Yellow Blue Tibia (35 page)

‘Assist him?’ The tone of Saltykov’s voice - tart with suspicion - brought back another little flurry of memory. He was exactly like himself. I remembered exactly what he was like. There was a curious joy in that fact.

‘Permit him to lean against you,’ said Dr Bello, with a straight face. ‘Perhaps lend him your shoulder.’

‘It is impermissible for me to come into contact with another person,’ said Saltykov, primly, ‘and
a man
most especially. I suffer from a certain syndrome . . .’

Bello spoke across him: ‘I thought he was your friend?’

‘He
is
my friend,’ snapped Saltykov in the least friendly voice imaginable.

‘Perhaps, Doctor,’ I put in, ‘I might have a stick?’

The nurse went off to fetch me a walking stick, and Dr Bello peered intently at Saltykov. He, for his part, ignored her.

‘Saltykov,’ I asked. ‘Dora . . .’

‘Indeed. I shall drive you directly to her. She is most anxious to see you again.’

A great happiness bloomed inside me.

The nurse returned with a peanut-brown walking stick. It was for me. It was tipped with half-perished rubber. Very gingerly I levered myself off my bed.

 

It was a long walk down the corridor to the lift, and it was followed by another long walk through the main hall out to where Saltykov had parked his taxicab. But emerging into the chill of early spring, under a bright blue sky, felt like renewal. I was still alive. I was going to see Dora again. The grey of the buildings had a pewter, precious tint; the noise of traffic, distant in the air, chimed a strange symphony and even that noise was delightful. After weeks of hospital air, I breathed in the tainted chill with pleasure.

Saltykov, in what I believe he regarded as a kind of concession, opened the door of his taxi for me, and then stood aside as I grunted, and struggled, and strained and eventually manoeuvred myself into a sitting position inside unaided.

He got in and drove away. We drove for long minutes in silence before he said, ‘You do not think my taxicab is bugged?’

‘I don’t believe so,’ I said.

‘It is not likely, I suppose. Still, one cannot be too careful.’

‘No.’

‘In that case, I may tell you where we are going. Dora is in a small hotel in Kiev.’

‘I would have guessed as much.’

‘Really?’ He sounded disappointed. ‘If you can think of that, then perhaps they will think of it too.’

I knew what he meant by they, although without precision. I don’t believe Saltykov had any better knowledge. Nevertheless I said, ‘I could not guess which Kiev hotel. I daresay there are many.’

He brightened at this. ‘True! I tried to persuade her to return to Moscow. I told her: Go to the US embassy in Moscow. Seek sanctuary, I said. I said: Consider yourself the hunchback of Notre Dame.’

‘You told her to consider herself a
hunchback
?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Saltykov.

‘Did this not strike you as, perhaps, an insulting thing to say to a woman?’

He puffed and chewed his lower lip at this, and then said, ‘I was not attempting to be insulting. It is a well known story. The hunchback was in danger and he claimed sanctuary inside the cathedral in Paris. That was the point of the analogy. Do you think Dora Norman would be likely to take offence?’

‘Take offence at being compared to the hunchback of Notre Dame? Surely no woman could take offence at
that
.’

‘Exactly!’ But then his face became stern. ‘Unless you are being sarcastic? Perhaps you
are
being sarcastic. You must remember, please, that my syndrome makes it difficult for me to understand nuances such as irony and sarcasm. At any rate, she refused to return to Moscow. Specifically she refused to return to Moscow alone. To be more specific still, she refused to return to Moscow without you.’

My old heart sang like it was young again. ‘She said so?’

‘Indeed. I told her she was foolish. But she didn’t listen to me.’

Driving through the streets of the city might, for the buoyancy of my heart, have been flying through the sun-rubbed blue of the sky. I was grinning, my mouth stretched as wide as my pinched and scarred flesh permitted. I do not doubt I looked perfectly idiotic. I may even have looked like a death’s head. But I didn’t care.

