If Only You Knew

by Alice Jolly

  The steps up to the veranda creak under my feet. The floor is wooden planks, painted brown. Various objects from his Moscow room are scattered on a table – that shell paper-weight, a vase, piles of papers. I bend to pick up his book and he wakes, blinks several times, then slowly reaches out to me. For a moment I stare at his fleshless hand, and hesitate. The sun coming in through the glass above is so bright it dazzles our eyes. I reach out and pull his fingers up close to my face and kiss his knuckles. He catches me around the waist and pulls me towards him, burying his face against my hip. ‘Oh my dear, I’m so glad you’ve come.’

  I lean down and kiss his hair. The last five months cease to exist. He and I are back in the life we were meant to have. I pull up a low stool and sit close to him. Although he looks ten years older than when I last saw him, a glow radiates from inside him, illuminating his skin and eyes. He looks as he did at the Church of the Resurrection. His fingers stroke my neck, just below my ear. ‘Such lovely weather. Just look at the flowers.’ He points up the garden and smiles, that familiar first-time smile. His cheeks are hollow, and dark blue shadows have gathered under his eyes. I look down at those raw fingers and remember how they touched me, cupping my breast, or sliding down over my hips.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I’m so sorry. You know, I wanted to spare you this.’ I pull my stool closer to him, listening to the familiar sound of his breath. In the distance, a hammer strikes metal and a train rumbles into the station.

  I tell him then about my father and the ice. ‘You need to go and see Maya,’ he says. ‘You need to insist that she tells you exactly what happened. It isn’t good enough to have some vague idea.’ I tell him that I won’t be able to speak to her, I’m not strong enough.

  ‘I don’t know why I always believed her,’ I say. ‘I suppose it was because I was sure she loved my father.’

  ‘But of course,’ Jack says. ‘We tend to forgive anything if passion is involved.’ He shifts in his chair, coughs, draws in a short breath. ‘Do you think that this party you can remember was on the sixth of January 1967?’

  ‘Yes, it was.’

  ‘I wonder if that night had some particular significance for your father? Something to do with his work or his astronomy? I don’t know. Perhaps I’m wrong. I could find out, but there’s information I would need. I could ring someone in America and ask them to send it.’

  I should ask him what information he needs but I’m frightened to keep talking about that night. So instead I tell him that I’m leaving Moscow in two weeks, but he doesn’t seem to hear. ‘I can stay tonight,’ I say. ‘At least I can do that.’ That pleases him, although he warns that the house has no electricity, and only an outside loo.

  For a long time I sit in silence, holding his hand. I know that I should be making some kind of plan, but I can’t let my mind move out of this moment. I suggest to him, once again, that he should go and see a doctor but I only do it out of a sense of duty. I know that he won’t agree. The wind stirs the long grass of the lawn and the nodding heads of the yellow flowers. I look out down the garden at the tin roofs of other dachas visible through the trees.

  ‘I don’t want this to end,’ I say.

  ‘Eva, you don’t understand. You think that time is measured in minutes, and hours and days. But it isn’t – it’s measured in intensity of feeling. Some moments always remain with us, they become the backdrop to all the other days.’

  ‘But why isn’t it possible just to make time stop?’

  ‘It is possible. We have. Time is driven by desire, isn’t it? So when you have everything you want, then time ceases to exist.’

  And that’s how it seems as we sit together staring out down the garden.

  ‘Jack, you know about my father. This thing between you and me – it isn’t only about that, is it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What then?’

  He turns to kiss me. ‘Most things have an explanation. But not this.’

  The day slides past in scattered sunlight. We eat bread and cheese at the table under the hot glass roof, and carry buckets of water from the tap near the gate. The drowsy buzz of a mower sounds from next door. I drink glass after glass of water because I can’t stop coughing. Jack jokes that I’ll die before him. As the sun cools and the shadows lengthen, he says he’ll walk to the shop near the railway station. He wants to buy us some supper. I think it’s too far for him but he insists, and he wants to go on his own.

