A Question of Return

by Robert Carr

  “Please call me if anything happens,” Laukhin told the doctor. He asked one of the nurses for a piece of paper and wrote down his name and his home and office phone numbers.

  The doctor looked at the paper and said, “Are you family?”

  “I’m Ms. Millay’s friend. It was in my house, in my bedroom that she got hurt.”

  “You’re not family.”

  “I love her, doctor. You can’t get more family than that.”

  * * *

  At home he drank until his mind was numb. Clogged brain gulleys—Kyril’s expression. Kyril would arrive on Lavrushinsky Lane and say, “Let’s clog the gulleys,” and then produce a bottle of vodka from under his coat.

  He called the nursing station at eleven that night and was told that Audrey’s condition had not changed.

  “What condition is that?” he asked.

  “Are you family?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  “Her husband.”

  “Ms. Millay’s mother left instructions to communicate exclusively either with her or with Ms. Millay’s father, if he called from overseas.”

  “You communicated with me already.”

  “I did?”

  “You told me her condition had not changed.”

  There was silence at the other end of the line.

  “I’m her father.”

  “You’re not.”

  “I’m coming to see her.”

  “The doctors are with her now—the neurosurgeon and other consulting specialists. Anyway, visiting hours are over.”

  “What are the specialists doing? Did you say consulting? Consulting each other?”

  The nurse hung up on him.

  At one in the morning he went out for a walk. He couldn’t keep a straight line, and found it difficult to breathe. It was humid, and the late hour had brought little relief from the heat. Yonge Street was dismal and lifeless—only the occasional cab. At night the city was exhausted, like the breasts of a middle-aged woman. He was very drunk, no doubt, but Babel would have been proud of that sentence. He should tell it to Ben, ha, the Babel devotee. He’d likely say, mockly reproachful but proud of his memory, “Oh, no, Artyom Pavlovich, this is straight out of … whatever.” Well, he wouldn’t remember it tomorrow anyway. He cursed, remembering the intern’s baffled face when he said only time would tell. They were all marionettes, with strings of time pulled by an indifferent puppeteer. Not indifferent—cruel.

  Images came to him of Audrey looking distressed, half sentences, words fitting well together. He saw Martha too, Gorgon-like, angry and vengeful, and his first cousin Sasha Cornilov sneering dismissively. It had been a while since he’d had such clear images, unbidden, a very long while, but he felt none of the elation he once had in such moments. To think he had promised Audrey he’d write poems about her, and that it was now … Oh, he was drunk, very drunk, and tomorrow everything would sound false or trite.

  He heard the phone ringing as he unlocked the door, but didn’t rush to answer it. There was no point—any call at this time would be bad news. He undressed slowly and got into the unmade bed. He told himself that he could still smell Audrey—the smell of a good woman, his good woman for two nights—but he knew he was deluding himself. He heard the phone ring again and, as before, he didn’t answer it.

  In the end, exhausted, he must have fallen asleep, because he was awakened by the phone again. It was light outside. He looked at his watch—past eight thirty. He avoided his clothes strewn on the floor and went downstairs hoping the ringing would stop.

  It was the police, a Detective Albano. He was in his car, close by, and wanted to come in for a talk.

  “Now?” Laukhin asked.

  “Yes, now.”

  “It’s not a good time.”

  “It never is.”

  “Is it about Ms. Millay?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

  A slight pause. “Yes, she is. Didn’t the hospital call you?”

  “They did.”

  “She told an odd story to her mother before she died. Odd and confusing. Mrs. Osterhoudt is beside herself.” Detective Albano’s voice got louder, and Laukhin detected both sarcasm and an accusation in what he said next. “She thinks her daughter was murdered, and that you know who did it.”

  14

  The late November snow was melting as it hit the ground. With only a windbreaker over his T-shirt, Laukhin was cold. Another sign of aging, he thought. It had been damp and cold since he got back to Toronto two days earlier.

