. Anyone can be KGB, or a KGB informant, ready to report on you.” He snapped his fingers. “Quick you are in Lubyanka. Never heard from again.”

“Oh!” Ginevra hovered over her chair in a squat, stopped herself from a seat.

He must have realized he’d frightened her because he said, “Not me. I am neither a KGB agent nor an informant.”

“How do I know you are being honest?”

He laughed, a beautiful guffaw that warmed her insides in the cool synagogue. “Well, first, I am Anatoly Aronov. All my blood is Jewish blood. They don’t let Jews in the KGB.”

“Wouldn’t that be something KGB would say?” Even as she said it, she’d relaxed, though, was teasing him. She was shocked at her ease, her surprising lack of awkwardness.

“Fair enough.” Anatoly leaned back, crossed his arms over his chest. “Truth is, I could be a stukach. An informant. The KGB is masterful at recruiting them. Even Jews can be informants.”

“Jews against Jews?” Ginevra asked, mouth agape. That was unthinkable. You had to help one another, especially your own brothers.

Anatoly shrugged. “When they threaten you and your family, there is often no other choice. But it breaks down trust in our society. It’s why the greatest Soviet pastime is to say shhhh anytime anyone starts to criticize the government or talk about religion. Because your neighbor, your uncle, even your brother, could be a traitor. So I’ll leave it to you, then, to determine if you can trust me. We can listen to anyone, hear anything, but in the end, we only have our wits. The wisdom within to tell us if someone speaks the truth. Or if they lie.”

Ginevra smiled uneasily. The wisdom within—what did that even mean? Ginevra had fearful thoughts, mean thoughts. Deep swells of love, too, especially for her sister and father. And for multitudes of strangers, like the dreary shopkeeper who always looked like the day was too heavy to handle or a little girl turning in circles in a piazza. But wisdom—Ginevra wasn’t sure.

“I am not a stukach,” Anatoly finally said. “I shouldn’t have teased you. You weren’t born in this hell. You don’t understand the humor we prisoners have about our jailers.”

“Is it that terrible?” Ginevra asked.

The smile disappeared from his face. “It is. It truly is.”

“How?”

“You really would like to know?”

“I really would.”

And so he told her—about his father’s tragic death when Anatoly was seven, about the kids who beat him as a child for being Jewish, how he never had enough food to eat or clothes to keep him warm.

He started to tell her about his military years, and then he stopped. “Oh, it’s not an unusual life. I am singing you a sad song. But I am not a victim.”

But Ginevra was already hooked—on this man, on his sorrowful life, a life that made her feel sad, yet impossibly charmed.

Then Anatoly told Ginevra about his mother’s sudden death a few months before.

“She had a stroke. A bad one. She was gone before I even got back to Zhitomir to say goodbye. She died alone. I am an only child, and I should have been there. She died alone,” he said again. “I haven’t said that to anyone. I don’t know why I am telling you.”

Ginevra put her hand over his and didn’t even realize she’d done so until her eyes took it in. She waited for him to extract it, but he didn’t. And she didn’t dare move it. It was the happiest home her hand had ever had.

“And what about you?” he finally said, looking up with a smile Ginevra could tell he didn’t feel. “Any sad stories to match mine?”

“Not to match yours,” Ginevra said quietly. But she told him then, a little, about how her mother had died in childbirth, and her father and her sister blamed Ginevra—even if they didn’t speak it aloud.

“I think it is the things that are not spoken aloud that are the loudest,” Anatoly said, and Ginevra nodded.

Ginevra began to tell him the truth, about Orsola—how she was so beautiful and desired—but then Ginevra didn’t want to sully the conversation by introducing him to a sister who would sound infinitely more appealing than her. Ginevra told him, instead, how she loved writing and dreamed of becoming an author. How she read voraciously, and Anatoly shared that he did, too, even though Western books were all but impossible to procure. His eyes lit up as he shared that a few years back there had been a bicentennial exhibition for American Independence in Sokolniki Park, and after waiting for four hours in the downpour, he’d gotten his hands on a copy of the Declaration of Independence. He’d stayed up late into the night, translating, absorbing. It had struck him like an object crashing from the sky, the enormity of the revelation. All men are created equal and given inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

“Can you imagine it, Ginevra? All men are created equal. Do you have the same principles in Italy?”

