The Siege

by Helen Dunmore

  ‘You’ve no idea, Anna, because you’ve grown up with what came after. The time of hope didn’t last long. Everything solidified so quickly, after only a few years. They closed down one of Bulgakov’s plays, and banned The Crimson Island. It wasn’t allowed a single performance. By that time people were measuring what they said, and thinking about where to align themselves. There was such fear. It’s one thing for a poet to speak out. He can always write poems. But an actor or a director has got to have a theatre. He has got to be part of something, or else he’s nothing. People saw that they’d be out in the wilderness if they made the wrong choices.’

  People, thinks Anna. Always people. I want to know about you, not about people.

  ‘I thought you were going to talk about what happened between you and my father.’

  ‘Yes. But this isn’t background. It’s all part of it.’

  Those rounded, authoritative syllables. You have to believe her. But don’t forget that Marina has been trained to make people believe what she says.

  Kolya sighs, and shudders. A bad dream, nothing more. Anna pushes her hand under his coat and rubs his back, over the knobs of his spine, across his ribs, up to the wings of his shoulder-blades.

  ‘There, sleep now. Sleep.’

  ‘In the second year, I became pregnant,’ says Marina. ‘By that time I knew your mother. We’d been introduced, we liked one another. I used to come to the house. We were becoming real friends, kitchen friends.’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘I had an abortion, as everyone did. It was perfectly normal. I didn’t tell your father until afterwards.’

  There is silence for a while.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He was angry.’

  ‘So, he wanted another house, and another baby not to go home to. Was that it?’

  ‘No. He said it was our baby, part of our life. He said I should have told him before I had the abortion.’

  ‘But he wouldn’t have done anything.’

  ‘Of course not. He loved your mother. I knew that by then. But he was still angry with me.’

  ‘It’s true, he can stay angry for a long time.’

  ‘He asked me if the foetus was male or female.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said I didn’t know.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘It was male. I was four months pregnant.’

  ‘You left it late.’

  ‘Through stupidity. Thinking I might tell him, and then pulling back from it, and then thinking again that I might tell him.’

  ‘But you didn’t.’

  ‘No. It’s finished. It’s a long time ago. But that was the end of things between us. After that we were friends.’

  ‘That wasn’t what you wanted.’

  ‘No. But I could tell that it was an effort for him to touch me. So I preferred not to be touched.’

  ‘When my mother died, did you ever think –’

  ‘No. I never thought of it. I knew it would not happen.’

  She says it coldly and clearly, as if she’s giving a statement to the authorities.

  ‘So there you are,’ says Marina. ‘That’s my story.’

  They lie silent, in the dark. Her father breathes snoringly. Kolya twitches, then goes still. The room smells of the books Marina has burned.

  ‘How many volumes did you burn, Marina?’

  ‘Two. It’s good paper, and the boards are almost as thick as wood.’

  ‘We’ll burn two more in the morning.’

  Anna thinks of the bright hot flame that will spurt from those books. She’ll hold her hands so close that her bones show through the flesh. The flames will lap at her palms. Who could have ever imagined such ecstasy, while the radiators still worked? Her whole life will be in her hands, and Kolya will sit between her knees, his face lit, his candle-pale skin flushed to rose.

  ‘Of course, that wasn’t the truth,’ says Marina.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you want the real story?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We recognized each other right from the first moment. We hadn’t any choice, that’s what I thought. He’s dying now, and perhaps I’ll die, too. Nobody will ever know what happened. There was no child, and now there’s not even any story left. Everything will be rubbed out. That’s what they do to enemies of the people, isn’t it, Anna? They are erased from the records. So I’ll tell you, even if you don’t want to hear. Even if you think I’m your enemy.

  ‘I was already well-known. I was used to things being as I wanted them to be. The roles I wanted, the tables I wanted in restaurants, summers in the Crimea. I was used to respect. Nothing had ever caught me and held me and made me do things I didn’t want to do, and go to places I didn’t want to go.

  ‘But your father did all that. He captured me like a fish and then he tried to throw me back into the water, but it was too late. I’d spent too much time up in the air and I was damaged. I wasn’t as beautiful any more, either to him or to myself. I couldn’t repair myself. I couldn’t even swim away. I sank to the bottom of the water and I hid there, in the mud. I believed that the mud was where I belonged.

  ‘I wanted the child, but I knew that your father wouldn’t be prepared to become its father. He would stay with Vera, and with you. My child would depend on me for everything. Once or twice I imagined telling him, in the heart of the night, after hours of sex, when you seem to be out of your body. I know, he’s your father. I shouldn’t be telling you this. I would imagine us talking soul to soul. Of course it never happened. I didn’t have the courage.

  ‘The doctor I went to was not a pleasant individual. He knew who I was. He kept telling me about how much he loved the theatre, and which roles I should take in the future. Plenty of excellent, fatherly advice, but his eyes weren’t fatherly. We were in his consulting-rooms. He owned me, for a while. He was full of understanding for what he called my “predicament”. What he wanted was for us to conspire together, and maybe for me to weep tears on his shoulder. But I wouldn’t. I had to open my legs for him but I would not open my mouth. He actually said to me that he would be interested to come to my next performance, to find out if my experience had affected my art.

