If Only You Knew

by Alice Jolly

  ‘No, hardly at all. My family knew his, ma-a-ny years ago now. I think he left Moscow with his father when he was ten. His mother was expected to join them.’ Maya shook her head and sighed. ‘So many of those stories.’ Her hand smoothed the bedspread. ‘Of course, they do say he’s part of the Intelligence Services.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, it stands to re-e-ason, doesn’t it? I mean, it’s quite an advantage, wouldn’t you say, to speak both English and Russian fluently? And then there’s that fabricated name … and he doesn’t ever seem to give anyone his telephone number or his address.’

  ‘Yes, but none of that means anything. It doesn’t mean anything at all.’

  ‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. Does it matter? We’ve all got our cover story, haven’t we? A love affair with a spy – rather exciting, don’t you think?’

  Harvey clattered in the hall again. ‘Oh, whatever does he want?’ Maya said. ‘Wait a minute. I’ll be back.’ I said that really I should go, but Maya wouldn’t let me. ‘Really, there’s no need for you to leave,’ she said, and shut the door on me firmly. I walked around the room. I’d eaten too much and now my stomach felt bloated. My mouth was dry because of the vodka. I thought of Jack standing in that room and of the way he’d manipulated my spine. We’d never spoken of that again, but at that moment the past had started to move forward into the present and now there was no way to stop it.

  Maya didn’t come back so I wandered over to her desk. Peacock feathers, stuck in a vase, drooped over piles of books. A green-painted cup full of pens stood next to a card-index box. An invitation to the opening of an exhibition in Paris was propped against it. Photographs of paintings lay half-pushed into envelopes. Underneath a book I could see a faded green cardboard file, with the flap open. Written in ink on a smudged label in that unsteady hand was a date – 1966.

  I eased the file out from under the book. Inside it were papers, and an envelope full of photographs. I looked back at the door then flicked through them. Some of the people in them looked familiar. Long collars, flared trousers, geometric patterns, flowing hair. I turned over a photograph which was crumpled and discoloured. Surely it showed a figure in a frockcoat? No, of course it didn’t. I pushed the photograph closer to the light and bent down to stare at it. Yes, a frockcoat and a three-cornered hat. I’d been so sure that that image I’d seen in my head was not a real memory, and yet here was a photograph of exactly the same man.

  The photograph wavered in my hand and I bent to stare at it again. It seemed as though it had been taken by accident. A bright patch of light ran down one side of it, and the frockcoated figure was in the background and half out of the photograph. Above were the latticed leaves of a tree and in the foreground an iron gate, standing open. Was that a monkey puzzle tree? And did that wrought-iron gate have a design like a spider’s web? In the garden at Marsh End House we had a monkey puzzle tree and an iron gate, but this wasn’t a photograph of our garden. Of course it wasn’t.

  I didn’t even see Maya as she came back into the room. ‘Ah yes, that file.’ Her voice made it sound like nothing, but she reached out and took the photograph from me.

  ‘Who is he?’ I asked.

  She stared down as though seeing the photograph for the first time. ‘It must be your father, but it isn’t very clear. It isn’t one I took.’ I looked towards the photograph again but she had placed it far back on the desk.

  ‘I must go,’ I said.

  ‘But why go? It’s late, and you don’t look well. Perhaps you should stay here – wouldn’t that be better?’

  ‘No. No. I must go.’

  ‘But Eva, re-e-ally – you should stay here. I insist. It would be better for you to go to bed now.’

  Suddenly we were arguing as though it mattered. You must go to bed now. You must go to bed. She was insistent and I was tired and awash with vodka. And so I finished up in her spare room, putting on a white lace nightdress she found for me, while she telephoned Rob to explain that I wouldn’t be back. She came to tuck me in, and kissed me good night – tenderly – so that I felt I was a child again. And then I was alone with the monkey puzzle tree and the iron gate with the design like a spider’s web. Eva, you must go to bed. You must go to bed. But it wasn’t Maya’s voice which should have been saying those words.

