Pravda Page 7

  "All your little bitches go to London. The British must believe Russia is made only of millionaires' daughters. Or whores."

  "What did Grisha want?"

  "A salsa partner."

  "I do not owe him any money," Henry asserted, though whether to himself or to Arkady wasn't clear. "He oversupplied me. I told him. I have paid him for what I asked for. I don't need the extra he gave me. I told him that three times. He more or less forced me. So he can't get all cross now if I am—"

  "You understand well what he wants."

  "I don't even know these people he seems to think I'm friends with. Not anymore. Most of the English, French, and Germans I used to hang around with have left or gone to Moscow or run out of excuses for doing nothing and returned home. People move on. Especially the foreign kids. The new crowd, whoever they are—Grisha probably knows them as well as I do."

  "Did you give him your shit back?"

  "No." Henry wished that he had taken measures to rectify the hole in his old black brogues. "How could I? I just won't get any more for a while."

  Arkady's eyes narrowed for a moment, then swept the sky. "I need a piss," he said.

  He stepped to the side of the track, where a once grand but now untended grave with an elaborate wrought-iron Orthodox cross was being choked by weeds.

  Henry walked on alone toward the crossroads where the track that led to the central chapel met their own. It was thoroughly dark now. Ahead, the trees overhung in a complete canopy, branches shifting, though Henry could not feel any wind. An owl was hooting somewhere close by. He thought he saw its shape perched on a headstone. But it was only a trick of the ivy. Some cat or rat, rabbit or badger—he had no idea what—was rustling through the undergrowth to his left.

  Unexpectedly, a cast of primitive superstitions he believed long forgotten revealed themselves in the forefront of his imagination. He smiled nervously to himself, drew rueful breath, and shook his head. Silly. Nonetheless, there was something about the Smolensky (and the answering crack of a twig) that caused him to wonder whether the place affected Arkady in the same way. After all, here they were, in a cemetery thronged with the Petersburg dead, a cemetery that had been built on the agonized bones of all those who had perished in hauling the city up from the marsh, and a cemetery whose perimeter was this very night ringed by their living and disendowed descendents—the desperate and the diseased—here they were, and Arkady was pausing unconcernedly to piss on an unknown headstone. One thing for certain: these ornate Old Believer crosses seemed to afford purchase only to the weeds. More places to bind and swathe.

  He reached the crossroads and stood waiting. He often paused here on his way into town, by the main track down which the hearses came, day after day, followed always, he had noticed, by that stubborn delegation of white-haired women, forever in black, forever wailing, as if there were not time enough left in the world to get all the mourning done. But how quickly the generations forgot: his own father's father, Henry had hardly known, and his great-grandfather not at all, no more who he was than where he was from. In so many brief years we become strangers to our own blood.

  His pocket was vibrating.

  Someone was trying to call him. No: there was a text message on his phone. Grisha. He thumbed it open. In Russian: "Your sugar bitch is dead."

  But in the time it took for him to turn and look for her son, he made the decision not to tell Arkady. Not until after the concert.

  7 The Double Life

  Ten-thirty in Petersburg. Seven-thirty in London. And the worst night of his life was squatting black and heavy in the shabby courtyard outside. He sat motionless in the window of Yana's mother's apartment, his face a picture of mute and frozen shock, staring out like some child marquis on the place where they had lately guillotined his mother. Opposite his vantage, the locksmith was closing up on the ground floor and the builders, two brothers from Belarus, worked with naked bulbs suspended from naked joists in the room above. A cat held mangy station at the bottom of the adjacent stairs, its back to the bags of sand. He continued to hold the phone in its cradle. Isabella would call back any moment and he would suddenly become animate again, everything would start over, everything would race and swerve and dart and fall. Yana's mother was due to return from her gathering of special supplies. After their surreal trip to the hospital, Yana had gone back to the CCCP Café. But she would be home soon too. As would Yana's brother, Arytom, carrying his endless manuscripts and proofs.

