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  "Okay." Gabriel eyed the olive-green Martians in the comic that was open by his elbow.

  "And yes," Isabella continued, "we can ask him to play the piano, but don't you think that's going to be just a bit awkward? 'Excuse me, Arkady, thanks for coming all the way from Russia with no money and living in a shit hole for two weeks while we ignored you but could you just please play us the Goldberg Variations while we, experts that we are, check out your talent to our satisfaction?'"

  "I'm not saying—"

  "And what if he is brilliant? Does it change anything as far as we are concerned—as far as our lives go? No." She shrugged excitedly. "It may or may not mean we feel duty-bound to raise the money for him to finish his course. But it makes no difference to who our real mother is—or isn't. And if he's dog shit, the same. We still have to go. We have to know everything. We need the answers to some pretty fundamental questions here. And the only—"

  "Arkady said he's not going to play anyway," Gabriel cut in. "Not until he knows about the conservatory one way or the other."

  "He what?" Isabella's flow stopped abruptly.

  "That's what the guy said when I tucked him in last night."

  "Jesus."

  Gabriel blew into his cupped hands awhile and then said, "Even if it's all true, it doesn't change much—Mum is still Mum."

  "Of course, Gabs, of course." Isabella knitted her brow. "Come on, I'm not—"

  "We've been adopted, that's all. Happens all the time. But she was our mother all our lives. From the first moments of consciousness until ... until she died."

  "Of course. I'm not arguing with you about that. I feel the same." Isabella softened, hooked her hair behind her ear. "I feel exactly the same. In one way, it changes nothing." She paused a moment. "But in another ... Anyway, Christ, come on—we don't even know if Dad is actually our dad. I mean, it's that basic, Gabs. We don't know the first thing about who we are. We might not—"

  "Okay. Okay, I agree. You're right, we do have to know. But regardless of whether we have been lied to or not, the truth, as far as I'm concerned, is that Dad is Dad and Mum is Mum." There was another pause. Gabriel put his hands in his armpits. "Why don't you go?" he said. "Go now. You'll be at Waterloo in forty minutes."

  "I'm not going. I can't. I..." Isabella tailed off and dipped her head to bury the lower half of her face in the scarf she was wearing. "Dad ... Dad makes me feel so ... so nauseous." The scarf dropped from her chin as her head came up again. "And anyway, look at the state of me. I can't be calm. I can't even pretend to be calm. I will row with him. I will. I'll start a terrible argument. I'll be absolutely furious from the minute I see him. I will be storming out before I've even stormed in. I can't hide it like you can. I haven't got your ability to ... I can't ... I can't make myself unreadable like you can. I'm polished glass to Dad."

  Gabriel said nothing.

  Isabella pulled her sleeves down over her hands. "And you know, the thing is that Arkady is ... He is kind of like a solution. Not a problem."

  "I'm not saying the guy is a problem." Gabriel grimaced. "Jesus, can't you do something about this intense cold?"

  "Sorry, no." Isabella bit her lip. "I know you're not saying he is a problem, Gabs. But he's more than not a problem. Think about it. He's the answer. He's kind of brought us back from the brink—well, he's brought me back to my senses, anyway. You may well be past help." She smiled. "I mean, the guy has got nothing at all. He's totally fucked. He has absolutely nowhere to stay. He's got no money. He was actually saying that he needed to start walking to the airport for his flight tomorrow because the trains are too expensive."

  "They are too expensive." Gabriel's eyes ran around the room and back to meet his sister's. "How long is his visa?"

  "Six months. But that's not the point. He can't afford another ticket if he misses the flight. That's it. He's stuck."

  "We'll buy him one if he wants to stay."

  "More than that, he's given us the excuse we need, Gabs. He's the reason. Now you have to go."

  "Now I have to go? Why me?"

  "And..." Isabella dipped her head into the scarf again. "And he does look like her."

  "Does he?"

  "More than we do. Come on. He's got Mum's eyes."

  "What do you mean, I have to go? If I am going, you are going."

  She hesitated. "I don't know if I can stand it—even being in the same room. Seriously. We need to make him talk. Not fight."

