by Alice Jolly
I go to bed and lie awake under the five-armed light. I realize that Sasha has almost become a friend. I don’t usually do friends. I remember talking to Jack about that. It was when I said that I like to travel, to move on. And he said, ‘What, before someone notices?’ And I said yes, because it is like that.
From outside, a bang sounds – a car exhaust, or a gunshot? I can’t sleep. For some reason that odd phrase of Sasha’s twists and turns in my head. I have not any shelf where I can put that.
10/38 Kutuzovskii Prospyekt, Moscow
January 1991
Maya lounges on her blue-green sofa, her hand cast idly to one side, a cigarette propped between two fingers. Clothes, books and tins of food from her four matching suitcases are spread around the sitting room. As always, the blinds are pulled down and the air is stagnant. ‘Why e-e-ver did I come back?’ A channel has been cut into the wall by the fireplace, and a thin coating of plaster dust lies across the room. ‘They’ve just come in and done this,’ she says, ‘without a letter or any notification – and what can you say, because they own the place?’
She leans over and pours herself Chardonnay from a bottle on the table. Harvey has said that soon they’ll have to move somewhere else, to a flat with proper security. The Mafia are everywhere, really e-e-everywhere, and so many people have been murdered. The country has become corrupt and dirty. The people lie and are idle. I sit listening, marvelling at how people get away with racism when they’re talking about their own country.
‘But whe-e-re else can I go?’ Maya says. ‘I’ve lived in so many countries, I no longer know where home is.’
‘But you’ve got good friends, haven’t you? Like Estelle and …?’ I can’t think of any others. Maya is anyway dismissive of Estelle. Consolations and compromises, she sighs. Consolations and compromises. She’s determined to feed me although I’m not really hungry. Heading for the kitchen, she pokes at things with her stick as though she’s blind. ‘No, no. You stay there,’ she says as I get up to help.
I examine a pile of books on the low table in front of me. Memoirs of a British Agent, Europe in the Russian Mirror, Baedeker’s Russia 1914. I know that Maya will have read these books from cover to cover and will remember their contents. And yet she never goes out of this flat.
Something smashes in the kitchen and Maya swears in French. Rob and I were meant to be spending this evening with Bill and Sarah, but Rob had to cancel because of some problem with the newspaper. When I rang Sarah to explain that, she pressed me to come on my own. ‘It’s so hard for you,’ she said, ‘with Rob always working. I really don’t know how you put up with it.’ I suspect that she was talking about herself. Rob tells me that she’s more insistent than ever that she’s leaving here by the summer, with or without Bill.
Maya brings bread, ham, and chocolate cake, but I eat only a few mouthfuls. ‘Smoked salmon?’ she says, poking her stick into one of the suitcases. ‘I brought it back from the States.’ I long to tell Maya about Jack, or to ask her about those papers I found under my mother’s bed, but she’s talking about her son from her first marriage. He’s the one in the photograph on the hall table, with the shark-like car, pin-stripe suit and vicious smile. She’s told me before that he’s a Wall Street broker and earns a million a year. Playing slot machines, she says, that’s all it really is.
But now she tells a different story. ‘Addiction.’ She sucks on her cigarette, drawing smoke deep into her lungs. ‘It’s ri-i-fe in that world, of course. And when I saw him this time …’ She sighs, her head goes back, her eyes click shut then open again. ‘You know, they never tell you the truth about drug addicts. They never tell you how wonderful drugs can make you feel. He tells me that – about how the world becomes beautiful, perfect. How you feel as though you can do a-a-nything. And then the question is – how do you tell someone to give up pleasure like that?’
She shrugs, not expecting an answer. Outside, the wind howls and rain smashes like pebbles against the windows. Maya leans closer to me, then she takes my face in her icy hands and stares into my eyes. I’m trying not to look at her. ‘Loss,’ she says. ‘You and me both.’ She lets go of my face but keeps her eyes fixed on me. The rain patters at the window again, and I hear the shuffles and clicks of the flats around us.
‘Jack, I suppose?’ she says.
