If Only You Knew

by Alice Jolly

  I knew that I shouldn’t have been able to enjoy happiness bought at someone else’s expense. But, although I was frightened of being caught, I never really felt guilty. That part of me which should have felt guilt just wasn’t there. I knew that Jack didn’t like the situation any more than I did. I told him once that I felt guilty about my lack of guilt. He said, ‘Perhaps you can’t imagine how he might hurt because you don’t feel it yourself. Inflicting pain is always about a failure of imagination.’

  Around us, Moscow was clenched tight against the cold. Supplies of everything were running out – food, fuel, medical supplies. Every day my Russian colleagues at the college had a new story of contaminated food – engine oil in chicken, cleaning fluid injected into apples, fish full of mercury, radioactive carrots. Queues extended out into the streets. For most people it was impossible to buy meat, or soap powder. Washing machines and light bulbs were permanently unavailable. My colleagues explained that light bulbs used to be made in Estonia, washing machines in Armenia. Now those countries wouldn’t send anything to Russia unless the Russians sent them food.

  For days sleet spluttered down and the pavements were awash with freezing water. Even at midday the sky was twilight grey. There was talk of armed resistance, an uprising, a coup, but it was hard to imagine how anyone would find the energy for it. At street corners people stood holding one item for sale – a worn pair of boots, the gearstick from a car, a chipped china vase. They stayed there through rain and snow, as still as statues, their faces expressionless. Many of them were university lecturers, researchers or nurses.

  It seemed to me disgusting that Jack and I should live so fully in the midst of such misery. We were taking pleasure when pleasure was not on offer. I longed to do something to help, but I was as powerless as everyone else. Money wasn’t the problem, it was the lack of anything to spend it on.

  One day, on the way home, I saw a woman in tears in the street. A queue was breaking up and I knew she’d found no food. Although I had no more cash on me, I stopped and handed her a bag of shopping I’d bought for hard currency earlier in the day. The woman looked at me blankly and then peered into the bag. Gripping my hand in her grizzled paw she said in Russian, God be thanked. I walked away feeling cheap, knowing that I’d only really helped her so that later, at some moment of final judgement, I’d be able to say, Yes, I did try to help, I really did.

  One day, Rob and I met Jack in the street. It was a Saturday and for once a pale sun shone in the sky. We were walking along the Novyi Arbat through scattered stalls selling pirated tapes, tins of caviar, fur hats and pictures of the Kremlin. A woman knelt on a blanket amidst a collection of amber, Russian dolls, peasant scarves. A man with one arm was selling Western and Cuban cigarettes, glasses in their factory crates, and a brand new car axle, presumably stolen from a production line. I looked up and saw Jack from a distance, idling along, and for a moment I panicked. I must create a distraction, steer Rob in the other direction. But I didn’t know how to do it, and Jack continued to walk towards us.

  When he saw us, he looked up and smiled. Nothing in his face suggested that I was more than a casual acquaintance. We exchanged a few words about the weather. I nodded and smiled and felt my face flaming red. But Jack was quite at ease. I fiddled with my gloves, stared away down the street. Rob asked him whether he was still doing his mental-health work and he said no, he wasn’t, he was busy with some research. He’d never mentioned research to me.

  As we parted, Jack said, ‘Give me a call, and perhaps we’ll have lunch.’ His act was so convincing that I began to wonder if it was an act. Perhaps those hotel afternoons were something in my head? As he turned to go, strolling on down the street, I couldn’t stop myself from staring after him. He didn’t look back. Rob and I walked on, but I felt suddenly shaky and sick. It was like when I followed that figure through the streets, and I was so sure it was Jack. But it was someone I didn’t know at all.

  My birthday: 8 March. An empty bottle of shampanskoye stands on the bedside table in Room 815. The sheets are twisted up and the bedcover has fallen to the floor. I pick up my watch from the bedside table and find that it’s five thirty. I need to be back by six. Jack told me earlier that he had a present for me and now, as I sit on the bed, he hands me a small package wrapped in brown paper. On the front he’s stuck a white card which he’s edged with a pattern of loops and chains, drawn with his fountain pen. He’s written my name, the date, and Happy Birthday. I peel the paper away and find a book of Maiakovskii poems in Russian with English translations beside them. He must have asked someone to send it from America.

