It was cold. My cords were thick enough when I was walking. Now my thighs were freezing but if I stayed here, they couldn’t collect the bug from wherever it was on the bench. It was definitely here. The difference in her speech was so noticeable. I shifted along to Eva’s side, and ran my fingers along that edge. Then I gave up and went home.
It took me a while to shake off how angry I was with her. Maybe she was cross that I hadn’t been around when it seemed as if we could be friends after all. Whatever the reason, she’d gone back to how she was before and I wasn’t interested any more.
Tomas.
That name made no sense. I thought about it all the way back and scowled at Blue Jacket as he loitered outside the bread shop, walked faster than normal home and tried to slam the door at him. It closed annoyingly slowly.
In the lift, I remembered that evening on the balcony months ago, when I was talking to myself, saying the letters which still made sense to me. TOMA. Tomas. They could hear everything on the balcony. And Kit didn’t know.
25
We were on our third or fourth cocktail. I’d lost count, and it wasn’t even three o’clock. The sun shone and we looked at the way Moscow’s cream stone glowed and the windows glinted.
‘We should be outside,’ I said. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘Oh, we can see it’s beautiful from here,’ slurred Leila. I thought she’d had a head start. She lifted her glass. ‘What are these again?’
‘I’ve forgotten.’ I rested my head back against the worn velvet chair and looked around. Were our jacket watchers trying the cocktails? I hoped so. I was feeling well disposed to them today. ‘Where’s Seb gone off to this week?’
Leila screwed her face up with the effort of thinking. ‘Kiev?’ she said. ‘Maybe.’
‘Did he ever find that holy fool in Siberia?’
‘Not a fool, more of a second coming type thing.’
‘He thinks he’s Jesus?’
‘His followers do. Seb thought he was quite impressive.’ She finished her drink, whatever it was, and hunched over. ‘I think it might be coming to an end with him. He’s never here, and I made such an effort to get here to be with him. I should have gone to Leningrad and then he’d want to travel to see me.’
‘He’s just busy with work,’ I said. I had no idea. I still hadn’t met him. When he was in the flat, Leila liked to keep him to herself. She was becoming maudlin now. ‘Maybe we should eat something.’
She nodded. ‘Soon.’
‘There is a restaurant here.’
‘Urgh, we can’t eat at the Natsional.’
She spat her words loudly, and I looked around anxiously.
‘Seb says it’s the worst place in Moscow.’ She grinned and sat up straight. ‘He was placed here before he got the apartment.’ Her eyes brightened. ‘He was here at the same time as David Bowie.’
‘Did they meet?’
‘No. I think by the time he gets back to Australia, in his stories they will have spent a whole evening together.’
I knew I should ask about that, but when she was a bit more sober. Seb had told Leila all sorts of information about dissidents and protests and covered-up deaths. I hoped she wouldn’t get onto more of that now, with so many people around us.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s get some food and we can get some more drinks at the Metropol.’
Leila sighed, nodded, and we walked out, arm in arm. It was mostly for her sake.
The sun was warm on our faces and we walked slowly.
‘How’s your lovely husband?’ she asked.
‘He’s OK.’
‘He can’t join us?’
‘Maybe later. He can’t take time off without any notice, and he works Saturday morning so he doesn’t like to drink much on Fridays.’
She stopped. ‘Now, why is that? The Saturday thing.’
I started walking again, pulling her with me. ‘Soviets are asked to contribute Saturday morning working hours as a kind of tribute to the state. They’re not paid, but they have to do it. So, the embassy works too.’
‘Do they get paid for it?’
I thought. ‘I have no idea. I’ve never asked.’
We arrived at Ploshchad Revolyutsii in front of the Metropol and I settled Leila on the grass before getting two pies. When I came back she was looking up at a man and talking loudly.
‘I don’t understand you.’
He crouched down next to her as I hurried over.
‘No. I don’t understand.’
I said, ‘Ukhodi.’