After a while Saltykov spoke. ‘I did not mean to compare her
physique
to the physique of the hunchback of Notre Dame.’

‘I’m sure she understood that.’

‘The comparison was in point of the
principle of sanctuary
. I was not intending to imply she had a hunchy back.’

‘Of course not.’

‘In point of fact,’ he went on. ‘She does not
have
a hunchy back.’

‘That’s right.’

He indicated, slowed, turned right, and pulled away again. ‘In point of fact her excess weight is mostly on her
front
.’

‘You must stop talking now.’

‘One might say hunchstomach,’ said Saltykov. ‘Or—’

‘No,’ I stopped him. ‘One might not.’

 

The hotel was a little way from the centre of town: part of a terrace of a 1960s development, a tall narrow building squeezed between an office block and a clothes shop. Tram wires ran like giant clothes’ lines suspended along the middle of the road in front of it. The parade overlooked a dingy little park, dotted with bushes and containing a pond, a cadre of doleful ducks, a bandstand that I feel sure had never seen an actual band, and a concrete structure containing public conveniences that possessed somewhat the proportions of a large tool box. Saltykov parked on the road and, pointedly, neither helped me out of the cab nor aided my awkward progress over the pavement and inside the hotel.

 

At my re-encounter with Dora Norman, I felt, as the English poet said, [as if some new planet swam into my ken]. What I mean is that I felt a sense of renewed possibility. I have, since that day, often pondered those words. A new planet swims into your [ken], an English word for
knowledge
. Does this mean you are an imperialist, set upon dropping interplanetary troopers onto the surface, enslaving the indigenous inhabitants, colonising them? Or is the planet unoccupied, filled with verdancy, enforested, with bejewelled birds flying from bough to bough? Is it crying out for occupancy? Another English poet once called the object of his affections: ‘My America, my newfoundland’. How could I not think of that, that had spent so much of my life reading poetry in English, and who found myself - at
my
age! with
my
ruined face and bashed-up brain! - in love with a woman young enough to be my daughter?

Dora put her arms around me when I saw her again. She was weeping, but with happiness. ‘[At first I thought you were dead - when Mr Saltykov returned . . .]’

‘[Certainly not dead, my dear Dora,]’ I said.

I sat down on the settee in the main room of the hotel suite, panting with the effort of the journey, and Dora made me some bitter-tasting tea - nectar, I declared it. Saltykov had the grace to leave us together. Syndrome or not, he empathised enough to see that we needed a little privacy.

‘[When Mr Saltykov returned, he had such a doleful face . . .]’

‘[His syndrome disposes him to dolour, I think.]’

‘[I believe he thought you dead. There was an explosion?’]

‘[There was.]’

‘[It hasn’t been in the news.]’

‘[It is not surprising that the authorities have . . . is the English expression
shushed it up
?]’

‘[Hushed it up, yes. So Mr Saltykov drove away from the reactor, and came back to me. He’s been very good. He arranged this hotel room - I couldn’t stay where I was, before. There were cockroaches.]’

‘[This is to be preferred,]’ I agreed.

‘[It was, of course, hard to understand what Mr Saltykov was saying,]’ she said. [‘He found an English-Russian dictionary in an old bookshop in Kiev. Actually he found an English-Portuguese dictionary, and a Spanish-Russian dictionary, and the two of us sat for a long time looking up words and pointing at them. Communication was not very clear.]’

‘[Ah,]’ I said, trying to picture the scene.

‘[There was some confusion. He wanted to tell me that he thought you were dead, but at first I thought he was saying that you were destined for greatness. Then he said I would never see you again, and I thought he was saying that you have proposed marriage in my absence. I understood eventually. It’s so good to see you alive again!]’

‘[It is good to
be
alive again,]’ I said. Then I added, ‘[Better still to see
you
.]’ Had I been standing, or capable of getting to my feet quickly, I would have bowed.

