Pravda Page 38

  He half slept. He wanted a woman so badly that he felt he could barely breathe. Yes, this room, this mess, all of this would not matter if only there were some woman with whom he could now lie down and open up the constricted passageways of his heart. He turned away from what light was left in the day. From the age of fifteen, he had never gone more than a fortnight without someone to share his thoughts, to touch, to listen to, to laugh with—some he had admired, some he had simply desired, and those very few whom he had loved. And, oh Christ, they were haunting him now, slipping away just beyond the edges of his vision, their laughter vanishing just as his ear seemed to catch the happy chime. He drew the blanket over him. A woman's kiss. The whole sorry, shitty, solitary slog of a man's life could still be redeemed by a woman's single kiss.

  He was going to have to go back. He thought he was strong, but he was not. He was going to have to call her. Get up, man, get up. Rest awhile first.

  He slept and dreamed that he awoke. Spiritual asthma—the whole world is suffering from spiritual asthma. In his dream he could not fall asleep.

  Seemingly there was no end. He felt as though he were falling, falling, falling into ever colder and darker space, the wind rushing faster and faster, snatching at his face. He felt expelled, as though he had been thrown summarily out of heaven and the shock of it was continually ripping through him as he plunged away. He felt abandoned and lonely beyond all loneliness he had ever known or thought or imagined: abandoned even by his own better self, as if he were a lost cause to his own intelligence; and lonely to his core, terrifyingly certain that no other person would or could ever know where he was or what he was feeling—not only that no companionship was available, but that no companionship with him was possible. And there were no voices as he fell, none of the old voices of hope, argument, or reflection remained—all silent, gone, deserted—only the flat whisper sounding somewhere behind the deafening scream of the panic as it tore merciless through his flailing body. I told you so, I told you so.

  He opened his eyes for just a moment. The light was strange—not quite dark, not yet; the sleet running like shivers in the jaundiced glow of the streetlamps.

  ***

  And it's like you always said: in the heart of power sits fear enthroned; and it's as obvious as banknotes.

  Mama, mi vse soshli s uma. We are all sick, Mama. We are all sick. In friends, I find evasion; in children, tautology; and love itself, an election more of blindness than of hope. I am sick. I cannot stop my mind. I cannot rest. Cut my chest, look inside, you'll see it's all burning.

  The night came on. There were sounds in the house, a rude banging at his door. Others were home. He turned deeper into the bed.

  The price of courage is loneliness. Is this the price you paid, Ma? An awful feeling—something hollow but tight that lurks in no definite place deep inside, something impossible to banish, like days and days of accumulated cold that has crawled into the secret fissures of the bones and won't be chased out. A wretched feeling, a feeling to really drive and determine a person's life—actions, decisions, plans — more so than love or hate or any of the other supposedly powerful emotions, hey, Ma? Loneliness, and the fear of loneliness—it could make a person do, say, think almost anything. Yes, Ma, I am beginning to understand why people settle for the most appalling circumstances, the most appalling people. The inexplicability of wives, husbands, partners, lives—I see it now, Ma. It's all becoming a little more comprehensible. And I realize what that indefinable thickening is that I notice in the faces of the bride and the groom: it's relief — relief from the loneliness. Yes, that halo of happiness comprises three parts relief to one part love. Look Mother, look Father, look friends, I have someone; someone I can settle for has settled for me! I'm settled. We're settled. It's settled.

  But what if it's not settled after all? Or what if (as we suspect) settled is merely death's best-decorated antechamber? What if we refuse to settle, Ma? What if we refuse to settle for this life as we find it, these rites and rituals, this government, these gods, this ever-growing herd of golden calves? What if we will not settle for the derisory covenants of this disreputable age?

  I'm with you, Ma. I refuse.

  I have no great plan, I cannot even summon a coherent point of view, but I will not back down. I will stand here and I will say, I see through you, I see through you, and what you believe in is a lie, and what you have become is a falsehood.

