If Only You Knew

by Alice Jolly

  ‘This is the church I used to come to when I was a child,’ Jack says. I think of him being forced out of his home, and his country, aged ten. And then losing his mother as well. He told me that, when he was in his teens, he found out that she had died in an asylum. That’s what they did with anyone who tried to speak the truth, he said.

  I wander past brass lamps, hanging down on chains, and pass through forests of thin candles. The churches here in Russia are quite different to any I’ve seen before. They consist of a number of linked rooms and I always wait to arrive at some central point but am never sure if I have. When I go back to look for Jack I find him sitting on a chair staring up at the Crucifixion icon. I know immediately that he’s not well. As I approach him I hear him breathing deeply. His face is drained of colour. I’ve seen him like this before, but he never makes anything of it. Now, when I ask him if he’s all right, he just says he needs to sit down for a while. He’s explained about his illness. It’s called dilated cardiomyopathy. He even wrote the words down for me. It’s a condition which weakens the muscles of his heart and there is no cure.

  ‘You should be taking pills,’ I tell him.

  We’ve been through this before but I don’t get anywhere. He just doesn’t seem to care, and I’m frustrated because I want to comfort and support him, but he doesn’t seem to need that. Instead he just talks about death in a way that suggests it’s a subject you could study through a correspondence course. He talks of choices, and decisions, as though death is something which can be done well, or badly.

  ‘And for the people left behind?’ I ask.

  ‘Well, there’s always a purpose in death, even if that purpose isn’t immediately clear.’

  He talks, then, about what it’s like when you die. How you merge into everything around you. How you finally arrive at the place you’ve been travelling towards. ‘It’s something you search for, and you never find it. And most of the time there’s just nothing here, and you feel there never will be. But you can’t stop searching.’ I watch him staring up at the icons and I’ve never seen anyone look so happy. That feeling radiates off him, surrounding him in a warm haze. The thought comes to me that although I spent my whole childhood amongst people who supposedly believed in God, none of them actually seemed to have any real sense of Him, or at least not in the way that Jack does.

  We sit on longer in the church and I’m drawn deeper into the silence, and into his calm. I feel every burden lifting from me. And I feel his presence there, and mine, and everything is all wrapped up together. I don’t want the moment to break but the old lady comes into the church and beckons to us. As we stand near the curtain at the entrance I say, ‘Aren’t we lucky? Aren’t we so lucky?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Rented time.’

  I realize suddenly that I’m gripping his hand tightly in mine. I drop it and shake my head. And we’re back in the courtyard with the long dusty windows and the smell of engine oil.

  I’m so cold I’ve begun to feel warm. The lights from the factory windows shine out across the courtyard. As we walk past the textile factory, we see a room like a café, behind bars, and half-underground. Jack suggests that we find something hot to drink. I look at my watch. I promised I’d meet Rob at half six in Teatral’naia Ploshchad’ near the Bol’shoi Theatre. He’s got to drop off some papers at Sasha’s flat, which is where the editorial work on the newspaper is done. Rob said he’d take me with him because I’m always asking to go. But it won’t take three-quarters of an hour to get to the Bol’shoi.

  The café doesn’t look as though it’s open to the public but Jack talks his way in, and insists that I should sit down while he queues. I point out that he’s the one who’s ill but he doesn’t listen. I sit by high windows watching feet trampling past above me. The room is warm and my feet and fingers tingle painfully as blood flows back into them. A radio burbles behind the counter. Old men, crouched around a table, exchange glances and nod in my direction. Jack carries two cups of coffee to the table. He asks me what I’m thinking about.

  ‘Just about my father.’

  ‘Eva, what you should do is write to him.’

  ‘But what if he doesn’t get in touch? You know, the fact that he went away always makes me ask what kind of a person would I need to have been, to make him stay? And it makes me feel – I don’t know – as if I don’t really exist.’

