Since they were virtually imprisoned for the winter, the decision was made to bury Semyon in Pyramiden’s graveyard. If he had relatives who wanted him reinterred back home, they would face that issue in spring. Any request would most likely be denied anyway. He was not important enough to warrant the hassle of digging him up and getting his corpse home. A steel coffin was prepared in the mine workshop. Steel because the permafrost, which was three hundred feet deep, had an ugly habit of splitting wooden coffins and pushing them back up through the surface, with the deceased occupier on full view. Yuri had seen one of these before, an Albanian miner who had died of a heart attack. When his body reappeared above ground for an encore in this life, it was so well preserved the man looked as though he were sleeping.
Grigory put Yuri in charge of organising Semyon’s burial since he was the man’s superior. The truth was that no one else wanted to do it. Yuri reluctantly agreed, but doing it made him feel bad for other reasons. He had not done this much for his own brother. Nothing in fact. His brother’s neighbours had made all the arrangements for his funeral. Yuri’s single contribution had been to turn up at the appointed time. This he had managed to do. At the service, the neighbours had asked if he would like to say a few words, but he had declined. The audience was a small group of men and women he had never met before, and would not see again, so what was the point. Wherever he was, his brother would not be able to hear him. There was also the fact that he had not laid eyes on his younger sibling for years. Everyone else in the room knew him better than he did.
The Arctic topsoil was frozen so hard that a mechanical digger had to be used to prepare the hole, ten feet deep. The bottom kept filling with sludge but there was not much they could do about that. Yuri ordered the usual simple headstone, crowned with a red metal Soviet star. If Semyon had a personal religion, it would not be officially recognised on his burial plot. The state expected its people to be both communist and atheist.
The graveyard was thirty minutes’ walk from the settlement. A compromise distance between not too close to town and not too far out in the wilderness. There was no electricity here, so they worked under the digger’s headlights and an outdoor tungsten lamp connected to a noisy portable generator. Yuri moved upwind from the generator to avoid the noxious fumes billowing out of it. He looked around at the other graves, half-expecting the dead to wake with all the racket the digger was making. Happily, the deceased Albanian miner had stayed firmly interred the second time around.
When they had finished preparing the grave, Grigory came to inspect their work.
‘All right?’ shouted Yuri, over the generator’s din.
‘It’s a good hole, yes,’ said Grigory. ‘It’ll do the job.’
The party man looked around the barren graveyard. It was surrounded on all sides by a knee-high wooden picket fence, an unsuccessful attempt at giving the impression that this resting place for the dead was in some way protected from the elements.
Beyond the fence, the ice on the frozen fjord reflected the starlight in the dark sky above. Behind them, in the distance, lines of amber street lights glowed in town. Yuri checked his watch. It was two in the afternoon. Silence was restored as the digger driver switched off the generator. The man started to pack everything into the bucket of his digger for the journey back to town.
‘Do me a favour,’ said Grigory. ‘If anything should happen to me, make sure they don’t bury me here.’
‘Will do,’ agreed Yuri. ‘In that case, try and take your last breath in spring or summer if you can manage it. We can put you on the boat while you’re still warm.’
‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ replied Grigory, with a smile. ‘What about you?’
‘Do what you like with me,’ said Yuri. ‘I’ll be dead so what does it matter.’
Grigory sighed and shook his head.
‘What?’ asked Yuri.
‘Sometimes I wonder if you actually do care about anything.’
‘Sure I do,’ said Yuri. ‘While I’m still alive, I want to stay here.’
Grigory frowned. ‘Why? There’s nothing here except snow and coal. It’s a desert with ice.’
‘Exactly,’ Yuri replied. ‘I like it that way. I’m a simple man with simple needs.’
Grigory threw his hands in the air.
Behind them, the driver had finished loading up.
‘You two want a lift?’ the man shouted.
‘Yes, we do,’ said Yuri.
‘You’ll say a few words at the funeral,’ said Grigory, as he climbed up into the digger’s cab.
‘Oh no,’ said Yuri. ‘You’re not roping me in to that.’
Grigory stopped and turned to face him. He said the same words again, in the same tone, making it clear this was not a request. ‘You will say a few words at the funeral.’
‘Come on. I hardly knew the guy,’ Yuri protested. ‘I didn’t like him and he hated me. He would turn in his grave if he knew. You’re the expert speech-maker around here. Can’t you do it? It would be better coming from you.’
‘It’ll be expected from you. And make an effort. I’ll give you a few pointers.’
‘Thanks,’ said Yuri, not bothering to hide his displeasure. ‘That makes me feel a whole lot better.’
When they arrived back in town, Yuri parted company with the two men and decided to make another trip. He borrowed the keys to one of the snowmobiles. Then, wearing goggles and gloves, he headed out again for a ten-minute drive along the western shoreline. He brought his rifle along strapped to his back, just in case. Only pregnant female polar bears went into their dens for the winter. Hungry adult males were a year-round danger. He was also unsure of what might await him at his destination.
He kept to a slow and steady pace, as the headlights of the snowmobile provided little illumination.
