‘Why are you here?’ she said. ‘In Russia?’
Michael laughed at the incredible fact of his being there, meeting her, and stroked her fingers. He ran his fingers lightly over the contours of her face.
‘Let’s go and find somewhere to sit down,’ he said, ‘before we fall down.’
He led her out of the building, down the stairs.
Somewhere a table and two chairs appeared on the pavement outside a restaurant. A little boy came and asked them what they wanted to drink. ‘Coffee,’ said Maisie. Her legs were still shaking. ‘Coffee, please.’
But Michael said he needed something stronger and had a vodka. ‘I’m beginning to like the stuff,’ he said, raising his glass. ‘To us, Fig,’ he said. He drained the glass.
‘Why are you in Russia?’ she asked. ‘Here in St Petersburg?’
‘It must have been to find you,’ he said.
She thought she had never been so wildly happy.
She drank some coffee. He ordered another vodka. ‘Would you like something to eat?’
She shook her head and laughed at such a strange idea.
‘No, but what are you doing here?’ she said again. ‘I can’t take it in – that it’s you, Michael.’ She was looking at him, the features she had not been able to recall, the way his dark hair grew, the bitter edge to that flashing, open smile. Her happiness was such a relief, all considerations thrown recklessly, thankfully to the winds.
‘I’m with Sergei and his lot,’ said Michael. ‘This is where it’s all happening – the music scene, I mean. I’ve been here all week, working hard – Sergei fixed up the whole thing. It’s been very exciting.’
‘Sergei here?’
‘Yes, it’s work. I was just taking a few hours off, the recording is all done now. I’ve been really strung up – when I saw you I thought I’d finally gone crazy. Where are you staying, Maisie?’
‘With friends. Rose is with me. Where are you staying?’
‘In some dive with Sergei and the boys. Everyone sleeps on the floor. Six blokes sharing a washbasin, it’s pretty basic – well, bordering on the sordid, really.’
I can’t take her back there, thought Michael, and Maisie thought, I can’t possibly take him to the Abrahamovs.
(So the gods, it seemed, had set up this meeting, in the face of every other likely eventuality, every other path that might have been taken – and then lost interest in their predicament.)
‘Do you have to be back?’ she asked. The thought of letting him out of her sight threw her into a panic. He would disappear, she would lose him in this big city … she saw herself running down the Nevsky Prospekt frantically searching for him.
‘No, I’m a free man now the recording’s done.’
‘I have to go back to an auction,’ she said, ‘I’m bidding for a client. Oh, God, I have to go back.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Michael.
They held hands as they hurried to the auction rooms. When they got there it was all something of a blur to Maisie. The horse-trading auctioneer, who turned out to be nothing of the kind, Nightingale and Pearson suddenly sober and all as sharp as splintered glass.
Maisie lost the ikon to a private Russian collector – some said the wife of someone in the government. She was glad anyway that it was to stay in Russia. She said so to Michael. He put his arms round her and kissed her then.
‘You and your ikons,’ he said.
2
UNABLE to say goodbye to each other, they ended up collecting Rose from the Abrahamovs’ house, where she was reading Tom Wolfe in the bedroom, and all three going round to the sleazy lodgings to meet Sergei. By this time Rose had had enough of her own company to be sociable. She took Michael’s appearance with a certain resignation, as if she knew it was bound to happen sooner or later, and as if her mother had purposely gone out and found him.
As they climbed the dismal tenement steps to the fourth floor, Michael said that everyone was supposed to be going out on the town to celebrate that night, as they had finished their recording. ‘It won’t be a drunken orgy or anything,’ he said, ‘at least I don’t think so. Prepare yourselves for a bit of squalor now, though,’ he added, as he opened the door for them.
The room was smoky and very warm, it smelled of spicy cooking and hashish. Michael made his way across the room between musical equipment and lounging bodies, and opened the window, letting in the noise of heavy traffic. Everyone looked very surprised, and sat up and said how wonderful to see these unexpected guests. They kissed Maisie solemnly and shook hands with Rose, greeting her with warm, flowing eloquence, speaking in Russian.
