A Shadow of Myself

by Mike Phillips

  We walked on in silence.

  ‘I can go to Paris next month,’ Katya said. ‘There’s a conference and they’ve asked me.’

  Hearing the words was as if someone had switched on the lights in a dark room. Up to that time it had not occurred to me that we might be together in some other place, and when I thought about her there had been no expectation of any future beyond the next time we would meet. Suddenly it was possible to imagine her with me years away from the Lenin Hills.

  Walking up the slope we began planning. There had been no need for her to ask me, because her assumption that I would want to be there with her in Paris was entirely correct. We didn’t talk about what would happen there or whether there was any question of her leaving permanently. At the back of both our minds was the thought that no one could stop us getting married in another country. The odd thing was that the whole idea might not have come up at all if it hadn’t been put there, between us, by the intervention of others. Without saying anything, we both knew that being together in Paris would be the first step on a path which might carry us anywhere. The first snag, of course, was that in order to avert any suspicion we would have to stop seeing each other. In the circumstances it wouldn’t take much for them to cancel her trip.

  ‘The next time I see you,’ Katya said, ‘will be in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.’

  I don’t know what would have happened if everything had been as normal. Instead, I was on edge, nervous and agitated. I wrote to Makonnen saying that my father had been in poor health when I left and that I hadn’t heard from him. It was preying on my mind to the point where I couldn’t concentrate on my studies, and I wanted him to get me permission and to pay for the fares so that I could go back for a couple of weeks to sort matters out. Mak had lost touch with my father years ago, and in any case, he was a mere toiler, a sparrow whose fall no one would have noticed, but I trusted that my patron would take the hint. The story about my father was the safety net. If they thought this was a journey of compassion and that I was coming back, no one would connect my leaving with Katya.

  The arrangements were made faster than I thought possible. Ghana had by now established an embassy in Kitay-Gorod and Mak had sent a message through the ambassador. I think that the warden was pleased at the thought that I would have a holiday and return refreshed. Since my ‘accident’ I had discussed the matter with him twice, pretending to slowly come round to his point of view. I had met with worse things in England, I told him, and I had no intention of confusing the issues by allowing myself to be used as a tool of propaganda by anyone. He nodded approvingly, and returning my passport to me, shook my hand warmly.

  I went to see Hussein’s friend, Alexy, the black zek, before I left. He was still sitting up in bed, as if he hadn’t moved since my last visit. I gave Vera the bottle I had brought and sat beside him.

  ‘I wanted to tell you something,’ he said. ‘Hussein told me about what happened to you. Don’t judge us because of that. In twenty-five years nothing has ever happened to me, because of my colour, even in the camps. But even if it had, it wouldn’t matter. When you go back to Africa tell them that this system offers more freedom to more people. If they imitate the West what they’ll have is a ruling class working for the Americans. The hope is here.’ He paused. ‘Without Stalin and Beria this would have been a paradise.’

  This time I couldn’t restrain my curiosity.

  ‘So you’re still a Communist?’

  ‘Of course. When comrades come here from the West they expect perfection. What they never understand is that this is a state which is still on the way to changing the world.’

  I half expected Valery to lecture me too, but he had said very little since my accident, which I appreciated. In spite of the suspicions Hussein planted in my mind, we had been good friends, sharing many thoughts, as young men do. When the time came for me to leave he held my hand in his and looked straight into my eyes. ‘Are you coming back?’

  Something inside me refused to lie to him, although I couldn’t tell the truth either. ‘Maybe,’ I told him. ‘I’ll see how it goes.’

  I got one letter from Katya with one word written on a sheet of paper. I knew it was her from the handwriting, although it was unsigned. ‘Abyssinia’, it said. It was a childish code I had learnt from a girl in England: ‘I’ll be seeing you’. No one would guess its meaning but I hid it away among my papers, and I still have that letter, the ink faded, the paper creased and falling apart.

