Single & Single

by John le Carré

  He moved to the second window, saw a child’s bed and bedside table, reading light, a heap of books and a small dressing gown hanging from a hook. He moved to the third and nearly laughed out loud. Pieces of Yevgeny’s precious birchwood furniture stood shoved against the walls. At the center of the floorboards, in pride of place, the BMW motorbike, like a shrouded Shetland pony, stood sleeping under a dust sheet. Wanting to draw this amusing sight to Aggie’s attention he swung round and saw that she had frozen with her back against the wall and her hands splayed while she repeatedly tipped her head at the window nearest to her, the last. He crept toward her and, remaining on the near side of the same window, peered in. Zoya was sitting in Tinatin’s rocking chair. She was wearing a long black dress like an evening gown and black Russian boots. Her hair was taken up in an untidy bun, and her face was an icon of herself, haggard and wide eyed. She was staring out of the long French window but with a look so grim and faraway that Oliver doubted whether she saw anything at all, except the demons of her own mind. She had a guttering candle on a table next to her and a Kalashnikov across her knees. Her right forefinger was curled round the trigger.

  At first Aggie didn’t understand what Oliver was trying to tell her, and he had to mime it several times, first underarm, then overarm, before she dragged the wheel brace from her belt, sank into a crouch and signed to him to do the same. She held out her arms and made a cradle of them and Oliver copied her. She tossed the brace the five feet or so across the window and he caught it with one hand, not at all the way she meant him to. In a series of gestures he tried to tell her other things. He tapped his chest and pointed in Zoya’s direction and nodded and stuck his thumb in the air at Aggie in reassurance: We’re old buddies. He made slowing-down gestures with his palms: We take this softly, softly. He pointed at himself again: It’s my show this time, not yours, I’m going in, you’re not. He tapped the side of his head, diffidently, to indicate Zoya’s possible mental disturbance, then frowned in doubt, tipping his head to right and left, questioning his own vulgar diagnosis. Reverently, he made to embrace himself: I was her lover, she is my responsibility. How much Aggie followed of all this he didn’t know, but he guessed, by her docility, quite a lot, because having watched him closely, she kissed the tips of her fingers and blew the kiss in his direction.

  Oliver clambered to his feet and knew that if he had been alone he would have been afraid, and probably at a loss, but thanks to Aggie he saw things clearly and had no doubt of what to do. He knew that the French windows were of armored glass because Mikhail had demonstrated their weight to him, gleefully displaying the reinforced hinges that were needed to bear them and the locks to hold them. Therefore the improvised jimmy was not by any means his first recourse but more probably his last. What was indisputable was that, by handing him the jimmy, Aggie was handing him the job, which was what he wanted. The idea of sending Aggie into battle for him, of Aggie taking a salvo of Kalashnikov bullets for her trouble and becoming another body on his wrecker’s path, was more than he could handle. Armored glass was one thing. A burst from a highvelocity submachine gun at a range of six feet was another.

  So he wedged the wheel brace, Aggie style, into his own waistband and in stiff, sideways movements edged himself to the center of the window, then a little past the center so that Zoya could see his face complete in one pane rather than split in two. He rapped on the armored glass, gently, then vigorously. When her head lifted and her eyes appeared to focus on him, he pulled a winning smile of some sort and called out, “Zoya. It’s Oliver. Let me in,” loudly enough, he hoped, to penetrate the glass.

  Slowly she opened her eyes to stretching point, then in a rush of activity began to fuss with the gun on her lap as a prelude to pointing it at him. He slammed his palms on the window and put his face as close to it as he could without becoming a funny man.

