Malak, sipping her green tea, said, ‘I should wake up Ossie so that you’re not delayed. It would be better for him to get a lift from you in case the buses are still disrupted. And it would be good for you to have company in case your tyres get stuck in the snow.’ Her face was still puffy with sleep, gentle without make-up.
I assured her that I was not in a great hurry. I stood up to make myself another mug of coffee and to wash my cereal bowl in the sink. In the first orange rays from the rising sun I saw the car approaching. So for sure the roads were clear enough. No more doubts, no more procrastinations. I could leave, I should leave. The car came closer, but later I realised there must have been another car, one that was already parked out of sight of the house. My telephone buzzed. It was a message from Tony. Need to talk to you. Bad news from Khartoum.
I looked up and through the window saw two policemen. Before I could tell Malak, they rang the bell. She went to answer it and then everything happened very fast.
One of them speaks and says the other name instead of Oz. His voice is loud, says they have a warrant for his arrest. Malak asks why and the answer starts with ‘t’, ends with a suffix and she draws in her breath. I am glued to the kitchen floor, mobile phone in my hand, open at Tony’s message. They are everywhere now, lots of them, not two, with their shoes clomping, but Malak doesn’t say take your shoes off. They leap up the stairs, I catch a blur of dark uniform. Footsteps above me. Malak is calling Oz. This makes them angry. They think she is warning him off and two of them run, banging the bedroom door open. I hear him say, ‘What the fuck!’ I hear a scuffle but then Malak’s voice, telling him to be calm, to best do as he’s told. I walk to the landing but one of them is holding the sword in his hand, the sitting room is in disarray, one of them comes up to me, his large face looms close. He carries two laptops – mine and Oz’s. The white one is mine, I say but he takes my mobile too. His voice is loud but he just wants my name and my address. I tell him why I am here, but still my laptop gets carried into their car. They clamber down the stairs, Oz in handcuffs, Malak following. Oz is wearing his coat over his pyjamas. His lips are dry and his eyes, his body, the tilt of his head, are rigid with anger; anger a crust pressing down fear. Before they prod him out of the house, he looks at me and I have nothing to say.
Because the front door had been open all the time the police were here, the house was freezing. Blasts of air swept through; there was sludge on the carpet. I closed the door, I locked it too. I started to tidy up. I was shivering and my fingers were numb. Malak sat on the bottom step hugging her knees. ‘It’s a mistake,’ she repeated. ‘They’ve mixed him up with someone else, I’m sure.’
I reassured her as best I could. I picked up her shawl, which had fallen on the ground, and tucked it round her shoulders. I could not bear the chaos surrounding us, the way the house had been violated. I started to tidy up, putting everything back in its place. I pulled the vacuum cleaner from the store cupboard. I mopped up the shoe stains on the kitchen floor. I wanted everything to look and smell and feel like it had before they came.
I walked past Malak, who seemed to be glued to the stairs, and carried the vacuum cleaner up. Oz’s room was in complete disarray. Every drawer had been turned out, every poster pulled down from the wall, files and books scattered, clothes on the floor. I folded his clothes and put them back in the cupboard and drawers. Unable to stick the posters back on the wall, I rolled them up – one black and white image of the Kaaba during a freak deluge, pilgrims swimming around the cube instead of walking, two Spider-man posters, one of X-Men Die by the Sword 5. As I worked, the room lit up with the morning sun; it felt warmer than anywhere else. It had really happened, they had taken him away and the magnitude of the charge against him was pitch-dark and shameful. What have you done, you stupid, stupid boy? I could no longer move, I slumped on the bed, willing myself to calm down, to be rational. What have you done …
I stretched out on the bed, the sun coming straight at me through the window. I could smell him on the pillow, I could see him putting the kettle on in the kitchen and I could hear him call his mother by her name and I tried to push away the fear, to ignore his last look. I must forget their clomping shoes, their big faces and the invasion that had happened. Soon, I would wipe away all traces of them, vacuum the fluff that had fallen from their uniforms and the shedding of their skins, open the windows and flush out the smell of them. I closed my eyes from the bright sun, I saw blotches of colours, my fingers pressed down on the duvet. There was no sound from downstairs, the peace of shock. My body started to feel heavy, my stomach relaxed enough to start digesting my breakfast, my bladder to start filling up. I dozed and I was standing on one of the peaks of the Caucasus, balancing on the edge of a ledge. From the top of my head all the way down in one straight swoop, I split in two, half-human and half-reptile. In the logic of dreams it made sense that my left side was human because that was where my heart was. In the logic of dreams I was not embarrassed that I was naked, nor that a part of me was inhuman. With my left hand I ran my fingers over a pattern of scales on my right shoulder, ridges of shell, leathery grooves. In the logic of dreams what perplexed me the most was that I had split vertically rather than horizontally. It was natural to be like a centaur or a sphinx; it was usual to have a full human head. But I had failed; I had morphed into something completely different. A man was coming behind me and I was reluctant to turn around. Below me was a sheer drop into rocks and burning forests. I lost my balance and jerked awake.