“Yes, I suppose we do.” She thought about it, amazed that something she’d taken for granted—freedom—was the thing Anatoly most coveted. But she almost told him that she didn’t know if she agreed that the freedom the Declaration of Independence contemplated was really true.

Because Ginevra had a twin sister and their prospects in the world were not equal. It wasn’t fair to say they had been created as such.

Anatoly straightened up. “I shouldn’t have said that before.”

“Said what?” So much was percolating through Ginevra’s mind, more to process in an hour with Anatoly than in years of regular, routine life in Rome.

“When I asked if you had sad stories to match mine. No one has a monopoly on pain. Least of all me.”

“I didn’t take it that way. Your English is very good, by the way.”

He smiled. “I learned it in elementary school, and now I take lessons, because I dream to move to America. What about you—does America appeal to you, too?”

“Appeal, sure,” Ginevra said slowly, speaking honestly, but realizing she hadn’t much considered it. “What do you mean, as in to live there?”

“Yes.” His eyes were focused on her, like he cared about the answer to the question, like maybe he was even puzzling out some future the two of them could have.

Oh, she was being absurd.

“I suppose I could imagine living in America as much as I could imagine living anywhere,” Ginevra finally said. “Rome is”—she tried to put a finger on it—“home, I guess, but not because I chose it. It’s a wonderful place, of course, but it would be a different thing to choose your home. Maybe I wouldn’t take it for granted so much. Appreciate it more. Contrast always makes you see things differently.”

Anatoly nodded, a faint smile on his lips, and Ginevra felt her heart soar, because she could tell he approved of her answer. “Contrast does that indeed.” He lowered his voice. “When I am out of this place, I shall never take freedom for granted.”

Ginevra thought about that, and her realization she didn’t feel so wedded to Rome. That, despite her father and Orsola there, perhaps she wouldn’t even choose it as her home. America, though? Could she really fathom it? Her future felt foggy—that was the truth. It had always been so: a great fog she couldn’t see past, to discern what would be.

Suddenly a midforties man ascended the steps to the balcony, and the hairs on Ginevra’s neck prickled. The man walked over to the rail.

“Is he KGB?” she whispered.

“No.”

“How do you know?”

“KGB doesn’t come inside, but they are across the street, always monitoring.”

“He could be a stukach, then. An informant.” She was proud she’d remembered the word. She watched the man, her heart twitching.

“Could be,” Anatoly admitted. “It is dangerous to break off from your group, you know. You are a brave woman.”

“I pretended I was sick. I gave my Intourist guide two pairs of pantyhose.”

“Ah.” He smiled. “So why did you come?”

“To Moscow?” she asked uncertainly.

“I can guess why you came to Moscow,” he said. “Adventure. Seeing Soviet marvels. I meant why you came to the synagogue.”

“My father is a professor of Jewish history. We wanted to come to tell you and other Jews that you are not alone. That we will help you however we can. And I have things in my bag. Things I’d like to give you.”

“Oh.” Anatoly blushed, looked touched.

“But…” Something else burned in her throat. She couldn’t quite believe her daring as she said it. “But I think I really came to the synagogue to meet you.”

The week progressed with a joy Ginevra had never known, either before or since. One day she would tour with Olga and the group, and the next day Orsola would go out. Even the days Ginevra stayed with her father in the hotel, Domenico noticed something was different about her, telling her fondly, “This gray place is doing you well, piccolina.”

Ginevra returned to the synagogue and saw Anatoly again. She told him she would do everything she could to get him an invitation from fake relatives in Israel to help him apply to leave the Soviet Union. This time, Ginevra recorded Anatoly’s address in her little book that she hid in her underwear bag when she was sleeping. Then when she’d finished writing it down, almost without thinking she added her swirly Ginevra signature on the bottom of the page, with the curly circle hanging down from the a.

“You sign your name so distinctly. Your signature is almost a piece of art.”

“Really? I never thought of it that way. But my sister has tried to imitate it and she’s never been able to. When you’re a twin, you have to have something that’s all yours. My father has always said I got the creative genes in the family.”

Anatoly smiled, and Ginevra did, too. They spoke for hours. This time Anatoly told Ginevra about his violinist career, and how he dreamed of playing at the Bolshoi. They even took a walk, over to a café on Kutuzovsky Prospekt that Anatoly said was too expensive for regular Muscovites, so it was empty inside. Ginevra said she was treating—she was delighted to treat. The waiter gave them menus that read like books, with endless items listed, but each time they tried to order, the waiter shook his head and said they were out. Finally, Anatoly asked: What did they have? Eclairs. So Ginevra and Anatoly ate eclairs. Anatoly moaned over the deliciousness, the crumbs hanging off his lips, and Ginevra joined in to extol its praises, even though she thought Roman pastries superior.

