Fig and the Flute Player

by Christine Harrison

  ‘The police do not know all the secrets of this city,’ said Vasily. ‘The crypt of the Church of the Apparition gives off to underground tunnels. I doubt very much if the soldiers got their hands on the ringleaders. Not the ones they wanted, anyway – they’ve probably picked up a few entirely useless suspects.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Michael, ‘it could easily have been us.’

  ‘You must go and get all those wet things off,’ said Elena. ‘It is very foolish of you to sit about like that.’

  But before they did, they brought up as many of the Abrahamovs’ treasures as they could find. Then Maisie led Michael to the room she had been sharing with Rose. She had left the window wide open and the rain had come in and soaked Rose’s bed by the window.

  They took off all their clothes. They were both grimy from the flood-water they had waded through, and they wiped each other dry. They were shaking with cold. Maisie got into her bed.

  ‘Come into bed,’ she said. They held each other until they had stopped shivering. Michael kissed her cold mouth.

  It would have been all right if she had died that afternoon. The world was this room, this man, this particular afternoon which had no beginning and no end in existence. This room – the white damask curtains, heavily fringed, the elegant chair, prints of troikas in the snow on the walls. A decorous room. The brass bed they lay in was high and narrow, with stylised flowers on the enamelled panels at head and foot. The world was this room, the world was here and now.

  Michael lay in Maisie’s arms in the narrow bed, and grew warmer. She bent over and kissed him. ‘We are both covered in mud still. Do you mind?’ he said. She shook her head.

  Huddled together under the duvet, their legs twined and wrapped in each other, their bodies remembered each other. The storm had passed over, and they could hear it only intermittently in the distance; it left a sort of peace in its trail. They made love like old friends, like a long-married couple. It was better than it had ever been between them, because they were asking each other no questions. Both of them had decided that things were as they were, that it was so and that was it, what happened afterwards … well, there was no afterwards.

  It had been such a long time since Maisie had held him close like this. Naked, he was a different creature, as she was different, stripped of more than clothes. ‘How different we are without clothes,’ she said.

  Michael laughed. ‘Tell me,’ he said.

  ‘Quite different creatures. Don’t you feel different naked?’

  ‘You feel different to me naked, Maisie. Different to me. Much, much better. You feel incredibly better. I can’t describe what you feel like – like nothing else in the entire universe.’ But she meant that in taking off their clothes, they had been changed.

  No one had ever felt like this to Maisie. No one ever would. ‘Our bodies are so hard to tear apart.’

  ‘They are thanking each other,’ said Michael strangely. Maisie wondered if they were saying goodbye. She did not know, they led a life hidden in part from her.

  ‘I’ll run a bath,’ she said.

  ‘I haven’t any clothes to put on,’ said Michael.

  ‘Good. I shall keep you here. Now you are my prisoner.’

  She took his clothes into the bathroom and laid them on the hot tank to dry, and found him a towelling robe. The bathroom was a large room, converted from one of the original bedrooms. Maisie ran the water. They both got into the huge, old-fashioned bath.

  ‘Did you lock the door?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘I don’t think our hosts would approve.’

  ‘After all we did for them. Retrieving their opium pipes,’ Michael began methodically soaping and washing Maisie’s back.

  ‘How lovely water is,’ she said, ‘how lovely to be made clean by it.’

  ‘Shall I wash your hair?’

  ‘Have you ever had a bath with Kate?’ asked Maisie.

  ‘Shut up about Kate,’ said Michael.

  ‘Did you wash her hair? She has lovely hair.’

  ‘I can’t stand this,’ said Michael. He got out of the bath and began drying himself.

  ‘It’s not going to work, is it?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t expect so.’ Her voice sounded odd, thin, far away, someone else’s voice. ‘Did you make love to Philomena?’ The same voice asked it. She hadn’t known she was going to say this and the idea had not occurred to her before, it was preposterous.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. He put on the dressing-gown. He did not look at her.

  She nodded her head slowly. ‘Why?’ And why did she ask? Did it matter why?

