A Question of Return

by Robert Carr

  “Help her …” Boris Leonidovich whispered.

  That’s what they kept telling her, or something like that. Brodelshchikova, scared as she was, couldn’t understand everything even when she heard the words. Tsvetayeva’s voice had been soft throughout, but then she screamed, not loudly, but a scream all the same, like a wounded animal without strength. The other two said things too, but Brodelshchikova couldn’t make out what they were saying. Maybe they were farther from the trapdoor.

  “I didn’t see them, then. How could I? But I saw them later, and I knew who they were from their voices. I’ll never forget those voices. Perhaps they’ve stayed with me because I couldn’t see them while I was in the cellar. Like a blind man with sharp hearing, I don’t know. They didn’t leave the town afterward; they stayed around to make sure that their traces were covered, and that it was all written down as suicide. I don’t know why they bothered. Yes, they were there later, around the house and in the house, talking and mingling with the local police.”

  She took a noisy slurp of tea, tears in her eyes. She stood up, walked over to the stove, and brought back a small paper bag from which she took out a few yellow cookies and laid them on a plate. They were hard but I ate one, softened with tea.

  The other older man - she thought at first he was young because of his voice, a rather high voice for such a big man, and his laughter was foul and grating - had white hair, and was very big, huge, with huge hands too, and thick, greasy lips. He looked as if he had just got up from feasting on a fat goose and forgot to wipe his mouth. He was always laughing, and she never knew why. She didn’t think he was all there, something wrong with his head. And the way they talked to him, the other two, and ordered him around, he didn’t seem to understand much about what was going on. When she saw them later, in the yard, he was waiting there for the other two, and was talking to himself, laughing, jerking his head up and letting it slowly back down.

  The younger one, also big and tall, had a long scar on the left side of his face. He’d smile at you suddenly and for no reason, and you didn’t know whether to return the smile or to ignore it and run away. Tsvetayeva knew him—from the past. She had met him before.

  I asked, “She knew him? Are you sure?”

  Brodelshchikova nodded. Yes, Tsvetayeva knew him. She asked him—she begged him, “I’ve met you before, in Moscow, haven’t I? Yes, it was soon after my husband was taken away, and I went to Moscow. You write poetry too, like me, yes, somebody told me that. What’s your name? Help me please. Help me. I’m not ready, not yet, I need a few more days. I need to make sure that my son is looked after. And … It’s not much of a life, granted, and I’ve thought often of ending it all, but … It’s so sudden. I’m not ready. Give me a few more days and I’ll do it, yes, I will. Please, give me a few more days.”

  It was then that the older one—the one in command—asked, “Do you know her?” The one with the scar must have nodded, because the old one said, “Well, I’ll be damned. That’s why you were sent here. Couldn’t figure it out.”

  I glanced at Boris Leonidovich, who looked back at me with raised eyebrows.

  She, Brodelshchikova, thought of leaving her hiding place, of sneaking out noiselessly, but she was paralyzed with fear. She had no strength at all, and didn’t know whether there were other agents or policemen in the yard.

  Tsvetayeva kept pleading with them, but in a voice that grew weak and uncertain, almost as if she was agreeing to what they said, as if she saw the logic of it. She asked again, but without conviction, for a few more days, so she could go to Chistopol and talk to a few people—she mentioned some names, three or four names. She said, “I must make sure they’re looking after my son. I don’t want him to end up in an orphanage. I had a daughter who died in an orphanage.” The man with the scar, said something, but she didn’t catch it. The one in charge said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll take care of him. You say you have friends in Chistopol who’ll look after him? Write a letter entrusting your son to them.”

  The huge one laughed, and kept laughing until the one with the scar told him to shut up and get out. He left the house and stayed in the yard, and she gave up any thought of creeping out of the cellar while they were still there.

