‘I’m used to it.’
‘It was unkind.’
‘I’ve heard her be harsh with you, too, professor.’
‘That’s her way. And she’s on edge here—terribly on edge.’
‘Because of what she’s working on?’
‘That never presents any problem. No—it’s memory. The past. That’s what she’s here for. And I’m sure that’s why she wanted you to come—to spend these days here—so you could bring some lightness to her.’
‘I don’t think I’m following you at all,’ I said then.
‘She’s always sad when she comes back here: to Vulpera and Tarasp—it’s this whole valley—all the Engadine, in fact.’
‘Because of bad associations?’
‘Good ones. She came here with her first husband, years ago. You’ve surely heard her speak about him?’
‘Hardly ever.’
‘But you know he was a man of science?’
‘A geologist.’
‘Exactly so—and prominent, and gifted. Well connected, too. He had the backing of high-ups. And he had his ideas—his ideas and special theories.’
‘What kind of ideas?’ I asked.
‘Unusual ideas,’ replied Professor Leo, and a new expression—part anxiety and part excitement—came across his face. ‘Very unusual—I don’t imagine they did him any good in the end.’
‘Did you know him? Did you ever meet him?’
‘No, no—this was in the days before eastern scientists could do much travelling. I know the outline of the story—but once he fell from grace, his name went underground. He was a Siberian. He had a true northern childhood: he grew up beyond the Urals. And he had a northern death as well. He vanished into Dalstroi.’
‘Into what?’
‘You’ve never heard of Dalstroi?’ Professor Leo smiled, and shook his head: ‘Once those two syllables were enough to strike fear into every heart. It’s an abbreviation: Soviet-style. Far Northern Construction Trust. Dalstroi built the mines and labour camps—out in the arctic wastes: in the Kolyma—in the ranges beyond Magadan. Madame Serghiana never told you any of this? Nothing—no? Semyonov worked on its projects: he built dams for them, and power stations. That’s why he was sent here—when the war was over—to study installations in the West. She travelled with him—it was a kind of honeymoon for them. They went to the Valais, to the high dam at Dixence: they saw it when it was still being built. They came here too—to the Graubünden. It was a golden time for her: she must be one of the only people in the world who finds dams and power stations romantic. That’s the real reason why she comes here: she won’t tell you, she keeps it as a secret, I’ve never heard her breathe a word about it—to any of these westerners—but it’s true. Every summer, she goes back to the sites she saw with Semyonov all that time ago. Last year I took her to Sion and Dixence; only yesterday we all drove out to the reservoir at Punt dal Gall. She hides her feelings. Still, it’s hard for her to be in those places. Time passing only seems to make it worse. I’ve said more than I should have. Please—don’t let her know.’
‘What kind of ideas, professor?’
‘Semyonov’s? He led prospecting expeditions in the taiga. For uranium. For gold. They were the first surveys: deep into Chukotka and the Verkhoyansk. But he was a dreamer: somehow he convinced himself he’d found rocks that came from asteroids: from space. It was a scandal in Soviet science. Enough! Say nothing now—here’s Madame Serghiana coming over. She wouldn’t want us talking about him.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s like a profanation for her to hear his name spoken by others—a sacrilege.’
Serghiana reached us. She leaned against the terrace railing next to me, and stared out. ‘Such splendour,’ she said: ‘So inhuman. So heedless of us.’
She turned, and gave Professor Leo an inquisitorial look. ‘Talking about me again, Lyova? That’s not good.’
‘But you’re such an interesting subject,’ he said.
‘Is that the best you can come up with as an answer? You were much quicker when you were still living in the eastern paradise, and you used to follow me round in Prague and make reports on me. Your excuses were better then—your cover stories too. In fact I think I preferred you in those days.’
She gazed up at the sun and breathed in dramatically.
‘Light,’ she said: ‘Pure, blazing light. I could walk all day with this pale sun shining down. Ready?’ She glanced at me.
