The Industry of Souls

by Booth, Martin

  Tibble looked afraid once more, embarrassed by the fact that he possessed the knowledge I was after.

  ‘Your father,’ he began, ‘was my uncle. I knew him…’

  ‘Mr. Tibble,’ I cut in, ‘do not be concerned for me. I am asking these questions out of curiosity. Nothing more. Your answers will not upset me, will not disturb me. I am – how shall we put it? – merely filling in a few potholes in the road of my life. After an existence such as mine has been, there are probably as many as in the lane.’ I smiled to put him at his ease: he half smiled back at me and picked up his tea cup. He needed desperately to do something with his hands. ‘As you will by now know, having driven from Moscow, there are many potholes in Russian roads so it follows that there may be just as many in the roads of a man’s life in Russia.’

  ‘Your father died in 1968,’ he said quietly. ‘He had been ill for a short while, then pneumonia set in. He was in no pain…’

  ‘And my mother?’ I enquired.

  ‘Aunt Bea…’

  He paused and sipped his tea, putting the cup down on its tiny saucer. The china chimed for his hand was unsteady. This meeting was, I realised, and contrary to my expectations, far more of a tribulation for him than it was for me. I had expected to be the one who was afraid and yet now, faced with this man and the trim diplomat next to him across the table at which I have sat for years, I was quite composed, at ease with myself and the whole world. My heart was not beating more than marginally faster than usual. I felt calm and strangely serene.

  ‘My mother’s name was Beatrice,’ I confirmed.

  ‘Aunt Bea died in 1986. She was eighty-eight, living in a nursing home in the West Country.’

  ‘Did you know her well?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I was her favourite, so to speak. After you went missing, she … She needed a son,’ he added bleakly, almost guiltily.

  ‘And was she ill also?’

  ‘No, she passed away in her sleep after a tiring day trip to a matinée performance in the local theatre, with a dozen of her friends from the retirement home. Aunt Bea found a great delight in the theatre.’

  Give all the detail you can, I thought. The more the merrier. Detail gives veracity.

  ‘Thank you, Mr. Tibble,’ I said. ‘I am very grateful to you.’

  A weight seemed to lift from him. He picked up his tea cup again but, this time, his hand was steadier. His confession had been heard and found credible.

  At that point, I too sipped my tea but not because I had to find a diversion: it was simply that I was thirsty. Grigson snapped open the flap of his attaché case and handed me a manila envelope.

  ‘The Foreign Office thought you might like these,’ he said. ‘They are copies of your parents’ death certificates, your mother’s final will and testament in addition to some of the correspondence which has accrued over the years.’

  I accepted the envelope but did not open it.

  ‘Aunt Bea’s will,’ Tibble volunteered, ‘mentions you.’

  At this juncture, he clearly expected me to remove the contents of the envelope, which was not sealed down: yet I did not for I had no desire to open such a Pandora’s box of personal history. My history, I considered, looking around me at Trofim’s vegetables, Frosya’s flowers, the Merry Widow’s house and, over to the side, the field with the belligerent goat tethered in it, was here, not in some faraway place represented by a few documents in an official envelope.

  ‘I would rather not read these papers at present,’ I said.

  ‘Perhaps you should,’ Tibble suggested tentatively. ‘You see, Aunt Bea – your mother, that is – never really accepted that you were dead.’

  ‘She believed,’ Grigson interrupted, ‘that you had been involved in a spying mission, had been caught and imprisoned. For years, she wrote letters to successive Foreign Secretaries every time there was a Cabinet reshuffle, to members of Parliament, to the Russian ambassador. She even wrote to Khruschev.’

  ‘Did she receive an answer?’ I enquired.

  ‘Much to everyone’s astonishment, she did. A personal one, at that,’ Grigson declared.

  ‘It’s in the envelope,’ Tibble said.

  I handed the packet to Frosya and said, in Russian, ‘This, dear Frosya, you must read. There is a letter in here from Khruschev. No doubt,’ I added to Grigson, still speaking in Russian, ‘it denies all knowledge of my existence? I was simply drowned after my car went into the Elbe.’

