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"Okay. See you ... on Friday." She met the Russian's eyes a second time, hoping to convey her sincerity. A car was coming in behind the truck.

  "Yes, okay." He seemed to be about to say something but then stopped.

  "Friday at Kentish Town. I promise. I am so sorry about this."

  "I will call you."

  "Yes, call me whenever. I'd love to talk. I'll send you an e-mail to confirm." She turned to open the door and climb into the car. When, three seconds later, she looked back through the window to wave, he was already walking away.

  41 That Most Blissful Zero

  The sickness passed toward the end of day four. He washed himself over and over in cold water on day five. Shaved. Face and head. Bin-bagged his bedclothes and as much of his filthy room as he could. Carried the bags out into the narrow hall. Left them by the hole. He ate a tin of beans, a biscuit, and some dried figs. As much as he could stomach. Then he took the last of the sleeping pills and moved into Arkady's room. He slept for ten hours in the cleanliness of his friend's bed.

  On the sixth day, he thought he could appear almost normal again, though his knees ached and his stomach was still uneasy. He dressed in Arkady's oldest clothes—sweater sleeves and trouser legs rolled, the same gulag prisoner but liberated this very morning, emaciated and all but drowning in borrowed civvies. He lugged out the black sacks. Hauled out his mattress, kicked it down the stairs one flight at a time. Burned everything on the fires outside.

  There was never any real daylight in the winter. A light snow began to fall.

  He climbed the stairs one flight at a time, amazed at the simple functioning of his lungs. He found another sweater, put some socks on his hands, squeezed into his old raincoat, and walked slowly all the way to Sennayska market. He went straight to Tsoikin, the CD seller from whom he had bought so much of his beloved library. The darkness returned. He walked back. He sat waiting. (Had he known all along that he would sell the music? It now seemed so.) Tsoikin arrived at seven and offered him a derisory sum for everything. He accepted immediately and took the cash. He apologized for the hole in the wall and the dust on all the cases. He explained that he was leaving. He asked to keep a single disk—Vivaldi's holy music. He left Tsoikin boxing up and went straight out to call Grisha from a pay phone.

  He hung around Primorskaya station, scared that he would miss him, nursing tea that was forever cooling. Three hours later, at eleven, Grisha arrived in his car. They went for a ride. Henry agreed to meet with Leary the following day. He gave Grisha his money. And Grisha, all grins and goodwill, gave him a little extra in return.

  He climbed out by the bank of the Neva. He waited while Grisha pulled cautiously away—mirror signal maneuver, fog lights on, a scrupulous and law-abiding driver. The wind had dropped, but snow was falling thickly again, flakes like crumbled Eucharist, sticking to everything. The river was frozen. He stuck his hand out and took the first car that came skidding in to the curb. At the lights the man offered him half a bottle of vodka—very special, he said. He gave the man the rest of his money. Just what he needed to make sure.

  Tsoikin was gone. The room was empty now save for the dust, the stereo, and the tattered sofa. He found an unused syringe in his desk. (Had he been saving it there for this? It now seemed so.) He put on the only CD he had kept, seeking Beatus vir, in memoria aeterna. He knew his tolerance level would have dropped. But he prepared a bigger hit than his usual. He drank some of the vodka as he did so, wincing against the sting. Vivaldi's voices sang. He thanked God for his good veins, thanked God that he had taken care to rotate. He swigged another slug of vodka. He thought, I do not want to be here. He thought, This is my friend. He thought, This is coming home. He thought, Don't push it all in at once. Push and stop. Push and stop. Push and stop.

  And when it came, it was like the pure-purer-purest relief and the tranquil-happy surge of every good thing in the world, every sweet taste, every scent, every sound, and then an ever-flooding and perfect absence; and the music played and he didn't care, and his breathing slowed, and he really didn't care, and he lay back, and he felt himself going going going and he didn't care. And his breathing slowed a little more. And he knew he was going over. He knew he was going over. But he didn't care. His soul at last was circling that most blissful zero, angels falling, ragged wings ripped and broken, circling that very center of nothingness.