  Yes, it's true, Ma: your great indignity is now mine. That last time we spoke, you were passing it on to me, weren't you, Ma? One more time, just for good measure. As if it weren't already thrice inscribed in the double helix of my every single cell.

  I refuse.

  Give us the counterpoint and you can keep the tune. Isn't that right, Ma? Give us the contrapposto and you can keep the straight and narrow. Give us the counterintelligence and you can keep your presentations and your pulpiteers. Give us the counterlife. Every time.

  But where does my refusal lead me, Ma? And where did it leave you?

  I see it now: your courage and your loneliness and your despair. And I feel it: they do not ebb and flow, but they remain constant, like radiation, gravity, and death.

  You were lonely and powerless in that old house, stranded in a foreign country with so faithless and selfish a man while your pride and your dreams were year by year mocked and belittled.

  I refuse.

  Count me for the living, not the dead.

  REVOLUTSIYA

  45 The Gift

  For Arkady Alexandrovitch, the moment had arrived. He did not care to question or to understand. The truths within lies, the lies within truths, thoughts within feelings, feelings within thoughts—they were all so many beguiling matryoshka dolls to him. And now that it came right down to it, he was revealed at the last to be his mother's son. This discovery he did not recognize or consciously acknowledge. Rather he felt it, he experienced its expression, and its expression was stamina. His entire being was certain that whatever fate had in store, he could endure. His mother's most eloquent and effective gift was passed on silently, secretly, inarticulately, and without her agency. Yes, now that it came right down to it, life turned out to be mostly about not flinching. Keeping going. And he knew that it had come right down to it. He could feel it, tingling in his fingers and hanging out there in the cowardly weather that would neither rain nor snow but hovered between the two.

  He had not been idle. He had printed a map that showed everything, however generally, on one page. He had talked to everyone he could—fellow Russians, fellow East Europeans, fellow men and women. It started at the hostel. One contact led to another and to another. He had borrowed a cheap anorak (against the endless rain) from one of the Moldavians, and with them he had visited building sites in Harlesden. From there to Hammersmith to meet an electrician. From there back up to King's Cross to a go-cart track, looking for a mechanic. From there, three cafés in Fitzrovia; they'd need a short-order chef before too long, they always did. And thus he had spent the week walking, his boots forever devouring the pavement. He moved by general direction, learning his way as he went. He stayed clear of drugs, but everything else he investigated. Nightclubs, escort agencies, hotels, minicabs, restaurants, pubs, shoe booths, florists, hairdressers, Finsbury Park, Neasden, Golders Green, Stock-well, Vauxhall, Ealing, and Bow. District by district, he must have covered more than fifteen miles a day. He listened and he learned. He was on a dozen job waiting lists. Turn up here at six-thirty, whatever day you want, they said, and there will be labor. He stopped worrying about the police altogether, his identity, or his papers. He drank water from the tap. He stole fruit from the outside racks whenever he passed a fruit shop. He had one hot meal—a baked potato with tuna and sweet corn—every night in the café that the junkies used farther up on the Harrow Road. Besides that, he spent no money at all.

  Even so, thanks to the cost of his bed alone, he was now down to his last one hundred and twenty dollars. And he owed four more nights—the maximum
debt they would allow, even with his passport. So already there was a shortfall. Time to be moving on.

  He placed the borrowed anorak on one of the Moldavians' backpacks with a half-full carton of cigarettes he had stolen. He picked up his own pack and went quietly into the narrow corridor. Carrying his boots, he walked down the stairs as far as the second floor. Luck was with him: the woman on the desk downstairs was having a cigarette and her back was turned as he crossed the landing behind her. He squeezed into the tiny, filthy shower room, which stank of mildew. The sleet was thrashing and the wind was blowing as he loosened the catch. He dropped his pack out the window into the alley below. He threw his coat out after it, stuffed inside two plastic bags.

