The Starlings of Bucharest

by Sarah Armstrong

  ‘Let me show you around the house, and I’ll take Vorona for a walk while you settle in.’

  CHAPTER 32

  I sat on my bed. It was an attic room with wooden rafters, walls and floor. A tinderbox.

  I had watched her walk out of the gate with that dog by her side. I doubted that dog belonged to anyone else; it was alert to her every movement. She was hiding more than the dog, though, I was sure. But now I was hungry.

  I went back to the kitchen, basic but fully fitted, and helped myself to the white bread and jam that she’d left out for my lunch. The milk she may have put in her pocket at the shop, but she had not been carrying a loaf of bread. It was fresh. Where had it come from?

  I took my uneven sandwich with me as I walked around the cabin-like lower floor. There was a sofa, a chair by the back window, a swept fireplace and a small sideboard. Apart from the clock on the wall, the only ornamentation was a black-framed picture of a young man, maybe eighteen, nineteen. She had left me a pair of cotton shorts with the towel on my bed, ‘in case you want to go swimming in Silver Pond’. I did have the urge to go swimming and not come back.

  The door opened and I jumped. Eva came back in with the dog and a string bag full of food.

  ‘I thought you might be having a nap,’ she said. ‘You must feel exhausted by all the changes today.’

  ‘I’m too tense to sleep.’ There was no point pretending this was normal.

  She unpacked her bag. ‘I’m going to make lamb shashlik for dinner. They don’t take long, but I want to marinate them first. Why don’t you go for a swim and they should be well on the way.’

  ‘All right.’

  The dog watched me leave the room. As I got changed I could hear her talking in Russian to the dog. I hoped it was to the dog.

  I felt naked as I went back downstairs, but she was busy and didn’t look at me.

  ‘See you in a while,’ she said. The dog just watched.

  I wandered down to the bottom of the garden and paddled in the water. It was a sunny afternoon and the water wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t quite warm either. It would have been easier to jump from one of the little docks, but I edged my way into the water and began to swim. The Lido at Dovercourt came back to me, and the relative freshness of this water made a nice contrast. As I swam, I weighed my options.

  Swim to the other side of the lake and do a runner in my wet shorts? No.

  Maybe I had enough money to get a bus back to Moscow. Travel was cheap here. I could just walk into the embassy. In my shorts. And see Christopher’s face. No.

  They wouldn’t let me back into the Natsional. I could go to the Rossiya and find Ursula, or wait for her to walk past me on Red Square, if they wouldn’t let me in there. Possible. But not in shorts.

  I could wait here and see what happened. I had the sense that Eva wanted something from me in return for all this. And, really, it was a holiday. No one expected me back until the night of the 23rd and this was the 19th. I could always say no. I could always, as with Vasile, say yes and mean no. I liked this option best.

  In the middle of the lake I stopped to tread water. I could see my limits, yet I could also see where I was heading.

  I’d seen shashlik on a few menus, but I hadn’t ordered any. If Eva’s were anything to go by, I’d been missing out. We ate outside, like a picnic, with some good red wine and vodka to follow. I was happy. My possessions had arrived while I was out so my suitcase, my cigarettes and passport (which I’d forgotten about) were all here.

  A racket began in the taller trees along the lake, and we both looked up.

  ‘Starlings,’ said Eva, ‘all bluster and noise.’

  ‘I saw starlings in Bucharest. I hadn’t realised that you got them outside Britain.’

  ‘Ah, we have tigers, leopards, bears and starlings, sparrows, nightingales. There’s even a kingfisher on this lake.’ She smiled. ‘Best of both worlds. I have a book on birds, if you’d like to look at it.’

  ‘I might. Thank you.’

  ‘Did you spend much time on the Stour Estuary?’

  She knew where I was from. I kept my hands steady. ‘No. Not much.’

  ‘What do your parents do?’

  ‘My father is a fisherman. Goes out for cod, pink shrimp, oysters, with whoever needs an extra pair of hands.’

