The Rocket Man by Maggie Hamand

into the room. Some music was playing quietly: some Beethoven string quartet, she recognised it from a long time ago. It was cold in the flat, as if the heating hadn’t yet come on. He didn’t say anything to her at once; for a moment she felt terribly uncomfortable, afraid that she might have disturbed him at a time when he wouldn’t welcome it, or even, the thought crossed her mind for an instant, was with another woman.
    She said, ‘I thought I owed you an explanation.’
    â€˜What for?’
    She looked at him. Within seconds they were kissing one another; within minutes they were in bed. It was too cold for either of them to want to get up afterwards. It had started to snow outside; the curtains were drawn back but it was still quite dark inside the room. He switched the bedside light on. They lay together in the small circle of light it cast, which emphasised the darkness all around them; he put his arm around her shoulder.
    With his free arm, slightly awkwardly, he reached over to get a cigarette.
    â€˜Do you have to smoke so much? Doesn’t it worry you, that it’ll kill you?’
    Dmitry turned and looked at her. ‘Well, for you, I will try to smoke less. But this one, I must have.’ He lit up and inhaled deeply. Leaning against him, Katie felt suddenly relaxed, intimate.
    After a while she said, ‘You must tell me about yourself. I don’t know anything about you.’
    â€˜So you want my life story, do you?’ He looked at the clock. ‘Well, I don’t have to be in till ten. Maybe there’s time to at least begin.’
    He began to talk, slowly, slightly hesitantly, as if finding it hard to find the words to say in English things he had never before expressed in that language, perhaps even in his own. He told her about his father’s death when he was eight; how things had been hard for them; how he had been determined to excel at school. He had worked hard at science because he was good at it, but also at languages, because it had been his dream to travel abroad. He achieved a gold medal at school and went to Moscow State University where he was a serious student, preoccupied with work. There he had his first serious girlfriend; she was from Cuba. She used to teach him Spanish. He had long ago lost touch with her. He had also met his wife, Masha, there though he hadn’t actually gone out with her or married her until much later.
    Katie asked, tentatively, ‘What went wrong with your marriage?’ but he answered vaguely. They were wrong for one another. Katie must know what goes wrong with marriages – what had gone wrong with her own? It was not anybody’s fault. Masha had not liked his work. Of course he had worked in secret research establishments; the Russians were absolutely obsessed with secrecy, and for her this was not easy. Well, what else was there to say? His life had been very boring. His career had followed a logical progression. He had worked hard, but had never particularly excelled at anything. If he had, he wouldn’t have come to Vienna. The Russians didn’t like to let their top scientists go abroad.
    At that point she asked him, ‘Didn’t you ever want to rebel?’ and he looked at her, surprised. ‘Look,’ he said, stubbing out his cigarette and turning towards her, ‘You had better not have any illusions about me. I was – how do you put it? – a clean-cut Russian boy, a Komsomol type, a Party member. Of course uranium enrichment is a sensitive area; it has as many implications for atomic weapons as for nuclear power. So I have had to be careful. Rebellion – whatever you mean by that – is not possible. Of course, inside, it is a different matter. You get sick of everything. You know the system is absolutely rotten, but on the other hand, you don’t think much of the West either. So you just carry on, but inside… inside there are these little devils