  ‘Near Torgau,’ Grigson responded, also in Russian. ‘That was the official Moscow line. It was doubted, naturally and, to be truthful, the file was left open until the mid-Sixties. Reports from operatives and moles were received from time to time to the effect that you had at least not been drowned but, with an absence of concrete proof one way or the other, London finally concurred with the Russian statement and the dossier was no longer active. Moscow remained, of course, resolute. Your mother was, however, adamant that you had been working for MI5 and chased the matter for years. She wanted you exchanged for agents we had caught, demanded acknowledgement of your alleged espionage role and actually petitioned the Queen to have you awarded a medal. To be frank, your mother caused a bit of a ruckus and was regarded, according to inter-departmental correspondence, with no small degree of sceptical annoyance.’ He hesitated for a moment then went on, ‘I apologise now, on behalf of Her Majesty’s government…’

  I put my hand up and said, ‘Mr. Grigson, there is no need for that and, as for a medal,’ I added, touching my lapel, ‘you can see I received one after all.’

  Grigson smiled and replied, ‘For meritorious service to the Soviet Union. Not exactly the medal your mother had in mind.’

  Frosya held the letter out, a look of near wonderment on her face.

  ‘It is from Khruschev!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘What does it say?’ I asked.

  ‘What do you expect?’ Trofim replied sarcastically, reading it over her shoulder. ‘A railway voucher to Sosnogorsklag?’

  ‘It denies you ever existed,’ Grigson stated, bringing our conversation back to English. ‘The usual regrets but nothing more.’

  ‘Yet now,’ Tibble said, ‘we know Aunt Bea was right all along.’

  ‘I am curious to know how you discovered my whereabouts,’ I said.

  ‘Since the collapse of the USSR, KGB archives are now open to scrutiny,’ Grigson explained. ‘An historian going through the files stumbled upon yours a little over a year ago and contacted the embassy. They forwarded the report to London in the diplomatic bag and a senior secretary with a lot of years under his belt remembered the brouhaha your mother had kicked up. From there, it was just a matter of research, going through registration of births and deaths to trace relatives. Finding your cousin, we passed the information on to him.’

  ‘When I received the information,’ Tibble carried on, ‘I contacted a society which looks into the matter of people who were lost in the gulag. They traced you. I then contacted the Foreign Office…’

  ‘…and here we are!’ Grigson explained.

  Frosya returned Khruschev’s letter to the envelope taking, I noticed, a peek inside as she did so: then she checked everyone’s cup, refilling them and handing round her vatrushki. Tibble took one and placed it upon his plate but made no effort to eat it. I helped myself to two and set about consuming them. Frosya’s pastries are the best in the village. Even Andryukha the baker has begrudgingly admitted as much.

  ‘Tell me, Mr. Tibble, what is your job?’ I asked.

  ‘I am an accountant,’ he answered, ‘with my own practice. Tibble and Partners. I have two boys…’ He reached into the interior pocket of his suit jacket and removed a brown leather wallet from which he extracted a colour photograph, handing it to me across the table. It showed two young men standing next to a woman wearing an ankle-length flower print dress.

  ‘This is your family?’ I surmised.

  ‘My wife, Rosemary,’ Tibble continued, ‘and my sons. Simon is on the lef
t. He is the younger and works with me in the firm. My older son has just graduated from university.’

  ‘What did he study?’ I enquired.

  ‘Chemical engineering,’ Tibble said.

  I looked at the photograph once more but did not see this stranger’s family: instead, I saw Frosya as a little girl beside her mother.

  ‘What is your older son’s name?’ I asked.

  Frosya put her hand on mine. She had understood the conversation and, with her intuition, saw where it was going. I gave her a quick glance, saw the fear in her eyes once more, and smiled to alleviate it.

  ‘Alexander,’ he replied quietly. ‘Aunt Bea requested it. She did not want your name to die.’ He picked his vatrushka up. It was no longer a pastry but a punctuation mark in the paragraph of his emotions. Yet he still did not put it to his lips. Instead, he returned it to his plate and continued, ‘Simon is soon to be married and Alexander…’ He gave Grigson a quick look as if he was about to enter upon an argument and wanted to be sure of his allies before he opened his mouth. ‘My wife and I wondered if you would like … We would be honoured…’

  I got up from my chair, my head brushing against the twigs of the silver birch, the leaves not much bigger than petals stroking my hair. Moving round the table, I stood by my cousin’s chair. After a moment, he rose to his feet and faced me. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Frosya watching me. I do not think I have ever seen her look so afraid, so terribly unhappy. Beyond her, Trofim was staring at his boots.