  I give him a thank you kiss and hand him my present. I’d wanted to wait and give it to him on his birthday, but I won’t see him then, and next week seems too late. It’s a tin of shortbread which I bought for him in England. The tin has a tartan pattern, and a red ribbon is tied around it. On the front is a picture of a Scottish piper. I found it difficult to choose a present for someone who possessed so little. I’m glad the shortbread will be transient. I couldn’t think of anything which would be worthy to sit among that worthless collection of objects, arranged with such care, in that rented room of his. He wants to open the shortbread and give me a piece, but I won’t let him.

  ‘You know, next week I have to go to Leningrad.’ He says it just like that, as his fingers fumble with the button on the cuff of his shirt. My tights continue to slide up my legs. I put my foot into Maya’s high heels and wonder what I’m doing wearing such stupid shoes. I must look a fool in them.

  ‘Oh yes? And when will you be back?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps two or three months.’

  I had thought if he went away it’d be for a week or two at the most. If Rob’s contract doesn’t get renewed then I won’t be here when he gets back. I finish dressing, concentrating on buttons, collars, cuffs. In the wardrobe mirror I can see his reflection, but he’s taking care not to look at me. I walk to the window, where net curtains hang from a wire. The sill is covered by a layer of dust, like the skin of a mouse. Outside, the sky is like unmarked paper. Any time of day, any time of year. So the turn has come, as I always knew it would. I think of Dr Gurtmann in his shiny pine room, with its hessian wall hangings and boxes of tissues. How would you describe your relationship with your mother? Do you have any friends of your own age? Do you suffer from nightmares, headaches, period pains?

  ‘So when exactly are you going?’

  ‘Monday.’

  ‘What? This coming Monday?’ I sit down on the bed and feel a sob rising in my throat. But then I look over at him, and his eyes touch mine, and I know he won’t really go. Or perhaps he’ll go for a week, then come back. This is all to do with his birthday, I’m sure of that.

  ‘So I’ll still see you next Monday?’ I try to make my voice casual.

  ‘That may be difficult. My train is at five.’

  ‘Well then, let’s have lunch.’

  He picks up his watch from the bedside table. ‘Yes, fine. Lunch – why not? But we should meet somewhere not far from the station. Perhaps the Lubianka Metro? We can have some lunch somewhere there and then I’ll be on the right line for the train.’

  Lunch. That’s what he says but when I see him, we’ll finish up coming here, and he’ll never get that train, I’m sure of that. I button up my coat and pick up my bag. We argue, then, about who’s going to pay for the room. He always wants to pay because, for the last couple of months, he’s had some money. But I always press him to let me do it and sometimes he agrees. He doesn’t like taking money from me, and usually I don’t like to see the awkward way he pushes my money into his pocket, but today I insist that I’m paying and I don’t care how he feels.

  We step out into the corridor and Jack turns out the light. The room dissolves into a confusion of flickering shadows. We walk along the red carpet, over the squeaking boards. The floor lady sits at her desk with her pictures of Lenin and his Soviet workers. She takes the key from us, and nods. Her face regist
ers nothing. We go down in the clanking lift and I stand beside him at the desk while Jack pays. I look at my watch again and see that it’s past six o’clock. I imagine Rob at home waiting for me. This evening Maya and Harvey have invited us to go out with them to celebrate my birthday. A beige shoe appears on the brown patterned carpet, then the swinging edge of a fur coat. Red nails flash near the desk. I turn to hide my face. The shoe shifts on the carpet. I taste panic in my mouth. I hurry past slot machines towards the revolving doors. Outside, the door is blocked by security guards and taxi drivers. My high-heels splash and stumble through a gutter swollen with ice and frozen water. It’s been raining and light flashes on every surface.

  ‘Eva, what are you doing? What’s the matter?’ Jack is beside me.