‘I’m still in recovery from yesterday,’ said Professor Leo.
‘I wasn’t inviting you, Lyova,’ she said: ‘Come, my child—just you and me. We’ll take the path down through the forest. Our secret shortcut from before. Quickly. Let’s make our escape.’
Rock steps, deep shade, sharp turns—the sound of the river far below us: Serghiana led the way. She made a gesture to me at one point to take her hand: I held back.
‘No?’ she said, and shrugged: then nothing.
I followed. Minutes passed. The path divided. She paused.
‘Another of these silent excursions of yours,’ I said to her: ‘It’s so exasperating when you do this. I don’t know why you wanted me to come with you. I don’t know why you wanted me here at all.’
‘Is that so?’ said Serghiana, quietly: ‘It’s such a mystery? Then let me tell you. It’s because I need you to be here. Did you want to hear me say it? That I need you to come with me. That it’s I who need you now—not the other way around. I think you already understand that. I think you know it very well.’
‘But it’s not the way it was,’ I said to her, and she looked back at me.
‘It’s not?’
‘How could it be? You sent me off to boarding school on another continent. It was like being banished. We’re practically strangers now.’
‘Strangers?’
‘Yes, strangers. We hardly see each other anymore—and when we do, it’s in some crumbling old hotel from the last century, and there’s always a drama going on, always turmoil, never silence, never a moment’s peace, never the slightest chance to talk. And it’s like that on purpose: you want it to be that way. It’s how you run your life: full of schemes and projects, endless people waiting to see you, queueing for a snatch of time with you: you at centre stage, and all your extras hanging round. We’re not close, the way we were when I was spending every afternoon with you, when you took me with you travelling, from country to country, place to place, just the two of us together, for days, for weeks on end. It’s nothing like that now: and I’m not what I used to be.’
‘That’s the full charge sheet?’
‘Yes—for now.’
‘Of course we’re still close,’ she said then: ‘You don’t know what closeness is. It’s a bond, not a feeling. You just don’t see it. You don’t see yourself. You think like me, you speak like me, you even use my favourite words the way I use them, your eyes see like mine—you’re made up from fragments, just the way I am—you’re from nowhere—and you belong nowhere: you have nothing.’
‘Concisely put,’ I said.
‘Nothing except for me—and what I give you—and I’m giving you everything I am. Now, come—we go down this way. Hear that—the ringing, clashing sound—rock on rock, stone on stone, water pulverising everything? Do you remember where we are now? We were all here together once, a long time ago. No? Being here on this path doesn’t bring it back to you?’
‘Not really.’
‘It does to me. I can see the day. Clear morning: Indian summer—we were walking into town, we’d left the hotel terrace, we came this way then too: you were a little boy—with all the sweetness of a child. You asked me about the river: what happens to everything that’s washed away. That question—it brought me a sudden stab of sadness. You could tell. You asked me why. You turned to your poor mother and you asked her. You said: “Why is Aunt Serghiana always so quiet and sad, and so alone?”—that’s what you used to call me in those days, remember: both of you. And your mother said—“
Because she knows what the world’s like.” “Doesn’t everyone know that?” you asked her. “Very few people do,” said your mother, in a serious voice: “But that’s not the only reason,” she went on. “Aunt Serghiana came here, once, years ago, with her husband, whom she lost—and being here reminds her of him.” “I wish we could make her happy again,” you said—and I found that very touching. I walked on ahead. The time I had here before came back to me in those moments: I saw myself and him.’
‘Will you ever tell me about that time?’ I said: ‘Properly? You start to, but then you stop at once; you keep it as a mystery.’
We had come out at the riverbank. Pale blue water, foaming, flowing fast. She stopped. We stood side by side.
‘The same river that washes things away,’ she said: ‘Your river.’
‘I heard the first time you came here it was some official kind of journey you’d been sent on,’ I said.
