Chapter 27: Meeting Cut Short
Rudy woke from a dreamless nap. Afternoon daylight whispered around the edges of the heavy curtain. Rudy did not open the curtain or turn on a light. He just sat up, put on his shoes, and went out to catch a bus to meet Vitaly at the train station.
He’d ridden a day and a morning from Astrakhan to Samara, up the west bank of the Volga, stopping for nothing but fuel and piss and finally toward dark a restless sleep in the woods north of an ugly, lifeless village called Pobyeda, Victory. When he woke, if he’d lingered a while, made some grits and tea over his camp stove, he could have seen the sun rise over the small ridge. He could have jogged down the ridge to the Volga just three kilometers away and back. But he left his camp stove and running shoes in his saddlebag. He rolled and stowed his sleeping bag without a glance at ridge or any scan for a footpath into the surrounding woods. All he wanted was to go, on up the highway, farther from Astrakhan, farther from anything familiar, forget Samara, shoot through the turn at Tolyatti, ride north and northeast, a track maximally distant from the bell tower, Ksenia’s mountaintop, and Galya’s Kremlin, a route probably roadless and impassable, but he’d find a path, he’d make a path, he’d plunge as far up through the steppe and mountains and taiga as mechanically possible, then trudge on until the tundra swallowed him up or he fell into sea. Or he’d get to the shore when the ocean froze, he wouldn’t discern land from ice, and he’d walk through solid solstice darkness across the North Pole to the Yukon, or Alaska. Just go, keep going, go far, far away.
So often, that impulse… but this time, no spark. What he’d lost in Astrakhan was nothing like what he’d lost in Suzdal, he thought as he crossed the big bridge to Tolyatti. He had plans and work and commitments far greater than a plane ticket, he thought as he ignored the side roads north and east and came around the big bend in the Volga. He’d need some spark to ignite a burn away from this path of least resistance, and he felt no spark as he rolled into Samara and tracked down the hotel.
Vitaly’s train arrived in Samara at 17:15, right on time. Vitaly shook Rudy’s hand and clapped his shoulder. He brought one small suitcase and one large trunk of gear. Vitaly took the front handle of the trunk, Rudy the rear, and they trundled out of the station to find a taxivan that could carry them and the trunk to the hotel. They didn’t say a word on the ride—nothing they had to discuss was the driver’s business. But Vitaly sensed that Rudy wouldn’t have said much anyway. Rudy’s eyes were dark. His quick smile was absent.
To the hotel, up the elevator, to Vitaly’s adjoining room—”You settle in,” Rudy said. “I’ll be in my room.”
Rudy left his adjoining door open a crack. When Vitaly came in twenty minutes later, showered and shaved and in his good black shoes, he found Rudy slumped back in a red armchair, turned toward the window, five floors up, curtain open now to show Samara’s cathedral domes and the Volga beyond.
“Nice view,” Vitaly said. “Anything good to eat here?”
Rudy didn’t respond until Vitaly said his name. Then Rudy jolted a bit and shook his head. “Sorry. Don’t know. Haven’t looked.”
Rudy was usually eager for a good meal after a long ride. Vitaly ventured, “Astrakhan bothering you?”
Rudy gazed out the window for several seconds before nodding. “Yeah.”
“Well, don’t let it. The client bailed, before you even met—so what? Not our fault, not our problem. So let’s eat! I haven’t had anything since breakfast on the train.”
They settled for the hotel restaurant, overpriced but less visible. Rudy didn’t show much appetite for food or talk. Vitaly asked about the epic ride—5500 kilometers from Irkutsk to Astrakhan, another 1200 back up the river to Samara—but Rudy mostly shrugged and said the weather was fine. Vitaly settled for finishing Rudy’s pork chop and asparagus and telling Rudy, quietly, about Ring Group progress: investments regaining their pre-dot-com-bust curve, the dean at TGU arrested and fired, the ends of the Ring tunnel nearly joined on the east side, beside Lake Baikal…. Rudy half-listened and apologized for being such poor company, said he just needed to rest and get to work.
