Pravda Page 5

  It happened like this. Though son and mother never did see or speak to each other again, Henry found himself acting for Arkady while Zoya continued to work for Maria Glover. Perhaps some sense of a secular mission prompted Henry to intervene. Or perhaps it was some new and bold reckoning in his dispute with the God from whom he could not quite flee. Either way, the deal had been struck.

  Many an intention had blurred since then, but even at the time, more than two years ago, Henry had chosen not to examine his motives too closely—were not most human interactions thus shaded? Just the same, were he capable of being honest with himself on the subject, Henry had sensed then (as he sensed still) that desire was down there, lurking and smirking among the innocents, if ever he had mind enough to look. And yet he could not face bearing his torch so deep, for fear of discovering who or what held sway in these darkest crypts. Besides which, when he was in his lighter mood, such thoughts seemed like huge misapprehensions, echoes of a daydream from a time long ago, before he canceled himself out, before he shut down his sex drive and opened up his veins.

  In any case, theirs began as a straightforward friendship. Henry had been out with a group of mainly English expatriates at one of Arkady's Magizdat gigs at the JFC Jazz Club. A veteran of a thousand classical concerts and five times as many recordings, he had thought that he recognized something exceptional in the Russian's playing. Later, Arkady had joined the table—there was talk of gigs in Vilnius and Tallinn—and Henry had translated. Though it was no business of his, Henry had then offered to teach Arkady English at half his normal rate—out of an unmediated eagerness to assist such talent in any way he could. But perhaps Arkady surprised him by taking his offer seriously, turning up twice a week at eight in the morning at Henry's old flat behind the Nevsky, well prepared and with the vocabulary learned. And perhaps Henry was pleased to be thus surprised.

  Indeed, for the next six months, Arkady studied with the tenacious application of a last-chance student—far harder than the rest of Henry's pupils. And within a few months they were practicing English conversation. Initially Arkady told Henry only the barest outlines of his circumstances—that he knew nothing of his parents and that he had grown up in Orphanage Number 11, called Helios, and that it was "like a house for the fucking of pigs." But over the weeks Henry coaxed out the greater part of his history. (As so often happened, Henry noticed, Arkady was far more relaxed and open in his emerging second language. Curious, too, how quickly the Russians mastered obscenity.) Like a thick central pillar which alone supported the roof and around which everything else revolved was the main fact of Arkady's life: that he had trained as a classical pianist. This confirmed what Henry had felt must surely be the case when he first heard him perform—though "trained" hardly described the experience that Henry discovered Arkady to have undergone. His various teachers had well and truly made him a pianist—fashioned him, beaten him, worshipped him, forced him, encouraged him, praised him, hounded him, persecuted him, pushed him, cajoled him, inculcated him, taught him his art in the least compromising and most effective of all teaching methods: old-school Soviet style. For as long as he had been able to read, Arkady had been reading staves. It was not Russian that was Arkady Alexandrovitch's first language at all—it was music.

  And it was no exaggeration to say that Arkady had been a child prodigy—the proud boast of Petersburg youth orchestras and the boy chosen to play for Gorbachev himself in 1984. "They love orphans for Soviet times, Henry. We do not have problem of mothers, fathers. We are heroes of the great state. No parents to take the glory away." Certainly by the time he was seventeen, everything was set for Arkady's smooth transition to the St. Petersburg State Conservatory and from there surely to Moscow and international stardom.

  Then Mother Russia fell apart—again.

  At first Arkady's rightful place was merely postponed for a year. "There were problems, so many problems, Henry You just had to wait—this was the way. Always in this bullshit country, we wait. For what? For nothing." He was nonetheless required to leave the orphanage and seek what work he could find as an electrician, the secondary training they had given him by way of Soviet-style existential comedy.