  ‘That woman … she saw us.’ My hand is gripped to my mouth.

  ‘Eva, calm down. Just calm down.’ He shakes at my arm, looks into my eyes. ‘It doesn’t matter. We could’ve been drinking in the bar.’

  ‘No, no …’ Why doesn’t he understand? ‘She’s a friend of Maya’s. She wears a fur coat and her hair is blonde.’

  ‘There wasn’t any woman like that.’

  He watches me with worried eyes and I know that some part of him wants to walk away and leave me here. I’d like to walk away from myself as well. I can’t breathe, and on the edge of my mind I begin to see the child. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Let’s walk. You need to sit down somewhere.’ But I don’t want to go with him. I don’t know who he is any more. Wherever we go, Estelle will follow us. Every window in Moscow is full of eyes. I pull away from him and hurry towards the Metro. His voice calls but I don’t look back. Suddenly I long to be at home, with Rob, eating supper at the kitchen table with our knees close. In the depths of the Metro I find a bench and sink down, my head gripped in my hands.

  The child sits on a metal chair in a wide corridor lined with doors. It smells of cut knees and plasters. High above, strip-lights hang down on chains. At the end of the corridor a nurse with a starched cap is writing in a book. The child rearranges the skirt of her dress again and again, trying to keep the creases out of it. In her hand she has a bunch of holly, heavy with red berries. Tinfoil is wrapped around the stalks. Today her father might come home, and then it’s Christmas, and after that an exhibition. Then after an exhibition there’s always a party. Her mother doesn’t want any of that. She never wants anything except pills for her headaches or a handkerchief for her cold.

  The nurse sails down the corridor and tells the child that she can go in now. She points at a door straight ahead. The child gets up, straightens her dress, holds the holly with both hands as though she’s a bridesmaid. She steps through the door and into a white room where a man lies on an iron bed. The room has a ceiling miles high, and a long window with a slatted blind. The child moves towards the bed but the man lying there isn’t her father. Surely the nurse pointed towards this room? She goes back out into the corridor and stands there, uncertain. The nurse has gone, the corridor is empty. The stems of the holly have made a mark on her dress. She creeps towards the next room and peers in. This room has the same white bed, the same high window. A man is lying on the floor, wearing pyjamas, curled up like a baby, sucking his thumb.

  No, no, dear. Not this room. Come along. Next door. The child is steered back to the room where she was before. The holly is falling out of the tinfoil, and she’s got to keep it together and not let any more marks get on her dress. She looks back but the nurse has gone again. She moves towards the bed. The person there is a black-and-white drawing of her father, an outline. The shading needs to be put in, to give him a proper shape. She longs to have some of her father’s paints so she can start to put the colour in. The man in the bed is staring up at the slatted blind. She moves closer to him. His head turns and he asks her for a glass of water. She lays the holly down, goes to the sink in the corner of the room, and takes a glass in both hands. She kneels on a chair and turns on the tap. She stands the glass between the taps while she turns the water off, then she goes back to the bed. The man takes the glass from her, raises his head, drinks and then hands the glass back to her. If he was really her father he would smile and pull her to him, kissing her cheek.

  Who do you think that kind girl was who went to fetch the water? The man whispers these words. The child smiles, trying to play the game.

  I don’t know, she says. Didn’t you know her?

  No.

  Do you think the girl who fetched the water was me?

  It’s possible. Do you think we should ask her?

  The child wriggles and laughs, but she doesn’t look at the man’s face. He’s staring at the blind and he waves a hand towards it. Of course, he never likes curtains or blinds closed, not even in the middle of the night. The child moves the chair from the sink and, standing on it, she pulls at the cord until the blind opens. A ragged three-quarter moon appears and a sprinkling of stars. Suddenly the man turns into her father. He has light and colour. He stares up at the window, the night sky, the ragged moon. The child goes to fetch her bunch of holly, she takes the tinfoil off the stalks and pushes them down into the glass. She asks her father whether the water in the glass will be enough and he says he’s sure it will. So many berries on the holly, he says, and so very red.