The whaling house was a simple wooden hut erected by whalers who had worked these waters in the last century. It was hard to believe that men had once gutted whales, right here, on the shores of this bay. The water’s edge must have been turned red with blood.
If anyone in Pyramiden in modern times wanted a high degree of privacy for a meeting, this would be the ideal place. It was long abandoned and no one went there from one end of the year to the other. Yuri parked the snowmobile to one side and turned off the engine. He had a quick look around the outside. There was not much to see. Everything was hidden under a thick blanket of snow. The hut had accumulated banks of snow halfway up its exterior walls. But he noticed that the doorway had been cleared recently, with just a foot of snow in front of it.
Yuri forced open the wooden door, not really expecting to find any answers to his questions inside. He turned on his flashlight and entered. Inside, a mound of snow sat in the middle of the floor, stretching all the way to a hole in the ceiling, like a giant conical sculpture. On the ground, in a layer of snow, he saw a line of footprints in two different sizes. Semyon had not been a big man so perhaps the smaller set of prints were his. The other footprints matched Yuri’s own size. Next to an old sink was some fresh orange peel, and a cigarette butt. If Semyon had arranged to meet someone here, in this out-of-the-way place, they had obviously wanted to keep it a secret. But why?
He pulled out Semyon’s notebook from his jacket. He read the names of the animals again. Then he noticed that one of the dates on one page, under the word Spider, was the day after he had returned from Moscow. The day he had told Semyon that he had fixed the heating fault by himself. Could Spider refer to him? It would not surprise him if Semyon had considered him something that needed to be squashed under his shoe. He checked the other pages. The only date more recent than that one was a week before Semyon died, written under the word Eagle. Some of the animals had only one or two dates written underneath them. Spider had many.
Yuri shivered and wrapped his arms around himself. The old whalers were hardy men, who did not have the benefit of his central heating system. They must have found it almost impossible to stay warm here. There would
have been little wood to burn, as there were few trees nearby and no coal at all at that stage; the mine had not even begun until decades later. They must have had to haul fuel for miles.
He stayed a while longer, looking around. But there was not much else to see and the hut yielded no more information. Semyon couldn’t talk either. Yet someone in Pyramiden knew what had happened in here.
Yuri drove back the way he had come, parked the snowmobile where he’d found it and returned the keys.
The bare overhead light in his apartment blinked into life and Yuri stopped. The place was as untidy as he had left it, and nothing obvious was missing. But still, he had a feeling that someone had been in here while he was out. And then he saw it. The copper wire attached to his radio antenna was not the way he had left it. Someone had disturbed it, and rewrapped it around the radiator in a different way.
It was nothing unusual to have your home searched. This was something that had happened to half the population of the Soviet Union at least once in their lives. It had happened to Yuri in Moscow, in his younger, hellraising days, before he had learned to keep his mouth shut. That one had been an official search. They wrecked his stuff while he stood there watching, powerless to intervene. The more faces he made, the more of his stuff they ‘accidently’ smashed.
But who had done it this time? His money was on Timur, if it was an official search. At least, for once, he had nothing to hide. Plus, Timur had made it clear he wasn’t interested in investigating Semyon’s death. He turned on his radio and found that it was still tuned to the BBC. He could get into trouble just for that.
And if it was not an official search, then who? The Lithuanians? Would they have been so tidy? Right now he didn’t care; he just wanted to get under his covers and warm the cold out of his bones. If anyone wanted to rummage around his apartment while he slept, he was not going to object.
As he undressed, and felt a sharp pain from the swollen bruises on his abdomen, he had second thoughts. He grabbed his wooden chair and jammed it diagonally under his door handle.
From a distance, through the morning fog, the graveyard seemed to be on fire, which was impossible since there was nothing there to burn. Yuri was in the passenger seat of the truck carrying his late protégé’s coffin. As they drew closer, he saw that the graveyard had been staked out with six-foot-tall flaming torches. He guessed it was the work of the Lithuanians, giving their so-called friend, and Baltic neighbour, a theatrical send-off. The generator and the lamp they were transporting alongside Semyon would not be needed after all.
As Yuri jumped out of the cab, the Lithuanians brushed past him, giving him cold looks. They opened the rear of the van and took possession of the coffin. A bit late now to be looking after him with such care, thought Yuri. He followed the pallbearers to the hole they had dug the day before. The bottom was a mushy pool now, of mud, water and ice. But no one passed comment. It would be covered in soon enough.
Unlike the recent Great October anniversary celebration, this was not a communal event everyone wished to attend. Apart from the three Lithuanians, there was Timur, Grigory and Catherine, who was looking traumatised. She didn’t do anything by halves, Yuri thought. Either up or down with no in-between. She was someone who could be hired out for funerals, to express just the right amount of sorrow. With a handkerchief she started to dab away tears for a man she did not know. Grigory walked over to her and offered some words of comfort, which she appreciated.
Also present were what seemed like one or two token representatives from each work group. Igor and another grim-faced man representing the miners. The young doctor for the hospital. The head cook for the canteen staff. None of the children were there, but Anya was. She had obviously drawn the shortest straw among the teachers. Yuri was glad that she had, though the circumstances were not conducive to romantic conversation. Had he known she was coming he would have put more effort into practising his speech.