The girl violinist, Lila, was washing a cooking-pot at the sink. She turned and smiled at Maisie and Rose, wiping her hands on the edge of the ragged chenille tablecloth. She greeted them sweetly. ‘I will make coffee,’ she said. Michael helped her find a collection of wooden bowls and enamel mugs under chairs, and wash them.
Maisie could see that Rose was fascinated by them all, by their sangfroid and carelessness. She was especially enchanted by Sergei, whose witty, exuberant broken English she drank in like an elixir.
Lila covered the chenille tablecloth with a piece of oilcloth ringed with stains, and set the bowls and mugs round with instinctive ceremony, managing to invest what she was doing with a pleasant human ritual. Everyone thanked her.
‘You must come with us,’ said Sergei, ‘we are going to make the town red. Will you come with us, Rose?’ He turned towards her, he was irresistible.
‘You go,’ said Maisie. ‘See the other St Petersburg.’
‘Maisie and I won’t come, Sergei,’ said Michael. ‘We’ve got a lot to talk about. They’ll take care of Rose,’ he said to Maisie. He looked at her hesitantly, anxiously, thinking she looked sad. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked her.
‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she said. She was beginning to find the presence of so many people, when all she wanted was to be alone with Michael, hard to bear.
At last they were all ready to go. It was arranged that they would bring Rose back to the Abrahamovs. Then they were gone, clattering down the steps, laughing and shouting.
Michael and Maisie stood by the window, looking down at the concrete yard with a few silvery birch trees shivering in the sun, and the stream of traffic. Michael closed the window, and the silence settled round them. Neither of them knew what to say, they groped towards speech.
‘You haven’t changed,’ he said. ‘You’re still the same.’
‘I’ve changed,’ said Maisie.
He touched her waist, putting his hands around it in a deliberate possessive gesture. She kept still, looking at the birch trees, then at last at him, a little curiously, for, feeling his hands around her waist, she realised he must have simply forgotten about her pregnancy, about the baby she was to have had, his baby. She was astonished that he had forgotten, but she did not want to talk about it. How could she really know anything about this man, she thought, how his mind worked, what was in his mind, if that had been so forgettable, so unimportant in his scale of things?
‘Well, it’s been decided for us, hasn’t it?’ he said. ‘If we turn away from each other now, we are flying in the face of … flying in the face of … something.’ He said it as if he believed cosmic forces had brought them together. Perhaps that was true.
‘All the million different ways we could have taken. Yet step by step we were brought together,’ he kissed her hair, ‘to the same country, the same city, the same room – on the same day, at the same hour. Maisie.’ His hands tightened round her waist, his thumbs stroking towards her groin. He made it sound as if there was no turning back now. In a way she knew she had gone along with that by coming here at all. Michael’s closeness, his close physical presence, the fact that he wanted her so much sexually – if she had not wanted this, she should not have come, for she had known it would be like this.
He led her to the bedroom, where there were several unmade beds – mattresses and half-clean shee
ts and rough army blankets lying everywhere. Piles of clothes spilled out of unzipped bags and there was a litter of empty cans and bottles.
‘I’m sorry about the mess,’ said Michael. He tried to tidy one of the beds, but could do nothing about the dirty-looking sheets and ancient pillows with no pillow-cases.
‘Not here, Michael,’ said Maisie. She suddenly felt drained and depressed. There was a little silence.
‘No – not here,’ said Michael. ‘Come on, let’s go out somewhere. What about your place?’
‘That’s impossible – the people I’m staying with – it’s impossible.’
‘We’ll have to find a hotel room,’ said Michael.
‘Let’s just go out for a walk. Have a drink somewhere.’
‘Yes, all right, Maisie,’ said Michael. ‘I’m sorry to have brought you here.’
‘Don’t be sorry.’
As they went down the staircase, Maisie felt further depressed by the deadening smell of urban poverty, set in concrete; of old people living on cabbage and young people living on drink. The infinitely dismal wailing of a baby came from behind closed doors.
