moscow. romance

Moscow was stark, cold, gray, dark, dirty and impressive, as always, and although Ashley had been here before with her father, as always it took her breath away.
But there was little time for tourist pursuits. They had contacts to make, people to seek out-in secret. Pishin Square, Red Square, the Kremlin; all were seen cramed neck through the dirty window of a taxi.
The rules she had learned on past visits came quickly back to Ashley: never talk about anything but the weather in your hotel room; ignore the fact that you are being followed; never carry the address of any Russian contact with you; and don't bother to get upset over mild inefficiencies like a lack of toilet paper in a hotel.
Mischa Busnetsky, who had been out of prison only three months, had organized a showing of the works of an underground artist-a showing that had no official sanction. It was at this exhibition that Lewis Penreith hope to meet him. In those days in Moscow there was another "thaw," and foreign correspondents were allowed almost uninhabited access to certain dissident intellectuals who had been published in the West. These men and women, holding court in small overcrowded apartments, were taking all the advantage they could of their sudden immunity from the secret police, for they were felt to be too well known in the West to be sent to internal exile or prison.
It was in one of those small apartments that Msicha Busnetsky had organized the art showing, and as they approached the large stark apartment building, Ashley's heart had leaped in a kind of fear she had never knwon before on such trips. No meeting with a dissident, famous or obscure, had ever caused such tormoil in her.
The building was large enough that no secret follower could be certain of which apartment was being visited, and as she and her father climbed the stairs to the fourth floor they heard no step on the stairs behind them; nevertheless, a tight band had formed itself around Ashley's ribs so that it was almost impossible to breathe.
The apartment was packed to the rafters. The exhibition had been running for six days, and people knew that it would not be allowed to run much longer.
The forbidden paintings were all noodes. Sensuous, erootik, compelling, and the glow from the skin tones seemed to suffuse that small, overfurnished, overcrowded apartment with a wave of secsooal warmth that touched her, washed her from the moment Ashley waslked through the door.
At fifteen, Ashley had never even had a boyfriend. Her father's work and her life of travel had cut her off from the conventional friendships, but she had never missed such things, her life was so full.
The paintings-some softly, some harshly sedooktiv-made Ashley suddenly, and for the first time, aware that she was a woman. She had stood motionless, gazing at the noods, scarcely able to breathe, until her father had softly called her name.
And she had turned, and her father was standing beside the man in the photograph.
Ashley had watched her body's changes over the past few years, had watched herself becoming a woman, with an air almost of detachment: her breasts had filled out, her legs had suddenly been long and well shaped. She was, after all, a female. But it had never touched her. She had begun to wear more adult clothing because the salesgirls had led her to those racks.
Now, in the moment that she and Mischa Busnetsky looked at each other for the first time, what she felt was, oh Gosh, what it is to be a woman! And it was a prayer of the deepest, the most delighted gratitude, and the most profound discovery suffused her, earthshaking, as significant to her as "I think, therefore I am."
He was tall, taller than her father, taller than anyone in the vicinity, and he was thin and his hair was jet black. And those eyes that even in the photograph had seemed to see so much, saw everything there was to see about Ashley Penreith-heart, body, and soul. Over Mischa Busnetsky's shoulder, the painting of a nacd woman on her knees, her back arched and her hair dangling down her back, cast its golden glow over her mood, and she had a light-headed, drunken feeling that she knew the entire meaning of life.
He took her hand and said her name, and his warm, hard strength seemed to issue equally from his deep voice and from the touch of that roughened palm. From him directly she recovered the strength to speak, and what she said, softly, gently, was, "Don't go to prison again."
An indecipherable look, like a mixture of regret, resignation and sacrifice crossed his face, and his eyes were momentarily darker. He smiled down at her, a slow, understaning smile, and that, too, touched her physically, in a way she had never before experienced and only instinctivly now understood. "I do not wish to go to prison again," he said, "but this is a choice that is not mine to make."
She understood that he intended to continue his battle, whatever the result might be, and something deep within her cried out for her to tell him to give it up, to give in, to tell him that nothing was as important as what she felt in that momwnt-not freedom or right or truth. But she held back the cry as a betrayal, and she smaled at him in her turn. In that moment she knew all the agony of a woman who sees her man off knowing that nothing in life is as improtant as what they have together-nothing-but letting him go to make the world right, knowing that the world can never be right for her i he does not come back.
Mischa and her father talked quietly for a long time about improtant things-of which Ashley heard not a word. Afterward she could not even remember whether thay had spoken in Spanish or English. She was learning a whole new language- the song her body sang. She understood that the red velvet of her dress over the soft fullness of her breast was an unmatchable erootisicm, that the brush of red velvet on her thigh was also the touch of black denim on Mischa; that she and this dark man were, at one and the same time, one complete being and its two composite opposite halves.
When her father's attention was claimed by someone else and he moved away from tem, Ashley and MIscha stared at each other in the crowded room, buffeted by the milling crowd, but untouched by anything except what they saw in each other's eyes.
"Have you looked at my friend Vaclav's painting?" he asked her at last. And when Ashley shook her head, he said, "Come, I will show you." And the electricity between them was so powerful, she knew that his putting an arm round her waist, light as the touch was, was an involuntary movement; she knew with a direct, certain knowledge that he could not prevent himself from touching her in that moment, any more than she could stop her own body's moving toward him so that her hip and leg brushed his as they walked.
