If Only You Knew

by Alice Jolly

  I long for someone, anyone. The man downstairs with the Communist medals greets me when he sees me on the stairs but when I try to talk to him he can’t understand what I’m saying. I don’t know whether that’s my Russian or his hearing. Maya is still away in America. I pick up one of my mother’s kitten and puppy cards. For a moment I think that tomorrow I’ll go to Rob’s office and phone her, but, of course, I won’t. I don’t know who she is any more. I see her as in that flicker of memory. The cartwheel summer. Her feet on a sky of green lawn, her head dangling down into vivid blue, her frown changed into a smile.

  I pick up a copy of the Moscow News. The front page shows a photograph of a man in a fur hat standing amidst silver birch trees. He’s from an organization which has been formed to look for bodies buried during Stalin’s Terror. Twenty million died, the newspaper article says. Hundreds of mass graves may lie hidden in the forests around Moscow. I stare out of the window and wonder if the graves may be closer than that. I think of bones under the mud of our courtyard, skeletons barely concealed in the woods of Fili Park.

  I open the drawer of my bedside table and take out my small collection of memories, the story of Jack and my friendship. Two poetry books he lent me, the ticket from a gallery we visited, a pencil stub which belonged to him, and a handkerchief. For a moment I see this situation as though I’m not part of it and I know myself to be pathetic. He’s old, I tell myself, and a failure, and cranky, and dogmatic. And there was always something about him I didn’t trust.

  But still it feels like a phone call cut off in the middle of a sentence, and I am left alone, the receiver gripped in my hand, pressing at the knob again and again, hearing only a continuous beep where a voice should be. Are you there? Are you there? But the line is dead. I think I know now what was behind all those cardboard cut-outs. Nothing at all.

  I get out that envelope which I like to think Jack gave to me, and find the street map of Moscow. He lives in the south of the city, that’s what he said. I decipher the address – Sibirskii Pereulok 1/8, fourth floor. I’ve imagined his flat so many times that I’ll be able to find it immediately. It’s in an imperial building in a tree-lined street just near the Tryetiakov Gallery. The windows of his room are long and open onto a curly iron balcony. In the evenings he sits near those windows, reading or listening to music. But Sibirskii Pereulok isn’t anywhere near the Gallery. I search for it all over the bottom half of the map, trying to match one set of Cyrillic letters to another. The lids of my eyes feel swollen, all the streets merge together. He lives in a place which doesn’t exist.

  Three more days pass, their moments grinding past so slowly that I sometimes press my watch to my ear to hear its tick. The Russians celebrate Christmas on 6 January, and so for three days everything is closed. Rob and I are invited to a dinner by his Russian friends. On the way there, we see candles and home-made lanterns being carried around a church. This is the first time for seventy years that the churches here have been able to celebrate Christmas. At the dinner I am the Good Girlfriend and sit in the corner of a cramped flat, eating some porridge-like substance and smiling until the muscles in my face ache. I know that Rob and I are living through something extraordinary here, but I’m imprisoned in my own head.

  Rob discovers that someone has been sleeping in our car. We discuss whether we should try to get the lock fixed and decide against it. Sarah calls to tell me that outside their building a man was killed by a falling stalactite which dropped from the edge of a roof and split him in half, as a log is split by an axe. One of my Russian friends at the college tells me that she’s going to take her children to McDonald’s at least once a month. Even if you have to queue out into the street, it’s worth it because of all the vitamins in the food.

  I move through the shuddering city like an amputee – unstable and awkward, dragging around the bloody stump of a lost leg. My eyes sift the streets. Jack is everywhere and nowhere. In the No Name Café I sit opposite his empty chair. I go back to Tsaritsyno and sit in the ruined Palladian pavilion and walk through the skeleton of the palace.

  I start back at the college and we’re studying the continuous present tense. He is waiting for me at the café today. He is in Leningrad but he never told me. He is a spy and he’s been deported. He is too ill to get out of bed and no one is there to look after him. He is with some other woman. Sometimes the office phone rings, and I stop in mid-sentence and gaze at the door, waiting for someone to come and tell me that the call is for me. When I look back at my students, I find them staring in confusion. I look down at my book, and I can’t remember where I was, so I say, ‘Right, I think we’ve all understood that, let’s move on.’

