Then last night, I told him to meet me at the little bijoux a few blocks off campus. When the new semester started, I changed my schedule to make it look like I have a class until late on Wednesdays. So we’ve been meeting then, as well as whenever else we can manage.
There was a matinee ofCasablancaplaying. Ivan had never seen it before. At first, he scrunched up his face at the black and white, but then I could see it drawing him in, and soon he was watching as intently as I was.
When the Bulgarian husband and wife were looking up at the plane headed to Portugal, and the wife said, “Perhaps tomorrow we’ll be on it,” I looked at Ivan. I knew he understood that all I wanted was to be on a plane with him, flying somewhere warm and sunny, away from the snow and darkness of Moscow.
Ivan leaned over and kissed me again. It was warm in the cinema, and completely dark, except for the flickering light from the screen. The bijoux is old, but I like the smell of the old wood and velvet and popcorn spilled on the floor.
When we broke apart for a moment, I realized we were the only people in the whole place—at a matinee in the middle of the week, of an old movie that has never been as popular in Moscow as in some other places.
Ivan looked at me, thinking the same thing.
I got out of my seat and sat on his lap, facing him. I pulled my sweater up over my head and unclasped my bra.
My breasts looked very pale in the light of the projector. Ivan was staring at me with his mouth open. He’d touched me under my shirt before, but he’d never actually seen me like this yet.
I felt nervous for a moment, but then he said, “I’ve never seen anything more beautiful.”
And he pulled me close and kissed me again.
Reaching down, I undid his trousers, and pulled my underwear to the side beneath my skirt. And that’s how we had our first time together, there in the theater while Humphrey Bogart said:
“Who are you really, and what were you before? What did you do and what did you think?”
And Ingrid Bergman replied, “We said no questions.”
It only hurt a little, and it didn’t make any mess like some people said it might. It mostly felt like scratching an itch that’s been tormenting you for months. The relief of it, the satisfaction, was all I could think of at first. And then slowly, as I moved on top of him, that relief turned to pleasure.
And that’s all I’ll say about it now, in case anybody ever reads this someday. Maybe Ivan’s and my grandchildren, who can say.
But most likely I’ll burn this journal soon—I’ve been hiding it inside an old math book, but I’m terrified of Mama or Papa finding it, or even one of the maids. I know Mama tells them to snoop in my things when they’re cleaning my room.
Nadia put down the sheets of paper on which she’d transcribed the fourth entry. It had only taken her a single morning—she was getting quite fast at it.
Somehow, she’d already known before she started that the entry would be an account of Samara and Ivan finally consummating their love affair.
It didn’t trouble her, reading about a torrid tryst involving her own mother. She hardly thought of the girl on the page as her mother anymore. It was just Samara—a wild and passionate twenty-one-year-old girl, who was edging ever closer to the demise of this thing that had made her so effervescently happy for a time.
And that’s all that Nadia could think about.
The mystery of what had severed the bond between these two young people.
Part of Nadia wanted to stop reading and close the journal forevermore. It would allow her to keep the fantasy that they lived happily ever after, enjoying the children and grandchildren of Samara’s imagination.
But Nadia feared that something terrible had happened instead.
In fact, in that moment, she wondered if her grandfather had discovered the affair, and ordered Ivan to be killed.
She didn’t like to consider it, but she couldn’t imagine what else could have split the two young lovers apart so quickly and irrevocably.
Was that why her mother had left for Paris and not returned again for over a decade?
If Stanislav had murdered Ivan, Nadia knew that Samara would have hated him forever.
Secrets and lies. They were the things that bound mafia families together, just as much as blood.
As Nadia sat thinking, she heard an old-fashioned engine coming up the drive—a sound that was already becoming familiar to her. It sent a burst of happiness flashing through her and brought an immediate smile to her face.
She ran to the window.
