A Question of Return

by Robert Carr

The Emslies were flying with him and Bart to New York. “I’ll see a few friends and colleagues at the book launch, and we’ll stay for a couple of days afterwards,” Colson explained. Near them, Kate and Jennifer were in animated discussion. Later, after Kate joined them, Laukhin asked what it had been about.

  “Oh, nothing, women talk. We’ll be whisked from La Guardia directly to the reception. I won’t have time to change and I worry about how my dress will hold up.”

  “Ah.”

  “Jen suggested I take off the dress once aboard.”

  “That’s a thought, fly naked.”

  “Not fully naked, Art. I have a few little nothings underneath.” Kate laughed and added, “I asked Jen if there was something wrong with Ben. He seemed so miserable.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Nothing wrong.”

  * * *

  Mrs. Grunwald was leaving—Lezzard should be alone now. Laukhin dropped his cigarette butt on the ground, walked across the street, and climbed the stairs. It looked as if Lezzard was preparing to call it a day too because his coat was lying on his desk. He seemed neither surprised nor happy to see Laukhin. There were a few awkward minutes during which they remarked on the snow and the cold weather that had settled on the city. Lezzard looked at his watch.

  Laukhin said, “I didn’t see you in London.”

  “London?”

  “At Audrey’s funeral.”

  “No …”

  “Too busy?”

  “It was a busy summer. And Josiane had still not fully recovered.”

  “Have you kept in touch with her mother?”

  Lezzard hesitated. “Haven’t heard from her since, you know …”

  Laukhin looked around. He was surprised to see the large Chemakoff oil back on the wall of the smaller room. Hadn’t Lezzard told Audrey he had sold it to an old client from New York? He walked over to it, and there they were—the welder, the zek, the SS officer, the miner, the knife-grinder. An unexpected gift. He walked slowly around the small room, clearly annoying Lezzard. There was another Chemakoff oil, undoubtedly painted in Paris fairly late, plus several prints that had been there before. The ink and watercolour that he had liked so much was gone, and he remarked on it.

  Lezzard looked surprised. “Audrey bought it.”

  “Audrey? I wanted to buy it.”

  “You did? That’s odd. She said it was a goodbye present for you.”

  He felt his heart rate pick up. The bastard was mocking him. He pointed to the large painting, and said, “I’ve seen this Chemakoff oil before, haven’t I?”

  Lezzard shrugged.

  “Audrey said you’d sold it to an old client from New York.”

  “He returned it,” Lezzard said.

  “Didn’t like it?”

  “It doesn’t matter. They can return it within a couple of months. It probably clashed with his furniture.”

  “It’s a remarkable painting. An old Chemakoff from his Moscow days. I heard a couple of Russians carry on about it—here, in this room, as a matter of fact—how surprised they were to see it here given that Chemakoff had left that painting in Russia. They can’t be easy to get, these old ones from his Moscow days.”

  “No, they are not easy to get.”

  “How do you get them, Jean?”

  Lezzard looked sharply at him. “What the hell do you mean?”

  “Do you know Mr. Gratch, Jean? Yakov Gratch. Rather, did you know him, because he’s dead now.”

  Lezzard shook his head impatiently. “What exactly brings you here, professor?”

  “Yes, you knew him. Audrey told me you had a few chats with him this summer. More arguments, than chats, according to her. Mr. Gratch said—I heard him myself, right here—that this painting you have on your wall was confiscated by the police in Chemakoff’s apartment in Moscow many years ago. He knew that because he’d been an accidental witness to the KGB raid. So the question is, Jean, how did you get it?”

  Lezzard took his time, but eventually said, “From another dealer, a connection I have in France.”

  “How did he get it?”

  “I didn’t ask. I’m not a curious person.” He sneered, “You shouldn’t be either.”

  “Mr. Gratch’s death was rather convenient, wasn’t it?”

  “It’s your story, professor. The KGB raid and the seizure of Chemakoff’s paintings—who’d believe it? Early Chemakoffs have been in the market for many years.”

  “Mr. Gratch was killed, Jean. Murdered.”

  “Was he?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “It was in all the newspapers.”