‘[He checked the hospitals anyway. And he sat for hours in the lobby of the police station. Eventually they informed him you were still alive. How overjoyed I was! And here you are!]’

We embraced.

 

We settled into a sort of routine, the three of us occupying that two-room suite. Dora and Saltykov slept in the separate rooms they had been previously occupying; I slept on the settee in the front room. We agreed to make our way back to Moscow as soon as I was fit enough for the journey. And we agreed also on the need to keep Dora out of the way until she could be delivered to the American embassy in Moscow. I impressed upon them both the malignity and implacability of Frenkel. ‘[He wishes to kill you,]’ I told Dora.

‘[It makes me shudder to think of it,]’ she said. There was something simply delightful in the way a quiver might pass across the amplitude of her flesh. I said as much to her, and she blushed again.

‘But
why
does he wish such harm to Ms Norman?’ Saltykov pressed.

‘He wishes to kill her for the same reason he killed Dr Coyne,’ I replied. ‘I am sure of it. Although I am not sure, exactly, why he needed to kill Dr Coyne.’

I told them everything that Trofim had told
me
in the reactor room at Chernobyl; but it did nothing, precisely, to clear up the mystery.

Every day, Saltykov accompanied me as I undertook a ponderous, awkward walk in the park opposite the hotel. Every evening we ate together, and I translated between my beautiful Dora and my friend. We were waiting, simply enough, for me to become well enough to withstand the lengthy car journey back to Moscow; that is all. But some of the happiest moments in any life are moments of waiting. It has taken me a long life, and old age, to understand this important truth, and to slough off my youthful impatience.

‘A week. No more,’ I said. ‘Then we can journey back.’

Three days passed in this manner. I told Dora of the strange encounter with Frenkel in the hospital, late at night. ‘[Perhaps I only dreamt it,]’ I said. ‘[But it was a curious and vivid dream in that case.]’

‘[Ugh! You scare me.]’

‘[It is my intention. I love watching the shiver run through your flesh. It is a very sensual thing.]’

This had become a piece of common banter between us, and usually she laughed at it. But on this occasion she burst, suddenly, into tears. This wrongfooted me rather. ‘[My dear Ms Norman! Please do not
cry
.]’

‘[I’m sorry! So sorry!]’

‘[You have nothing to be sorry for, my dear Ms Norman!]’

‘[It was when you said
flesh
.]’

‘[I apologise! I am a monstrous and cruel man!]’

‘[No! No! I know I have too much
flesh
- that’s all.]’

‘[All the better!]’

‘[It cannot be better - I’m ashamed of being so
fat
. . .]’

‘[There’s no shame,]’ I said severely. ‘[Since your flesh is beautiful, the amplitude of your flesh magnifies that beauty. Shame? Shame is not welcome here. Shame is how you feel in front of other people, that is the definition of shame. But there are no other people here, only me, and I am a part of you now. You cannot be ashamed of yourself, by yourself.]’

On another occasion she said, ‘[You were married before. I bet she was thin.]’

‘[I was married in the 1940s. Everybody was thin. People starved to death - that’s how thin they were. When you have watched that you never again find thinness to be a beautiful thing. This strange modern aberration that praises thinness - it’s a function of an anomalous, global glut of food. Now, at this end of this terrible century, we find ourselves with more food than we can eat. But the human condition, taken as a whole, has not been plenty, but dearth. And it will be dearth again. Yours is the default position of beauty, my dear Ms Norman.]’ Perhaps I was not quite so eloquent as I have here recalled, but this was the gist of what I said.

‘[You are a sweet and lovely man,]’ she said.

‘[I don’t know about that. I am, I would say, a ruined man,]’ I noted.

‘[You mean money?]’

‘[I mean physically.]’ I gestured at my scarred face; at the still livid, scorched-looking marks on my temple; at the bristly cropped hair. ‘[I am old, and disfigured. I know you cannot love me, you, young and lovely as you are. But it is enough for me to have seen you again. It is enough for me that you are alive.]’