Pravda (39 page)

The brake squeal when at last it came was deafening. He rolled
over, stood up, and put his coat on quickly before the warmth fled its folds. It was becoming colder. He grimaced. There was a Petersburg saying he had always liked: "Just when you think it can't get any colder, it gets much fucking colder." He reached his hand up to the heater. Broken. If he made it across the border, he would change compartments, even if it meant sharing. He found the light, lifted down his bag, and opened up the zip to pull out some music to read. He and Henry had made up someone to be. They had made up somewhere to be from. But he was a pianist still, and the same age. Might as well look the part.

He wasn't anxious—rather, he just wanted his fate decided. So that he could resign himself to it. But there was no way of knowing whether the passport and visa would pass inspection. And neither did he know what would happen to him if they did not. He had looked through everything, of course, but he was no expert on such documentation, so it was a pointless inspection. And Henry was useless.

He read the notes on the score—heard them within—and the sound rinsed his imagination clean of the whining. He liked to read the orchestral part to these concerti—he liked to understand what the other instruments were doing. He liked to hear the companion songs to his own.

Eventually the train shuddered to a stop. He let a moment pass. Then, cautiously, he opened the door to his compartment. Nobody around. He began to make his way toward one of the doors at the end of the carriage. There were voices. A dozen or so people had gathered. Men smoking, a woman with two children bundled in hats and scarves, their noses streaming, their cheeks red. Somebody said the border guards would start at the front and work their way through. Another said that it could take two hours. Another ten minutes. A fourth pushed open the main door and descended, cigarette angled, hands already cupping for the match's brief spark. Arkady hesitated a moment, but he had no wish to talk and nothing to say, so he followed this man down.

The cold was absolute and brutal. The snow crunched sharp and the air smarted in his throat, crackled in his nostrils. The train had stopped at some forgotten place. A long platform: a hut at the one end; farther away, cracks of light; a tower at the other end, all dark. What was to prevent a man from walking boldly to his freedom in whichever direction he thought it lay? Nothing. But then, not so long ago all of this was Russia—right, left, forward, back.

Though the snow was no longer actually falling, it lay heavy, and his boots left a deep trail. At first, as his eyes adjusted, the forest seemed to hem in on either side, but gradually Arkady thought that he could make out the deeper black of water through the narrow belt of trees across the opposite track. It was hard to be sure. A freezing fog beset the ground there, seeming to curl in and out of the trunks. Perhaps a lake mist. There was no sound. And the silence was blissful after the train.

He turned and stood another minute peering down the narrow cutting of the track due east, from whence he had come. The smoker climbed back up onto the train. Something stayed him awhile yet. For the first time in his life he was feeling the traveler's thrill: a mixture of apprehension and excitement.

"All of Mother Russia is old—old rock, old geology," his history teacher had said, "and there is nothing that she cannot provide. Why would any of us wish to leave her? The Soviet Union is the hope of all mankind!"

Someone was coming along the platform. He assumed it must be a border guard. But as the figure drew closer, he realized it was some madman of the night, carrying a samovar wrapped in heavy blankets.

"Get back on the train," the man said in heavily accented Russian, "or they will leave you here. They give no warning. They don't care. The real border is farther on." He inclined his head backward to point the direction he meant but did not pause, continuing on his way to the end and entering the last carriage.

Arkady's eyes followed where the man had indicated. Then he withdrew his hands from his armpits. They were going numb. He held them out in front, looking at them as he flexed the muscles. Then, slowly, carefully, he unwrapped the bandage on his index finger and let it drop to the ground. He kicked it across the snow until it fell onto the track, between the wheels of the train. Then he squeezed both hands hard into two big fists and shoved them deep into his pockets.

Fifteen minutes later, cradling his tea, the music still open on the seat beside him, Arkady Alexandrovitch Kolokov (as he now was) offered up his passport. The squat guard, whom no cap nor boot could elevate, barely looked at it, nodded, and left the compartment. Arkady sipped some more and felt the heat coursing inside him.

