Katherine Carlyle (22 page)

“Where can I go,” I say, prompting her, “that is farther north?”

It’s so quiet in her office that I hear her spine click as she turns in her chair. She begins to tap away at her keyboard. A map of Northern Europe and the Arctic appears on her screen.

“Maybe here,” she says at last.

I lean over the desk, my head next to hers. She has zoomed in on a cluster of islands with shattered or serrated coastlines.

“Svalbard,” she says.

I have heard of Svalbard, but the name sounds fantastical, like El Dorado or Atlantis.

“This.” She points to a settlement located halfway down an inlet and surrounded by miles of nothingness.

“What’s there?” I ask.

“Very small place. Very —” and she makes a humming sound that reminds me of the man in the Peking Hotel “— very
obscure
.” She gives me a thin smile. She seems daunted by her own suggestion.

“How many people?”

“I don’t know. Maybe three hundred.” She frowns. “They look for coal.”

“It’s a mining town?”

“Mining. Yes.”

“And the name?”

“Ugolgrad.” She explains that although the archipelago belongs to Norway the settlement is Russian.

My heart leaps as I look at the screen again. I didn’t realize such a place existed. “How do I get there?”

“Not so easy.”

A complicated journey, then. Good.

While Elena makes phone calls and trawls through the Internet I stare out over the rooftops. The next step of the journey is taking shape. All I have to do is leave as soon as possible, before the people in my dream catch up with me. I hope it’s not too late in the year to be going so far north. I hope I have sufficient funds.

The travel arrangements take hours — Elena also books me into a new hotel — and when I finally step out onto the street it’s dark again. The lack of daylight makes me feel giddy, breathless, as if time itself is speeding up. I cross Chumbarovka, with its historic houses and its young mothers pushing prams. Fog thickens the air, reducing visibility. Elena told me to catch a bus on Troitsky Prospekt. The number 61 goes directly to my new hotel, which is over a bridge, in a different part of the city. The two connecting flights have cost me close to twenty thousand rubles but I know it will be worth it. The only drawback is I have to wait four days.

I come out onto Troitsky Prospekt. On the far side of the road is a church, its walls caged in scaffolding, two golden domes abandoned on the ground. A bus with purple curtains in the windows comes to a standstill near me. Behind the misty glass is Yevgeny. When he sees me his features widen. He points towards the door, then signals that he will get off at the next stop. As soon as the bus surges away from me I double back and cut down a side street, my
suitcase bouncing behind me on its tiny wheels. I take the first left turning, past a sauna, then turn left again onto a path that divides two rows of old wooden buildings.

As I flatten myself against the side wall of a house, a door opens behind me, or seems to give, and I’m drawn backwards into a kind of porch or anteroom, coats heaped shapelessly on hooks, a spade propped against the wall. Beyond is a dimly lit interior that smells of solvents. The room is about the size of a railway carriage, with bare boards on the floor and a tin ceiling. At the far end a low-voltage bulb dangles above a glass-topped counter. The shelves that line the walls on either side of me are crammed with small round objects that reflect the meager light.

I take a few quick steps into the room. The objects are snow globes, some made of plastic, others of thick discolored glass. I pick one up at random and wipe off the dust. Inside is a replica of Lenin’s mausoleum. I shake it gently and watch the white flakes shower down onto the famous revolutionary’s face. I look at the base. No price tag. I put the snow globe back and pick up another. This one contains a murky sea encrusted with ice floes. Resting at an angle on the ocean bed is the slim shape of a submarine. The figures of survivors float on the surface — or are they casualties, the bodies of the drowned, the dead? I have a dim memory of a news story about the sinking of a Russian submarine. It happened around the time of the millennium. Thoughtfully, I return it to the shelf. The third snow globe I look at holds a stand of birch trees, a frozen pond, and a couple skating hand in hand. I sense a heightened innocence, a pleasure that seems intense but fragile, as though the small glass dome has captured the moments preceding
a catastrophe. I have never seen such an extraordinary collection. Is this a toyshop or a museum?

