‘One day I received a summons from the head of the central documentary studio: I went to see him. He received me with great formality. He sat me down at the long table reserved for dignitaries. His secretary fluttered round us, and served us little sweet delicacies and sugared tea. “I have a project for you,” he told me: “A film about state goldmining operations. You’d have to travel far away.” “That would be something welcome for me,” I answered. “To the Sea of Okhotsk,” he said then: “To Magadan.” “Comrade director,” I asked him: “Do you know anything of my circumstances?” “I know them precisely,” he said: “I am authorised to make this offer to you.” “Offer—not command?” He held up a typed document and read aloud from it: “I am also authorised to inform you that Engineer Semyonov, in the pursuit of his surveying duties, succumbed to illness during his journey to the district of Anadyr, Chukotka Okrug.” I stayed motionless. I absorbed the blow in silence. “Did you understand me?” asked the director. “Perfectly well,” I said: “I knew this information long ago—I knew it before it happened.” “Serghiana Ismailovna,” he said: “Your father would have been proud of you—of your spirit.” And he made a little deferential movement of his head. “Comrade director,” I said then: “My father and my husband lived in an entirely different world from you.” I turned and left him. I didn’t care what happened next in my life.’
She looked at us both, then around the empty salon.
‘But what did?’ I asked her: ‘What did happen?’
‘A week later I was travelling from Moscow to Irkutsk to join the ethnographic team. The harsh-weather season was close ahead: the trains we passed were full of men and women returning from the camps: they looked like a parade of skeletons. The crew I was with were from the army film-production unit. They were quiet, resigned people. They knew who I was: they were kind to me. We reached our destination. We were shown very little there: the buildings at the centre of the settlement; the apartment blocks, the grey coastline: wrecked hulks of abandoned ships offshore, half-lost in the mist in Nagayev Bay. Trucks brought us to the goldmine where we were to film: it was deep in the taiga, hours down a broken haul road. We drove through the night; we arrived as dawn was breaking—but I could see nothing that shone or glittered there: it was a pit, vast, jagged, gouged out from permafrost and rock—and that rock was dull green and pale lifeless brown. It had held precious metal; it had yielded it. Men had died there, by the hundred—but it was a natural landscape, it had neither charm nor menace, it belonged to itself alone—it was somewhere that had not been made for men’s eyes to see and love.
‘We set to work. We were ordered to work fast. No contact with the men we saw on labour gangs: that was forbidden from the outset: they waved in our direction—we were told not to wave back. Everything we were allowed to film was staged: we hid the harshness: no images of spoil or tailings; no images of the wooden barracks or prisoners toiling away. I’d seen the signs along the road we travelled, all celebrating Dalstroi: “Work is honourable, glorious, valiant and heroic.” Those words reached into me. I thought to myself then: Dalstroi is where we’re bound: all of us—it’s everything—it’s the fulfilment of our Soviet world. The sound recordist on our unit had been with a tank brigade on the drive towards Berlin. He told me he would take a year on the Red Army frontline over a week in the Djelgala valley goldmining camps.