  “I must have forgotten. I have many things on my mind.”

  “Do you know when he was killed?”

  “No idea.”

  “A few days before Audrey died.”

  Lezzard raised his arms. “I’m terribly sorry about Audrey, professor, but I’m not following you. Anyway, I’m closing the shop for tonight.”

  The sight of the old Chemakoff had cheered up Laukhin. “Do you have anything to drink?” he asked.

  “No. Not at this time. Another time.”

  He took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, and a lighter.

  “I thought you’d quit,” Lezzard said.

  He lit a cigarette. “I’ve had a few difficult months.”

  “You can’t smoke in here,” Lezzard said. “I can’t stand the smell.”

  “You’re leaving aren’t you? It’ll be gone by tomorrow. Have a drink with me, Jean.”

  “It’s late, I’m tired,” Lezzard said. He pointed to a coffee mug lying on the smaller desk. “There, use that.”

  “Come on, you’ve never been too tired for a drink.”

  “I am now.”

  Arrogant bastard. They watched each other in silence. After a while, Lezzard asked, “When is that part about the Russian woman poet—Tsvetayeva?—when is it coming out? You know, the one in that New York magazine? Or was it the Globe. Both?”

  “It’s not coming out.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s been cancelled.”

  “Cancelled? Just like that?”

  Laukhin shrugged. “It wasn’t meant to be. The gods. The gods and a countryman of yours.”

  “A Frenchman?”

  Clearly Lezzard was mocking him. “A Russian. Well, a Soviet citizen. He stole it from me, Jean. He stole the only copy in English I had. That’s why nothing was published in the New Yorker. I had to redo it, and couldn’t make the deadline.”

  “What do you mean, stole it?”

  Laukhin wondered how much Lezzard knew of what had exactly happened that night. He told him, briefly, but he didn’t mention Cornilov by name.

  Lezzard played the stunned listener with aplomb. “You mean, it wasn’t an accident?” he asked at the end.

  “It wasn’t.”

  “Did you tell the police?”

  “Eventually.”

  “Terrible. It’s terrible what happened. I liked Audrey very much.”

  He probably did—so what?

  Lezzard looked again at his watch and said, “Well, you can publish it later.”

  “Maybe. Something was very odd, Jean, about that whole thing. I mean, how did they know?”

  “Know what?”

  “That they’d find the excerpts about Tsvetayeva in my house.”

  “You’re sure that’s what they were after? Sounds silly—a few sheets of paper.”

  “Oh, that was what they were after, no doubt about it. They didn’t take anything else. You don’t know how they knew, do you?”

  “What? How would I?”

  “Think about it. Think who else knew.”

  “Goodbye, professor. Drop in some other time. Earlier.”

  He had not thought of Lezzard as being involved at all. It still staggered him that he had been blind for so long. How could he not realize that Lezzard was at the centre of it all? Lezzard had been there that morning,
at the gallery, nursing a hangover and unable to sleep. And he and Audrey had stumbled on him after their first night together, and they’d talked as if they’ve just been absolved from a vow of silence. They told him everything he needed to know.

  God, it took him a long time. How could he not have seen what had been behind Lezzard’s eagerness to read the manuscript or get a copy of it ahead of everybody else? It seemed so obvious to him now. How could he not think of Lezzard? It was Ben’s words at the book launch that began the slow process of putting two and two together.

  He dropped his cigarette butt in the coffee mug. “I didn’t see you at the launch,” he said.

  “What? What launch?”

  “The book launch, for the first volume. I looked forward to seeing you there. I made sure you got an invitation.”

  “Oh. I truly did want to go, but I had to be somewhere else, more pressing.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about the letters. Did you find more of them? I mean the letters of interest to us academics. Did you have another look at your mother’s correspondence?”

  “No … I told you, I’ve been very busy. Anyway, I doubt I’ll find anything else.” He looked at his watch again, and tapped it. “I have to go, Art. Go back to your poems. Go back to Babel’s letters.”

  Where should he hit him? “I gave them to an expert,” he said.

  “An expert? What for?”

