Benjamin looked out of the train window at the passing countryside. As they'd left Moscow, the land had grown flatter and less densely populated, and the monotonous, square, gray rectangles of Soviet-era Moscow architecture had given way to the villages of small, haphazard dachas that studded the land between Moscow and Dubna. The closer they got to Dubna, the thicker grew the forests of pine trees.
On the short flight from Nice, and all during the train ride to Dubna, Natalya had said nothing about what had happened the night before. If anything, she seemed more distant than ever. Benjamin wrote it off to her concerns about her father and, for that matter, concerns about their entire adventure here.
Perhaps because of this, or some other reason Benjamin couldn't fathom, much of their trip to Dubna was spent in silence; watching the passing landscape, making small talk about his impressions of Russia, each of them trying not to appear too anxious for the sake of the other's feelings.
Along the train tracks there were stretches of undeveloped forest and of wild land that he thought probably hadn't changed in hundreds of years. There was also the sense of enormous potential, of great power and pride in the land itself, of immense history and possibility. He said something of this to Natalya.
"Yes," she agreed. "That is the Russia no Russian ever truly leaves. My father used to say we inhale Russian history with our every breath, that it is in our blood. It isn't until I return that I remember what that means."
Finally they pulled into the station in Dubna. It was the last stop on the line and so everyone exited the train. There was a light rain falling, and the air was chill with a premonition of frost and perhaps snow.
As they left their car, Benjamin saw a large monument at the front of the platform: a huge red star with an arc over its top and, and in another arc on the bottom, the English words ATOMIC CITY. He asked her what it meant.
"This is where they created the Russian atomic bomb," she said. "For many years, Dubna was like Uzhur, a secret city. Before 1956, it did not even exist on any map. Of course, there was the old Dubna-some say a settlement here dates back thousands of years. But the new Dubna was built by prisoners under the NKVD's control during the war."
"NKVD?" Benjamin asked.
"I forget, not everyone knows such things," she said. "NKVD was what came before KGB. Before that it was GPU, and before that it was Cheka. Now it is FSB. The letters change, the job is the same. Understandable?"
Benjamin nodded, and Natalya continued.
"At first, the prisoners stripped the pine trees of their branches up to about thirty meters and built many small buildings, scattered about. They wanted the pine trees to hide the buildings. I have seen photographs. It looked like a summer camp for students. And then they sent their best scientists here. Sakharov, Kurchatov, Kikoin."
"Like Los Alamos," Benjamin said, "out in the American desert, where they sent the American scientists."
"Well, not quite," she said. "Dubna was a sharashka, a special camp for scientists. The NKVD was in charge of everything. That is how my grandfather came to be here."
"Your grandfather?"
Natalya looked at him.
"I will explain later. Perhaps." Then she went to a nearby telephone and called her aunt's number. She spoke for a while, then returned to Benjamin.
"Now, we should go to the hotel."
"Won't that be dangerous? We'll have to register."
"Olga said there is a convention of physicists in town, for the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research. It's very famous. They created a new element there, element 105, which they called, of course, dubnium. Anyway, the town is stuffed with scientists from all over the world. Two more foreigners will hardly be noticed."
So they took a taxi to the Dubna Otel. Along the way, Benjamin saw that parts of Dubna were quite charming: rows of forties-style apartment buildings all painted yellow, and many separate houses, some of them rather large and constructed in a classical style not dissimilar to American turn-of-the-century mansions; these were painted in pastel reds, blues, and of course more pale yellow.
At the Otel, the lobby was filled with men and women, all of them looking very academic, and all of them engaged in intense conversations. No one took any notice of them.
At first, the clerk told Natalya there were no rooms to be had, due to the convention. Then Benjamin thought to bring out their press credentials, and Natalya, following his lead, explained they were there to cover the convention for the international press and that their paper would pay a donation to the hotel for finding them space. Once the "donation" had changed hands, an empty room was suddenly discovered.
"Guy's friend was right," Benjamin said, holding up the press credentials. "These are a bonus."
As they were walking through the lobby, Benjamin came to an abrupt stop. He was staring at an enormous frieze on one of the walls. It displayed a forest, obviously meant to represent the surrounding forests of pine trees, but there were also numerous figures and geometric shapes, some he guessed were meant to be people, but others he couldn't interpret.