They got to work the next morning, at Samara Polytekh, an institute run by an old colleague of Galina Filipovna’s who had coauthored three papers on nuclear physics with her during Soviet days before turning to industrial technology and opportunities for partnerships with multinational manufacturers. But Vitaly didn’t see much improvement in Rudy’s mood. For three days, Rudy hardly spoke to Vitaly beyond asking for tools or running down checklists. Rudy’s work was sharp as ever; he noticed small power variances in a couple of servers that revealed encryption processors that had been seated wrong and needed to be replaced. But each evening, after a brief review of the day’s work and planning for the next day, Rudy would beg off and disappear back to his room. Rudy hadn’t been to Samara yet—neither had Vitaly—and usually Rudy loved venturing out into any new city. But Vitaly couldn’t get Rudy to come with him in the evening to any of the restaurants or bars they saw on the way to and from the worksite. Not once did Vitaly see Rudy head out for a run or a ride. As far as Vitaly could tell, Rudy went nowhere but work and his room, where Vitaly heard nothing through the door but the TV on softly, past the time that Vitaly brushed his teeth and sacked out each night.
The fourth morning, Vitaly knocked on Rudy’s door at 6 a.m. Rudy opened the door right away, fully awake, comb in hand, dressed but feet bare. “Good morning,” Rudy said, making an effort to produce a brief, polite smile.
Vitaly didn’t answer right away, and didn’t smile. “Is something wrong?” Rudy asked.
“With you, maybe.”
Rudy didn’t seem surprised. Nonetheless, he parried. “Our work is on schedule, isn’t it?”
“I’m not worried about the work. I’m worried about you.” Vitaly shouldered past Rudy and sat on the corner of the unmade bed. “You’re not yourself. What happened in Astrakhan?”
Rudy’s shoulders drooped. He drifted to the window—the room lights were out, and the curtain was open to the city, bright orange in the cloudless sunrise. Anyone looking toward the hotel from outside would see nothing in the windows but the reflection of the sun.
Rudy faced the glass, back to Vitaly. “Nine years, and I don’t think we’ve ever talked about… women.”
Vitaly sat back a little. Rudy was right: they didn’t talk about women. Happily married for five years and not much of a ladykiller before that, Vitaly had no roving romance stories to tell, and he saw no need to pry into with whom or when or whether Rudy pursued romantic partners. Vitaly also saw Rudy chafe at Maria’s attempts to set him up with her friends and girls from the bakery. Maria took Rudy’s discomfort as an invitation to tease him further; Vitaly sensed otherwise and told Maria to back off—”He found his way to Irkutsk on his own,” Vitaly said one night after they’d turned out the lights, “he can find a lover on his own as well, if he wants one.”
Vitaly struggled to speak that directly of such matters to Rudy. Vitaly shifted, sat back a little farther. “That’s not my business… unless you think it should be. Is there… a woman?”
Rudy sighed and leaned against the glass. “I didn’t think there was. I didn’t think there ought to be. But in Kyzyl….” Rudy trailed off, not sure how to continue.
“Kyzyl? That was last spring.”
“Yeah, but Saran—”
“Saran? Our TGU contact? Wow! She engineered the dean’s ouster, got the whole document dump together without any help from us. I told Galina Filipovna we should keep an eye on her. She’s sharp. She could be usef—but whoa, if you and she—”
“No, not me and her. Saran just talked to me, got me thinking about… a girl I met, ten years ago. And last week, out of nowhere, there she is again, the bookstore, dinner…” Rudy started to pace a little “…and then gone.”
That was the longest speech Vitaly had heard Rudy make this week, and it was full of blanks. Vitaly tried skipping to the end. “Gone, like, you had to go, come here, to Samara? Or she had to leave?”
“No, I mean she just… poof. Gone. Not a word.” Rudy’s voice rose. His teeth showed. “She just up and… I’m there, and she’s not, and… dinner, street… just gone! And I don’t know where, or why! Just… fuck!” Rudy raised his fists toward the window as he swore in English. “Fuck!”
Vitaly was lost. Too many blanks. “Rudy,” Vitaly said, trying to calm his friend with his voice, “Who is she? How do you know her?”
Rudy shook his clenched fists for a moment, then flicked his fingers out, as if throwing something off. Then he sat heavily in the red chair. “Ksenia. She is called Ksenia.”