  12/20 rue de Lausanne, Geneva

  October 1991

  My hand unknots from the barrel of Jack’s pen. I stare at the lake. Morning again. The sun is a stain of yellow in shades of grey. The days are relentless. They come at me like cars on a blind bend, their details sharp for a moment, before they speed away into the past. This business of writing has become as necessary to me as it once was to Jack. As words form on the paper, my grip on the day grows stronger.

  I asked Jack once what he wrote in his endless blue notebooks. ‘Just details,’ he said, ‘the exact way things are. If I do that accurately enough, then I find that everything else is somehow revealed.’ I keep that in mind, but it isn’t the same for me. No pattern emerges, no system of cause and effect. Everything remains blurred and meaningless. A sprawling mess of events tumbles towards this futureless flat. To make it into a story I would have to invent, which I could do, of course, with worrying ease. But I’ve already spent too much of my life in the Land of Makebelieve.

  I get up from my desk and wander into the bedroom. For the last few days I’ve been wearing pyjamas, a self-pitying cardigan and my overcoat. It’s cold and damp in this flat because I can’t work out how to turn the central heating up. I need to go down and speak to the concierge, but even that level of human contact would be too much.

  I brush my hair, pull on jeans and a jumper. This flat is bland and functional, but luxurious compared to most places I’ve lived. White light shines in through picture windows onto pale walls and parquet floors. The smell is of floor wax and new paint. In the sitting room, I step over suitcases, crates, piles of books. A dismantled wardrobe and some pictures are propped against the wall.

  I pull my coat on again and go out to buy some food from the mini-supermarket at the corner. After Moscow, the lights in the shops here seem garish, and the music is an assault on my ears. I can’t get used to the fact that there’s no queue. The efficiency is offensive, the abundance vulgar. One whole wall is covered with chocolate bars. I hurry away as soon as I’ve made my purchases. When I get to the flat, I eat a bread roll and some tinned soup, then sit down at the table again.

  I think back to that conversation with Jack. All that talk about detail – was that really what he thought? It was impossible to know. He said different things at different times. Once he even said that he considered writing to be a bad habit, and that he would have hoped, by his age, to have given it up. But when I accused him of being contradictory he wouldn’t allow me that. He just said that any intelligent person should be capable of holding two or three conflicting ideas in their mind at any one time.

  And then there was that day, not long after we first met. Nervous and brash, I stumbled into the café, full of clever and interesting things to say. But then, when I saw Jack, all the sentences drained from my head, and so I stood there with my mouth opening and shutting like a fish. Finally I pointed to his notebook and said, ‘So what are you writing?’ He said nothing. And nothing and nothing. Why didn’t the silence unnerve him? My mouth opened and shut. ‘A love story perhaps?’ As soon as the words were out, I curled up inside, wondering how I could have said them.

  But Jack took the suggestion seriously. ‘No. I wouldn’t write a love story. In the modern age I’m not sure that such stories can really be made to work.’

  ‘No, perhaps not.’

  ‘Anyway, I’ve always thought those stories were the wrong way around. Love comes at the end, when really it’s a beginning.’ A bottle of water was open on the table and he motioned to me to sit down, and poured me a glass. He turned his head to one side, thinking. ‘I suppose love stories used to rely on obstacles. Obstructive fathers, barriers of class, or race,
or religion. But none of that exists any more. The obstacles lie within ourselves. So when love fails it’s just a grubby tragedy of people’s smallness.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right,’ I said. ‘No one wants to read about that.’

  ‘No. Not if it is like that. But of course, it wouldn’t have to be, would it?’

  His fingers were clasped around my glass of water and he looked at me intently before he pushed it towards me. The sides of the glass were wet. I took care that our fingers didn’t touch. He raised his glass to me, as though it contained champagne. I stared down at the black plastic surface of the table. But I moved my fingers on the glass, placing my thumb exactly where his thumb had been.

  The No Name Café, Moscow

  December 1990

  It’s the day after my evening with Maya. I go to the No Name Café and stand outside, wiping a circle on the window. I want to tell Jack what Maya said about my father; I want to describe that painting to him, to ask him about shamans and about astrologers in the ancient world. I stare through the window and Jack is there – but he’s not alone. He’s with a woman. Is that Valia or Anna or whatever her name was? Or is it one of the other women he sometimes mentions? Sunlight reflects on the window so I can’t see clearly. Hands move, mouths open and shut, the woman laughs. I step back from the window. Phrases float back to me from my morning classes at the college, examples of how to use the negative. They are not his friends. They should not be in our café. This should not be happening.