  And on the seventh day he was dead.

  42 Blood Fever

  London was in a damp and rheumy mood when he awoke at six; his windowsill wet with the night-long tears of some passing ghost or other. A hundred generations of Londoners seemed to have been weeping in the streets when he set off half an hour later. The parked taxi opposite, the red pillar box on the corner, the trees and the lampposts—all seemed to loom at him out of the murk as if to signify a cold aggression on the part of his new surroundings. So suddenly did the first figure he encountered appear that he almost fell into the dead pools of the other's eyes before he had time to stand aside. They stopped a moment before passing each other, and the stranger muttered something unintelligible, which Gabriel's imagination took to be more of the same: "What are you doing here? Get out of the way. Yes, you, asshole."

  Perversely, he was relieved that he wasn't sleeping. Now that he had been off work for a week, he would have resented waking up in the cold darkness and setting out for this breakfast meeting if it meant missing out on lying warm in his bed. But for the first time in his entire adult life, his bed was womanless and had become little more than a cradle for nightmares, waking or otherwise.

  He emerged onto the main road at the bottom of Haverstock Hill, walked past the Salvation Army, and crossed for the tube station. There was no real reason for him to be going. Though that did not bother him: there was no real reason for doing anything. Actually, there was a reason: perhaps he half wanted to find out a little something about the job himself. Or was this too an effort on behalf of his subconscious to pretend? In fact, he didn't give a fuck about TV. Why lie to himself? He would rather edit the new bottled-water magazine in the Roland Sheekey basement than waste his life's dwindling energy making yet more crap for Channel Eight and its ten million catatonic viewers. Hard these days to convey how little he cared for what people did, said they did, wanted to do. His life henceforward, he feared, would be all about disguising himself, concealing his natural reaction, burying it deep. Oh Christ ... Not yet six days and he missed Lina like his own limbs. And Connie, whom he must not call again. Never again—unless and until he was clear. His head ached, physically ached, so that he thought maybe he really did have the flu. He went underground.

  Thirty-seven minutes later he surfaced at Westminster and was surprised to see the day no better established in the presence of the mother of all parliaments. Opposite, even Big Ben seemed a little less sure of itself, its assertion of height—bigness generally—less convincing than ever, its Gothic angles all shapeless and shrouded in the still clammy air. The time was only seven-thirty. He was hopelessly early. He decided to walk out onto Westminster Bridge. He could easily make his way back to the café in good time—have something hot and warm and wait for Becky and Isabella to arrive.

  The sleepless Thames rolled on beneath. The top of the Eye was blurry in the mist, the great wedge of the South Bank barely distinguishable from the gray of the sky, air, and river. Embankment Place seemed less a building than the carapace disguise of some mighty insect—sleeping, awaiting the allotted hour. And the air was so dense with the hoary damp that it felt as though his jump would have been no great fall but slowed, bit by bit, by thicker and thicker vapors until the water swallowed him with barely a splash.

  He stood awhile in his coat, hands warming in the pockets, gazing downriver. London was awakening. He had the impression that the entire city was working to keep the city going so that the entire city could work there. He would have liked a job on the river. That would be good: to see the living Thames every day. To work the water. Some sort of pollution-monitoring patrol. Or so
mething to do with boat registration, perhaps. Rescue the odd whale. Something that started early. Something real. What river jobs were there?

  He turned and began to walk slowly back, looking up again at two of the four faces of that ever-ticking clock. And suddenly he felt the stabbing hurt of memory again—his mother's only half-joking belief that he would one day be prime minister. (Madly, he encouraged her voice every time it came now, preferring this pain of bereavement to the possibility of her vanishing.) That she had believed this of him, her confidence in him, her certainty, her ready support for any step he might take on this chosen path, her thermonuclear opposition to anything that might dare to stand in his way—these things pierced him to the heart. And here he was, all alone with the utterly insane fact that he could not pass the Palace of Westminster without feeling it to be some kind of challenge (there was plenty of time yet), the utterly insane fact that she had somehow made even the great British parliament her mouthpiece—had somehow enlisted it as surely as if all within and even the chambers themselves were merely vassals of her greater spirit. The sheer power of this: to make all things pertain to her will.

