ALEX’Seyes popped open. It was dark and it took him some time to rediscover his sense of place. Someone was moving about in the compartment. Moving his head, he caught Mrs. Valentinov in his field of vision and remembered instantly. Her back was turned and she was in the process of dressing or undressing, he could not tell which, only that the entire length of her body was naked. She was stepping into her underpants, the curve of hard buttocks outlined as she pulled up the pants and half-turned. He dropped his eyelids quickly, then raised them slightly as she fitted her breasts into the cups of her brassiere. He felt his penis harden and rise between his spread legs. As she turned, his eyelids fluttered closed again, but he imagined her putting on her slip, the sound of her movements increasing his excitement. Then he heard her close the door to the washroom, the swish of water in the sink, and the sound of her brushing her teeth.
Sitting up quickly, he squinted at the face of his watch. Despite the darkness, it was eight o’clock in the morning, Moscow time. It wouldn’t be long, he thought, as the train crossed the various time zones, before night would become day and he would be having dinner at dawn and breakfast at bedtime. He quickly removed his shirt and pants and poked in his suitcase for fresh clothes. Quickly, he zipped up his slacks and began to work his loafers over his feet. He noted that the bottle of vodka was nearly empty.
Standing up again, he began to button his shirt, goaded by some strange sense of modesty, feeling the pressure to be dressed by the time Mrs. Valentinov returned. Then the door opened and she stood in front of him, wearing only a half slip. His eyes went immediately to her pugnacious breasts which seemed about to burst from their brassiere.
“I hope I didn’t wake you,” she said.
“Not at all. I’m programed to wake up at this hour anyway.”
“The ingrained habits die hard, although you will find that it will be more and more difficult to maintain them on this journey.”
“I can imagine.”
“That’s part of the adventure,” she said, pulling a blouse from her suitcase and putting it on. Then she took a gray skirt from a hanger and stepped into it. He marveled at her nonchalance, dressing before a total stranger. It seemed as natural as if he were at home with Janice.
She patted her stomach. “I’m hungry,” she said.
“You should be.”
“The tendency on these trips is to eat too much.”
“And drink too much,” he said, pointing to the vodka bottle.
“So,” she said, laughing. “We have a moralist on board.”
“No. Just a doctor,” he said quickly, and immediately regretted it. He had tried so hard to be guarded and discreet, to offer nothing about himself. But Dimitrov and all his problems seemed far away now, and his suspicions about Dimitrov’s plans seemed absurd, impossible. I imagined it all, he told himself.
“A doctor?” she said easily, as if it were mildly interesting. “How secure. I can outline my ailments for the next few days.”
“From the look of you that would hardly take more than a few minutes.” My God, he was being flirtatious.
“I’ll make some up,” she said, coquettish, promising.
She put her hand on the handle of the compartment door. “I’ll save you a seat in the restaurant car,” she said. “Breakfast is always a bit of a scramble and Russians are quite voracious in the morning.”
“Great,” he responded, going into the washroom.
But before he could put a ribbon of toothpaste on his brush, he heard a great commotion in the passageway. He opened the compartment door and peeked out. The small boy was kicking furiously at one of the toilet doors. Heads poked out of doors and Tania came running down the passageway, her lips pressed together. She grabbed the boy by the shoulders and tried to draw him away. But he broke free and began bashing the door again.
“What the bloody hell is going on?” MacBaren, the sandy-haired Australian, cried as he looked into the passageway, his face still heavy with sleep.
“I want to go to the toilet,” the boy shouted, grappling with Tania, who had pulled him finally from the door.
Another head popped out from the compartment next to Alex’s. It was the red-haired agent, his “protector.” So they put him right next door, Alex observed with some annoyance.
“I want to go to the toilet,” the boy shouted.
Tania dragged the boy toward his parents’ compartment and knocked on the door, banging with the heel of her fist.