  “Zoya! Let me in! I’m Oliver, your lover!” he shouted—without, it must be said, any awareness at that moment of Aggie’s presence, but he’d have said it anyway. And clearly Aggie would have wished him to say it because, out of the corner of his eye, he saw her emphatically nodding her support at him. But Zoya’s response was like an animal’s when it hears a half-remembered sound: I recognize it— nearly—but is it friend or enemy? She had stood up, uncertainly— he guessed she was short of food—but she was still holding the gun. And having stared at Oliver for a time, she peered sternly round the room, apparently suspecting an ambush from behind while her attention was being taken up with what was happening out there in front of her. “Can you open the door for me, please, Zoya? I need to come in, you see. Is there a key in the lock? Otherwise we could go round to the front and you could let us in from there. It’s just me, Zoya. Me and a girl. You’ll like her. No one else, I promise. Can you try turning the key, perhaps? It’s one of those little brass wheels, I seem to remember. It takes three or four turns.”

  But Zoya still had the gun and she had brought the barrel round to point it at Oliver’s groin, and there was such lethargy in her movement, such despair in her face, such an utter indifference to life or death, that it seemed as likely she might loose it off as not. So there was a long pause while he remained firmly standing, with Aggie watching him from the wings, and Zoya trying to come to terms with the idea of him again, after all the years of whatever life had done to her in the meantime. At last, with the gun still aimed at him, she took a step forward, then another, till they were standing man-to-woman either side of the glass, and she was able to examine his eyes and decide what she saw in them. Holding the gun in place with her right hand, she reached out her left and tried to turn the lock, but her wrist was so thin it hadn’t the power. Finally she set down the gun and, having straightened her hair in order to receive him, used both hands to let him in— and Aggie straight after him and past him, scooping up the Kalashnikov and tucking it under her arm.

  “Will you tell me, please, who else is in the house?” she asked Zoya calmly, as if they’d known each other all their lives.

  Zoya shook her head.

  “Nobody?”

  No response.

  “Where’s Hoban?” Oliver asked.

  She closed her eyes in renunciation.

  Oliver put his hands under her elbows and drew her toward him. He extended her arms and laid them round his shoulders, then he gathered her into an embrace, holding her cold body against him, patting her back and rocking her while Aggie, having checked that the Kalashnikov was loaded, cocked it and, holding it across her body, stole into the hall on the first leg of her inspection of the premises. For a long while after Aggie had gone, Oliver kept Zoya in his arms, waiting for her to thaw and soften and grow warm against him, and her fists to unclasp from the lapels of his jacket, and her head to lift and find his cheek. He felt her heart beating against him, and the trembling in her emaciated back, then the heaving of her ribs as she began to weep in long exhalations, emptying her breast of wave after wave of grief. Her thinness shocked him but he guessed it was not new to her. Her face was hollowed and as he lifted her chin and pressed her temple against his cheek he felt her skin slipping like an old woman’s across the bone.

  “How’s Paul?” he asked, hoping that, if he could persuade her to talk about her son, he would open the door for other things.

  “Paul is Paul.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Paul has friends,” she explained, as if this phenomenon distinguished Paul from other children. “They will protect him. They will give him food. They will let him sleep. There will be no funerals for Paul. You wish to see the body?”

  “Whose body?”

  “Maybe it is gone.”

  “Whose body, Zoya? My father’s body? Have they killed him?”

  “I will show you.”

  The front rooms of the villa were linked by connecting doors. Clutching his arm with both of hers, she led him past Catherine the Great’s furniture and the shrouded motorbike, through Paul’s empty bedroom to the room with flowers str
ewn over the floor and the trestle table at its center, and the builders’ battens nailed in an Orthodox cross.

  “It is our tradition,” she said, placing herself beside the table.

  “What is?”

  “First we put him in an open coffin. He is prepared by villagers.

  Here we have no villagers, so we prepare him ourselves. It is hard to dress a body with many bullet holes. Also the face was affected. However, this was accomplished.”

  “Whose face?”

  “With the body we place his favorite objects. His umbrella. His watch. His waistcoat. His pistols. But we keep also his bed for him upstairs. We make also a place for him at table. We eat for him beside a candle. When neighbors come to say good-bye to him we greet them and we drink for him. But we have no neighbors. We are exiles. It is our tradition to leave a window open so that the soul can depart like a bird. Maybe his soul did this, but the weather was very hot. When the body leaves the house, the clocks are turned three times against their natural inclination, the table is turned upside down, all flowers are removed and the coffin is struck three times against the door before it makes its journey.”