  “To check the handwriting, the age of the paper. It’s standard procedure. It took him a long time to get back to me because he sent them to a colleague in France for some sort of crosschecking—they know better there, it seems—and the letters got lost for a while. There was a bit of controversy too—there always is with experts. And when I pressed him for the results he pretended he hadn’t known I was in a hurry.”

  Lezzard made a dismissive gesture with his hands.

  “The thing is, Jean, the expert is not happy. He’s still doing some tests, but he has reason to believe the letters are not genuine.”

  Lezzard sneered. “He’s no expert.”

  “He’s an expert all right. And he worked with other experts too. A team of experts—these were letters from Isaak Babel, after all. Interesting things came out, Jean. The paper on which the letters were written is, indeed, old, but not old enough. Mid to late fifties at the earliest. Definitely not the thirties or earlier. Yes, a bit of a problem there. Some twenty-five or thirty years difference.”

  “They don’t know about Russian paper.”

  “Oh, they do. They know about all kinds of paper, Russian and otherwise. It shouldn’t be Russian paper, though, should it? Babel wrote those letters while in Paris, didn’t he?”

  “Look, I really must go.”

  “What do you think of the first volume?”

  It took Lezzard a while to follow him. “I haven’t had time to read it yet.”

  “But you read half of it, didn’t you? I gave you the first half of it, didn’t I?”

  “Yes. I read that.”

  “And?”

  “I liked it.”

  “Did you buy the first volume?”

  “Sorry? Yes, I did buy it. Too busy, you know. But I’ll read it—finish it.”

  “You seemed so keen once.”

  “I have to go, I’m already late.”

  “I don’t get it, Jean. You once promised my student Ben Paskow money, good money, for a copy of the draft. And now you can’t be bothered to open the book?”

  Lezzard stared at him and then said, “I’ve got to go. I’m meeting somebody.”

  “How long have you known him, Jean? How long have you known Cornilov?”

  “Who?”

  “Cornilov. Was he—is he—in this art-racket?”

  “In where? What racket?”

  “Selling confiscated art, Jean. Was Cornilov in on it, or did others let him know about you? Just curious, not that it matters. Something else too, also sheer curiosity: was he tasked to get rid of Mr. Gratch as a condition for his trip here? Or was that simply a favour Cornilov did in answer to an idle aside like, ‘Since you are already there, Alexandr Petrovich, you might as well …’ Oh, it makes no difference.”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about. I don’t know any Cornilov.”

  “He’s the one who killed Audrey, Jean. With your help. He’s my first cousin—did you know that? He didn’t tell you?”

  “All right, enough. I’m out of time, here. Go piss somewhere else.”

  That’s when he did it. He slugged Lezzard as he reached to pick up his coat. Sucker-punched him. The punch didn’t land well, but he felt good about it, as good as he felt when he thumped the big man in the Sydney pub. The effect was different, though, because Lezzard crumpled to the floor. His glasses, by a miracle unbroken, landed near his head. A trickle of blood gathered on Lezzard’s lower lip. He bent down and made sure Lezzard was breathing. Did the miracle extend to Lezzard himelf—was he unbroken like his glasses? What if he didn’t recover? Well, fuck him.

  He stood there, shaking a bit, looking at Lezzard. The old man moaned and moved a bit. His eyes focused on Laukhin, and he asked, “What happened?”

  Laukhin lifted him up and dragged him to the chair nearby. “Anything broken?”

  Lezzard said nothing for a while, touching and massaging the left side of his face and mouth. There was more blood on his swollen lips now. He whispered, “Fuck you.” He touched his mouth and looked astonished at the red spots on the cuff of his shirt. “Fuck you,” he said again. He was breathing with difficulty. “Get out or I’ll kill you.” He could hardly keep his head straight as he spoke.

  Laukhin took the knife out of his pocket and slid the blade out. Good old Stanley, whoever he’d been. He was delighted by sound the knife made. It attracted Lezzard’s attention. Laukhin approached the large Chemakoff oil painting and without hurrying, slashed it, once in one diagonal, and then again in the other. The second diagonal took more effort. He turned to Lezzard. He was watching Laukhin with horror, his mouth opening and closing, unable to make a sound. Laukhin bent over him, and with the knife close to Lezzard’s face, whispered, “I should have used this on you. But I’m a coward.”