  It is all I have. She never came to Paris in the spring. I waited, haunting the hotel where the Russians were staying, perusing the faces at the conference long after I knew she wasn’t there, and I didn’t give up until they left. In desperation, finally, I arranged to bump into one of the delegates whom I recognised from the Komsomol college. I explained that I was doing a brief period of research in Paris, and asked after Katya. The delegate looked surprised. Katya had not been part of the delegation. They left the following day and I returned to London, where I got a summons from the Ghanaian embassy. The Russians had revoked my scholarship and withdrawn my visa, the attaché told me. He looked at me with obvious disapproval. ‘You’re not the first,’ he said, ‘to get into trouble over these women. But we expected more discipline from you.’

  Coming out of the embassy there were tears in my eyes, and I walked the pavements between the high stone buildings without knowing or caring where I was going. In my mind I was wondering what had happened to her, and whether I would ever see her again, and what to do with the rest of my life.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Joseph and his father ate breakfast together, Kofi picking at a couple of rolls and drinking cup after cup of black coffee. He had noticed Joseph’s bruises and the stiffness of his movements immediately. Joseph told him a version of the story, editing out any mention of George. At the end Kofi reached out, and, holding Joseph’s chin in his hand, turned his head from side to side as if examining a small child.

  ‘You’re okay,’ he said finally. ‘I heard Berlin was bad. You should be careful.’

  ‘You too,’ Joseph told him. He was oddly irritated by his father’s coolness.

  ‘I’ve been in worse places,’ Kofi replied.

  He had secured an English newspaper from somewhere and he read it carefully, replying laconically to Joseph’s comments. For his part Joseph stopped talking as soon as it was apparent that Kofi was in no mood for conversation, and, in any case, he was relieved not to be forced into elaborating on what had happened. What he really wanted was to sit and daydream about Radka, and the way her naked body had felt against his. His heart skipped a beat when he thought about the fact that he would be seeing her soon.

  Ironically he was more nervous and on edge than Kofi seemed to be. Walking in the Tiergarten his father seemed to have recovered from whatever had ailed him, striding with his shoulders back, his head angled upwards as if he was trying to get his share of the fresh air in the park. He was still in a distant and abstracted mood, but Joseph couldn’t resist asking him once more about Katya and what it had been like with her. Oddly enough, he wanted to tell Kofi about Radka and what had happened between them, but the instant it came into his mind it also occurred to him that Kofi might explode with indignation. ‘Your brother’s wife? You fucked your brother’s wife?’ He imagined his father saying it, and then he wondered how George would take the fact that his brother and his wife had betrayed him so completely. The idea gave him a peculiar little shiver, and, catching something in the corner of his eye, Kofi turned his head to look at him.

  ‘Are you looking forward to it then, Dad?’ he said, forcing a smile.

  Kofi shrugged.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘We have a lot to talk about.’

  ‘Do you think she had something to do with your being expelled?’

  This was a thought which had been at the back of his mind, since Kofi had said what he did about Katya being a Party member.

  Kofi shrugged again.

 
‘I don’t know. Why would she?’

  Joseph didn’t know the answer to that, but somehow the thought that she might have been untrustworthy didn’t displease him.

  ‘I’m surprised you’re so trusting,’ he said. For some reason, he realised, without being able to stop himself, he was trying to needle the old man. ‘You were always telling me not to trust white people.’

  Kofi flicked him a quick dangerous glance, and they had walked on for a few steps before he replied.

  ‘When I told you that, you were a child, and I told it to you because you did.’

  It was the middle of the day when Radka came to fetch them. It was a short trip, she said. George hadn’t arrived yet, but they were expecting him soon.

  ‘How did she take the surprise?’ he asked her.

  She pursed her lips in a non-committal grimace.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘She is looking forward to seeing you.’ She paused. ‘Her feelings are complicated. It’s natural.’

  Her tone was friendly, but distant, which disappointed Joseph. He knew, of course, that in Kofi’s presence she was unlikely to let slip any clues, but nevertheless her manner was like a dash of cold water in the face, as cool as if he was a business acquaintance. If anything she was warmer towards Kofi, fussing round and asking whether he was comfortable as she settled him in the back of the car.

