The Wolves of Leninsky Prospekt

by Sarah Armstrong

  She looked terrible, hair lank and feet dragging. We walked on until we were nearly at the other end and she looked around before sitting on the grass in an open area, away from the trees. I sat down next to her.

  ‘No, you sit facing me. Then we have a full view of what’s happening.’

  I moved to face her. Her eyes were dark and sunken, her hands holding each other tight.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  She shook her head. ‘They say I’ve been given classified documents. They say I have been colluding. That time at the picnic, that’s the only time I’ve ever spoken about those things. No one was interested before you.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Sandra. I didn’t mean to get you into trouble.’

  She laughed. ‘It wasn’t you. They’ve been watching me. My own people. And now it seems that if I don’t spy for us, I’ll be charged with treason.’

  ‘They said that?’

  ‘No, not straight out, no. It’s just all, “Who’s Sasha? Where does he live? How do you contact him?”’

  She looked behind me, tracking someone going past. I wasn’t sure that she knew what was going on. Her mind seemed split between the place we were and somewhere entirely separate.

  ‘Has your husband said anything?’

  ‘Albert? No. I can’t talk to him. He was so jealous that I had things to do, and things to read. I’m sure he told them to watch me.’ Her hands worried against each other. ‘And they keep trying to get me to sign papers to say I can’t say anything, but if I do that and I am charged, no one will know, will they? I’ll just disappear.’ Her focus drifted. ‘Like the river.’

  ‘The river?’

  ‘The Neglinnaya river that was here, before Tsvetnoy Boulevard.’ She patted the ground. ‘They hid it under the ground. It went right past the Kremlin, where the Alexander Gardens are, and into the Moskva. It’s still there, but we can’t see it any more.’ She placed her hand flat, as if she could feel the rushing deep underground.

  She turned back to me. ‘Who knows you’re here?’

  ‘Alison gave me your address, and Emily knows I was going to see you. She made me go to see her and she wanted me to visit.’

  ‘To report back?’

  ‘I won’t tell anyone what we talk about.’

  Sandra closed her eyes and rubbed her temples, then opened them to scan the area again.

  ‘Did Alison tell Emily about the address?’

  ‘Yes, they met in the shop.’

  ‘Coincidences, eh. Alison used to be OK, before her husband had that affair.’

  ‘With who?’

  ‘With the nanny. That’s the one she knows about anyway.’

  I held one finger up. A woman, bent over, her face hidden by a loose headscarf, was shuffling past, behind Sandra. I kept my eyes on her until she was out of earshot, all the while thinking that Alison had had a much worse time than I thought.

  ‘I don’t think she meant to meet up with Emily.’

  Sandra rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah, she’s made you feel useful, looking after her kid, and it worked. Now you’re loyal.’

  ‘But you can take any situation and track it back with the right mindset, and lots of things look deliberate from that angle. There was no intent on my side to do anything but get Bobby out of the apartment for an hour or two.’

  ‘Did you ever ask him where he goes when you’re not there?’

  ‘No. That would be weird. I’m not going to question a child.’

  ‘How did you get here today?’

  ‘Alison dropped me off. I’m not trying to hide anything.’

  ‘You don’t know anything. You’re being used.’

  She was utterly serious. Her hands were shaking, and she planted both palms on the ground and breathed more consciously, more slowly. The sun went behind a cloud and the buildings behind her darkened. Small birds flew between trees. Her hands stilled, and she gathered them in her lap.

  ‘It’s not your fault. I’m angry because we’re all being used.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Albert has been in such a terrible mood with this thing that’s going on at work. He’s been foul. How’s Christopher been?’

  ‘He’s fine. He shrugs things off quite easily. He’s been tired, but he’s spending a lot of evenings out.’

  ‘And you don’t mind?’

  Her expression suggested that there was something else I should mind.

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘Moles, thieves, spies. It’s a ridiculous way to live, isn’t it? It attracts the ridiculous, that’s for sure.’