  “She must have agreed—or she realized she had no choice. The older man told her to write something, confirming her suicide, something to her son. I think she did it, and not just one letter, but several of them. One to her son, and others, I’m sure. My husband saw three letters on the table, when he returned home and found her.”

  It took Tsvetayeva a long time to write the letters, more than an hour, or so it seemed to her. The men didn’t talk to each other while Tsvetayeva was writing. They just kept going in and out of the house, and she heard the big one talking outside, in the yard, with somebody. She didn’t know who.

  “And then I think they did it. I’m not sure how, maybe they just smothered her, there was so little life left in her. I didn’t hear her voice, just some muffled moans. But there were things going on up there, above me, and I heard grunts and quick steps and somebody pushing a chair, and brief sentences like, ‘No, no, not there, here,’ and also, and this I remember very well, ‘She’s not heavy, not heavy at all.’ It was the older one speaking, mostly.”

  She had been very scared. If they found her there, in the cellar, only God knew what they’d do to her, so she stayed put, didn’t move, hardly dared to breathe. She hadn’t been so scared in her life, and was not proud of herself.

  “I just couldn’t do anything, you understand, not anything.”

  Tears were running down her cheeks. She wiped them with the sleeves of her blouse. Boris Leonidovich had slid down in his chair, and he was not looking good. His mouth was open and his large lower lip was trembling. There were tears in his eyes too. I knew what he was thinking: that Brodelshchikova was just the last in the long line of people who couldn’t do anything for Tsvetayeva.

  Varya’s words came back to me, “She’s tragedy, Pasha.” As in classic tragedies, there was nothing that Brodelshchikova could have done. She played by the proper rules, she was fated. She was the unseen witness, who suddenly appears for the edification of the spectators. A modern deus ex machina.

  Boris Leonidovich said, “Her friends couldn’t do anything for her either, her so-called friends. So don’t scold yourself, Anastasia Ivanovna.”

  Brodelshchikova looked at Boris Leonidovich, trying to figure out the meaning of his words. After a while she continued her story. “They stayed for another half-hour. I heard them walking above me, but I wasn’t exactly sure what they were doing because they weren’t saying much to each other.”

  She heard them walking in and out of the small bedrooms, and she heard them go up the ladder to look into the attic, but there is hardly any space up there, only enough to hang salted fish to dry, and she was more afraid than ever that they’d discover the trap door and find her, but they didn’t, and then they left. She waited another half-hour, maybe longer, she didn’t know, and then she left too. She stole back along the route she’d taken earlier, through yards and gardens and hidden lanes, all the way back to where she had been working in the morning, although she was still very tired. She was asked where she had been for so long, and she told them that she was sick and that she had been sleeping in the shade. They shook their heads, but the way she looked convinced them.

  The husband poured more tea. He smiled at her. An approving, toothless smile.

  We drank the tea quietly, without saying anything.

  “When my husband found her, later that afternoon, she had a hemp rope around her neck. It was attached to a nail too low to properly hang oneself, if you know what I mean.”

  The husband nodded.

  “I told no one about it,” Brodelshchikova said, “except my husband. And I only told him weeks later, after they were all gone, and the boy was taken somewhere else. What happened to him?”

  “He died in the war,” Boris Leonidovich said. “He had al
ways wanted to join. He was too young, of course, only sixteen in ‘41, but he was a big boy and they let him join. He died in the summer of ‘44.”

  She shook her head. “Well, he didn’t seem to suffer much. I mean, he didn’t seem to care that his mother was dead. He didn’t even go to her funeral. I think his mother’s death was a relief for him. Odd boy. They didn’t get along.”

  The husband said, “Children, what do you expect? They suck your strength, and then they dance on your grave.”

  I wondered if they had children. Was something gnawing at him?

  The husband reached over the table and grabbed the box of chocolates. It took him a while to open it. The variety of chocolates inside seemed to stun him, but eventually he chose one of them. He timidly offered the box around, but no one else was interested. In the silence that had fallen around the table, he ate several more chocolates in quick succession. Then he put the cover back on, as if to say enough for today. His rough hand kept moving over the lid, in a possessive, almost sensual gesture.