  Gabriel let it ring once. His focus seemed to journey in from far away; his head lowered a moment, and abruptly he had the handset to his ear and he was back in the storm and swell of the present.

  "Can you hear me properly now? Is this line better?"

  "Yes. Forget my mobile. It—"

  "I couldn't get through."

  "Sorry, Lina. Isabella called again." This was only the second time they had spoken since the afternoon, and already he knew that Lina was his savior and that he would never ever be able to do without her, not for one day, not for the rest of his life.

  "Okay—this is definitely Yana's landline? I can use this."

  "Her mother's, yes. Yes, I think it's fine."

  "Will you be okay there tonight, Gabriel?"

  "Yes ... I don't know where I ... I will be all right."

  Her voice became even more measured. "Okay, now, listen. I have booked you into the Grand Hotel Europe, Gabriel, where we stayed. For tomorrow. It's all on my credit card. I don't want you to even think about the money. We can talk in the morning about whether you want to go there. But I think you should have somewhere as a base. I've booked a twin, so you can be with Isabella. If you prefer to stay at Yana's mother's until later, then fine, but it's there if you want. We can talk about it tomorrow."

  "Lina. God, you don't ... Thank you. Thanks."

  "And you have spoken with the consulate?

  "Yes. Yes, I have. A guy called Julian Avery there—he's being very helpful."

  "So don't forget, I can call people from here too. I can call anyone you need—if it helps, I mean. I will be here on standby in the morning. There's a lot I can do from here."

  "Okay."

  Gentle now: "We have to be practical for the time being."

  "Yes."

  "You are sure that you are going to have the funeral in Petersburg?"

  "Yes. It's what Mum wanted."

  "Right. Well, I'll try to get a visa first thing tomorrow and I will be there ... Thursday, Thursday night. Latest, Friday. Okay?" "If you can. But don't—" "You have enough money?" "Yes.Yes ... it's all right. I have money." "You have some food for tonight?" "I'm not—"

  "I know. But you should try to eat something. Will Yana's mother get you something?"

  "It'll be okay, Lina."

  "Just don't ... Just take care of yourself. You need all that fierce strength of yours. And try to focus on whatever you need to do. Try not to think too much, Gabriel. Sometimes just doing stuff is best—you know, fool the days, or you'll go crazy. When is Isabella there?"

  "Tomorrow evening. She's getting her visa now and then she'll fly."

  "Is she okay?"

  "I don't know."

  "Is Sasha coming?"

  "No. I don't think so."

  A pause. "Is there anyone here you want me to call tomorrow?"

  This, he knew, was Lina's way of approaching the question of his father. He loved her for her delicacy and for knowing him so well. He loved her for her endlessly decent strong sensible saving kind humanity. He loved her. "No. There's nobody to call, Lina. But ... But I don't know. Tomorrow we should ... we should try to think. Maybe there's some of Mum's old friends or something."

  "What time is it there?"

  "Ten thirty-five."

  "Okay. You go now. I am going to call again at eleven-thirty your time, okay, before you go to bed? I love You'very much."

  "Thanks. Thanks for everything, Lina. I love you too."

  Lina's voice vanished but he did not put down the pho
ne. There was stillness. Sudden. Silent. His eyes glassed again and he was gone. The courtyard outside seemed to him now a darkened rough-made stage set for some great play about to begin, the hero appearing in a shaft of light as the door was thrown open, the shadowy and conniving chorus ushering themselves off (never quite fast enough), chanting their collective exhortation: "Gentlefolk, behold this, our man, at such sore odds with himself and his times." His dearest hope had once been that he would become a director—some bold reinvigorator of the London stage, teaching the silly actors to stop their acting. It was his mother's most fervent wish for him too, though she had stopped talking about the prospect in the past few years. In art we are in conversation with ourselves across the generations, Gabriel; this is the lodestar of our humanity. The rest is chasing food and money...

  When he came back to the surface, he found that he was snatching at his breath and there was the taste of salt in his mouth, but he saw that his fingertips must have lingered all the while on the handset. He had not spoken to Connie since the morning—already another lifetime ago. And he dialed the numbers now as if they were inscribed above the secret door to the other chamber of his heart.