  They were there in less than a quarter of an hour, turning off the broad thoroughfare of the Bundesallee into a criss-cross pattern of quiet streets. There was something solidly comfortable about the look of these houses and apartment blocks, dull red brick faced in gleaming white, with lines of trees dotting the pavements. Unintentionally Joseph found himself comparing the district with the street in London where his father lived.

  ‘Very nice,’ he murmured.

  Radka gave him a quick impersonal smile.

  ‘It’s new. They rebuilt all this after the war.’

  Katya’s apartment was on the first floor of a block, the entrance to which was reached through an archway which gave on to a paved courtyard. In the middle were a couple of trees surrounded by benches. They walked in single file, Radka leading the way and Kofi bringing up the rear, his footsteps seeming to slow down and drag as they climbed the stairs. On the landing Radka paused and looked around. Then she put the key in the lock and turned it. As she did so they heard the high-pitched piping of Serge’s voice – ‘Matka.’ Immediately, the sound of his feet thundered along the corridor and before they could get past the threshold, he had hurled himself at Radka, clinging to her legs, laughing and hooting and talking rapidly, all at the same time. She picked him up and hoisted him in her arms, putting her finger over his lips.

  ‘Wo ist deine Oma?’

  By this time Serge had seen Joseph and Kofi and he squirmed around to watch them, his eyes wide and his mouth dropping open slightly.

  ‘Babushka?’ he whispered, his eyes still fixed on the visitors.

  ‘Ja. Das ist eine Überraschung.’

  ‘Ah.’

  The boy’s eyes seemed to grow wider and rounder as he contemplated the nature of the surprise his mother had brought home. Joseph felt the urge to laugh. They’d used three different languages in as many sentences. With himself and his father in the room it would be four.

  Serge pointed to the open doorway from which he’d emerged. Radka touched her fingers to her own lips this time, looking round at Joseph and Kofi, then beckoned them to follow her. The room at the end of the hallway was big, with tall French windows leading to a small balcony overlooking the courtyard. It was a pleasant room, the sort of room where Joseph could imagine sitting and whiling away the afternoon. The walls were light grey and with a faint pattern of tiny maroon flowers. There were two armchairs, one of them in soft worn brown leather, opposite it against the wall a piano with the lid open. Above it a line of photographs. In some of them he caught sight of his own face looking back at him. Katya was sitting in an armchair facing the window, warming herself in the bright oblong of sunlight which slanted through the glass.

  Joseph had expected someone older, or rather someone who looked more aged, a shapeless old babushka with a watery gaze. Instead, the woman who turned to look at him had a kind of vigour and sharpness about her which made her seem younger than she must have been. Her grey slacks were buckled at her narrow waist, and her white hair curled round her face in a soft cloud. Around her mouth the dimples were etched deeper, along with the tracery of lines beside her eyes, but she was still pretty, with an easy smile and bright clear eyes.

  ‘Georgi,’ she called out, beginning to get out of the chair, then her smile faded as she realised that it wasn’t her son, and she was about to say something, Joseph never knew what, when she saw Kofi coming through the door behind him. She stared for a few seconds, and behind him Joseph felt his father’s silence, motionless.

  ‘Hier ist mein Onkel,’ Serge said loudly. He looked at Radka for approval and she smiled, drawing him towards her.

  ‘You know who this is?’ she asked Katya in English.

  Katya nodded slowly, still staring at him. Then she sat back in the armchair as if her legs had given way. The colour had drained out of her and her eyes blazed at Kofi.

  ‘I never believed,’ she said, speaking the unfamiliar words slowly, ‘that I would see you again.’

  She began to cry, sobbing helplessly, curling up in the chair as if trying to hide herself away. The little boy stared at her for a moment, then he too began to cry, a huge wail, his face buried in his mother’s dress. She began speaking to him soothingly. Kofi pushed past Joseph and knelt by Katya’s chair.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, his voice light and jocular. He held her hands between his. ‘I don’t look that bad, do I?’

