A new day was dawning.
And I felt a need for something new. But what? New life? New sensations? No idea. New illusions, more likely.
I watched it growing light. Nature was raising the curtain on a new day, presaging, I felt increasingly certain, a fresh beginning.
A cloudless, bluish sky, and, though not yet visible from my window, a gentle yellow sun bringing a sparkle to the snow. No lights opposite any longer. My watch showed 9.45. The day fell short of expectations, but that evening Lena rang.
“Better?” I asked.
“Yes. Miss me?”
“Been terribly lonely.”
She sounded happily surprised.
“Really? All right to come?”
I would have preferred the usual “Be there in an hour” calling for no response.
“Of course.”
“Something funny about your voice today,” she said. “Be there in an hour.”
I sat at the kitchen table and waited, with growing eagerness to see and hold her. Angry at my long solitude without her, I had forgiven her within ten minutes of her call. Forgiven her on the score of her still wanting me. Maybe she thought the same way about being wanted by me. And here was evidence. But the on-off nature of our relationship – her never-seen but operative timetable of appearances and disappearances – prompted anxiety as to the fragile, short-term nature of it. Her double life and double name suggested less than full value in our love-making, but so what? “All or nothing” being not much of a slogan, since nothing was what you usually got in the end. Not that I was ready to dedicate myself to anyone wholeheartedly, even a woman.
Hearing the bell I sprang to my feet and ran to the door with surprising impatience.
“Just let me get my things off,” she laughed, as we kissed in the doorway. “There’s no rush.”
Her long black jacket with fur-trimmed hood went onto a hook, and there, in black slacks and emerald sweater, she was.
“So you missed me?”
My missing duly assuaged, she produced champagne and a bag of food, and we took ourselves to the kitchen. The salami, baguette, butter and Turkish pastries she set out on the table were welcome indeed after a fortnight of sausage sandwiches and the occasional luxury of fried potato.
“Relief aid!” I said. “Thank you.”
She smiled.
“Not much use hungry, are you?”
“And when my hunger’s satisfied?”
“We’ll see. When did you last have a proper meal?”
“Way back, but I’ve got by.”
“Right, knives and forks – any potatoes?”
“A couple of kilos.”
“Right. Today’s a holiday, but tomorrow you get some more in. Stick the champagne in the fridge, top shelf, if there’s space.”
“My fridge is all space,” I said opening it.
“What a way to live!”
Half an hour and the meal was ready. Rising to the occasion, I got out two good glasses.
“All we need are a few flowers,” she said dreamily, contemplating the table. “Something you’ve never given me.”
“Never knowing when to expect you.”
We began with champagne.
“What’s the toast?” I asked, raising my glass.
“Us,” said Lena, “and our not being ill!”
Fried potatoes, thin slices of salami, fresh, crusty baguette and butter – a celebration for stomach and spirits, filling the little flat with a riot of happiness.
“Does your cassette player work?” she asked.
“Should do. It’s ages since I tried.”
I put the tape on in the living room and came back. The music was a little while starting, and when it did, my forkful of salami stopped dead in mid air, just short of my mouth. I looked at her in amazement. She smiled, gestured helplessly.
“Corelli. The B-side’s got rap, Car Men, Bulanova, if you’d rather …”
“No, I like it. Just surprised.”
“Not sure if I do or not. I just sometimes feel I must hear it. Pure music is like a tonic. It soothes when I’m feeling neurotic.”
“Is that often?”
She shrugged. “It happens. As with everyone. You, too, sounded a bit odd when I rang. Any reason?”
“I’d been repaying a debt. Someone I knew, someone I’d borrowed from got killed. So yesterday I went and handed the amount to his widow. I’d not been keen on going. I was in a bit of a state.”
She nodded sympathetically.
“Last month a friend of mine got killed. Some drunk asked her to his place and strangled her. She’d lent me books from her parents. I still have them. She’d just had her eighteenth birthday. Wonderful spread Mum and Dad put on …”
“Change the subject?”