I sat up and remembered Tony’s message. I fished in my pocket for my mobile and realised that it was going to be a real nuisance not to have it. I could not remember Tony’s number off the top of my head. This was the result of years just pressing a button, instead of dialling. Of course there were other ways of getting hold of it and most likely I had scribbled it down in an old Filofax. But I wanted to hear that news from Khartoum. And how exactly had it reached Tony? Maybe Grusha, my mother’s friend, had called him. The news would be about my father – who else? I put the vacuum cleaner on and tried to remember Tony’s home number, the number I used to call Mum on all these years. 01224 was the code but the number itself was muddled.
When I went downstairs, Malak was locked in the same spot, her knees bunched up, her face expressionless. When she finally spoke, her voice sounded strange. An accent had crept in. Shock did that to people, it hurtled them back to their mother tongue. ‘They took the sword,’ she said.
‘They took every CD you have. They took my mobile phone and my laptop.’
‘I am sorry, Natasha. I hope you will get your things back soon.’
Tears came to my eyes. I wanted to speak to her like I had never spoken to anyone before. Instead I said, ‘I have to go.’
‘Can’t you stay a little longer?’ she whispered. She looked pathetic huddled in her shawl. She stood up and for the smallest fraction of a second, lost her balance and then regained it again. That wobble added years to her age, a slip-up as if she had been acting all the time, playing the role of a London actor, a glamorous woman of the world and now this was her real self. One of those who don’t matter, who shuffle down the street, reeking of failure if not trouble, suspect and unwanted. One of those people I never wanted to be seen with. She said, ‘Let’s make a pot of tea, shall we?’
Weren’t these the words I had longed to hear? Where did I have to go that was better than here? But the warning said get away, don’t get dragged further into this – it’s bad enough that you’re already involved; save your skin. I recognised this pragmatism, these tropes of survival. It made me grab my coat and head towards the door. Malak stood up and followed me. Her movements were slow and tentative; she was not herself. In a high querulous voice she repeated, ‘It’s all a mistake. They’ve made a mistake. They’ve got the wrong person I’m sure.’
I didn’t allow myself to speak, I didn’t look at her. Guilty, I got into the car and drove straight to work.
2. GEORGIA, JULY 1854
She walked through grass that reached her waist. It tickled her arms and almost covered Alexander to the brim of his straw summer hat. He let go of her hand and ran in the direction of the soldier galloping towards them. Anna opened her mouth to call him back then closed it again; she shaded her eyes from the sun. These maternal flickers of anxiety flared with varying degrees of intensity through every stage of his life. Sometimes they were justified, often they weren’t, but cats had nine lives and children didn’t. What if the soldier didn’t see Alexander or Alexander didn’t stop running early enough? At the same time she did not want him to be timid, to be tied to her apron strings as no boy should be. So she must grit her teeth as he exposed himself to a thousand and one dangers.
