* * *
It is almost two a.m. when Zoya, on Lucas’s instructions, drops Rachel and Ivan back at the apartment block. Once her passengers are safely indoors Zoya sits motionless in the driver’s seat for a minute. As a few drops of sleety rain splatter across the windscreen, she reaches beneath the glove compartment for her wipers and climbs out of the Zhiguli to attach them. A stray dog – brindled and leggy – sidles across the car park. Zoya bends down to give him a stroke. His coat is rough and one of his eyes is infected, but his ears are silky smooth. Out in the darkness another dog barks. She looks up. It sounds as if the animal is high above her head, maybe on one of the apartment balconies. Her grandfather used to keep an Alsatian on the balcony. When Zoya was fourteen the dog ate rat poison, but he didn’t die. In the end, a brain tumour killed him.
The trolleybuses have stopped running when she turns the key in the ignition and pulls out on to Staronavodnitska Street. On impulse she turns left and drives up towards Lesi Ukrainky rather than right towards the river. She stops at a red light, the engine ticking over as she waits, though there are no other cars at the junction. When the light changes to green she turns right, puts the gear stick into neutral, switches off the engine and coasts down the hill. If anyone were to ask she might say it was to save petrol, but the truth is that at this hour she would rather listen to the wind. There is no one here to make crude gestures because she is a woman driving a car, no one to shout insults or say she cannot do this thing or that thing. She is alone on the six-lane boulevard, carried by the silence of the buildings and the trees.
Back on Khreschatyk, the prostitutes in their shiny leggings lean against the wall that leads down to the metro. A black Mercedes winks as it jumps the lights. The Zhiguli coughs after free-wheeling, though soon it is passing the new Seagrams store with its marble pillars, its Canadian maple panelling and blue satin presentation boxes of cognac costing two hundred dollars apiece. The stores patronised by the new elite take their place between the book shops and the bread shops and the shops selling machine-embroidered tablecloths and hand-daubed plates. Bribes flow like vodka. The suits and the watches may be flaunted more openly, but their new visibility makes it easier to steer Lucas round the pot holes of corruption, keeping him safe. Rachel is a different matter. She is secretive, like most mothers, though her cow eyes and her way of watching the world without looking straight on unsettle Zoya. Rachel counts buildings. She asks questions without purpose. Sometimes, she walks as if she is afraid of the floor.
The river is black as Zoya crosses over. In summer, the old communists and the young and the foolish who have stopped caring about radioactive contamination picnic and bathe on its islands. Now, though, the lights on the bridge are too dim to illuminate the water. On she drives, past the cement works and the tower blocks, past the schools and the Houses of Culture and the stretches of waste ground with their rusting see-saws and dented slides, until finally she reaches her own neighbourhood.
Upstairs in the little flat her neighbour Tanya is asleep on her sofa.
‘Wake up,’ says Zoya, giving her a shake.
‘He’s crapped himself,’ mutters Tanya, reaching for her coat. ‘You need to get some diapers.’
Zoya, cleaning her grandfather, holds her breath against the stench and grips his leg just a little too hard. Sometimes the need to squeeze and crush overwhelms her. The old man groans and she releases her grip and wipes her hand, relieved that she can still let go.
‘Forgive me, Grandpa,’ she whispers, as she dabs at his thighs with a towel. ‘Forgive me.’
Chapter 16
Lucas, who has stayed out all night, phones the next morning to say there’s an Interior Ministry briefing. He asks whether Zoya mentioned anything as she hasn’t turned up for work and he’s pretty furious actually as he hasn’t seen her since she drove Rachel home from the party.
‘No,’ says Rachel. ‘What happened?’
‘A leak at Chernobyl.’
Fallout, thinks Rachel. Seepage. Half-lives. She takes a quick breath. ‘Is it dangerous? What should I do?’
‘What? Oh no. It’s contained. A mammoth fuck-up, all the same. Not what Kravchuk needs while he dithers over nuclear warheads.’
Rachel is silent. She has lots of things she wants to say to her husband: things like ‘come home’ and ‘don’t come home’, but sometimes it is as if there is a fine mesh in front of her mouth, catching her words. She tries to single out one question, push it through.