  He put on his boots. But came out of the shower room quietly, only beginning to make a noise as he stepped down the flight of stairs to the desk. He took the cigarette from behind his ear, stuck it in his mouth, and asked the witch for a light in his friendliest English.

  "I owe you for four nights," he said. "And I want to stay two more, please. I am going off to the bank now—I need my passport for identity. Is it okay?"

  She looked at him suspiciously. "You'll get soaked to the skin in your shirt. It's raining like the end of the world out there."

  He blew smoke toward the nicotine-stained ceiling. "I will run."

  She tutted. "Where's your coat?"

  "I left it upstairs. Locked in the room. It's not good for the rain."

  "What's your name?" She bent down, disappearing from view, and he heard her opening up the safe.

  He leaned over the counter. "Arkady Kolokov."

  She reappeared. "Okay. I need your room key until you come back."

  He handed her the key.

  She handed him his passport.

  Once outside, he walked right, out of sight of the desk, and then slipped down the alley. He ground the unwanted cigarette beneath his boot and unpacked his coat, leaning against the side of the building. The sleet hacked down relentlessly.

  He carried his pack in his hands in case he was challenged as he came out. But the weather had emptied the street. So he walked swiftly away from the hostel without looking back. Right, then left. He walked fifty yards farther with his pack still in front until he reached the twenty-four-hour shop, where he ducked beneath the awning. Ignoring the supplications of yet more bullshit homeless people, he fished out a black garbage bag that he had stolen from the cupboard by the toilet. Then he retrieved his cap from one of the side pockets and slung the pack onto his shoulders, loosening the straps to accommodate the bulk of his coat. He made a hole in the bag, took off his cap a moment, and pulled the thing over his head. Then he put his cap back on and set off, his feet warm in his boots.

  It was only just four. Partly because of the necessity of pretending that he was going to the bank, he had given himself three and a half hours, plenty of time. His idea was to walk along the canal, which he had come to know quite well since that first night, when he had lost himself in the Paddington basin. The route would be quieter and it was direct to Camden. He could stop along the way without needing to spend any money. From Camden, it looked straightforward to Kentish Town.

  At first it was easy, but soon the water disappeared into a tunnel where there was no path, and for a while he wandered around trying to find where the canal reemerged. He asked a passerby, but she knew nothing. (Nobody in London seemed to know where they were, or where anything was, or where anything might be.) When finally he saw the water again, brown and turbid in the rain, he could not get down to the bank, so he was forced to walk on the road above until the fence was low enough to vault.

  The towpath was deserted and he slowed a little, more confident. He listened to the sounds of his boots and his breathing. His previous anxiety—that he had not actually stolen anything that night when Oleg had left the hole in her window—had ceased to bother him entirely; it seemed irrelevant now that he was actually here in London and so close. His plan was to be sure to find out where the brother was. Find out if Gabriel Glover was ignoring his e-mails and calls or if his silence was something to do with all the bullshit that had been going on last Sunday. Either way, he wanted to see Gabriel too. Make sure that there was no chance at all of anything from brother as well as from sister. Make sure there was nothing offered, nothing to hope for. Nothing.

  Once he knew how to get hold of the brother, then ... then he would simply tell the sister the truth. There was no longer any reason to piss around with the strategies that he and Henry had talked about—ways of getting to know them while making up further bullshit about Maria Glover and her fucking piano. There was no time and no point. If the sister did not want to know, if she was hostile, then fuck it. He would go and find the brother. And if he did not want to know either, then fine. His choice would be made. His new life would start. Good. Fuck the piano. Fuck the conservatory. Fuck Mother Russia. He was staying here and he was going to make money like everybody else. It would be bullshit at first, but he would get through that phase quick enough. Hundreds of Russians were doing the same. Brothers, sisters. Yes, he was down to it.