During her pregnancy with Lydia she had been less alert, and after the birth too, she was immersed in that satisfaction that only comes to mothers with copious milk and a healthy feeding baby. In that period Alexander had flourished, benefiting from less of her attention, venturing further away from the radius of her vision. Here in the countryside, he had grown fitter and more hardy. Apart from Madame Drancy’s lessons and the requirement to speak to her in French at all times, he was allowed to do as he liked. It was as carefree as a summer should be, despite the rumours that Shamil’s men were set to descend from the mountains. Such an invasion had never taken place throughout history and was, Anna believed, just as unlikely to happen now.
The horseman had seen Alexander. She could tell by the way he straightened up in his saddle. Anna could breathe more easily now, continue walking towards them for surely the soldier was bringing a message from David. She was conscious of the fullness of her body in last summer’s dress, aware of the absence of Lydia, neither inside her nor in her arms, and still it was a surprise. She felt less weighed down but at the same time incomplete; the distance from the garden to the nursery where the baby was sleeping seemed excessively large. If Lydia woke up and cried now, she would not hear her. Her ears, though, strained for that familiar high note and now it felt as if she was playing truant, exploring the furthest end of the leash that tied her to her daughter. The gardener, Gregov, reached the rider first and turned to bring her the message. Despite the white in his hair, he was strong and quick in his movements. She must ask him why he had delayed cutting the grass. It had not rained yesterday.
Gregov gripped his hat in one hand and handed her the message. ‘Should he wait for a reply?’
She hesitated before saying, ‘Yes.’ It meant cutting her walk and returning to the house. She preferred writing leisurely long letters in the evening. Now it would have to be a hurried note. Still, David would want her to reassure him.
Gregov hovered over her as she read the message. His avuncular right or just a natural eagerness for news from the local militia? There is no occasion for uneasiness. The sentence was underlined and she read it first. Then she went back to the beginning.
She said to Gregov, ‘The fortress at Shildi was attacked by a large number of Lezgins but they were repulsed and they took heavy losses.’
‘Shildi must have been Shamil’s target then.’ He twisted his hat in his hands.
‘Would that explain the campfires on the mountains?’ There were four of them last night and Madame Drancy even more edgy. ‘How far is Shildi from here?’
‘A good thirty miles. The Lezgins are the most lawless of the tribes that follow Shamil.’ Gregov shook his head. ‘My cousin was taken by them as prisoner. They threaded horse-hairs through his heels.’
‘Whatever for?’
Gregov narrowed his eyes and replied coolly, ‘So that he wouldn’t escape, ma’am. The wounds fester and make walking horribly painful.’
She looked towards Alexander. He seemed to be enjoying a new friendship with the soldier, who now dismounted and lifted him up to take his place.
‘The Lezgins keep their prisoners in pits,’ Gregov continued. ‘What would they know of Christian compassion?’
Anna turned away from him. Sometimes she felt like she was part of a great charade. An essential pretence that Russia was winning the Caucasus, that every encounter with Shamil was a resounding victory. And yet thousands of lives were being lost and the mountains still did not belong to the tsar. David too, talked this optimistic language. He had to, he had no choice. This awareness of the pressures he was under caused a rush of love for him. This and the relief that he had not fallen into the hands of the Lezgins swept her back to the house and into writing him an effusive message urging him to come as soon as he could, even though they were all safe and well.
In the evening as she was putting Lydia to bed, Madame Drancy came in to say that Gregov wanted to talk to her. Lydia was not fully asleep – her eyes fluttered open as soon as Anna put her down in the cot. She tiptoed out of the room, Drancy close behind her. It was on the tip of her tongue to say, ‘Stay with Lydia until she is deeply asleep,’ but Madame Drancy bristled whenever she was asked to do anything that remotely resembled a nursery maid’s duty. Besides, she was clearly eager to hear what Gregov had to say. He had never asked to see Anna at this time in the evening.
‘There is a man at the gate asking permission to spend the night,’ Gregov said. ‘He is an Armenian merchant.’