  I watch him heading up the lawn, his steps still straight and energetic, then I step through the double doors into the house. It’s smaller than it appears from the outside. Downstairs, there’s a bedroom and a sitting room and upstairs, two bedrooms. It’s all simple and austere, unlived-in, decorated a long time ago. The smell is of damp wallpaper, moss, and unaired beds. Flies buzz against the windows. In the sitting room, wallpaper with a fine stripe is peeling in places. It feels like a house where someone has died.

  When Jack gets back we eat garlic sausage and bread and tomatoes. As the day fades, he lights candles and stands them on the windowsill. The damp sitting room smells of earth and garden and wax. Now, for the first time, neither of us feels any need to talk. All evening Jack is restless, wandering from the bedroom to the sitting room and back, staring out at the navy sky. An ancient radio, the size of a television, and made of mahogany, stands on the top of a cupboard and Jack fiddles with the knob but it only crackles and fizzes. It usually works, he says. What’s wrong with it? It’s a warm night and he opens the doors to the veranda then shuts them again.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I ask.

  ‘I’m not sure. Perhaps there’ll be a storm tomorrow.’

  We go to bed in the downstairs bedroom. The walls of this room are thin, and metal windows are cut into them at the front and the back. Jack brings in the candles from the sitting room and places them on the bedside table. A crooked wardrobe stands cramped in next to a chest of drawers. Above us hangs an oval mirror with a curly metal frame. The carpet is patterned in squares of brown and gold. The trees grow close to the back window, their branches tapping against the glass. On top of the chest of drawers is that wooden box with the ivory clasp, three Metro tokens, a green toothbrush with splayed bristles, Jack’s fountain pen. He sees my eyes wandering over the room.

  ‘I’m not sure now what I’m going to do with this stuff,’ he says. ‘I’d planned to burn everything but I don’t know whether I’ll be able to do it. I would ask you, but I’m not sure you’ll have time.’

  I try to remain steady. ‘I would do, of course, but you’ll need them …’ My eyes fix on that wooden box. A wisp of conversation floats back to me from the day when that ray of sunlight slanted over the façade of the church. You’re going to get more and more ill, and lie in some rented room waiting to die. No, no, it won’t be like that.

  I lie down next to him in the short and lumpy bed, beneath the oval mirror. The bed is damp and hard so he gets up and puts his overcoat over us.

  As I lie awake, watching an oblong of light from the window moving up the wall, I think again of that wooden box, of his plan to burn all his possessions, and I’m seized by a sudden fear. It seems to me that something apocalyptic has been woven into the details of the room. My mind travels back to that long-ago newspaper article about Stalin’s Terror and the twenty million bodies. I hear the dead close up at the window. I drift into fretful sleep and wake with sweat running down my back and words gabbling in my throat. Jack is staring down at me and I grip my hands around his arm. ‘I need your help. I need your help.’

  ‘Of course,’ he says. ‘Of course.’

  And then we start to talk, and we don’t stop. Our words go on through sleeping and waking, through the branches tapping at the window, the sounds of birds, the creaking of the wooden house. Jack, I’m frightened. What will I do? After you’ve gone, what will I do? You’ll get married to Rob, he says. Just like that, so certain and calm. I twist in his arms, staring at him in the darkness. I won’t. Not now,
I won’t. I can’t do that. Our relationship has only ever been about protecting each other from the past. But then I wanted to know, and that has changed me. But he hasn’t changed at all.

  I’m not so sure, Jack says. I think if one person changes, then others automatically change as well. It’s just we can be slow to see it. Everything that you see in me is there in him as well – it’s just that you haven’t yet uncovered it. He hasn’t left you, has he? Something keeps him there. You have something he wants. You could help him if you decided to. It’s up to you to choose.

  I wonder why he doesn’t leave me? I say. I don’t know, Jack says. Sometimes people accept a situation of minor pain in order to avoid some far greater pain.