  I’m wearing Maya’s emerald scarf and I twist it through my fingers. Of course, I’ve seen him talking to people before, but not like this. When I look again, his fingers have closed around that woman’s arm. I raise my hands to shield my eyes and swallow several times. But then I know this isn’t important. He can do what he likes. Our friendship isn’t about possession. It’s on a level far above that. If he wants some cheap Moscow blonde, then that’s fine. I suppose she is more his age.

  Through the window I see that she’s getting up to go. And then there’s another man, and I’m not sure whether he’s with her or not. He’s dressed in a ski-jacket, and a fur hat lies beside him on the table. That jacket suggests an American rather than a Russian. He hands a large white envelope to Jack and now he and the woman are moving towards the door. I step back under the porch of the next-door building until they’ve gone. I think of Maya and her comments about the Intelligence Service. She was wrong, of course. Totally wrong.

  When I go into the café, Jack is just as he’s always been. He bends to kiss me but, as a waitress dawdles past, I step out of his way. He suggests that I should sit down, and I do, but not before moving the chair further back. I’m tense and tired because I haven’t slept properly for weeks. Jack suggests that we get something to eat. I say that I’m not really hungry although I am. He’s determined that I should have something. He tells me about a church he wants to take me to see. It’s called the Church of the Resurrection. We can get the Metro to Polianka and walk from there. ‘Sounds nice,’ I say, making my voice unenthusiastic.

  At the next table a teenage Russian couple have pulled their chairs close. The boy wears a baseball cap and the girl has a smart Italian handbag. They must be Mafia children. The boy’s hand moves up under her short pleated skirt. He kisses her and slides his other hand inside her jacket. Probably they live with their parents and have nowhere else to go. I try not to look at them but they’re right in front of me. On the table are two coffee cups belonging to those people who were talking to Jack. That white envelope lies underneath Jack’s book. In an ashtray a curl of smoke still rises from the stub of a cigarette which is stained with red lipstick.

  I can’t sit still. My hands fidget and the muscles of my shoulders are tight. No one comes to serve us so Jack goes to the counter. This café is a place which, in this new era of Soviet capitalism, has recently been taken over by a cooperative. As a result, you don’t have to queue and the tables and chairs are made of new black chrome. Vases of plastic flowers decorate the tables. But the staff are still products of the old regime. They stand behind the counter, smoking and chatting. Occasionally one of them pushes an antiseptic-smelling mop across the concrete floor, or stands at the sink, washing up in brown water.

  Usually most of the food on the menu isn’t available, but if you offer dollars then it’s surprising what turns up. Jack always gets what he wants because he knows how this works. No anger, no bribes, just some long story, preferably involving a tragedy in the family. Russia, he always says, has more regulations than any other country, but there’s a way around everything. He comes back, shaking his head, and gives me some change. He tells me that he once saw a van which was meant to be delivering food to this café, but everything was being whisked away into a car belonging to one of the cooks. Capitalism is really wasted on the West, he says.

  I nod my head and shrug. A thin curl of smoke still rises from that cigarette.

  ‘So,’ Jack says. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing.’

  ‘Why don’t you just tell me?’

  I mumble something about feeling tired. He eyes me doubtfully. I know that if I don’t tell him he’ll start on some rant. ‘All you’re doing is relying on some secondhand emotion, some idea of what you should feel. We’re living in a world of packaged emotion. All these films and books, telling us what our experience should be. It’s almost impossible now for anyone to be authentic.’ Blah-blah. That’s what he always says.

  ‘It’s just – well, Maya said that … Well, that you work for the CIA or something like that.’ My words fade out because I already know they’re ridiculous.

  Jack looks at me and starts to laugh. ‘How she flatters me. Of course, the Neurology Departments of universities are crammed full of state secrets.’ He laughs so much that he has to get out his handkerchief and blow his nose. ‘That just goes to show that there’s nothing so mysterious as someone with nothing to hide.’