‘Will Vee be there? At the briefing?’
‘I should think so, if her hangover can stand it. Why?’
‘Pass on my thanks for the party.’
‘Right. I’ll see you later. It’s going to be busy.’
* * *
When Rachel goes down to the basement mid-morning with Ivan on her hip and her laundry bag in the baby carrier, she expects to find Zoya and Elena. She is greeted by darkness, but it doesn’t matter. The basement calms her. It feels safe to retreat to below ground level, surrounded by concrete and earth. No vertiginous balconies. No radioactive cloud. No journalists with their high heels and complicated laughs.
She flicks the light switch, but the fluorescent tube spits and dies so she fumbles her way over to the desk lamp Elena keeps on the workbench and turns that on instead.
The bare bulb’s glow illuminates Elena’s sheets of old newspaper and neat coils of twine. It reaches into the shadows, exaggerating concrete uprights and draped washing and the warm, humming bulk of the boilers. Almost immediately Rachel knows she and Ivan are not alone.
‘Allo . . .’ she says cautiously, as something swings backwards and forwards near the base of the far wall, half-obscured by a pillar. Then she hears the sound of tearing paper. Elena must be here somewhere. ‘Elena?’
‘Good morning,’ replies a strange voice – a boy’s voice. It lingers over the first syllable of ‘morning’ as if savouring its unfamiliarity. ‘Ciao baby!’
Rachel blinks for a moment, gripping Ivan so that he wriggles and complains. She knows this voice: it belongs to Stepan, the boy from upstairs, the boy who stares at her in a way that seems too old for his years. He’s been sitting in the darkness.
‘I’m sorry . . .’ She takes a step backwards. ‘I didn’t know anyone else was down here.’
Stepan doesn’t speak for a moment. Instead Rachel hears a rustling sound, and then the sudden sheesh of a sneeze. Now she can see him; he is sitting on a tall metal stool, swinging his legs and fiddling with a paper packet in his hands. As she watches he lifts the packet up to his mouth and shakes it to dislodge its contents. She can smell something, too – a sickly strawberry smell, a synthetic tang that takes her back to the formica kitchen table of her childhood.
‘Baby, want some?’ he asks, offering the packet.
‘No thank you. I’m – I have to go.’
‘Why go, Mum?’ The boy swings himself off the stool and strolls towards her. He passes three of Ivan’s vests dangling from a line and she wants to leave, she wants to tell him not to call her ‘Mum’, but she also wants to take the clean laundry with her. ‘You bring clothes here I think,’ he continues. ‘This is your – ah, steeralnaya mashina.’ He nods at the washing machine, its tubes attached to the taps of the sink like a cow in a milking parlour. ‘I know that shop. Okay for shop, but no for Elena Vasilyevna. She like machine, she don’t like shop. She don’t like man in shop.’
Mykola, thinks Rachel, remembering how Elena had spat at the delivery man.
‘You seem to know Elena Vasilyevna quite well . . .’ She dips quickly under the line and bobs up next to the vests.
‘Quite well.’ Again, the boy lingers over the second word, as if he is tasting it in his mouth. Rachel, uncomfortable, changes the subject.
‘And you aren’t rollerblading today?’
‘No. It is difficult. Before I train in Soviet system, compete
with many countries. Learn English! Now, no money. No papers. No compete.’
Rachel is still holding Ivan. She tugs a vest from the line with her free hand.
‘What about school?’
‘No school. I leave school.’
‘But your uncle?’
‘He not my uncle. He, ah – coach.’
Stepan continues to stare, though his cheeks slacken for a moment. Lucas is right, thinks Rachel. The old man is his keeper, or worse. She tries to imagine how difficult Stepan’s life must be and how abandoned he must feel. She’d like to reach out to him, to show him she cares as she truly wants to care, even while he is reverting to his habitual brazen smirk.
‘What will you do?’ she asks, but Stepan is stretching out his arm, offering Ivan the packet he’s been holding. Before she can stop him, Ivan grabs it and brings it towards his mouth. It is only as she pushes it away that she recognises English words, the branding of Bird’s Angel Delight, the same pudding her mother used to make every Saturday, whipping the pink powder with milk until the lumps disappeared and the mixture thickened. There were other flavours – chocolate and butterscotch – though her mother only ever bought the strawberry.
