by John Boyne
‘Call me Zoya,’ she said quietly. ‘It means life.’
1981
IT’S ALMOST ELEVEN o’clock at night when the phone rings. I’m seated in an armchair before our small gas fire, an unopened novel in my hands, my eyes closed, but not asleep. The telephone is close to me but I don’t pick it up immediately, allowing myself a final moment of optimism before I must answer it and face the news. It rings six, seven, eight times. Finally I reach out a hand and lift the receiver.
‘Hello,’ I say.
‘Mr Jachmenev?’
‘Speaking.’
‘Good evening, Mr Jachmenev,’ says the voice on the other end, a woman’s. ‘I’m sorry to phone you so late.’
‘It’s all right, Dr Crawford,’ I say, for I recognize her immediately; who else could it be, after all, at this time of night?
‘I’m afraid it’s not good news, Mr Jachmenev,’ she tells me. ‘Zoya doesn’t have very long left.’
‘You said there might be weeks yet,’ I reply, for this is what she told me earlier in the day, shortly before I left the hospital to return home for the evening. ‘You said that there was no cause for immediate concern.’ I’m not angry with Dr Crawford, just confused. A doctor tells you something, you listen and you believe it. And you go home.
‘I know,’ she says, sounding a little contrite. ‘And that is what I thought at the time. Unfortunately, your wife took a turn for the worse this evening. Mr Jachmenev, it’s entirely up to you, of course, but I think you should come in now.’
‘I’ll be there shortly,’ I say, hanging up.
Fortunately I haven’t yet changed for bed, so it takes me only a moment to retrieve my wallet, keys and overcoat and head for the door. A thought occurs to me and I hesitate, wondering whether it can wait, deciding that it can’t; I return to the living room and the telephone, where I call my son-in-law, Ralph, to let him know what’s happening.
‘Michael’s upstairs,’ he tells me, and I’m glad to hear it, for I have no other way of contacting my grandson. ‘We’ll see you shortly.’
Outside on the street it takes a few minutes to locate a taxi, but finally one approaches, I raise my hand and he pulls in to the kerb next to me. I open the back door and before I can even close it again I have given him the name of the hospital and he’s pulling out on to the road. I feel a quick breeze in my face and pull the door firmly shut.
The streets are less quiet at this time of night than I expect them to be. Groups of young men are emerging from the public houses, their arms around each other, fingers pointing in each other’s faces in their determination to be heard. Further along, a couple are fighting and a young woman is trying to separate them by placing herself between the blows; I only see them for a moment as we pass, but their expressions of hatred are disturbing to observe.
The taxi takes a sharp left turn, then a right, and before I know it we are passing by the British Museum. I glance at the two lions standing on either side of the doors, and can see myself hesitating there for a moment before I step inside to meet Mr Trevors for the first time on the morning that he interviewed me, the same morning that Zoya began her position as a machinist at Newsom’s sewing factory. It was so long ago and I was so young and life was difficult, and I would give everything I have to be back there once again and to understand how lucky I was. To have my youth and my wife, and our love and our lives before us.
I close my eyes and swallow. I will not cry. There will be time for tears tonight. But not yet.
‘Here OK for you, sir?’ says my driver, pulling up next to the visitors’ entrance, and I tell him yes, this is fine, and hand him the first note that comes to hand; it’s too much, I know it is, but I don’t care. I step outside into the cold night air and hesitate before the hospital doors for only a moment, only walking forwards when I hear the taxi drive away.
Zoya is no longer in the oncology ward, I am told by a tired, pale young woman at reception. She has been moved to a private room on the third floor.
‘Your accent,’ I say. ‘You’re not English, are you?’
‘No,’ she says, looking up at me for only a moment and then returning to her paperwork. She’s chosen not to tell me where she comes from, but I’m sure it’s somewhere in Eastern Europe. Not Russia, I know that much. Yugoslavia, perhaps. Romania. One of those countries.