  ‘Your father, of course, knew nothing about any of this. When I told him that I’d had the abortion, later on, he wrote a series of poems. They were very good poems.

  ‘Vera read them. There was never any quarrel, nothing was said. She simply withdrew. She could be in the same room, and it would seem as if she wasn’t there. You know how she always read all the drafts of your father’s work? At that time she used to write her thoughts on small sheets of yellow paper – often very good, clear, technical comments – and then she’d clip the yellow sheets to his manuscripts. She never wrote on the manuscripts themselves. Your father showed me what she’d attached to the manuscript of the poems he wrote after we’d separated. It was just a short note. “In my opinion these poems, excellent as they are, strike a false note.” That was all she ever said.

  ‘I spent a long time down in the mud, thinking about it all. I thought a lot about your mother, too. I wanted her friendship even more now that I’d done this to her, but I couldn’t get it. She didn’t try to stop me seeing him, nothing like that. She didn’t need to.

  ‘I had to understand that I’d been mistaken from the beginning. We hadn’t recognized each other. I’d recognized him, but he’d thought I was someone else. And I saw what a relief it was to him, when he believed I wasn’t in love with him any more. He really loved me, then. He was so grateful to me for having got over him that he built me up into something remarkable.

  ‘I remember the tone of the doctor’s voice exactly. “It was a boy,” he said. He wanted me to know that. Not, not so fatherly at all.

  ‘And all those letters your father sent to me. The most wonderful letters, years and years of them. I’ve kept them all. Is Kolya still asleep?’

  ‘Fast asleep.’

  ‘That’s it.
Now it’s time for you to tell me your story.’

  ‘There isn’t one to tell.’

  ‘Of course there is.’

  ‘No,’ says Anna, ‘because it’s still happening. It hasn’t turned into a story yet.’

  Marina laughs. ‘How like your mother you are.’

  ‘I hope I am.’

  She’s solid, like Vera. She doesn’t know what she wants yet, but when she does know there won’t be any hesitation. Why did I tell her all that? Because she’s going to survive. You can see it, it’s written in her face. Though thousands shall perish around thee, it shall not come near thee. God knows why that is.

  I didn’t tell her everything. Perhaps it wasn’t a true story at all. There are only two things I want to remember.

  One night I got out of bed and went to the bathroom. He had fallen asleep. I filled the basin with warm water and soap and slowly washed myself, as if I were washing someone else. My thighs ached, my whole body was damp with sweat. It was summer, and still light, and I could see myself in the mirror, washing away the smell of sex, squeezing out my sponge, and soaping it again. My face was pale and my eyes were dark, and my reflection seemed to flicker, as if it wasn’t quite real. The mirror reflected the window behind me, and a bat flew past, against the late-evening sky. It flew straight, then it jinked sideways as if it had sensed me. Suddenly I was terribly hungry.

  And then it finishes. I don’t remember what came next.

  The second time, I was alone. I had gone back home after visiting the doctor who performed the abortion. I had no idea what to expect. Again it was summer. I sat by the window, waiting. I had no pain yet, but my body felt wrong. I was waiting and waiting, checking every grain of sensation, waiting for it to begin. I’d said to the doctor that my old nanny would be at home with me. But I hadn’t told her anything. She would have looked after me, but she would have been sorrowful. I didn’t want that. She would have prayed for me when she thought I wasn’t looking.

  Another pale, late sky. There was a heavy scent of jasmine, and it irritated me, although normally I like jasmine. It smelled artificial, as if someone were pumping the scent into the room. I got up and opened the window, but of course the scent grew stronger. I looked down and there it was, deep, dark green that was disappearing in the summer dusk, and white flowers like stars. Wave after wave of scent came up as the breeze turned. I leaned out, and that was when I felt the first pain, not strong at all but final, like something ripping inside me that could never be put back together.

  She says she hasn’t got a story. Andrei comes home and says to me, ‘Hello, Marina. How have you been?’ I exist for him, but only because I’m connected to her. They lie on the mattress together, with the child between them. Sometimes I hear them whisper. When he comes into the room his eyes pass over me as if I am furniture, until he finds her face. She is like Vera.

  23

  She’s come at last. I don’t say anything, but I hold out my hand. I say her name, those two syllables that mean truth. Ve-ra. Her name makes no sound, but she smiles as if she’s heard it, and sits on the sofa beside me. It doesn’t hurt. All the others hurt me when they come near me. But when Vera sits beside me, I feel nothing but lightness and warmth. Even though I know it’s winter, she’s wearing her sunflower cotton dress.

  I don’t open my eyes, but I know when I do the sun will be shining behind the curtains. I was wrong. It isn’t winter, it’s summer. It’s so early in the morning that the garden will be soaked in dew. When we walk, we’ll make black footprints. I know the exact shape of Vera’s footprints on wet grass. They are firm, and not too small, and she’s wearing the low-heeled shoes she always wears to work.

  Something wonderful is about to happen. I’m trying to remember what it is, but I can’t remember. Without opening my eyes, I can tell that Vera is smiling.