  ‘Because you weren’t there. Because she was getting her own back on you for not having an affair with her. Because I was drunk and miserable. Oh – I don’t know why. Christ!’

  ‘I thought you did not like her.’

  ‘I don’t like her.’

  ‘I remember you said women seem to decide things for you. Any woman you come across does what she likes with you, as if you had no say in any of it. It must be really inconvenient and awful for you. I suppose it was the same with me.’ (She thought of him saying ‘Because you loved me first,’ and how it had moved her.)

  ‘Have you finished being sarcastic?’

  ‘You seem to have made love to practically everyone.’

  ‘Practically everyone,’ agreed Michael. He unlocked the door and went out, slamming it.

  Then he came back. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I may be a weak and stupid bloody man, but as it happens I love you. I don’t love Kate – not as I love you. Certainly I don’t love Philomena. I love you – very, very much. I should get out – the water’s cold.’

  Maisie got out and dried herself carefully and put on her Russian kimono. She was staggered by what he had told her, completely taken aback, even though she had suggested it might be so. ‘I never knew you,’ she said, ‘I never knew anything about you.’

  ‘I’m tired,’ he said. He looked tired. ‘Let’s go to bed.’

  They went back to the bedroom and climbed into the high, narrow bed. They slept in each other’s arms because if they had not they would have fallen out of the bed. It was a dead sort of sleep.

  5

  MAISlE woke early the next day. She unwrapped herself from Michael’s arms and slid gently out of bed. Looking out of the window, she saw the river still in flood, but less turbulent. She went into the bathroom and washed, and cleaned her teeth. She took Michael’s clothes from the hot-water tank and shook them out. Back in the bedroom, she put them beside him on the chair. He had settled comfortably in the middle of the bed and was sound asleep, lying on his stomach. Moving about quietly, she dressed and sat down on the window-seat. She sat there for a long while, very still, watching Michael’s soft, steady breathing, looking at the tidy pile of creased, stained clothes beside him, a pair of socks on top. She noticed, straining to see each detail, as if she must take everything in, that the socks weren’t actually a pair. One was a dark blue, the other a lighter colour. It must have been because of the chaos at Sergei’s lodging. She hadn’t noticed it when they were wet. She knew it would be something she would remember.

  After she had written the few words she could manage to think of – there isn’t any other way to say goodbye than to say it – she left the note on top of the socks, and left without waking him.

  Downstairs the water had been pumped out and the floors were now being dried by huge, noisy vacuums, wielded like toys by two strong-looking women. Out in the streets the sun was drawing steam from the wet pavements, from which the flood-water had retreated.

  This time Maisie found her way to the Church of the Apparition more easily. It had escaped the floods because of its elevated position, and was busy with old women, dressed in black, who were scraping candle-grease from the floor. One or two people, the first pilgrims to the ikon, were kneeling in prayer.

  Maisie went up close to the iconostasis. The Ikon of the Mother of God of the Steppes stood on a low lec
tern. A thousand candles burned in front of it. What did it mean to her? she wondered. Why did it move her? That serene, wakeful gaze of the Mother, that lively, beginning-of-the-world feeling about the Child. What was its unfathomable purpose? What drew her to it? There were no answers to her questions.

  Standing there, she felt emptied. On the edge of the world, her toe feeling its blue rim, her foot slipping, sliding. She felt very afraid. Then, as if she had been given an antidote, something to save her, she felt strongly that she was not going to slip, that she was part of the world, really and truly a living part of it. As she stood underneath the roof of the church, as underneath the roof of the world, she felt everything to be invested with livingness. Even the stones of the building that was now arched over her were living stones. They were living as she was living, stone and flesh the same, the same living stuff.

  And so, having opened herself to creation, somehow she could let him go. Because he was truly and always part of her, so she could let him go and took him to herself in one delicate movement, hardly detectable, infinitely sweet and bright.

  And it was true that his glamour had not been nothing. For this glamour was in the livingness of things, an integral part of the creative exuberance. A shining forth. And she knew that everything, even death, which allowed its renewal, was part of it.