‘Yes. It’s just – I haven’t heard from him.’
Maya suggests that perhaps he’s gone away.
‘No. I think he’s here.’
‘Have you called him?’
I hesitate. ‘Yes, but he hasn’t got back to me.’
‘Oh my dear, I’m sorry.’
‘It doesn’t matter. He was only a friend.’ Maya asks me to get her some vodka. In the kitchen, I pour a splash into her glass, then top it up with water.
‘It’s hard,’ Maya says, taking the glass. ‘And sad, ve-e-ry sad. Probably I should tell you that some good will come of it. The strongest metals are cast in the fire of pain, and all that. But re-e-ally that’s all rubbish. Loss is what it says it is. And it happens again and again, it chips away at you until you’re less and less. If the pains were new pains they’d be easier to bear. But things go in circles and you pass the same point again and again.’
Maya is quite still, staring into nothing. Her stillness, her sadness, are like a presence in the room, as distinctive as the scent of lavender, or the taste of olives. The thought comes to me that Maya has a talent for sadness. She just lets it be what it is. In the world I come from, people always say, Come on, cheer up, you must be positive, count your blessings, look on the bright side. But actually why does anyone do that? Why don’t they just sit in silence, as Maya does, and say it’s sad, it’s just very sad.
My head slides down against her shoulder. She runs her hands through my hair.
‘Eva, you know, if someone doesn’t speak to you, then often that doesn’t mean they don’t care, it means they care too much.’
It’s late and the rain still breaks on the windows like gunfire. Maya insists that I should stay, so I ring Rob on Sasha’s number to let him know. She takes me to the room where I first talked to Jack. I feel his absence there. The chair where he doesn’t sit, the wall where his shadow fails to appear. Maya takes a lace nightdress from a drawer. ‘So strange,’ she says. ‘All these cheap images of romance. Then the re-e-al thing can be so unexpected, so improbable, we simply don’t recognize it.’
I stand by the bed, staring at her. Of course, she must be right. That’s what it is. I’m in love with him. I feel a weight lifting from me. The idea seems bizarre, incredible, even faintly disgusting, but I enjoy the fact that it’s concrete, absolute, beyond any question. I’m in love with him. I put on the lace nightdress and get into bed. Maya sits down beside me, finishing her glass.
‘I suppose it must have been like that for you with …’ I want to ask her about my father, but I can’t say the words. ‘I mean – with your first husband?’
‘Oh no,’ she says. ‘Not him. No.’
I think of those photographs – my father with his arm around her waist. That toothy smile, and the scarf in her hair. He kept going to London to see her when my mother wanted him to stay at home. She understood his paintings, and wanted him to be successful, whereas my mother thought he shouldn’t be interested in any of that. And then one day my mother found out, and she was so angry she talked to the lawyers about a court order. That’s how it was. ‘You know, Maya, I was trying to remember – where did you live in London?
‘Chelsea.’
‘Somewhere near the river?’
‘Redesdale Street.’
And that was where he went to when he first moved out, except Maya wasn’t there then because she’d already moved to Rome. Did he plan to go and join her? And if so, then why did he go to Mexico instead? Maya is brushing cigarette ash off her skirt. She looks at me, shakes her head, shrugs.
‘You know, you don’t have to worry,’ I say. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t your fault.’
For a moment we’re so close that our minds are touching. I feel a rush of relief because now we’re going to understand each other. I start to lean forward, wanting to stretch out my hands to her. Her eyes watch me, her head is back, her lips are slightly parted. Then suddenly she’s looking down, her hands rustling in panic beside the bed. ‘You know,’ she says in a rush. ‘I’ve got a surprise for you, a Christmas present.’
But I don’t want a present. I want to know what she was going to say. I want to be back in that moment when our minds touched against each other. Instead I’m holding a bag in my hand and she’s telling me that I should open it up, taking another swig of vodka, starting to tell me the story of where she bought the present, how she’s sure it’s ju-u-st the right thing for me.