She laughed. ‘Is that a question? No, it’s not. I knew old Loewy would tell you something. I asked him not to—and I knew he would, and knew he’d try to swear you to secrecy—but you’re not much of a secret-keeper, are you?’
‘It’s hard to keep things from you—don’t tell him I said anything.’
‘My child—I don’t mind. How could I? It’s not a secret for me—not at all. It’s always in my thoughts—it’s the memory of a time that’s dear to me. And Lyova’s right—he knows something of the story—from the outside at least. It was a scientific mission they sent us on—or that’s what we thought, in our blindness, then. And I’d like to tell you about it all: those days; what led up to them. Why not? Before you’re swept away from me—swept into life.’
She began: she spoke in a clipped way, as if describing someone else, someone remote from her: as if reciting facts from a dossier: the childhood she spent in the mountains, her wartime years, her father’s fate, the memories she had of him; her first studies, what she’d hoped for, what her life turned into; then, and only then, at last—she smiled slightly—Semyonov: her first meeting with him.
She paused, and gave me an assessing look.
‘Why wouldn’t you ever tell me about those days when I was younger?’ I asked her.
‘Shall I say it didn’t seem important for you to know these things then? Or that I knew everyone else would tell you their own versions of my life? All of them—Keleti, Daru, Palafay. But none of them saw me truly: they had no picture of the way I’d lived, what I’d seen before I joined their little world; and none of them knew Semyonov. I wish I could describe him to you: describe our time together here. Would you like that?’
‘That would be wonderful,’ I said.
‘It would be wonderful, if we could bring back the ones we’ve lost: give them life again in words. But when I try, I find I’m describing scenes I barely remember: moments that escape me; events I don’t understand: accidents, coincidences, patterns repeating.’
She broke off. She shook her head.
‘Where did I get to,’ she said then: ‘What was I telling you last?’
‘Science—geology—your first time at some institute: you didn’t sound as if you liked it very much.’
‘Of course: the institute. Of course: Moscow. I’ll go on.’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘Of course I do.’
Her husband’s project; his team: their tasks. How she and he had travelled in the Alps all through one summer on their own: the sites they went to, everything they saw: high mountain barrages, the first ones being built, vast construction camps—ornate, ordered, beautiful.
‘How majestic they were for him,’ she said: ‘He always meant to come back here—to see them finished: their high walls of curved concrete—their sheets of water underneath the sky. That’s why I come to see them. That’s why I make my visits every year: for him. Not because I like the country, or the old hotels—it’s the knife of memory for me.’
‘He never thought of staying: you never thought of it?’
She turned to face me; she looked shocked.
‘Not going back? You mean defecting? Is that what you’re asking me? Him? But he had his projects, his responsibilities, that was what he lived for—to build—to make the East. The bridges and the barrages you’d see if you went there today—all the dams that bear his imprint, on the Angara River; on the Amur and the Yenisei: he already knew the sites: every blueprint was drawn and perfected in his head.’
‘And was he able to build them? Any of them?’
‘Let’s walk on,’ she said. ‘Climb a little—free the mind from its shackles—let it roam. We stayed here, in Vulpera, in the hotel where we’re all staying now. It was a palace, to our poor eyes then, at least, our Soviet eyes—something unbelievable—it was grander to us than the Tauride or Peterhof—lovelier than the Hermitage. In those days, there were very few tourists left so late in the season, when we arrived. We had the forest paths and high valleys to ourselves. The hotel was just as it is today: the same wood-panelled walls, the frescoes everywhere in Jugendstil—and there was music in the salon, once darkness fell: they had a house pianist who played Chopin from memory—there was even a visiting string quartet. After the years we’d lived through of war and hunger, coming here was like being shown a glimpse of heaven. Every evening, Semyonov would write his reports at a desk in the reading room; and I’d sit near him, and make sketches in my notebook, and look out into the night—or we’d go walking on the terrace high above the river and stare up to the stars. He knew them all: he’d been a navigator in the war. I knew nothing, I thought at last my true life was beginning, it was a magic time—every day I spent with him was a day of discoveries.’