  One of the old women in black was replenishing the burnt-down candles. Maisie took a fresh one from the box. She lit it and placed it in front of the ikon.

  As she was making her way out of the church, someone touched her on the elbow from behind. It was Werner. ‘Dr Shergold,’ he said. She remembered that she had written to him and told him that the ikon, which had such a strange place in his life, was to find a home in this St Petersburg church.

  They began to go down the steps to the street.

  ‘It was kind of you to write.’

  ‘Were you here yesterday?’ asked Maisie, wondering if he could tell her anything of what had happened after she had left with Michael.

  ‘No,’ said Werner, ‘I arrived too late for that, but … I feel this is my own pilgrimage. And I have made it.’

  He looked more ordinary than she had remembered him, more balanced and humble. She smiled at him and they shook hands.

  ‘I have to go,’ she said, ‘I am leaving St Petersburg today and I must pack.’

  They went their separate ways, but she did not go back to the Abrahamovs’ house. She would not go back until she was sure Michael would be at his workshop at the Music School. She knew he would not miss it. But she also felt that he would not let her end their affair, he would continue it on his own terms to the clap of doom. He never left his women of his own accord. His mother. Kate. He would never leave her of his own accord. And he would put it all down to the fates.

  Holding her life carefully in her own hands, she went back to the little open-air coffee-house by the river where she had sat talking to Michael. She had not finished saying goodbye to him, to it all. She sat with her coffee, saying goodbye. The flower-seller was there. The sun shone and the air was clear and sparkling after the storm. She bought a newspaper. There was nothing in it about Nikitich’s murder, nothing about any arrests. There was a long piece about the Ikon of the Steppes, and its return to Russia, and the controversy of where it should be. It was a disgrace that it should be in an obscure church, it should be in Moscow, in the city’s art gallery, said the newspaper, a movement was afoot to prise it from the church. But in a climate where crucifixes were the latest fashion, the article sounded merely peevish.

  She could have passed the afternoon looking at the Picassos in the Hermitage, she could have spent the time in a second-hand bookshop, looking for books that might be useful to her. She just sat in the sun, watching people come and go, making her last farewells to the lover who had touched something in her that would never be touched again.

  In her mind she lit another candle to the ikon, and let him go again. And again, she let him go.

  The flower-seller was talking to an old man who had bought some flowers. Maisie listened. They were talking about the old Tsar.

  ‘It’s all the same,’ said the old man. ‘Red or white Tsars – it makes no difference to us. They’re all Tsars.’ The old woman laughed uproariously, as if it was a very good joke. The old man laughed with her, a high-pitched, infectious laugh. They looked across at Maisie and invited her to join their laughter. Maisie folded her paper and drained her coffee and laughed too, until there were tears in her eyes.

  At last she made her way back to the Abrahamovs. The house had been put to rights by the minions the Abrahamovs had managed to summon. The place smelled odd, like a river instead of a house, but apart from that things were in order.

  Maisie told them she was going to catch the night train to Moscow to meet Rose, and asked if it would be all right to telephone Kiev. Then she remembered Sergei was not on the telephone, and wondered what on earth to do. She was determined to leave that night, she had to go at once.

  She went up to her room and began packing. Rose had left half her things and there were quite a lot of them. All the time Maisie was wondering what she would do. Perhaps she could leave a message for Rose and hope she would telephone. Perhaps she could write to her and give her a Moscow number where she could get in touch. It crossed her mind that it would be easier to stay until Rose did telephone, as had been previously arranged. But Maisie knew she must go before Michael finished at the Music School.

  She tidied the room. Then she cleaned the bath. She telephoned the railway station to find the time of the train and reserved a sleeper. As she put the receiver down, it rang. It was Rose.

  ‘Hallo, Mummy. I just thought it was time I rang.’

  ‘I’m leaving for Moscow tonight,’ said Maisie. ‘I shall travel overnight and I shall be staying at the Gorky, it’s near the embassies, it’s easy to find. I’ll wait for you there.’

