Pravda (18 page)

His eyes expressed genuine sympathy; an intelligent man, well used to dealing delicately with distressed human beings. And she was grateful for that kind "gets through"—as if there would really be any trouble with their father "getting through" to his children if he, or they, had wished it.

"Thank you—that might be useful." She knew that the natural end of the conversation had been reached. She paused a moment and then asked, "Will there be an autopsy?"

Avery turned his head a fraction, as if to allow his left ear a chance to confirm the impressions of the right, but if he was surprised at this ambush, neither his face nor his manner betrayed it. "No. In the case of an older person's death, where there are no suspicious circumstances, then there is not usually an autopsy."

There was a moment's silence. Avery slowly rotated his head. Though he had sensed the disquiet previously, Isabella had now taken him into a much murkier place altogether. And she realized that rather than adding anything to his statement, he would wait until she spoke again. Silence was his natural holding pattern; he was a diplomat, after all. She was just about to ask another question when suddenly, to her complete surprise, Gabriel sat forward for the first time.

"And there's no problem with her being a British national ... who defected and all of that?"

Again without changing tone or manner, Avery directed his attention to her brother. "Yes ... you are right—it's a strange situation. There might have been an issue with nationality. I was talking to your father about this. But ... well, the truth is, I think we can assume that the Russians know who your mother is and that they don't have a problem." He finished his coffee, pleased perhaps to be back on familiar consular ground. "I would be amazed if they didn't know her. They knew your grandfather of course, very well. And they will have known your father too. And all defections were treated with extra-special ... er,
attention,
shall we say? So even if she used her married name when she came back, I'd be surprised if they did not know that she was Maria Gavrilov originally. In fact, your own surname, Glover, might well be flagged on their computers—I know it's a common enough name, but they might well cross-check. Again, I wouldn't be surprised."

It was a clever putting-at-ease question of her brother's, Isabella realized. He had interrupted only to move things on after her autopsy inquiry—as if to take over now that she had gone crazy. Perhaps she had.

Avery continued. "My guess, for what it's worth, is that they used her original return application politically—granted her a visa to show that the new Russia was not the same as the Soviet Union. If anything, they will quite like the fact that as a Russian she wanted to be buried here. I don't think we need worry about all of that."

Isabella cut in. "Did my father say that he would be coming on Friday?" She knew this was brutal, but she also knew that the question had to be asked and that if she left her brother to his own devices, he would never ask it.

And this time Julian Avery's hesitation was obvious. "No. No ... Actually, he didn't mention it. I ... I presume he would want to be here, but I can't—"

"Not necessarily." It would be better if she just said it. "Our parents were separated."

"I see."

Gabriel did not allow the silence to lengthen. "And will the service be in the Russian Orthodox tradition?"

"Yes. Was that your mother's faith?"

"Mum didn't have any." This from Isabella.

"But," Gabriel pursued, "I assume that we have to have a Russian Orthodox service at the Smolensky?"

"Yes." Avery nodded slowly. "It may be possible to arrange something else, but not before Friday."

"Oh God no, don't worry." Isabella gave a wan smile. "Everything you have done is ... is really helpful. We don't want to change anything. We're just grateful that it's all going to be dealt with so painlessly."

The security man passed behind them again, his face set and seeming to say,
Terror does not sleep and neither do I.

She had dropped her bags in their room and now sat waiting for Gabriel to return. He had gone to fetch yet more cigarettes. This did not feel like the Russia she knew. Indeed, this hotel, this lobby bar, wasn't her Russia, her Petersburg. In countless visits to the city, she had been here—what, twice before? Once with her grandfather, as she recalled. She looked around: two escort girls, laughing quietly and sipping their mineral water at one of the narrow tables in the corner; two slack-bellied businessmen drinking untidily at the bar, lecturing the blank-faced barman. An elderly American couple. It was past midnight. But something like midafternoon as far as her body was concerned. She knew for certain that she would not sleep, not soon, probably not at all. Indeed, ever since she had arrived, her brain had been moving so quickly that she had experienced the peculiar sensation of not being able to rely on reality, as if she were driving so fast that the scenery ahead was only just managing to construct itself in time, as if she were having to do far more than merely read the road, as if she were having to guess how the world was going to fashion itself. Their father had certainly outflanked them thus far—not only did he know about the death and the funeral plans, he was paying for everything already. But would he come? Gabriel's only thought would be how to keep him away. And her brother was right: their father was all corruption and tarnishing; their father could find a way to taint even the truthfulness of sorrow. And yet she could not help wondering what he would feel—as a human being, if nothing else. What was her father feeling right now, for instance?