  "Is, if I am going, then you are going. At least to Paris."

  "What about Arkady?"

  "We give him some money, obviously. He can stay at Grafton Terrace if he wants. Or he can fly back tomorrow as he planned."

  "But what do we tell him about the course? The conservatory."

  "That depends." Gabriel stood up. "Can we make some tea, at least? We need something that's warm in here to focus on. I've got a bitch of a hangover, and I've been at the police station since eight trying to convince them that I haven't been robbing myself."

  "Yes. Make tea. Why do they think that?"

  "Divert attention from my robbing everyone else, apparently."

  "Makes sense." Isabella smiled again. "Depends on what? What does what we say to Arkady depend on?"

  "On whether it's all true. If Arkady is Mum's son for real, then Dad is going to pay for him to finish his course and a whole lot more. Whether the bastard fucking well wants to or not. Even if I have to walk out with an armful of his precious paintings to raise the money."

  50 The Fates

  This, then, is what it came down to: a dribbling and diminished old man sitting in silence beneath a blanket beside an easel on which there was a portrait he could not paint while a dirty winter's rain fell into the raddled old Seine outside.

  Waiting.

  Waiting for the light to thicken. Waiting for the day to end. Waiting for the week to pass. Waiting for a son who was not his son, a daughter who was not his daughter. Waiting, in essence, for the second stroke of death that surely must be coming—any night soon.

  And suddenly now so fearful. Fearful of everything, even as it existed in his own imagination. Fearful of stagnation, fearful of travel; fearful of speed, fearful of stairs, fearful of the sea; fearful of other races, of the street-corner young, of every neighbor's real intentions. And every stranger suddenly an attacker, terrorist, swindler, or thief; every pavement a desperate, seething deathtrap of violence and crime; every ache or sneeze the herald of plague. Fearful of his own bones grown too brittle, his body too slow to heal, his mind too narrow, obsessive, or stale. Fearful of too much company, fearful of none. Fearful of conversation.

  Fitting, though. Well shaped. He would give the Fates that. Those three squint-eyed goddesses, spinning their threads, black shawls about their heads, reckoning and rectitude in their every callused fingertip. Clotho: that he who had so traduced the family now had none. Lachesis: that he who scorned convention should feel convention's scorn. Atropos: that he who would so rudely take life's secret temperature in the bodies of a thousand lovers should now be left so cold and unconnected.

  And yet. He felt no remorse. There were things he owed to Gabriel and Isabella. There were the duties of the truth. And he would pay these now—for in his own way he loved them both. He was the only father they had known. If they came, he would tell them everything. He would give them all the explanations they required. But no ... no excuses.

  For still he felt it—the old defiance, the lifelong no. Sluggish, furred, but undiluted and stirring in his blood still. That great and resolute no, swimming the wrong way around his heart. Perhaps this was what had caused the clot in his brain. One day this no of his had simply grown too gnarled and swollen to pass along the channels of his lifeblood. The same no that had kept him alive all these years was now trying to kill him. His eyes swept the sodden ashes of the winter's sky.

  51 Paris

  The train rolled through those somber fields of northern France, the rain hanging in the air, the sky all bruised,
low, lowering, washed-out purple giving way to gunmetal gray, the farms here and there, the narrow roads riding the slight rise and fall of the ground, and he sat by the drizzle-straggled window, bad coffee cooling, and thought the same thoughts he thought every time he passed this way: about the two generations of soldiers, unimaginably heroic, those who dug themselves into this mud and those who, twenty-odd years later, hurried back and forth across it, pursued or pursuing. Men dying for a cause, right or wrong. And this imagining kept his thoughts from anything else. Kept him silent and still, imagining most of all the sadness of all the million unwitnessed moments, the horror and the terror and the pain that a certain man might see or find himself amid, for just a second, utterly alone, with no other to corroborate the experience, testify. The loneliness of that second. Then, immediately, more fighting, or death. What generations they must have been.