“I’ll pee in my pants,” the boy shouted, his arms lashing out at Tania’s stomach. Finally, the door to the compartment opened and the bloated man in filthy striped pajamas stood there blinking into the attendant’s face.
“You had better teach this young man some manners,” Tania said.
The Australian shook his head, shrugged and slammed the door to his compartment.
“You leave that boy alone,” the bloated man hissed, suddenly comprehending the situation. The boy smirked and broke free from Tania’s grip.
“He was kicking the door, making a racket, annoying the passengers,” Tania explained to Trubetskoi.
“Listen, you bitch,” he said imperiously, the model of stern Communist authority, in spite of his incongruous costume. “You do this again and I’ll have your job.”
He looked toward the locked door of the toilet and walked out into the passageway. “Who the devil is in there, anyway?” he said between clenched teeth, obviously enjoying the exercise of his authority. Alex watched with some curiosity, feeling a suggestive pressure on his own bladder. Maybe the kid’s got a case, he thought.
The boy’s father strode to the door of the toilet and banged against it. “Who is in there?” he shouted.
But before he could bang again, the red-haired man, as agile as a big cat, had moved behind him to hold back his hand.
“I wouldn’t,” he whispered.
“Who the hell are you?” the fat man asked, still flaunting his authority.
Instead of answering the red-haired man twisted Trubetskoi’s arm behind him and moved him swiftly back to his compartment.
Tania, left in the passageway alone, looked at Alex and smiled thinly, shrugging, as if such activity were all part of a normal day’s work. Then she moved down the passageway to her own quarters.
Alex stepped back into his compartment, keeping the door open a sliver and pressing his eye to the crack. His curiosity was aroused. Why had there been no response from the toilet? The train bounced and he pressed his body against the wall, holding the compartment handle to keep the door from opening wider. Then he saw the toilet door move, first slightly, then quickly. A man emerged, moving swiftly down the passageway, and deftly letting himself into the compartment next to Alex’s. Zeldovich! Alex shut the compartment door and stood with his back against it. So Zeldovich was on the train after all. How silly he had been earlier to think that all that had gone before was a mad dream.
Anna Petrovna, he whispered, as if she were in the room. Was she really one of them? he wondered. The memory of Zeldovich’s face jabbed him. “Don’t be a fool, Kuznetzov,” he said aloud, and walked into the washroom.
When he had washed and shaved, he made his way to the restaurant carriage, where Mrs. Valentinov was already eating a big plate of eggs and a small mound of caviar. As she had predicted, the restaurant was crowded, with lines waiting at either end, but she had obviously protected his seat with great determination, much to the annoyance of the little manager. They were seated opposite the British gentleman whom he had shocked the night before. So they were letting him communicate without harassment, he thought.
“Albert Farmer,” the man said, putting out a delicate white hand.
“Alex Cousins. And this is Mrs. Valentinov” Alex paused. “Anna Petrovna,” he said boldly.
“Very good,” she said, winking at Alex and smiling at Farmer.
“A pleasure,” he responded.
“She’s my roommate,” Alex said, feeling an odd sense of possessiveness, perhaps a bit of macho. He remembered her strong, tall body as she dressed that morning.
“I must say you’re luckier than me. I’ve got a snoring Australian.”
The waitress came and dropped the fifteen-page menu on the table before him.
“I won’t go through that again,” said Alex. “Eggs and caviar,” he said in Russian, pointing to Mrs. Valentinov’s plate. The waitress nodded and started toward the kitchen. As he watched her depart, he noted a familiar face in the crowd, the red-haired man, waiting patiently, big sleepy eyes trying to look indifferent. Poor Zeldovich, Alex thought maliciously, doomed to sucking sausages in his compartment and making surreptitious trips to the john.
Mrs. Valentinov spread caviar on a piece of toast and stuffed it into her mouth with relish. Alex watched her, caught by the sensuality of the act. Would they have a brief future together? Why not? he thought, his confidence soaring. He looked beyond Farmer at the sky lightening over the low hills, a layer of glistening frost covering everything with a blanket of spangles, like a tranquil Christmas scene.