‘Scientific ones?’
‘Those, of course, up among the peaks and glaciers—above the tree line, where the rocks were open.’
‘Open?’
‘Where they were exposed, and bare—so they could be read. They were like books for him—books written in the stone.’
‘And you went up there with him?’
‘Naturally. Haven’t you been listening to me? We were always together.’
‘And that’s why it was so difficult for you! I see it now—why you were so on edge, that day when we went up in the funicular—when we were alone on the summit—up on the rocks at Cassons Grat.’
‘When was that, in fact?’ she said, in a casual tone of voice: ‘Was it the same summer that we read the Princesse de Clèves together?’
‘The year after. The year of the Prague Spring—don’t you remember? You must. You have to: it was the day that changed everything. For me. For both of us. It was that same day in August—the day the tanks went in.’
‘My child, don’t be so agitated. There’s no need. All that was such a long time ago—an age ago—half your lifetime ago—and so much has happened since. What seemed important then seems like a little detail in the past’s slipstream now.’
I stared at her. ‘When you heard the news that day you said it was a great disaster, not a minor detail—I remember. I heard you, I was there.’
‘Pit your memory against mine, by all means,’ said Serghiana: ‘But be precise. Don’t make things up. I remember that day—much better than you: I said it was a tragedy, and entirely predictable. I understood at once that morning the way that things were going to be. It’s the insignificance of what happened then that’s the real horror.’
‘But—’
She raised a hand in warning: she turned to face me: she cut me off. ‘All these interruptions,’ she said: ‘You make it very plain: it’s obvious what I’m telling you means nothing to you, it’s a joke—it’s without interest for you. We don’t have to go on. It doesn’t matter anyway—no one knows this story properly; there’s no need for you to hear any more of it. Maybe one day I’ll find someone else I want to tell it to.’
Her face was tense; she looked at me with bitter eyes. ‘We’ll go back now. Back to the pleasure palace: to the movie people; they’ll dilute you. It’ll make t
his easier to bear.’
‘Please,’ I said, and stopped.
‘Yes? What? And think before you speak!’
‘I’m not trying to fight with you, Great-Aunt Serghiana.’
‘But you are,’ she said, in a wondering way: ‘Don’t you see that? That’s exactly what you’re doing—it’s all you’ve been doing since you got here: fighting me; defying me, betraying me. I told myself on the hotel terrace it was nothing, you were testing me—testing yourself, but now I look at you: I look into your eyes and I see they’re dark, dark as night. You’ve closed yourself against me. As if you’re doing everything that’s in your power to devastate me—as if you have to do that to break free.’
‘You know that’s not true,’ I said: ‘That’s not what I’m trying to do. Not at all. And I know everything that you’ve done for me: I’m full of gratitude.’
‘Gratitude! I don’t want your gratitude: gratitude’s a weak, pulpy thing…’
‘But what is it that you do want from me? Why am I here?’
At this, she smiled: it was a smile of pain. ‘You ask me that? You? Isn’t it clear to you? Hasn’t it always been clear?’
As she spoke, she stretched out her hand towards me as if across a dreadful void. The expression on her face changed: it softened. ‘It’s not a thing to say aloud. There aren’t the words for it. It should be understood between us. I want you to live truly—live well—be nearer to the truth and light than me. That’s all: all I’ve ever wanted from you—for you.’
She looked at me, and said nothing more. The forest all around us suddenly seemed still. No rushing sound from the river far below; no wind in the air. I heard the noise of my own breathing. I could see Serghiana staring into my eyes, waiting for me to speak.
‘Forgive me,’ I whispered to her, and I mouthed the words a second time: ‘Please.’
‘Of course,’ she said then: ‘Of course—it’s done. I’d forgive you anything the moment that you asked me to: everything! You already know that too. Whatever it is you do to me, I forgive you: you could stab me with a blade and I’d forgive it. Forgive at once.’
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