  ‘He doesn’t have his own boat?’

  ‘Not any more.’ I swallowed. ‘My mother stays at home. A bit of sewing, knitting, that kind of thing.’

  She said, ‘Good, decent work.’

  I was blinking and hoping she kept her eyes fixed on the water beyond. I don’t think she looked, but she probably heard the lump in my throat in the way I spoke. I gulped some wine.

  She went inside, telling the dog to stay, and came back with the picture frame from inside.

  ‘My son,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen him for—’ she paused ‘—ten years.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Alexander.’ She took it back inside and I knew it was time to change the subject before we both started bawling.

  ‘Where is your friend?’

  She looked confused.

  ‘Who owns the dog?’

  ‘Ah, Lubya. She is far away at the moment. She used to be a cosmonaut, and now she trains cosmonauts.’

  I laughed in surprise. ‘Does she?’

  ‘Yes. Is it funny?’

  ‘It was unexpected. So, she’s been to space?’

  She shrugged. ‘That is what they do.’

  She looked so cross with me that I started laughing and couldn’t stop.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s just if I knew someone who had been to space it would be the first thing I said to anyone. And the dog as well. I’d say, hello, I’m Ted and this is a cosmonaut’s space dog. And you’re just shrugging it off.’

  She smiled.

  ‘You must know a lot of amazing people for that to be nothing.’

  She refilled our glasses and offered a toast. ‘To space.’

  I clinked.

  ‘I don’t think you’ll meet Lubya. Not unless you’re here for rather longer than I expect.’

  ‘How long do you expect?’

  ‘Two or three days, I think.’ She nodded to herself. ‘You can stand it for that long, can’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Do you know, has anyone got through to the office?’ I half-wanted them to know where I was, and half-wanted them to think I was still at the festival.

  ‘I’m not sure yet. It might drag on until Monday. I assume they don’t work at the weekend?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m sure it will be fine. We’ll get along for a couple of days and you will have an adventure to talk about when you get back, or keep to yourself. Whichever feels best.’ The wine was empty and she opened the vodka. ‘I’ll get bread to have with the vodka.’

  I was drunk enough. With any luck I would sleep despite the light skies. I’d seen how thin the curtains were, but the curtains in my room at my parents’ house were no thicker and I hadn’t minded it then. There was something else which reminded me of home, and I was starting to think it was Eva. Maybe it was the sheer luxury of someone cooking for me, or just being interested in what I had to say.

  She came back out with rye bread and a knife.

  ‘What were you told about your predecessor at the magazine?’

  ‘Nothing. I was just told there was someone who’d left suddenly.’

  ‘He died, Ted. While he was abroad reporting on a festival. Joseph North.’

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘Well, there’s no official story. I heard it was an accident. The CIA are good at inventing new concoctions, but aren’t as good at working out what they’ll do to people.’ She put the bread on the table and began to slice it. ‘It’s all been hushed up, but I think someone should have told you about him. Don’t you?’

  ‘Does Mr Benstrup even know? Should I tell him?’

  ‘That’s up to you, but whatever you
choose to say, you shouldn’t mention me.’ She sat down. ‘Do you like your job, Ted?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘You’re not worried about what they’re going to say, and you were going to leave without seeing the festival end. Don’t you want to know who’s going to win?’ The vodka glugged loudly as she filled the small glasses.

  ‘You told me who would win. And no, this isn’t what I want to do.’

  ‘What, then? What do you want, Ted?’

  She was too eager, too keen to get that out of me. I smiled, and pointed at the vodka.

  ‘Show me how to do this like a Russian.’

  She blinked slowly and tilted her head. ‘You drink the vodka and eat the bread. But first we toast.’

  I clinked her glass.

  ‘Rabochiye mira!’

  We drank.

  ‘What did I drink to?’

  ‘Workers of the world, tovarishch.’

  ‘Have I been signed up?’

  ‘Do you want to be?’

  CHAPTER 33

  Did I want to be?