The child is standing on a chair, boiling milk to make cocoa for her father. He’s got flu but he’ll be better soon. He’s been sitting in a chair in the sitting room all day, and his face looks collapsed. He doesn’t use his telescope any more, or paint, or read his star books.
Mrs Reynolds from the farm has been helping to look after him. She comes every morning, bringing a shepherd’s pie for lunch wrapped in a checked tea-towel. The child can see her father through the sitting-room door. He shivers and she decides that she should go and get his book for him. He left it upstairs but he might want to read it again now.
Her mother is in the hall, talking on the telephone to someone about an exhibition which might take place in the New Year. It’s not a question of the work, she’s saying. He’s just not that well at the moment. I don’t know whether it’s a good idea. We should leave it a while before we make a decision. Well, I’m sorry, but I’ve got to put his health first.
The child takes the milk off the electric ring and goes up the back stairs. She longs for Rob, and the biscuit-tin drum, and the plastic soldiers and the tent made out of sheets, but Rob has gone back to school. As the child goes out of the door, she sees her father entering the kitchen. He shuffles and his shoulders are slumped. He isn’t meant to walk around. If she hurries for the book then maybe she’ll be able to persuade him to sit down again.
She’s halfway down the stairs, carrying the book, before she realizes. The smell is charred, metallic, a hint of roast meat. The book drops from her hands and falls away down the stairs, opening and closing as it goes. She jumps after it and pushes the kitchen door wide open. Her father has mislaid his hand. It’s spread out on the angry red surface of the electric ring. In the hall the child’s mother rattles the phone back onto the hook. As she rushes into the kitchen she’s keening like a trapped animal. The child looks at the hand. Her father looks at it as well. The white sides of it are merging with the hot-plate, turning red. A smell of burnt wool rises around them. The cuff of his shirt and jumper are alight. Her mother pulls his hand off the hot-plate.
Her father shrugs, smiles, blusters. He wipes his flaming hand on his trouser leg, whistles silently. Her mother rushes at cupboards, fumbles over bandages and lint. The child grabs antiseptic cream from the drawer by the sink. Her mother starts to ring 999 and then puts the phone down. The panic dies. Because the truth is that it doesn’t really matter. After all, he doesn’t seem to mind. Finally it’s only like the toast got burnt.
The child’s father goes back to the sitting room and hunches up in his chair. Her mother sits at the kitchen table, her face blanched. This can’t be the right way, she says. The child sits next to her father and makes up words for him. Bean-greens-dancing-stop. Lean-seams-dancing-pop. Pop-seams-prancing-lean. Her father tries to play the game but his mind isn’t with her. She keeps on – lean-seams-dancing-pop. Bean-greens-dancing-stop. The words make it easy not to think. She knows now that there’s a sound worse than a scream of pain – and that’s the silence where the scream should have been.
30/16 Ulitsa Pravdy, Moscow
January 1991
It’s Sunday morning, and Rob is still in his pyjamas, reading the newspaper in bed. I’ve been back from Maya’s for half an hour and although I’m exhausted I can’t keep still. Rob lays the newspaper aside, heads for the bathroom, stops. ‘Listen, sorry. I forgot to tell you. Bad news. Your mum called on Friday and she’s been made redundant.’
‘Redundant?’ My mother doesn’t get made redundant, she’s worked at the same school for over twenty years. ‘Oh my God. So what will she do?’
Rob tells me that on the phone she sounded positive. After all, she’s still got her own work. But Rob and I both know that the market for that is limited. The dresses she makes are hand-embroidered and worth thousands of pounds. Sometimes orders come from specialist London shops, sometimes they don’t. ‘I think it isn’t really the job she minds about,’ Rob says. ‘It’s just that apparently the school took the decision last summer, but then didn’t tell her until she went back for the beginning of the term. That’s what always gets to people – not what’s happened but the fact of not being told.’