  Then, when the long year had dragged itself reluctantly around the calendar, the place was arbitrarily postponed again. But still Arkady could not bring himself to face the facts: that the nature of bribery and corruption had undergone a complete reversal and that advancement was no longer about the Party system or Party sponsorship; that in the new Russia it was all about the money and the guns. In 1991 the orphanage shut down. In 1992 his piano teacher died. He lost access to the last good piano he had been using. The second year passed and he was told to apply to the conservatory all over again—through the new system. He did so, this time without a sponsor. By midway through 1993, he knew he wasn't going to make it. Even then it took him half a decade to abandon the greater part of his hope. And so he spent the last years of the millennium selling smuggled stereos around the back of Sennaya Square by day and (as much as to sit by a functioning piano as to stay alive materially) playing bullshit music in the new hotel bars by night, hour after hour, his fingers aching like ten desperate would-be lovers trapped in ten deadly marriages for something real ... the Hammerklavier's embrace.

  The shortage of playable pianos in Russia ... Ah, yes—besides the English lessons, there was a second reason for the deepening of Henry and Arkady's early association. Or perhaps it was the main reason. At any rate, a few months after Henry had begun teaching Arkady, he bought an upright C. Bechstein. Henry himself had once been a competent amateur, and maybe he did genuinely intend to pick up where he had left off at the age of eighteen—and yet, even as he and the seller's three handsome sons heaved the piano through his front door, Henry knew well that Arkady would be the first to sit at the keyboard. Sure enough, as soon as the Russian saw it, he asked if he could play, and—the quagmire of the verb "to be" happily abandoned for the time being—Henry spent the next two hours sitting still at his teaching table, utterly rapt. Thereafter Arkady came around three or four times a week, practicing for hours on end, regardless of the lesson schedule.

  Nonetheless, these two circumstances—teaching and piano—might not have led to their present arrangement in tower block number two had it not been for two further eventualities: the dwindling of Henry s money and the unforeseen arrival of the woman whom Arkady referred to as "the stupid bitch." Maria Glover changed both their lives overnight.

  They were some six months into the English lessons. Arkady was now playing Henry s piano several times a week. And yet Henry found out about the meeting between mother and son only some days after the event. The idea occurred to him more or less instantly, though: arrange for the woman to pay for Arkady to go to the conservatory. And get her to keep Arkady alive while he did so. Arkady would have to reapply, of course, and he would probably have to suffer the indignity of several auditions, but ... But if he could prove himself at least as worthy of the department s time as any of the adolescents he would be up against, then the main thing was the money. If need be, the woman, whoever she was, could pay in advance. Surely, Henry reasoned, it was worth a try. The problem was Arkady.

  In all his other dealings, as far as Henry could tell, Arkady was as vulpine as everyone else in Russia, but on this one subject he was as silent and scornful as an anchorite. Henry pressed, but the Russian refused absolutely to contemplate a second meeting, refused to consider asking for anything through Zoya, refused even to talk about it. Eventually Henry offered to broker the question himself. Arkady merely shrugged—Henry could try if he wished, but it was nothing to do with him.

  Thus meagerly enfranchised, Henry nonetheless set about his task with skill, a renewed sense of purpose, and no little interest, the only further Arkady-related difficulties being the finding of Zoya and the meeting with Maria Glover herself, for which he, Henry, was required to bring photographs of the Russian that he was forced (against his liking) to steal with the complicity
of Polina.

  In the event, the deal was relatively easy to secure. After a truly ferocious hour in the company of his friend s mother (during which he had to relate everything he knew about Arkady thrice over), Henry found Mrs. Glover suddenly tractable; she had been testing him, of course—interrogating him, or perhaps, as Henry later thought, mining him was a better way of putting it. Regardless, once her mood changed—abruptly, as if by a switch—she was more than ready to guarantee the funds in writing to the conservatory ahead of any audition. If Arkady won a place, she would not give the money to Henry (he did not ask for this, and he explained that Arkady would not accept it either), but she would pay the conservatory directly and in advance each term, the entire three years tuition as well as any dining, books, stationery, or other bills her son might incur. This without further question, Mr. Wheyland. I am not surprised to hear that you have trained as a teacher. And I further hope you will look out for my son for the duration of his studies. I trust you to do so. You will let me know immediately of his acceptance at the conservatory. Now that I have heard what you have to say, I am sure that he will be accepted. And from then on, he must have no other work or distraction until his career is made. You understand this?