He stood, grey faced and exhausted, and walked away.
‘What was he saying?’ I asked.
‘He wanted hard currency.’
‘Here?’ The park was full, as it always was on sunny days, the older people on benches, younger people on the grass. He was walking away, around the Metropol.
‘The toilets behind there are for picking up men,’ said Leila. ‘He’ll have more luck there. Loads of Westerners.’
I shuddered. If Leila knew, the KGB knew.
I changed the subject. ‘We should have some water before we start drinking again.’
I pointed at the metal machine on the corner. I hadn’t known what it was when I was here with Alison, but it was a self-service drinks machine. You rinsed the glass, put three kopeks in and filled it with flavoured fizzy water. Then you left the glass for the next person. I had tried to imagine the glass not being stolen or smashed in London, but I couldn’t.
Leila didn’t answer. All her attention was on the pirozhki. I bit into mine. Minced beef and onion, maybe. It was so good. I hadn’t realised how hungry I was.
She finished and lay back on the grass. ‘Are you having fun with your map?’
I laughed. ‘Yeah, I am.’
‘Filling in your parks?’
‘Some of them. I don’t want to draw on it, so I’ve been tracing parts of it onto typing paper and taking them out. I can cover Moscow in about eighteen months, at this rate.’ I joked, but I was feeling filled with purpose for the first time since Cambridge and it felt great.
I finished my pie and wiped my fingers on the newspaper wrapper. Leila was very still. I thought she’d fallen asleep. Then she spoke.
‘Do you know anyone else in Moscow?’
‘I did meet some people from the embassy when I first got here, and someone else called Eva.’
‘Do you still see her?’
‘I decided she was a provocation. The whole thing was more dangerous that it was worth.’
‘Why did you think that?’
‘I had this booklet of stories, and I thought that she’d written them and they were autobiographical in a coded way. She said she hadn’t written them. Well, didn’t say that exactly, because she wouldn’t speak about it at all. Then I started to believe that she didn’t even live in the apartment that she invited me to. I don’t know. I think it was for show. It all got too strange.’
Leila rolled onto her side and pushed herself up. ‘That sounds fascinating. Can I read the stories in the booklet? Look for clues?’
‘OK. You can’t take it to the university, though. Your roommate will definitely read it.’
‘Oh, she’s so annoying.’ Leila got to her feet and held out a hand to pull me up. ‘I have my second wind. Let’s go.’
Arm in arm, we walked into the Metropol, past the doormen and the men in hats with newspapers and stern women at desks, and knew we were untouchable.
On the way home, Leila made me get off at Universitet and we walked east.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Shopping.’
I groaned. Shopping with Leila was easier, but it was still a slog. And that was after we’d avoided the teenagers hanging around outside the Beriozkas, asking for chewing gum. But this place was different. Like an aeroplane hangar, it spread over a huge area.
‘Cheremushkinsky rynok,’ she said.
A market. ‘This is where the farmers sell their surplus?’
; ‘One of them.’
We entered through one of the large entrances and inside I could see there were four in total, large paintings above each of harvests and goods. The tables were emptying, but there was still more variety than in the commission stores. Fresh greyish-green squash, polished onions, white bulbs of garlic shone under the skylights, and jars of pickled fruit and vegetables. One woman had honey and cottage cheese, but I hadn’t brought any empty containers to fill. I picked up a jar of what looked like sour cabbage in vinegar, recognising the smell of every lift I’d been in. They pickled fruit, too, and even salted apples. There were so many ways to preserve food through the long winter in the absence of cans.
Leila carefully put six eggs into her bag, wrapped in sheets of Pravda, then negotiated a price for some poisonous looking mushrooms.
‘How do you know they’re OK?’ I whispered.
‘They’ve been collecting mushrooms their whole lives. They wouldn’t get it wrong.’
I looked at the woman selling them and she looked away from me, towards the women still circulating with their bags ready to fill. There were plants too, and I picked up a potted jasmine. The old woman behind the table held her hand out and I counted the money out.