  He was still early. Becky and Isabella were due at eight-fifteen. He decided to wait inside—a choice he immediately realized was a mistake, given his unhealthy state of mind. La Cantina was one of those phony places he found spiritually weakening, the whole "concept" more than likely conceived by some pathologically mediocre little masturbator of a city boy with individual interior decor supplied by the inevitably "artistic" girlfriend. Oh Christ. He looked around, wondering whether he was ill or not: polished light wood and chrome everywhere, the newspapers in racks, eggs Benedict for an outrageous sum of money, and a bad wine list presented on a blackboard as if (just this minute) written out in the hand of a motivated and cheeky member of staff. Dotted about, a clientele that deserved nothing less. He went for the sofa in the window and ordered himself a tomato juice and some coffee. He simply couldn't read the newspapers anymore, and he had forgotten his book, so he just sat there, wishing they would turn the awful pretend jazz off, glancing around, trying not to hear the conversation coming from a nearby table.

  One mind tried to remind another mind that the choice of venue was not Becky's fault. Just near Channel Eight and convenient. So stop. Stop this. What was happening to him? (He was ill. Definitely. Fever.) And what the hell was happening out there? Beyond the window, the whole of London seemed to be engaged in an embarrassingly transparent struggle for some kind of authenticity. And yet the more they asserted their passion for this or their great love for that, the more he saw the neediness, the emptiness, the desperation. Their only authentic endeavor was their endeavor to appear authentic. Help me, Ma.

  Becky was exactly on time. And for a while she rescued him. He was amazed by how good it was to see her. She was an old friend from when they were both working on the local papers, and he had forgotten how genuine her good nature was. She had tales of ex-colleagues. She had industry news. She had personal news. TV journalism was a piece of piss compared to print. There was none of the bother. The story only had to stand up for the three minutes you were telling it. And everything was forgotten immediately afterward. Oh, yes, my God: she was engaged. She was getting married to Barney. Remember Barney? (No.) How was Gabriel?

  He glossed his mother's death as "really sad, but it was a beautiful funeral," his job as "not a bad holding station for now," and his relationship as "a trial separation." This last a phrase he particularly loathed. And it occurred to him while saying these things that it was he who was the fake. Of course.

  Unbelievably, Isabella was nearly half an hour late, arriving barely ten minutes before Becky indicated that she needed to go. But there was no point, Becky said, in their getting together unless she gave Isabella the whole picture. So she, Becky, would hang on for another twenty. No problem. (Gabriel was touched by her kindness and her loyalty to him; he knew that she was seriously inconveniencing herself.) It was a low-paid job as a production assistant on a new magazine-style culture show. Isabella should emphasize this, leave out that. It was a long shot, admittedly, but the program was also going to cover the media, and Isabella probably knew as much about this as anyone—the U.S. connection might be useful too. The best bet was just to be honest.

  "That was a waste of time," Isabella said.

  "No, you made it a waste of time."

  "Did I?"

  "Yes."

  "Are you okay, Gabs?" Isabella put down the menu and looked up at him.

  "Becky isn't stupid."

  Isabella frowned. "I didn't say she was."

  "No, but you treated her as if she was—and as if everything she was saying went further and further toward confirming it."

  "That's not true."

  "It is," Gabriel pressed. "It's just that you can't see it."

  Isabella looked at her brother with rare crossness. "What's the issue here, Gabs? I've said I'm sorry that I was late. I'm sorry."

  "The issue—the issue—is that Becky got up at dawn to come here and meet you. And the only reason she did so is because she is a friend of mine, someone who might be able to help you. And so what do you do? You turn up half an hour late and immediately start in at her about her work and her life. That's the issue." He scowled. "Oh yeah, and the fact that you've left yet another job without the slightest idea what you are going to do. Which I wouldn't ordinarily mind, because I'm used to it—you've never managed to do anything for more than a few hours since you were five—except ... except that this time you're bullshitting me about it. Sabbatical, my arse. Three issues."

