Last Call for Blackford Oakes Read Online Free Page B

flat, shown it by Rufina one afternoon when he was away. Ursina had described it to Kirov. “It is on Uspensky Street, just off Pushkin Square. From the apartment there is a view to the west, east, and south. Rufina tells me that at sunset you can watch, from the kitchen window, the sunlight sliding down the spire of one of those hideous Stalin skyscrapers.”
    The one-legged doorman admitted them, and they walked up the narrow staircase adorned with colored prints of work by modern Russian artists.
    Rufina was smart looking in early middle age. She wore a jabot blouse, a red rose pinned to one side, and greeted them at the door. They followed her to the little salon, which seemed at first to be simply a burgeoning library. And indeed it served as such—as a study for Andrei—and also as a makeshift dining room.
    The dining table was covered with a white tablecloth. Two candles flanked a photograph of Ursina and Rufina, taken the day they both moved into the apartment on Pozharsky Street. Spread on the table were drinking glasses, what seemed a glass manufacturing company’s total output. Ursina, teasingly, began to count them. “Rufina, did the czar lay on more glasses than you have done, at a party for, oh, a friendly count? Liqueur glasses, wine glasses, water glasses—Andrei, are Dr. Kirov and I, as practicing urologists, required also to drink water?”
    Andrei, thirty-seven years older than his fiancée, his hair thick but completely gray, his shoulders square, was seated in an easy chair, a book open on his lap. He looked up, taking pains to participate in Ursina’s jocular opening. “Ah, professor. Tell me. Is water a strain on the … system?”
    Rufina stepped into the exchange. She said testily, “Too much vodka, Andrei Fyodorovich, is certainly a strain on the system. And you are not to use the wine glasses when pouring out vodka, or”—she laughed—“you will damage not only the body but also the Marxist cause. You will remember, I hope, that Comrade Khrushchev cautioned many years ago against the excessive use of vodka?”
    â€œYes, Rufina,” Andrei stretched out his hand as he might have done to silence a student exhibiting his ignorance, “but he was talking about the peasantry. It is they who drink too much.”
    The hearty knock on the door interrupted the banter. Rufina went to the door and brought in the Gromovs.
    Andrei rose from his easy chair. Those fat folk, Ursina thought, will need to enter the room one at a time. And, true, Maksim Gromov’s girth was enormous, his wife’s torso equally so. “Ah, Maksim, Irina, how nice to welcome you other than in a classroom setting. Have a drink of vodka before Rufina consumes it all.”
    They drank together and nibbled on the zakuski. Ursina turned to Maksim. “Tell me something you learned this week in class from Andrei Fyodorovich. Oh, I’m sorry—I forgot. I wasn’t supposed to ask about what he teaches. If Rufina correctly describes the scene, we must assume it is very secret. Does it tell us, Andrei Fyodorovich, how we can overcome the West in agricultural production?”
    Rufina shot a look of exasperation at Ursina. Andrei’s face was suddenly rigid. He lit a Gauloise cigarette. And then, a mild reproach in his tone of voice, he said, “The Marxist revolution is not about how to make corn grow more plentifully than they evidently manage to do in … Iowa?” His patient smile now resumed, and he reached for his glass. Andrei liked to drink and smoke simultaneously, and frequently.
    â€œOf course, of course. On the other hand,” Ursina took a conspicuous bite of one of the zakuski, “is there anything grander than this smoked salmon? You’re not going to try to trump that as a Soviet accomplishment, this salmon? With what? A peaceful revolution in Nicaragua?”
    Rufina sighed resignedly. She turned to Maksim.