Leila laughed. ‘I’ve bought a fried breakfast and you get a plant? Your poor husband.’
‘Oh, he eats in the city a lot.’
‘We can share the eggs and mushrooms. Like good communists.’
‘Oh, don’t worry. I’ll come back another time with bags and jars. I never knew this place was here.’
‘Don’t buy too much, comrade. We still have a way to walk home. It’s nice now and then.’
"Space"
by
E.V. MANN
I always expected to carry a child, feeling within my centre the heat of summer, of the wolf’s heart, of the dragon’s fire, of the bear’s fur. This place of marble palaces promises tiny shoes and fresh cut dreams. It is a place to bear a child. And I am promised.
But each summer passes, hot like melted silver. My wolf says he will come back. I force myself not to hold onto his fur, and collect it from the bed when he leaves. While I wait for him, I avoid the bears, flash drunk in the gutter, polluting the streets with unsanitary sounds.
I have grown good at waiting. I am so still that I can see the grass growing.
When he finally returns in the dampness of autumn, he hands me a heart-beating bundle, hair as black as the night sky and eyes as blue as dusk. A baby girl, plucked from the dust of a comet, blessed by stars. I love her with the heat of burning rocket fuel, and never leave her side.
I watch in awe as she learns to eat and smile and walk and play. I make her ice shoes and frost cloaks for her to dance in before the bitter moon. She doesn’t need the heat of the sun. She burns, my only brightness, and I need nothing else, not even my wolf. But he comes back with stories of brighter, further stars and her eyes glitter. I am dull in comparison.
In no time at all, she is strapping on her boots, checking the clasps on her helmet. She waves to me as she flies up to the silent heavens. I blaze with pride. But she doesn’t come back. I breathe in and out, watching for her return, and my heat fades.
I cry for her to come back. The wolves pull me away on my glass sleigh, ever further from the heat of cities towards the starlight. Now I have nothing but remote views of shifting glaciers, those pure gods of the Arctic, harder than death. The clouds they leak snow in the quietest of calamities.
All I have left is space, a falling emptiness within my centre, the cold vapour of a child’s breath which sparkles like ghosts. It’s a prison of air and absolute stillness, the landscape bitter with frost. I scream and it echoes back to me, again and again, like an ache.
Slowly, I transform from woman into a cold fox fire, trying to feed the residual heat of her memory that radiates deep within me, knowing that it leaves me weak and sleepless. I whisper her name into my hands, place a kiss on my fingertips and send it flying to her. Sometimes I feel the flutter of a moth against my cheek and I wonder if she has sent me back a kiss.
In the dark, I keep my eyes on the stars, hoping I will catch a glimpse of her in the frosty midnight of space. This world has no heat left in it and cold can burn almost as much as loss. The space in my chest is darkly shrinking and I wrap my heart in fur to keep it warm for her.
Because she promised to come back.
And I promised to wait.
And if it is that wolf that I see first, I will rip his heart out with my teeth.
26
I picked up a copy of Pravda on my way to the university to meet Leila. I flicked through it as I walked. I needed the practice as I hadn’t been reading much, but I had been listening to the radio.
Soyuz 12 was being launched today, a big deal after the catastrophic failure on re-entry of Soyuz 11 two years ago. The USSR didn’t want to be known as having the only people to die in space. But they weren’t the focus today. Vasili Lasarev and Oleg Makarov were already being declared heroes.
I folded the paper and put it under my arm, then immediately removed it, feeling like a spy in a bad film. Whichever way I held it, it felt like a signal to someone watching.
I reached the open area in front of the university, stood next to the statue of Mikhail Lomonosov and gazed up at the towers. However dysfunctional Leila had told me it was inside, confirming what Kit had said, it really was beautiful. The symmetry and the pillars were offering something special to the people of Moscow, an adoration of education that reminded me of Cambridge. A group of sportswomen walked past in their burgundy tops, CCCP in white. They were laughing and pushing each other. I felt a little homesick.
