“Water will be fine.”
Remizov brings him a glass of water, and together they sit near an open window. Sergey hears children playing in the street below.
“So you changed your mind,” Remizov says.
Sergey nods without meeting his gaze.
“Splendid. I thought you might. Oh, Sergey Andreievich, you look ashamed. Please, don’t. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. People spend so much time and effort pretending this isn’t how the world works. It’s absurd.”
Sergey says nothing.
“Come,” says Remizov. “Follow me.”
Another gulp of water and he follows Secretary Remizov to his bedroom. Remizov begins unbuttoning his shirt, all the time holding Sergey with his glare. He’s enjoying this. Of course he’s enjoying it. And not just the thrill of what might happen next, but Sergey’s submission. His look says, “I broke you, eventually.” Yet beyond that, something else. A note of shame; both aroused and repulsed by his own desire.
“You should undress,” Remizov says with an anxious gulp.
Sergey begins unbuttoning his own shirt. Remizov is already naked and sprawling across the bed.
“Sit next to me,” he says. “Please.”
Sergey looks down at this pale and paunchy man, spread clumsily on silk sheets, working away at a stubby erection with one hand and stroking his own flabby chest with the other. He looks like a pig’s carcass hanging in a butcher’s shop. Does Remizov want to be fucked by him, or to fuck him? None of this was discussed. He imagines kissing him; Remizov’s lips like raw liver. He’s wearing some sort of perfume. It’s impossible. Sergey feels sick.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I can’t.”
Remizov stops what he’s doing and sits upright.
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t go through with this.”
“Go through with what? We’re talking about a fuck, not a bank robbery.”
“I’m sorry.”
Remizov swings his legs off the bed and sits, hunched over, his sagging chest resting on his paunch, his paunch resting on his thighs, like a comic allegory of dejection.
“Why?”
Sergey looks away.
“Tell me, Sergey. Why? You’ve had everyone else. Tatiana and fucking Vasily and who knows how many others? Why not me?”
Sergey slips back into his shirt, the traces of sweat now cold against his skin, and he leaves the bedroom before he’s finished buttoning it. Remizov follows, plucking a silk dressing gown from a hook on the door.
“Have you forgotten what we agreed?”
“Of course not.”
Sergey fumbles with the door handle, opens the door and walks out of the apartment. The elevator is only a short distance away, but it takes an age to arrive. Remizov goes no further than the open door, watching Sergey with an expression that curdles from one of acute sadness to one of loathing. There may be no coming back from this. He remembers what they agreed. This was the condition, and he’s broken it. It’s over.
The chime of the elevator. The doors open. Sergey steps in. The doors close and the elevator goes down.
Chapter 16:
LOS ANGELES, NOVEMBER 1950
Midnight. San Bernardino. A motel room shaped like a wigwam. An hour’s drive from the city, but by no means beyond it. In recent years, Los Angeles has begun spilling out through every valley and canyon like floodwater. It took an hour to drive here, but at no point did it feel as if you’d left LA.
You picked this place because Angie saw it in a magazine and thought it would be funny. Why either of you thought “funny” was appropriate for your wedding night remains unclear. Perhaps “funny” would defuse the tension of what was guaranteed to be an unusual day.
Tonight will be the first you’ve spent together. Perhaps there’s something romantic in waiting, unlike so many couples these days. Perhaps these traditions are there for a reason, and not just because some rabbi or priest says it’s the correct way of doing things.
The ceremony took place at City Hall in the presence of two witnesses; a college friend of Angie’s who moved out here a few months ago, and Howard Greenbaum, a colleague at Capitol. Angie’s folks live in Chicago, yours in New York, and neither pair are inclined to travel. She wrote to her parents telling them all about you. You told her you’d written to yours, but you hadn’t.
You check into the motel as Mr and Mrs Conrad. The man on reception takes one look – you in a grey suit, white shirt, yellow tie; Angie in a pale blue suit and pillbox hat – and says, “Newlyweds?”