  ‘But whatever he decided, he had his own reasons. It doesn’t really have anything to do with you. Whether he gets in touch with you or not, you’ll still be the same person. It seems to me, if you want to live fully, you need to take the risk.’

  ‘Maybe. You know, I think he had an affair with Maya.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. And I was just thinking – it must have been so hard for him. He was Catholic and married, and then I suppose he met Maya and fell in love with her.’

  Jack cups his hands around his coffee. ‘Yes, if that’s what happened, it must have been hard. There isn’t much place in normal life for that kind of thing.’

  ‘Isn’t there? If people love each other, don’t they find ways of being together?’

  Jack looks at me with eyes full of pity. ‘Oh really, Eva. What have you been reading? The truth is that the world crushes such feelings –’ A voice booms from the radio and everyone turns to stare. One of the serving staff has turned it up. This is Radio Echo, one of Moscow’s few independent stations. I can’t understand the words and when I turn to Jack, he raises his hand to silence me. The report comes to an end and the waitress turns the radio down. She looks over at her colleagues who nod and shrug. Jack explains that Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania. I know, I say. Lithuania is negotiating to have its independence from the Soviet Union. I know that as well. Now it seems that Gorbachev won’t let them go without a fight. After Christmas there’ll be trouble.

  ‘What – a war?’

  ‘No, perhaps not that. But the situation is going to get more difficult. The Red Army will probably start by taking over the television station. Civilians will mount a protest and the Army will turn the guns on them.’

  I remind Jack about my expired tourist visa. ‘But it’ll be all right,’ I say. ‘It’s only two weeks now until I’m going back to England for Christmas. I’ll get a new visa then.’ But we both know that no amount of visas will do any good. I sit in silence, stirring my coffee. ‘Jack, you know, it’s not that I couldn’t feel anything for you, it’s that I might feel far too much.’

  ‘Yes, I know. And that’s one of the things I like about you. The feeling that if you ever did decide … I like that part of you which wants everything to be so grand and intense.’

  ‘And you think that’s something admirable in me, but it isn’t.’

  He shrugs and drinks the last of his coffee. ‘People’s best qualities tend also to be their worst failings.’

  We sit in silence and Jack stares up at the feet walking past above. He looks strained and tired, even his eyes have lost their usual glint. ‘You look sad,’ I say.

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I suppose it’s the waste.’

  ‘Yes, it is a waste, isn’t it? But I’ve got to do what I can do. I’m no good at grand passions. They’re not the right thing for me.’

  ‘Perhaps. But it isn’t strong emotion which will kill you. It’s trying to live conventionally, that’s what’ll bring you down. It’s like the letter to your father. You won’t send it for fear of what you might feel. But you’re dying of not feeling anything.’

  I don’t have any answer to that. As we get up to go, Jack says it’ll be quicker for us to try to get a lift in a car, rather than take the Metro. He flags a car down and negotiates. We climb in and bump over potholes. The driver has no windscreen wipers and moves his head continually so he can see out through the smeared windscreen. He drops us near the Moskvorechkii Most, I pay him, and we walk on.

  The streets are crowded with people hurrying home from work. No stars are v
isible. As we cross the bridge, a freezing wind batters against us. An occasional lorry passes, or a bus. The bridge is illuminated by globe lights held high on twisting stems. Jack stops for a moment to stare down at the deserted river. Above us, the walls of the Kremlin are floodlit. Further down the river, smoke rises from the power station. I walk on and then look down. The river is frozen except for a thin channel of black water which still flows at the centre. I feel Jack beside me. ‘Are you all right?’ he asks.

  ‘No, I’m angry. Because we’ve got so little time.’

  ‘Then why are you wasting it?’

