A Russian Story Read Online Free PDF Page B

Samarsky.
    But Eugene Samarsky did not return to the Nebuvaikos’ home. For sure, if he had made a serious effort to care for the little one they would have taken him back at Pushkin Street. But he didn’t feel like nursing the baby any more than Lada did. All the more so since he held a trump card, albeit a fake one — doubts over the paternity. Actually, he wasn’t in any doubt about his paternity and he could even say exactly when it had happened, to within a week. Lada had been to France six months previously; that was where she met Thierry. But she returned to Eugene’s open arms. Something might have taken place between her and Thierry at that time. But the Frenchman was in no way responsible for the birth of Myroslav.
    Thierry and Lada began corresponding; he sent his letters to the main post office, to be collected as
poste restante
. This was an epistolary flirtation. Lada hadn’t yet made up her mind, as everything would be decided by her trip to the feminism summer school in Belgium that Thierry was also to attend. At that time Lada was proud that she had not accepted any money from Thierry, when he had had invited her to visit him and offered to pay her fare. No, as an independent woman, she would travel to Europe if it was paid for with her own hard-earned cash, or by some organisation, but not if it was paid for by men. Then there was suddenly this pregnancy and Eugene’s decision to go to America for a year. Any modern woman would go mad and lash out at a man who behaved so arrogantly. She was quite distraught, and she booked a telephone call to Thierry at that main post office. He came over and comforted her, saying that the main thing was for her to be taken care of. But he was staying put. He would have to get a divorce; unlike Lada, he was legally married.
    Later on, after she and Thierry had finally sorted everything out, grandfather Vasyl said he wouldn’t let them have Myroslav. They could produce French children, but Myroslav would remain Ukrainian. He and grandmother Nina were still young and they would bring up the son that Nina had been reluctant to have, after Lada.
    Dad had turned so many sensible Ukrainians into informers that, following Ghandi’s theory, he felt obliged to bring up at least one in a different environment.
    “Was it all so serious?”
    “It certainly was!” said Lada, naming one of their shared friends, and when Eugene expressed his great surprise she said she had known that young man before the great changes. But that was a quite different story; the time wasn’t ripe in Ukraine to go into that yet.
    “But you were always fond of your father,” said Eugene, who well remembered Lada sitting on her father’s lap, with her arms round his neck, burying her fingers in his hair.
    “I love him now too, and I miss him,” replied Lada.
    “Do you miss him more than the little one?”
    “What about you — who do you miss more in that America of yours? Your son or your father?” asked Lada in reply.
    This conversation took place in Thierry’s house in the Camargue, where they were celebrating Myroslav’s fifth birthday. That was the second time Eugene had seen his son. Grandmother Nina had brought the dear chubby-cheeked lad to see his mother and his French stepfather. Nina looked rejuvenated, elegant and amicable; she had left her shrew’s mask back home in Pushkin Street, hidden away somewhere in a cupboard of Soviet provenance. Grandfather Vasyl had stayed behind to look after the house. Eugene never saw him again.
    Eugene had come with Dounia. By then he had received a US residence permit, so he could travel anywhere in the world. Everyone was pleased, everything was sorted out, everything was fine. Little Myroslav recited short poems in French, English and Ukrainian, to the rapturous delight of everyone present. Thierry told Eugene, in English, that his house hadn’t seen such a cordial gathering since the late 17 th century. Incidentally, at that time he had