‘From UK,’ he says, ducking beneath the last row of pegged washing. ‘Nice gift.’
‘Stepan!’ she calls sharply but the boy is through the door and gone.
Rachel wants to believe that Angel Delight is another of those out-of-date consumables that wash up, by some circuitous route, in the kiosks by the war memorial. She has never seen it for sale though, and she has scoured the city for western goods. No. Already she understands, she knows that this boy is stealing packages sent from England by her mother.
* * *
The line crackles and pops. Rachel pushes the receiver closer to her ear.
‘Mum?’
‘Who’s that?’ The voice, so familiar, makes Rachel’s breath catch in her throat.
‘It’s me, Rachel.’
‘Rachel? What a terrible line. I’m watching the one o’clock news.’
‘Mum . . . Thank you for sending me things. I’m sorry I haven’t called. I didn’t know.’
A pause.
‘Someone else was opening them. They didn’t reach me.’
‘I see. I thought you must have given me the wrong address.’
‘No, they arrived, but – I had no idea you were sending packages.’
‘Well I thought perhaps Customs were stopping them. You can’t tell.’
‘I’m sorry Mum. How are you?’
‘I’m very well. How is my grandson?’
‘Fine! He’s got long legs, and a gorgeous smile, and he’s sitting! He sits in front of the washing machine, and if I leave the hall cupboard open he pulls all the shoes out.’
‘He ought to be crawling.’
‘He is, sort of –’
‘You’d better bring him home soon. I don’t know what you do out there. I never see your husband on the news.’
‘He’s not that kind of journalist, Mum. He’s radio. Not TV.’
‘Well you know what I think; you should never have gone.’
Now it is Rachel who says nothing. Instead she makes pictures in her mind’s eye, the old habit from childhood, in case her mother can still invade her head. The fifteen hundred miles between them really isn’t so far. Here I am going to lots of parties. See? I have friends here. I am living a grown-up life.
‘Is this call expensive?’ asks her mother. ‘It must be expensive.’
Rachel clears her throat. ‘Thank you for the Angel Delight . . .’
‘I shan’t send any more. Not if someone else is opening it. Is that the baby I can hear? He sounds fretful. You’d better see to him.’
‘What? Okay – well, bye-bye Mum . . .’
‘Bye-bye.’
There is silence, then a click as her mother replaces her receiver. Rachel can almost hear her sighing as she reaches for her cup of tea and settles back to watch her programmes. She stares at her three reflections in the mirror above the telephone, at her sagging corduroy skirt with its creases across her hips. Ivan is sitting at her feet, reaching for the edge of the low table. His fingers grip the veneer as he tries to pull himself up, a bubble of saliva shining on his lip.
‘That was your grandma,’ she says, scooping him up before he knocks his chin. There is something about his wide eyes, open, trusting, that reminds her of the hand-written notices on the lampposts on the road up to the monastery: all those flaps of paper, waiting to be torn off, waiting for someone to call the number on the slip, waiting for a connection. ‘She used to be a mind reader,’ she whispers, into his soft ear. ‘But not any more.’
* * *
A couple of days after Vee’s party, Rachel wakes up to a ringing sound.
‘Do you hear it?’ she asks Lucas, as he sits on the side of the bed to pull on his socks.
‘That’s tinnitus,’ he says. ‘I used to get it on night shifts when I was subbing. Like a worm in your ear. Bloody annoying.’
Rachel shakes her head. It is as if someone is standing by her shoulder, running a wet finger around the rim of a crystal glass. She thinks of Stepan, for some reason, though this is no squeak from a pair of rollerblades. The sound is most insistent when she reads Jurassic Park, counting the words and memorising entire pages. When she descends in the lift the ringing fades, and when she walks outside into the dense grey fog that has rolled up from the river it stops altogether. The sound isn’t unpleasant, but it does confuse her. ‘What?’ she asks Lucas, as he says goodbye.