  ‘Is everything all right, Mummy? I heard about the floods. I heard on the news about the ikon, there are pilgrims setting out from everywhere. I saw it on the television. Has the monarchy taken over yet?’ She laughed.

  ‘I think it’s more likely that if anyone takes over it will be the army,’ said Maisie. ‘The Tsarists have gone to earth.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Rose. ‘Anyway, Sergei says it’s always the same people who are really in power behind everything, holding the strings. That it’s all done to fool the people. I’ve painted Sergei’s portrait and I am painting the family now, having a meal. I think it might be good, Mummy. I want you to see what I’ve done.’ She sounded fresh and bright and eager.

  ‘That’s wonderful,’ said Maisie.

  ‘Yes. I spoke to Daddy on the phone and he said I’d be an idiot to give up the business and what I should be doing is beginning to collect all the stuff from the Revolution onwards – all the stuff that everyone thinks is rubbish, you know, the pictures of the Workers and the Party and Lenin and everything. Art that followed the Party line. He said it’ll be worth its weight in gold in twenty years or less.’

  ‘I expect he’s right.’

  ‘I don’t want to do that,’ said Rose. ‘I want to go to art school.’

  ‘What, painting, you mean?’

  ‘Yes, serious art school. The Slade. I’m going to do it. I’m going to sell the business and I’m going to paint.’

  ‘I’ll see you soon, anyway,’ said Maisie.

  ‘Is Michael coming with you?’

  ‘No – I’ll be alone.’

  ‘We’ll do Moscow on our own, then.’

  Maisie zipped up the bags. She would have to go to the station and wait there if she was really to avoid Michael. After the Music School he would come looking for her at the Abrahamovs. She hoped he would not come to the railway station to find her.

  Oh, God, and yet she hoped so desperately that he would. That he would follow her. Take her back. Capture her. Make her his prisoner.

  She rang for a taxi and went to thank the Abrahamovs and make her f
arewells. When she got to the railway station, her train was in, but it was over an hour before it was due to go. She bought a book and went to find a place to settle on the practically empty train.

  Her book was the sort of thing she scarcely ever read. Never read, in fact. The hero was called Sasha, and the heroine Valentina. There was a picture of them on the cover. Valentina was young and beautiful, spirited and in love. She said things like: ‘Sasha, you are the only man I shall ever love.’ Sasha was a handsome soldier, strong-willed but modest. He said things like: ‘Valentina, you are my heart’s desire.’ Sasha also asked, ‘Why do you love me? Me? I am not worth it, Valentina.’

  As to loving Michael for his qualities, well … she hardly knew him. There’s no getting to the bottom of a person. So you might just as well love the colour of someone’s eyes, the grace of their movements, their flash, quirky smile, or whatever. Valentina loved Sasha’s full brown eyes and white, even teeth. Sasha said, ‘I can feel your heart beating next to mine, Valentina. I love you.’ And Valentina said, ‘Oh, Sasha, when you kiss me I nearly faint with love for you.’

  A woman with a little girl got into the carriage. Maisie looked up briefly and returned her eyes to the page.

  Sasha said, ‘It is a cruel fate that takes me away. I have to go with the army. I have to go this very evening.’ And Valentina could not speak for tears.

  The little girl took two sweets out of her pocket and offered one to Maisie. Maisie smiled at her and said, ‘No, thank you,’ and the little girl looked pleased she would not lose one of her sweets.

  Maisie turned to the end of the book and found the lovers reunited. Sasha said, ‘I always knew I would come back to you. Always.’ And Valentina said, ‘I love you, Sasha.’

  Maisie wondered whether if she looked out of the train she would see Michael on the platform desperately searching the crowds for her. She looked out of the window, and could not tear her eyes from the always-changing tapestry of faces which fluttered and ribboned the platform. Perhaps she would see him, something in her would rush out to him, rush out to join him, and be reunited with him. But if she did see him, perhaps she would just sit there. Just like this, still, and pretend it was not him looking this way and that, frantically searching for her.