Free The Russian Affair by Michael Wallner

bush; on the pond, a woman was sitting in a boat and reading a closely printed manuscript. The summer was almost over, and anyone with sufficient time had hastened to the park in order to take in as much as possible of what might have been the last of the long, hot days.
    Rosa and Anna had arranged to meet near the children’s playground, where children were climbing through brightly colored pipes and whirling around on a wooden disc. The woman whom Anna sometimes thought of as “the Khleb,” wearing a short red dress, came walking down the promenade.
    “Which of them is Petya?”
    “I didn’t bring him,” Anna replied in surprise. “I thought you said—”
    “Oh, right. You shouldn’t have taken that so seriously.” Rosa took her arm. “My girlfriend has two of these little monsters. When they’re around, there’s no way to have a rational conversation with her.”
    While Rosa chatted, Anna wondered why someone like Rosa Khleb would want to be friends with her. What could she tell a journalist about? There was nothing special about her life; every day, she stood on her scaffolding, painted walls, hurried home, cooked meals for her father, son, and husband, if he was there, and got a little fatter, because she couldn’t pay attention to her figure. What was so interesting about Anna that Rosa devoted so much time to her?
    When the two reached the triple-spiral staircase, like a colossal braid linking the upper and lower levels of the park, Rosa stood still. “That can’t be …” she said. She took a lateral step, and Anna followed hereyes to the profile of a gentleman in his fifties who was sitting at a table and drinking lemonade. Long after this meeting, it would occur to Anna that all the tables around him had been empty.
    “Do you know him?”
    “My teacher.” Rosa had lowered her voice, as if she didn’t want to disturb the lemonade drinker. “He hardly ever comes to Moscow.”
    “Don’t you want to say hello to him?”
    “Not now. We have an appointment later.”
    Rosa wanted to go on, but Anna held her back. “Go ahead, we’ve got lots of time.”
    “Kamarovsky doesn’t like surprises.”
    It was the first time that Anna had heard this name. In her memory, it seemed to her that she herself, not Rosa Khleb, had instigated the meeting. “Go tell him hello.” She’d led her friend into the park café and over to the man, who’d looked up only when the two women were standing in front of him.
    “Rosa.” He hadn’t seemed surprised in the least. Sparks flashed from his eyes; the lenses of the glasses he was wearing had been ground and polished repeatedly.
    To Anna’s amazement, Rosa didn’t explain that they had been walking there merely by chance. Instead, she took a seat next to him. “This is Anna,” she said.
    He gestured toward the chair across from him. Anna sat down and introduced herself with her full name. She’d expected that student and teacher would have things to talk to each other about, but he appeared to be interested only in Anna. “I take it you’re married,” he said.
    She wore no ring; was it so easy to spot her as a wife?
    “Anna has a five-year-old son,” Rosa interjected.
    “So he’ll start going to school this autumn.”
    Anna acknowledged the truth of this observation and answered further questions, all of them courteously posed; and yet she found thatKamarovsky’s behavior went beyond a stranger’s common curiosity. “You were Rosa’s teacher?” she asked.
    “Is that what she says?” His glinting glasses hid his eyes.
    Anna wondered whether the man had been Rosa’s mentor in journalism school or at the newspaper. She said, “I don’t know anything about the newspaper business.”
    “And what do you know something about, Comrade?”
    “Lime,” she replied. “Emulsion paint. Oil paint. I’m pretty familiar with undercoat plaster and finishing plaster, and I even know how to do marbling.”
    “Have you seen the big hall in the