  And this led him to thinking of his own grandfather, Max, and how little he had talked to him—twenty-six-year-old Max, already working for the British with the Russians against Hitler. Or so the story went. But perhaps none of it was true. All that could be certain was that his grandfather lived in Russia, in Moscow and then in Petersburg, doing who knows what for most of his life. Weighing in on one side or the other, or both, and thereby canceling himself out. He wondered what his grandmother had made of it all. Dead thirty years now. Perhaps the real difficulty was that life was far too short. Just as one generation learned their lessons, they died; and the next had to step forward and start again from scratch, with nothing to work from but those anonymous deep-coded atavistic imperatives, the secret commands of the genes, and whatever few cogent guidelines they had managed to rescue from the minute-by-minute demonstration of human contradiction, confusion, and hypocrisy that was their parents. Or guardians. Childhood: it was like trying to chart an entire continent by the brief flare of a firework. Except that you had no idea that this was your only chance to explore for free, and instead you spent the five seconds of precious light gawping at the sky, stuffing treacle into your mouth. And then it went dark again.

  He could not love Paris. Because his father lived there and the whole place seemed to exude his father's manner. This was ridiculous, of course, and he knew it; but then, underneath he had started thinking that everything was ridiculous, so why discard one notion and hang on to others? Nonetheless, he decided to walk to his father's flat and see if the Christmas streets would make him happy, sad, angry, or full of goodwill to all men. He had the notion that he should start treating himself as a human experiment, an ongoing private investigation into the effect of environment on the emotions. Maybe even take some notes. A purpose, at least.

  After arriving late yesterday afternoon, he had gone straight to the place he was staying, at the top of the Rue de la Chine, up in the twentieth. His friend Syrie, Anglo-French aspiring actress turned massage therapist, had given him her spare room; they had done a play together years and years ago.

  Syrie had gone out early that morning with her boyfriend, Jean-the-physiotherapist. She had left him a map, but he knew the way, more or less—down to Gambetta, past Père Lachaise, and then in along the Chemin Vert. He had set off at twelve, in plenty of time.

  Now he stopped at a café and ate a light lunch—mussels in white wine—preferring not to risk the tiredness that heavy food might bring on. He needed to be alert. He tried to read Le Figaro and regretted his bad French. He drank a delicious coffee, smoked a perfect cigarette, and watched the passersby. He was beginning to feel more and more disengaged—freewheeling, almost—as he set off again. Perhaps it was Paris after all, his London self hushed, the personality appeasement of a foreign city.

  At length, after the Place de la Bastille and the canal, he came to the river and began walking north along the embankment in the direction of the Hotel de Ville and the Pont Marie. The weather was cold, but at least it wasn't snowing or raining. He was glad of his gloves. Maybe, he thought, if it were not for Isabella, then he wouldn't have bothered. Sure, he would have believed Arkady. He would have uncovered Nicholas's whereabouts. He would have written Arkady a second letter addressed to his father, bought the Russian a Eurostar ticket, and sent him on his way. Sorry, but I can't help. These people, whoever they are—these relations—they're an accident. Please, take what you need, do what you can, and good luck. Shout if you are ever in London again.

  He came to the bridge and turned left, over the river, a slight wind cold on his right cheek. Or maybe Isabella was right: maybe you simply needed to know. Maybe you could not go anywhere, in any direction, unless you knew where you had started. As a human being, perhaps you had a deep and inescapable requirement to understand your history, your genesis, as clearly and as fully as possible, however painful, however unpleasant. And those who did not, or could not, come to this knowledge walked the earth as if inwardly crippled, forever compensating, forever uneasy, forever secretive. (Jesus, just look at it: Notre Dame like some mighty queen termite, belly-stranded in the middle of the river by the sheer volume of her pregnancy.) But strange that being human was never enough on its own. That the need went further. The need to belong. To belong to one tribe or the other. This is my land, these are my people, this is what we believe—which is where the trouble began. Why could we not be content with species-pride, the staggering good fortune of belonging to humanity itself? Mankind, the mother of all miracles. Wasn't that enough?