She smothered these questions quickly with the thick blanket of her loyalty as Gabriel reappeared, and in doing so had one of those odd moments which come only infrequently when you have known someone forever—longer: she suddenly saw her brother clearly as a stranger might. Yes, he was handsome in what she always thought of as his famous-for-something-but-nobody-is-sure-what look, but now his slight scruffiness, his tousled hair, his loose shirt, his jeans, his battered boots—they somehow told against him. Where before there had been a casual confidence dressing down, she now saw anguish dressing up. His manner no longer said, "I don't care to manage any better—take it or leave it," but instead, "This is the best I can manage."

"How you feeling?" she asked.

"Fantastic. All go."

Isabella smiled. "I mean, can you take a drink or are you going to crash?"

"I'd love a drink. I would absolutely
love
a drink." Gabriel eased into his seat and grimaced. "I didn't sleep last night—in fact, I can't remember when I last slept. I'm totally wasted. What you thinking?"

"I'm thinking vodka. It can only help."

"Tonics separate?" Gabriel found a lopsided grin.

She smiled in return. Vodka that was worth tasting—it meant they were in Russia together again.

Gabriel put up his hand to catch the attention of the barman and unwrapped the new packet of cigarettes. "But if I burst into tears, get me to the lifts. I'm serious. It's been happening all day."

"You won't. You're too tired." Isabella held out her palms. "Chuck the cigarettes, then."

"You smoking again?"

"No."

"Me neither."

After that, everything external slowly faded away until there was just the two of them talking to each other, moving slowly across the ice toward the discussion that they knew they must have. On any other subject they could be as frank and as open as it was possible for two human beings to be; but on the subject of their father—and on this subject alone—there was convention and even taboo between them.

"What are we doing here, by the way?" Isabella asked.

"Lina. Lina sorted it all out. She says not to worry about anything ... and I was too ... I was too battered to argue ... so I just checked in."

"Right." Unlike everyone else, Isabella understood without judgment the exact nature of her brother's situation. And above all her other concerns on the subject, she worried about the hidden damage it was doing to him. But all that was for another day. "Is Lina coming?"

Gabriel shook his head. "Probably not, now it's looking like Friday."

Isabella considered. "I'd better go to the flat tomorrow. I suppose we're going to have to ship Mum's stuff home. Maybe not the furniture. But all the rest—her private papers, her books and everything. We should start."

Her brother smiled sadly. "We'll spend the day. Go through it together."

She watched him sip his vodka, then hold it on his tongue for a few seconds, tasting.

"She had begun to call quite a lot," he said. "It was getting pretty mad. Every night."

"Mad?"

"I didn't mean that. Not mad. I mean she was becoming more roundabout—she was saying more and more roundabout stuff that always seemed to imply other things." Gabriel raised an eyebrow ruefully. "As well as all the usual lectures on how to live your life and the state of the world."

Isabella swallowed and felt the burn. "Hard to know whether or not to take all that stuff seriously."

Her brother sucked his teeth. "She did," he said.

"Yes." Isabella nodded slowly. "You know, in the last few months she kept writing to me about Thomas Jefferson." She affected a declamatory voice. "'All attempts to influence the mind by temporal punishments, or burdens, or civil incapacitations tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness...'You know the routine."

Gabriel nodded slowly.

The vodka was working its magic on their willful blood. Isabella took another sip. "Do you ever think about those summers when she used to drive us around Europe—on her own in that old car?"