“Yes,” you tell him, proudly. “Yes we are.”
“Well, sir, I’m afraid all of our wigwams are the same. We don’t have a honeymoon suite, as such. But I can offer you a complimentary bottle of champagne.”
Except for its sloping walls, the room looks nothing like a wigwam from the inside. You were expecting something made of canvas, but the walls are painted plaster on cement.
It’s getting dark. You close the curtains, cutting off the view of Foothill Boulevard, and for a moment you and Angie look at one another from either side of the bed, as if considering a complicated chess move. The bottle of Paul Masson bobs unopened in the ice bucket. Angie unbuttons her jacket, draping it across the chair beside the dressing table, and begins unbuttoning her blouse in an almost business-like manner. You take off your shoes and unbutton your shirt, and watch her in the mirror as she removes her blouse. You’re drawn to her breasts, so much fuller than you’d imagined; broad and heavy-looking. You take off your pants and shorts and slide into the bed before she has a chance to see you naked.
It isn’t Angie who turns you on so much as the idea that what you’re doing, or what you’re about to do, goes against every desire you’ve ever had. Something about this feels forbidden, though it’s the very opposite of that.
Unclothed, Angie stands before the bed, the light from the bedside lamp catching the side of her body and her breasts in golden waves and crescents. She touches herself with her fingers, looking down at you with a hesitant desire; confidence and caution mixed in equal parts. She gets into the bed and her touch makes you shudder with pleasure and shame. When you kiss, her mouth feels small.
Chapter 17:
MANHATTAN, OCTOBER 2001
Washington Square Park. New York’s centre of gravity, the place where it was pinned to the map. The city might have other landmarks, recognised around the world, but to Natalie this was where New York was most unapologetically itself. Or, at least, it had been.
It had none of its usual spark that night; none of the buskers and students, dealers and tramps, chess hustlers, bag ladies, pigeon-covered hobos. Before September, Washington Square was like a nightly carnival, but now everything about the place felt wrong. The music people were playing, either on instruments or old portable stereos, was sombre, downbeat. If she’d heard Everybody Hurts once she’d heard it a thousand times. People were still lighting candles and wearing peace sign t-shirts as if it might make a difference somewhere in the world. In the distance, there was a gap in the skyline that made her stomach lurch each time she saw it; the empty chair at a dining table following a death.
Where could they possibly go from here? What next step would make sense of it, or draw a line beneath it? It often seemed they would have to live through all this – the sombre songs and candlelit vigils, the shrill news bulletins and war rhetoric and flags, so many flags – forever.
She and Pavel crossed the park to the Library, a walk she could take without thinking, her feet leading the way unconciously. If they hadn’t, she may have had to fight the urge to turn back. She knew the library, but each step forward was a step into the unknown.
For three years she had visited this place almost daily, a sanctuary from her neighbours in halls or the turbulence of other people. It was how she’d met Tyler. Bringing books back, checking them out. He was one of the few faces she saw each day, one of the few people with whom she had any sort of interaction. He asked
her out for coffee, then a movie. She said yes both times. They dated.
But what if Tyler wasn’t there that evening? What if he was no longer at the library, or even in New York? She’d heard of college friends and acquaintances leaving the city in recent weeks, going back to their home towns or away to wherever seemed safe.
She and Pavel passed through the revolving doors. There were three people on the information desk and one of them was Tyler. Natalie breathed out. He was still here, and he hadn’t changed a bit. Same mop of wavy brown hair. Same glasses. He was wearing a stripy sweater that looked three sizes too big, just as he always had. He saw Natalie and did as much of a double take as anyone does in real life.
“Natalie?”
He looked at Pavel, realised they were together, and his smile faded a little.
“Hey, listen,” he said. “You know, I was meaning to call you or email. Just to make sure you were okay. But I didn’t know if you had the same number and I only had your old NYU email and –”
“It’s fine,” said Natalie. “I was the same. Didn’t know who to call, who to check up on. But you’re okay.”