‘Christ, how can you live here?’ said Maisie.
‘We only sleep here,’ said Michael. ‘It’s just a doss, we don’t notice it. I’m sorry to bring you here, Maisie,’ he said again.
‘Rose didn’t seem to notice it either,’ admitted Maisie, as if questioning her own sensibility. But she could never have gone to bed with Michael in this place, lain with him in those unsavoury sheets. It did not occur to her to wonder if she would have felt differently at the beginning of their affair when even the litter in the streets seemed glorified.
They went to a place Michael knew, near the river, and sat with their drinks in a little courtyard. There was a flower stall there; a toothless woman, dressed in a heavy winter coat in spite of the warm weather, shuffled her bunches of gladioli.
They sat opposite each other.
‘Do you want to talk about Ireland?’ Michael drank quickly. She thought he looked impatient, even angry.
‘There’s nothing to say,’ replied Maisie. ‘I got your letters,’ she added.
‘You never answered, though.’
‘No.’
‘I was waiting for a word from you, Maisie. Waiting every day for a word. Were you punishing me?’
‘No.’
Maisie was watching the flower-seller fumbling with the flowers. As someone bought a bunch of them, the old woman took the money, stowing it in her leather bag, in that peculiar way peasants have of touching money, as if it is a commodity, like eggs or grain. She felt Maisie watching her and gave her a toothless grin. Maisie smiled back.
‘What are you laughing at?’ Michael got up, draining his glass quickly. ‘Would you like another drink?’
‘I haven’t finished this one,’ said Maisie. He went to buy himself more vodka, coming back with a whole bottle, which he put on the table. The look in his eyes was wild, incoherent, almost puzzled.
‘Did you have to get rid of the baby as well as me?’ he said. He sounded aggressive.
‘You’ve got a fucking nerve,’ she said slowly. She was angry now. She wept a little.
He put his hand on hers. ‘Don’t be angry,’ he said. He looked confused, unhappy.
She saw this human, fallible, faithless man, this slightly drunk, bewildered, angry man, who did not know which way to turn. This man who still loved her. Whom she still loved.
She told him then about losing the baby, the brief facts. And she told him about her mother, that she was dead.
He listened, his eyes down, to all this and then he told her he was sorry. Everything was his fault. He just went round messing up people’s lives. He heaped coals of fire on his own head – her mother’s death was probably caused through her worry over Maisie, and their relationship.
‘That really is nonsense,’ said Maisie. Then, changing the subject, she began talking about how she had come to be in St Petersburg. ‘Rose needed a change and anyway I wanted to attend the mass for the ikon’s return to Russia.’
‘You mean our ikon?’
Maisie smiled. ‘Yes – our ikon. A church in St Petersburg was chosen – probably safer than Moscow for the monarchists, and a better rallying place.’
‘Safer? Haven’t you heard what has happened in the city?’ Maisie shook her head.
‘One of the monarchists has been murdered in the street. In the Kirovsky Prospekt – he had been addressing an open air meeting in the park.’
‘Oh, God, how dreadful – what a foolhardy thing to have done.’
‘Yes; he must have thought he was in Hyde Park – well, he wasn’t. He found that out.’
‘It’s dreadful, dreadful. Who did it?’ she asked. She had tears in her eyes.
‘I don’t expect we shall ever know. There are plenty of theories.’
‘When did it happen?’
‘It happened at lunchtime – just before we met in the museum, in fact.’
‘You never said anything.’
‘It was such a shock seeing you, I had forgotten about it – until now. Do you think they will be warned off, your monarchists?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘I don’t think so either.’
‘Do you care – how it all ends for them?’
‘Maisie, I’ve told you before, if you’ve got any sense you don’t get mixed up in this sort of thing. They’re all as bad as each other. I hate politics, it stinks. Music is where I live, I’m just not interested in all the rest.’
‘Yes, that’s why you’re here in Russia … it’s got nothing to do with some cosmic plan – with meeting me.’