I look towards the end of the room again, aware of some sort of shift or change yet unable to describe it. The naked bulb above the counter sways. There’s a draft perhaps — or else a truck went by outside and shook the building. I don’t see the man until he moves in his chair, and I have the feeling he only moved in order to relieve the tension. It reminds me of something I haven’t thought about in years. When we were living in London I would often sit so still that people would walk into the room and out again without noticing that I was there. It was as if I was able to find a wrinkle in time or space and hide in it. I used to believe I could become invisible. Inanimate. The man huddled in the shadows to one side of the counter is dressed in a brown suit that looks too small for him. His elongated head is covered with a sparse gray fuzz. Behind him is a heavy pleated curtain.

I say good afternoon in Russian. He responds with a sweeping gesture which I assume is an invitation to browse. One of the snow globes is much larger than the rest and contains the whole of Arkhangel’sk. I can see streets fanning out from the center, and the industrial zone beyond. There is the Pur Navolok, and there, farther east, is the Dvina. There is the bridge I will have to cross to reach my new hotel. I can see buses with purple curtains in their windows. I can see people too. One is wearing a black cap. Deep lines bracket his mouth. I step back suddenly as if from a cliff edge.

The floorboards groan and I glance over my shoulder. A second man is standing beside me. He says something in a voice that makes me think of a homeless person begging for loose change. With his
narrow face and pale eyes he resembles the man in the armchair, though he has wispy hair that falls to his shoulders, and his style of dress is more traditional or archaic — a cardboard-colored leather waistcoat, a maroon shirt embroidered with meadow flowers. The man in the armchair nods, then speaks.
That’s my brother. We’re twins
. At least that’s what I understand him to be saying. The man in the waistcoat repeats part of what his brother said, dim light glinting on teeth that are minute and stained, then he motions towards a wooden cabinet and pokes a key into a lock. As he tugs on the brass handle and the door shudders open there’s a wincing sound and then the smell of dust and walnuts. Inside the cabinet are more snow globes, each of which houses a solitary, detailed figure. The figures are much larger than those in the replica of Arkhangel’sk, three or four centimeters high at least, and uncannily lifelike, as waxworks often are, and I realize that every one of them is a recreation of a real person. I don’t have any evidence or proof. It’s just an intuition.

The man in the waistcoat plucks at my sleeve and breathes a question into my ear. Once again I have no idea what the words mean, only that he seems to be making an offer or a proposition, and when I look into his face, which is much closer than I would like it to be, his eyes have a surface gleam, like balls on a pool table. In the meantime the other man has risen from his chair and is positioned at his brother’s elbow. They appear to be united in trying to exert some kind of power over me. I understand that they want me to accompany them beyond the curtain. I also understand that what happens behind that curtain isn’t something I should contemplate, or even know about.

I free myself, then reach for my suitcase and move across the room towards the entrance. Thank you, I say in Russian, more than once —
Spasiba, spasiba
— as much to paralyze the two men as anything else. To keep them from coming after me. To keep them from speaking. Where’s the door? I search among the coats. Cut my hand on a protruding nail. The spade clatters to the ground. At last I find a doorknob and wrench it open. Darkness pours in. A different darkness. Keener, colder.

As I hurry back towards the road I hear shutters being closed, bolts being driven home. The sign above the sauna flickers like a tic in someone’s eyelid. On Troitsky Prospekt the fog is thicker than before, turning headlights into halos. I suck the gash at the base of my thumb and spit the blood into a bank of dirty snow. If I happen to run into Yevgeny I will tell him that my failure to appear had nothing to do with him. I left my purse in a museum, I’ll say. I had to go back and get it. The museum is owned by two men who might or might not be brothers. They specialize in snow globes. Does he know the place?

I approach the bus stop where we were supposed to meet. Now I have a story I’m almost disappointed to discover that he isn’t there. He’s a kind man and I have behaved badly; I would like to make it up to him. A gravelly reverberation fills the sky. It sounds like an avalanche, but there aren’t any mountains. Is it thunder? Possibly. Or maybe just a plane coming in to land, a plane hidden by the fog that is smothering the city. The 61 appears. I flag it down.

