I can’t go on and I won’t, that’s what I thought as I lay there in bed, and I let myself go. I subsided once more into sleep, or into my dream. So it was just a dream after all, and the room and time and my fear disappeared, and I was back in our Munich flat with Ellen and Jessie. The happy time. What was it Luigi had said, more than once? Life here is almost the way it was meant to be.
The door had creaked as it did then. Our kitchen door had always creaked in the days when life was the way it was meant to be. We never oiled it. And when I was cooking in the kitchen on my own and Ellen came in, the door always creaked. I could hear her before I saw her. And when the door creaked later on, it would be either Jessie or Sally, our cat.
We had found Sally on a compost heap in a public park. She was very small and utterly forlorn, just a tiny handful of cat, so to speak. Ellen picked her up and said: Poor little poppet. She was known as Poppet right from the start. We only called her Sally when we had visitors, because Poppet would have sounded a bit odd.
When everything ended and I was alone, the cat was still there. She lived on for quite some time. Her food and water bowls were in the kitchen, and at night, whenever she went for a snack, I would hear the kitchen door emit that long, wonderful creak, and for a moment it was Jessie going into the kitchen. For one brief, blissful moment.
This went on for a long time. Until Sally died. The door never creaked at night after that. And now, for the first time in all these years, a door had creaked again. Jessie came into the kitchen and nestled her head against my leg, and I said: You’re welcome to come for me, you’re welcome to kill me. You won’t get me anyway. And then I was in another kitchen. I was lying beside my mother in that huge white cocoon, but I wasn’t screaming now, nor weeping as I had when a child. My grandmother and grandfather came in and looked at us. Quite calmly. Quite serenely. Without agitation. And then, quite suddenly, Jessie was there in that huge kitchen, and we were all there together. I was with the dead, and they weren’t dead at all, and I put out my hand to stroke Jessie’s head, and a voice said softly: Harry! Don’t be scared, it’s only me.
It was Sonia, sitting on the edge of my bed.
* * *
Ellen called. Just now, while I was writing this. I pressed the button on my mobile and there was Ellen’s voice: Harry, my flat has been searched. No, not ransacked, but obviously searched. Could it have been the police?
No, the police would have come with a search warrant.
I know, she said. I know.
Can you leave the building without being seen?
Yes, probably. Perhaps.
Then leave. At once. Don’t let anyone see you. Hide. Go somewhere, anywhere, and don’t speak to anyone. And take your mobile. I’m coming. By the next plane. Tomorrow.
Harry? Come as fast as you can.
I’m coming, Ellen, I said. I’m coming.
After the End
Harry flew to Europe the next day. He left at eight a.m., on a United Airlines flight to Amsterdam. That was three weeks ago. He used Aliosha’s American passport. The passport of the man he had shot. We had shot.
We haven’t heard from him up to now, Susannah and I. We left San Francisco two days later and are staying in a safe place. If he and Ellen fail to escape the Mafia, they’ll torture him until he tells them where I am. And until he gives them Susannah’s name. I can’t imagine anyone not cracking under torture, so he’ll tell them. And what if they do something to Ellen? I know those people, they’ll do something to her if they can. If it’ll make Harry talk.
I made a printout of this book, this account of our journey into fear, and read it. Then I gave it to Susannah, but Susannah felt it belonged to me. I don’t know who it belongs to, but it seems I’m the only one who wants it. I shall dedicate it to Susannah.
Harry never talked to me about Ellen or Jessie. I knew nothing about them. He mentioned their names only once. It was all news to me. Not to Susannah. Susannah knows the whole story.
If they escape the Mafia they’ll need protection. There’s bound to be a witness protection programme in Great Britain. Perhaps they’ve gone to the police in Scotland and already have new identities. Except that Harry would have called us by now. Perhaps they won’t let him, but we’ve got to find out somehow or other.
Susannah is trying to discover something through her contacts in Washington, not that they’ll get anywhere if the British programme is any good. She wants to get the British and Americans to cooperate, but I don’t know if she’ll manage it.
Perhaps Ellen joined Harry in Amsterdam and they went to the police and turned themselves in. I’ve no idea.
* * *
I pray for him and Ellen. Yes, I’m a praying mafiosa. Harry was right. Some idiotic voice inside me says: Praying mantis – she gobbles him up while they’re making love. But that’s silly. It isn’t like that. It wasn’t like that. I’m simply praying, I don’t know to what or to whom.
It’s not true that Harry didn’t possess a photo of Ellen. I went through his wallet once. Yes, I do things like that. I’m mistrustful. A mistrustful Russian. In his wallet was a coloured postcard of a railway station, I forget which. The station square was deserted save for a girl, a young woman, holding a bicycle and looking at the camera. She was wearing a white blouse and a red skirt with white polka dots. I couldn’t make out her face because she was just a tiny figure in that vast square outside the station. Unidentifiable, though someone who knew her would probably have recognized her. There were some words written on the back of the postcard: “I didn’t know you then.” No signature, no name. Nothing. It was a wholly anonymous photograph. A postcard of a railway station, in fact. What else could one expect?
No, the girl was unrecognizable, but I know now that it must have been Ellen. Who else could it have been? She was sixteen or seventeen at the time. You could tell she was roughly that age from the way she held herself. That must have been when Harry was in California – when he and Susannah were together. Strange, that. I was two or three years old at the time. A general’s daughter. The little daughter of Anna and Vladimir Kovalevsky. I can’t understand why that girl outside the station was the only person on the postcard. Perhaps the photographer was her father, and she was the personal trace he left on it.
* * *
I wish Harry would come back to America. I’d like to see him, that’s all. I want to make sure he’s still alive. I wouldn’t even speak to him. I’d simply like to know that he still exists. I wouldn’t even have to see him again. All I ask for is his continued survival. A postcard would be enough. A view of San Francisco for tourists. A crowded cable car, perhaps, and on a nearby sidewalk it two little figures walking down the street. Ellen and Harry. Unrecognizable unless you knew them, but I’d know Harry anywhere.
That’s all I ask. All I pray for. I don’t know who it is I ask and pray to, but I often think, often say quietly to myself: Don’t be frightened, we all have to die in the end.
But not now. Not now. Not yet.
America, autumn 2000 Sonia Kovalevskaya
The Russian Passenger Page 22