  Brodelshchikova was staring at the money on the table. “My husband forbade me to repeat what I just told you. He made me swear. And I didn’t. But now he has changed his mind. He says maybe things are not as bad as they used to be. He says I shouldn’t die without letting others know what happened to her. He says it’s not easy to keep it bottled inside you for so many years. He says things like this eat at you from the inside. He knows better than I do what’s good for me. Men, they always know better …”

  The husband interrupted her. “You say she has a daughter that has been … there, you know, for many years, and has just returned. You ought to tell her the story.” He leaned forward, staring at Boris Leonidovich, who was sitting across from him, and went on in a raspy voice, “I don’t know what’s best, what’s the right thing to do. My wife is upset with me for pushing her to tell the story, but it’s not right that the woman’s end should remain hidden. You should write about it, but not now—years from now, after I’m gone. You hear me? Only after we’re dead, both dead. You’re smart, you’ll know what to do.”

  I looked at Boris Leonidovich and he looked at me, but he said nothing.

  We left soon afterward. Korotkova was already there, waiting in the yard, staring at the leashed pig. She waved.

  Boris Leonidovich turned to me and said, “Sasha Cornilov, he’s your cousin, isn’t he?”

  I sighed, “First cousin.”

  Korotkova joined us and said, “You two look as if you’ve been to a wake.”

  12

  Audrey was shaking his shoulder in the dark. “Art, Art, get up, the phone’s ringing.”

  He felt her breath on his face. “Let it ring.”

  “It’s been ringing on and off for ten minutes.”

  The phone was in the kitchen, and it wasn’t that loud. He found his shorts and somehow climbed into them, then stepped out onto the dark landing. He switched on the light in the downstairs hall. He was somewhat alert by the time he got to the kitchen and picked up the handset from its wall cradle. It was Paul Karman. He was at the Black Bull, a pub on Queen Street West, and needed him to come right away with some money because he couldn’t pay his bill, and the people holding him were being difficult.

  “Difficult?”

  “They’re insisting I have to pay.”

  “That’s not outrageous.”

  “I don’t have the money.”

  “Govnyuk.”

  “I’m so sorry, Artyom Pavlovich.”

  “How much?”

  “A hundred and ninety-six. Without tip.”

  “A hundred and ninety-six! In a pub?”

  “It took a while.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “I ate too.”

  “Caviar?”

  “I had company.”

  “Oh, good. Who? Is Ben there with you? Let me talk to him, you’re drunk.”

  “Ben’s not here.”

  “Who then?”

  “Friends.”

  “Can’t they help you?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “They seem to have disappeared. I thought they’d pay.”

  What an idiot. “What time is it?”

  “Close to two—they’re closing at two.”

  “Paul, I can’t come right now.”

  “There’s no one else …”

  “I’m not alone, Paul.”

  “I’m so sorry. I’ll pay you back, of course.”

  “Call Ben.”

  “I did. You’re not the first person I called.”

  “And?”

  “He’s away. He said something about Jennifer earlier.”

  “Write a cheque.”

  “No cheques. Cash or credit card.”

  “Credit card, then.”

  “Mine doesn’t work anymore.”

  “Fuck.”

  “I called Helen too.”

  “And?”

  “It was her husband who answered. He threatened me.”

  “Did you speak to Helen?”

  “He wouldn’t wake her up.”

  “Did you explain your situation to him?”

  “He hung up.”

  “You have other friends, surely—the students in your residence.”

  “Gone for the weekend. All gone. Even Srinivasa, the mathematician. He went to Burlington. He has a cousin or an aunt there.”

  “I don’t have that much cash on me, Paul.”

  “They take credit cards.”