  ‘What are you going to do? I mean about what they’ve asked you to do.’

  ‘I can’t look Sasha in the eye and pretend nothing has happened. He calls and I don’t answer. He knocks and I don’t answer.’

  ‘How did you know it wasn’t him when I knocked?’

  ‘I watch from the window. All day. I see everyone leaving for work and for nursery and school, and I watch them come back. I watch the sun rise and the night fall.’

  I was suddenly struck by the similarity to Eva’s stories. Maybe they weren’t fables, but just a symptom of what Moscow did to everyone. I thought about the story Alison had told me about the previous summer. Early in August, the city had been filled with smoke and for a week the press denied it. She’d got clay from Children’s World to seal all the gaps around the windows. People were coughing and suffering, but no one would admit it was a problem. Nothing on the news, nothing to see. And finally, it was announced that there was smoke in Moscow, and it became real: a peat bog had been on fire for a month, sixty miles away. Plane crashes are kept secret, murders don’t happen, rivers don’t flow and no one watches each other all the time.

  ‘How long have you been in Moscow, Sandra?’

  She laughed. ‘All my adult life. I’m not sure any more. How long has Moscow been in me?’

  I was going to have to break my promise. Sandra needed help.

  ‘Could you go home for a break?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I think this place is intense. Being watched all the time, it gets to you, and we’re not used to it. We’re used to being free.’

  She leaned forward. ‘But it’s the same in England. We’re just better at hiding it, and not looking for it. Everyone’s in their boxes, they know whether they get that privilege or can go in that place. We are just more polite about it, but you protest on the streets and you could still be beaten to death. It just depends on where you come from and who you know.’ Her eyes were bright. ‘It’s no different. The people in power are the same here and in London.’ She looked away from me and blinked. ‘We’re here because they think we’re the right sort. We’ll sit tight and keep quiet, and keep our husbands from the beds of Russian temptresses. They don’t care that we have nothing to do. I liked finding out things. I’d rather think about yetis.’ She swallowed. ‘They’ve taken my books.’

  Her hands went to her face and she started to cry. I moved beside her and put an arm around her. Her face moved to my shoulder, and I felt her body shudder. People walked past on the path, not hiding their interest. I stared the first few down, and then closed my eyes to them.

  Eventually she stopped, pulled her jumper sleeves over her hands and wiped her face.

  ‘Sorry. There are no tissues in Russia.’ She gulped a kind of laugh, and her head drooped again. ‘This isn’t the first time I’ve made a friend and they’ve disappeared. I see them in the streets and they run from me. They’re afraid and I don’t know what happened to change things. I must be a bad person.’

  She moved away and wiped her face with her sleeve again.

  ‘What can I do, Sandra?’

  She dug into her skirt pocket. ‘You could take this to Sasha for me.’

  I looked at the crumpled envelope. Shit. She pressed it into my hand.

  ‘I meet him at the Apothecary’s Gardens on Prospekt Mira, the small botanic garden. By the lake. Fridays at noon.’

  I took the envelo
pe. ‘What does it say?’

  ‘It just says goodbye. It says what he means to me and how much I’ll miss him. I don’t mind if you want to open it, read it. I don’t mind at all. He might not even come. I haven’t been able to go for weeks.’

  ‘So, he never had your address?’

  ‘No. I just like to think he’s calling for me. If he had, I’d have left with him.’

  I didn’t know what was true and what was fantasy any more. I knew that I really didn’t want to deliver this letter.

  She wiped her eyes one final time, stood up and smoothed her skirt down.

  ‘Thanks for coming, Martha.’ Her voice was controlled, almost back to normal. She pointed south. ‘You can just follow the Neglinnaya back to the Kremlin.’

  I nodded. I could follow the underground river? I watched her walk away, and realised that I was also watching for anyone watching her. The old people on the benches, the women pushing prams, the men with hats tipped slightly forward. No one moved.

  I stood up and looked at the letter. I put it in my bag and headed south. I looked at the road name – Neglinnaya Ulitsa. A street named after the river.

