The Betrayal

by Helen Dunmore

  However, thanks to Irina, her hands were smooth tonight. ‘Take half a cup of sugar, Anna, and mix it with two spoonfuls of oil in a big bowl. You rub the mixture into your hands, all over, and leave it as long as you can. You should do your elbows too. Elbows are a terrible giveaway.’

  It sounded like a waste of oil and sugar, but Irina had been so eager that Anna had tried her recipe, and she had to admit that it worked. The sugar had turned a disturbing shade of grey, but her hands felt softer than they’d done for years.

  She smoothed down the dress over her hips. A good fit. If she had the time, and a sewing machine like Julia’s, she’d make all her clothes herself; it’s wonderful to have something that really fits and is made for you. She could see her heart beating under the fabric. It was strange how excited she felt. It had nothing to do with the excitement you feel when you are young and single, going to a dance where you think you might meet ‘someone’. No, thought Anna, moving to the mirror and regarding her own face, that’s not what I want. It’s Andrei I want to meet, but not as we meet every day at home. We go through the routine, and that’s how it has to be, but sometimes it feels as if we’re sleepwalking.

  Her own face looked back at her, the same as ever. But she was deceiving herself, because it was not the same. She was thirty-four and growing older by the day. If she were faced with her twenty-year-old self in the mirror she would be shocked at the change. She was on the conveyor belt that was taking her from birth to death, but so slowly and imperceptibly that it was bearable.

  She clenched her fists. You’ve got to stop all this.

  It was Andrei she was going to meet. Her husband. Irina thought Anna was so lucky. She thought Anna had got it made. Dear Irinochka, it was all she wanted, to be married and to have children, to love and to be loved. I know that I’m fortunate, Anna thought. Without Andrei and Kolya, I don’t know how I would live.

  Sometimes she was still afraid that the dead would be angry with her, because she had survived and they had not. She had gone back to her life. The down that had grown on her arms and Kolya’s had rubbed away. Andrei had told her that it would disappear, once they were properly nourished again. But her father and Marina had been thrown into a pit.

  Anna looked away from the mirror, towards the door of Kolya’s room. That’s where her father had lain. If she went to the door now, and opened it, she might find him still there, watching the door, reproaching her for forgetting about him. He might stretch out a hand and clasp her in a grip of ice. He might say that it’s not the dead who close the door on the living, but the living who close the door on the dead.

  No, she told herself. No. He wasn’t like that. He wanted me and Kolya to live. He’s at peace.

  She’d tried to talk to Andrei about it once. He listened, but she knew that what she said only disturbed him and made him unhappy. He hated it when he couldn’t help people. She never talked about those times to Kolya, unless he asked questions. It was impossible to know what Kolya remembered, and what he had forgotten. Thank God they had been able to keep him indoors, because there was always Marina to watch over him while Anna went for the rations or to search for firewood. Plenty of women were not so lucky. Kolya hadn’t seen the corpses in the streets and courtyards. He hadn’t seen the bread queues, and people’s faces as they crammed their rations safely into an inner pocket, and then glared about them like hunted animals. He had not seen what Anna had once seen and never forgotten: a little girl, wrapped to the eyes in layers of clothes, standing beside a woman who lay in the snow and did not get up. And while Anna watched, a man came by and scooped up the child, leaving the woman on the ground. Her eyes stared, as dark as raisins in the hollows of her skull. That memory has tormented Anna. She’d assumed then that the child belonged to the man. But had she been right, or had she been too weak, prepared to see only what she wanted to see?

  Andrei was right, she should not think about all that. He was usually right. He never reproached her for anything. Sometimes she wished that he would. There were too many things they never talked about.

  But perhaps it was as well. If he ever said to her the words she dreaded, she wouldn’t be able to forget them.

  Of course a man wants a child. It’s natural.

  He’d never said that, or even hinted that she and Kolya weren’t enough for him. But she knew Andrei. He was too good and too loyal ever to let her know what he truly felt about the fact that she had not become pregnant. Once she’d asked him if he thought that perhaps starvation had affected her fertility. He had looked at her sharply and said, ‘Of course not, Anna. At the time perhaps, but not permanently.’ She’d known from the readiness of his answer how much he had been thinking about it. Thinking, but never telling her.