  “Mikhail’s body,” Oliver suggested, and she confirmed this with a series of long, ominous nods.

  “Maybe we should do that, then,” he said, covering his relief with determined brightness.

  “Please?”

  “Turn the table upside down.”

  “It was not possible. After they have gone, I was not strong enough.”

  “We’re strong enough together. Here. Let me do it. Why don’t I just collapse it?”

  “I remember you are very kind,” she said, and smiled admiringly as he folded the legs under the table, pressed them home and laid the table face downward on the floorboards.

  “Maybe we should clear up the flowers too. Where’s a broom? We want a broom and a dustpan, that’s the best thing. Where do you keep your brushes?” The kitchens reminded him of Nightingales: high and raftered and a smell of cold stone. “Show me,” he said.

  Like Nadia she pulled open several cupboards before finding what she was looking for. Like Nadia she muttered about absent servants. They returned to the front room and she swept vaguely at the flowers while he held the dustpan for her. Then he took the broom from her and leaned it against the wall and held her because her weeping had started again, and this time it seemed to Oliver that the companionship between them had revived her, and her tears were cathartic. And he gave everything he had to tending her—all his feelings and empathy and willpower were beamed at her. It was an essential discipline to think of nothing except gentling her out of her catatonic state and back to life: because to have done otherwise would have been to shove her aside and abandon her to her tears and convulsions, and race back to the second kitchen cupboard from the left, where a brown bag to match his coat—a carry-on, Nadia had called it—boldly labeled Mr. Tommy Smart in Tiger’s hand-writing, leaned exhausted among mildewed boots, rubber overshoes and back numbers of Russian-language newspapers.

  “My father was betrayed by time,” Zoya announced, breaking free of him. “Also by Hoban.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “Hoban loves nobody, therefore he has betrayed nobody. When he betrays, he is being loyal to himself.”

  “Who has he betrayed, apart from you?”

  “He has betrayed God. When he returns, I shall kill him. It will be necessary.”

  “How has he betrayed God?”

  “It is irrelevant. No one may know. Paul likes very much football.”

  “Mikhail liked football too,” Oliver said, remembering kickabouts on the lawn, and Mikhail with his gun still in his boot, leaping for the ball. “How has Hoban betrayed God?”

  “It is irrelevant.”

  “But you’re going to kill him for it.”

  “He betrayed God at the football match. I was present. I do not like football.”

  “But you went.”

  “Paul and Mikhail will go to the football match, it is arranged. Hoban has obtained the tickets. He has bought too many.”

  “Here in Istanbul?”

  “It was night. There was a full moon at the Inönü stadium.” Her gaze drifted to the window. She was shivering again, so he gathered her into him. “Hoban has obtained four tickets, therefore there is a problem. Mikhail does not like Hoban. He does not wish Hoban to be in attendance. But if I come also, Mikhail cannot resist because he loves me. This also Hoban knew. I have never been to a football. I was afraid. The Inönü stadium holds thirty-five thousand people. One cannot know them all. At football there is a halftime. In this halftime, the teams withdraw and discuss. We also discussed. We had bread and some sausage. Also, for Mikhail, vodka. Yevgeny does not permit Mikhail very much vodka, but Hoban has brought a bottle. I am at the edge of the group. Beside me is Paul and after him Mikhail. After Mikhail is Hoban. The lights are too bright. I did not like the lights.”

  “And you discussed?” Oliver said softly, leading her.

  “With Paul we discuss football. He is explaining to me the subtleties. He is happy. It is rare that his father and mother attend such an occasion together. Also the Free Tallinn is discussed. Hoban is proposing that Mikhail takes a boat ride on the Free Tallinn. He is tempting him like the devil. It will be a beautiful journey. From Odessa through the Bosphorus is beautiful. Mikhail will be so happy. It will be a secret from Yevgeny. A gift, to surprise him.”