"What on earth…?"
"Part of Soviet iconography," Natalya said. "It is a sort of map of Dubna. That large arc is the Ivankovo Dam, that circle is the institute, that squiggle is the Volga River, and that triangle, that is the largest statue of Lenin in the world, where the Volga and the Moscow Canal meet."
"How do you get all that from this… geometry lesson?"
"It was a very popular kind of Soviet art in the late sixties, when this hotel was built. Now come on, please," she said, tugging on his arm and pulling him toward the elevators. "We should get to the room."
Once in their room they unpacked. Their purchases included parkas, sweaters, and other warm clothing, as well as casual clothes, everything they needed for their dual roles of vacationing newlyweds and working journalists. Natalya changed into a black turtleneck, matching pants, and dress boots. Benjamin was more conservative in wool pants, a white cable-knit sweater, and brown shoes.
"Tres chic," he said, looking Natalya over.
"Not too chic, I hope," Natalya said. "The point is to be invisible."
He wanted to pull her to him, to pick up where they'd left off in Cannes the night before-but he sensed that she was in no such mood right now, and so he agreed to follow her down to the hotel bar.
Once there, they elbowed their way to a table with their drinks-he'd surprised himself by ordering scotch, while she'd selected vodka-and sat down. Given the high background noise in the bar, Benjamin thought it was as safe a place as any to talk.
"What did Olga say about your father?" he asked once they were seated.
"We are to meet him tomorrow. But not at his apartment. He has been staying…" and she smiled, "in a church."
"Church? Where?"
"Ah," Natalya said, "the very one where I was baptized. In Ratmino."
"Huh," Benjamin said. "And he trusts the priest there?"
"He is being cautious," answered Natalya. "It is his training. Or perhaps it is simply, like history, in his blood." She grew silent again, looked away.
"Look," Benjamin said, "ever since we got on the plane this morning, you've been acting-"
Natalya nodded. "I am sorry," she said.
She looked up at him, placed her hand over his. "It has nothing to do with last night, Benjamin, believe me. It is simply returning here."
"To Russia?" he asked.
"Well, yes," she said. "But more than that, to Dubna."
"I thought you grew up in Uzhur, in Siberia?"
She looked at him for a moment. "All right," she said. "Perhaps it is time to explain a little of my family's history. But if we are going to do that, we might as well order something to eat."
And so they ordered dinner. Natalya asked for kulebyakas, pies filled with meat and cabbage, and side dishes of salted cucumbers and sauerkraut. Benjamin decided to try their stroganoff. They also ordered a red Moldavian wine that Benjamin thought tasted almost like a burgundy, only sweeter. And then, with their meal started and the wine poured, Natalya said she was ready to tell Benjamin her family's darkest secret.
"I mentioned that my grandfather-my father's father-came to Dubna, to help build the Russian atomic bomb. But he wasn't a scientist. He was NKVD. He was one of the scientists'… supervisors."
"So, he was secret police?" Benjamin asked. "That's the dark secret?"
"Wait. You see, the assignment here was considered a… reward. For the work he'd done for the NKVD before the war."
"And that was?"
"Arresting people," she said, looking at him steadily. "Arresting people to be shot." She let that sink in for a moment. "He was a driver of one of the 'black crows,' the dark vans that moved around the streets of Moscow at night during the purges of the thirties. He drove dozens to their deaths… and worse."
Natalya took a long drink of her wine.
"Natalya," Benjamin began, "if you feel guilty…"
"There's more," Natalya said, interrupting him. Her face had grown grim, her eyes wouldn't look at him. "I said it was my family's secret. I meant my entire family. My other grandfather was also NKVD. Only he was a prosecutor, in a camp called Magadan, on the Sea of Okhotsk. One of the most terrible of all the camps. Thousands of prisoners died there. My grandfather was responsible for sentencing men to years of hard labor mining gold or building railways. Or to more immediate… punishment."
Benjamin was momentarily stunned. He looked at Natalya, at her fierce, bright beauty; it was impossible for him to think of anyone of her family doing such things.