She nodded. Her smile returned.
“Pour me another,” she said.
There was not much champagne left, but fortunately I still had a bottle of Hungarian slivovitz.
“To who?” I asked, raising my glass.
“Us.”
“We’ve drunk to us.”
“A good toast bears repeating,” she said firmly.
It was long after midnight when we went to bed, and near morning when we fell asleep.
27
December
OUTSIDE, THE CRUNCH of snow and the chill breath of it through the open window vent.
For three days now, to our mutual enjoyment, though probably in different ways, Lena had been woman of the house. Yet every so often came the gloomy thought of how such blissful happiness had more than once ended abruptly, leaving me alone in a flat still filled with her living presence, beseechingly gazing at a silent telephone, as if it could help. A thought I did my best to dispel so as not to let it spoil our celebration. I was sure, watching Lena, that our brief illusion of life together was as much to her liking as to mine.
And when I played the Corelli tape, it was not to calm neurosis, but because tender violins were in harmony with our mutual enjoyment, dispelling nagging thoughts as to its impermanence.
The banality of permanence was what I wanted, and for unremitting happiness, no more than compatibility and togetherness with a woman, as in my Lena idyll, her adherence to some secret timetable the only impediment. An aspiration, which for all I knew, she might share, our time together serving as a palliative to a life I knew nothing of.
I balked at asking more of her. I simply must find something to occupy me during her spells of absence. So long as they were only temporary!
“Chips for supper,” she declared happily, then looking out of the window, “‘Winter, but no peasants celebrating.’” And then from the kitchen, “Did you hear?”
“Yes.”
“When we studied Nekrasov, I thought the peasants didn’t do badly under the Tsar, and winter was when they rested. ‘Winter – peasants celebrate’ …”
“You and your peasants!” I laughed, joining her in the kitchen.
“Can’t you just imagine – weeny timber house in the country, smoke curling from the chimney, and us, drinking tea with strawberry jam, snug inside.”
“As in ‘Masha, me and the samovar’.”
To my surprise the telephone rang.
“Tolya?”
“Speaking.”
“Marina, Kostya’s widow. Sorry to be a nuisance … You came, you remember?”
“Of course.”
“I don’t like asking, but you’re my only hope. You couldn’t come over at six, could you?”
“I think so,” I said warily. “Why?”
“There’s something I must go and attend to …” she said eventually. “It’ll take a couple of hours … And I’ve no-one to leave Misha with.”
“Ah!”
“So, could you?”
“Yes,” I said, catching the anxiety in her voice. “At six.”
“Oh, thank you.”
Putting down the receiver, I stood perplexed.
“Who was that?” asked Lena.
“The widow I took the money to.”
“What does she want?”
“Me to baby-sit for a couple of hours.”
“You?” she laughed. “Good with nappies, are you?”
I didn’t think it funny.
“You’ll cope,” she said, patting me on the back. “How old is it?”
“A few months.”
“Can you put up with its crying?”
“No idea.”
This intrusion into our temporary little world together was not only destructive of peace and quiet, it brought back the whole business of Kostya. I asked Lena to hold me tight.
“You’re trembling – whatever’s the matter?” she asked with concern.
For some minutes we stood in each other’s arms. Breathing the scent of her hair, I whispered “I love you!” over and over like a spell, giving no thought to the meaning of the words, calming myself as it were, only to realise half an hour or so later that Lena was for me what Corelli was for her. She was at one and the same time tranquilliser and composure, and my “I love you!” my highest form of gratitude.
I was happy and could smile again, something Lena could not see, being still clasped close to me.
28
Evening
IT WAS DARK when I got to Marina’s. The instant I pressed the bell the door opened as if she had been waiting by it.
“Glad you could make it,” she said. “In five minutes I must go. Come in, take your jacket off. There’s a hook – are you warm enough in that? – here are some slippers. Come through to the kitchen. I’ll make you a coffee. I’m so glad you’ve come. I’m so tired, but I simply have to go this evening. I thought of asking one of my girl friends to baby-sit, but not having seen them since the funeral, I was afraid it would just mean memories and tears.” Her chatter reflected the hurry she was in.