I step into the lift and press the button for ‘3’; even if the phone call had not been explicit enough, I know what it means to be moved into a private room at this stage in an illness. I’m glad the lift is empty. It allows me to think, to compose myself. But not for long, as I soon emerge on to a long, white corridor with a nurses’ station at the end. As I walk slowly towards it I can hear two voices engaged in conversation, a young man and an older woman. He’s talking about an interview he is soon to undertake, presumably for promotion at the hospital. He stops when he sees me standing before him and an irritated expression crosses his face at my interruption, even though I have yet to speak. I wonder whether he mistakes me for one of the elderly patients from the many wards which spread out like the arms of an octopus all along this corridor. Perhaps he thinks I’m lost, or cannot sleep, or have soiled myself in my bed. It’s ridiculous, of course. I’m fully dressed. Just old.
‘Mr Jachmenev,’ says a voice from behind him, Dr Crawford’s, as she reaches for a clipboard heavy with documentation. ‘You made it here quickly.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Where is Zoya? Where is my wife?’
‘She’s just through here,’ she replies softly, taking my arm. I shrug her off, perhaps more violently than necessary. I am not an invalid and I won’t be treated like one. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says quietly, leading me past several closed doors behind which are … what? The dead and the dying and the grieving, three conditions I will know myself before very much more time has passed.
‘What happened?’ I ask. ‘Tonight, I mean. After I left. How did she become worse?’
‘It was unexpected,’ she says. ‘But not unusual, if I’m honest. I’m afraid the last stages of the disease can be unpredictable. A patient can be no better or worse for weeks, even months on end, and then one day she can suddenly become very ill. We moved her out of the ward and into this room so you would have some privacy.’
‘But she might …’ I hesitate; I want neither to fool myself nor to be treated like a fool. Still, I need to know. ‘She might improve yet, do you think? As quickly as she became worse, she could become better?’
Dr Crawford stops outside a closed door and offers me a half-smile as she touches my arm. ‘I’m afraid not, Mr Jachmenev,’ she says. ‘I think you should just focus on spending whatever time you have left together. You’ll see that Zoya is still attached to a heart monitor and a feeding tube, but other than that, there are no more machines. We feel it’s more peaceful this way. It offers the patient more dignity.’
I smile now, I almost laugh. As if she or anyone else could possibly know how much dignity Zoya has. ‘My wife was raised with dignity. She is the daughter of the last martyred Tsar of Russia, the great-granddaughter of Alexander II, the Tsar-Liberator who freed the serfs. The mother of Arina Georgievna Jachmenev. There is nothing you can do to diminish her.’
I want to say this, but of course I do not.
‘I’ll be at the nurses’ station when you need me,’ says Dr Crawford, opening the door. ‘Please, come and get me any time you want.’
‘Thank you,’ I say and she steps away now and leaves me alone in the corridor before the door. I push it open.
I look inside.
I enter.
‘Is it safe?’ I asked her as we sat outside the café in Hamina, on the south-eastern Finnish coast, looking towards the islands of Vyborgskiy Zaliv in the distance, towards St Petersburg. Of course, Zoya had planned this all along. It was to be our last trip together. It was she who had chosen Finland, she who had suggested that we travel further east than we had originally planned, and she who had insisted upon our taking this last
voyage together.
‘It’s safe, Georgy,’ she told me, and I said that if it was what she wanted, then it was what we would do. We would go home. Not for long. A couple of days at most. Just to see it. Just to be there one last time.
We stayed in a hotel next to St Isaac’s Cathedral, arriving in the late afternoon, and sat by the window staring out at the square, two tall mugs of coffee before us, finding difficulty in speaking to one another, so moved were we to be back.