  I didn’t sleep well, but the sun was high when I eventually got up. Eva had left me a note next to a breakfast of bread, butter, jam and kefir.

  ‘Please help yourself to tea or anything you would like. I will return after lunch.’

  She had also left me the dog.

  After breakfast, I changed into my shorts and took my towel down to the lake. I sat in the sun and watched the light bounce back from the water. I tried to remember when I had last been given time to just think. In Harwich I had worked in the holiday park in the summer and on the boats in the winter. In London I had weekends to myself, but this was a holiday. My first since I left school at fifteen, and I’d had to work through those anyway. Here I was free to think about what I wanted. If I knew what I wanted.

  I heard a clatter of starlings behind me, and laid back on the sandy soil. The white-trunked birch trees were full of life and movement. It was probably true of the Stour as well, but when did I ever get the chance to soak that up? It was all cleaning chalets and throwing bloody, clammy fish into boxes, and cutting my hands on brutal bits of machinery. I inched into the water.

  We’d been allowed to go to the Lido at the end of the season, and we had swum in the sea up the coast on late summer evenings. This water had neither chlorine nor the salty chill of the North Sea. It wasn’t clear right to the bottom, but it was fresh and warm now that I’d adjusted. I floated on my back, my ears underwater, listening.

  I knew Eva wanted something from me. I never knew I had anything to give, anything anyone wanted. It made me want to say yes without asking what it was.

  Eva was back by the time I went inside. I had a bath while she got lunch ready. She appeared to have bought food from a café that she had wrapped in newspaper.

  When I came down she was talking to the dog.

  ‘She telling tales on me?’ I asked.

  ‘What tales could she tell?’

  ‘She sat by the house while I was swimming but I was sure she had her eye on me.’

  ‘How was the water?’

  ‘Lovely, once you adjust. It’s quite cold at first.’

  ‘Every New Year’s Eve people swim in the Moskva. We call them walruses. Maybe you’ll work your way up to that. Shall we eat?’

  We sat down and she uncovered the plate of blinis, sour cream and an open can of black caviar.

  ‘Do you want to know where I have been?’ she asked.

  ‘Apart from shopping? I’d guess that you were looking in at the festival to see what people were saying.’

  She nodded. ‘How’s your caviar?’

  ‘Lovely. I had red before, but I prefer black.’

  She was silent for a while. I knew she was waiting for me to ask, so I didn’t.

  Finally, she said, ‘Do you know the names of those four Vietnamese women in the Natsional?’

  ‘No. They don’t speak English, so I never asked.’

  ‘It’s interesting. Ly, Phuong, Qui and Long. They mean Lion, Phoenix, Turtle and Dragon, representing the four sacred mythical creatures.’

  ‘It that a political choice?’

  ‘I don’t think so. They were very informative. Between them they seem to know most things that are going on at the Rossiya. They are taking good care of Ursula, by the way. Christopher was harassing her and they got rid of him. He seemed to think that you were hiding in her room.’

  ‘I would have thought he had information from inside the hotel.’

  ‘I’m sure he does. He does like his hunches, whether they are correct or not.’

  ‘Did you speak to Ursula yourself?’

  ‘I didn’t. I didn’t speak to the Vietnamese women either, the translator of their films did.’ She raised her eyebrow. ‘I can’t speak every language.’

  ‘Any word on Alan?’

  ‘Fully on the mend.’

  ‘And what is Christopher doing?’

  She smiled. ‘Turning Moscow upside down, looking for you.’

  ‘I have ruined his weekend.’

  ‘Do you feel bad?’

  ‘No. Alan getting sick was bad enough, but I still could have experienced the festival and made two good friends and written my report and taken away some great memories of Moscow.’

  ‘I hope you can still take good memories with you.’

  I swallowed and sat back. ‘I can.’

  ‘I have a typewriter here. You should use this time to write up your festival report.’

  ‘Yes. Maybe.’ I didn’t want to think about work or Plumstead or my bedsit. It was all too small.