The light from a flaming torch to her left was having such a dramatic effect on Anya’s brown eyes that Yuri found it hard not to keep looking at her. He found it remarkable that no matter how long he stared in her direction, she still did not manage to acknowledge his presence. They were occupying the same space, only feet apart, but they may as well have been on different planets.
Spurred on by the desire to impress the teacher, and an equal desire not to rile the Lithuanians any more than he had already, Yuri gave his best speech ever. He borrowed liberally from Grigory’s suggestions, quoting from Tolstoy about life.
‘There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness, and truth. And joy can only be real if people live their life as a service. Our dear friend Semyon embodied all of these things.’
Yuri spotted Timur, behind the others, suppressing a grin. The Lithuanians held on to each other in a line, with their arms around each other’s shoulders, presumably to lessen the pain of their friend’s parting.
Next to be quoted was Pushkin on death.
‘Ever peaceful be your slumber. Though your days were few in number
On this earth, spite took its toll. Yet shall heaven have your soul
With pure love we did regard you. For your loved one did we guard you’
As he got into his stride, he could see the growing surprise on the faces of his audience. The Lithuanians began to look at each other, as though they were not quite sure what was happening. He was so eloquent that even Anya looked in his direction once. When he was finished there wasn’t a dry eye in the graveyard. Then he stopped abruptly because he had run out of things to say. To his embarrassment, everyone stood waiting for more. He turned to Grigory for help.
‘Aren’t you going to say something?’ he whispered.
‘No. I can’t follow that,’ said Grigory. ‘You did surprisingly well. I’m shocked and, I have to say, impressed.’
Then he turned and addressed everyone present. ‘Thank you to Yuri for those moving words. I am sure we all appreciated them. And now if anyone would like to join us for refreshments in the glass bar, you are all very welcome.’
The small crowd began to disperse towards the various vehicles that had brought them here. Igor gripped Yuri’s hand and wiped the satisfied smile off his face by saying, ‘A terrible business. I hope they catch who did it.’
To catch a murderer someone must actually look for one, thought Yuri.
The Lithuanians upended their flaming torches and extinguished them in the snow. They filed past Yuri on their way out. None of them shook his hand but when he caught their eyes, their cold looks had changed to more confused expressions. Yuri was hopeful they might desist now from using his abdomen as a punching bag. The bruises were only just beginning to subside.
He turned, looking for Anya, and saw that Timur was standing close behind her. He wondered for a moment if she could have been the one Timur was visiting that night when he had seen him standing in a window in the Paris apartment block. It would be a disappointment if she was. He hoped that she had better taste in men. However, when Timur walked around Anya, on his way out, neither of them acknowledged the existence of the other.
Nearly all of the funeral group ended up back in the glass bar, drowning their sorrows in the case of the Lithuanians, or just taking the rare opportunity to socialise during working hours for the rest of them. Yuri only drank at night as a rule. He hated the harsh effect of sunlight on drunken eyes. It pierced straight to his brain. But since there would be no sunlight here for another hundred days, he considered this rule to be breakable today. Unfortunately, Anya did not come to the bar. Nor did the cook, who had lunches to prepare. Grigory stayed for an hour, chatting with him. But he was not a big drinker in public, and he took his leave as the others started to get more boisterous. Yuri knew for a fact that the party man preferred solitary drinking, in the privacy of his own apartment. The evidence was the collection of empty whiskey bottles, which he later converted in to home décor.
The glass bar was small, and Yuri had some difficult
y avoiding being seated too near to the Lithuanians. They did not seem to want to talk to him either. However, judging by their regular glances in his direction, they were talking about him.
As the end of the evening drew near, it was just him and them left. When Yuri realised, he stood up and made to leave but one of them blocked his path.
‘That was a good speech,’ said the one who had punched him in the kidneys.
‘Yes,’ agreed the one who had kicked him on the ground.
‘I’m glad you liked it,’ said Yuri. ‘It was a bit nerve-wracking, I must admit. Always hard to get the tone of these things right. Semyon deserved a good send-off.’
‘You did it, you did it,’ said the first. ‘No doubt about it. We’ve talked and we’ve decided, either you’re a really good actor, or else you may not have had anything to do with what happened. For the moment, we are not going to kill you.’
‘Though that may change,’ said the third. ‘We’ll let you know.’
At which point they all laughed. Yuri did his best to see the humour. He smiled stupidly as they pushed him back into his chair and seated themselves around him, penning him in. Then he had to endure their off-key Lithuanian songs, and jokes, some of which were actually funny. It took him a full hour to extricate himself from their friendly attentions.
Outside, it was as dark as it had been when he entered the bar, eight hours earlier. Thanks to the vodka, he was not feeling the cold as much any more. He staggered home, fumbling for his keys. He had almost reached the front entrance to London when a figure stepped out of the shadows. For a moment, he feared he was in for another beating. But it was Anya. Her eyes fixed on his for longer than they ever had before, and she had an odd, almost desperate expression on her face.
‘Are you the one I’m waiting for?’ she asked.
The Reluctant Contact Page 5