  She struck Henry in those moments—sitting in the casement window of her apartment, back to the light, face impassive, lips set—as a woman of great will, an exiled queen charging her courtier with the full authority of her divine right; and perhaps already inclined to duty, he felt her wish much as a command.

  Of course he tracked down Arkady at his favorite pinball bar with the news that same afternoon, but the Russian never actually thanked him—not then, not ever. All the same, overnight, Henry' s old place became a twenty-four-hour rehearsal room. Which was all the gratitude he needed.

  Though nothing was left of Henry s former life (buried, loathed, forcibly forgotten) save for the ever-decreasing remains of the money, there was nonetheless something vaguely pastoral about what happened thereafter. For it was Henry who had suggested that they find somewhere cheap together so Arkady could practice whenever he wanted and thus make the very most of the chance he had finally been given. Arkady was going to need a piano, after all. Further, Henry offered to pay for most of their food, the bills, and the rent, so that Arkady could concentrate full-time and give up the nights in the bars.

  After a fashion, the arrangement worked. Arkady practiced all day (and disappeared most nights). Henry listened and listened and continued to help the Russian improve his English. And in this lopsided symbiosis, they lived.

  Henry met Maria Glover only once more, some six months later, at her flat on Griboedova, as before—though this time ostensibly to check on the efficacy of their arrangements. Perhaps Arkady's acceptance at the conservatory (communicated via Zoya) had furnished them both with the required validation—Henry to pursue his vocation more explicitly, Maria Glover to feel her obligation obliquely eased. At any rate, Henry found her that day in a lighter, more expansive mood. Perhaps glad of his Englishness too, she offered him tea and told Henry a little about herself, what she called "her second life" in London, her family there, her work on the newspaper of record. And thus charmed, Henry reciprocated by confessing something of his previous life too. That he had trained for the Catholic priesthood before abandoning the calling and becoming a full-time secondary school teacher, a job which, he explained, was these days almost impossible to do without incredible resources of stamina and insensitivity.

  She asked him how he came to be in Russia. He explained that he had left his teaching job on his thirty-fourth birthday and that after his mother had died he had used the money from selling her small house in Reading to set off traveling. He described how he had come to Russia (after three years, mostly in India) overland, from the south, and fallen in love with Petersburg on his first visit.

  She nodded as if such a conclusion were quite understandable and told him—with great feeling—that she had been born here. She reminisced a little about how the city used to be when it was Leningrad. He asked her how she had left. She told him she defected. She told him she had effectively "started again" in London. She became more and more loquacious. She told him a great deal and much that was personal, though she left out the names; and he began to form the impression that she was in some odd way trying to unburden herself, and that she was answering his polite curiosity with something like relief.

  Then, precisely as the second hour ended, she put to him the question that he realized was the real reason behind her asking to see him again: did he, Henry, think it possible that she might hear Arkady play?

  Henry was caught out. He was moved by her plea. And yet, knowing Arkady as he did and fearing Arkady s reaction both toward Maria Glover and toward himself if he were ever to bring the two together again, he considered that he could not risk effecting such a meeting, even covertly. Despite all that she had told him, he felt he had little choice but to answer no.

  4 Gabriel and Isabella

  A brutalized dog whimpered in the shadow of the crumbling courtyard. Six P.M. now in Petersburg; eleven A.M. in New York; and this was just the fourth or fifth call of nine or ten between them. Gabriel sat by the window of Yana's mother's apartment, the telephone never in its cradle, the undernourished light lingering, the better to slip away unnoticed when he turned; Isabella heading uptown, battery running down, the New York morning like a set of freshly whitened teeth. She fixated, he terrified—real and unreal, one and the same.

