A Shadow of Myself

by Mike Phillips

  In comparison, Katya’s exile had been an escape to a new life.

  ‘There is so much to tell you,’ she said.

  Unable to stop himself, he yawned.

  ‘I’m tired,’ he said apologetically.

  It was past midnight, and in normal circumstances he’d have been in bed by this time. He wanted, more than anything, to lie down.

  ‘You can sleep in my bed,’ Katya told him. ‘I was thinking about that, and I can’t remember us being in bed together.’

  In the bedroom she pointed to the big photograph of Nancy Cunard.

  ‘I bought that,’ she said, ‘because I remembered you talking of her.’

  He nodded, smiling at her to show his appreciation of her memory, but the truth was that he didn’t like to see the picture. It made him think of failure, wasted promise, blasted lives, his own and others. This woman in the photograph had been there when he first met Osageyfo.

  He undressed sitting on the side of the bed, watching Katya doing the same thing in the middle of the room. She had left only a dim lamp burning in the corner, and she stripped without a hint of coyness. As she took off her trousers, standing on one leg and smiling broadly, it struck him that although they managed to conceive a child together, he had never seen her naked. He hadn’t known what to expect, and he’d been prepared for her to be wasted and wrinkled beneath her clothes, but her figure was still recognisable, the waist dipping in, her legs still long and straight. She kept her bra on, because she told him later, her breasts were no longer beautiful. ‘They feel fine,’ he told her. Her arms were thinner, the skin sagging round her shoulders, but as she walked towards him she still had the appearance of an attractive woman. Kofi hadn’t thought about sex during the entire day, but his penis rose as if summoned to arms. Katya looked down, smiling, and patted his stomach, which since the years she’d known him had ballooned into a moderate paunch. ‘This is a new thing,’ she said. ‘The other I know very well.’

  They lay face to face, arms and legs wrapped round each other.

  ‘It’s been years since I did this,’ Kofi said.

  ‘Do you want to?’

  ‘Yes.’

  It was as if he had never been away, but, better still, Katya seemed like a new woman, one he had never known, while at the same time she was the woman he had dreamt and wondered about for so many years. He slipped into her easily and they moved together slowly. After a time Kofi began to feel his former power return, his calm deserting him and a kind of delight rushing through him as he moved inside her. With a strength that surprised him he turned her on her back and rode into her, moaning with joy. At the end she held him in her arms, stroking his face.

  ‘Not so bad for an old lady,’ he told her.

  ‘I love you,’ she said.

  Just before they went to sleep, she propped herself up on her elbow above him.

  ‘I’m worried about George,’ she said. ‘His wife is beginning to despise him.’

  It was shortly after this that George arrived, half carrying Joseph, Valentin shuffling behind them, grinning when he saw Kofi. Another hour had gone past before Katya dismissed them, ushering Valentin out of the apartment and sending George off to the bedroom where Radka was waiting. Now they sat in the kitchen drinking tea, the scent of the honey-coloured liquid tinged with lemon. He sniffed at his cup, dragging the fragrance into his lungs. Forty years ago, in the hostel where she visited him, they had drunk tea like this.

  ‘You said that you knew how to fix it,’ he said. ‘How can you do that?’

  He knew better than to ask about talking to the police or any other authorities. He had already gathered from Joseph’s hints that George was no ordinary businessman, and from the moment he had got out of bed and seen Joseph slumped on the sofa he had known that it wasn’t a matter for the authorities.

  They were speaking in English. Katya spoke the language now more fluently than she had before, but with a different accent, a little buzz which gave her intonation an American sound. Kofi found it disorientating, as if this was an imposter who looked exactly like the woman he’d known.

  ‘It’s your friend Valery,’ she said. ‘I think he would help us. For myself I would not ask him. I think he might say no, but now you are here it’s different.’

  Kofi was astonished. He hadn’t thought about Valery in years, not since Chernobyl, and since then he had forgotten.

  ‘How can he help?’ he asked. ‘He must be an old man now.’ He paused, remembering. ‘He wasn’t a Georgian, was he? He was Ukrainian. Did he get to be an engineer?’

  ‘Yes. He went to the Institute of Oil and Chemicals, and then he went to Siberia.’

  ‘So he wasn’t at Chernobyl.’

