Just then Christine ran outside and stood between them, screaming at the top of her voice for them to stop. Dazed, Kostya paused, his hair stuck to his scalp, clothes dripping; he couldn’t quite believe what he had done. But Kitty’s face showed no remorse, no fear: she looked him dead in the eye, haughty and self-assured. The blood on her face mixed with the rainwater, creating the illusion of war paint.
Stasia, too, came out into the garden, stood in Kostya’s path, and grabbed him by the collar. ‘What have you done?’ she snarled at her son.
He looked her in the eyes, and said, ‘I hate you both!’
And those words tore us all apart.
*
A few weeks later, Kitty called Mariam and asked to meet her in a café. Mariam, who found both the strained atmosphere between the siblings and her fiancé’s aloofness and irritability upsetting, was happy to receive the invitation and accepted with relief.
They met in a fashionable café that had just opened near the Technical University. Mariam had taken great pains not to seem in any way inferior to the rest of its clientele. She arrived wearing a chocolate-brown suit that didn’t really do her figure any favours, hugged Kitty, and ordered a Turkish coffee, although normally she only drank tea: one had to drink coffee in a place like this.
‘I simply have to tell you how happy I am you called. The last month hasn’t been that easy for any of us, has it? All this time I’ve been hoping we’d be able to find a way, be able to talk about everything again. I don’t want you to be cross with me.’ Mariam gushed at her friend like a waterfall.
‘I have to speak to you.’
‘No, listen to me. Please. I’ve hardly been able to sleep these last few weeks. I don’t want anything to come between us. It’ll all sort itself out. I’m sure of it. We’ll sort this out, the two of us. We’ve come through so much together, we just have to want it.’
Mariam was agitated; her cheeks were burning. She grabbed Kitty’s hand across the table and held on to it.
‘Mariam …’
‘We’ll make up for everything, won’t we? We can’t give up on our friendship just like that, that’s just not possible. I miss you, I miss you so much, and I don’t want to be without you. Yes, I love your brother. But that doesn’t mean you’re any less important to me.’
Tears welled up in Mariam’s eyes.
‘I don’t want to drive a wedge between the two of you, I don’t want you to quarrel, especially not because of me. I would never forgive myself. You’re such a wonderful brother and sister. Fascinating, talented, clever, beautiful. No — that can’t happen, Kitty. I’d never forgive myself.’
Mariam had turned away and was staring at the pigeons strutting up and down the pavement.
‘Mari, I have to tell you something important.’
‘I love you. But I love him, too. You’re two halves of a whole. That may sound strange, but I’ve thought about it a lot, and I know what I’m talking about. I —’
‘He’s cheating on you.’
‘Kitty!’
‘He’s having an affair. I’ve seen her, but I don’t know her name, and I will gladly help you if you find out who she is.’
‘Kitty.’
‘If you don’t want to believe me, that’s your decision. The quarrel wasn’t because of you, it was because of her. Check what I’ve told you, and if I’m wrong, just forget all this. If not …’
‘Yes — if not, what?’
‘Then think about whether you want to spend your life with a man who will never love you.’
‘Why are you trying to ruin everything?’
Tears were rolling down Mariam’s red cheeks.
‘I can’t ruin something that was ruined long ago.’
Kitty hated herself. But she hated that woman far more.
*
That night, Kitty persuaded her aunt to make her the hot chocolate. Kostya came home late, and when the smell of the chocolate reached his nose he hurried to the kitchen and demanded some of the magical drink. Kitty reluctantly divided her portion, shared it with her brother, and they fell on their cups like starving dogs. Wakened by the smell, Stasia too stumbled into the kitchen to see her children licking the last drops of chocolate from their cups. She screamed at her sister — how dare she, where had she got hold of the recipe — sank helplessly onto a chair, and howled. Even if Stasia still wasn’t sure what price her father’s hot chocolate exacted from those who tasted it, she was no longer in any doubt that there was certainly a price to be paid. She had wanted to protect her children from temptation, from becoming greedy for more, because she was sure that this was the danger her father had spoken of back then, the danger inherent in the chocolate: the fact that no one who had so far succumbed to the temptation of sampling it was able to do so just once.