  "You have to go back there."

  "I'm not going back there."

  "You have to go back there."

  "Is, I am not going back there. I can t. You can go when you come or tom—"

  "Gabriel, I need you to go back there today, tonight."

  "We'll go together. When you get here."

  "Too late. It might be too late."

  "I can't—"

  "How was she again?"

  "How was she?"

  "How was she?

  "I told you ... I told you. She was on the floor. In the main room. What are you asking me?"

  "There was nothing wrong with her?"

  "Yes. She was dead, Is, she was dead."

  "For Christ's sake. I know that."

  "What are you asking me, then?"

  "I'm asking you ... I'masking you if ... She wrote me this letter .. . I'm asking you if it looked like she did it herself."

  "Jesus."

  "I mean ... anything ... was there anything strange about her? Anything that—"

  "Is ... Is, she had a stroke. That's what happened. That's all." "How do you know?"

  "Yana. The ambulance men said—there was dried saliva and other stuff—her skin was all mottled—they told Yana it looked like a stroke and I—"

  "You sure? Can you check? Will there be an autopsy?"

  "Is—"

  "Did they say that there would be some kind of autopsy?"

  "Is, for Christ's sake. She didn't want to kill herself. I spoke to her on the phone on Sunday night. She was ... she was fine. So will you stop. Will you stop being such a crazy idiot. She's dead. She is just dead. She died."

  Silence.

  Gabriel again: "Shit. Shit, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

  "No, it's okay. I'm sorry. I'll be there tomorrow night if I can get my visa. I'm on my way to the embassy now." Isabella breaking. "Sorry ... I'm sorry. You are right—I'm being crazy and you're there by yourself and ... Gabs, will you be all right? Is Yana there? Or Arytom? Someone you can stay with?"

  And so Gabriel pulling himself together. "I'm okay. Just make sure you get the visa and a flight, Is, that's all you have to do. This had to happen one day."

  "I know. I know, I know."

  "And you were right about the consulate. They're helping a lot. I'm ... I'm talking with them again first thing. A guy called Julian Avery. When I called, they knew who I was. They remember Grandpa Max. They know who Mum was too—who we are, I mean. They're going to help ... with everything. We're
lucky, in a way."

  A long silence, and then Isabella asking the question: "Does he know?"

  Another silence. Then: "Yes."

  "They contacted him?"

  "Yes. The hospital contacted the consulate before me. The consulate guy—Avery—seems to know where he is. And he's next of kin. So they got hold of him. They told him. He knows." Gabriel drew his heaviest breath. "But we're going to bury her here, Is. We're not going to fly her home. She wanted to be buried in Petersburg. We're going to do that as fast as we can. We're not going to tell him. We're going to do it before he can get here. That bastard can go fuck himself."

  5 Nicholas Glover

  Nicholas Glover had in fact spent his entire adult life fucking himself. However, estranged as they had been these past ten years or so, neither Gabriel nor Isabella could know this; and even before their antipathy ossified, Nicholas knew well that they could scarcely have imagined the ongoing mêlée in which he lived. Indeed, in the past twenty-four hours, Nicholas had come to an awful and existence-rearranging realization: that the only other person in the world who might ever have grasped the true nature of his lifelong war was his wife—Maria, Masha, Mashka, Marushya.

  But it was too late now. Too late to confide. Too late to be open. Too late to start the one journey that he might have taken with any hope of reaching understanding at the end. Was this a tragedy? At present, Nicholas had no idea. Because as of the past thirty minutes, he was ignoring all such thoughts, ignoring them with a strength of will which, had it been available to most other men, would have sent them rushing from their dreary lives pell-mell in pursuit of their disappearing dreams.