A crash comes from upstairs. Rob and I stare upwards, preparing ourselves for more thumps and bangs, but no other sound comes. ‘I think for once they really just dropped something,’ Rob says. He heads for the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist. I sit on the edge of the bath and watch him shave. Steam rises in clouds from the defective bath tap. The mirror is propped above the sink so he has to bend down to look in it. I tell him about my evening with Mr Balashov and ask if there isn’t something we can do. Rob doesn’t think we should get involved. ‘You know, if he really wanted to go, he would. In those relationships there’s usually some kind of dependency.’
‘Perhaps – but what exactly? I mean, why does anyone stay in a relationship that’s making them unhappy?’ My eyes meet Rob’s on the surface of the mirror. He reaches over, clicks the switch on the radio, and tunes in to one station after another, trying to find the latest news from Vilnius. Shaving foam drips from his razor into the sink. Why is he so interested in events thousands of miles away when he couldn’t care less about Mr Balashov? Perhaps causes make people callous, I think.
I wander back to the bedroom and lie down. The sheets and pillows are still warm from Rob. Today is refusing to happen. I should try to fix the light in the kitchen or rearrange some of the junk our landlord left on the balcony. Or go for a walk in Fili Park, take the tram to the Rizhskii market. Rob and I should have arranged to go away somewhere for the weekend. That’s what I’d really like, but it isn’t possible because I don’t have a visa. And even if I had one then it’d still be difficult to get a train ticket, a hotel booking, an invitation. It’s not surprising that many people in this country seem deranged. If you’re never able to just jump on a train when you want to, then of course you finish up like that.
‘Are you OK?’ Rob switches the radio off and comes to sit down on the bed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, putting out his hand to me. ‘I know I haven’t been around much. It’s going to be easier now, I think – although, having said that, I’ve got to see Sasha at four today.’
‘That’s OK. You go. I don’t mind.’
He leans to kiss me, and my hand touches the skin of his neck. I pull him to me, kiss him again and wonder why it is that he and I never seem to find time to make love. As Rob puts on his clothes, he’s looking at the bag which contains Maya’s Christmas present. ‘What’s that?’ I tell him, and he wants to see. He’s only taking an interest because he’s worried about me, but I show him the blouse, feeling embarrassed by its translucent luxury.
‘Put it on,’ he says.
‘No, it’s not really me.’
‘Go on.’
I pull off my jumper and T-shirt and put the blouse on. The material is fragile and crinkles against my skin. Rob watches me, as his hands tighten the laces of his shoes. ‘I like that. Very smart.’
‘Nah.’
He tells me there are muffins in the kitchen, he was given them yesterday by someone visi
ting from America, and he suggests we should warm them up for breakfast. In the kitchen he switches on the oven and puts water to boil. ‘This morning we might even have an overhead light in the kitchen,’ he says. He’s got a bulb from the office so now he’s just got to get the remains of that other bulb out. He pulls up a chair even though he can nearly reach the bulb.
‘So did you have a good time with Maya last night?’
‘Yes, fine.’ I’ve never told him about the papers I found at home, or the conversations I had with my mother, and I know that now I shouldn’t say anything to him about Maya. It won’t do any good and we’re enjoying this morning, so I shouldn’t spoil it. ‘But I was wondering – do you think my father might have had an affair with Maya?’
Rob looks down at me and shakes his head. ‘No. No. Your father wouldn’t have had an affair. Maya, perhaps, but not your father.’
‘But we always think people wouldn’t do that – and sometimes we’re wrong. Because, you know, my father used to stay at her flat in London after your –’
Rob snatches his hand back from the broken bulb. ‘Bugger.’ He steps down from the chair and shakes his hand up and down, wincing. ‘It’s hot. The switch must have been on.’ He turns the tap on, but the sink is full of yesterday’s pots and water splashes everywhere. I’m moving towards him and then I stop. Because just for an instant he’s ten years old, and we’re at Marsh End House, and he’s got water all down his shirt, and he’s crouching by the sink, with water spouting everywhere. I reach over, turn the tap down and pull some of the pots out of the sink. He puts his hand under the cold water but he won’t look at me. ‘It’s fine,’ he says. ‘It’s nothing.’