  Without warning, he bends down, pulls me to him, and kisses me on the lips. For a moment it’s easy, so easy, and we could just go on and on. But suddenly I’m uncertain, and pull away. I expect him to keep a grip on me, but instead he moves a step back. I want to slap him, or tell him to keep his filthy hands off me. But by stepping back, he’s deprived me of the opportunity to pretend that I was forced. I stand quite still, too close to him. He looks down at me, head slightly back, one eyebrow raised. He knows he’s got me in his power. Both of us are tied up in longing, and hatred of that longing. We can’t walk away because we both understand too well what this is. Finally I reach up and kiss him on the cheek. He stands motionless and doesn’t yield. I turn away and hurry on across the bridge, without looking back.

  Teatral’naia Ploshchad’, Moscow

  December 1990

  I’m twenty-five minutes late to meet Rob. His Volga is parked with two wheels on the pavement. Brown clouds billow from its exhaust into the freezing air. I open the passenger door and climb in. I’m still shaking and I wipe at my face, and hair, as though some trace of Jack might be evident there. As I lean over to kiss Rob, I’m sure he’ll taste that other kiss. ‘Sorry I’m so late.’

  ‘That’s OK. It doesn’t matter. Where were you?’

  We set off, the wheels spinning in the ice-covered street. ‘I met up with Jack. We had a cup of coffee, and I left with loads of time to spare, but then I got on the wrong Metro. You’d think I’d have stopped doing that by now.’

  Rob is bent forward, watching the road. We drive out through Taganskaia Ploshchad’, then turn off the main road and rattle and bump through narrower streets. If there are any road signs, it isn’t possible to see them. I lick at my lips, trying to get rid of the taste of that kiss. I look across at Rob, hoping to see in him something I don’t like. But he’s just the same. He wears an old sheepskin jacket he’s had for years. I know the warm smell of it, the exact size of the tear in one of the button holes. Surely if I love spending time with Jack then I must like Rob less? But it isn’t as simple as that. Underneath me, springs stick up through the car seat, digging into the backs of my legs. I rearrange the cushion which covers them. ‘I wondered if you mind me meeting up with Jack? I mean, I could not.’

  The car wheels slide sideways on the ice and Rob jerks the steering wheel into the skid. ‘Why would I mind? He seems like an interesting guy. And it’s hardly likely you’d want to get inside his dusty old trousers, is it?’

  ‘Of course not.’ I try to laugh. He’s right, of course, it’s ridiculous. Jack is thirty-five years older than me. I’d never think of him like that. Flakes of snow whirl through the car headlights. I pull my coat more tightly around me, trying to stop the shivering. Rob has to keep his foot hard on the accelerator because, if he lets the car slow, then the engine cuts out.

  ‘You know, your mother rang and she wants to speak to you,’ he tells me. ‘Perhaps you could come around to my office tomorrow and give her a call?’

  ‘Yeah, maybe. I should at least tell her we’ve met Maya.’

  ‘I don’t really see why. I mean, it’s not as though we’re going to get to know her, is it?’

  I knew he’d say that. I mustn’t get to know Maya because that might upset my mother, and we must never do that. I think back to a conversation I had with Jack. I said to him that my mother had probably never talked to me about my father because she wanted to protect me. He said, ‘Isn’t it more likely she wants to protect herself?’ And as soon as he said that, I knew it was true.

  ‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell my mother about Maya.’

  ‘I didn’t say you shouldn’t. It doesn’t really matter.’ At a junction we stop while a convoy of Army lorries rumble past. Their headlights sweep along the sides of buildings. It seems as though they’ve got no windows. As each one passes, I think it must be the last, but they keep on coming. Where can they all be going? It’s probably better not to know.

  Rob’s foot moves up and down on the accelerator, as he looks across at me. ‘You know, about Maya – I just always feel as though she contributed to the making of a myth. It was always her, and your father, and they were glamorous and interesting. And my mother as well.’ The car engine dies and although Rob sticks his foot down flat, it cuts out. He swears and turns the key in the ignition. ‘And no one took much notice of your mother. But she was the one who mended the clothes, and organized the dentist’s appointments, and drove a hundred miles with my football boots when I’d forgotten them at the beginning of term.’