  But time doesn’t move on. I need to find a map which covers areas beyond the city centre but not many exist, and the ones that do are out of date, or inaccurate. That’s what this country is like – even the lay-out of the city is a secret. Eventually Mr Baloni lends me a map which covers the whole area south of the river. At home I lay it out on the floor and move a lamp so I can see it clearly. Eventually I locate his street. It’s south of the Dobryninskaia Metro, an area I’ve never been to before.

  Just as I finish folding up the map Rob comes back. ‘You do look awful,’ he says.

  ‘It’s just that bug I had at Christmas,’ I tell him. ‘It keeps coming back.’

  ‘Sleep,’ he says, ‘that’s the only thing.’ And he makes me go to bed and brings me a cup of tea. Later he comes to say goodbye because he’s going out. After he’s gone I lie in bed listening to the howls of stray dogs, and the sound of someone trying to start a car in the courtyard below. The engine whines and falters, whines and falters. I get up, wander through the flat, then pull on my clothes and my coat and go out.

  A full moon hangs over the vast Phillips sign, written in Russian, which sits on top of a tower block. I take the Metro to Dobryninskaia and come up into a narrow square which is poorly lit. I consult the map and Jack’s envelope. A trolley bus splashes and crackles through the ice, heading north up the long road towards the centre. I cross the road, and set off in the opposite direction along a wide street called Liusinovskaia Bol’shaia. Streetlights shine through the mesh of leafless trees. People queue at a kiosk. The blocks here are low-rise, flat-fronted and painted pale green. Lights come on at windows, revealing pot plants, net curtains, flickering television screens.

  The map seems to be wrong. The ordered pattern of the streets has broken down. Highways link blocks of flats and stretches of worn grass. There are no signs anywhere. It starts to snow and the map gets soggy. An old man emerges from a building and I try to ask him. His face is a mass of swollen red veins. Waving a hand, he stumbles and nearly falls. I drift deep into a forest of tower blocks. No street lighting, no roads – just dirt tracks and half-finished construction work. I speak to a man who wears shoes, but no socks, and is siphoning something out of a car. He’s never heard of the street where Jack lives. I slip and tear open the knee of my trousers. I look down and see blood but I’m so cold that I feel no pain. Ahead of me, three figures are crouched around a fire. I move towards them holding my hands out towards the warmth. A man edges half of a rotting armchair into the flames. I speak to a woman who is small and thin as a child and she points me back towards the main road.

  Then suddenly I’m at the corner of his street. I find his block and go to the door. It’s upholstered in black leather and has a peephole. I cross the road, standing back from the building so I can see better. It’s the same as all the others, a tall modern building surrounded by mud and twisted trees. Swings and slides in a children’s playground are black and spiky in the furred grey of the night. Lights are on in some of the windows and I count up to the fourth floor. So that’s where he lives. It seems impossible. Nothing marks that floor out from any other. It’s all too small and ordinary, too random. On the fourth floor, two windows are alight. In one a pair of trousers swings from a coat hanger. There is something shameful in those trousers.

  A shadow moves
at the other window. So he is there. I wait for that shadow to move again but it doesn’t. As I walk back towards the Metro, a figure walks ahead of me. It looks like Jack. I move forward, trying to see more clearly. For a moment, the man is illuminated under a streetlight, pulling his scarf tighter. I know it’s him because of the length of his stride, the cut of his coat. That shadow at the window of the flat must have been someone else. My heart turns inside me, wide as a fairground wheel. I start to run but then I stop. What if he doesn’t want to see me? I walk on, keeping close into the sides of buildings. I catch glimpses of him as he steps through squares of light which fall from windows. He carries nothing in his hands but one of his pockets is weighed down. Jack always has a book with him and it’s always in that same pocket.