The name hung in the air while Vitaly waited to see if Rudy would continue. The silence told Vitaly that Rudy still had work to do to get the story out. “Ksenia,” Vitaly repeated carefully. “Beautiful name. Maria’s mother had that name.” Vitaly let that connection, that indirect sympathy, settle in. “You said… ten years ago. How did you meet?”
Rudy leaned back in the chair and let his gaze drift away. “In Suzdal. She rode to Galich with me, on the motorcycle.”
“Galich? Where they make the big cranes?”
“Yeah. She’s from Galich. Her parents actually work at the crane factory. Suzdal to Galich… it was my first big ride here. I spent the whole day with her… just one day, but…. She was the first friend I made in Russia. If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be here. I’d have… been on the bus.”
Vitaly understood. Rudy kept quiet about his past, but Rudy had told Vitaly, and Galya, about the tour bus, the terrorists, the official belief that he was among the victims. Rudy wanted his boss and his closest colleague, at least, to understand why no one would come looking for him. But Rudy had only told them he’d missed the bus that weekend. He’d never told them why.
“This Ksenia,” Vitaly said, “she saved your life.”
Rudy sighed and rubbed his head, undoing his earlier combing. “I thought about her—I think about her, a lot, but I never saw her after that. I never thought I would see her. I never thought I should see her.
“But Saran got me thinking about her. And then we met in Astrakhan.”
“Did you arrange—”
“No,” Rudy snorted. “I couldn’t even work up the guts to send her a letter. I didn’t call her. We didn’t plan. We had no idea. We just stopped at the same bookstore, and we turned at the same moment, locked eyes… and… wow. We only had a minute, because I had the meeting with the supplier and she had…” Rudy furrowed his brow “…something. But we agreed to meet for dinner, and when we walked away, I couldn’t think straight. Couple times I had to ask our supplier to repeat some figures, because I kept thinking about what I would ask Ksenia, what I would say to her, and what she might say to me.
“And then—it was 7:55, and I saw her walking toward me on the street, and we walked into the restaurant and ordered salmon.” Rudy was up out of the chair again, conjuring the memories in the air before him with his hands and eyes. “The waitress walked away. Our menus were gone. I looked at Ksenia… and I loved her. It was like everything that held me back, everything I held myself back with, just went snap! all at once. That… that love sat in my soul this whole time, just waiting for me to stop being stupid or stubborn and see it, and say it. I saw her eyes, and, flip! I was ready to run away with her all over again, for real and for good. I’d have called you and said, ‘Done, bye!’ I’d have asked her to marry me before we finished the salmon.”
Vitaly had never heard Rudy talk like this. “Seriously? Marry?”
“Seriously. The moment I saw Ksenia, and then every excruciating moment that she filled my field of vision, I was like, ‘Yup. Love. Always.’
“But we didn’t get to the salmon. We talked, we held each other’s hands—the moment the waitress left, she reached, Ksenia reached, across the table and took my hands…” Rudy crossed the room and seized Vitaly’s hands “…just like this—and she seemed fine, more than fine, maybe as madly fine as I was….” Rudy’s eyes burned into Vitaly’s, through Vitaly’s, trying to make that moment real again.
Rudy let loose of Vitaly’s hands and stepped away. “…Until, suddenly, she wasn’t… fine.” Rudy looked out the window. “Her eyes went far away, and she went with them. She excused herself and left the table, without another word.
“She went toward the washrooms, but she didn’t come back. She didn’t reply to my texts. She was just gone.
“I sat at the table for two hours. Where else could I go? She would come back to two plates of cold salmon and wonder where I went, and then I’d be the idiot, right?
“But not another word. Nothing.”
Vitaly hadn’t expected a story like this. For the moment, he could only approach Rudy’s story the way he approached the usual things talked about, as practical problem to diagnose and solve. “Did you tell her what you were feeling? Did you scare her off?”
Rudy paused, playing back in his mind the restaurant, the table, the conversation. “No… no. I guess not everything in me snapped. I was still holding back. I was just talking with her, while inside, I was trying to figure out some—” Rudy chuckled once” —huh, some polite way to say, hey, would you consider marrying me? I mean, you don’t just blurt things like that out.”