“We are in Asia now,” Mrs. Valentinov said. She sounded wistful, almost sad.
“We must have passed the Monument of Tears,” Alex said, still watching the passing scene. Beyond that marker, his grandfather had told him, was the unknown—Asian Siberia, a vast waste, from which few returned. “You were entering the gates of hell,” his grandfather had said. “What was there to do but wash the earth around this marker with your tears?”
Albert Farmer looked nervously at his watch.
“We will be in Kirov soon.”
“Where are you headed?” Alex asked.
“Ulan Bator,” Farmer said. “I’m with the British Embassy there.”
“Oh.” Alex’s interest quickened. Ulan Bator was the capital of Mongolia. It was the edge of the world. Ghengis Khan’s capital. “I didn’t know the British maintained an embassy there.”
Again he wondered if this mild-mannered man could carry his information.
“Ah, yes. The residents of our little island always had their bit of wanderlust.”
“So I’ve heard. Anyway, it sounds quite gloomy.”
“Quite the contrary. It’s rather exciting.” Farmer looked furtively around, then continued. “Just take a peek at any map. It’s rather in the middle of things.”
Alex was, of course, quite familiar with the location of Ulan Bator. He had seen it on the map of China at Dimitrov’s dacha. I must be careful, he warned himself.
“You know Mongolia, Mrs. Valentinov?” Farmer asked.
“When you live in Irkutsk, Mongolia is not as exotic as you might imagine. We’re very neighborly.” She spoke pleasantly, but Alex sensed a certain tenseness that hadn’t been there before.
“Irkutsk. Lovely city. Been there many times. I rather am fond of music and Ulan Bator is, well, not exactly a cultural mecca. But in Irkutsk, you have a superb symphony orchestra.”
“You see,” Mrs. Valentinov said to Alex, jiggling his elbow with a child’s exuberance. “That’s my town.”
“The waitress brought his eggs and caviar and Alex began to eat.
“And you, Mr. Cousins,” Farmer said blandly, breaking the silence. “What are you doing on the Trans-Siberian?”
The inquiry came too suddenly, like a spear thrust. Chewing hard, Alex held up one finger to signal that the answer would be forthcoming, while his mind raced to prepare a safe response.
“A private visit to ancestral haunts,” he said, smiling at his choice of words, suspecting that he had encouraged Farmer’s curiosity. He felt Mrs. Valentinov stir beside him.
“So, your people are also from Siberia.” She spoke the words with a raised eyebrow, and he suddenly remembered. The night before, he had listened silently as she talked about Irkutsk, holding back his natural responses, feeling the tension of resisting his own inclination to talk. She must think I’m an idiot, he thought. He was suddenly angered by his caution.
“As a matter of fact, Mrs. Valentinov,” he said, relieved to be speaking at last, “our grandparents came from the same town.”
“No,” she said in disbelief, her eyes glistening in excitement. Then she ran her fingers through her hair.
Could she be acting? And so successfully?
“Cousins,” she mused, a fingertip on her cheek.
“Kuznetsov.”
“Ah ah.” She laughed, then turned to Albert Farmer. “He is traveling under false pretenses and a false name.”
“Nobody in America could pronounce the damned thing,” Alex said in English.
He washed the last of his eggs down with tea, savoring the warmth. He was enjoying this easy bonding of relationships, particularly with Mrs. Valentinov. He turned and looked at her over his uplifted cup, studied her high cheekbones and the deep-blue eyes set wide apart. Her natural blonde hair fell softly to her shoulders. There was a fullness, a sensual richness, in her lips that he had not noticed before. His eyes met hers. She did not turn away. Again he felt a twinge of possessiveness.
“Soon we’ll be seeing nothing but the taiga,” Albert Farmer said, as he looked out of the window. “The endless white birch forest.”
