Although no longer as light-hearted as she had always been, Anya appeared to recover from the loss more quickly and more completely than did Nikita. For one thing, she was thirty-four, ten years younger than he. Her spirit was more resilient than his. Furthermore, she was not burdened with the guilt that he bore like a leaden yoke. He knew that Nikki had asked for him repeatedly during the last weeks of life and especially during the final few hours. Although aware that he was being foolish and irrational, Gorov felt as if he had deserted the boy, as if he had failed his only son. In spite of uncharacteristic long, thoughtful silences and a new solemnity in her eyes, Anya gradually regained a healthy glow and at least a measure of her former spirit. But Nikita only feigned recovery.
By the first week of September, Anya was back at her job full time. She was a research botanist at a large field laboratory in the deep pine forests twenty miles outside Moscow. Her work soon became one more avenue to forgetfulness; she traveled farther along it every day, arriving early and staying late at the laboratory.
Although they continued to spend the nights and weekends together, Gorov was alone too much now. The apartment was full of memories that had grown painful, as was the dacha they leased in the country. He went for long walks, and almost every time, he ended up at the zoo or the museum, or at some other landmark where he and Nikki had often gone together.
He dreamed ceaselessly of his son and usually woke in the middle of the night with a sick, hollow feeling. In the dreams, Nikki was forever asking why his father had abandoned him.
On the eight of October, Gorov went to his superiors at the Naval Ministry and requested reassignment to the Ilya Pogodin. The boat was in the yards at Kaliningrad for scheduled maintenance and to take on some new state-of-the-art electronic-monitoring gear. He returned to duty, supervised the installation of the surveillance equipment, and took the submarine on a two-week shakedown cruise in the Baltic during the middle of December.
He was in Moscow with Anya on New Year’s Day, but they did not go out into the city. In Russia this was a holiday for the children. Young boys and girls were everywhere: at the lively puppet shows, the ballet, the movies, at the street shows and in the parks. Even the Kremlin grounds were thrown open to them. And at every corner those small ones would be chattering happily about the presents and the gingerbread men that Ded Moroz—Grandfather Frost—had given to them. Although Nikita and Anya were together, each supporting the other, that was one sight they chose not to face. They spent the entire day in their three-room apartment. They made love twice. Anya cooked chebureki, Armenian meat pied fried in deep fat, and they washed the food down with a great deal of sweet Algeshat.
He slept on the night train to Kaliningrad. The rocking motion and the rhythmic clatter of the wheels on the rails did not bring him the pure, dreamless sleep that he had expected. He woke twice with his son’s name on his lips, his hands fisted, and a chill of sweat on his face.
Nothing is more terrible for a parent to endure than to outlive his child. The natural order seems demolished.
On the second of January, he took the Ilya Pogodin to sea on a hundred-day espionage mission. He looked forward to the fourteen weeks beneath the North Atlantic, because that seemed like a good time and place to shrive himself of his remaining grief and of his unshakable guilt.
But at night Nikki continued to visit him, came down through the fathoms, through the dark sea and into the deeper darkness of Gorov’s troubled mind, asking the familiar and unanswerable questions: Why did you abandon me, Father? Why didn’t you come to me when I needed you, when I was afraid and calling for you? Didn’t you care, Father, didn’t you care about me? Why didn’t you help me? Why didn’t you save me, Father? Why? Why?