  He passed a mooring. There were no lights on any of the boats. His cap was sodden but his feet were still dry. He passed some fine buildings, pale-colored and elegant, and he was reminded of Petersburg. He saw pretty gardens on the opposite bank. He passed beneath a bridge that dripped and echoed away into the narrowing darkness wherein he could not see. He passed what seemed to him to be giant nets that loomed crazily against the wet heavens. All the while the sleet continued to come down, bending this way and that in the wind, slapping against the plastic of his makeshift cloak. The path ahead was slick and shiny. He kept on, breathing steadily, the water streaming down his face.

  46 Between its Disguises

  Six forty-five and the Internet café on Kentish Town High Street was half empty. She seemed to be spending her life at these places, but she did not want to go back and disturb Susan and her family. She had said that she would be out until late. And she wanted to let them have their dinner uninterrupted. The last two flats she had seen had been a total waste of time. She'd canceled the third, and now she had three quarters of an hour.

  There were a few tourists tapping vigorously at the cheap keyboards, Australians mostly, and a circle of Lebanese huddled around a screen in the corner, but most of the seats were unoccupied. She was facing the wall near the entrance, one empty booth in from the front window. A cheap neon sign advertised unspecific "exchange" to the world beyond, and the back of the flashing light caused the frame of her screen to glow red-gray thirty times a minute.

  Outside, the lashing continued, but more sporadically now. If she looked up and turned her head to the left, she could see directly onto the high street. Minicabs, vans, and rented limousines arguing one inch at a time up and down, up and down, up and down. The sleet like thin liquid wires in the headlights.

  She must have been sitting in something like a trance, staring at the screen, when she first became aware of someone behind her. A steady, unmoving presence Not someone hovering, as if hoping to interrupt with a quick question, but someone in the business of waiting, steadily—waiting for her to look up, look around, turn her attention toward him. Which she purposely did not do for a minute or two, having learned a long time ago that the best way to handle unwanted men in public is to ignore them completely. She deleted part of the question she had typed: "Did you ever meet her mother, Russian granny?" And then deleted the whole paragraph.

  Her second thought was one of irritation. She wanted to reread what she had written alone. But the presence was still there, refusing to go away, a force field behind her chair. Her irritation began to escalate ... She didn't want some bloody random bloke ... For Christ's sake. With anger jackknifing her brow, she swung away from her screen to meet the face, a curse on her lips.

  The man standing a just-polite distant behind her was tall, thin, and trying to smile. He had messy, longish blond-brown hair swept to one side off his for
ehead, and he was wearing an ill-fitting older man's suit jacket with faded blue jeans and what looked like hiking boots. But it was neither frame nor clothes nor boots that stopped her mouth: it was his face. Hollow cheeks, head raised a fraction in defiance despite the effort at a smile; close-shaved; nose, lips, and brow as even as an icon's, and a sunken pair of deepest turquoise eyes. It struck her for a second as the face of some ancient human tribe from an unknown pinnacle of civilization long ago. Not handsome—indeed, the sort of face that made "handsome" sound silly—but striking, enduring, prototypical in the way of those faces on ancient vases or the ones cut in stone. And the eyes ... the eyes stopped her dead. All of this before she recognized him—then a flood of confusion as she realized who he was, bafflement that she had not seen these features for what they were on the street when loading Adam's car. Followed, just as suddenly (as he held out his massive hand), by the thought that he looked nervous and tense.

  "Hello. I saw you in the window. I was going to the station where we arrange to meet. I am sorry for the surprise."

  She recovered herself. Evidently it was just writing to her father that was heightening everything. She noticed now that the jacket he was wearing was the upper half of the suit he had been sporting on Gabriel's doorstep.

  "Hi. No, not at all. I just didn't recognize ... How are you? What time is it?"

  "I am early. It will not be half past seven for forty minutes."

  "Sorry. No, I didn't mean that." She didn't. She realized that it was quite normal for a Russian to stop in if he saw an acquaintance; only Londoners crossed the street and pretended not to have seen each other so as to arrive at an appointment separately. "Hang on, I've just got to save this and shut down and then we are gone."