Christine, still holding the tin bowl she had made the chocolate in, snarled back that he was her father, too, and she also had a right to the recipe, whereupon Stasia seized the bowl and threw it on the floor. For a moment they all glanced back and forth between the furious Stasia and the few drops of black liquid that had trickled out of the bowl.
Suddenly Kostya bent down, sank onto all fours as if hypnotised, and started wiping the residue off the floor with his fingers, sticking them eagerly into his mouth.
The women stared down at him, speechless. When he had wiped the last drops off the floor, he got up and calmly left the kitchen.
‘What was that?’ asked Christine. She looked at her sister, bemused.
‘His first chocolate, I imagine,’ Stasia answered reproachfully.
I was there, too. I drank mead and beer;
they flowed down my beard but did not go in my mouth.
RUSSIAN FORMULA FOR THE HAPPY ENDING TO A FAIRYTALE
The tall blonde woman with the cherry-red lips was called Alla. She was forty years old and the neighbour of the silk merchant who let his children throw parties in the big house. It was at one of these parties that Kostya had met her. She had studied medicine in Moscow, where she was regarded as an up-and-coming star in the field of psychiatry. As a result, she was approached by the NKVD and joined the organisation. On one of her business trips she met her future husband; he, too, worked for the NKVD, but with the Georgian branch. She moved with him to Tbilisi and continued her work in the Caucasus. Her husband was about twenty years older, and she soon grew tired of him; for Alla displayed a healthy appetite, not only for tracking down ‘spies and counterrevolutionaries, saboteurs and other vermin’: her body also had a great hunger that her husband, a very busy man, was soon no longer able to satisfy.
In the twelve years she had so far spent in the service of the most powerful organisation in the country, she had had nine abortions — all children of different men — the last of which had gone wrong, and since then she had been barren. Infertility, then, became her punishment for the toughest women who fell into her clutches — her small, personal revenge — and it bore impressive fruit. She was known as one of the NKVD’s most loyal employees, and also one of the most feared. It’s even said that the Little Big Man had pinned a medal to her breast with his own hand. But I don’t know that for sure.
When she met my grandfather, her appetite was piqued. That very night, she dragged him into the house next door and unbuttoned his trousers. Her alacrity and decisiveness reminded Kostya of Ida, and he willingly surrendered to Alla. From then on they met regularly.
I don’t know how she did it, but Mariam found her. The humiliation of a woman scorned can work miracles. She must have lain in wait for Kostya night after night, standing outside the glittering house. The laughter and loud music coming from within must have felt like being slapped, until she found what she was looking for.
Mariam followed the blonde woman, who kissed her fiancé goodbye behind the house before hurrying down the cul-de-sac, where she stopped in front of the fir
st house. Before, in the dark, all Mariam had been able to make out was her tall figure and elegant clothes, but now, as she stood directly in the light from the streetlamp, looking for her front door key, Mariam too recognised the woman from Hell.
The soft, blonde hair, the red lips, the slow movements, the litheness of her body.
Mariam’s horror at the thought of this woman making love to the man she planned to marry was inconceivable. And it was easy for her, so appallingly easy, to picture those manicured fingernails digging into Kostya’s back: the coquettishness with which she would throw back her head, snarling at him, lips and eyelids moist with lust. It was so easy for her to imagine the woman urging Kostya on, using the same soft words with which she had once ordered Mariam to pick up the syringe of poison.
*
That night, Mariam threw gravel at Kitty’s window. Kitty slipped on a coat and hurried out into the street. When they were far enough away from Christine’s house, they sat down on the pavement, and Kitty knew that Mariam had found what she herself had sought so long and so bitterly.