  "Jesus Christ, Gabs." Isabella put her coffee down to one side as if clearing the space between them. "Where did all that come from?"

  "You don't know what you're doing here. You don't know what you were doing there. You walked out. You gave them the usual Isabella treatment. You fucked everything and you—"

  "So what if I did?" Now she sat forward to return the attack with interest. "I didn't ask you to find me a job here. Yeah, you're right—you organized this for me. I didn't really get much say in it, did I? It was more or less an order. Come down to Westminster at eight-fifteen, Is, I'm sorting you out." She paused a moment and narrowed her eyes. "Oh, I get it. Now that Mum is dead, you've decided that you are in charge of my life. Is that it? You're obviously an expert at running lives."

  "Leave Mum out of this."

  She looked around for a waiter. "I don't have to listen to you."

  They had not fought in twenty years. And even now they could have stopped, left the café, and perhaps survived without serious wounds. But some furious force was impelling them both.

  "No. You don't. You don't have to listen to anything, Is. You never have before. Why start now?"

  She turned back to him, her eyes suddenly ferocious. "Oh ... oh, you have a lesson for me. That's what this morning is all about."

  He met and held the violence in her gaze. "One day you are finally going to see that other people can be clever too. One day you are going to get it into your tiny stubborn mind that, yes, other people can be intelligent as well—in different ways. And sometimes a whole lot more intelligent than you. One day you will understand that not everyone thinks and feels the same as you—not everyone has the same prejudices. Not everyone has reached the same conclusions. There are lots of different kinds of intelligence. Besides yours."

  Her voice was heavy with scorn. "Say whatever it is you're trying to say."

  "I'm not trying to say anything. I am saying it. You think you are this ... this genius at seeing inside everything, at understanding what's really going on. You think you have some kind of social x-ray facility. But you're going to have to wake up and realize that you've no such thing. Because the truth is ... the truth, Isabella, is that you never—you never see anything from the other person's point of view. You never even come close." He leaned toward her, and his words were measured to deliver their payload. "Just now, your body language, your manner, everythin
g about you contrived to make the whole thing a waste of time. You weren't listening at all. Not really. Every gesture and every remark, you made only to demonstrate your worldview to Becky. That's all you cared about. Getting across what sort of a person you are. Whatever the conversation was ostensibly about, all you wanted to do was make her understand your way of seeing things, and not only that, but ... but that your way of seeing things is ... is in some way the coolest. Except she wasn't really going along with your jocular little tone—about how it's all shit and a bit of a game and anyone could do it with their eyes closed. Because she works in television, for Christ's sake, Is. That's her job. She doesn't share your opinions. Of course she doesn't—she can't. She's got a job and she is doing it. Sticking to it. Doing it. Going the distance. Actually committing to—"

  "I didn't realize you thought Channel Eight was so great."

  "That's not the point and you know it. I don't give a fuck about Channel Eight." He had cowed her for the moment. "What I'm trying to get through to you is that whether or not you are ultimately existentially right about Channel fucking Eight, other people have different opinions, and they might, just might, turn out to be as clever and as insightful as yours. And you have to start understanding that. Because otherwise you can't learn anything. Because otherwise all your insight and x-ray vision will amount to nothing more than the worst kind of pathetically disguised egotistical evangelism. Because otherwise these other people will get up and leave, like Becky did just now, thinking you are an arrogant, naive, conceited little bitch."

  "Whereas you—you are all heart, right, Gabs?" Her throat was reddening but she was leaning forward to meet him now, the space between them narrowing. "You think and feel on their behalf, on everyone's behalf ... and then—and then—you go right ahead and do it anyway. Straight to the torture: fuck with everybody around you, but it's all okay, because you're doing all the feeling and thinking on their behalf." She jeered at him. "Very kind. Thank you on behalf of all the women you are so graciously caring for."