‘Before we left, we were ushered into to the headquarters block in Magadan. We filmed a meeting there with the Labour Force Administration chief. From his office you could look out and see the mountains in the distance and the pale light in the sky: like a world still coming into being. A silent man from State Security brought us in for the interview. He sat beside me. At the end of the meeting he followed me out and came up to me in the corridor. “Doubtless,” he said, “esteemed Serghiana Ismailovna, you would like to know something of the fate of Engineer Semyonov.” “Doubtless!” “I can tell you,” he said, “that he performed heroic work.” I said nothing. “He was here of his own free will.” “I’m sure,” I said. “He made scientific advances—advances of the greatest significance.” “I believe you fully,” I replied. Then the man came up closer, and whispered this to me: “He was looking for special structures—you must have heard them mentioned: structures in the rocks. Rare materials: he found them. He was certain of it. It was a triumph. A discovery of something magical and wonderful: but at high cost. He and his prospecting team had gone deep into the Koryak Mountains—where there’s no one, and nothing. It’s a remote place.” “Unlike here, you mean?” I said. “Remote even by these standards. He fell ill: it was impossible to evacuate him.” “Where from?” “Anadyr.” “I should like to visit that place one day,” I said. “Inconceivable,” he answered: “It lies within a military zone. It’s an area of strategic significance.” “Am I not a soldier?” I asked him: I was wearing an army uniform. “Even telling you this is telling you too much,” he said: “I do it because of my regard for you, and for your name. I myself have been there: often. As a location, it has a beauty all its own. You can imagine the soul setting out from there on a voyage to distant worlds.” “An unusual thing for a man with your function in life to say!” “I was a prisoner here once,” he answered: “Many things happened here before my eyes: nothing affected me as deeply as Engineer Semyonov’s death.” “Why’s that?” I said: “One man’s life is like another’s. All deaths have equal value.” “I was on the prospecting expedition,” he replied.” “You knew him?” I asked then: “You were with him?” He nodded his head, and in that moment looked away from me. “You sent back reports on him, I imagine?” “He was a mystic—a stargazer. There was nothing that could be done for him. He wanted what came to him to come.” “Who are you, comrade?” I asked him then: “May I know your name?” “Names in this world come and go,” he answered, and left me there.
‘We returned to Moscow with our footage. We made our little propaganda film. I’ve already told you about my life in the years that came afterwards, haven’t I? Endlessly, in fact, I’m sure.’
‘Not really,’ I said.
‘You know the essence—the details hardly matter: you know when the first changes came. There was a new faction at the helm: they relaxed their hold: there was a horizon for us, then: suddenly, there was a hint of space. My work became more straightforward: escapism, fantasy. I wrote scripts: I made sure there was funding for them: I made sure they followed the prevailing winds. The time came round to mark the Chelyuskin expedition: the exploring vessel trapped in arctic pack ice. A great chapter in the Soviet story—or a failure gilded and made into one. It was the anniversary year. We prepared the outline; we received approval; we found our director. I told him that we had to see the sites; nothing else would do—it was necessary for us to be real documentarists, to be relentless in our pursuit of accuracy: to bring back truth. And so he made the request to film where the drama had unfolded; out at the furthest edge of Soviet land—and beyond—in the old Dalstroi kingdom. Word came back: impossible! But I had a high-up ally of my own by this stage: that man you’ve heard Loewy and me speak about. I pressed him. It was arranged for us. We asked for special transport: it was given to us—an Ilyushin to fly our crew and equipment. We asked for access to the north-eastern coastline: they provided it.
‘They brought us to a missile base in Chukotka, on the Bering Sea. It was still under construction: everything gleaming, everything new. Across the bay was a settlement—and that was Anadyr. Silent, like an abandoned stage-set. A few blocks of housing, a port, storage tanks. Grey sky, grey water—the place where the world runs out. You could see it all in half an hour; we spent days there, weeks on end. I explored it, I knew it from every angle: the foreshore, the road up to the lighthouse, the empty docks. At night the northern lights were in the sky, and you could watch them, shifting, pulsing in a gentle rhythm, casting their lovely glow. By day there were seabirds, gulls and terns, hovering in the air above you, almost motionless—and that was all: that was ev
erything.’
She fell quiet, and looked up.
The maître d’hôtel had been sitting throughout this story, silent and solemn. He leaned forward now. ‘You found no trace of your husband, Madame Semyonova?’ he asked: ‘No grave, no memorial?’
‘I went to the little clinic hospital: they had no record of him. I knew there’d be nothing: I had no reason to believe a word of what I’d been told in Magadan. I’m sure he met his end soon after he left me. I’m sure he died in the mines—somewhere bleak and frozen, somewhere fearful like Elgen or Yagodnoe. They made a legend for me; they thought it would be enough for me, they thought I was the kind who needed stories to believe.’
‘A legend, madame?’