  Opening my arms, I embraced my cousin, kissing him on both cheeks in the Russian fashion. He had not shaved since the morning and I felt the light scrape of his beard just as I had, all those years before, felt Kirill’s unshaven chin scour my lips. He tasted salty, too: the tears were dribbling down his face.

  ‘Cousin Michael,’ I said, holding him at arm’s length, ‘I know your love for me is great and I, not you, am the honoured one. You named your first-born son after me. Had I died in the gulag, you would have kept me alive through him. And I know what you are offering me and I am truly grateful for it.’

  I let go of him and took a pace backwards. The sun had shone on the wall of the house all afternoon, the warmth now radiating off it. He watched me for a moment then shifted his gaze to survey Trofim’s ordered rows of beetroots and radishes, Frosya’s tall dahlias nodding their heavy heads as if exhausted from the long summer.

  ‘Have you lived here since your imprisonment in the … Since they released you?’ he asked hesitantly.

  Referring to the gulag seemed to embarrass him. Perhaps, I thought, the mere mention of the word prompted feelings of guilt and I thought how, throughout his life, he must have been pained whenever the word appeared before him, like Banquo’s ghost at the feast of his everyday existence. And yet, what had he to be guilty about? Nothing. I was not his responsibility.

  ‘When I was let out,’ I told him, ‘I came here to repay a debt to a close friend, a fellow zek.’ I smiled. ‘It’s been a long time since I last used that word, an abbreviation of zaklynchenny which means prisoner in Russian. Frosya is his daughter. She and her husband took me in.’

  He was confused, could not understand why I had not headed straight for Moscow, drummed my fists on the door of the British embassy, demanded succour and a passport, a plane ticket back to London and revenge.

  ‘Have you repaid your debt now?’ he ventured.

  ‘No,’ I said with a quiet assurance which I could see perplexed him, ‘I have not. I shall never be able to settle that obligation.’

  Frosya must have caught the drift of our conversation for she sucked her breath in and turned away, looking up the hill towards the chickens, into the sun. Her shadow was lengthening across the ground, almost touching my shoes. In the distance, one of the cockerels crowed. It was a cracked, imperfect cock-adoodle-doo, the adoo missing. It must be, I thought, one of the young birds yet to assert his presence amongst the hens.

  ‘I know what you are offering me,’ I continued, ‘and I should like very much to meet your family, especially to meet the son who bears my name into the future, who will carry me with him long after I am nothing more than dust blowing across the steppe: but I cannot accept for I cannot leave here. This is my home.’

  His face was a study in disappointment. He had, in his imagination, already taken me away to the genteel, damp, green shires of England. For a moment, I wondered if he was going to try and persuade me otherwise, yet he did not.

  ‘Were I to come with you,’ I added, ‘I should be in an unfamiliar land, without friends. Here – well,’ I remarked, smiling at him in the hope that this might help him to truly understand, ‘I’ve grown used to the seasons. If I was to live away from Myshkino, my old bones would not know when to start twingeing at the onset of autumn.’

  He returned my smile and replied, ‘I understand.’

  Yet I knew he did not – indeed, he could not – truly appreciate my feelings.

  It was not just a reluctance to quit my friends: I was also afraid of leaving, afraid of what England might hold. I would be a stranger there, the thought of such alienation terrifying me. It was the same fear that had governed me upon my release from the gulag which had trained me to forget, never to think of what horrors the future might bestow. In the gulag, one lived only for the present: survival was not a matter of hanging on for years, but hours.

  For just a moment, I felt an intense sadness that I had not at least sent a message to my mother, to let her know I was well, had made it through, had endured the nightmare. Yet it passed for I knew, had I done so, I would have been beholden to return to England, to face an unknown future for which I was unprepared. It is better she believed me alive rather than had confirmation of it for she was, after those gulag years, less than a vague memory to me and I had replaced her, over the long years, with Work Unit 8, then Frosya and Trofim and I should not have wished her to know I did not want to return.

