Bennis came up to the door of the bedroom and said, “What do you think you’re doing? Don’t you know the building is unsafe? The roof could collapse on you and you could get killed.”
“The roof didn’t collapse on you,” Tibor said. “You didn’t get killed.”
“We were being careful.”
“I’m being careful too,” Tibor said. He waved his hand at the pile on the floor. “There were some things I wanted to get. There is no point telling me that you could have gotten them for me. I wouldn’t have been able to explain what to look for. And you don’t read Armenian. Not very many people do, here.”
“So what’s that?” Bennis said. “That’s your wife, isn’t it?”
“My wife, yes, Anna. Close to the time when we were first married. She wanted to come to America much more than I did. I didn’t really want to come. I wanted to live in a free Armenia. But Anna wanted to come to America even if Armenia became free.”
“She died, didn’t she?”
“Yes.” Tibor looked down at the picture. “She was shot trying to run away when we were raided celebrating the liturgy. We were not allowed to celebrate the liturgy except in government-approved churches. The clergy in those churches were all spies. Nobody respected them. We would celebrate the liturgy in places where it was not licit, in people’s houses, in basements. We took liberties so that people could worship God and not be spied on, and then one day we were given away, and that was that. When Anna died, she was already out of the house, running down the street, running away. The other two people who died were right there in the room, backed against the wall together. When they reported it in the press later, they said we were armed and had explosives. But they did not report it much. It was only another incident.”
“What happened to you? How did you get away?”
“I didn’t get away. If I could have gotten away, I would have gone with Anna. I was arrested. Then for a while I was in prison, in Armenia and later in the Soviet union . Then eventually I was released. Don’t ask me why. People were arrested and released on whim, almost. There were sentences, but they didn’t mean anything. In my case there wasn’t even a trial. So I was in prison and then I was released and taken back to Armenia, and when I got there I found some friends and began to make my way out. For a long time, I felt very guilty, being here. It didn’t seem right to me that I should be here and Anna could not be. Then I was called to Holy Trinity, and the rest you know.”
“What are the papers?” Bennis asked. “They look old.”
“They’re crumbling to dust. Everything does. I just hate the thought of losing them. They’re letters, from Anna to me, the ones she wrote me when we were not married and I was studying to be a priest. But I wasn’t studying in the ordinary way, in the government-approved theological college. We had to be careful.”
“You know, there are ways to preserve old letters like those. If you don’t mind not being able to touch the paper itself, you can have them sealed in plastic and that keeps the air from them and keeps them from disintegrating.”
“This is expensive?”
“I don’t know,” Bennis said. “Why don’t you let me have one of them later and I’ll get it done and we’ll see.”
“I have been thinking that they would wear away, and then I would have only the picture. It would not be the same. It is her voice I miss. Sometimes I can hear her talking to me, but it gets fainter all the time. It’s only a trick the mind plays, I know. I am not being ridiculous. I just need to hear her voice.”
“Well, in the meantime, let’s get you and this stuff out of here. Go down to the Ararat for breakfast. Most everybody will be gone, but Gregor will be there because he’s waiting for John Jackman. You can talk to them. I think they’re going to go over what the police have on the bombing. And then something happened yesterday with a gun.”
“Yes,” Tibor said. He stood up and then leaned over to get his papers and his picture. Anna smiled up at him in black and white, posed with head tilted like a forties movie star. “He has told me something of this yesterday. I wasn’t paying enough attention. It seems to me, a little, as if—I feel all the time I am in a play, not a reality. Maybe I am becoming an adolescent in my old age.”
“Come on,” Bennis said. “If you’ve got to be up and about, it will do you good to be up and about among cheerful people. If anybody is cheerful these days. Oh, there was another murder out in Bryn Mawr. Have you seen the papers?”