  "Connie."

  "Hey, lover. Are you in Petersburg?"

  "I'm—"

  "Jesus." She sensed it immediately. "What's happened?"

  "Con, my mother has died."

  "Oh, Gabriel."

  And somehow with her, with Connie, he could turn on himself, reach up behind and sever the taut wires of control. Somehow with her he had the strength to actually say it. Somehow with Connie he could give himself up.

  "Oh, Gabriel." Nothing else. A whisper that contained all the compassion that one person might feel for another; a whisper that somehow understood the fragile geometry of his soul.

  "Oh, Gabriel." Nothing else.

  And at last his tears broke. A quiet, desolate crying that juddered through him as if he were dragging a blunted plow through every organ, every muscle, every nerve.

  8 The Good Things Trick

  She lay across the central four seats at the back of the plane, the thin airline blanket pulled over her face, accepting nothing from the flight attendants, hearing nothing of the other passengers' stir and murmur. She had never in her life been afraid on flights before. But this time, although her eyes were closed, she was wretchedly awake, rigid with stillness, feeling every plunge and shudder of wing and fuselage, her mind contracted on a single image: a row of white-painted bolts working themselves loose, one after another, on some load-bearing metal strut 35,000 feet above the storm-tossed Atlantic. Only with an intense effort—by somehow ripping up her fixated brain by the roots and setting it to think of every good thing she had ever known in Petersburg—did she conquer her urge to beg for whatever it was the crew was rumored to carry for passengers who went insane.

  The Good Things Trick was a mental discipline she had learned from her brother twenty-five years ago, one night when their parents were screaming at each other in the front of the car—late, lost, and circling in the dark, miles from the holiday cottage. She had practiced and honed it many times since then. But she had not tried for at least a decade. And she wondered if she still had the will.

  The images came and went, came and went, came and lingered, came and stayed, illuminating the vast and vivid screen of her fine imagination ... The new blini restaurant on Kolkonaya, behind the Nevsky Palace Hotel, with hot pancakes, savory and sweet, where she and Gabriel had sat one Christmas and wasted the brilliant blue of a Boxing Day sky reading the thin, out-of-date St. Petersburg Times, ordering more and more, saying nothing, drinking coffee after coffee, plates piling up in droll testimony to something gross or affirmative or just plain alive; or here, years ago, Yana's grinning face and the endless varieties of vodka they were drinking together, true friends, after-hours at the CCCP Café, just opened, Highway 61 Revisited turned up as loud as the stereo would go; or here was her twenty-four-year-old self, before the millennium turned, having some sort of a thing with Arytom, and they had nearly fallen in the canal because they were so drunk and stoned—except it was iced over—and they had crept in past Yana's mother and Yana herself to Arytom's tiny room at the back of the apartment and made love in absolute silence, bedclothes forever slipping off her shivery shoulders, he looking up, eyes wide in the darkness, holding her head in his hands, lips parting without a sound when the moment came; or here she was during the White Nights of the tercentenary year in the middle of the sheer frenzy at Troika opposite those shabby-grand shadowed arches of Gostiny Dvor, the midnight sky, the long day's ghost; or, yes, the first time back to officially-Petersburg-not-Leningrad! as an adult, the January after her grandfather Max died, turning off the Nevsky, down by the Fontanka Canal, where she had walked that night with her mother, a girl of nineteen no more, and it had seemed to her then that all the old palaces were lit in great amber teardrops by the glow of the streetlamps, in pink and yellow, in silvery damask, in ivory and pearl, and there were skaters already dancing on the ice, torches lit and chasing back and forth like children's souls, and later it was so cold in the rented apartment that when she climbed out of the camp bed to find her coat to lay on top of her blankets, she could see her breath passing from her lips in the dim blue of the pilot light, flickering hopefully on though all the pipes were frozen tight.

  The plane scored across the darkening sky like a misshapen crucifix tearing a wound in the heavens.