  Anna straightened her shoulders, took a deep breath and looked back at the mirror. The dress was a success. It made her look quite unlike her everyday self. If she could step out of herself – and if Andrei could step out of himself – then there was no telling what might happen. It was time to go now. Andrei was on call and he’d taken his evening clothes with him, to change at the hospital. She was going to meet him at eight o’clock. It was a shame not to leave for the ball together, arm in arm, but it didn’t really matter. Kolya was spending the night at Grisha’s. She and Andrei had all the time in the world.

  Perhaps they can go home soon. The band has begun to play another polka, and Anna moves back behind a pillar. The hall is as crowded as ever. At the side tables the heavy drinkers watch the dancers with unflagging, morose attention. A man gets up slowly, steadies himself and walks with care and in a straight line towards the door that leads to the wreck of the buffet. He can’t possibly want to eat anything that’s left in there. Perhaps he thinks it’s the toilet. The steady hum of pleasure and music has begun to break up.

  This polka, and then perhaps a sudashka, and then at last another waltz. She was pinning her hopes on that waltz, but now it seems unimportant. The speeches have been made and the toasts drunk. Why on earth do there have to be speeches at a ball? Of course it’s interesting that the hospital has received a delegation of thoracic surgeons from Paris, but still. Just as well for those thoracic surgeons that they’re back in Paris now, thinks Anna. The ball supper would have been a disappointment to them. The cold salmon was flabby, and the spiced meatballs needed more sauce.

  Anna smiles at herself. Since when did I get so fussy? Salmon is salmon. But all the same I wouldn’t have prepared it like that. It needed a sharp sauce, not that greasy mayonnaise. She’d have made sorrel sauce. The potato salad tasted as if it had been lying around for days, not hours. The vodka is first-rate, however. She can’t remember how many partners have assured her of that.

  My God, there’s Andrei dancing. Who can the woman be? She’s much older than him, with her hair severe in a bun. Her dress has the kind of ugliness that makes your heart clench. It’s bright turquoise, and cut so that it turns her breasts into a bolster. And yet she’s a handsome woman. In a white coat she would be impressive – and probably is. She’ll be a doctor, or a radiographer. She’ll have bought that dress without even thinking about it, because it looked more or less suitable. Anna can’t help envying her that degree of detachment. She’s not even trying to keep up with the steps of the polka. Her feet move to their own rhythm, dignified and off the beat.

  They are coming towards her, not even pretending to dance now. Andrei has taken the woman’s arm.

  ‘Anna, allow me to introduce you to Riva Grigorievna Brodskaya, a surgical colleague.’

  It’s her. The one who operated on the Volkov boy. She’s not at all as Anna had imagined her.

  ‘Are you enjoying the ball?’ asks Anna quickly.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I think so,’ says the other woman, as if the question requires a truthful answer.

  ‘They’ve got a good band this year.’

  ‘Yes, it seems so.’

  She looks so out of place here. Anna wonders why she decided to come at all. No doubt her reasons ar
e much the same as everyone else’s. She came because otherwise it would look as if she weren’t part of the team. She put on that dress out of duty.

  ‘For me, it’s a kind of farewell party,’ says Riva Grigorievna, looking straight at Anna.

  ‘Oh – are you leaving the hospital, then?’

  ‘I’m leaving Leningrad. I’ve accepted a post in Yerevan. Hadn’t you heard?’

  ‘I haven’t seen any of Andrei’s colleagues lately. Not for months, really, until tonight,’ says Anna, realizing suddenly that none of Andrei’s colleagues has dropped in for weeks. And then, as Riva Grigorievna still looks at her, she understands that the person from whom she might – should – have heard this news is Andrei. ‘Congratulations,’ says Anna.

  ‘Some might say it was a backward step in career terms,’ the other woman continues, her eyes never leaving Anna’s face, ‘but Yerevan has certain advantages. No one is fighting to work there. It’s a long way from Leningrad.’

  Anna stretches her lips into a smile. ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘it must be.’

  ‘Two thousand five hundred kilometres. A good distance.’

