by Alice Jolly
I knew about the lake but I couldn’t picture it. ‘Quite interesting to meet her, wasn’t it?’
‘No, not really,’ he said. ‘She just struck me as in some other world.’
‘Maybe. I suppose she’s trying to recreate the world of her childhood.’
‘Well, hardly, because she wasn’t here before the Revolution, was she?’ Rob was right, of course, it did seem odd for someone to live like that. ‘Where’ve the saucepans gone?’ He was staring at the shelf above the sink.
‘Oh, sorry, I forgot to say. I gave them to the Lady with a Hundred Relatives.’
‘What?’
‘I thought she might need the money for the children.’
The Lady with a Hundred Relatives lived in the flat opposite. People banged in and out of there twenty-four hours a day, shouting and swearing. All of them had the same dark faces and long, narrow eyes. Rob said that they must be people from the south, Chechens or Azerbaijanis, and that they probably had no papers. Often a little girl played out on our landing, making a den out of old suitcases and dust-sheets which were tucked into the corner under the stairs.
‘So now we haven’t got any pans?’ Rob said.
‘That’s a pretty fair assessment of the situation.’
The cockroach was approaching my socked foot. I remembered that I’d been warned about them before I came to Moscow. I felt annoyed with the cockroach for being a cliché. Taking a glass and a piece of paper, I captured it, and, opening the front door, I dropped it down the stairwell. When I came back, Rob was staring at the carrots on the chopping board.
‘Tomorrow I’ll go and find some more saucepans,’ I said.
‘And then you’ll give the new ones to her as well?’
‘I might do.’ I thought of that child with her staring black eyes, cold sores, and thin arms sticking out of the too-short sleeves of her jumper. I’d given that woman the pans in the hope of making the child smile. It hadn’t worked but I didn’t regret what I’d done.
Rob came to stand beside me and rubbed his hands up and down the back of my neck, under my hair. ‘You silly fool.’ I liked the way he touched me – not in a sexual way, but gently, easily. It was like that when we were children, and now it went on just the same.
‘I’m sure you can cook carrots in a frying pan,’ I said.
‘Do you think?’ Rob chopped up the carrots and filled the frying pan from the tap. I watched him and realized how much I liked the way he looked. I never usually think of that because I’ve known him all my life. To me, he just looks like Rob. He’s not particularly tall or solid, and yet he has a physical certainty to him, a brisk way of dealing with practical problems. And no matter where he’s living, he always has the tanned and rumpled look of someone who’s just arrived back from some exotic trip.
I sat down and went on marking, moving my books so that I could see them better. The bulb in the central light in the kitchen had broken soon after I arrived, and we couldn’t get it out, so now we relied on a lamp standing on the top of the fridge. The walls of our building were as thin as tissue and every sigh, every snore, every argument, travelled up and down the pipes. Now, from somewhere below, I heard a dog bark and a murmur of music – a crackly recording of a U2 track? I was teaching my students question words. How? When? What? Why? At least in the classroom the questions usually had answers. A second cockroach advanced across the floor. I scooped it up, put it outside the door, then screwed up a scrap of newspaper to stick into the crack near the door.
‘I shouldn’t bother,’ Rob said. ‘They’ll just come out of somewhere else.’ A shout came from above, and a scraping noise like a chair being dragged across the floor. Rob and I stared up at the low ceiling. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘Not again.’ He lifted plates down from the cupboard. We’d heard these noises often enough before, but they’d never been as loud as this. Another creak, a thump and a shout. ‘Nyet, nyet, nyet.’ From a crack in the ceiling, a thin line of dust dropped down on to the table. I’d heard the names of the people upstairs – Mariia and Nikolai Balashov – but I’d never seen them. Sometimes I did see a man going up to the floor above but, with his tired face and round glasses, he looked more like an academic than a wife-beater.
‘Rob, don’t you think we should call the police? There’s a woman up there being hit.’
‘No one here calls the police.’
‘We need to do something.’