“I’m okay.”
“I’m glad.”
“Me too. It’s great to see you.”
A pause. His smile seemed almost to erase the last three years completely. She could imagine she was back at NYU, carrying more books than she could manage, hoping she didn’t have any outstanding fines, knowing he’d cancel them if she did.
“So,” he said, arms spread in an exaggerated greeting. “What brings you to the Bobst?”
“We need a favour.”
Tyler lowered his arms and grimaced.
“What kind?”
“We need a book. Maybe two. Or three.”
Tyler’s voice dropped to a whisper and he leaned forward.
“Wait. You graduated when? Like, almost three years ago?”
“Two and a half, actually.”
“Even so. You know the rules. Students and faculty only, unless you have an appointment. You guys should probably, you know, go through one of your old professors… get a permit…”
“We don’t have time. And it won’t take us very long. We’ll be in and out before you know it. And I promise I’ll bring them back.”
“No,” said Tyler. “No way. Look, I know you were a student here, but I can’t make exceptions. I mean, do you even know what would happen to me if they found out I’d let a… you know… civilian take books?”
This was a stupid idea. Their time together hadn’t ended with the neatest of breaks. She simply let him go; rarely ever calling, taking time when replying to calls and emails. In the end, he had to ask her if it was over, and she told him it was. And now she wanted a favour?
“Please?” Natalie said. “I’ll bring them back Monday. I promise.”
Tyler sighed, leaning back with his hands clasped behind his head.
“Okay,” he said. “But if you’re not out of here in an hour, I’ll come looking for you. And two books, max. Okay?”
“Okay. And thank you.”
There was something comforting about being here again. The Bobst Library belonged to a time when things were simpler, calmer. No-one ever demanded anything of her in this library. The world would leave her alone while she was here. Now that anxiety was everyone’s default setting and nobody stopped asking how she was, what she was doing, what she was thinking, there was a reassurance in finding the library exactly how she’d left it.
The floor they visited was empty but for a young woman in a woollen beret, a book of Respighi scores cradled in one arm. Only a few years younger than Natalie, but she had that lightness, that untroubled air that only undergraduates ever seem to have.
“That guy,” said Pavel. “Downstairs. He is a friend of yours?”
“We dated,” she explained. “This was years ago.”
“He likes you still,” said Pavel. It wasn’t a question.
“No,” said Natalie. “He doesn’t. I mean, we haven’t seen one another in a while, and no. It was a long, long time ago.”
Pavel grinned. “He does. He likes you very much.” He leaned in close to her, and whispered, “I think he was jealous.” The words brushed featherlike against her neck.
Though smaller than its counterpart at Columbia, the music section was vast. So many lives stored there, so much more tangible than a mausoleum. The known facts, the photographs, the first-hand accounts. Yet still, frustratingly incomplete. Every biography is missing something; the gaps left behind by secrets and lies.
The book on Bernard, the one she’d searched for fruitlessly in Sol’s library, was sandwiched between a book about Irving Berlin and three separate biographies of Leonard Bernstein. She took it from the shelf and skipped whole chapters about Bernard’s childhood, his teenage years, his time in Paris after the War, meeting Duchamp, Picasso and Gertrude Stein, his marriage to the heiress, Margaret Vandemeer. She was looking for 1938. Bernard was thirty-seven years old and already a success. His Mill Neck Concerto had premiered the previous year, and he’d begun work on his opera Jason and Medea.
“Here,” she said, holding the book open for Pavel to see. He leaned in close, his shoulder touching hers.
“You read it,” he said. “I would read too slowly.”
She dragged her finger across the page: “In March and April of 1938 Bernard was one of a number of American artists and intellectuals who visited the Soviet Union at the invitation of Stalin’s State Committee of the Arts, and as an assignment for Modern Music magazine.”
She waited for him to grin, or laugh, or even cheer, his voice echoing across this almost deserted section of the library. He did neither of those things. If anything, it seemed as if he might cry.