  ‘Chernobyl?’ She laughed. ‘No. He was never that kind of engineer. Anyway he was in Siberia.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ Kofi asked. It was as if she was telling him about a life he should have known or been a part of. In all these years he hadn’t thought of it like this. On the contrary he had imagined their separation as one in which Katya had been cut off. Now he felt that he was the one who had experienced the deprivation of exile.

  ‘He came to see me,’ she said calmly. ‘He was here to see a government minister. I saw him on television, but I wasn’t sure, then in the morning I got a telephone call. Valery Kirichenko, they said. The funny thing was, although it was a surprise at the time I was expecting it.’

  ‘He’s important, then.’

  He was trying to call up a picture of Valery, sitting over the stove with a book in his hand. Instead he remembered the sneer on Hussein’s face as he looked at him, and his sceptical remarks: Be careful of that one.

  ‘You remember Hussein?’ he asked Katya.

  She thought for a moment, then nodded.

  ‘He died,’ he told her.

  Hussein had died twenty years before, in mysterious circumstances in prison in Uganda, his publications suppressed, his careful charting of economic disaster scattered.

  ‘Valery is very important,’ Katya said. ‘He’s a billionaire. I think he might be one of the richest men in the world. He owns property all over, even here in this city. Now he’s buying newspapers and TV.’

  Kofi whistled involuntarily.

  ‘Incredible.’

  Katya shrugged.

  ‘Everything changed ten years ago. For some it was a death sentence. They breathed and they walked around but they were dead. For some every door opened.’

  ‘So he’s a billionaire,’ Kofi said. ‘But he knew us forty years ago. We shared a room. Rich men don’t remember what happened before they were rich. Not just rich men, at my age I find it hard to remember names and faces from the past.’

  A dozen years previously he had been scanning one of the black newspapers in the newsagents in Ladbroke Grove, when he saw a picture of Calvin in a group of dignitaries. He wasn’t sure at first, but the caption underneath gave his name and said that he was his country’s Minister of Culture. Kofi laughed about that all the way home, but when he telephoned the High Commission they wouldn’t give him Calvin’s whereabouts or pass on a message. Eventually he found out that Calvin would be at a fund-raising reception at the Kensington Town Hall. The entrance fee cost him more than he could afford, but he was there when Calvin was ushered across the room, his wife, a young woman dressed in a sari who looked like a fashion model, clinging to his arm. Kofi smiled, remembering Marina and the pumping buttocks of the Minister of Culture. Seizing his chance he got in front of Calvin and put out his hand. ‘Dobri veeyecher, Calvin,’ he said. Calvin stared at him, puzzled for a moment, then he took the offered hand and shook it warmly. ‘How are you, man?’ he said. ‘Nice to see you.’ Then he side-stepped Kofi and continued on his way out of the room. At the door he paused suddenly, as if hearing a voice call his name. He looked back at Kofi, a puzzled frown creasing his forehead, and Kofi stared back smiling, certain now that Calvin would return and throw his arms round him. Instead the wife tugged at his arm
and said something, and Calvin, returning to the present, nodded his head and hurried on out of the door. That was the last Kofi saw of him.

  ‘Valery will remember you,’ Katya said. ‘You were the reason he came to see me.’

  ‘Me?’ Kofi was bewildered now.

  ‘He was the one who started the trouble.’ She hesitated. ‘Well. It was my father, in fact. I only learnt this a few years ago. After you came to our apartment I knew he was very angry, but I didn’t know how far he would go. He sent for Valery and interrogated him about you. He ordered him to find ways to separate us. But it was difficult.’ She laughed. ‘Subtlety was not possible for them. The boys who attacked you were Party members. Valery found them and told them what to do. He said my father was pleased and excited, and that he would have liked to have seen it.’

  ‘I thought they must have stopped you coming to Paris,’ Kofi said.

  She smiled.

  ‘I was nearly there. My father wouldn’t have stopped me. I pretended that I had come to my senses and was getting over you by throwing myself into my work. I was sitting every night in the apartment writing speeches, going to Komsomol meetings. This was my conversion, and he believed it because he wanted to. My mother was different, but she was more angry with him than with me. She would never tell him my secrets. I knew I was pregnant. That was my secret. I was going to tell you in Paris.’