  9 A Savage Freedom

  Le Castebin was all candle-flicker, cream linen, and chiaroscuro. Their supper, though, was a little less solipsistic than usual. Partly because Nicholas allowed himself to become drunk more quickly than was customary and thus was prepared to give unusual voice to habitually concealed thoughts. And partly because Alessandro too was concentrating and responsive for once—eliciting information, seeking to draw Nicholas out, though for reasons of his own.

  In truth, Alessandro's sole and busy aim ever since Nicholas had disclosed the news of his wife's death was to work out the new situation with regard to money. His most itchy hope: an allowance. Now, surely, given that Nicholas was no longing paying his wife's fat rent or living expenses, there was a chance that the tetchy old tart might be prepared to rechannel at least a portion of this expenditure in Alessandro's direction. Those funds that he wasn't used to keeping for himself he would not miss—something like that. The question, therefore, was how much extra did Nicholas have with the hag out of the way? How much to pitch for? Certainly Alessandro deserved something regular. Because while this shitty little money thing with Nicholas continued, his inventory of the balance of pros and cons—the default loop of all Alessandro's thoughts—kept coming up negative. Yes to Paris. Yes to the apartment and the parties therein. Yes to the restaurants and yes to the musical soirées and yes to opera and blah-de-blah-de-blah. All puttable-up with—as long as darling Nicky never got jealous of his trips to Greece. But having to ask for money all the time! No. Having to explain that he'd run out again. And oh the boring palaver with the fountain pen in the study—the silly old slut waving the check around for ten minutes, pretending to wait for the ink to dry. No. No. No. So if he could just get an allowance—even a small one for now—then everything would be as perfect as could be. Choose the moment, though. Be as charming as champagne. Actually (Alessandro was beginning to believe), it wasn't going to be that difficult: Nicholas looked quite handsome tonight, with his short hair and those straight white eyebrows—the brutal but very fanciable father-general in the film about the sexy slacker of a son who hates the army but eventually rescues America just the same.

  As was his habit, Alessandro made great play of his winsome desire for sweetness by reading out each of the possibilities—temptations narrowly resisted—until, at length, he declared that no, he couldn't possibly have chocolate again and how about a coffee instead?

  The waiter bowed—a man long ago departed from these shallows for distant oceans of indifference.

  "How are you fe
eling, Nicholas? Are you tired? God, you've had the longest day. Thank you for this, by the way. I love eating with you."

  "You don't have to say thank you. It's not necessary."

  "Do you want to talk about your trip?"

  "I'm not tired."

  This was true. Nicholas was not tired, or not locally so, at least. He returned his attention to his glass—the lazy bubbles drifting languidly to the surface. All that fizz and fuss seemed so long ago. Apart from Alessandro's extraordinary physical beauty—and he really was Perugino-pretty—his great virtue was that he did not matter in the slightest. And occasionally Nicholas felt that he could say whatever the hell he wished to him, confident that he would neither understand nor reflect upon it.

  Nicholas shifted his chair so he could pull his legs from under the table and stretch them out to one side.

  "Life let her down, you know, Alessandro. Politics let her down. Russia let her down. London let her down. And I ... well, I couldn't give her what she wanted, what she needed. Poor woman. Poor bloody woman." He shook his head.

  "When did you two..." Alessandro swirled his remaining wine around his mouth, making it froth. "When did you two meet?"

  "We met in Russia—in Moscow—at a party, actually. One of my father's little get-togethers with his Soviet acquaintances. She had just started working in the Secretariat. She was a rising star and she was accompanying some idiot from the Party. She was ... she was a very clever woman." Nicholas looked directly at Alessandro. "She defected to marry me, you know. Abandoned it all six months later: family, job, and friends. Her home. Can you imagine anyone understanding that now? Defecting. The sheer risk. The absolute finality of the severance." Nicholas set his glass down, two long fingers pressing at the base, and spoke softly. "Knowing you can never go back. Making a decision like that takes courage. Real courage."