I took the page with today’s map section from my pocket and unfolded it. I wished I could do this with baking paper and overlay them, but I could do that when I got home.
Someone walked up behind me and spoke in English.
‘Hello.’
I turned, laughing. Of all the days to try a provocation. He was stunningly handsome, clear grey eyes under floppy blond hair. A bit like Kit’s hair, now I thought of it. Had they used him as a model? He didn’t have the military stance of Sergei.
‘I’m meeting someone,’ I said, turned my back to him and studied my map.
A hand appeared around me and pointed to the map. ‘This is a good place.’ He moved to stand in front of me, taking the other side of the map. ‘Are you going here now?’
‘Who are you?’
‘Ivan. Hello. Are you going now?’
‘None of your business, Ivan.’
I tried to be cross, but his smile was so wide. He even had the same full bottom lip that Kit had. Did they have a whole room full of men to choose from, according to taste?
‘I am not rude. There will be thunder soon.’
I looked at the sky. The clouds did have the purple tinge of a storm.
He had such an open face. He didn’t look like a spy, but I had to assume he was. Then again, I had missed flirting, and I wasn’t sure that I could do worse than I had been by being careful.
‘OK, Ivan. What would you do today?’
He looked so pleased and surprised that I was glad I was an idiot. He held out his hand and I took it.
The KGB had chosen well. The hand-holding had convinced me that he was one of them. Russians didn’t hold hands. But, if I’d written a description of my ideal date, it would not have included an Elvis fan who would happily sing a tribute concert for one while I sat on the ground and laughed myself silly. He took requests, and didn’t quibble at the titles I asked for: ‘Suspicious Minds’, ‘You’re the Devil in Disguise’. It was all the same to him, even if the words were, at times, utterly indecipherable to me.
The rain poured, but safe under the arched entrances to Novodevichy Convent, we could watch the lightning and, exhausted, he came and sat next to me. I shivered, and thought how wet our tail was going to get.
‘I am very thirsty,’ Ivan said.
‘I’m not surpri
sed.’
‘Maybe we should go for a drink somewhere, when the rain stops.’
‘I’m not sure. I should get back.’
Ivan nodded. ‘We can go another time.’ He looked out at the rain. ‘Is someone waiting for you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I live with my mother, my sister and her husband, and my – she has a baby, a boy.’
‘Your nephew.’
He nodded. ‘Nephew. My father is died.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He shrugged. ‘A long time now. Where do you live? Not in Moscow, where else?’
‘England.’
His eyes lit up. ‘Ah, London. That’s good.’ He smiled. ‘Good films from London. And Japan. I like to go London and Tokyo.’
‘Are you a student at the university?’
He looked confused. ‘Of course. I meet you at the university.’ He took my hand. ‘I study engineering for space.’
‘That’s very good.’
He nodded, serious. ‘Very good. Very hard for space.’
I was doubting very seriously now that he had anything to do with spying. His English wasn’t polished enough, and he was a genuinely lovely man.
‘Ivan, will you get in trouble for being here with me?’
‘No. I speak lots of English at university. It’s good. They say, talk lots of English. Is good. And you speak Russian?’
‘Da.’
He laughed. ‘Da. Is all you know.’
Horrified, I realised that Ivan thought I was a student too. That it was all right to speak to me because I belonged there. He could get in terrible trouble.
‘Ivan, I really have to go now.’
‘OK. It stop soon.’
‘No, I really have to go.’ I stood up. ‘Thank you for a lovely afternoon.’
He laughed, and gestured around. ‘Better place next time.’
‘Yes.’
He stood too. I reached up to kiss him on the cheek, and lingered there too long. What damage there was had already been done. He turned his face and I kissed his lips. And we kissed again.
The Wolves of Leninsky Prospekt Page 19