  “Paul, I’m with someone.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Fuck it, Paul, any other night …”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Paul didn’t sound good. “Are you all right?” Laukhin asked after a long pause.

  “Kind of.”

  “All right. I’ll be there.”

  Back upstairs in his bedroom, Laukhin switched on the table lamp and began to get dressed. Audrey leaned on her elbow and asked what was happening. He told her and she laughed. She got up and took money from her wallet. “Take a cab. I want you back here quickly.”

  “I have enough for a cab.”

  “Just in case. Your student will need money for a cab too. Let’s not argue.”

  She opened her bag, retrieved a nightgown and slipped it on. It didn’t cover much.

  It took some time for the cab to arrive. The driver wore a Sikh turban, a dastar Colson had told him, and was listening to soft Indian music. He seemed half asleep. That’s what being an émigré is all about, Laukhin thought, driving a cab in the wee hours of the morning in an unfamiliar city. Doing odd, rough, menial jobs just to keep afloat. He should try it, drive a cab for a while, like some of the early Russian émigrés between the two world wars.

  He told the driver to wait in front of the pub while he went in. There were hardly any customers. Paul was hunched over a corner table, head resting on crossed forearms. The right side of Paul’s face was battered red and blue, and there was dried blood under his eye. Two men were watching from a nearby table, and from their size and faces Laukhin deduced they were the source of Paul’s injury. A middle-aged man was at the counter, doing the accounts or whatever bartenders do at closing time. When Laukhin handed him his credit card, the man looked up and said, “You should have a talk with your son.”

  In the cab, Laukhin said, “Shouldn’t we drop you at a hospital?”

  Paul shook his head.

  They searched for an open drugstore to get disinfectant and bandages.

  “Did you try to sneak out?” Laukhin asked.

  Paul batted the question away.

  “What happened? Who did this to you, Paul?”

  “Not now,” Paul whispered after a long silence.

  Laukhin dropped him in front of the student residence, and gave the driver his address. When he got home it was past three o’clock. The front door was unlocked, and he thought that, pressed and upset as he’d been when he left, he forgot to lock it. But when he saw that the land
ing light was on, he sensed something was wrong. He knew he had not switched it on before he left. The door to his bedroom was ajar, and he felt momentarily dismayed by the thought that Audrey had left.

  There was enough light from the landing for Laukhin to see that Audrey was not in his bed. He switched the lights on. She was on the floor, lying on her back near his worktable, her eyes closed, legs straight, one arm by her body, the other bending away from it. For a split second he thought she had decided to sleep on the floor. But her nightie was bunched up around her waist, and, as he kneeled down, he realized she was alive, but not with him. He called her name several times, at first softly, then louder, but she didn’t respond. It was then that he saw the blood in her hair, its source seemingly from somewhere above her right temple.

  He could only think that she had got up, tripped in the dark, hit her head on the table and lost consciousness. He wondered whether he should move her back to the bed, but decided against it. He ran down the stairs and called 911. When he explained that his girlfriend had hurt her head and was unconscious, the dispatcher’s voice hardened. Where was the hurt woman? Upstairs, in his bedroom, on the floor. They’d send an ambulance at once. The lights inside the house must be on, and outside too, if there were any. He shouldn’t touch or move her.

  Laukhin gathered Audrey’s clothes and packed them into her bag. He put the bag near the open door, then sat on the floor next to her. He thought he had heard her murmur. He touched her hand and her face, but there was no still response. While he waited for the ambulance, sitting there on the floor near Audrey, frantic with worry, holding her hand, he wondered why the door to the bedroom had been ajar. He remembered switching off the lamp on his worktable as he left, and he was certain he had closed the bedroom door behind him. He didn’t think he had left the landing light on, but wasn’t entirely sure. Maybe Audrey went to the bathroom, switching on the hallway light first, and had stumbled and fell after she returned. The worktable, though, was some distance from the bed. Why would she stumble and hit the table when there was enough light in the room from the hallway?