Five minutes later another official—this time a taller Latvian—
entered the carriage. He sat down on the bench opposite and took out his flashlight, though the light was working well enough. He examined the passport. He pointed the beam into Arkady's face. Arkady blinked. He examined the passport again. Then shone on the music.

He spoke in Russian. "Where are you going?"

"London."

"Good."

The Latvian stood. Passed back the passport. And then he was gone. That was it.

Arkady swore repeatedly under his breath. Stay here. Put some more clothes on. The cold wasn't so bad. Better than having to talk to people. In any case, he had another glass of tea lined up.

He sat alone, listening to the guard moving down the carriage. He wondered if the British authorities would be quite so easy.

Twenty minutes later the train hauled itself into the night, heading due west again.

The next day, Sunday, was wintry sharp but pleasingly so, the faintest frost still whispering white on the branches that the two women stooped beneath, the cold air thicker on the breath. Mornings like this reminded Isabella of Petersburg—the colors all reduced to their essences and only the bravest red flash of a robin's breast daring to challenge the cobalt of the sky. They were walking together up Swain's Lane, the steep road that divided the famous Highgate Cemetery into two plots—east, west—and took them up to village beyond. The pavement narrowed every few steps to accommodate the wayside trees, so they went along sometimes side by side, sometimes in single file. Roots had cracked and cleft the path, and they had to be careful not to stumble or slip.

At Isabella's suggestion, and then at Susan's urging, they were on their way to call on Francis, the keeper of the old Highgate house. As girls and then teenagers, they had done this walk many times before, though it was the first time Isabella had been back in nearly five years. She realized that this was her allotted session: Sunday morning—cordoned off from Adam and the children, negotiated, set aside; and ordinarily such a choreographed falsity would have irritated her. But there was something about old friends, something that exonerated Susan from the usual strictures of Isabella's unforgiving mind.

The two women passed the last tree in the immediate line and the pavement widened so that Isabella could step beside her friend again—Susan's sensible walking shoes click-clacking on the pavement while her own sneakers made no noise.

Susan looked across. "So you can store your stuff in the old house? If you decide to move back properly, I mean."

"If I'm coming back, I want my own flat." Isabella shook her head ruefully. "Just watch me—twenty-four hours in London and all the psycho crap will be forgotten and I'll be after all the usual: job, flat, man. Not necessarily in that order."

"I doubt it." Susan smiled and went ahead as they came to another tree. Over her shoulder she said, "And you know you are welcome to stay with us for Christmas."

"That's kind, Suze."

Susan stopped to retie her lace. "You didn't write back this morning?"

"No. Not yet. Which is pretty stupid, since I started it."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. Because..." Isabella stood watching her friend fashion a methodical double bow. "I suppose because I'm shocked to hear from him at all. Because it's been ten years. Because of his stroke. Because I don't know exactly what to say. And because I still really,
really
dislike him. Because everything."

"Do you feel sorry for him?"

"I feel sorry for anyone who has had a stroke ... but. It's hard to explain, Suze ... It doesn't change anything. It
shouldn't
change anything."

"But it does, it does." Susan rose and they went on. "You do want to stay in contact now, right?"

"Yeah. It's just the idea of actually doing it that makes me feel sick. It's almost worse, now that I know he is actually reading what I write. And I definitely can't face the thought of talking to him on the phone or—Christ—seeing him. Then there's the whole thing with Gabs."

"You mean you can't tell Gabriel if you are in touch with your dad?"

"No. No way. He would be really upset. He'd be crazy. He'd think that it was some kind of betrayal." She paused. "Are you sure of that, Is?" Susan asked. "Yep. It's probably the only thing I can't talk to him about."

"It's still that bad?"

"It's worse."

"Gabriel wasn't that keen on your dad when he was little." Susan clicked her tongue. "Well, either we have to think of a way of telling Gabriel or you have to stop bothering with your dad."

They were side by side now.

