Making Enemies Read Online Free

There she takes off her shoes, her dress and her underclothes. She likes her dress, it does not disgrace her, though she sees how unfashionable it is by comparison to the dresses she has seen in the streets of Leiden. But she is ashamed of her underclothes, worn grey through use and darned. She washes her hands and face and between her legs, cleans her teeth and combs her hair. She wears no jewellery apart from her wedding ring and she does not bother to remove that. Then she turns out the light and goes back into her bedroom. For a moment,before she is used to the dark, she sees nothing and she thinks he has gone. Then she notices his clothes tossed carelessly over the back of a chair. He is in bed, lying under a single sheet.
    She gets in beside him, her heart beating so loudly she is sure he will hear it. They lie beside each other for a while, not touching. Then she reaches for his hand and turns her body towards his, her head down as if she is afraid to look at him. He takes her chin in his hand and raises her face so he can see her in the moonlight that streams in through the open window. Then slowly and softly he begins to kiss her.
    Afterwards, while he sleeps, she holds him in her arms and feels a sense of completion she has never known before. She tries to define the emotion. Is it love? She has only experienced what she imagines is love once before, and it was with Marchenko in the first months. It was nothing like this. There was no tenderness in what he did to her, no meeting of equals, only a man with his desire and she with her ability to satisfy it. She recognizes now what she has always known but refused to admit. She does not love Marchenko, has never done and will never do so.
    She lies against Stevens, and knows that in this room and on this night in this strange foreign town, her being and that of this man whom she hardly knows, fused for one moment. She was not obliterated by this act (as she has been before), she was enhanced by it, liberated: perfected, that is the word she chooses. In giving herself to this man she has been brought to an undreamed-of perfection. She is now more herself than she has ever been. She exults in the emotions of tenderness that flow through her. She is lost to one world but she has found herself in quite another.
    They are lovers until the end of the week. Everyone knows about their relationship at once (at conferences everyone always knows who is sleeping with whom) because she is constantly by his side. He insists they eat together though she thinks this is unwise, but he will hear nothing of her objections. When she is with him, she cannot resist smiling at him. She takes time off with him from the conference to buy some lipstick, skin cream, scent, some special soap for the bath and new underclothes. She goes to the hairdresser. Stevens wants to buy her a dress but she refuses to let him do this.
    She expects her colleagues to criticize her behaviour (she even fears she may be sent back early to Moscow) but they don’t, though they express their disapproval (or jealousy) through their silence. Sheis not sure why they don’t criticize her. Perhaps they realize that these events may be stored away for future use. Patience is one of the arts of living under communism. You hoard the indiscretions of your colleagues and neighbours against the day when the evidence can be used to your advantage.
    Isn’t that what Ivan had done? Isn’t that why she is in this room now, answering Andropov’s questions? The day of reckoning always comes (it is one of the few certainties of life in Soviet Russia), but for these few days in Leiden she chooses to forget so many of the lessons she has learned in her adult life. She knows she has made enemies, but she consoles herself with the thought that everyone has enemies, so what does it matter? Recklessly, she gives no thought to the future because she sees none beyond the end of the week.
    ‘You don’t deny it? I am surprised,’