“What if you had?”
Rudy winced, and Vitaly understood that wasn’t the right course to pursue, not right now. “Don’t—don’t what-if me,” Rudy said. “I’ve been doing that all week… and it doesn’t matter. I think I would have said what I was feeling, eventually, before we got up from that table, and I’m telling you, the look in her eyes, at first, the way she reached for my hands… I think she’d have said the same thing to me. But something… interrupted. We talked, we caught up. I got her talking first, about university in Moscow, about the books she wanted to write, about how those books would have to wait while she did business, built up her finances, made sure that she and her parents and maybe someday her own family—”
“So, not married yet?”
Rudy looked at the remembered hands on his. “No, not yet, no ring, either hand. She said she was making sure her own family wouldn’t have to worry about the ruble or mafia or anything else.”
“Worried about gangsters…. Did you tell her your work?”
“Of course not—at least, not the part we don’t talk about. I told her I settled in Irkutsk. I told her I work on buildings and networks at the Institute and that our practical partnerships mean I get to travel, consult, install, repair… but that is all. I said nothing that… what did she call her job, a… communications specialist could put together as evidence of what we do in the Ring Group.”
Vitaly thought for a moment. “Did someone else come in the restaurant, someone she knew? Did her phone go off?”
Rudy mentally replayed the last minute—the change, her departure, less than 60 seconds—at the table again. “No. I didn’t hear her phone. She didn’t reach for it, even when she walked away. I talked about traveling and the motorcycle. I thought maybe she’d be excited to hear I still had the same bike we’d ridden together. But her eyes dimmed. Her hands tightened on mine. I asked if she was o.k. She glanced around the room… but did not fix on anyone. It was more as if she did not see someone she expected. And then, excuse me, and gone.”
“Maybe… I’m sorry, but maybe she did just step out, maybe she was ill, but then someone grabbed her. She is a beautiful woman, yes? Alone in the city?”
Rudy shuddered. “I have checked the newspapers every day. I looked at news online. No mention of her name, no ‘Unknown Woman Found Murdered in River’. Actually, I couldn’t find her name anywhere online. She did not tell me what company she works for, but I could not find any record, any résumé, any company webpage listing her as their communications specialist. She does communications. She would have a web presence for her firm, she would promote her work. But nothing, no trace, current or past.”
“And you called her?”
“Called, texted, yeah, until the next morning, first thing, when the text bounced back, Number disconnected.”
“Disconnected? Strange.”
“Damn strange. It doesn’t make sense. Even if I read her wrong… I mean, date goes bad, women don’t just walk out and throw their phones away, do they?”
Vitaly shrugged. “I’m no expert. On my first date with Maria, I spilled my drink on her, she called me a clumsy goat and slapped me… and we got married seven months later.”
Rudy allowed himself to chuckle. “You’re a lucky man. But… I didn’t spill anything. I’m telling you, she was as happy to see me as I was to see her. One moment, she is there, out of the blue, and we are overjoyed. On the sidewalk, at the table, the way she looked at me, the way I was looking at her… I did not imagine it, I did not fabricate what I wanted to believe. Her eyes, her voice, her hand… she felt what I felt. And then—snap, something changed, something I can’t figure out, and she is gone. She…wants to be gone.” Rudy slumped, head almost to his knees, hands covering his face.
Vitaly considered his words carefully. “Maybe there is a good explanation, but it is not for us to bring about. If this is what she wants, let her have it. We have no other knowledge, and without knowledge, we cannot act.”
Rudy sat up and rubbed his sunken eyes. He looked at his watch. “I suppose we should eat, and get to work.”
“Eat, yes. Work, I suppose, if you are up for it.”
“As up as the last few days. But… you understand….”
“I understand. You do not switch this off.”
“Ksenia did.”
Vitaly sighed. “You don’t know that. Whatever she did, whatever choice she made, it was hard, as hard for her to make as for you to take. You do not switch this off.”
Rudy sat silently, staring out the window, into the sunlight. Then he reached for his work boots. “Thank you. Breakfast?”
Vitaly got up and put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Breakfast.”