by John Boyne
I had not always intended my life to be quite so conservative. There were even moments, fleeting instances over more than sixty years together, when I resented the fact that we could not stand clear of our parents’ shadows and create our own individualized lifestyle. But Zoya, perhaps in recognition of her own childhood and upbringing, desired nothing more than to create a home which would fit in exactly with those of our neighbours and friends.
She wanted peace, you see.
She wanted to blend in.
‘Can’t we just live quietly?’ she asked me once. ‘Quietly and happily, behaving like others behave? That way, no one will ever notice us.’
We made our home in Holborn, not far from Doughty Street, where the writer Charles Dickens lived for a time. I passed his house twice every day as I walked to and from the British Museum and, as I became more familiar with his novels through my work at the library, I tried to imagine him seated in the upstairs study, crafting the peculiar sentences of Oliver Twist. An elderly neighbour once told me that her mother had cleaned for Mr Dickens every day for two years and that he had presented her with an edition of that novel with his signature upon the frontispiece, which she kept on a shelf in her parlour.
‘A very clean man,’ she told me, pursing her lips and nodding in approval. ‘That’s what Mother always said about him. Fastidious in his ways.’
My morning routine never changed. I would wake at half past six, wash and dress, and step into the kitchen by seven o’clock, where Zoya would have tea and toast and two perfectly poached eggs waiting for me on the table. She had a miraculous technique for preparing the eggs so that they retained their oval shape outside of the shell, a talent she put down to creating a whirlwind effect in the boiling water with a whisk before plunging the albumen and the yolk inside. We said little to each other as I ate but she would sit at the table next to me, refilling my mug of tea when it ran low, taking my plate away the moment I had finished and rinsing it beneath the tap.
I preferred to walk to the museum, regardless of the weather, in order to take some exercise. As a young man, I was proud of my physique and I worked hard to maintain it, even as middle-age approached and I became less enamoured by my reflection in the glass. I carried a briefcase and Zoya placed two sandwiches and a piece of fruit inside it every morning, alongside whatever novel I was reading at the time. She took such good care of me and, through the nature of daily repetition, I rarely thought to comment on her kindness or offer her my thanks.
Perhaps this makes me sound like an old-fashioned creature, a tyrant making unreasonable demands of his wife.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, when we were first married, in Paris in the autumn of 1919, I could not bear the idea of Zoya placing herself in a servile position towards me.
‘But I am not waiting upon you,’ she insisted. ‘It gives me pleasure to take care of you, Georgy, can’t you see that? I never imagined I would have such freedoms as this, to wash, to cook, to maintain my own home as other women do. Please don’t deny me something that others take for granted.’
‘That others complain about,’ I replied with a smile.
‘Please, Georgy,’ she repeated, and what could I do but accede to her demands? Still, I remained uneasy with this for some years, but as time went by and we were blessed with a child, our routines took over and I forgot about my initial discomfort. The arrangement suited us, that is all I can say of it.
My shame, however, is that she has looked after me so well throughout our life together that I find myself unable to cope with basic responsibilities now that I am alone in our home. I know nothing of cooking and so eat cereal for my breakfast every day, flakes of dry oats and bran, fossilized currants made soggy by the addition of milk. I take lunch at the hospital at one o’clock when I arrive on my daily visit. I eat by myself at a small plastic table overlooking the infirmary’s unkempt garden, where the doctors and nurses smoke side by side in their pale-blue, almost indecent scrubs. The food is dull and bland but it fills my stomach and that is all I ask of it. It is basic English food. Meat and potatoes. Chicken and potatoes. Fish and potatoes. I imagine that some day the menu will offer potatoes and potatoes. It can excite no one.
Naturally, I have grown to recognize some of my fellow visitors, the widows and widowers in waiting who wander the corridors in terrified loneliness, deprived for the first time in decades of their favourite person. We have a nodding acquaintance, some of us, and there are those who like to share their stories of hope and disappointment with each other, but I avoid conversation. I am not here to form friendships. I am here only for my wife, for my darling Zoya, to sit by her bedside, to hold her hand in mine, to whisper in her ear, to make sure she knows that she is not alone.
I remain in the hospital until six o’clock and then I kiss her cheek, rest my hand on her shoulder for a moment, and say a silent prayer that she will still be alive when I return the next day.
Twice weekly, our grandson Michael arrives to spend a little time with me. His mother, our daughter Arina, died in her thirty-sixth year when she was hit by a car as she returned home from work. The scar that was left by her absence has never healed. We had been convinced for so long that we were unable to bear children that when Zoya finally became pregnant we thought it a miracle, a gift from God. A reward, perhaps, for the families we had lost.
And then she was taken from us.