"All the time." She saw the lines around her brother's eyes as he spoke. "Nothing but concentration camps and art galleries for weeks on end."

"And don't forget every house that the great composers ever lived in," Isabella added. "Mozart's cradles and Beethoven's death masks. Jesus, she must have driven us a thousand miles every summer."

Her brother shut his eyes a moment and screwed up his face—against the vodka's bite, perhaps. "You know she was ill?"

Isabella looked away, momentarily taken aback, though this was one of her suspicions. "Ill in what way?"

"She was coughing—coughing really badly on the phone. The last time she called she had this ... this
fit.
I'm not joking—she was coughing for about five minutes." Gabriel straightened and extended his arm before him, his cigarette between fingers. "You know what, Is? I think she had cancer and I think she knew it. I think that s why she was ringing me. I think she found out recently. I think the stroke might have been a blessing."

Isabella forced herself to relax her forehead.

"She smoked all her life. It happens, Is. It happens all the time."

"Yes ... yes, I know." Isabella tipped tonic into what remained of her vodka. "Actually, I've been thinking the same."

"You have?"

"Yes ... I mean, not specifically cancer. But I've been thinking that she might have been ill." And now Isabella saw what she had been looking for: a chance to take those last few steps. "It would explain something that she wrote in her last letter. She said that I should make sure that I visited her here, in Petersburg, before I ... before I visited Dad."

Her brother was silent.

Isabella asked, "Do you think he s going to come?"

"Who, Dad?" As if she meant anyone else.

"Yes—Dad."

But Gabriel, either too tired or past caring or vodka-quelled, surprised her again by speaking in a flat and emotionless voice. "He's only been back here once since they got married. And that was to sell Grandpa Max s house and plunder all his stuff. He hates this place."

"Yeah, you re right ... But this is slightly different, isn't it? It s not like they re divorced."

"Is, Dad doesn't give a fuck about Mum." She watched him put out his cigarette. "All he will care about is recouping the money we made him give her. They haven't spoken properly for ten years."

Isabella wanted to ask her brother how he knew this. But she guessed that he didn't, that it was a belief, a quasi-religious assertion. Gabriel loathed their father as much as he loved their mother, and to such an extent that he could not countenance the fact that the two of them had ever got on at all. Their marriage was opaque to him—an abomination he refused to consider. And now was not the time to dispute this or indeed any of the hundred credos of their family lore.

"Are you bothered about his paying for things?"

"Let him pay. Even if he is trying to make us feel guilty. It doesn't matter. The result is that Mum gets buried where she wanted to and has a decent funeral."

"Do you think he'll try and get in touch?"

"Not with me."

She felt the challenge behind this and automatically rose to it. "Well, he s hardly going to call me direct either, is he? The last few times I saw him, I took good care to tell him he was a bastard and a failure."

"He won't come. He won't try to get in touch. he'll just do everything through his brand-new puppet at the consulate."

"That's not fair. Julian is a decent bloke."

"Maybe." Gabriel finished his drink. "Why did you ask about all that autopsy shit?"

She was caught out by the question but knew she had to tell the truth—and immediately, because even in his current state, her brother wouldn't miss the hesitation. Sometimes the speed and accuracy with which he read people reminded her of ... her father.

"I had this mad idea Dad killed her."

Gabriel shook his head. "Jesus, Is. You are more fucked up than I am."

But this was her other suspicion.

There was no point in locking the door. The cardboard they had tacked over the gaping wound in the wall would fool no one. In any case, there was nothing left to steal. So he pulled it shut and made his way into the darkness of the unlit stairwell.

Once on the street, he paused and looked around for a moment, as if assessing the fighting weight and shape of the night. He set off at a slow jog, following the same route they had taken two nights previously on the way to the gig—through the gap in the railings and into the cemetery. His muscles felt loose and limber and he moved with the ease of fitness, listening to the fall of his own step, the rasp of his own breathing. Above the swaying trees, a gibbous moon seemed to follow him, slipping from cloud to cloud.