  The mop woman comes to our table with a tray.

  ‘You mustn’t worry about Maya,’ Jack says.

  ‘I know, but she made me angry. What has it got to do with her? I mean, it’s not as though there’s anything to talk about, is there?’

  ‘Oh no,’ he says. ‘Nothing at all.’ He raises an ironic eyebrow at me and stretches out his hand. I jump back as though he’s bitten me. ‘Eva,’ he says. ‘You need to slow down. Just slow down.’

  He’s right, of course, that’s what I need to do. I tell him then that I can’t sleep, and that my mind feels like a symphony orchestra playing in a cupboard, the sounds distorted, dangerous, frantic. Everything seems to link up, everything is connected, and I’m always within sight of some final explanation, but I never quite get there.

  He listens to what I’m saying then he produces a book of poems from his bag. He’d been going to lend it to me, he says. He’d already introduced me to Maiakovskii and Mandelstam. Now, leaning close to me, he opens a collection of Anna Akhmatova and points out some of the poems he likes. He reads one or two, slowly and quietly, enjoying the words. It seems an odd thing to do, in the middle of a café, but it makes me feel calm.

  I drink my coffee, which is gritty and has too much milk, and I thank him for reading, and for lending me the book. I don’t know why I ever worried about what Maya said. People are just suspicious of him because they judge in conventional ways. He challenges people because he’s different, and they just don’t understand.

  He touches Maya’s scarf. ‘That’s a great colour. It suits you.’ I know that he wants to take my hand. He’s tried to do that before but I don’t let him. It wouldn’t be fair on Rob. But it isn’t only that. I also feel quite sure that he isn’t really attracted to me. He just flirts because that’s how men of his generation relate to younger women. I even told him once, when he really pushed me, that when he tries to touch me it somehow degrades him. He gave me a long look when I said that, but didn’t disagree.

  We eat shchi, cabbage soup, and
something which is called a salad Olivier but is really yesterday’s vegetables covered in cheap mayonnaise. As we finish our meal, the couple at the next table lock their lips together, and their tongues search each other’s mouths. The boy’s hand strokes a patch of skin on the woman’s hip between her jumper and skirt. I keep my eyes fixed on my empty plate. I know that Jack is enjoying my embarrassment and I hate him for it.

  He goes to the counter to try to order some more coffee. A man pushes past our table and Jack’s book falls to the floor. A brown envelope drops from inside it, and I reach down to pick up the envelope and the book. The envelope is empty so he must have been using it to mark his place. It’s got an American stamp and, on the front, his name and address written in Cyrillic script. I look at the words, trying to decipher them. Which area of Moscow is that? I know that addresses in Russia are written with the name at the bottom, and the country at the top, but still I can’t make sense of it. Jack is finishing his negotiations with the counter woman. Just as he turns, I push the empty envelope into my trouser pocket. As we drink our coffee, I feel its imaginary warmth against my leg.

  By the time we reach the church, the sun has gone and our lips and fingertips are numb. The air is clouded by a fine mist, and it feels like evening although it’s only three o’clock. We walk through industrial metal gates and across a courtyard. Jack tells me that, during the Second World War, the buildings surrounding the church were taken over by a factory which makes army uniforms. We walk past dirty windows, three metres high. A door swings open and we glimpse women crouched over sewing machines. A gentle rattle comes from the building and a smell of engine oil. Those women probably don’t even know that the Cold War has ended, Jack says.

  The church itself is dwarfed by the buildings around it. It has white walls, and several small domes which support a fragile lantern topped by a gold cross. A babushka, bent almost double, stands near the gate, with her hand stretched out. She stares at us as though she’s never seen anything so extraordinary. I give her a rouble and we push through a curtain into the church. Dark and windowless, it is divided up into tiny rooms. The air is heavy with the smell of incense and the walls thick with gilt and jewelled panels. Jack shows me an icon of the Virgin Mary and one of the Crucifixion. He’s told me before that icons are windows into Heaven, they represent the world we can’t see. I stand there staring up at the golden-green halo of Christ, crossed by black thorns.