Michael was only a boy when his mother died, and his father, our son-in-law, a thoughtful and honourable man, ensured that he maintained a relationship with his maternal grandparents. Of course, like all boys, his appearance changed constantly throughout his childhood, to the point where we could never decide whose side of the family he favoured the most, but now that he has reached manhood, I find that he reminds me very much of Zoya’s father. I think she must have noticed the similarity too, but has never spoken of it. There is something in the way that he turns his head and smiles at us, in how his forehead furrows unexpectedly when he frowns, the depth of those brown eyes that combine a mixture of confidence and uncertainty. Once, when the three of us were walking in Hyde Park together on a sunny afternoon, a small dog came scampering towards us and he fell to his knees to embrace the puppy, allowing it to lick his face as he gurgled delighted inanities in the dog’s direction, and as he looked up to grin at his doting grandparents, I am sure that we were both taken by the sudden and unanticipated resemblance. It was so unsettling, it caused our minds to fill with so many memories, that the conversation immediately grew stilted between us and an otherwise pleasant afternoon became spoiled.
Michael is in his second year of studies at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, where he is in training to become an actor, a vocation which surprises me for as a child he was quiet and withdrawn, as a teenager sullen and introverted, and now, at the age of twenty, he displays an extrovert’s talent for performance which none of us had ever expected. Last year, before she became too ill to enjoy such things, Zoya and I attended a student production of Mr Shaw’s Major Barbara, in which Michael played the part of the young, smitten Adolphus Cusins. He was quite impressive, I thought. Convincing in the role. He seemed to know a little about love too, which pleased me.
‘He’s very good at pretending to be someone he’s not,’ I remarked to Zoya in the lobby afterwards as we waited to offer our congratulations, unsure as I said the words whether I meant them as a compliment or not. ‘I don’t know how he does it.’
‘I do,’ she replied, surprising me, but before I could respond he introduced us to a young lady, Sarah, Major Barbara herself, his on-stage fiancée and, as it transpired, his off-stage girlfriend. She was a pretty thing but seemed a little confused as to why she was being forced to make small talk with two elderly relatives of her lover, and perhaps a little irritated by it too. Throughout our conversation I felt as if she was talking down to Zoya and me as if she believed that a correlation somehow existed between age and stupidity. At nineteen years old s
he was full of pronouncements about how terrible the world was, and how both Mr Reagan and Mr Brezhnev were entirely to blame. She declared in a harsh, condescending voice, which put me in mind of that awful Thatcher woman quoting St Francis of Assisi on the steps of Downing Street, that the President and the General Secretary would destroy the planet with their imperialist policies, and spoke with deluded authority of the arms race, the cold war, matters that she had only read about in her student magazines and about which she presumed to lecture us. She wore a white T-shirt which made no attempt to conceal her breasts; a dripping, blood-red word – Solidarność – was scrawled across it and when she caught me staring – at the word, I swear it, not her breasts – she proceeded to deliver a sermon about the heroic nature of the Polish ship-worker, Mr Wałęsa. I felt utterly patronized by her, insulted even, but Zoya linked arms with me to ensure that I remained composed and finally Major Barbara informed us how absolutely marvellous it had been to meet us, that we were perfectly adorable, and vanished off into a sea of grotesquely painted and no doubt similarly opinionated young people.
I didn’t criticize her to Michael, of course. I know what it is to be a young man in love. And, for that matter, to be an old man in love. Sometimes I find it absurd to consider the fact that this magnificent boy is now experiencing sensual delights; it seems like such a short time ago that he wanted nothing more than to sit on my lap and have me read fairy-tales to him.
Michael makes sure to visit his grandmother in the hospital every few days; he is diligent in his attendance. He sits with her for an hour and then comes to lie to me, to say how much better she looks, that she woke for a few moments and sat up to speak with him and appeared alert and more like her old self, that he’s sure it’s only a matter of time before Zoya will be well enough to come home. I wonder sometimes whether he really believes this or if he thinks that I am foolish enough to believe it myself and he is doing me a great service by putting such wonderful, impossible notions in my stupid old head. Young people have such disrespect for the elderly, not by design perhaps, but simply by the fact that they refuse to believe that our brains still function. Either way, we perform the farce together two or three times a week. He says it, I agree with him, we make plans for things that we three – four – might do together when Zoya is well again, and then he checks his watch, seems surprised by how late it is, kisses me on the head, says ‘See you in a couple of days, Pops, call me if you need anything’ and is out the door, bounding up the steps on his long, lean, muscular legs, and jumping almost instantaneously on board the lower deck of a passing bus, all in the space of a minute.
There are times when I envy him his youth but I try not to dwell on that. An old man should not resent those who are sent to take his place, and to recall when I was young and healthy and virile is an act of masochism that serves no purpose. It occurs to me that even though Zoya and I are both still alive, my life is already over. She will be taken from me soon and there will be no reason for me to continue without her. We are one person, you see. We are GeorgyandZoya.
Zoya’s doctor’s name is Joan Crawford. This is not a joke. The first time I met her, I couldn’t help but wonder why her parents inflicted such a burden on her. Or was it the result of her marriage, perhaps? Did she fall in love with the right man but the wrong name? I didn’t remark on its familiarity, of course. I imagine she has spent a lifetime enduring idiotic comments. By coincidence, she bears a certain physical similarity to the famous actress, sporting the same rich, dark hair and slightly arched eyebrows, and I suspect that she encourages the comparison by the manner in which she presents herself; whether or not she beats her children with wire clothes-hangers is of course open to conjecture. She usually wears a wedding ring but occasionally it’s missing from her hand. Whenever that is the case her manner is distracted, and I find myself wondering whether her private life is a source of disappointment to her.