"Yeah. Except I feel like I owe Gabs. I want to help him despite himself, if you know what I mean. Apart from anything, he's been so good to me with all my fuckups. I don't want to give you the twins shtick, Suze, but there
is
something about being born on the same day or whatever—you know, a weird kind of extra loyalty. Maybe it would be different if we had more siblings, but ... Well, seeing as it's just us two and we've always been that way and—"

"But come on..." Susan waited for the noise of a passing bus to die down. "Come on, Is, surely he's got to take care of himself?"

"Yeah. Yeah, of course, in some ways ... But I worry that he can't see the problem. It's as if ... as if Gabs carries this backpack of hatred or hurt with him everywhere these days. And he never takes it off or talks about it. But it stops him sitting still, and it gets in the way when he wants to move. Basically, it's hindering his whole life. And only I can see it. It's ridiculous. I was exactly the same. Until, for some reason, I think Mum's dying changed me." They were coming to the steepest part of the walk. "I left Petersburg two days after Gabriel, Suze, and I was on my own and I had to go back to her flat again and box some more of her papers and stuff up to be shipped here. And I was in the maddest state I have ever been in. It's hard to describe—it's like total obliterating-everything sadness and you feel so on your own with it, because she was no one else's mum, I suppose, and you
are
on your own with it. And I was walking along the canal where she used to live and I crossed the bridge outside—it's the Raskolnikov bridge, where he stops in the book—and I wasn't even crying. More like I had just been punched in the stomach or whatever and was completely winded, completely empty, everything gone inside, everything totally gone, like a child turning around from the fun at a playground and realizing that her mum has left not just for a minute but
forever
—feeling really, really desolate. But on that bridge it was as if I suddenly caught sight of my true reflection in the water—as if I suddenly saw myself with this huge lump of a backpack on my back. And even though it has taken me weeks to get the shit off, all that time in New York sitting at my stupid desk at work, I have definitely done it now—I've taken my backpack off and I've got it where I can see it. Unpack. Face. Sort."

"It's difficult for me to imagine. I've never lost anyone." Susan slowed. They were coming to the entrance to the cemetery. "But I sort of understand. You're stuck. You can't tell Gabriel if you speak to Dad, and you can't speak to your dad without telling Gabriel."

"And now I'm worried that I'm running out of time with Dad too."

They stopped. A crowd was gathering for the next tour of the morning.

"What on earth happened between those two, anyway?" Susan asked.

"Oh, about fifty million things. Apart from the general fact that he was the worst father of all time, Dad used to like to mock and humiliate Gabs in front of other people when he was young. Belittle him. Although it was only when Gabs was older that Dad got seriously nasty. He used to go around to Gabriel's girlfriends' parents' houses and tell them not to trust Gabriel." They set off again. "All kinds of shit went on between them. You remember when Gabs came home from college and put on his play at the Gatehouse?
As You Like It
—you remember?"

"Of course I remember. I went. It was fun."

"Yeah."

"Shame about that horrible review," Susan said. "He was so upset."

"Right." Isabella nodded. "It was a massive thing for him—you know, he had borrowed money from the bank to finance it, rehearsed all the actors, persuaded them not to go up to Edinburgh, directed the play, more or less designed the set, the lighting, everything ... It was a huge risk, and it meant everything to him—you know what it's like when you're twenty-one. He really wanted to be a director badly. And he thought this was make or break." Isabella looked across. "Well, anyway, that review: Dad wrote it."

Susan stopped. "Oh shit—
no.
" Her mouth fell open and she shook her head slowly, her even features aghast. "No ... That's ... that's
sick.
All that stuff about how students shouldn't be allowed near the stage?"

"Yep. All of it. Dad was mates with the theater critic and they swapped jobs that week for a joke."

"And Gabriel found out?"

"Wasn't difficult. Dad
told
him."

"You're kidding."

"No. Dad gave him this long horseshit lecture about how he had to understand the cut and thrust of the adult world, and how it was an honest review and it was better that Gabriel heard the truth from him rather than someone else. Let this be a lesson to him. That he should have got a proper summer job and learned how to support
himself and stop hanging around. Earn his keep. And ... and Gabs just lost it. He went crazy. I don't think they ever spoke again. Not alone."