  I walked slowly down Neglinnaya, and was relieved to see the familiar shape of the Metropol mosaic silhouette. I crossed over and walked up to it wanting superstitiously to touch it and ground myself. As I approached one of the large arched windows, I saw a man crossing the road, his face turned to me. Blue jacket, black hat. He waited while I watched him, then turned and walked away. My fingers, resting on the window frame of the Metropol, could barely feel a thing.

  Kit asked me how Sandra had been the minute he got back from work.

  ‘How do you know I saw her?’

  He sat down at the table. ‘Well, Alison told Charlie that she’d dropped you off, and then Bert overheard and asked me to ask you how you thought she was. So I’m asking.’

  ‘We went for a walk. She’s not good.’

  ‘Do you think you should contact Mrs Highfield about her?’

  ‘No. I think her husband should do that. I’ve met her twice. I don’t know what normal is for Sandra.’

  ‘Sometimes people are more open with strangers. There’s nothing you could add?’

  I’d thought about the letter all afternoon. I wasn’t sure that I was going to deliver it by any means, but I didn’t want to get Sandra in any more trouble by handing it over.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I can’t add anything. She’ll be all right.’

  19

  One Friday had already passed and I had failed to go to the Apothecary’s Gardens. I regretted it straight away. I didn’t want to keep the letter. It wasn’t something I wanted to have to guard while Natalya was wandering around the apartment. I had to decide to throw it away or deliver it to Sasha. I also had to decide whether to read it, but I felt bad thinking that. I kept it inside Eva’s book of stories.

  Her tales were becoming such a strong part of Moscow. The longer I stayed there, the more I understood. I wanted to ask her about them, to ask how she’d got here, what she thought of it all. There was the small issue of the possible poisoning, but I was unsure about that. Alison was busy with the other mothers, but I had got out with Bobby a couple of times, and we had a late lunch booked for this Friday. I made it late in case I went to the Apothecary’s Gardens. I wanted to see Sandra, check how she was, but I couldn’t face her before I’d decided what do with the letter. Behind it all, I needed to know, one way or the other, what Eva wanted from me, but she was never going to tell me.

  I decided I’d been alone too long. I needed to be around people, even if I couldn’t speak to them. I set off for the university. I was coming to Leninsky Gory, Lenin Hills, and I decided to walk up to the observation point, past the ski jump. Kit had been up here at night, before I arrived, and told me about the lights along the river and beyond, around Lenin Central Stadium.

  At the paved area, I walked up to the marble balustrade. I was amazed at how low Moscow looked from here. Lines of trees led to the stadium, and the small dark windows were picked out again and again in the creams and greys of the concrete blocks of apartments. All was softened with the green of parks and grass.

  I turned and sat on the balustrade to look back at the university, an encircled star right at the top of the cathedral-like tower. Kit had told me how it was almost impossible to navigate inside, that the students were endlessly lost in identical hallways and stairways.

  I noticed, to the right, a woman in clothes that weren’t Russian. Denim jeans, a red and white checked scarf tied at her neck. They didn’t quite look British either. American, maybe? But quite 1950s in style. Her curly blonde hair was pinned back, and made her eyes look large, childlike. She was taking photographs of the view across the river, but I had the distinct impression that she was aware of me. She was going to approach me. I could sense it. I looked around for my blue jacketed shadow. I eventually spotted him, far to the left, also gazing towards the stadium, but in a brown jacket for a change. I wondered if he’d bought another, or if he had swapped jackets with a colleague. It was impossible to tell from the fit, as so many Russian clothes didn’t fit well. He would always be Blue Jacket to me.

  He was leaning with both hands on the waist-high balustrade, quite still. I wondered what he would do if I approached him and said hello. I walked towards him. He didn’t move, and then I went back down to Leninsky Gory Metro, and got on the train into the city.