‘You wanted me to see her, didn’t you? You knew who it was, and you didn’t tell me.’ Mariam spoke quietly. Her face was empty. It didn’t even express anger. ‘Why didn’t you tell me then and there?’
‘You wouldn’t have believed me,’ murmured Kitty, not sure whether she had done the right thing, whether she’d had the right to let Mariam walk into this trap.
‘How long has it been going on?’
Mariam crumpled like a pricked balloon.
‘How should I know?’
‘How could he … It’s too ridiculous to be true. Why did you let me …?’
Mariam stood, walked a few steps along the dark, empty street, turned back, and sat down again. Her whole body seemed to baulk at this outrageous fact, as if refusing to acknowledge the truth.
‘I can’t even blame you. What sort of degenerate is he, arranging to go to someone else’s house for a rendezvous with a woman who isn’t even invited to the party?’
She laughed. Her laugh sounded shrill, forced. Kitty’s thumbnail was bitten down to the quick.
‘I don’t know why I sent you there. Perhaps I wanted you to confirm that it couldn’t possibly be her. But it is. It’s her, and none other!’
Kitty wondered what reaction she had anticipated from her friend. Certainly not this. Fits of weeping, perhaps; hysteria, panic, but not this emptiness in her face, this irrevocable determination in her voice.
‘I’ll go and find her and talk to her. It’s nothing to do with you any more.’ Kitty got up off the pavement and looked down at her friend. She hoped this position would lend weight to her words, but Mariam was laughing again. She was laughing in her face.
‘Talk — to her? Are you pretending to be more stupid than you really are, Kitty, or what are you actually saying? And don’t tell me it’s nothing to do with me. If that were true, you wouldn’t have set me on your brother like a bloodhound. Be honest enough at least to admit that to yourself.’
Kitty couldn’t think of anything to say. Of course she should never have sent Mariam to the house, but it was too late. Kitty refused to think about that; she couldn’t hesitate now. It would only make Mariam more determined, whatever that might mean.
‘Yes, perhaps you’re right, but please — let me put an end to this by myself.’
‘Put an end to it? What, are you going to report her to the police?’ Another derisive laugh.
Kitty was gradually losing control of the situation. Mariam was steering this conversation, this whole situation, in a direction that made Kitty very uneasy, one she couldn’t fathom. She cursed her own rashness, her impetuosity.
Perhaps for both of them the blonde woman had once been an angel of death, but to Mariam now she was, above all, her rival for Kostya’s affections; the classroom, the village school, were just an inevitable black mark on her immaculate white skin.
Kitty began to shiver. She rubbed her hands.
‘You want to put an end to it, but you’ve already made me your accomplice. Here I am again, and we’ll put an end to it together. Because that was how you wanted it, and apparently God did, too,’ said Mariam, before turning her back on her friend and walking swiftly away down the road.
*
When she got home, Kitty sat on the window sill and asked herself, for the first time since that mild evening on the Holy Mountain when she had seen with her own eyes something she would never have thought possible, what exactly it was she really wanted. Whole armies, political organisations, countless people in uniform and Little Big Men stood between Kitty and her angel of death. Between them lay mountains of weapons, files, and bones, over which she would never be able to climb. Feverishly, Kitty ran through her options. The easiest thing, of course, would be to confide in the woman’s husband — obviously a very powerful man — and reveal to him that he was a cuckold. But a man married to a woman capable of brutally robbing another of her unborn child would surely be her equal in this respect. His fury would be directed not against his wife but against the man she had chosen. And his revenge would be no less terrible than his wife’s. Kitty couldn’t risk putting her brother in such danger.
By the time she fell asleep, exhausted, she had come to the conclusion that taking revenge was no less a burden than renouncing it.
*
Mariam withdrew. She didn’t show up at the Institute, didn’t leave the boarding house, didn’t meet Kostya any more, and didn’t respond, either, to the notes Kitty shoved under her door. Kostya tried to confront Kitty, but she denied having anything to do with Mariam’s behaviour.