I have not spoken to Dr Crawford for almost two weeks and so, before visiting Zoya, I wander through the white, antiseptic-scented corridors in search of her office. I’ve been there before, of course, several times, but I find the oncology department difficult to negotiate. The hospital itself is labyrinthine and none of the young men and women who rush by, consulting clipboards and charts as they scurry along, biting into apples and halfsandwiches, seem inclined to offer any assistance. Finally, however, I find myself standing outside her door and knock gently. An eternity seems to pass before she answers – an irritable Yes? – and when she does I open it only a fraction, smiling apologetically, hoping to disarm her with my elderly civility.
‘Dr Crawford,’ I say. ‘I must apologize for disturbing you.’
‘Mr Jachmenev,’ she replies, impressing me by the fact that she remembers my name so quickly; over the years, there have been some who have had great difficulty in either recalling or pronouncing it. And there have been others who have felt it beneath their dignity to try. ‘You’re not disturbing me at all. Please come in.’
I’m glad that she is so welcoming today and step inside, sitting down with my hat in my hands, hoping that she might have some positive news for me. I can’t help but look towards her ring finger and wonder whether her good humour is a result of the shining gold band winking at me as it catches the sunlight. She’s smiling noticeably as she takes me in and I stare at her, a little surprised. This is a cancer department, after all. The woman treats cancer patients from morning till night, tells them terrible things, performs horrible surgeries, watches as they struggle their way out of this world and on to the next. I can’t imagine what she has to look so happy about.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Jachmenev,’ she says, shaking her head quickly. ‘You’ll have to forgive me. I’m just always impressed by how beautifully you’re dressed. Men of your generation, they seem to wear suits all the time, don’t they? And I don’t often see men with hats any more. I miss hats.’
I look down at my clothing, unsure how to take the remark. This is how I dress, how I have always dressed. It does not seem worthy of comment. I’m not sure that I care for the distinction between our generations either, although it is true that I must be nearly forty years older than her. Indeed, Dr Crawford would be around the same age that Arina, our daughter, would have been. Had she lived.
‘I wanted to ask you about my wife,’ I say, dispensing with these pleasantries. ‘I wanted to ask you about Zoya.’
‘Of course,’ she replies quickly, all business now. ‘What would you like to know?’
I feel at a loss now, despite the fact that I have been preparing questions in my mind ever since I left the hospital the previous afternoon. I search my brain for the correct words, for something approaching language. ‘How is she doing?’ I ask finally, four words which do not seem sufficient to carry the great weight of the questions they support.
‘She’s comfortable, Mr Jachmenev,’ she replies, her tone softening a little. ‘But, as you know, the tumour is at an advanced level. You remember I spoke to you before about the development of ovarian cancer?’
I nod, but cannot look her in the eye. How we cling to hope, even when we know that there is none! She has spoken at some length over the course of several meetings with Zoya and me about the four individual stages of the disease and their inevitable ends. She’s talked about ovaries and tumours, the uterus, the fallopian tube, the pelvis; she has used phrases such as peritoneal washings, metastases and para-aortic lymph nodes which have been beyond my level of comprehension, but I have listened and asked appropriate questions and done my best to understand.
‘Well, at this point the most that we can do is try to manage Zoya’s pain for as long as possible. She responds extremely well to the medication, actually, for a lady of her years.’
‘She has always been strong,’ I say.
‘I can see that,’ she replies. ‘She has certainly been one of the most determined patients I’ve encountered in my career.’
I don’t like this use of the phrase ‘has been’.
It implies something, or someone, which is already past. Which once was, and is no more.
‘She can’t come home to …?’ I begin, unwilling to finish the sentence, looking up at Dr Crawford hopefully, but she shakes her head.
‘To move her would accelerate the progression of the cancer,’ she tells me. ‘I don’t think her body could survive the trauma. I know this is difficult, Mr Jachmenev, but—’
I don’t listen to any more. She is a nice lady, a competent doctor, but I do not need to hear or report platitudes. I leave her office shortly after this and return to the ward, where Zoya is awake now and breathing heavily. Machines surround her. Wires slip beneath the arms of her nightdress; tubes worm their way beneath the rough covers of the bedspread and find purchase I know not where.
‘Dusha,’ I say, leaning over and kissing her forehead, allowing my lips to linger for a moment against her soft, thin flesh. My darling. I inhale her familiar scent; all my memories are wrapped up in it. I could close my eyes and be anywhere. 1970. 1953. 1915.
‘Georgy,’ she whispers, and it is an effort for her even to speak my name. I motion to her to reserve her energy as I sit by her side and take her hand in mine. As I do so, her fingers close around my own and I am surprised for a moment by how much strength she can still summon from within. But I reproach myself for this, for what human being have I ever known whose strength can compete with that of Zoya? Who, dead or alive, has endured as much and yet survived? I squeeze her fingers in return, hoping that whatever feeble strength remains in my own weakened body can be passed along to her, and we say nothing, simply sit in each other’s company as we have throughout our whole lives, happy to be together, content when we are one.