  I doze, wake, hear those branches on the window, see that oblong of light high on the ceiling. My sleep is clouded with half-seen images and I wake again, crying, biting my hand. I tell him then about what happened when he left. And now it’s going to be the same again, isn’t it? No, no. I didn’t cause the pain, you know, I only uncovered it. And it doesn’t have to be the same this time. It’s your choice. You need to go and see Maya. That’s what you need to do. I can’t, I won’t be able to. You can. You will. You’re much stronger than you know. This long journey – most people would never have come this far. You’re saner than just about anyone I’ve ever met. You’ve been trying to find out the truth and no one has helped you. That is hard beyond anything else.

  The hours slide by. I wake, cough, doze, cough. Those words I heard as the child’s shoe banged against the kitchen chair. Jack, that’s in the genes, isn’t it? That kind of illness? No, no, no. Jack’s voice is firm and he’s gripping me tight. That kind of illness may be genetic and it may not. But there’s nothing wrong with you. You didn’t inherit that from your father. What happened is quite different. Your mother was always terrified that you would inherit his problem. And you know the strange thing is, when someone is frightened of something, they often create conditions which increase the chances that it’ll happen. You’ve been lied to all your life. Don’t you consider what the effects of that must have been?

  All along I wanted to make sense of it, I say. I wanted to understand, but once I found out about his illness I realized that maybe there isn’t any sense. Jack moves my head back from him, and fixes his eyes on me. No. No. Don’t think that. It isn’t right. Why? I say. Because the mad are really sane? My voice is weary.

  No, not that. But the mind tries to heal itself – and the process of healing can be very strange. Things do happen for a reason. Promise me that you’ll believe in that? Do you promise? Yes, I do. I do.

  But you and I? I ask. Why has our friendship always been thwarted? I pull the sheets up over me. Thwarted? he says. I don’t think so. I think in time we’ll find this is all exactly as it was intended to be. He runs his hands over my spine. Eva, I know you can’t see it now, but you must have faith – in some overall goodness, some abundance.

  Oh, because it’s all going to work out right in the end, is it? No, not that. Absolutely not that. But there will prove to be reason in this. As he says this, I understand that he’s talking as much to himself as to me. You know that despair is perhaps the one sin for which we can never be forgiven? We all know that nihilism, hopelessness, cynicism exist … But we must never lend our spirit to those forces. You understand that, don’t you? Now go to sleep, he says.

  And strangely I do. And through the night his words stay in my head. I hear them repeated again and again. You must speak to Maya. You can do it. You have far more strength than you know. There’s nothing wrong with you, nothing at all. I know that Jack’s right. I’m going to be all right. I don’t know how it will happen, but I’m sure that it will.

  I wake to find that Jack is already up. My neck aches and my throat is raw. At the window, the sun is large as it emerges over the tops of the trees. Dew flashes on blades of lolling grass. I pull on my dress and go out to the veranda, taking a towel with me so I can get some water and wash. A faint wind shivers over the garden. Smoke rises from the chimney of a distant dacha. The sound of an axe chopping wood breaks through the air. The morning is so full of blessing that it makes me happy, despite myself. Jack is sitting in the veranda armchair, his feet bare, his shirt hanging out. He’s staring down the garden, soaking it all up. ‘When I’m gone and you see flowers like that, will you look at them and think, he would have noticed that?’

  ‘Yes, I will.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course. I’ll always think of that.’

  For the first time I have the sense that Jack is frightened. It’s as though he’s given me all the strength he had, and now there’s nothing left for him. Yet still he walks down the path, with his sleeves rolled up, and he’s carefree and easy, swinging the bucket. As he passes the dacha next door, he raises his hand to greet someone there. Then he bends down and puts the bucket under the tap. After he’s filled it, he moves back to the neighbour’s fence, and stops again. The edge of a Russian voice, suddenly questioning, unsettles the air.

  Jack picks up the bucket again and walks a few more steps. He’s got more water than we need and his shoulder is pulled over to one side. He stops and looks back towards the fence. I start to walk across the grass towards him. He picks up the bucket and takes two or three steps. The bucket tips, spilling water on to his feet. He stops for a moment, puts the bucket down, stretches out his arm, flexes it. He draws a short breath and I hurry towards him. He’s leaning to pick up the bucket again, but I catch hold of the handle. ‘Jack, let me –’

  He pulls at my arm, his eyes wide and blank. ‘Eva, listen. That man … It’s on the radio. Yesterday, Gorbachev was deposed.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘An announcement – he’s unable to continue as President due to ill health.’