  Andrei is looking uneasy.

  ‘You are young,’ says Riva Grigorievna, looking only at Anna and smiling faintly. ‘You have everything in front of you.’

  Anna laughs.

  ‘Why do you laugh?’

  ‘I suppose I’m not in the habit of thinking of myself that way.’

  ‘But nevertheless you are young enough to start again.’

  ‘ “To start again?” ’ Anna repeats, frowning.

  ‘Yes. I’ve been trying to persuade your husband that a change of air will do him good.’ Suddenly her face changes. She looks past Anna’s shoulder. ‘Good evening, Boris Ivanovich.’

  It’s Russov.

  ‘And how are you enjoying our ball, my dear Anna Mikhailovna?’ asks Russov, and to Anna’s amazement he takes her hand, lifts it to his lips and kisses it. She represses a sharp urge to snatch it away. Riva Grigorievna has already gone. ‘But why aren’t you dancing, my dear girl?’

  ‘I’m a little tired,’ says Anna.

  ‘Beautiful young women don’t come to balls to be tired. You’ll give me a turn, won’t you?’

  The band is still playing the polka. Anna glances at Andrei for support but Andrei is staring ahead, his face set. She mustn’t alienate this man. Her skin prickles. At that moment the music rises to a crescendo and then plunges to its final chord. The polka is finished. Anna looks at Russov. ‘I’m afraid you were too late,’ she says.

  ‘They’ll begin again in a minute.’

  ‘Yes, but I think the next dance will be a waltz, and I’ve promised that to Andrei. Another time,’ she says cheerfully.

  Russov shrugs. ‘I must ask you to congratulate me, all the same. I’m off to Moscow, to the Morozovka. Modesty forbids me to say that it’s a promotion. But as you know they are expanding there, creating new facilities –’

  ‘You’re going to Moscow? When?’

  ‘In the new year.’

  Anna sees from Andrei’s face that he already knows. So Russov has got himself out of Leningrad too. No Yerevan for him, though – he’s picked a plum. A top children’s hospital, in the capital.

  ‘My new post will be largely administrative, although of course there will be a clinical aspect.’

  ‘Of course,’ says Andrei.

  Russov looks a changed man. He glistens with self-satisfaction, and his glance at Andrei holds something of the contempt that a man who has managed things well for himself feels for one who has not. Hard to connect this Russov with the fearful, sweating figure in the courtyard.

  The band strikes a chord.

  ‘It’s a waltz,’ says Anna, though how she can tell after a couple of notes is beyond him. ‘Come on, Andrei, let’s have this one and then we’ll go home.’

  He holds out his arms to her, a little stiffly. He’s not a good dancer and he knows it. He’d rather not lead off under Russov’s smug gaze. Riva Grigorievna is nowhere to be seen. Russov remains at the heart of things, with the promise of the Morozovka ahead of him; she goes.

  Anna puts her left hand on Andrei’s shoulder. He takes her right hand, and smiles down into her face.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she says, ‘there aren’t so many on the dance floor now. We’ll have plenty of space.’

  ‘I know this music, I think.’

  ‘Oh, Andrei, of course you do. You’ve heard it dozens of times. But I’m surprised they’re playing it,’ she says, dropping her voice.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s Shostakovich. Surely you recognize it?’

  He wishes he could explain to Anna that the sounds which are as legible to her as words on paper make no kind of pattern to him. But he must concentrate on the steps or he will be out of time. The waltz is the easiest dance … One-two-three, one-two-three – yes, that’s fine, he’s really got the hang of it now. Anna is so warm and soft. She moves without him even having to think about leading her. In fact he rather suspects that she is leading him, even though she can’t see which way she’s going.

  ‘Look out for the pillars, my treasure,’ she murmurs.

  One-two-three, one-two-three – it’s not difficult at all; in fact he’s almost enjoying it. He looks down at the curves of Anna’s lips. She’s smiling at something. ‘Are you laughing at me?’

  ‘Of course not. I was just thinking how much you’ve improved, with all the practice we’ve done.’

  ‘Good. But shall we make this the last dance? Since we’ve got the place to ourselves tonight, let’s make the most of it.’