‘It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?’ she asked, shaking her head as she watched the people walking quickly along the street outside, doing their best not to be run over by the cars driving quickly every which way. ‘Did you ever think you’d be here again?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, I never imagined it. Did you?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said quickly. ‘I always knew we’d come back. I knew it wouldn’t be until now, until the end of my life—’
‘Zoya …’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, Georgy,’ she said, smiling tenderly and reaching across to place her hand on top of my own. ‘I’m not trying to be morbid. I should have said that I knew I would come back when I was an old woman, that’s all. Don’t worry, I have a couple of good years left in me yet.’
I nodded. I was still growing accustomed to Zoya’s illness, to the idea of losing her. The truth was that she looked so well it was difficult to believe that there was anything wrong with her. She looked as beautiful as she had on that first evening when I had seen her standing with her sisters and Anna Vyrubova at the chestnut stand on the bank of the Neva.
‘I wish we had brought Arina here,’ she said, surprising me a little, for she did not often speak of our daughter. ‘I think it would have been quite something to show her where she came from.’
‘Or Michael,’ I said.
She narrowed her eyes and looked less certain. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, considering it. ‘But even now it might be dangerous for him.’
I nodded and followed her gaze outside. It was night-time, but darkness had not yet fallen. We had both forgotten, but remembered at the same moment.
‘The White Nights,’ we said in unison, bursting out laughing.
‘I can’t believe it,’ I said. ‘How could we have forgotten the time of year? I was beginning to wonder why it wasn’t getting any darker.’
‘Georgy, we should go out,’ she said, filled with sudden enthusiasm. ‘We should go out tonight, what do you think?’
‘But it’s late,’ I said. ‘It may be bright, but you need to rest. We can go out in the morning.’
‘No, tonight,’ she pleaded. ‘We won’t stay out for long. Oh please, Georgy! To walk along the banks of the river on a night like this … we cannot come this far and not do it.’
I gave in, of course. There was nothing she could ask of me that I would not agree to. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘But we must dress warmly. And we cannot stay long.’
We left the hotel within the hour and walked down towards the banks of the river. There were hundreds of people strolling along arm in arm, enjoying the late brightness, and it felt good to be at one with them. We stopped and looked at the statue of the Bronze Horseman in the Alexander Garden, watching as the tourists had their photos taken in front of it. We said little to each other as we walked, knowing where our feet were taking us, but not wanting to destroy the moment by speaking of it until we arrived.
Passing by the Admiralty, we turned right and were soon confronted with the General Staff quarters circling Palace Square. Before us was the Alexander Column and standing before it, as bright and powerful as I remembered it, the Winter Palace.
‘I remember the night I arrived here,’ I said quietly. ‘I can recall passing the column as if it was only yesterday. The soldiers who brought me here dumped me by the side of the palace, and Count Charnetsky looked at me as if I was something he had discovered on the heel of his boot.’
‘He was a grump,’ said Zoya, smiling.
‘Yes. And then I was brought inside to meet your father.’ I shook my head and sighed deeply to prevent myself from becoming overwrought with memories. ‘That’s more than sixty years ago,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘It’s impossible to believe.’
‘Come,’ she said, leading me forward towards the palace itself, and I followed her cautiously. She had grown silent, her mind no doubt filled with many more memories than I had myself of this place; she had grown up here, after all. Her childhood, and that of her siblings, had been spent inside these walls.
‘The palace will be locked at this time of night,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow, perhaps, if you wanted to go inside—’
‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘No, I don’t want that. Just this. Look, Georgy, do you remember?’
We were standing in the small quadrangle between the front gates and the doors, the twelve colonnades surrounding us where the horseman had gone by too quickly, startling her, and she had fallen into my arms. The place where we had kissed for the first time.
‘We hadn’t even spoken to each other,’ I said, laughing at the memory of it.
Zoya leaned forward and embraced me once again, standing before me in the place where we had stood all those years before. This time, when we separated, it was difficult to speak. I could feel myself growing overwhelmed with emotion and wondered whether this had been a bad idea, whether we should have come here at all. I looked back towards the square and reached into my pocket for my handkerchief, dabbing at the corners of my eyes, determined that I would not lose control of my emotions.