The train seemed to be slowing.
“Kirov,” he said, looking at his watch. “And right on time. That’s the most fascinating thing about Russian trains. They are always on time, to the minute. It’s astonishing, considering the Russians’ lack of efficiency everywhere else.” He flushed suddenly, remembering Mrs. Valentinov. “A ten-minute stop,” he said briskly, refolding his private timetable.
Out on the station platform people huddled in overcoats, their faces red with cold as they watched anxiously for the train to stop. A line of women near the tracks suddenly came to life as the train finally ground to a halt. Older women in their babushkas, young flat-faced girls carrying baskets stocked with foodstuffs and strange-looking bottles of a milky substance, which Alex later learned waskvas, packages of sunflower seeds and little bouquets of flowers. A motley assortment of people in pajamas, housecoats, jogging suits, overcoats and uniforms swarmed around the women purchasing their wares.
Alex paid his check and stood up.
“I think I’ll pop out to the terra firma,” he said. “Anybody like something?” He had to test them.
Both Mr. Farmer and Mrs. Valentinov shook their heads. Alex moved into the aisle, stopping by Miss Peterson’s table.
“Would you like something?” he asked politely.
“Are those sunflower seeds?” she said, pointing at one of the baskets.
“If they are, I’ll get you some.”
He moved through the crowd, brushing past the red-haired man, who was still pretending to wait for a table. Bounding down the metal stairs, Alex felt the cold bite through his jacket. Looking down the length of the train, he noted the long line of carriages, including one tacked on at the end that seemed different from the others. Beside it, clusters of armed troops stood around smoking cigarettes, automatic weapons slung over their shoulders. Alex gave a quick backward glance toward the restaurant car and picked out the lumbering red-haired man.
Alex smiled to himself and stood aloof from the crowd around the sunflower-seed vendor, patiently waiting his turn. When it came, he made his purchase and stuffed the bags of seeds into his pockets. Starting back to the train, he passed the flower vendor and bought a little bouquet, then grabbed the hand support and lifted himself aboard. The red-haired man had kept a respectful distance, but the string seemed to have little slack.
Alex felt a tug at his trouser leg and, turning, saw the moon face of little Vladimir. He was apparently too small to get a grip on the hand support and was using Alex’s trouser leg to hoist himself up. Alex could feel the tension in the fabric, then the giving way as his pants began to rip.
“For crying out loud,” he shouted in English, kicking his leg to shake the boy loose. The boy screamed but held on.
“Leave the boy alone!” Trubetskoi had appeared on the platform, his face red with cold.
“Get the damned brat off my leg,” Alex shouted, letting go of the handrail and gripping the waist of his trousers, barely keeping his balance. The father reached out and lifted the boy onto the first step, but not before Vladimir had lashed out and punched his father in his big belly.
“Are you all right?” Alex asked.
“You bastard,” the fat man said, still gasping.
The red-haired man had moved near them, observing the scene. Trubetskoi struggled to gain his composure.
“Somebody should lock that brat up,” a woman said. It was Tania.
“And his father,” Alex mumbled.
“They are a menace,” Tania said, moving back into the carriage.
Alex followed her and behind him he could hear the ubiquitous red-haired man moving in his wake.
Back in the compartment, Mrs. Valentinov was sitting in the chair thumbing through the pages of a Russian magazine.
“I was attacked by a four-foot monster,” Alex said, rubbing his hands together and emptying his pockets of the bags of sunflower seeds. He felt along the waistband of his trousers and discovered that two of the belt loops had been torn.
“I have some sewing things,” Mrs. Valentinov said, standing up and moving past him to her suitcase.
The train began to move, haltingly at first, then with gathering speed. Outside Alex saw the army of grandmothers, brooms in hand, sweeping the tracks, ignoring the moving train as it slid smoothly past them.