  “And Mikhail agreed to go?”

  “Hoban was very subtle with him. Devils are always subtle. He placed the idea in Mikhail’s head, he promoted it, but in his conversation he made sure that the idea proceeded from Mikhail. He congratulated Mikhail on his good idea. He turned to me. Mikhail has this great idea. He will sail with the Free Tallinn. Hoban is wicked. It is normal. That night, he was more wicked than normal.”

  “Have you told this to Yevgeny or Tinatin?”

  “Hoban is the father of Paul.”

  They had returned to the drawing room and it was evident that Aggie somewhere in her training had acquired nursing skills, because she had made a broth from bouillon cubes, and stirred two eggs into it, and now she was sitting at Zoya’s arm feeding soup to her, and taking her pulse and chafing her wrists and dabbing her face with eau de cologne from the bathroom. And it was inevitable that Oliver should remember Heather on the occasions when he had one of his galloping temperatures and the shivers, but whereas Heather had always got some kind of power kick out of ministering to him, Aggie just seemed to feel responsible for the whole universe, which was pleasing to Oliver, if disconcerting, because until now he had always assumed that he was alone in this regard. He had fetched Tiger’s bag and it had told him nothing except that, wherever Tiger was or wasn’t, he lacked a change of clothes. Aggie had disarmed the Kalashnikov and propped it in a corner and she had brought fresh candles because like Oliver she had an instinct for preserving atmosphere and didn’t want to startle Zoya with the harshness of electric light.

  “Who are you?” Zoya asked her.

  “Me? I’m just Oliver’s new squeeze,” she replied with a cheerful laugh.

  “What does that mean, please?”

  “I’m in love with her,” Oliver explained, and looked on while Aggie put a blanket over her, and puffed up the pillows she had brought from upstairs, and patted more cologne on her brow. “Where’s my father?”

  A long silence followed in which Zoya appeared to recompose her memory. Suddenly, to Oliver’s astonishment, she laughed. “It was preposterous,” she replied, shaking her head in amusement.

  “Why?”

  “They had brought us Mikhail. From Odessa. First they take him to Odessa. Then Yevgeny gives them money, so they send him here to Istanbul. The coffin was of steel. It was like a bomb. We bought ice. Yevgeny made a cross. He was demented. He laid him on the table in his coffin in the ice.”

  “Was my father here already?”

  “He was not here.”

  “But he
came here.”

  She laughed again. “It was a theater. It was ridiculous. The doorbell rang. There were no maids. Hoban opened the door, he thought it was more ice. It was not ice, it was Mr. Tiger Single in an overcoat. Hoban was very pleased. He brought him to the room and said to Yevgeny, ‘See. A neighbor has called after all. Mr. Tiger Single wishes to pay his respects to the man he has murdered.’ Yevgeny’s head was too heavy for him. He could not lift it. Hoban had to bring your father to him before he would believe.”

  “How? Bring how?”

  She put her arm behind her back, as high as it would go. Then she raised her chin and grimaced in empathetic pain. “So,” she said. “Then?”

  “Then Hoban said, ‘Shall I take him into the garden and shoot him?’”

  “Where was Paul?” Oliver asked, as an extraneous wave of anxiety for the child seized him.

  “Thank God he was with Mirsky. When Mikhail’s body came I sent him to Mirsky.”

  “So they took my father into the garden.”

  “No. Yevgeny says no, don’t shoot him. If we are in the presence of the dead, we are also in the presence of God. So they tied him.”

  “Who did?”

  “Hoban has people. Russians from Russia, Russians from Turkey. Bad people. I do not know their names. Sometimes Yevgeny sends them away, but then he forgets or he is sorry.”

  “And after they’d tied him? Then what did they do with him?”

  “They made him look at Mikhail on the table. They showed him the bullet holes. He did not like to look. They forced him. Then they gave him a guard and put him in a room.”