I wondered why Mrs Balashova didn’t just get out of there. Her husband must have locked the door from the inside. ‘Nyet. Bol’she ne mogu.’ I tried to work out what was being said – I can’t take it any more? I thought of bleeding lips, a fist smashed into an eye-socket. The frying pan bubbled over and Rob turned it down. Another cockroach emerged from under the sink. Rob followed my eyes, we looked at each other and shrugged. He put the pork chops on plates, and the carrots. I’d bought the chops earlier in the day from a hard currency shop. Imported from Denmark, they cost twelve dollars. And yet only that morning I’d read in the Moscow News that Russian farmers were starving because they couldn’t sell their produce. That was typical of how it was. Nothing made sense, and the Russians didn’t expect it to. They lived in a continual comedy of the absurd.
We sat down at the tiny table, our knees banging together, and Rob poured me some vodka which he’d got through someone at his office. I’d never much liked vodka before I came to Moscow but it had already become a habit. Another Moscow cliché.
‘So what do you think?’ Rob said.
‘Looks good.’
‘No, not that.’
‘Oh yes. Sorry. Well, I don’t know.’ A sound like the breaking of china came from above. ‘Nyet, nyet, nyet. Vsyo, khvatit. Perestan’. I tried to translate in my head – No, no. Stop. I can’t take it any more – what if he kills her? Or rapes her? Another crash, and a sound of creak-thump, creak-thump. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just these aren’t ideal conditions for responding to a marriage proposal.’
‘That’s true,’ Rob said, and I felt his knees move against mine.
‘Also, I just feel … I mean, aren’t we happy as we are? Surely we don’t have to get married because everyone else does.’
‘Yes, but often the reason why everybody does a certain thing is because it’s a good idea.’
‘Is that right? I think often people just unquestioningly do what is expected and it isn’t necessarily good for them.’
‘Surely it’s a question of knowing what you’re doing it for,’ Rob said, poking at the carrots on his plate. ‘I mean, purely as an example, consider cooking carrots in a saucepan. Now you could say we usually do that just because everyone does, but that’s not right. Actually we do it because otherwise the carrots are hard as bullets.’
‘They don’t seem too bad to me. In fact, I rather like them.’ I speared three pieces of carrot with my fork. ‘I don’t know why we ever bothered with a saucepan.’ Carrots crunched in my mouth. Above us, a door slammed and footsteps cascaded down the stairs. Suddenly there was silence. I reached out for the vodka bottle but Rob’s hand was there before mine. Our fingers met around the thick of the bottle and he moved his thumb up over mine. Rob smiled and, awkwardly, we poured the vodka together, so that our thumbs could stay joined.
I thought back to the summer before. I’d moved to Paris after three years in South America and Rob had come to visit me there. During the six years since I left university we’d covered the globe visiting each other. I’d flown from Sucre in Bolivia to Kenya, and he’d made the journey the other way. He’d also visited me in Lima, and I’d been back to The Hague to see him there. Wherever we were, we always finished up in bed together because it seemed almost necessary, having travelled so far. Rob always found a way of making it seem the only reasonable option. Shouldn’t we discuss this over breakfast? It really isn’t safe for you to travel home tonight. Oh no, just look at the time, and there’s only one bed.
When he flew from Moscow to visit me in Paris, I hadn’t seen him for two years, b
ut I thought it would be just the same. In Paris he was staying in his father’s flat near the Champs Elysées. His father has flats all over the place and they’re all the same – cream carpets, gold-plated bath taps, and a mass of technology, none of which works. And, sure enough, the first night Rob just couldn’t lay his hands on the buttons required to get us out of the building. And so that’s how it was, but I didn’t think anything of it. Just Rob, my second cousin, the brother and sister I never had. The buttons turned up next morning under the sofa.
We spent the week together, idling from one café to another. They were all the same, as they are in Paris – on a corner, with a red awning, a curtain halfway up the window, small round tables standing on one ornate leg. Rob was full of Moscow. Glasnost, perestroika, the possible collapse of the empire, the change from a command to a market economy, the development of civil society. I suppose I was jealous. Why was it that he had a proper job while I was teaching English? After all, we’d both done the same Master’s Degree, and I was the one who’d got a distinction. I’d come back to Europe full of the idea that I needed to make use of my qualifications. But the truth was that I’d moved city four times in the last six years and each time I’d done it with the idea of getting a proper job.