“I was about to kick the brat in the face,” he said, remembering the flowers, which he had thrown onto his bunk along with the sunflower seeds. They were slightly crushed. Looking at them he felt his old boyish shyness return.
“I bought you this,” he mumbled, his heart pounding. My God, I am clumsy, he told himself.
“A bouquet,” she said, smiling broadly. She took the flowers and arranged them in an empty tea glass.
“Everybody in Siberia is passionate about flowers,” she said. “These were grown in hothouses. But in the summer Siberia is a forest of flowers.” She opened the sewing kit and, squinting, threaded a needle. Crooking a finger, she slipped it beneath his belt and drew him toward her.
“Now let us see.” She surveyed the loose loops, pressed one torn loop to the material and began to sew.
Alex turned his head, and looking down, watched her with interest.
“So, we are neighbors in spirit,” she said, drawing the needle in and out through the material.
“In a way,” he agreed. “Although we’re a generation or so removed.”
“And this journey is a pilgrimage?” she asked abstractedly.
“I hadn’t thought of it quite that way,” he answered. He knew he was throwing caution to the winds now, feeling the sluices within him unlock.
“Then why?” she asked, her busy fingers pausing.
How much did she really know, he wondered.
“Pilgrimage seems so ponderous. Call it curiosity,” he said, watching her bite off the thread with her even white teeth. She re-threaded the needle, preparing to repair the other loop.
“Or putting it another way,” he said, drawing a deep breath, “I’m searching backwards in time within myself to understand my antecedents.” He shook his head and smiled. “What an insufferable pedant I am.”
When she didn’t respond, he went on. “My grandfather was a Czarist exile. It was the dominant experience of his life and he kept it alive for years afterward, handed it down through the generations. I’m beginning to think he passed his obsession on to me, in my genes. I have always had a sense of being the alien corn.”
“You feel this way even in America?”
“Especially in America.”
“Strange!” She sighed.
“Am I making any sense?” he asked, unsure that he was, but at the same time enjoying the exquisite sense of unburdening himself to her.
“When this opportunity came up—” He stopped, watching her. She continued to sew, showing no signs of heightened interest. “I have this mind’s-eye view,” he said. “A whole landscape has been imbedded in my mind and it just seemed important that I see the real thing. So, you see, it is quite possible to hand down an obsession.”
“Yes,” she said, looking up. “Quite possible.”
But he went on talking, carried on by his own momentum.
“You see, my grandfather was reliving the great adventure of his life and immersing his offspring in the idea of it. He was a prisoner here, a convict.”
“What was his crime?” she asked quietly.
Alex smiled grimly.
“This was his crime. When he was sixteen, the head of his village’s council decided that everyone who sold firewood for a living should give him a portion of wood in return for a license to do business. It was really a bribe, of course, and my great-grandfather refused. His license, of course, was withdrawn. He was forbidden to cut or sell his wood. Soon he was barely able to provide for himself and his family. Goaded by hunger and his inability to provide for his family, he soon became an object of ridicule, a kind of village character, whom no one took seriously. My grandfather was just becoming a man himself, and seeing this happen to his father made him bitter and angry. One day, he followed his father into the village and saw him go up to the head of the village council.
“ ‘Thief,’ ” his father cried. ‘You steal the bread from the mouths of the starving. You pig!’ ”
“The councilman just looked at him for a minute. Then he cleared his throat and spat in my great-grandfather’s face. My grandfather, who was standing right there, threw himself on the councilman and ground his face into the mud.
“That was all there was to it. Banishment by word, with no recourse, no trial, no chance to defend himself.”
They were both quiet for a few moments. Anna Petrovna did not seem to know what to say. Alex decided to go on.
“He did knock off a few years by helping to build this railroad,” he said, in a lighter tone. “When he was released, he started a new life in Irkutsk, your home town. He became a prospector and fur merchant. In 1913, he told me, he could smell what was coming and converted everything he had into gold nuggets. He sewed them into my grandmother’s and my father’s clothing, and they hopped the Trans-Siberian and made their way to Vladivostok, then on to Japan and the United States.”