“This is it,” he said. “This is the proof.”
“It proves nothing except a connection,” said Natalie. “Bernard was in the Soviet Union in April 1938. That doesn’t mean he was at the Kirov. And besides, what are we saying? That he came back, hummed the melody to his student? That just doesn’t make sense.”
“Then we need to know more about this,” said Pavel, prodding the page. “This trip. Bernard. We need to know where he went and what he did.”
She skipped to the notes. The main reference for that chapter was a book about the relationship between the Soviets and their supporters in the West. They took the biography of Bernard and ran across the library, only slowing when one of the guards told them to.
It took a while, but presently they found the book in question and searched its index for Bernard, Ronald. And there he was. Multiple mentions in more than one chapter. A picture of him in its glossy middle pages, with the caption:
“April 1938. A party at Leningrad’s Hotel Astoria, following a performance at the Kirov Theatre (now the Mariinsky). Clockwise, from top row: Doris Fanshawe, Charles Fanshawe, Ronald Bernard, Lawrence J. Black, unknown, Langdon Brunel, unknown, Dorothy Markham, Penelope Markham-Riley, William F. Kaufman, Viktor Remizov.”
She pointed to the back row. “That’s Bernard.”
Pavel gasped and placed his hand over hers, moving it across the page until she was pointing to one of the two unknown figures.
“That’s my grandfather.”
“Well, now, look. It says here ‘unknown’, so…”
“You don’t think I recognise him?”
“It isn’t that. I just don’t know what he looked like.”
“You think I’m lying?”
She looked again at the photograph. Standing beside Langdon Brunel was a young man, smartly dressed but his tie askew and his face a blur. At the precise moment when the picture was taken, he’d turned his head to look at something or someone to his right. He was the second unknown.
“Okay,” she said. “Listen. We’ll take these books, and tomorrow we’ll start making calls, yes? I’ve a friend who teaches at Columbia. This is her area. If I show her this I’m sure she’ll be able to find out if it was taken the night they performed your
grandfather’s ballet.”
Her words were tripping out of her. She hardly knew what she was saying. She was talking about her friend Carol and making plans as if she intended to see them through, as if she intended to help Pavel until the very end. Perhaps she did.
“But I know this was his ballet,” said Pavel. “Look. April 1938. There’s Bernard, there is Sergey. This is the proof.”
“I believe you.”
She said those words unconsciously, but they changed the air between them. Pavel leaned towards her and kissed her on the mouth. She put her arms around him, the books falling to the ground, and they stumbled back into the bookshelves. When they parted again they looked at one another as if seeing each other for the first time.
Down on the ground floor, Tyler scanned the books out on his own card, telling them they had until Monday, and no later, to return them. Natalie promised she would do just that and Tyler made a face, goofy and tender: You’d better.
It was dusk, the day receding in a blaze of pink over one corner of Washington Square. As they passed beneath the memorial arch Pavel took her hand in his, and they stayed that way, holding hands, all the way to her apartment.
Chapter 18:
LOS ANGELES, FEBRUARY 1951
The day Ron finished the Inferno oratorio, he said nothing, not immediately. He nudged the score across the desk and smiled at you. Even then, just sight-reading it, you heard his music as clearly as if it were being performed right there in the room, and you knew this was the piece for which he’d be remembered. The scale and ambition of it were like nothing he’d attempted before, as if he’d thrown away all uncertainty and put every last thing he had into a single work. But that joy was tempered, as you read its last movement, by knowing he’d left, encoded within it, a message. Something personal. Something cruel.
As such, Giudecca is an impossible piece, something you can hardly listen to, let alone contemplate conducting with a full orchestra and choir. You tried persuading Margaret Bernard to choose another piece, perhaps an earlier movement, but she was adamant. The oratorio is Ron’s greatest work, and Giudecca its highlight. To not include it in the concert would be a travesty.
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