Then Anatoly asked Ginevra what she’d be doing two days after, which was the First of May. Ginevra understood from the way he said it, like something sour and painful to entertain in his mouth, that he detested the day and what it stood for. Ginevra said that their group would be going to watch the parades in Red Square—and that it would be Ginevra’s day out touring, and Orsola’s day in the hotel, staying with their father.

What Anatoly responded startled her—that he’d met her sister at the synagogue.

Ginevra felt instantly cold all over, off-kilter, especially when Anatoly added, “You are twins, yes, but you are distinct. Very different.”

Because of course, all her life Ginevra had known she was different.

But then Anatoly cycled back to the First of May conversation, and Ginevra filed it away—that he’d met her sister, but appeared unaffected by it. Grazie a Dio. Anatoly said then that he had to march in the parade, in the civilian part that followed the military rendition. Ginevra said, wow, she would look for him. And he said, “How about you meet me after?”

“Is it safe?” she asked. “I mean, KGB…”

“It will be the safest place to meet. In fact, everyone will be so swept up in their excitement over the communist machine. No one will notice one Jew and one tourist—”

“Also a Jew,” she reminded him.

He nodded. “I know who you are, Ginevra. And I can guarantee you, no one will pay us any attention at all.”

So Ginevra did meet him, at their appointed time, in the middle of Red Square, having stolen away from her group fairly easily, as Olga was absorbed, riveted to the reviewing stand with all the communist leaders.

“How was the march?” she asked Anatoly, looking up at him in awe—incomprehensibly handsome in his smart black suit.

“Oh, fine.” He shrugged. “A loose kind of march.”

“What was the whole thing? I couldn’t understand anything anyone said.”

“Ah.” He smiled. “We approached the reviewing stand, you saw it, above Lenin’s mausoleum?”

She nodded.

“Well, did you see Gorbachev?”

“Vaguely. There are so many people.”

“Yes, well, we all shouted, Progressive forces around the world unite against the evil capitalists!”

She smiled at his obvious facetiousness.

“And then you heard it? Ooo-rah!” He imitated it with dramatic force.

She smiled. “I heard it. Our group chimed in.”

He rolled his eyes. “They don’t even understand what they are saluting, eh? Sometimes I feel like I’m in a movie, you know? And we’re all just actors saying our lines. That’s how this whole country feels.”

She thought about it. “I know what you mean.” Then she was surprised to hear herself follow it with “I feel like that sometimes, too.” She didn’t elaborate, but the whole picture of her life flashed back at her—taking care of her father, their dusty apartment without much laughter. “Writing is the only time I feel really me, but my father doesn’t support it. Doesn’t think I’ll ever make money of it.”

“I’d love to read your writing.” Anatoly smiled. “I bet you’re as good as Dostoyevsky.”

She smiled. “I wouldn’t go that far.” But a pleasant feeling settled in her, like a stream lapping at rocks beneath a gentle sun.

“You know,” said Anatoly, “it was my first time seeing Gorbachev.”

“Was it… exciting?”

“Exciting? No. He’s hardly something exciting to see.” Anatoly laughed, like that was an absurd question. “He’s better than the others, at least, provides less fodder for jokes. Brezhnev, for instance—we had many jokes about Brezhnev.”

“I want to hear.”

“Well, there’s one.” He smiled. People jostled by, and Ginevra moved closer to let them by. In doing so, she brushed up against Anatoly’s chest. A jolt went through her.

“It’s a teleprompter joke,” he said as Ginevra was still feeling the jolt. “Someone knocks on his apartment door, and Brezhnev comes to the door, and pauses. He’s uncertain what to do, what to say. Then he reads aloud from his teleprompter: Who is there?”

Ginevra giggled. “That’s funny.”

Suddenly Anatoly was solemn. “I’m really glad you came to meet me.”

“I’m glad I did, too.”

Indeed, for the first time ever, Ginevra’s mind had begun to cycle forward, somersault into fantasies of what life could be. She and Anatoly, in America. Because he was determined to live in America, the land of freedom, the land of the Declaration of Independence he so revered. She would go, of course, with him. It would be difficult to leave her father and sister, but for love—a love she never could have fathomed she’d attract—she would leap.