But still I’d had high hopes for Paris. It was there that I’d walk round a corner, into a certain street, and I’d think, Oh yes, this is it, the place where I was always meant to be. But I never found that particular street. So once again I finished up with the usual underpaid teaching job, and the usual two weeks of passion followed by too much despair. I’d wander for hours through the ungrasped days, through Montmartre or Le Marais, thinking, Should I turn left or right? Drink tea or coffee? Get married or not? And none of it seemed to matter. In the evenings I’d stare out of the window of yet another rented room and think, This is it, my life, here, today. Hurry, catch it. But day after day got away from me, dissolving like a sentence half-overheard, or a face glimpsed through a café window.
The night before Rob was due to leave Paris, we were on our way to see a film, and got caught in a rainstorm. As we ran for the cinema, we jumped across a gutter swollen with rain, his hand gripping mine. ‘Look out for the piranhas,’ he said. And it was just a silly comment, a reference to a game we used to play as children, but it suddenly struck me that we were the only two people in the world who could laugh about that. And I knew that I’d miss Rob, when he’d gone.
At the cinema, the film we’d wanted to see was full, so we had to make a split-second decision on another one. It turned out to be one of those films you’ve seen hundreds of times before. Woman meets man, falls in love, complications ensue, true love triumphs in the end. Blah-blah. The rain had stopped and we walked through the dripping streets looking for somewhere cheap to eat. Then Rob bumped into this guy he knew from school, called Tom, or Peter, or something like that. Rob suggested he might like to come along with us. I thought that Tom or Peter would have the decency to refuse but he took Rob up on the offer. As we walked, I told Rob that Paris wasn’t really the right place for me, that perhaps I’d go back to Lima again.
Then Tom, or Peter, or whatever his name was, stopped in the street. ‘Listen, I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t you two come back with me and I’ll cook you some bacon and eggs?’
But at that same moment Rob said, ‘Well, why don’t you come to Moscow?’
My stomach pleaded for bacon and eggs. ‘Oh yes! I’d love that.’
Then I was caught in the line of Rob’s eyes, and saw delight dancing there. ‘I’d love it if you would,’ he said.
‘Oh, well, I mean …’
‘I think I might have some sausages as well.’
‘Really, I don’t know,’ I said.
‘Well, it’s just as you want. Mushrooms, I’ve definitely got mushrooms.’
‘It could be just for six months,’ Rob said.
‘Of course,’ the Tom-Peter man said. ‘It’s only five minutes’ walk.’
‘Yes, perhaps I will.’
‘Will what?’ Tom-Peter said.
‘Have some bacon and eggs.’
But I ended up buying a plane ticket for Moscow instead.
Rob and I finished supper and cleared up the dishes, then I filled the sink with water and added grey Soviet washing powder. Other expatriates in Moscow lived in refurbished flats, with pale Scandinavian furniture, and washing machines, or even spin dryers. Rob preferred to live as the locals did, and I agreed that that was the right approach. We were having an experience of the real Russia, but still I couldn’t help sighing as I washed, rinsed and squeezed yet another pile of shirts.
As I filled the sink for the third time, Sasha arrived. He often came round in the evenings and sat for hours, drinking and talking to Rob. Most Russians wouldn’t have dared to come to our flat but he had always seemed impervious to the risks. As soon as he arrived, Rob turned the radio up so that it would be difficult for anyone listening to understand what was said. Seeing him do that made me think of low-budget spy films.
Usually Sasha spoke in Russian so I couldn’t understand, but now he was speaking in English. ‘You know in schools zey stop teaching history. Zey have no more any to teach. All ze old is thrown away but no new history instead. But me, I think zat if you have no history, zen you have no country.’