  Now, having trained myself to put aside the past like a unmemorable book, I cannot afford to indulge in such nostalgia. To go away now would be like fulfilling one of those forbidden dreams of how life was, as Valya put it, before the world ended. A trip down memory lane invariably leads to the embalmer’s gaudy paint box and the undertaker’s marble slab.

  ‘But I had to come to you,’ my cousin went on lamely.

  ‘I know,’ I replied, ‘and I am grateful and very glad indeed you have made the journey. It has been good to meet. Perhaps, you will return to Myshkino? With your family?’ I invited him. ‘There is a house down the lane in which no one lives. It is the property of one Averky Ilich Izakov but he and his wife have emigrated and now it is empty. I’m sure we could ready it for you.’

  He brightened at the prospect. His dream had been shattered but now it was reforming, like all dreams do, into a different, altogether more enticing entity.

  ‘I should like that very much,’ he said with a sincerity that touched me: then, realising that he was accepting an invitation he might not be able to fulfil, he cast a glance at Grigson who preempted his question.

  ‘Quite easily,’ the diplomat assured him. ‘There should be no problem with visas but, if there should prove to be any glitch, we would be only too pleased to sort it out. I’m certain the Russian authorities would not put up barriers.’

  Frosya turned to face me, her eyes rimmed with redness.

  Going to her side, I kissed her on her cheek and said, in Russian, ‘Frosya, Mr. Tibble and his family are going to visit us. Do you think the Izakovs’ old ruin might be made temporarily habitable?’

  She made no reply. She just looked at me and the tears welled up once more, running down her face unchecked. Trofim came over, put his arm around my shoulder. I felt his sudden strength, born of wielding hammers and twisting wrenches.

  ‘So, Trofim,’ I advised, ‘you and Tolya had better get a move on with that taxi of yours.’

  For another hour, we sat under the tresses of the birch. The sun crept lower and t
he forest darkened into a black border between the warm earth and the cooling, fading sky. When we had eaten the liqueur raspberries, Trofim fetched a bottle of Komarov’s distilled cider and we drank a toast or two. I talked of my life in Myshkino, answered my cousin’s questions, told him of my days as a teacher, of the village, the villagers and their aspirations in the new Russia.

  As the twilight began to deepen, Grigson announced that they had to leave and asked me to sign a few papers which he produced from his attaché case. Frosya fetched my pen from my room.

  ‘These are preliminary formalities,’ Grigson began to explain.

  ‘I don’t want to know,’ I interrupted him. ‘At my age, who cares? I don’t need for anything.’

  Without bothering to read them, I signed each page as required, but in Russian. It was then I realised I had not signed my name in English for over forty-five years.

  ‘When would you like me to return?’ my cousin asked as we shook hands by the vehicle. The driver, a Muscovite, had opened the doors, the scent of warm leather mingling with the perfume of Frosya’s night stock, the plants opening their flowers, now the sun was down, in readiness for the evening’s little moths which had spent their day in the goat’s meadow.

  ‘Don’t leave it too long,’ I answered. ‘I’m an old man, I won’t last forever. Come next month. In the autumn. The forests are exquisite as the leaves fall.’

  ‘Very well,’ he declared. ‘Next month.’

  As he climbed into the vehicle, Trofim suddenly spoke in English.

  ‘Sir, Mikhail,’ he addressed my cousin, ‘what is this car?’

  ‘A Land Rover,’ my cousin replied.

  ‘Lan’d Rover,’ Trofim repeated. ‘It’s very good.’

  The Muscovite leaned out of the driver’s door and said in Russian, ‘Forget it, friend. It costs more than your entire village.’

  I unpinned the medal from my lapel and handed it to my cousin.

  ‘Give this to your son. To Alexander.’

  ‘What is it?’ he wanted to know.

  I was about to explain but Frosya, not to be outdone by Trofim’s brief venture into English, said, ‘It is the sign of a good man in Russia.’