  The nurse comes in, smiles at the child, then reaches out for the cord. As the blind drops the child turns. Why doesn’t the nurse know that she shouldn’t have closed the blind? But the nurse has gone and the blind is down. She looks at her father and sees his face tighten. He’s turning back into the outline man. A low groan comes from between his lips. He stretches out his arm and the child tries to take hold of it, but he’s banging it up and down on the edge of the bed.

  The child climbs up on the chair and pulls at the blind but she can’t make it work. Behind her she hears the groaning, and sees the arm going up and down. Her father starts to shout and the child struggles with the cord. The nurse comes back and tells the child to get down from the chair. The child tugs at the cord. The nurse grabs her but she kicks and struggles. She has to get the blind up, her father needs to see outside. Her head is pressed against white cotton, but the toggle of the blind is still gripped in her hand. She wraps her body around it. The room is full of shouting and a sound like a dog howling. A smell of fresh laundry and antiseptic smothers her. She fights to get away from the white cotton. She sees a syringe in a kidney-shaped bowl. Suddenly the blind moves halfway up and the shouting stops.

  But her fingers are being prised away from the cord one by one. They will shut the blind again if she doesn’t keep hold of the cord. She catches at it again and pulls. With a crash the blind comes away from the wall and collapses, hitting her on the head, showering her with dust and plaster. The child looks up and sees a glimpse of that ragged-edged moon. The glass with the holly is smashed on the floor. But the howling has stopped. She’s pulled out into the corridor. Her mother is there, and next to her is a priest. He has hair like flames coming out of his head.

  Eva, Eva, what are you doing?

  She wants to go back into the room to pick the holly up, but her mother’s arms are tight around her. She tries to tell them about the blind, how it mustn’t be pulled down, but no one listens. They don’t understand. The nurses, and the priest and her mother – none of them understand. Her mother clings to her, smothering her, pulling her away from her father’s room. It’s time to go home now, they’ve got to go home. She mustn’t worry, everything is going to be all right. Please, please, don’t let them put the blind back up.

  30/16 Ulitsa Pravdy, Moscow

  8 March 1991

  When I get home Rob isn’t back, but a letter is lying on the kitchen table. On the back it has the address of my father’s solicitors printed in red. I sit down at the table and stare at it. I get up and walk to the window, look down into the courtyard, go back to the table. I pick the letter up and turn it over again and again, examining the two addresses, the postmark.

  So this is it. My mot
her said he’d never write, but she was wrong. Now that I need him he has come. I hold the envelope against me. From far below I hear the thread of a melody, one slow note after another, like a music box winding down. I push my finger under the flap, feel the paper unsticking. I know it’ll contain a brief letter from the solicitors and then, inside it, a letter from my father. My fingers stumble on the stiff paper. I wait for that other letter to fall out. I check inside the envelope. Nothing. The words on the solicitors’ letter blur in front of my eyes. My letter has been forwarded, they say, but no response has been received. The address they used may be out of date. It is their belief that my father is still in Mexico, and enquiries will be made.

  My hands are numb as I fold the letter away. I feel him fading from me. I imagine my letter, pinned down beneath the timbers of a blown-down shack on a turquoise beach. The corner of it flaps in the wind. The ink has washed from the letter, leaving only a watery purple stain. But he will get in touch with me, I know he will. I look up to see Rob at the kitchen door although I didn’t hear him come in. For a moment he stops and looks at the letter. Those notes still sound from below, slower and slower. Rob steps forward, wraps me in his arms, and we kiss awkwardly. ‘Brrrrh,’ he shudders, but the kitchen isn’t cold.

  He starts to open his backpack. ‘Happy Birthday again.’ He told me this morning he had a present for me but that he’d left it at the office. He’s digging around now, trying to find it. As he puts his pack on the table, he pushes papers to one side, deftly shuffling my father’s letter under my Russian dictionary. ‘Here we are.’ He hands me a flat package, wrapped in used Christmas paper, then looks at his watch. ‘OK, so we’ve got an hour before meeting Maya.’ He drops his coat on a chair, gets out glasses and a bottle of vodka.