Sasha was thin, with his hair tied back in a ponytail, and a strawberry birthmark covering half of his face. He wore Levi jeans and a Cornell University baseball cap – clothes he must have bought from some tourist. His long legs were draped awkwardly over the arm of a chair. Sometimes he came with his guitar and, when he’d had a lot to drink, he played and sang. I knew Rob found that embarrassing, but it was also strangely touching. According to Rob, Sasha had grown up in an orphanage, and his sister, when pregnant, had been arrested and then died in prison.
‘You know what?’ Sasha said. ‘In Voronezh zey are wanting to introduce rationing but zey cannot do it because zey have not any paper to print the ration tickets on.’ He enjoyed this joke, the birthmark on his face turning red as he laughed. Sasha was involved in the running of an underground newspaper, and Rob had met him because the Democracy Foundation had provided the newspaper with some funding. As a result, Rob had become firm friends with Sasha, and his newspaper colleagues Igor and Vladimir. In the evening he often went to help them, although I sometimes wondered, disloyally, how exactly a foreigner could assist them.
Before I came to Moscow I thought that all Russians would be like Sasha and those other newspaper enthusiasts, but I soon realized that they were the exception to the rule. The Western press made it seem as though every Russian was engaged in a great struggle for freedom and democracy, but the reality was that for most people survival was a full-time job. People weren’t much interested in politics because they didn’t believe that anything could change. There was much talk of the free market but all anyone saw of it was men in the street selling fur hats, war memorabilia and ancient tins of caviar. Glasnost and perestroika were words for businessmen and politicians who jetted in from the West. The only other Russians I’d really met were women who worked at my college. All they talked about was how they wanted to get out of the country. An odd mix of vulnerability and aggression, they were fascinated by all things Western, but spoke with frank contempt of biznesmyen and spekulianty – words which included anyone engaged in a commercial operation, however innocent.
Sasha then started to speak in Russian, and I understood enough to know that he was complaining, as he often did, that nobody bought the newspaper. I watched Rob sitting in the black swivel armchair, listening, and I knew that he cared about every word Sasha was saying. I wanted to care as well but I couldn’t. If anything, what I felt was a certain jealousy. Sasha had had a life of terrible hardship so he had an excuse. I didn’t. Nobody had ever hit me or locked me in a cupboard. There was only really the casual damage which characterizes any English childhood. If I had a problem it was that I’d never really had any problems.
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I stood at the window staring down into the courtyard. I liked the view of the buildings opposite. The black and grey geometry of roofs and windows, the crooked grid of a television aerial, the rusted balcony on every third window. Now, with the lights on, it was possible to see into kitchens, sitting rooms and bedrooms just like ours. Sometimes I wondered whether, if I came home one day and accidentally walked into another flat, I could begin some other life without even noticing the change. I looked at my watch and found that it was past midnight. Turning back to the table, I packed up my books.
My eyes travelled over photocopied sheets and words filled in by my students. How? When? What? Why? The place where I was teaching wasn’t even a proper college. My boss was an Italian called, improbably and appropriately, Signor Baloni. He claimed to have set up the first ever English language college in Moscow. In reality, his business was an illegal operation taking place in three adjoining flats. His students were all diplomats or the bored wives of businessmen. I wasn’t contributing anything to anyone by working there. Rob and I didn’t even need the money. In Moscow there was nothing to spend it on, as just about everything was provided free by the state.
As I wandered through the sitting room and said goodnight, Rob and Sasha hardly acknowledged me. In the bedroom, I shut the door and sat down on the bed. In the back of my address book was an envelope which contained a photograph of my father. I hadn’t looked at it in years. When I was eighteen I stole it from a cardboard box which my mother kept under her bed. Now my fingers were clumsy as I opened it. There he was – my reprobate father. The man who never sent us any money, who never painted anything really good, except for perhaps a few early pictures.
I remembered what Maya had said, that I was so very like him. The same corkscrew curls, blonde and red, which stick up everywhere. The face long and mournful and pale as a sheet of paper. Eyes which are green, the colour of willow, and can’t help staring. The mouth wide, and containing too many teeth. When I think of him, I imagine my father living in a shack on a turquoise and gold beach, with the sun glistening on the green tops of waves.