“He sounds like an adventurer, your grandfather.”
“He admitted to being an opportunist, a briber, a cheat and a killer.”
“A killer?”
“He may have been exaggerating.”
“Everything about Siberia is exaggerated,” she whispered. “That will be your principal discovery.”
“How do you mean?”
She stopped her sewing. “It is considered by everyone a beastly place, hardly fit for human habitation.”
“Is that an exaggeration?”
“Absolutely. Here you have an example of good Siberian stock.”
“And me?”
She looked up at him with a slow smile. “The soft life may have taken its toll.”
It seemed a challenge. Was it an invitation?
In a sudden burst of courage, he reached out and grabbed her hand. It was cold. He saw her lips were trembling, and he sensed that her uncertainty somehow gave him an advantage.
Bending down, he pressed his lips gently over hers, feeling the sweet tingle of her flesh, and the mounting tension in his body as he breathed in the special smell of her. He knelt beside the chair and enveloped her in his arms, and felt all his fears slip away. Whoever she was, what did it matter?
Burying his head in her breast, he felt her hands run through his hair, gently caressing the back of his neck. The surge of desire then gripped him, as if every nerve end had suddenly become kindling. Rising, he drew her out of the chair, feeling the full length of her body, his lips moving over her face and neck. She sighed, and said his name, and then drew out his shirt and her hands found the bare skin of his back.
Then, as if some secret signal had passed between them, she insinuated herself out of his arms and moved back, watching his eyes as she began to undress with slow, languorous movements. Instinctively, she knew that he loved watching her. Not a word passed between them. Even the sound and bounce of the train seemed suddenly suspended. His fingers trembled as he removed his shirt and drew his T-shirt over his head. She stood now almost naked, and he reveled in the sight of her high breasts with big pink nipples, erect now, and he watched while she removed her panties, the last barrier. He looked for a long moment, then removed his own pants, and saw her eyes dart down longingly toward his phallus. No woman had ever looked at him that way, not even Janice—certainly never Janice.
He moved toward her, pressed his lips against hers again, caressing her nipple with one hand and, with the other, dipping into the fold of her buttocks. He could feel her shiver as he held her, and knew she was already on the edge of orgasm. Then he drew her down on the lower bunk, a confined space, where they fitted themselves together in an instinctive mutuality. Her hand, with tremulous lightness, reached out for his manhood and, as if she were plunging a dagger smoothly into its sheath, brought it deep into her body. He felt himself shudder and reach into her, and she responded with the same animal sense of abandon. This was the meaning of sexuality, he told himself when it was over, still holding her, determined to keep her in his arms.
He felt as if he owned her and, strangely, as if he had long known her. He knew it was all a fantasy, a reality totally distorted by the parameters of the train journey. Here, life unfolded within a confined space and time. He barely knew this woman, had spoken to her briefly, exchanged information, some of it banal and pedestrian, and yet he could tell himself that he was in love with her. The idea was foolish, adolescent, irrational. But as much as his mind tried to brush it aside, he found himself hooked by this overwhelming sense of possession. Could she be acting for anyone but herself?
He explored her face silently, his gaze washing over her skin, absorbing all the details of her pores, the curve of her full lips, the straight bridge of her nose widening at her nostrils, and finally, above the ridge of her high cheekbones, the blue eyes with their tiny flecks of yellow and black. He had not noticed this before. Old doubts crowded back. What did she really feel? Was he imagining all this?
“Am I dreaming?” he finally asked aloud, drawing blankets around them in the tight space. The sun was higher now, throwing a cold glaring light into the compartment. Outside the landscape had changed as the train threaded through endless rows of white birch.
“The taiga,” Anna Petrovna said. “That’s what we call the birch forests. Millions upon millions of birch trees,” she said, sighing. He followed her eyes, watching the trees, feeling the hypnotic effect of the repetitive whiteness.