Kitty focused on her studies, the theatre, and above all her guitar. But at night, when she was alone, an ice-cold fear that made beads of sweat stand out on her brow would overwhelm her, and she would toss and turn, trying to find a solution. She sensed, however, that after all the weeks Mariam had spent obsessively searching for the blonde woman, she was not just going to walk away from this, would not just let it go.
When she thought of what Mariam might be going through, she pictured all kinds of dreadful scenarios. Memories of the days in the classroom, the days in the barn, began to plague her, and when her nightmares started to pursue her in the daytime, too, she went to the student boarding house where Mariam lived and sat down in the corridor outside her door. She decided she would wait for her friend for as long as it took. Sooner or later Mariam would have to go out — sooner or later she would at least have to eat something.
For the first two days, Kitty’s efforts were fruitless: the door remained closed. She hammered on it again and again, slipped many more notes under it, begged, pleaded with her friend, tried all her powers of persuasion, but nothing happened.
On the third morning, after most of the students had gone to their lectures, leaving the boarding house empty, Mariam appeared at the door. She was wearing a long raincoat and had done her hair.
‘Let’s go for a walk,’ she said, as if nothing had happened, as if everything were as before, when the two of them had had an — almost — normal friendship and would stroll through the alleyways chatting and eating sunflower seeds. Mariam strode out purposefully into the street and marched over to the bus stop. Everything about her seemed cheerful, smart, the same as always. Only the dark rings around her eyes betrayed something of the grim labyrinth she was trapped in.
‘We’re going to the Old Town,’ said Mariam, as they boarded the first bus that came along. Kitty sat beside her friend. It was foggy and damp in the city. The sky was overcast. The autumn still hadn’t really arrived; it wasn’t chilly yet. They stared out of the bus window at the streets, the passers-by, the people fleeing the grey day. Kitty laid her head on Mariam’s shoulder and breathed a sigh of relief.
They got out at Lenin Square and walked up Kirov Street. Mariam set the pace and the direction. In a cheerless, empty grocery shop d
isplaying half a sausage and two types of cheese, they bought some malt beer, which they drank quickly. Mariam didn’t stop anywhere for long, but continued unerringly on her way, which led up and up into the green hills. Kitty asked no questions; she was happy just to be walking here with Mariam, and tried to keep pace with her friend.
They left the big, screened garden of the Central Committee building behind them, turned left, cut through some side streets, sat on a lonely bench for a moment, passed the cable car stop, and watched the people getting into the little cabins.
All at once, Mariam turned to Kitty, reached out, and lifted her jacket and jersey. She stared at Kitty’s bare belly. With her other hand she pushed down Kitty’s skirt and tights and studied her abdomen.
‘What are you doing?’ Confused and unnerved, Kitty permitted herself to be examined.
‘I wanted to see your scars again. The ones I left you with. Whether they’ve healed well. I haven’t seen them since then.’
They left cobbled Chitadze Street behind them, and were already looking up at the artists’ cemetery when Kitty realised where Mariam was heading. The silk merchant’s house was just a few metres away. She stopped, demanding that her friend explain what this was all about, where she was going. But Mariam didn’t stop. She called for Kitty to follow her: it was all right, her husband was away.
Kitty tried to protest, but Mariam was already pausing at the corner of the street and climbing the three steps that led up to a red-brick house. Kitty screamed at her not to do it, but before she could reach the house her friend was banging on the front door with a metal lion’s head knocker.
Kitty had just set foot on the bottom step when the door was thrown open and Alla stood before them, a cigarette between her painted red lips, curlers in her hair, in a full-length white silk slip.
‘Yes?’ she asked in Russian, looking at them both crossly. Kitty wanted to grab Mariam’s sleeve, to drag her away, but she stood there, firm as a rock, staring spellbound at those scarlet lips.
The Eighth Life Page 36