  Katya looked at him and laughed, then she cried again while he put his arms round her and they hugged each other. Radka had turned around and gone out of the room with Serge and he could hear their muffled voices somewhere outside. For the moment Joseph felt like a voyeur, an intruder in an intensely private scene, but there didn’t seem to be anything else he could do, so he sat down and watched his father and Katya hugging each other. He found the sight both touching and disturbing. In a curious way, seeing his father’s emotion he felt pleased for him. At the same time he found himself wondering whether it was the depth of Kofi’s feelings for this woman which had made the separation from his mother inevitable.

  After a while Radka and Serge came back, pushing between them a trolley loaded with cakes and pastries. The couple stood up and Kofi led her by the hand to Joseph’s side.

  ‘This is my son, Joseph,’ he told her.

  ‘I know him.’ She had dried her eyes and now her face was all smiles. ‘I saw him speak on the television. He looks like George.’

  She hugged and kissed him. Joseph smiled stiffly, wondering how he was expected to behave. Fortunately, their attention focused almost immediately on Serge who, carried by his mother close to Kofi, clung round her neck and drew back from his reach. Kofi laughed unselfconsciously, cooing and making a clown’s face at the boy, who, recollecting Radka’s instructions, suddenly put out his hand.

  ‘Hello, Grandfather,’ he said hesitantly in English.

  ‘Oh, bravo!’ Katya cried out, clapping her hands. ‘Bravo.’

  After this they behaved as if it was a normal everyday occasion, Kofi and Katya smiling and touching each other like a couple who had only been separated for a few weeks. They talked about the old days and about places and people they’d known, but they sounded to Joseph like a pair of pensioners at a reunion. If there were undercurrents to be explored they clearly intended to keep them hidden for the moment. Joseph stuck it out for another hour, then he said he was expecting a phone call at the hotel. Something to do with his work.

  ‘But you must wait for George,’ Katya said.

  ‘I’ll be back soon,’ he said. ‘Besides, you two have plenty to talk about. I’ll see you later.’

  Radka came to the door with him. Now
her eyes met his and she smiled softly.

  ‘You’ll come back?’ Her voice was pitched low and she spoke quietly, giving the question an undertone of intimacy.

  ‘Later,’ he told her.

  She reached out and squeezed his arm and he lifted her hand to his lips, feeling like a traitor, because he had no intention of going back, not that evening. No one was thinking about how he might feel, he thought unreasonably, walking back along the Bundesallee, and suddenly he experienced a desperate urge to be relaxing in his own house, waiting, perhaps, for Lena to come into the room and sit quietly beside him.

  Back in his hotel room he lay on the bed, drinking beer and watching the news, followed by a football match between two South American teams. He must have fallen asleep before it came to an end, because he woke up to the sound of the telephone ringing. The sun was low on the horizon, the tall blocks in the centre of the city casting long shadows. He fumbled for the phone, knocked it over, and picked it up blearily.

  ‘Mr Coker,’ the voice said, ‘I have a message for you.’

  ‘A message?’ he repeated, astonished. He knew no one in the city, apart from George and his family.

  ‘From your brother. He is waiting for you.’

  ‘Waiting for me?’

  ‘Yes. He is sending a taxi.’

  Joseph shook his head.

  ‘Wait a minute. What are you talking about?’

  ‘You are Mr Coker?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mr George Coker is sending you a taxi. He wants you to meet him. He wishes to speak with you.’

  ‘Where is he? Let me speak to him.’

  ‘That is not possible. He’s on his way here.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Kreuzberg. The taxi will bring you here. You will find it waiting outside the hotel.’

  There was a click and in a moment Joseph heard the dialling tone.

  He hesitated, in two minds about what to do. His instinct was simply to go downstairs and get into the taxi. He had become accustomed, during the conferences and festivals he’d attended abroad, to being ferried around in buses or cars, and there was an easy familiarity about an impersonal phone call warning him that there was a vehicle waiting. This was different and after his experience of the previous night his caution was automatic.