But then one evening, a week and a half after the Efrati family had come to Moscow, Ginevra’s fantasies were swiftly severed.

Ginevra and Orsola were finishing up breakfast in the fancy hotel dining room with its huge painted glass dome. A harpist played as people helped themselves to the buffet. There were scrambled eggs and pancakes, which were decent, but the juice didn’t taste like juice—just water with sugar. Still, Ginevra savored it like it was the finest wine, so was the cloud she was floating atop. Domenico had eaten with them and had now gone back upstairs to rest. It was Orsola’s turn to tour today, and she looked lovely—in cream trousers and a yellow silk blouse with a jaunty scarf around her neck.

“You look happy,” Orsola said to her sister, and it was funny, because Ginevra had been thinking the same thing of her.

“I am,” Ginevra said. And then she debated telling her sister about Anatoly. She hesitated, because the twins weren’t the conjoined type bandied about in Western lore. They very deliberately lived their own separate lives. Ginevra had always felt Orsola was a little ashamed of Ginevra, of her looks, her shyness, but maybe that was unfair—because Orsola had never given her reason to think so. Had never said a mean word to or about Ginevra, other than that one unfortunate conversation with their father to which Ginevra had overheard all those years before. About Ginevra being responsible for their mother’s death in childbirth.

“I met someone at the synagogue,” Ginevra said, picking up the sugar water and sipping it to distract her thumping heart. “A man.”

“Oh!” Orsola clapped her hands. “Did you? That’s funny!” She paused. “Because I did, too!”

Something cold swept over Ginevra, prickling all her little arm hairs.

“What’s his name? Oh, Ginevra, this is exciting! You never talk of boys.”

“It’s not like that,” Ginevra said, even though it was, but suddenly she regretted saying anything to her sister. “I don’t like him. I just met someone, you know, to help. That’s all.”

“Oh. Okay, well what’s his name?”

A sick feeling gripped her entire being. “Anatoly.” She held her breath. She knew, of course, from Anatoly, that his path had crossed with Orsola’s. But perhaps Orsola wouldn’t even remember meeting him.

“Oh! Oh, that’s so funny. I met him, too. Anatoly—tall with dark hair and gorgeous blue eyes, right?”

Ginevra nodded, sick dread settling in her stomach. “He’s a violinist.”

“Yes! I’ve been meaning to tell you, in fact, but…” For a moment she looked almost apologetic, like she felt sorry for Ginevra. That was the look—pity. Now Ginevra’s stomach felt composed of cement. “I met him, too. Well, more than that—he didn’t say?”

Ginevra shook her head, or at least felt her neck move her head. She didn’t feel like it was she directing it, like she maintained any control over her body anymore. She felt divorced from herself, almost floating above.

“Oh.” Orsola nodded, flushed pink. “Well, in fact, we’ve been meeting in secret.” Her eyes shone. Her sister never looked more pure or happy when in love—and Ginevra had seen her as such many times.

“Meeting in secret?” Ginevra stammered.

Orsola nodded. “He took me ice-skating. He took me to eat.” She laughed. “I’ve been giving so many tubes of lipstick to Olga that soon we won’t have any left.”

“When?” Ginevra heard her voice—hoarse—and tried to convert it to nonchalance. “When did you meet him?”

“Oh, a week ago? When we got here, the first day I went out. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to be like Papa and tell me it’s dangerous and that I should stop being boy crazy. But this is so utterly different from Gino… from Pietro.… Wait a minute.” She studied Ginevra’s face. “You don’t like Anatoly, do you?”

Suddenly Ginevra felt converted to a marionette, manipulated by strings to swivel her head right, then left. Indicating no. No, she did not like the man who’d apparently become besotted with her sister. Because what else was there to say?

“Oh, good.” Orsola smiled big. “Yesterday he played me the violin, and, Ginevra. It’s crazy, but I feel like it’s the first time in my life that I’m actually, truly, falling in love! Why a man in Moscow? I don’t know. But already, we are talking about how to get him out. How he can come to Italy, perhaps. Al cuore non si comanda.”

The heart wants what the heart wants.

Orsola’s beautiful bright eyes gleamed, shooting hearts right out of her pupils, which landed as daggers in Ginevra’s own.

Yes, Ginevra thought—wasn’t that saying true, deeply so? She’d add a corollary, too: And of course, the heart always wants Orsola.