  ‘I get the feeling, Ted, that things have changed for you. You don’t want to be a film reviewer, you said that. So, how are you going to get what you really want?’

  I looked towards the lake. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Maybe we should think about that together.’

  ‘Maybe. Eva, what’s your view on translation? Is it about conveying the spirit of the film or the literal words?’

  ‘It’s more than that. It’s about understanding the cultures of both the place the film was made and the place it is being seen and finding a way to communicate between both of those cultures. A literal translation often makes no narrative sense as the spirit of the film is lost, but then if one tries to convey the spirit of the film it becomes an entirely different film. To some extent a film or a book is always altered by the person who translates it. But finding a way for two peoples to communicate and understand each other, that’s what I think translation is for.’

  She was surprisingly passionate about this. Any doubts I had that she worked as a translator had been set to rest. That didn’t mean that she only worked as one, though.

  I sat in front of the grey Olympia Traveller De Luxe with its smell of fresh ink ribbon and oiled parts.

  ‘Isn’t this new?’

  ‘Of course. They are made in Yugoslavia. I use it for my work in English, the translations. For Russian, I have a different one, obviously.’

  I nodded. A review of the festival.

  ‘Have you read a festival review before?’

  ‘Yes. In the library.’

  ‘Can you remember how they are structured?’

  I looked at her. ‘No.’

  ‘Just write down what you want to say, and I’ll get you some examples.’ She paused in the doorway. ‘I read your article on Mircea Drăgan. You write well. You can do this.’

  Then she was gone, and I realised that no one had ever said that to me before, not since I left school anyway. She came back with her bag.

  ‘I’m going into work to find some magazines for you. Shall I take the dog?’

  I looked at her. ‘She’s fine. You can leave her here.’

  She lifted a bag. ‘I’m going to take your shoes. It’s not to stop you leaving, it’s just I think your soles need replacing.’ She looked into the bag. ‘I might get them polished too.’

  ‘Thank you. That’s very kind.’
<
br />   Eva left and the dog lay down at my feet. I flicked through my film notes, and remembered what Eva had said about the winners: Dersu Uzala by Akira Kurosawa; The Promised Land by Andrzej Wajda; We All Loved Each Other So Much by Ettore Scola. I would never think of Kurosawa without thinking of Alan, and the thought of the Scola film still made me well up.

  They had bonded, Alan and Ursula, over pressure from something happening to them. The phone calls, maybe, I wasn’t sure, but it felt like more than that. If I gave in to Eva, wasn’t that letting them down and saying there was nothing to fight against here? And Ingrid, poor, shaking Ingrid — what had scared her so much?

  I rubbed my lips. The dog raised her head to look at me, and then sat up to look out of the window. I looked too, but I couldn’t see what she could. Was there someone out there? Had Eva left someone to watch me while she was away? I pulled my shirt over my fingertips and rubbed at the typewriter where I thought I might have touched it, and then realised how ridiculous that was.

  The dog was still looking. Something was there. I pushed the chair back and ran through the back door, right down to the water. Panting, I turned around. There was nothing. The dog was still inside, watching me now. I walked back to the table and then looked around the room. I went through the chest, but there was just a hairbrush and an empty notepad and pen. I listened out for any car pulling in, and then went to Eva’s bedroom opposite mine. The door had never been open when I’d gone to my room or to the bathroom. I opened it quietly and looked in. It was the same as mine, bed by the window and chest of drawers. There was a pair of slippers by the bed and a dressing gown draped over the end. I wasn’t going to look in her drawers and there was nowhere else to search.

  I went back to the table.

  ‘Don’t tell Eva,’ I said to the dog.

  The dog lay back down and I started to type my review. I started with Girl from Hanoi, partly so I didn’t have to think too much about Alan and Ursula and partly because I wanted to know whether Eva would say anything. If she didn’t say I should cut it, then it might mean that she didn’t have my interests at heart. And if she did, I would take it from there.