  ‘You came at last,’ I say to her.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But what took you so long?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. It wasn’t any time at all.’

  ‘You remember that first time we went dancing?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I can’t dance,’ I said. She looked at me, and there she was, quite suddenly the most important thing I had ever seen. She was strong and supple, her waist deeply marked, her breasts round and full, her hips already moving to the music. She was laughing at me, because of what I’d said.

  ‘Don’t be silly. Everyone can dance,’ she said.

  ‘Not me. I’ll only tread on your feet and pull you over.’

  She took my right hand in her left. Her skin was warm and moist. She took my other hand and moved closer to me. Now I could smell her. A warm, powdery smell, then the smell of her hair which had had the sun on it. Vera loved sitting in the sun.

  She wasn’t laughing at me now. Her face was smooth and serious.

  ‘Of course you can dance. You just have to let yourself move to the music,’ she said.

  What we did wasn’t really dancing. She drew me close and we swayed to the music. The band finished that number, and started another, and Vera said, ‘I love this one.’ We never stepped out on the floor. ‘Next time,’ she said, ‘we’ll dance properly. I’ll teach you.’

  But I don’t think we ever did. As I remember, we went to a cafe and I talked for a long time about Mayakovsky. I would have had to go to dancing lessons, and I didn’t want to. There were more important things.

  She’s still there, still smiling, waiting. I can see her breasts and her hips, which I haven’t yet touched. I believe that she’s a virgin, and I’m right. Her life has been work, friends, dancing. But she is ready to move on. I can see her clear, serious face with the half-smile on it. One of her hands is lifted, ready to settle on my shoulder. If I made the slightest effort, she would dance away with me. But I stand still.

  She’s still here. She must have been sitting beside me for a long time, because I’ve been asleep. One of those others came up and did things to me. I can’t see them clearly. They are like clouds I could put my hand through. But Vera is solid, and sharp. My eyes fill with tears, and I put out my hand to touch her. The weight of her thigh presses down my blanket.

  ‘Did you go away?’ I say.

  She shakes her head and smiles. ‘I’ve been here all the time.’

  She uncrosses her legs and glances away from me, at something I can’t turn my head to see.

  ‘Don’t go, Vera,’ I say.

  ‘Don’t worry. When I go, you’ll come with me.’

  She smiles. She raises one hand, as if to settle it on my shoulder. It touches the open wound there, but I don’t flinch. I want her to touch me. I want her to dance me away from here.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she repeats. ‘This time, you’ll come with me.’

  I can’t see Vera any more. They’re all like clouds now. My feet have been cold for a long time, but now the cold has reached my knees.

  ‘Vera.’

  She doesn’t answer, but she squeezes my hand.

  ‘Cold,’ I tell her.

  Marina straightens up from Mikhail’s side. How awful she looks, Anna thinks. If only Andrei could get something for her cough.

  ‘What did he say?’ she asks.

  ‘He’s cold.’

  ‘But I can’t light the burzhuika again. There’s only enough to heat the room up a bit before we sleep.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He doesn’t recognize me any more.’

  ‘He doesn’t recognize me, either.’

  ‘But he spoke to you. He took your hand, I saw him.’

  ‘He thought I was someone else. You know that your father’s going, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He isn’t suffering, that’s what matters,’ says Marina, almost to herself. Anna looks at her father’s face, carved, yellowish, like a mask of wood. His mouth gapes a little.

  ‘He can’t go on like this,’ she says.

  ‘No. He can’t and he won’t.’

  On the mattr
ess, Andrei is showing Kolya chess moves. He has made a chessboard from paper, with tiny paper pieces which Anna drew and cut out. They have had to burn the wooden chess set in the burzhuika. Andrei’s legs are too swollen for him to get to the hospital today. Kolya watches the movement of the paper chess pieces. Andrei isn’t playing real chess: his knights thunder freely over the field, snatching pawns, stymying kings and bishops.

  ‘The horses are hungry,’ says Kolya. ‘Give them something to eat’

  ‘Of course. Here’s their hay, and here are their oats. You hold out the oats, Kolya, with your hand flat. Like this, then they can’t nip your fingers by mistake. Perfect.’

  ‘They’re gobbling it all up! They’re trying to eat my fingers!’ says Kolya. There is a gleam of pleasure in his wasted face.

  ‘Hold out your hand and give them this apple, and then they’ll be ready to fight again.’

  Marina puts another blanket on top of Mikhail. She folds it under his chin.

  ‘It’s time to turn him again,’ Andrei says from the mattress. They are turning him every two hours now, to relieve his bedsores.

  ‘No,’ says Marina, ‘I don’t think he wants us to touch him any more.’

  ‘His skin’s like paper. It’s got to be looked after.’

  ‘I think he’s going, Andrei. Have a look.’

  But before Andrei can heave himself off the mattress, Mikhail begins to snore, deep in his throat. A long, snoring breath, a pause, then the gravelly start of another snore.

  ‘You’re right,’ says Andrei. ‘There’s no need to turn him.’

  ‘Why’s he making that funny noise?’ asks Kolya.

  ‘He’s very ill.’

  ‘I know that?