Viktor Kapitsa turned to Tamara—they occupied the rearmost seats and no one, in the half-empty airplane, was occupying the seats across the aisle from them—and winked. She returned the wink, lowered her head slightly, and smiled. She wore her hair in a bun, but it flowed back loosely over the sides of her face, so that there was movement, and a ripple of light, in her brown hair whenever she raised or lowered her head. Her smile was both young and wise: and cautious. There had been just that one night when they discussed such matters as Soviet authoritarianism explicitly. It was after she told him yes, she would marry him; told him she would never have married any other man, if he had not asked her, and he had broken down with the joy that filled him, and they hugged, and walked and walked until the dawn came in that crystal night during the whole of which the snowflakes came down gently as sanctifying grace. He talked then about Vorkuta. She knew, of course, about his background. But graduates of katorga are disinclined to talk about it, except among themselves.