“Beautiful,” he said, but he could not be sure what he meant. Everything was beautiful, he decided, putting his lips to her forehead and kissing her gently, feeling the chill of her skin. “I can’t believe this is happening,” he said, as if it were something provocative, profound.
“You are a romantic.”
“Me? A romantic?” He looked at her in disbelief. “I am the least romantic man I know.”
She reached for the hairs of his chest and crushed them in her fingers.
“You must accept good things as they come,” she said, smiling.
“They haven’t come that often.” He smiled back, but suddenly felt panicky. Was she trifling with him? Using him?
“You have been celibate?”
“Practically,” he said, then, feeling a challenge to his manhood, retreated into bravado. “Well, perhaps not quite.”
She laughed, showing the incredible evenness of her teeth.
He raised himself on one elbow and looked at her.
“Why do I feel I’ve known you all my life?” he asked.
“Because you are a romantic. You are reading more into events than meets the eye.”
“And you?”
“I think of myself as more practical.”
“So did I.”
“You should trust more in science.”
“I did. Until now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean—” he paused, not wanting to banter, wanting to give her a real answer—“science cannot adequately explain this.” He leaned over and pressed his lips on hers, caressing her tongue with his own. He felt his phallus beginning to harden again. “I can explain the body’s reaction. What the body does under these circumstances. But not why.”
“It is simple animal attraction,” she said.
“Simple? That would imply that all men are attracted to all women, indiscriminately.” He felt pedantic. If I’m not careful, we will talk it away, he told himself, his fingers roaming her body, reaching for her clitoris, caressing, feeling the need of her again.
“There is no explanation for this at all,” he whispered, feeling her hands reach out for him as she moved her body to receive him. He felt the tight exquisite fit of her organs, the soft, yielding wonder of their joining.
“I love you,” he said, the words coming smoothly, yet foreign to his ear. He might have said them a hundred years ago, perhaps in another life. He was not sure whether he had ever said them to Janice. “I love you, Anna Petrovna,” he repeated, feeling comfortable with the words now, as his body pressed itself to hers. It was as if all the heavy years of dreariness had disappeared, he thought. It was like being born again. He was no longer afraid.
“You must love me,” she said, her voice a whisper, translating the urgency of her body’s needs, as she drew him into her, her hands pressing on his buttocks. He felt the beginning wave of her trembling, like distant thunder. In his mind he imagined a flash of lightning as she gasped her pleasure, her teeth biting into his shoulder.
She continued to tremble in the afterglow of their closeness and he felt his phallus shrink slowly within her.
“I am a very physical woman,” she said, almost in apology. Again he felt a pang of anxiety, wondering if she took her pleasure indiscriminately. He felt vaguely humiliated. Suppose I mean nothing to her? he thought.
“Does that imply that it is always like this?” he asked cautiously. Her eyes opened and she looked at him with indignation. “No,” she said, “it does not mean that.”
“You have no lovers?”
“No.”
“And your husband?”
“We perform our duties.”
“Duties?”
“Are you married?”
“Yes.”
“Well then. Shall I ask you about your wife?”
“Please don’t.”
“Then what of your mistresses?”
“I’m sorry I started this.”
“You should not question so much.”
He was annoyed at his own jealousy, the smothering feeling of possession. She was silent, looking out the window at the passing taiga. He looked at his watch, his sense of time returning. It will soon be over, he thought, and felt her impending departure like a stab of pain. She put a hand over his watch and nestled her head on his shoulder, seeing the soreness where her teeth had dug in.
“I have drawn blood,” she said, licking the small wound.
She finished her ministrations, then kissed him on the neck and closed her eyes. He watched her slip into a light sleep, her lips parted, her breathing calm, and wondered what it all meant. What did it matter? I have never been so happy, he told himself, and he felt his mind relax and sleep begin.