He paused in front of the painting of a woman who stood in a simple pose, facing the viewer, waiting. That was all, exept somehow one sensed the woman was watching the approach of her lover. Her eyes and part of her golden body were in shadow, but Ashley knew that the woman was looking at a man she loved passionately, and in every line of that nacd body was evidence of a battle she was fighting with herself to wait, to wait and make him come to her.
Ashley drew in her breath through opened lips and felt Mischa glance down at her. They said nothing, and he guided her gently but firmly to the next painting.
A woman on her knees, her arms up and her lips parted, but this time the shadow falling on her was in the shape of a man's leg and hip, and when she realised the significance of it, Ashley felt her insides turn over. For a moment she closed her eyes.
"you are young?" his deep voice came from over her head. "how old are you?"
"fifteen," she breathed, her whole body aware of the contact between them at leg and hip, and his hand, burningly strong at her waist.
"In the west that is old enough to have learned of love," he said quietly. Ashley caught her breath.
"have you learned about love?" he asked quietly, gently.
she whispered, "no."
"it will not be long before someone will wish to teach you," he said. "you are so beautiful, so alive." there was quiet regret, resignation in his tone. "i would like to teach you about love," he said, and Ashley felt as though she had been struck in the stomach. She looked up at him; he was looking down at her, the same quiet regret in his eyes as she heard in his voice.
"but these things are not to be." he continued, his voice now causing a warmth to flow through her body, his voice caressing her body resonding.
her eyes, wide, gazing into his, and she felt that he must kiss her. "look at the picture," he commanded quietly, doing so himself, and she looked at the picture of the enraptured woman with parted lips.
"this is a look i will never see on your face," he said. "but this is how you would look for me if o taught you about love."
no one around them in the crowded apartment was taking the least notice of them, and Ashley realised, with a kind of drunken joy, that what he was saying to her, in English, could not be understood by anyone in the room except her father, who stood by another wall engrossed in conversation.
:here i can make love to you only with words," Mischa said. "shall i do this? shall i tell you how my mouth would touch your hair, your soft lips, your full young breasts? shall i tell you what we would have together if the world were not what it is at this moment?"
she breathed, "mischa-"
"look at the painting of my friend Vaclav," he commanded again. "this is a woman who is in love with a man body and soul, as you will someday be, but not for me. but if it were i, if you looked at me like this, how would i keep from ttouching your lips?" and he reached out and his fingers lightly touched the oil-on canvas lips of the woman kneeling in the golden glow and the shadow.
ashleys mouth burned as though it were her lips that he had touched. his hand dropped to his side.
"when i am next in prison," he said, "i will remember this as though it were your own flesh i had touched, and i will remember you looking at me with a face such as this, and then i will wish that life had been different." he looked down at her again.
"you do not know about love, but i know how you have looked when my hand is on your breasts, i know what you have said to me when i have touched your thighs, your long legs. everything i know about you, even how you have made me tremble."
ashley already could hardly speak, could hardly stand, but the thought of what it would do to her to know she had made this man tremble, made her head reel. she swallowed, licking her lips.
"i would like to make you tremble." she whispered, hardly knowing what she said.
she saw that she had reached him by the sudden breath that he took, the involuntary tightening of the clasp of his hand on her hip.
"i trembled the first moment i saw you." he said roughly. "these other things will never be. but- you have made me tremble."
suddenly she felt tears in her eyes, "tell me," she said fighting back the tears for in that moment ot was as though all the years streched out ahead of her, desolate, empty, and loveless, while she waited for this man, the man who could never come to her. and instinctively she wanted the memories that he could give her. to store up against the future emptiness thatshe saw so clearly. "tell me how it would have been." she repeated, and in her voice wasa plea against the loneliness, and she knew that he heard and understood.
they walked around the whole room then, looking at the paintings, and all the time his deep quiet voice, rough with passion, was making love to her, slow, incredible, passionate love to her, and her body responded fanatically, drunkenly, to every word until, when he said that she would moan his name aloud as she did.
"mischa," she breathed.
he aid, roughly, "ashley," for in his deep, full voweled accent her name was changed.
she looked into his dark face and thought she could feel her heart breaking, and mischa Busnetsky touched a tear from her cheek with a gentle finger and smiled down at her.
"the world is not as we would make itm" he said quietly.
she saw her father soming toward them over mischa's shoulder, and her heart was chill. she looked up at him while her father helped her into her coat, and she saw in mischa;s eyes that she looked at him for the last timme, and it was i pain fingers clung as though through a barred gate-a gate that would never be unlocked.
holding her hand. mischa saw ashley and her father to the door then down the ill-lighted hallway to the top of the stairs/ her father started down, but with a foot on the first step, Ashley turned and gazed in anguish at the man looming so darkly above her.
"i love you," she whispered, her stomach hollow and knotted with pain. mischa breathed as though he had been struck and silently bent to bary his mouth in her trembling palm.
the sound of a stifled cough several floors below traveled clearly in the silence. the secret shadow, their watchdog, was waiting in the warmth for his quarry to reapear.
mischa raised his head and caught her gaze, "not as the world would make it," he repeated, and he smiled at hr as though he might have smiled at his own death.
she would not protest at what could not be changed. she smiled back at him in salute and farewell Ashley took her hand from his and turned and walked slowly down the stairs to her waiting father.
the next day the art exhibition was closed by the secret police.
a month later mischa busnetsky was in prison again, for "possession of anti-soviet propaganda."