/

The Meridian sits on a piece of wasteground to the east of a red bridge, in an area of the city known as Solombala. The hotel is modern but curiously empty. In the lobby there are paintings of sailing ships, and ceramic fish in alcoves. The café has a stone fireplace and diaphanous turquoise curtains. Fixed to the ceiling is a huge curving piece of pale-green fiberglass or plastic, like a swimming pool suspended upside down. My room is on the third floor, facing back towards the river. Though I’m still in Arkhangel’sk, somehow I’m separated from it too. I’m grateful to Elena. She couldn’t have found me a better hiding place.

During the next three days I only leave the Meridian once, to collect my plane tickets. It’s a simple precautionary measure; I can’t risk any more coincidental meetings. Sometimes as I pass through the lobby on my way to breakfast or dinner the hotel staff try to interest me in tourist attractions. There is Malye Karely, for instance, an outdoor museum of ancient buildings. If you don’t been Malye Karely, the woman on reception says in broken English, you don’t been Arkhangel’sk. Malye Karely is beautiful. The White Sea is beautiful. And the Solovetsky Archipelago, with its historic monastery. That is also beautiful. And what about the Kola Peninsula? There is beauty on all sides, apparently. I leaf through a brochure and admire the wide expanses of blue water, and the tundra, devoid of trees and people, and then I shake my head. I can’t, I say. I’m too busy.

I spend most of my time in my room, poring over the map I have spread on the floor beneath my window. According to a printout Elena gave me, Svalbard is only thirteen hundred kilometers from the North Pole. Permanent night descends at the end of October and lasts until the middle of May. Since the darkness is more absolute than on mainland Norway or in Russia, Svalbard
is an ideal place for observing “celestial bodies.” In January the average temperature is minus 16 Celsius, but the lowest recorded temperature is 46 below. The name Svalbard means “cold edge” or “cold coast.” It’s hard to describe the way these earnest factual sentences affect me. I stand on my balcony looking out. Once home to shipyards, Solombala feels neglected, melancholy, the dark wooden houses sinking, lopsided, into the earth, the river a gray strip in the middle distance. I veer between rushes of adrenaline — a roller coaster thrill — and a sweetness that is laced with pain, a delicious cloying poignancy. What it resembles most closely — what it actually
feels like
— is nostalgia.

/

The day before I fly to Svalbard I’m jumpy from the moment I wake up. I’m the only person having breakfast in the café. The turquoise curtains hang motionless, a world of grimy monochrome beyond. When I look at the ceiling it seems to undulate, and I’m not sure I don’t hear the trickle of a water filter. I could dive upwards. Disappear beneath the surface. My clothes would be found next to my chair, a few telltale splashes on the floor.
ENGLISH TOURIST VANISHES AT BREAKFAST
.

Later I pace up and down on my balcony. Scrapyards, graffiti-covered walls. The dull red bridge. At first I imagine it’s impatience. I’m desperate to leave, and yet I’m being forced to wait. But then, in the early afternoon, I realize. It’s October 17, the day I’m supposed to meet my father. I check my watch. One forty-five. Arkhangel’sk is two hours ahead of Berlin, and my father is always punctual. He will be walking into the Einstein at any moment.

My legs start trembling. I go back inside and sit down on the bed. I have imagined it so many times, but what’s going to happen — really? My father will meet Lydia, that much is certain. It seems unlikely he will get hold of Oswald — and even if he does all he will discover is that I boarded a train to Moscow. I could have got off in Warsaw, though. Or Minsk. Not such a good lead after all.

What about Cheadle?

Opinionated and belligerent he may be, but he is also inquisitive. Suppose he took a look at my passport while the Russians had it — or even before that, one day when I was out? His eyes will have been drawn to my father’s name and address, since my father is listed as the “friend or relative” who should be contacted “in the event of an emergency.” I imagine Cheadle studying my father’s details, the jealousy stirring and curdling inside him.
To be contacted in the event of an emergency
. What if Cheadle wrote to my father? What if he were to raise the subject he has already raised with me? He would be quite capable of such effrontery, and would conceal his own address by using the American Express office near the Gendarmenmarkt, which is where he often picks up mail.

c/o American Express

Friedrichstrasse

Berlin

Dear Mr. Carlyle
,

Following a number of conversations with your daughter in which your shortcomings as a father have become apparent, I am proposing that you
henceforth waive your rights and responsibilities in that department. Cede them to me without further delay, and I will make the necessary arrangements for her legal adoption here in Germany
.