15. Alexei #2
“He described them standing on the edge of this river, arguing about whether or not it was frozen enough to hold their weight. They could see the current moving beneath it. They’d both grown up in the gulag and didn’t know how to swim.
They knew that if the ice cracked, they’d fall in and likely die.
But they were very hungry, and they also knew that on the other side of the river they would find food.
So eventually, my father decided that he would walk out onto the ice first and test it.
He was more than halfway across when the ice cracked, and he fell into the freezing river. ”
I nod at Ofelia’s sharp inhale. “Yeah. I remember doing the same thing when he told me the story. I asked Papa if he was scared when he fell through. He told me it was the most afraid he’d ever been in his life.”
I remember his face when he said it, the way the hard lines deepened, his eyes momentarily dark.
“How did they get out?” Ofelia searches my face, genuinely intrigued, and I remember that this is partly her story too. Ruki, my father’s partner in these tales, was in fact Aleksander Borovsky, Roman’s father.
“It was your grandfather who saved him.” I smile at her.
“Ruki—Aleksander—walked out onto the ice, even though he’d just seen Sergei fall in.
He followed Sergei’s shadow under the ice down the river, until he saw a place where the ice was thin.
He kicked a hole in it, Sergei reached through, and Ruki pulled him out.
They ran the rest of the way across the river together, the ice cracking behind them.
Papa said that night they had a fire for the first time in a month and ate a hare that he managed to hunt.
He said that meal probably saved their lives. ”
“He managed to hunt after all that?” She looks amazed. “How?”
“Ruki, your grandfather, was a jeweler,” I say.
“It was my father’s job to look after his hands.
Aleksander’s hands, my father always told me, were the most valuable thing they had between them.
So when they crossed the river, my father built a fire to make sure Aleksander didn’t get frostbite, and then he hunted their dinner.
They lived to walk another day, as he would always say. ”
Ofelia is silent for a moment, digesting all this. “Wait,” she says eventually. “Sergei was trying to teach you to swim—and he told you a story about falling into an icy river and almost drowning? How was that supposed to help?”
I laugh and take a drink of my vodka as I turn back to the water.
“I told you, there was always a purpose to these stories. Papa asked me what I thought he’d learned from the story of him and Ruki at the river.
When I said I didn’t know, he looked at me, and in Russian he said, ‘Glaza boyatsya, a ruki delayut.’ The eyes are afraid, but the hands do. ”
For a moment I am back there, on the lawn of the Miami compound, my father’s stern words trickling through me like the dark water he’d crossed, somehow transmitting the strength of his experience to my own body.
“He made me say the words back to him.” I’m staring at the sea, but inside I’m a child again, repeating the words after my father.
“Over and over, until I said them perfectly: Glaza boyatsya, a ruki delayut. Then he took the inflatables off my arms and told me that while my eyes might still be afraid, it was time to trust my hands.”
Ofelia’s eyes settle on me. “And did you?”
I nod. “I walked over to the pool and jumped straight in. From beneath the surface, I could see my father staring down at me. I remember I stayed underwater for as long as I could hold my breath, imagining that I was him and the figure above the water was Ruki. Then I just swam up toward him.”
When I broke the surface, my father reached for my arm and pulled me out of the water, hauling me into his arms and turning me around in the air, his face blazing in triumph. I think it was the last time he ever swung me in the air like that.
Later, after the Orlovs came, I held on to those memories like precious jewels, taking them out and turning them over when the river of pain and fear became so dark I feared I wouldn’t ever make it to the other side.
“What a beautiful story.” Ofelia’s eyes are pensive. “I’m glad you had memories like that with him,” she says quietly. “Before . . . everything that happened.”
Her words so closely mirror my own thoughts that my throat suddenly tightens. “It was good,” I manage eventually and take a large mouthful of vodka to burn through the sudden rush of emotion.
The truth is that I needed every one of Papa’s stories to survive those years. And by the time I was through them, I didn’t need him to tell me the stories weren’t fairy tales after all. I could imagine their reality only too well.
Ofelia’s hand touches my arm. “Thank you,” she says softly. “For telling me that.”
When I turn to her, the last rays of the dying sun slant across her face, turning her skin tawny gold and her eyes to arctic fire. The undercurrent pulls me toward her with a palpable force that I have no desire to fight.
“That’s what you remind me of, Ofelia.” I cup her face, my thumb tracing her cheekbone. “That river. Powerful currents that nobody sees, surging beneath the surface. I want you,” I say roughly, powerless to soften my voice. “But I don’t want you to think—”
“Shh.” She covers my lips with her finger, shaking her head slowly. “I don’t,” she whispers, her eyes never leaving mine. “And I want you too, Alexei. More than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.”
I cover her hand with my own, moving them down between us, my eye searching hers. “Are you sure, angel?”
She nods, her eyes wide and deep as the indigo sky. “I’m sure.” Her lips are barely a breath from mine, and suddenly the current pulling me to her is no longer beneath the surface, but surging between us like a spring tide. “Oh, God, Alexei—I’m so sure.”