When Elena arrives to watch TV Rachel turns up the volume, which in turn wakes Ivan from his nap. Elena draws a circle with her finger next to her temple in a gesture straight out of Simplemente Maria. ‘Vesna,’ she mutters as Rachel pads off to the bedroom. ‘Loco’. And perhaps Elena is right, perhaps Rachel has inhaled a little spring madness, because later that afternoon, before she can think twice, she is digging out the credit card that Lucas has asked her not to use and taking a trolleybus down to Khreschatyk to buy a pair of imported jeans from the place under the stone archway Suzie calls the ‘hookers’ boutique’. She can’t try them on because she has Ivan in the baby carrier, so instead she shakes them out, holding them against her legs and inspecting the seams, frowning and tutting like the women she has watched buying clothing in the musty corridors of the central department store. However, these jeans are not made of the cheap, bleached denim that everyone wears; they are cut from a dark indigo, good quality fabric, with tiny metal studs in the shape of a curvy ‘S’ on each back pocket.
‘One hundred twenty dollars,’ says a bored-looking young saleswoman with pushed-up breasts and piled-up hair.
Rachel’s hand shakes a little when she hands over her card; she must wait as the woman picks up the phone and reels off the long number, rolling her eyes at the incompetence of the operator down the line or maybe Rachel herself, who ought to know better than to waste her husband’s dollars on a tired, sagging backside.
Back at the apartment the jeans button digs in to the soft flesh of Rachel’s stomach and the fabric strains tight across her thighs. Nevertheless, when she squints she looks taller. When she closes her eyes she hears the high, ringing note, and imagines she is a Mexican polo player’s mistress, or a kohl-eyed violinist or a journalist throwing a party and smoking out in the hallway with someone else’s husband.
Chapter 17
The fog lingers across Kiev for five whole days. Like a cocoon, thinks Rachel, opaque and animal. The landscape is already morphing into spring by the time the sunlight glimmers through. A slick of green spreads between the apartment blocks. The lilacs that grow through the chain link fence by the military academy are in bud, and the air smells of wet earth and oily potholes and a more ancient smell – last winter’s thawing detritus, or maybe gas from the tunnels that once burr
owed beneath the streets. The ground is sloughing off winter.
Lucas groans about the mud by the dump bins but otherwise pays little attention. His story about The Golden Promise is snagging – the general release has been pushed back to July and Lukyanenko won’t let him sit in on the editing. Lucas has asked Teddy to take pictures for an Observer feature he’s hoping to bag, but Teddy has problems of his own. Karl’s café has been vandalised; disgusting graffiti have been daubed on its walls. They are thinking of shipping out to the Balkans, or so he tells Lucas one evening at the apartment on Staronavodnitska Street. Events in Bosnia aren’t fixed yet, he says. He wants to document a more fluid, less predictable story.
‘The story’s not fixed here, either, unless we make it so!’ says Lucas.
‘Everyone makes it so,’ argues Teddy, with uncharacteristic sourness. ‘Politicians, editors, readers. Journalists are the worst. I want something else.’
Rachel, meanwhile, is preoccupied with Ivan. When she takes him outside he throws off his mittens and his hat, again and again, chuckling like a maniac, playing the game that always gets her into trouble with the old folk on the trolleybus. He is starting to look more Ukrainian with his cowlick of blond hair, the vests with strange fastenings and some woolly leggings made in Korea. He is crawling now, too – a sort of lop-sided scoot. One moment he is under her feet in the kitchen and the next he has vanished along the hallway. If she doesn’t intercept him he will pull out the drawer from under the bed and fling nappies across the parquet with frowning concentration. She keeps the living room door shut, of course, and when Lucas is out she always wedges a chair under the handle.
Nevertheless, there are some difficulties that Rachel cannot keep at bay with her rituals and her barriers and her pages. When Ivan sits on the bedroom floor and his eyes spill swollen tears, she thinks he’s starting to peer into the future. When she opens the cupboard door and slips behind it to stow his vests, perhaps he thinks she will disappear like Lucy Pevensie, away to Narnia, and never return. She tries playing peekaboo with the door, but Ivan won’t be tricked. Sometimes he howls for hours. The only remedy is to take him out in the baby carrier or the pushchair, down across the waste ground, over to Podil by way of the river or up through Tsarskoye Selo to the monastery, with its winding cobbled paths.
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