‘Where did he come from?’
‘He says he swam the Alazani.’ Gregov stressed the word ‘says’ as if he didn’t believe it.
Neither did Anna. Most travellers were heading in the opposite direction.
‘He says he was evading Shamil’s men and he’s soaked to the skin.’ Gregov’s tone softened.
Madame Drancy, hovering behind Anna, blurted out, ‘At a time like this? We certainly should not trust him!’
Her outburst made the two Georgians close rank. ‘We can’t turn him away, Madame Drancy. It is not our custom.’ She turned to Gregov. ‘Give him supper too, but watch him.’
‘I will disarm him,’ said Gregov. ‘And if he tries to escape, I will shoot him.’
She had been brave in front of Madame Drancy but she did not feel comfortable with the thought of the stranger spending the night on the estate. Sleep eluded her and at last when she drifted off, she heard a shot. It could well have been a dream but Madame Drancy banged into the room without knocking.
‘Princess Anna, wake up!’
She scrambled to her feet. ‘Did you hear that?’
Madame Drancy’s face was visible in the bright strips of moonlight that bordered the curtains, ‘Yes, I was walking in the garden. I just couldn’t sleep. It’s so hot. I saw a man – the traveller who was spending the night. He had a gun – he must have hidden it from Gregov. I saw him make for the woods.’
Anna put on her dressing gown. ‘He must have fired that shot.’
‘Why? What does it mean?’
‘He’s a spy.’ The word was heavy in her mouth, the consciousness that she was turning a corner. ‘He fired the gun as a signal.’ She let duty dictate her next words, not her preference, not her need. Left to her own devices she could cling to Tsinondali and grit her teeth, pray that the threat would go away. ‘We must leave for Tiflis at dawn. I’ll have to start packing. We must bring down the big trunk from the attic.’ She would pack with precision and care; she would not scramble off dishevelled, leaving behind what was precious and irreplaceable. Back to face the smug ‘told you so’s of Tiflis, her flight a smile on everyone’s lips.
‘There is something else.’ Madame Drancy drew in her breath. ‘Something I didn’t tell you.’
‘Well, out with it.’ Anna’s hand reached out to the back of her favourite armchair. How could she leave it behind?
‘The moon is so full tonight, I could see across the river. The water has definitely subsided. Two men were leading their horses along the bank searching for a place to cross. I saw their weapons.’
Anna stood up, the sense of urgency finally taking root. ‘They must be scouts. Wake the servants up. We have to be ready by dawn.’
But they were not ready by dawn. The ikons nee
ded wrapping, the bedding needed folding, the maids panicked and slipped away which made the process of packing even slower. Anna made sure that all the silver was put away in the trunk. Her dresses and the children’s clothes. She made Gregov carry the armchair and hoist it up on the oxen-cart. He grumbled and cursed but he was too loyal to leave them at a time like this. The younger gardeners had already disappeared without even saying goodbye, so had the grooms and the field-hands. Gregov was the only one left guarding the estate; he would be at the gate now. When all this was over, she would tell David and he would reward him.
Alexander pushed his father’s pistol against Madame Drancy’s back. ‘I am the dreaded warrior, Shamil,’ he shouted.
‘Mon Dieu!’ his governess squealed and dropped the ikon she was wrapping. It shattered on the ground.
‘How dare you, Alexander! Is this a time for games?’ Anna snatched the pistol from him. ‘Apologise to Madame Drancy.’
She accepted his apology. ‘Now that you’re up, you might as well be packing instead of creating mischief.’
He smiled, ‘I will pack my summer hat.’
‘Off you go then,’ said Anna. ‘We are leaving soon. Be sure the flowers on your hat don’t get crushed.’ Afterwards she would think, if I had not cared about the flowers, the silver, the packing, how much time would I have saved? Horsemen at full tilt on the plains and she was giving Lydia her morning feed. Her breasts not as full as they usually were, the milk sensitive to the sleepless night, the disjointed nerves.
The Kindness of Enemies Page 8