What sort of comfort could he offer to someone suffering under the guilt of crimes committed by relatives so long ago? Crimes she'd had no part of committing?
"When did you find all this out?" he asked finally.
"I myself did not learn of this history until after perestroika, after my father resigned from the army."
"And your father? When did he know?"
"Only shortly before then. Only when he began to read the books that had been suppressed for decades."
Benjamin was shocked. "You mean, he knew nothing of his own father's life?"
"Benjamin," she said, almost pleading. "You just do not understand what it was like. The Revolution wiped out not just individuals, but whole families, entire villages. History itself. Most people did not want any record to survive of who they had been before the Revolution. My father literally knows nothing of his father's life before 1917. He is not even certain of his father's birthplace. The name Orlov is as common in Russia as is Smith or Jones in America. His father probably took it to replace his real name that was, for some reason, unacceptable. Nikolai knows only that his father appeared in Maikop, in the North Caucasus, in 1918, married his mother… and then worked for the security services. He never spoke of his life before the Revolution, and never of his work after it."
Benjamin wanted to offer solutions. "Have you tried searching records?"
Natalya shook her head. "There are no records to search." She gave him a slight smile. "It is not like America, where you simply go to the library and begin to trace backward. In Russia, at some point, all such searches reach a blank wall."
"But your other relatives, they must-"
"They have their own secrets to keep," she said firmly. "That is what you do not understand. For seventy-five years, what happened yesterday or the day before was not just unimportant, it was a threat, something that might be used against you by one of your 'comrades.' And what happened before the Revolution… it was another epoch."
"Such secrets… they aren't your fault."
"Someone once said, Benjamin, that in Russia, everything is a secret, and nothing is a mystery. The details of my grandfathers' lives are the secret. But why they chose the path they did, that is no mystery. For the same reasons millions of others did the same things: to survive."
By now the bar-restaurant had become even more crowded, as there simply weren't that many places in Dubna for people to unwind after a hard day of physics seminars. Their table was surrounded by people for whom there was nowhere to sit. In addition, a small band had begun to play music-which included a balalaika, which Natalya said "drives me crazy."
Benjamin thought of something. "Will they let us take wine to our room?" he asked.
"This is Russia," she said. "The only rule about drinking is to never do it… what do you call it? Half-assed?"
Benjamin managed to flag down a waiter, ordered another bottle of the Moldavian wine, paid the bill, and then, using his body as a flying wedge, led Natalya from the bar.
When they were back in their room, Benjamin realized they had no way to open the wine.
"Here," said Natalya, "give it to me. We don't need a bourgeois bottle opener."
She located a pen, asked for Benjamin's shoe, then took these and the bottle into the bathroom. Balancing the bottle over the sink, she pounded the pen into the wine cork using her shoe as a hammer. At an especially forceful stroke, the cork plummeted into the bottle, sending wine spouting up into her face and hair. Laughing, she took a drink directly from the bottle, handed it to Benjamin.
"Now we drink Soviet style," she said.
Benjamin could tell Natalya was forcing herself to drink and make jokes as though they truly were the Levebres, here on holiday, as a way of distancing herself from her confession in the bar.
When the bottle was nearly empty and Natalya clearly half drunk, she crawled across the bed where they'd been sitting and, taking Benjamin's head in her hands, kissed him passionately on the mouth.
Benjamin started to resist. "If you don't-"
Natalya looked into his eyes. "No, Benjamin," she said, "I truly do."
And so they made love again; only this time, Natalya's hands held his body with a kind of desperation. She pressed against him with an ardor that was hunger.
"Please," she said, "let's make love like we are animals. Creatures without thoughts, without words."
Benjamin held her, made love to her. Made love with her.
Later, very late in the night, she was lying with her head on his shoulder and he was stroking her hair.
"Natalya…," he began.
Natalya didn't respond, and he decided she was asleep. But she was breathing softly with her eyes wide open.
Later still, after Benjamin's chest rose and fell with the regular breathing of deep sleep, Natalya was still awake. She looked down at Benjamin, ran her hand lightly over his hair.
"Ya lyublyu tebia tozhe," she said, almost in a whisper.