  He reaches the end of the street and turns left. I move as though attached to him by an unseen thread. He approaches the Metro and I hurry to catch up. If I don’t speak to him now then he’ll be lost in the crowds disappearing underground. He’s stopped at a kiosk and is reaching into his pocket for his wallet. He pays for something, slips it into his pocket and then moves on. I walk up to him and say his name but he doesn’t hear me. I move closer and lay my hand on the sleeve of his coat. He turns and I look into his face. He stares down at me and he doesn’t know who I am. I’m saying his name – Jack? Jack? But he doesn’t recognize me. And then I realize. This isn’t Jack. It’s some man with thin and bristly hair whose coat isn’t even the right colour. I look down at my hand gripping the sleeve of the wrong-coloured coat. The man jerks his arm away and walks on.

  The next day, when I get back from the college, I find Mr Balashov, our neighbour from upstairs, sitting on the stairs with his head in his hands. I say good evening to him and he babbles at me, pointing up the stairs, using his hands to indicate a key turning. His face is damp and distorted. It seems his wife has locked him out of the flat. As he’s telling me this, I’m rubbing my hands together and wriggling my frozen toes. Outside it must be minus fifteen, or perhaps even colder. The hopscotch girl appears from her den under the stairs. She’s wearing the clothes I gave her and walks with a touch of pride, although the skirt hangs down far below her knees and the sleeves of the coat are rolled up.

  Mr Balashov is babbling again, complaining about his wife. He’s got to leave, he can’t stand it, but where can he go? He’s standing with his feet close to that crack. Surely more concrete has chipped away from the sides of it? Above us, the strip-lights buzz. Ice has cracked open one of the windows on the landing and someone has tried to plug the crack with cardboard, without much success. I’ll either have to shut the door on Mr Balashov or invite him in. I settle on the latter and usher him and the hopscotch girl into the sitting room. Mr Balashov sits in the black swivel armchair near the television. The hopscotch girl hangs back, half-hiding behind the side of the bookcase.

  I stare at the telephone, wondering whether it might have rung while I was at the college. Maybe Jack is trying to ring but he never finds me here? I go to fetch milk for the child, vodka for Mr Balashov, tea for myself. I’m glad to have visitors, any visitors. While I’m in the kitchen Mr Balashov tells me that his wife shouts at him all the time. Does he think I’m not aware of that? And she makes him do all the cooking and cleaning, she won’t let him eat, she hardly even lets him sit down. I nod at him through the door while I’m waiting for the kettle to boil. Some part of me finds Mr Balashov comic – the old sitcom caricature of the henpecked husband – but when I look closely at him there’s nothing funny about the state he’s in.

  He seems to be telling me that his wife is ill. He points to his abdomen, makes a circle with his hands, trying to explain. I’d like to say that someone who can draw blood from another person can’t be that ill. I give him vodka and hand a cup of milk to the little girl. Mr Balashov is talking again about how he must leave. I sit down beside him and nod sympathetically. After a while I join in. ‘Yes, it’s very difficult,’ I say, ‘when someone behaves badly to you. You think that they care but they don’t. You can’t understand, and it hurts, it really hurts. You don’t know if they’ve gone away, or they’re sick, or they’re disappointed in you.’ In a way it’s easier to have a conversation with someone who doesn’t speak your language. Perhaps that’s what I’ve been doing all my life.

  The bell rings and for a mad moment I think it might be Jack. But instead I find Sasha on the doorstep. He’s wearing a new black leather jacket and carrying a plastic bottle and a small paper package. He’s come round several times since Christmas and he always asks for Rob, but he comes when he knows Rob isn’t here. Each time he’s asked me to send a fax, or photocopy some papers. I know now that he wants to check if I’ve sent a fax which he gave me three days ago, but I wait for him to ask. He accepts a glass of vodka and we discuss Bleak House and Great Expectations. It’s only after we’ve discussed both in some detail, that Sasha mentions the fax. I give it to him and he produces a document which he needs photocopying.

  I’m glad he wants photocopying because that’s easier than faxes. The faxes have to go to Nizhnii Novgorod and Voronezh, and sometimes I have to dial ten or twenty times before they go through. Fortunately Mr Baloni is unlikely to ask what I’m doing as he’s seldom around. He’s got a twenty-year-old Russian girlfriend, having ditched his wife and three children in Tuscany. Is her name Irina or Raisa? Anyway, she wants a flat in some new condominium on the Leninskii Prospyekt so he’s busy with the negotiations.