  And here he was: the Café Charlotte. So this ... this must be the quay. He seemed to remember this street vaguely from a childhood trip. Ice cream. He turned left, looking up at the numbers as he went along. He had the odd sense of the day as intensely normal and abnormal at the same time—something like watching the closed-circuit footage on the news a week later: this is the station five minutes before the bomb. The sky was as many shades of gray as black and white could fashion. A little windier now, and a bite in that. Curiously, he had remembered the Seine as wider. But of course this was only half of it. This was an island.

  Here.

  He went under the arch and into the courtyard.

  And now, now that he was actually at his father's address, his heart, his spirit, his mind, everything suddenly felt like a million maggots writhing. And he was astonished to find that there was no anger either—or no anger anywhere near the surface, no hostility, no upset, no sadness or seething. Instead there was only this overwhelming, excruciating sense of embarrassment.

  He stopped at the bottom of the century-worn stairs. He felt painfully, agonizingly nervous, shy. He felt ashamed of himself. And it was beyond anything he had ever experienced before—terrible nerve-squirming embarrassment. Worse, he was not just embarrassed for himself but also, unbelievably, embarrassed for his father. Dear God. Despite everything, here he was, stuck still, empathizing with the old goat for having to enact his part in this ghastly meeting with so ridiculous a son.

  He leaned against the wall in the semidarkness. He felt physically sick with it. Of all the reactions, he had least expected this one.

  Time stalled. He could neither go up nor turn around. He became apprehensive that at any minute someone might come out of one of the other doors on the staircase and wonder what the hell he was doing. So, madly, he took his telephone from his pocket and began thumbing through the names in his address book for no reason. He had the idea that he might call someone. Might, in fact, call Isabella.

  Christ, today was the wrong day. Maybe it was the train ride. But there was nothing there. No fury and no flame. No injury, no hurt. He was terrified that he wouldn't be able to remember what it was all about ever again, that he might go in there, go through with it all, and at no point do justice to whatever it was he had previously thought had been so traduced all his life. This was a new malaise altogether: standing in the shadows of his father's stairway, scared to move in case anyone heard him.

  The door opened.

  "Okay ... I have to go," he said to nobody, into the receiver of his telephone, before making a show of pressing a b
utton to end the call.

  "Gabriel. I thought it must be you."

  The figure in the doorway looked nothing like his father. He was an old man, completely white-haired, with rheumy eyes, and thin, very thin; and now, as the door was pulled back, Gabriel could see that this old man moved with great difficulty and with a cane.

  "Gabriel."

  The shock. "Hello, Dad."

  Nicholas smiled, a little lopsidedly, but abruptly Gabriel saw that it was there—the light, the old familiar animus. It was as if the stroke had left his father with a death mask as his default face; as if eerie blankness was where he must begin and must quickly subside; and it was only when he physically, consciously willed himself to move his muscles that expression returned, flooding into his features.

  "Sorry." Gabriel was conscious that he was already apologizing. "I just had to finish a call."

  "Come in. Come in." Nicholas beckoned, his arm extended. "It's freezing out there."

  Conscious too that he was apologizing for something that he hadn't actually been doing at all, something that was not in fact true. So it began.

  "It's not too bad. I walked here."

  "From London?"

  "From the twentieth."

  "Ah, shame—thought you might be able to teach me how to walk on water so that I can annoy my doctor. He's a very difficult man to impress. Danish. But walking-on-water-and-bugger-the-cane would do it, I imagine." Nicholas closed the door and turned. "It's very good to see you, Gabriel."

  The charm was there yet. But for these two men, for whom physical contact and human touch meant so very much, there was no embrace. Instead Gabriel merely stood looking around at all the wood, the paintings on the walls, the elegance.

  "How are you, Dad?"

  "I'm fine. It's taking me longer to recover than I had hoped, of course—it sort of goes in fits and starts. I was quick at first, but not so now. Still"—he dragged his lips into a smile—"I'm able to get out of the apartment as of this week, and my walking is improving. I'm aiming to go all the way to Notre Dame and back by the end of the month. A pilgrimage. I count myself lucky. Very lucky. My speech wasn't really affected. The Dane says I'll be passing myself off as normal soon enough."