‘Zoya,’ I said, turning back to her, but she was no longer beside me. I looked around anxiously and it took only a moment to locate her. She had slipped into the garden that stood between us and the palace door, and was sitting by the side of the fountain. I watched her, remembering when I had seen her at that fountain once before, in profile, and as I did so she turned her head and looked at me and smiled.
She might have been a girl again.
We walked slowly back towards the hotel along the bank of the Neva.
‘Palace Bridge,’ said Zoya, pointing towards the great structure that connected the city, from the Hermitage across to Vasilievsky Island. ‘They finished it.’
I laughed out loud. ‘Finally,’ I said. ‘All those years of a half-completed structure. First, they couldn’t complete it in case the noise kept you awake at nights, and then—’
‘The war,’ said Zoya.
‘Yes, the war.’
We stopped and looked at it, and felt a surge of pride in the fact of it. It was a good thing. It had been completed at last. Connections could now be made with those on the island. They were no longer alone.
‘My apologies,’ said a voice to our right and we turned to see an elderly man, dressed in a heavy greatcoat and scarf. ‘Could I trouble you for a light?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, glancing at the unlit cigarette he held out towards me. ‘I’m afraid I don’t smoke.’
‘Here,’ said Zoya, reaching into her bag and removing a packet of matches; she didn’t smoke either and it surprised me that she would have them, but then the contents of my wife’s handbag have long been a mystery to me.
‘Thank you,’ said the man, taking the box. I glanced to his left and noticed his companion – his wife, I assumed – staring at Zoya. They were about the same age, but, like my wife, age had not diminished her beauty. Indeed, her elegant features were spoiled only by a scar that ran along her left cheek to a point below the cheekbone. The man, who was handsome with thick white hair, lit his cigarette, smiled and thanked us.
‘Enjoy your evening,’ he said and I nodded.
‘Thank you,’ I replied. ‘And you.’
He turned to take his wife’s hand and she was staring at Zoya with an expression of tranquillity upon her face. None of the four of us spoke for a moment and then, finally, the woman bowed her head.
‘May I have your blessing?’ she asked.
‘My blessing?’ asked Zoya, the words catching in her throa
t even as she said them.
‘Please, Highness.’
‘You have it,’ she said. ‘And for what little it is worth, I hope that it brings you peace.’
It’s bright now, it’s morning time, and the living room looks cold and unwelcoming as I open the door and let myself in. I stop for a moment, glance towards the table, the cooker, the armchairs, the bedroom, this small place where we have made our lives together, and hesitate. I’m not sure if I can go any further.
‘You don’t have to come back here,’ says Michael, also hesitating in the doorway behind me. ‘It’s probably a good idea if you come back with me and dad today, don’t you think?’
‘I will,’ I say, shaking my head and stepping forward into the room. ‘Later on. Tonight, perhaps. Not right now, if you don’t mind. I think I’d like to be here. It’s my home, after all. If I don’t come in now, I never will.’
He nods and closes the door and we both step into the centre of the room, take our coats off and place them on one of the chairs.
‘Tea?’ he asks, already filling the kettle, and I smile and nod. He’s so English.
He leans against the sink as he waits for the kettle to boil and I sit down in my own armchair and smile at him. He’s wearing a T-shirt with a comic message printed across the front; I like that – it didn’t even occur to him to dress in a more sober fashion.
‘Thank you, by the way,’ I tell him.
‘For what?’
‘For coming to the hospital last night. You and your father. I’m not sure that I could have got through the night without you.’
He shrugs and I wonder for a moment whether he is going to start crying again; three or four times over the course of the night he has broken down in tears. Once when I told him that his grandmother had passed away. Once when he came in to see her. Once when I took him in my arms.
‘Of course I’d be there,’ he says, his voice nervous and emotional. ‘Where else would I have been?’
‘Thank you anyway,’ I say. ‘You’re a good boy.’