  Mr Balashov switches the television on. The bottle of vodka in our fridge has run out but Sasha produces his plastic bottle. Home-made vodka. I’m nervous of drinking it because it might contain meths. Sasha opens the paper package and produces bread, hardboiled eggs and cake. His uncle works at the Hotel Smolenskaia and the food has come from there. He always tells Rob and me that it’s the leftovers, but we know it’s stolen. In this city, honesty is a luxury most people can’t afford.

  The little girl has fallen asleep, her head propped against the bookcase. Her mouth is open and a thin line of dribble runs down from the side of it. I move her head gently, and prop a pillow against the bookcase to make her more comfortable. On the television, a man in a glittery suit struts on a stage. He’s a hypnotist and a psychic. People here believe in all that. The city is full of fortune-tellers, astrologers, witches, clairvoyants, mediums, Mormons and Hari Krishnas. A Russian woman who works at my college tells me about spaceships seen over Gorkii Park and aliens landing in the Luzhniki Stadium. Jack says that people believe in incredible stories when the real ones are too hard to accept.

  On the screen, the glittery-suit man has hypnotised a man from the audience and is making him dance around the stage like a ballerina. I remember the tone of derision in Jack’s voice when he talked about these programmes. I pointed out to him that some of his beliefs are far-fetched, but he was quick to tell me that there’s all the difference in the world between his ideas and this kind of populist rubbish.

  Just as the programme finishes, a shout sounds outside the door. Mr Balashov is out of the door like ice off a hot-plate. I follow him out on to the landing. His wife fills the width of the stairs, wearing a tight dress made of red stretchy satin and a green woollen coat. The dress comes down to her puckered knees, which are far apart, cushioned by flesh. Her make-up, beneath the dried-out orange hair, is garish. Without a word or a movement, she somehow sweeps her husband away up the stairs. I imagine her like quicksand, sucking him in, his arms and legs flailing, until there’s nothing left, and only his glasses remain, dropped where he stood.

  I go back into the flat and sit at the kitchen table, talking to Sasha, my head fuzzy with drink. He leans close to hear what I’m saying and bangs at his ear with the palm of his hand. I think he does that due to a problem with his hearing. Occasionally he smiles, revealing stained and crooked teeth. His conversation veers from the mundane to the philosophical. ‘The best shop to buy milk is in Begovaia Ulitsa, close to ze cemetery. Of course, you must visit ze Danilov Monastery. Ju
st go to ze Shabolovskaia Metro and zen take any bus along Serpukhovskii. And do you believe in God? And what, in your opinion, is ze true nature of love?’ The hopscotch girl sniffles in her sleep and snuggles close to the pillow. Sasha insists on pouring me vodka from his plastic bottle. Why not? I don’t really care if I get poisoned.

  Sasha is worried about Rob. As he speaks, the birthmark on his face burns red. ‘You know he does not having any proper contract. Zat man Herr Mecker has a new BMW which is imported from Germany. And he don’t speaking any Russian and do not any work. Rob should make zem give him same or find some different job.’ I try to explain that Rob isn’t interested in money. Sasha shakes his head in disgust. ‘But you are from the West. How is it zat I am explaining to you capitalism?’ I tell him that capitalist societies aren’t all about money. But Sasha isn’t having any of that. I wonder what he’d say if he knew that Rob’s father sometimes sends cheques for three thousand pounds, which Rob rips up and scatters in the bin.

  Later, he tells me about his childhood. He was taken to an orphanage when he was five after both of his parents were arrested. ‘Cold,’ he said. ‘Always very cold. On Sundays zey sometimes light a fire. I always long for zem to light a fire.’

  The Lady with a Hundred Relatives comes looking for the child, shakes her awake, and pulls her yawning out of the door. Sasha says that he must go as well and I look at my watch. Two o’clock. However will I get to work tomorrow? At the door, unsteady on his feet, Sasha lays a hand on my shoulder. ‘I’m very happy now zat I know you. Before, I wasn’t kind to you. You were kind to me, but I didn’t …’ He spreads his hands wide as though waiting for words to drop into them. ‘You know, for me it is difficult. When people are kind I sometimes not even notice. I have not … any shelf where I can put zat.’ I watch him go, his long legs tumbling away from him down the stairs.