  He heard Lezzard rasp, “You’re a dead man. You’re a dead man walking. You’ll end up like Gratch. You have no idea who …”

  Slowly, without hurrying, Laukhin took the Babel letters out of one pocket and his lighter from another, and lit the letters, watching them burn for a while in his hand, and then dropping them on the floor. For a few seconds, he had the insane idea of setting the place on fire.

  How childish, how imbecilic. That was all he could come up with—slash an oil painting. It was pitiful, contemptible.

  He left the gallery, and walked down the stairs gingerly. He took a few more steps and then stopped to look up and down the street. Heads down, a couple was hurrying toward Yorkville Avenue. It was windier now and colder, and the snow was beginning to stick together in small white islands. No one took notice of anything or anybody under the wet November snow.

  * * *

  There was a flat parcel leaning against the front door when he got home. He took it inside and placed it on one of the boxes. The living room was all islands of boxes, some piled up like cardboard stalagmites. He’d begun packing before his trip to Australia because his free housing was coming to an end. Efim would be wrecking the house early in the new year, and Laukhin had already looked at a couple of apartments near the university. They weren’t large, but he’d see. The sales of the first volume had significantly picked up, and he might be able to afford a bigger apartment, even buy a house, although buying an apartment might suit him better. A condo, as they said here. No lawn to mow.

  His boots had left wet traces on the wooden floor. There was neither an address nor a sender’s name on the parcel, but a white envelope was clumsily attached to it. He carried the envelope into the kitchen, dropped it on the small round table, poured himself a drink, sat down, and opened the envelope. He read the letter
, emptied his glass, poured himself another drink, and picked up the letter again. He sat there, drinking and re-reading the letter. After a while he began skipping the first half and read only the final paragraphs.

  It took me a long time to convince myself to send this to you, but she was my daughter, and I must do as she wished. She told me about it the last time I talked to her, at the hospital, the evening you also came to see her and were unable or unwilling to explain to me what had happened to Audrey in your own house. She said that in our apartment on Prince Arthur there was a small Chemakoff, an ink and watercolour that you very much liked. She had bought it from Jean Lezzard as a gift for you. She knew that things were going from bad to worse for her, and wanted me to send it or give it to you, from her, in case she couldn’t do it herself.

  I will always hold you responsible for her death, but I cannot not do it.

  Martha Osterhoudt

  He poured himself another drink and began to unwrap the parcel, the mannequin birds.

  List of Russian Characters

  The names of real people appear in italics.

  Akhmatova, Anna Andreevna (1889-1966): Soviet/Russian poet.

  Aksakov, Andrey: Soviet/Russian writer living in the West. Friend of Art Laukhin from Moscow.

  Apelbaum, Efim: Friend of Art Laukhin in Toronto. High school colleague of Art Laukhin in Moscow.

  Ardov, Viktor Efimovich (1990-76): Soviet/Russian writer. Friend of Akhmatova and Pasternak and many other writers and poets.

  Arkhip: Steward on riverboat Kirov.

  Babel, Isaak Emmanuilovich (1894-1940): Soviet/Russian writer. Shot in 1940.

  Bedrosyan, Anastas Koryunovich: Official in the Writers’ Union.

  Brodelshchikova, Anastasia Ivanovna: Landlady to Marina Tsvetaeva and her son, Georgy, in Yelabuga in 1941.

  Brodelshchikov, Mikhail Ivanovich: Husband of Anastasia Ivanovna.

  Chemakoff: Soviet painter.

  Chukovskaya, Lydia (1907-1996): Soviet/Russian writer and poet.

  Cornilov, Alexander (Sasha): Art Laukhin’s first cousin, on his mother’s side.

  Efron, Sergey Yakovlevich, 1893-1941: Tsvetayeva’s husband, also called Seryozha. Fought with the White Army, then left for the West. Became a spy for the NKVD while an émigré in Paris. Fled back to Russia in 1937, where he was shot in 1941. Went by the last name Andreyev after returning to Russia.