She was in jeans and a denim jacket over a green sweater, and for the first time I became aware of brown eyes and, mingled with the aroma from my little ceramic cup, her perfume.
“He has his feed at 7.00. His bottle’s here on the radiator. Help yourself from the fridge if you’re hungry … I’ll be back by 8.00. Disposable nappies under the cot, if he cries. It shows on the packet how to change them. It’s very simple.”
There was just time to show me the little one asleep and breathing heavily in his cot in the living room.
“What if he’s still sleeping at 7.00?”
“He won’t be. He works to a timetable, like Pavlov’s dog. ’Bye.”
The door banged and I was alone. The flat was like the one I had grown up in, except that ours had been on the top floor, living room, bedroom, pokey lavatory, pokey bathroom, low whitewashed ceiling dark with damp, kitchen with little window. And under the little window, by tradition, the main item of furniture, the kitchen table with plastic top decorated by some simple-minded designer with pale-green maple leaves, the whole edged in Duralumin to form a trap for breadcrumbs and kitchen muck.
This flat, with its white ceilings and gloss painted doors was much better cared for than mine. Sitting on the sofa, I contemplated the cot, bought for growth, and the tiny bundle that was Misha occupying a third of it. He was asleep. And for just a moment my mind was at ease, as if I, in common with millions of others, was at home with all as it should be – the child as much mine as the Electron TV in the corner between balcony and German dresser with its cut-glass vases, The Three Musketeers in three volumes and the Soviet bible, the two-volume Pushkin (print run 2,000,000!), all unread. The moment passed, and there I was in a strange flat, seeing from the alarm clock on top of the TV that there was an hour and 50 minutes to go until 8.00.
Lena would be getting supper. She’d promised chips. How little life altered. Twelve years or so back a girl friend, whose face I could no longer recall, had been fond of frying me chips.
Getting up, I walked around the room, wrote a bold “Hello” in the thin film of dust on the TV, and proceeded to the kitchen, where, finding a packet of Indian tea on a shelf above the stove, I put the kettle on.
Familiarisation with someone else’s flat is best begun from the kitchen, and certainly the kitchen was where I felt most at home. Maybe because here, to the right of the window, was where I had sat, having brought the money. The boiling kettle imposed a cosy domestic note over the silence. The windless December evening was loud with trams. The nearest street lamp shone on leafless trees and a white Zhiguli.
When I returned to the living room, the alarm clock showed 6.45. I peered into the cot. He was still asleep.
At 7.00 I fetched his bottle from the kitchen and again bent over him. His eyes were still tight shut. Recalling Marina’s “Pavlov’s dog”, I smiled.
Hungry, I went back to the kitchen, returned the bottle to the radiator, and looking in the fridge, found all I needed – butter, cheese and sausage – but nothing cooked. Topping up the teapot, I made myself a couple of sandwiches and resumed my seat.
The telephone rang in the passage. I went and answered it, but hearing only breathing, hung up. It must have been a wrong number.
Half an hour later I took another look at him. He was still sleeping. I rang Lena and asked her what I should do.
“Don’t be neurotic, let sleeping babies lie. He’ll tell you when he’s hungry. By the bye, potatoes peeled and ready.”
“On my way in half an hour.”
Silence.
Time dragged on, together with an irritating silence not to be broken for fear of waking one who should long since have been caterwauling to be fed.
I put a hand to his warm cheek, and still he slept, miniature face free of line and feature. Who would he be like? Who was he like now? At this age all babies were the same. I looked around for a photograph of Kostya, but there wasn’t one. In fact, there were no photographs anywhere, just books. Still, by her bed would be the place.