  He had returned from Australia in a savage mood. He had left in a savage mood too, but had hoped the trip would calm him down. It didn’t. In Sidney he got into a fight, after signing books for two hours. He had not had much to eat, but needed a drink more than anything else, and he pushed Bart and the Random House publicist (who didn’t need much pushing) into a bar. After a few drinks he lost it. Bart kept pulling at his elbow, saying, “Enough, Art, let’s get something to eat.” Laukhin, leaning on the counter, waved him off several times, “One last drink, Bart.” A man near him, a big man with a beard and thin scarf tied around his neck, turned around and said, “Art and Bart, how cute. Come on, Art, listen to your sweetheart.” Laukhin looked around, put his drink down, smiled and nodded at the big man, and then punched him in the gut. It was the smile that made the blow effective—a tip from Efim—but his opponent was big. He dropped his glass on the floor but quickly recovered and hit back, a blow to Laukhin’s chest that left him unable to breathe. Somehow the Random House man put himself in front of Laukhin and managed to smooth things over. Bart put cash on the counter to cover their bill and they left. Laukhin threw up on the sidewalk.

  For several days after Audrey’s death he was too shocked to do anything. Her death had been too sudden, too unexpected, as if a landmine had exploded under her feet while they were holding hands. One day she’d been in his bed, naked and warm in his arms, and then she was dead. It made him wonder if this was why most deaths followed illnesses, to prepare the survivors. Even Detective Albano kept away from him after their first meeting, something he probably regretted when he learned that, despite his warning not to leave Toronto, Laukhin had gone to London for Audrey’s funeral.

  Audrey’s father had taken her body back and her mother had flown with him. The day of the funeral a fine rain followed Laukhin on his way to Covent Garden. As it should be, he thought—clear blue skies would be indecent. The church wasn’t large, yet the façade across the market was one grand colonnaded portico. Audrey’s parents were there, of course, although he only guessed that the elderly, bent man who walked with difficulty, and sat in the front row was Audrey’s father. He guessed too that the younger man who helped him reach his seat and look solicitously after him was Audrey’s husband. The woman sitting near Martha, with another man and two children were, likely, Audrey’s half-sister and her family. It was a large gathering. He assumed there were other relatives, many friends, former colleagues from some museum or gallery. He was surprised not to see Lezzard there.

  Nobody paid any attention to him at the funeral service. Audrey had told no one about him except her mother, and Martha hardly knew him, mainly from the brief encounter they had at the hospital a few hours before Audrey died, the very unpleasant one during which she accused and threatened him. He kept apart anyway, and Martha either didn’t see him or couldn’t bring herself to talk to him. She seemed devastated, and it surprised Laukhin again. He had thought of her as a reluctant, indifferent mother. A generous one, true, but it was easy to be generous when you had a lot of money. Maybe her daughter’s death had done something to Martha. Or, perhaps, Audrey’s stories about her were exaggerated. Of course, Martha would go on holding him responsible for what happened to her daughter, and he couldn’t blame her.

  He sat on one of the back rows. Everybody was very polite—the Brits were polite people—and no one asked him directly what he was doing there. Only one older man,
who sat near him and felt like talking while they were waiting for the service to start, asked him about his connection with the deceased. Unable to say he’d been her lover for three days, Laukhin lied he’d been a friend. The older man confessed he was there merely because it was his parish church, and, long retired and with little to do, he attended many services. He said he found funeral services soothing. He looked at Laukhin to see his reaction and then shook his head as if to deny what he’d just said. “I fear death and I come here hoping it will help me face it, small step by small step.”

  The three brief speeches meant little to him, as they were about an Audrey he had not known. It was the singing that did the damage. Listening to the hymns, the significance of which he knew nothing about, with strange and mostly incomprehensible words, he felt tears in his eyes and then, embarrassingly down his cheeks. Rivers. What he felt were regrets of colossal weight, what might have been, what he lost. He wiped his face under the curious stare of the old parishioner, and mumbled that hymns had that effect on him. He was clearly romanticizing his brief love affair with Audrey. Brief indeed. After all, their involvement began only three days before the accident. Three days. Two nights together, well, one and a half, and also the morning following the first night, the only time in which he had had an inkling of the delightful intimacy of early days, the buds of an amour partagee. Undoubtedly he made it all much worse for himself by imagining what his life with Audrey could have been. All rosy-perfect, of course. He even saw children in his delusions.