  Eva never looked surprised to see me, no matter how much time had passed between my visits. I had remembered flowers again, so I got a smile. This time, she didn’t send me into the front room alone, but hobbled in first, letting herself sit heavily on the sofa.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I said.

  ‘Just a stupid accident,’ she said. ‘I twisted my ankle.’ Her dog looked up at her, and she stroked it slowly. ‘Poor old Vorona hasn’t had much of a walk today.’

  She looked at me sadly. I swore even the dog looked at me sadly.

  ‘I wonder if you could do me a favour,’ she said.

  My shoulders stiffened. Just like Sandra, I was going to be given an envelope or something worse, and a mission. I had to say no. Then I realised what she meant.

  ‘Would you like me to take her out for you?’

  ‘Would you? I would be so grateful.’

  The acting was so poor, I almost felt that she couldn’t bother to be convincing. ‘Where’s the lead?’

  ‘She doesn’t need one. She knows where to go.’

  The dog was going to take me for a walk. Great.

  ‘Vorona,’ I said, hoping the dog would want to stay with Eva. The dog stood, shook herself, and waited by the front door. ‘You’re sure there’s no lead?’

  ‘You’ll be fine. She’ll look after you.’

  I followed the dog out of the door, down the stairs and right, along the way I’d come from the Metro. I tried to walk beside it, rather than behind it, but it was quick, determined to get where it wanted. It waited at crossings, and walked, and then in Alexander Gardens, it stopped by a bench. I tried to work out if it was the same bench I’d met Eva on, all that time ago, but I couldn’t be sure. I stood next to the dog for a bit, then I sat down.

  This was quite one of the most stupid things I’d done. Not only was I stuck here at the whim of a dog, but I’d also ceded something to Eva. I was starting to believe that the dog would behave the same way, whether I was here or not.

  I leaned back on the bench. I wondered where my blue jacket was, behind a tree or a newspaper, laughing at me. I looked around, feeling we’d got past the pretence where we faked ignorance. To my astonishment, I saw the checked scarf woman from Lenin Hills. Map in hand, she was looking at the Kremlin walls behind me, and down at the map. I thought about that map Eva had promised me, and wondered if that’s what I had looked like those first couple of times with my useless map.

  She caught my eye and smiled, before coming over.

  ‘Hello.’

  A British accent
. Was it?

  ‘Didn’t I see you earlier?’ she said. ‘Up on the hill?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘What an impressive dog. I didn’t see him.’

  ‘It’s a her.’

  ‘Sorry.’ She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. ‘I was wondering if you could help me get to GUM?’

  ‘It’s pronounced goom, not gum.’ I cringed at my patronising tone. She might just be a version of me, landed here, as if on Mars, trying to make the best of it. I should be wary of coincidences, yes, but God knows it would be nice to have someone to talk to. I changed my tone. ‘You just follow the wall. It’s on the opposite side of the Kremlin.’ I held my hand out for her map. ‘The river here,’ I pointed, ‘is just over there.’

  ‘Oh, I know,’ she said, flopping down beside me. ‘I just wanted an excuse to talk to someone. Do you mind?’ Her accent veered from British to Australian, with bits of something else too.

  ‘I don’t mind. I just have to warn you that the dog is in charge, and if it goes, I have to follow.’

  ‘Does that mean leave me alone, in some weird way?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid it’s true. It’s not my dog. I’m doing someone a favour.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  I nodded.

  ‘OK. Well,’ she held her hand out, ‘I’m Leila, on a student exchange here.’

  ‘Martha,’ I said. ‘An exchange with?’

  ‘The British Council. Trying to work out where’s where and what’s what.’ She looked around and back at her map. ‘I’m sharing with a girl from Georgia and it’s all a bit intense right now. Most of the other exchange students are waiting for the term to start in the autumn, but I arranged a short language course to be with my boyfriend, who’s an Australian journalist, and he’s been sent away for a story. I don’t know when I last had a normal conversation in English.’ She threw her hands up, and they landed neatly on her lap as if she’d practised that display of casual frustration along with her life story.