Tiptoeing to the bedroom, I switched on the light. Wooden double bed, bedside table with radio, mini alarm clock, round mirror, pile of magazines, and on the pillow a book: Heinrich Böll’s House with no Man. Strange reading with no photographs of him! But how was the time? The alarm said 8.05. Switching off the light, I went back to the living room. The little wretch was still asleep. No matter, she’d be back any minute, and I, again hungry, would depart to my chips.
So, braving the silence, hoping to hear a key in the lock, I sat, hearing only the tick of the clock on the top of the TV, and becoming increasingly annoyed. Hating me, he was pretending to sleep, not wanting me to feed him! Nonsense, of course, since babies couldn’t care less who fed them, so long as somebody did. For a while I was calmer, then, seeing it now to be 8.20, reverted to my former state.
I rang the flat.
“What the hell?” asked Lena.
“Still not back. What do I do?” Speaking to Lena, my annoyance turned to perplexity.
“Some loving mother for you! Hasn’t she rung?”
“No.”
I could see her by the telephone, shrugging her pretty shoulders.
“Well, you can’t leave him, so you’ll have to wait, and hungry little me will have to eat and leave some for you.”
“Shouldn’t I wake him? It’s past his feed time.”
“Look, I’m no Hero Mother of the Soviet Union, but wake him if you must!”
“See you!” I said, hastening to end our conversation on a peaceable note.
“Love you,” she said, hanging up.
This time when I peered into the cot, his eyes were open. Seeing me, he moved his lips. Relieved, I fetched and produced his bottle, expecting a smile. But he merely opened his eyes the wider, and when I put the teat to his lips, seemed not to notice, eyeing me with cold hostility and refusing to suck.
Well, starve, sod you! I thought.
Returning his bottle to the kitchen, I sat at the table. Now, had I still been a smoker, would have been the moment for a cigarette. Failing which, coffee or alcohol. I looked in the fridge. Cognac. Not what I wanted.<
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The kitchen still held a waft of her perfume which the silence seemed to intensify. Eyes yielding to the day’s fatigue, I had an urge to close them, though not to sleep. This flat, this infuriatingly, terrifyingly silent and motionless baby was what they were sick of.
God, what am I doing here? I wondered, closing my eyes.
Performing a duty, discharging a debt, God said.
Again?
And yet again. Your owing will endure.
For ever?
Fear not. For so long only as you remember him.
What I wanted was to forget, only the harder I tried, the more vividly was I back in the rain and glint of broken glass in that godforsaken courtyard with, in the yellow eye of a torch, a body.
Pouring cognac from the fridge into a teacup, I swallowed it like medicine.
The round kitchen wall clock said getting on for 10.00.
Cutting myself more sandwiches, I ate, forgetting both baby and Marina. Once, thinking I heard a cry, I stopped, but decided it was an extraneous noise or my imagination. Anyway, I didn’t check, but stayed put, safe in the kitchen, pouring more cognac, baby forgotten, debating long and incomprehensibly with myself the question of debt and duty. Only finally to be aroused by a key in the door, and the return of a worried Marina. “Heavens, I’m most terribly sorry, but that’s how it went!”
The clock said 12.30, but oddly I felt no resentment.
“Wouldn’t take his feed, and I must go,” I said, hoping the clock was wrong but doubting it.
“He could have been frightened, being used only to me,” said Marina. “I ought to have thought. How are you getting home? I got a taxi, after freezing waiting for a bus.” Taking my jacket from the hook, I left with a formal “Good night”.
It was freezing. No-one was about. None of the passing cars I thumbed stopped.
It was 2.00 before I got home. Lena was asleep.
“Christ, you’re cold!” she muttered as I slipped into bed.
29
IT WAS 11.00 or thereabouts when I woke.
The silence told me that I was alone again. This time for how long? The traditional week or longer? Our four days together had been too few. Could her going before I was awake have had anything to do with my late return? My missing supper and her chips would not have upset her – she wasn’t that childish – especially knowing where I was and why. Even so, she was still a child liable to crazy ideas and loveable peculiarities. That was what I liked about her.
A Matter of Death and Life Page 6