  He left London drained. For days after his return he drank heavily, ate hardly at all, saw no one. He knew he had to bootstrap himself out of that dark despair, but he had neither the strength nor the desire. He thought of his father’s long depression after his wife’s unexpected death, and recalled Pasternak’s worried words to his friend. Laukhin had taken his father upstairs to have dinner with the Pasternaks. “You need to be more miserly with your sorrow, Pavel Nikolayevich,” Pasternak had said. Stingy, tight-fisted. We have only so much suffering in us. When we run out of it we croak. We’re apportioned a cup, no more. You must save it like a shipwreck survivor rations the fresh water in his ocean-lost life boat.” In the kitchen, washing the dishes with Zinaida after a mostly silent dinner, Laukhin had been doubtful Pasternak believed what he preached, but had been grateful for his efforts.

  In some way, it was Pasternak’s words that slowly towed him out of his despair.

  To give himself a sense of purpose, at least for a while, Laukhin focused on publishing the first volume. He wanted to forgo the events surrounding the book’s publication, but Bart warned him he couldn’t do that, whatever the circumstances. Bart, long-suffering Bart, usually so reasonable and always on his side, had been spitting mad. He shouted down the phone line that Laukhin had a contractual obligation, and he’d sue him himself, never mind the publishers. When Laukhin said he doubted his agent would sue him just as he was ready to cash in on him, Bart said he certainly would because the publicity—and he’d make sure there’d be publicity—would only add to the sales.

  As he drank and brooded beside Bart in the long flight to Sydney, it dawned on him that he had nothing from Audrey, nothing to remind him of her, save the few hours he’d been close to her. The few hours they made love and slept close to each other. That was all he had from her for the rest of his life. Would they last, would they always be with him? The permanence of hours. A good title for a poem, but a delusion, because there was no lastingness in a few hours. They’d be with him for a while, her smell, her initial awkwardness (his too), her soft skin on his face, her breasts on his lips, and her sigh as he touched her, her fingers as she clumsily guided him in, her buttocks as she turned away from him afterwards and fitted them against his crotch, and her smell as he tried not to fall asleep and breathed in the mixture of perfume and sweat of her neck. Her beautiful face too, her smile and gentle irony, they’d last for a while too, perhaps a bit longer. And then everything would fade away, and he’d be left with nothing.

  * * *

  He felt the knife casing in his pocket. That’s what the sales clerk that morning had called the flat orange handle enclosing the blade. He’d demonstrated the retractable blade, easily sliding it in and out, and pointed out its ergonomic design. All that enthusiasm for a knife that cost $2.90.

  “What do you need it for?” the young man had asked when he said he was looking for a knife.

  He’d been tempted to say he needed it for a Russian bastard, an old Russian bastard—a staryi ublyudok. “Cardboard,” he said.

  “Cardboard boxes?”

  “In a way.”

  “A Stanley knife,” the young man said. “They are the best for that.”

  If only he could sleep. At night his heart raced to keep up with his mind. Before flying to Sydney he went to see a cardiologist and complained of heart palpitations. The initial diagnosis was arrhythmia, irregular heartbeat. Had he had such symptoms before? Maybe. If he had, he’d paid no attention to them. Well, the doctor said, very likely that was what he had. They’d have to do tests when he got back.

  French, German, and Italian translations were being rushed to press. The Europeans were upset that the final draft of the first volume was not sent to them earlier. They claimed, with some merit, that their readers were much more interested in matters Russian than the parochial Americans. Bart had planned a December tour of Europe for interviews in advance of the spring book launches there, and warned Laukhin that they’d have to return in the spring.