‘They gave him a heroic, tragic death: you know the idea: a death to live with, a death with significance: he’d been the leader of a scientific expedition, he was a martyr for the cause of knowledge, he’d found rarities—wonders, treasures, deep in the arctic wilds. And that’s why they eased my path. They wanted me to go in search of him, go on my quest—go to the ends of the earth, and grieve there, and imagine that I’d seen through all their duplicities; believe I’d found fulfilment: compose myself. It was a charade—a piece of theatre.’
‘But why, then,’ I asked her: ‘Why did you go?’
‘For the horror of it—to be in that red heaven; that emptiness. To see it; feel it. I asked myself if places could preserve the memory of people: I asked myself if I could sense anything of him at all in those northern wastes—if I could dream him into memory there.’
‘I hope you did,’ said the maître d’hôtel: ‘I hope that very much.’
‘I found something else,’ she answered: ‘It was calm all through the time we spent at Anadyr. Not a breath of wind in the air; a sea like glass—but it was a calm with an undertone. I was uneasy after a few days there. I had the sense that the stillness all around me was the stillness of exhaustion—the calm wasn’t peace—it was the aftermath of pain and suffering; of all the violence and the fury that had rained down on that far-off corner of the world.’
She placed her hands on the table. ‘Enough, now,’ she said: ‘Enough sentiment. In every life a time comes when you’ve reached your goal. The point when truth is shown to you—and everything after that is epilogue. I looked out across the dark sea at Anadyr and knew that time had come for me. It’s pleasant enough, of course, to be here with you, to sit in this dining room, to see this place again, this valley, this building that was the scene of such happiness for me—pleasant enough to live this life, read books, have knowledge—but the shadows stay.’
There was a noise from the front of the hotel as she said this: from the reception—laughter, voices.
‘Madame Semyonova,’ said the maître d’hôtel, and he stood up, and rested his hands on the back of the chair: ‘With your permission…’
‘Of course.’
He retreated. She glanced at her watch.
‘Past midnight. Can they be back from their evening already? So soon—it’s not possible. I can’t bear the thought of seeing all of them. Now go, my child, sleep soundly—think of what I’ve told you, and leave me with my thoughts.’
*
Years passed. I entered adulthood. Her story stayed with me—its light and dark, its details. But a time came when there were no new messages from Serghiana, she had fallen from the headlines, I could find no trace of her—so it was something startling for me when, one winter morning, chance intervened in my life in its imperious way, and I heard her name again.
I had just stepped off a Swissair flight: I was at Geneva airport. It was early in 1990: the last of the eastern regimes had fallen; my months of travelling with photographers and camera crews were over. I made my way into the arrivals hall: As I fetched my case I was conscious of a woman with blond hair looking at me. She was staring at me. The face was striking: familiar, in a far-off way.
‘Hello,’ the woman said then, and came closer: ‘Hello, my little someone.’
It was Josette—older, slightly faded, immaculately dressed, a look of amusement in her eyes. She tilted her head slightly away from me, and held the pose. ‘Kiss me on both cheeks, you poor creature,’ she commanded: ‘You shouldn’t forget your manners—always remember who you are.’
‘Josette—it’s you?’
‘You look dreadful,’ she said then: ‘Worn out: half-starved. Where have you been? Where are you flying in from?’
‘Bucharest.’
She gave knowing smile. ‘So that’s what you became—a journalist—a correspondent. What a choice! Self-effacement incarnate.’
I took a step back from her, and tried to read her expression. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘You know very well: it’s the simplest way to cancel out yourself: tell other people’s stories, not live inside your own. And they were always talking about that for you, weren’t they? They all thought writing was the key to power. Pure delusion: that was a dream from long ago. I used to imagine that you’d end up doing something else with your life: that you’d rebel against them, just a little. Make a little revolution of your own.’
‘And is this your part of the world now?’ I asked her.
‘Is that so unexpected?’
‘No more Paris? No more Malzahn?’