  Finally the last truck disappears and we drive on, arriving in an area of tower blocks and half-made roads. Rob slows the car, and the headlights touch on construction work and straggling trees. I shift on my cushion and pull my coat more tightly around me. Of course, my mother is practical and good, and so is Rob. And they’ve tried so hard to recruit me into their camp. But what if the girl behind the cardboard cut-outs just isn’t like that?

  Rob stops the car outside a tower block. I try to shut the door but it’s never worked properly and now it won’t close. Rob comes to help me and his hand brushes against mine but I move away. ‘Eva, listen, you do what you want. All I’m asking is that you take care of your mother. Every time she rings I have to invent some story about why you haven’t called. And I don’t like having to lie to her. She deserves better than that. She’s made a lot of sacrifices for you. You’ve got a responsibility towards her.’

  ‘I don’t see why.’

  Rob’s voice is suddenly acidic. ‘I would have thought that was obvious. If someone cares for you, then you have to respect that, even if you’ve stopped caring for them.’ He strides away towards the block of flats opposite. I follow him, trailing through mud and ice. Rob keys in a code to open the door and we push the button for the lift. The hallway smells of piss, and the pages of a porn magazine are screwed up on the floor. Usually Rob would joke about a place like this. ‘Not too much glasnost here,’ he’d say. But he’s not going to joke now.

  We take the lift to the tenth floor. Sasha’s flat is dark, hot and cramped. It smells of cabbage and pickled herring. A glimpse of the kitchen reveals a string vest and underpants strung up above the sink. A bed in the sitting room means there’s hardly space to stand. The furniture is brown chipboard, standard Soviet issue. I’ve been to flats like this before, but still it shocks me to find First World people living in Third World conditions. Most of the tenants who inhabit this building are better educated and more intelligent than me but they’re living in one third of a room and sharing a bathroom with six other people.

  The only evidence of the newspaper is a bedroom filled by two crooked tables and three antiquated typewriters. I know that the paper is printed at night in a factory in the south of the city. The supervisor of the factory can be bribed to open the place up at night. It’s not illegal to produce an independent newspaper, but it’s certain that everyone involved in the newspaper is being watched. The aim is to produce the newspaper in Voronezh and Nizhnii Novgorod as well, but that’s more difficult. The people there are unreliable, no one cares about politics and it’s difficult to find printing facilities. The truth is that, even in Moscow, the newspaper is usually only eight pages long and printed in fuzzy black and white on paper as thin as tissue. Most of it is taken up with advertising. But Rob sees it as an important start, and I suppose it is.

  Under the law the
newspaper has to be sponsored by an enterprise so it’s technically managed by Vladimir who’s the boss of a meat factory. He’s fat, with small hands and calculating eyes. But I like him because, having spent some time in Cuba, he speaks Spanish, and so I can understand him. I’d like to talk to him now but he’s buried in conversation with Rob and doesn’t even see me.

  I move towards the bedroom, trying to keep out of the way. Sasha is on the telephone. Here he’s not the same person as the guitar player who comes to visit our flat. He’s serious and committed, issuing instructions. Behind him, a window fills nearly the whole wall. I understand that he’s talking about sending faxes. A journalist once said to me that fax machines were the main cause of the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Sasha puts the telephone down.

  ‘You know, I can always fax something,’ I say. ‘There’s a machine at my college.’

  For the first time Sasha is looking straight at me. ‘Do zey also have a photocopier? When would it be possible for you to use the machines?’ But as Rob comes into the room, Sasha’s face changes. He knows that Rob won’t want me to get involved.

  ‘It’s no problem,’ I say. ‘All the teachers photocopy sections of textbooks so I can always use that as an excuse.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Rob says. ‘But I don’t think there’s any need.’

  ‘Yes, probably it’s not really necessary,’ Sasha says.