  Laukhin attended the Toronto and New York book launches on two consecutive evenings, and then he and Bart caught the last flight from New York. He arrived in London at noon the following day. The book launch was in the evening, and the next morning he flew back to New York for ten days of touring in the US. “Your largest market, don’t forget,” Bart told him when he grumbled. Then back to Toronto, with more readings and signings in several bookstores. Then the long trip to Sydney, with a stopover in Vancouver on the way back.

  It was in Vancouver that it finally clicked and he understood what had happened. How thick he’d been. It was so obvious. Ben had figured it out much earlier, or so it seemed from what he told him at the book launch.

  * * *

  He had been surprised to see Ben with Jennifer at the launch in Toronto. It was held at the Bakers’ large house, and he felt miserable during the event, as it was there that he first met Audrey. There were speeches by Bart and his Toronto publisher. Laukhin said a few words too, and then signed books for more than an hour. He took several breaks—quick drinks that his students had ready for him. Helen, a few weeks after giving birth, particularly enjoyed the event. It was her first outing, she confessed, in a long while. Pointing to her midriff, she said, “It’s such a joy to wear these clothes again. Last weekend I burned all my maternity outfits and danced around the fire.” Looking at Jennifer and Ben, she added, “You two look so lovely together.”

  Ben had not seemed very happy to Laukhin. He guessed Ben’s state of mind and whispered to him, “Cheer up, Ben. Grin, show some teeth. You’re better off without Marion. Jennifer looks stunning.”

  At the door, Laukhin’s students were given copies of both the Canadian and American editions. The books had the same jacket, and the British and Australian editions used it too. To Laukhin’s disappointment, copies of the Russian edition had not yet arrived from the German publisher. The Canadian books had come too late for him to sign any, but in the American ones Laukhin had written, over the leaping borzoi, a few words to each of his students. Their names were also mentioned in acknowledgements, where he credited Ben Paskow as his “main collaborator in this first volume because of his interest in the Soviet Russian literature of the thirties.”

  Ben thanked him for the books and for the kind words in the acknowledgements.

  “Nothing to thank me for. You deserve it.”

  “I don’t know. I let you down. The Tsvetayeva bundle was not published because of me.”

/>   “It doesn’t matter, Ben. The staffers at the New Yorker lost interest. They suffer from ADD. Bart said they may still publish it ahead of the second volume. Anyway, I’m told there’s enormous interest in this one. And I hear that there are good early reviews coming out.”

  “I should have had it all typed in much earlier.”

  “We all have our ups and downs.”

  “Maybe it would not have happened.”

  “What are you talking about? What would not have happened?”

  “You know … Audrey’s death.”

  “Now, that’s silly. Jennifer looks splendid.”

  Ben nodded. “Your friend is not here,” he said. “At least I’ve not seen him.”

  “Who?”

  “Jean Lezzard.”

  “Oh. I hadn’t noticed.”

  “It’s curious. He’s been so keen to read the journal. And now, when he can finally get his hand on the first volume, he doesn’t show up.”

  “Maybe he’s already bought the book and left.”

  “Wouldn’t he have wanted it signed?”

  “He’s not a fool. And he doesn’t have the patience to line up. Anyway, he can get it in a bookstore.”

  Ben seemed unconvinced. Colson Emslie joined them and told Laukhin he loved the dust jacket. Laukhin was pleased with it too. It showed something that looked like a roulette wheel, or a sector of it, with pictures of people instead of numbers, old black and white photos: Babel, Pasternak, Tsvetayeva, Mandelstam, Mayakovsky, Fadeev, Alexey Tolstoy, Bulgakov, Sholokhov, Pavel Laukhin. Victims, survivors, bootlickers. Solzhenitsyn too, the only one still alive. The roulette ball was slightly elongated and pointed at one end, like a bullet. In the centre was a photograph of Iosif Vissarionovich at his most avuncular. All of this on a faded background of Moscow’s Kremlin, massive, mysterious, fearsome.