‘Ancient history! I got rid of him. There was a scandal. Perhaps you heard about it? Nothing? No? I live here now, with my current husband, and his daughters. We’re across the lake—at Cologny, up high. He’s a banker, or he has a bank, I should say, maybe—but I suppose you’d already figured that out, hadn’t you?’
She drew close again, and reached out her hand towards me. ‘Don’t flinch like that—I’m not going to hurt you. Let me see you properly: see your face. You still have that guarded look. I remember it, from the first time I met you, from when you were just a boy; when I took you up to visit Nietzsche’s chicken bone. How I felt for you in those days. I thought you needed protecting.’
‘There were people looking after me,’ I said.
‘Protection from them, exactly. Such deranged guardians you had: storytellers, fantasists: the empresses of exile—rulers of their own resort hotels. And what attentions they lavished on you: room service, boarding schools, hauteur, neglect.’
She glanced round in a restless way. ‘I should go,’ she said: ‘Not dwell on past time. It’s never a good idea.’ She waved her hand in a quick farewell, and turned away—then turned abruptly back. ‘And will you see your great-aunt?’
‘Who do you mean?’
‘Why, Serghiana, of course. Who else could I mean? She lives on the lake. Didn’t you know that?’ And she tilted her head in a questioning way.
‘I’ve rather lost contact with her,’ I said.
‘Truthfully? I thought you two were inseparable—like two particles bound together by the strong nuclear force—infrared freedom, ultraviolet slavery, that kind of thing.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing—pay it no attention. We had a dinner for the physicists at CERN the other night: we help in raising funds for them. It was fascinating—the things they told me. All quite bizarre—but that’s modernity for you, isn’t it? The rate of change overhauling us more and more, the faster we run? We poor mortal beings always losing the race.’
‘You were talking about Great-Aunt Serghiana. I thought she’d disappeared from the face of the earth.’
‘I won’t tell her you said that! She’s at Vevey. She has a suite in the Hotel Miramar—she has for years. It’s the one that looks like an Italian palazzo, with a row of linden trees in front of it. Very restful, I imagine. Near the marina—it’s hard to miss.’
I hesitated.
‘Just go—and see her,’ said Josette. ‘Go tomorrow—it would be a welcome visit—and a well-timed one. Don’t call first: surprise her. Bring her joy.’
All through this exchange a man in dark suit and peaked cap had been standing to one side, waiting, the expression on his face fixed. Josette made
a sign to him. ‘Here, Ruggiero—let’s be off.’ She handed him her little case.
‘Bizous,’ she called out to me, and waved again as they vanished in the crowd.
*
Two days later, my work tasks done, I took the lake steamer for Vevey and the mountains. The morning was cold and crisp, the peaks stood out like silhouettes against the sky, the landscape was as clear as a high-resolution photograph. There was the marina, and the promenade; there was the hotel behind its barrier of trees. Inside, in the reception, all was quiet. A young woman was sitting behind a scroll-top desk, reading. She looked up at me with a faint air of curiosity and went back to her book. She turned a page, and frowned, and gave a little laugh.
‘What are you reading?’ I said eventually.
She held up the book: a thick, parchment-coloured old paperback.
‘Céline,’ she said: ‘You know him?’
‘An inspired choice,’ I answered.
‘Were you looking for someone?’
‘Do you have a Russian guest staying here? The name is Semyonova. She lives in the hotel, I think, for much of the year.’
The young woman gave a sigh. ‘Serghiana’s been waiting for you—for some time. She’s in the Persian chamber—along the corridor.’
I took a few steps.
‘Here—in here, my child.’
It was the austere, familiar voice. And there she was, as angular and aquiline as ever, seated in a darkened salon full of draperies in dark-patterned fabrics, a samovar before her on a glass and metal tabletop. She had a wry expression on her face. Her hands were tightly clasped. I looked at her intently. I took her in. She turned away after a few moments, as if it hurt her to be seen.
‘Great-Aunt Serghiana,’ I said.
‘I’ve been expecting you—for two days—two whole days,’ she said in an accusing way: ‘And I hear you thought I was gone from the world: perhaps you even hoped it.’
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