  ‘Poor Kolya.’

  ‘It’s not “poor Kolya”. Our lives revolve around that boy.’

  ‘It’s always the way, with children in the house,’ she answers thoughtlessly, and then he feels her body tense.

  ‘I love you in that dress,’ he says quickly.

  ‘The skirt is a bit crushed. Your friend Dontsov grabbed great handfuls of it when I was dancing with him. He must have thought I was planning to run away.’

  ‘He’s a nice chap.’

  ‘I know that. All the same, he has sweaty hands.’

  ‘You did your duty. I watched you dancing with all sorts of people.’

  ‘ “All sorts” is right. Thank God I didn’t have to dance with that snake Russov.’

  ‘He’s changed, hasn’t he? He used to be all right.’

  ‘He doesn’t like you. I’m glad he’s going. He’s dangerous.’

  ‘Anna, you mustn’t think about any of that now.’

  ‘No, you’re right … Listen, let’s go now, Andryusha, while they’re still playing. Shall we do that?’

  The streets are light and quiet. It will be another of those cool, cloudy days. Still, summer is short and you have to make the most of it. Anna and Andrei find themselves talking like this, as if someone were snooping on their exchange of banalities. They walk slowly, close together but not quite touching. Anna listens to the sound of their footsteps. Her own are light, in her mother’s evening shoes. Andrei’s are crisper and heavier. After a while they fall into step, as they always do.

  ‘Did you enjoy it?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Anna firmly.

  ‘Every time I looked for you, you were dancing.’

  ‘You know I like dancing. You used to as well.’

  ‘I do, it’s just that I don’t get any better at it. I keep treading on people’s toes.’

  ‘You think you’re worse than you are. You’ve got to keep on trying. You mustn’t end up like my father.’

  ‘I promise you I won’t do that. Although he was a fine man, I’m not criticizing him,’ Andrei adds hastily.

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  He knows what she means. A man sunk into himself. Hard to live with; harder to feel that you had the right to enjoy life in his company.

  ‘He liked it out at the dacha, though,’ says Anna. ‘You know, sitting on the verandah in the evenings, smoking and
reading. He was happy there. Happier than he was anywhere else, at least.’

  Andrei doesn’t like the direction of this conversation. Her face is sad and pensive, and she’s far away from him even though they are still talking. He puts his arm around Anna’s shoulder and draws her to him.

  ‘You look beautiful, Anna.’

  ‘Oh, Andrei!’ she says, almost dismissively. But he won’t let her put him off.

  ‘Beautiful,’ he repeats, and this time she says nothing, but moves closer into his embrace. ‘Just think,’ he continues, ‘we can stay in bed until eleven if we want. I’ll bring you tea.’

  ‘I expect it’ll be the other way round. You’ll still be snoring and I’ll be cooking the porridge,’ she replies in a bantering tone, which jars on him as much as if she’d pulled out of his grasp. But tonight he’s not going to let her fend him off.

  ‘Anna!’ He stops, and she stops and turns to face him. He reaches out and very gently traces the line of her cheek, and her jaw. He sees her shiver. Good. Holding her eyes, he traces the line where the low neck of her dress meets her breasts. She glances around quickly, fearfully, but doesn’t move away. There’s no one else in the street.

  ‘Anna,’ he says, more softly, and in a moment they’re in each other’s arms, blotted out against each other, the green against the black, his head bent, her eyes closed. The pale, quiet street vanishes. They cling together, barely moving, as if each of them wants to disappear into the other. He hears her breathing and the quick, deep sound of her heart through the thin dress. How long is it since he’s felt like this? A long time. They’re so busy, they have so little time. He’d almost forgotten that none of it matters, compared to this.

  It takes weeks for a woman to be sure that she’s pregnant. Anna has had too many cycles of gathering hope and sudden, crushing disappointment to trust to anything less than cast-iron certainty. A month late, and perhaps she might begin to believe there is a chance. Years ago, in their easier and more hopeful days, Andrei told Anna that there were ways of testing for pregnancy early on, by injecting a woman’s urine into a female rabbit and then examining the rabbit’s ovaries a few days later.