  I’m not really listening. This is just one more Moscow rumour. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I shrug and reach for the bucket again. ‘Oh yes? And so what happens now?’

  His fingers dig into my arm. ‘Eva, there’s been a coup. Yesterday.’

  I make an effort not to laugh. That word has floated around me all the time I’ve been in Moscow. But a coup can’t happen now – not in August, when everyone is away on holiday. Anyway, what exactly is a coup? What happens? The bucket standing on the grass suddenly seems dangerously innocent and vulnerable. Around us the morning is still waking, the mist dispersing, the sun climbing up above the line of the trees. Birds are chattering on a telephone wire, and in the next-door house a child is crying. ‘We need some water,’ I say. ‘Let’s carry the bucket back.’

  ‘Yes. Let’s do that.’ We walk back together, holding the bucket between us. Our feet move in time, we keep the bucket steady so it can’t bang against our legs. But just as we’re getting close to the house, my ankles tangle and water splashes across my bare feet. We put the bucket down and I sit on the table, reaching for my towel. Jack takes it from me and bends down to wipe my feet. His breath is tight and his hand clutches at the table, but he dries my feet all over, moving the towel over my toes, the tops of my feet, my ankles. When he’s finished he lays a sombre hand on my knee.

  Then he walks into the house and turns on the radio. The sound of classical music swoops and falls through the sparse room. A clarinet plays a swirling melody, violins tremble. Jack fiddles with the knob, the radio fizzles, then the music starts again. ‘This is what they always do,’ he says. I want to take the radio from him and stop that music. ‘We need to go into the city.’ Jack stumbles into the bedroom and tries to pick up some books from the floor but he can’t bend down. He sits on the bed, his hand pressed against his chest. ‘The plotters have closed down all the television stations and the newspapers. They’re taking control of the city.’

  To me, the idea that anyone could ever control Moscow seems ridiculous. ‘Jack, surely the best thing we can do is stay here?’

  ‘No. I need to go back. There’s Mrs Pastukhova. And Kashtanka.’

  The dog? B
ut there’s no point in arguing. Jack’s already far away from me. Sweat has gathered on his forehead and his hands tremble. He goes through to the sitting room and crashes his finger down on to the radio button. The silence is full of questions. Images I’ve seen of the 1917 revolution flash in my mind. Blood in the snow, flesh ripping, metal against bone. And those fuzzy pictures of Vilnius, stick figures dodging, caught between the tanks and a high wall, the sound of gunfire, screaming.

  I stand at the window and stare out at the treacherous sun. Only those few hours of happiness yesterday. And even that was unreal, because the coup had already happened. Jack says that people are gathering at the White House to defend it and that we should go there and join the protest. But I can hear defeat in his voice.

  ‘The West won’t let this happen. They’ll support Gorbachev.’ But my cheap optimism can do nothing for Jack. This has shocked him at a level beyond my understanding. Where I come from, tragedy is a train strike or a hospital closure. For people here, it’s twenty million dead. I think of those china cups in his room, edged with their line of gold. And the photograph of the pony and trap, the women in long skirts, the small boy in his plus fours. For him this is history repeating itself.

  ‘Jack, please, just sit down. I’m going to get everything ready, then we can go.’ He sits on the bed, uncertainly, while I gather together his books. I find his suitcases under the bed and pack everything into them. I want to wrap my hands around each object, register its exact feel, so that I’ll remember later. I make tea, find a clean pair of socks and his shoes. He sits like a small child, fumbling with his socks. I try to help him, touching those alabaster feet. But the socks are stubborn, they catch on his toes, the heel finishes up on top. Suddenly he’s crying, tears pouring down his face. I remember when he cried once before, in that hotel room. I was embarrassed by him then. Now I’m envious.