‘Yes, it has. We’re being given another chance. Let’s start again, from the beginning, as if we were strangers. As if we had just met now – here. I saw you and I came over and asked if you wanted a drink. I’d never met you before. Like that.’
‘Things don’t work like that. You can’t wipe it clean and start again – we’re not children’s chalk drawings on a slate. We’re flesh and blood.’
‘Let’s try.’
‘It’s no good.’
‘Let’s try – just do what I say. Just trust me, let me lead you.’
‘You said that once before.’ And then she remembered the time, with a shock that it had ever happened, when he had put his hands on her throat. It seemed incredible to her now that it had not angered her more deeply at the time. She had been in a dream.
‘This time I’ll lead you more carefully,’ Michael was saying. ‘I’ll be careful.’
‘Perhaps I would be better at it – leading, I mean.’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
He shrugged. ‘This time I’ll be more careful,’ he said again.
Maisie sighed. ‘Let’s walk,’ she said. She felt restless. The news about the murder saddened her.
As they left the courtyard Michael bought a bunch of white gladioli and put them in her arms. ‘Now you look like a Quaker bride, in that grey thing you’re wearing.’
‘Now I’ve got to carry these about St Petersburg.’
‘I’ll carry them,’ he said, taking the flowers. He smiled at her, that smile that was like no one else’s. She kissed him then. He put his arm round her, looking happy.
‘Let’s be happy,’ he said. ‘To hell with everyone.’
‘I’d like to see where it happened – the assassination,’ Maisie said quietly.
‘That’s not being happy.’ He hesitated. ‘Come on, then,’ he said.
She knew she was falling in love all over again, only this time there was more pain in it, and more knowledge. How could she help loving him? Everything he said, every inflection, every movement.
He took her to see the place where the Russian had been gunned down in the street. The blood-stained pavement had been covered in flowers. Who were the people, wondered Maisie, who came and laid their wreaths of red, blue and white flowers – the Tsarist colours – weren
’t they afraid to be seen? Apparently not. It was not just old people who came, there were all types and ages, even children. The spot was heaped with carnations and cornflowers, peonies and lilies.
Maisie took one of the white gladioli from Michael, and laid it on the place. ‘This is one good way,’ said Michael, ‘to make sure their cause will live on.’
Maisie felt very shaken. She wondered suddenly if Rose was all right. Abruptly she said, ‘Goodbye, Michael – I must get back,’ and she started to run for a tram she had seen which would take her in the right direction for the Abrahamovs’ house. Michael ran after her.
‘Don’t come with me,’ she gasped as she jumped on the tram, which had begun to move. Michael thrust the flowers in her arms. ‘I’ll come tomorrow,’ he shouted.
She sat down, getting her breath, she held up a hand to wave. He was standing there now, looking very young. It was something she usually forgot about him – he was so young. Neither of us has mentioned Kate, she thought, as the tram rattled along.
When she got back to the Abrahamovs, Elena greeted her. ‘How sweet,’ she said, taking the flowers from Maisie, ‘sweet of you.’ She asked Maisie to fill a Chinese vase with water. She placed the vase of flowers on an ivory and mother-of-pearl inlaid table. They looked exotic and rare in that setting.
‘Have you heard the news?’ asked Maisie.
‘Yes, that is the way of the world now. Vasily is very angry, he has gone to bed. Goodnight, my dear.’
In her room, Maisie prepared for bed, but she would not sleep, she was not sure if Rose had a key. She sat up in bed reading, hoping that Rose would not be too late. She felt slightly uneasy about her, and was relieved when she arrived at last, her eyes bright, full of unaccustomed animation, not at all tired now.
‘Sergei will be going home soon,’ she said. ‘He has invited us all to a picnic, the Abrahamovs as well, all of us. Will you come to the picnic?’ Rose was still wide awake.
‘Yes, of course. I don’t know if Elena and Vasily will come. In spite of everything, they are getting too old for picnics, perhaps.’
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