  We would never have gone back, he thought.

  ‘It was Valery who did it. It was my fault. I wrote you a stupid note. Abyssinia. I should have known better. It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.’

  ‘I’ve still got the note,’ Kofi said.

  ‘Valery saw it. He must have been searching your papers, but I never guessed that his English would be so good. I think in those days he hid his cleverness. He told my father about the note and what the word meant. After that, no Paris.’

  She stopped and put her hand to her face, as if the enormity of the moment had suddenly struck her. Kofi leant forward and took her other hand, stroking it gently. She raised it to his cheek, her touch warm and dry, the way he remembered her hands on his skin.

  ‘It would have been good,’ Kofi said. Their eyes met. She blinked and a tear trembled on her lashes.

  ‘I had to get away before my father knew about the baby. I didn’t know what he would do. They could have sent me to an institution.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘Committed me and got rid of George. I couldn’t risk it. I volunteered for the Virgin Lands. Valery helped me to get to Siberia. I told people in the Party I had been raped and they kept it from my father. He didn’t find out till it was too late. Afterwards he helped me get a job here in Berlin, working on translations. It wasn’t the sort of life I had intended, but it wasn’t so bad.’

  Kofi thought about Valery looking through his papers. It wouldn’t have been difficult. With everything he must have known and guessed about their relationship it wouldn’t have been hard to spot the child’s riddle of Abyssinia. Perhaps there had been a touch of sadness when he asked whether Kofi was coming back, which he imagined, at the time, was about the prospect of not seeing him again. There was no doubt about it, Valery had ruined his life. But Kofi found it hard to summon up any anger. After all, his roommate had probably had no choice, faced with the direct commands of an official like Katya’s father. He did what he had to do.

  ‘So he survived.’

  ‘My father thought he owed him something. The first step is always the hardest, but he got him into management in the oil industry in Siberia. That’s where he wanted to go, and he never looked back. He was a senior manager during the time of Gorbachev. Then they made him a deputy minister for oil and gas. Then he became president of a state company before privatisation, and he stayed there afterwards. In two years he was a billionaire. Now the politicians and officials line up outside his office begging to see him.’ She smiled and gestured. ‘No one would have imagined it. Perhaps I was lucky.’

  Lucky to be out of it. Lucky not to be one of those who rode the Party like captains on the bridge of a ship just before it sank below the waves.

  ‘When I saw Valery, he said he had been full of shame for what he’d done. He liked you, but that was how we lived. This was brave of him to come and see me. He was ready for me to curse him and spit in his face. But I didn’t blame him. Only a few years before there were men who could commit any crime if you didn’t do what they ordered. He said that if there was anything he could do for either of us I should telephone at any time.’ She put an engraved card in front of him. It had Valery’s name on it, and a single phone number. ‘I think you should call.’

  There was something about her tone, almost challenging, as if she was testing him, finally handing over the responsibility for all these matters. Hearing it, he decided against asking her what to say. He hesitated for a few seconds, thinking about the time. In the Ukraine it would be nearly three in the morning. At last he made up his mind. The time would make no difference.

  ‘Give me the phone.’

  She got up and brought him a handset and he punched in the number quickly. The phone rang interminably, and he was about to put it down again when there was a click and a woman’s voice answered in Russian.

  ‘I want to speak to Valery Vasselievich,’ Kofi said in English. ‘This is Kofi Coker.’

  There was another burst of talk which Kofi didn’t understand.

  ‘Kofi Coker,’ he repeated patiently. ‘Tell him Kofi Coker.’

  There was a silence on the other end. Kofi looked over at Katya and shrugged. Perhaps the number wouldn’t work. He sat there for several long minutes listening to nothing, and just as he became convinced that he’d been cut off, Valery’s voice spoke into his ear.

  ‘Kofi?’

  ‘Yes, it’s Kofi,’ he answered, feeling nothing but relief.

  ‘Kofi.’ Valery’s voice sounded amused. ‘I thought you were dead. Last week I flew over Kalinin. They call it Tver now, and I thought of you.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Kofi said. ‘I thought they killed you at Chernobyl or somewhere. Now I hear you’re alive and ruling the world.’

  Valery chuckled.

  ‘The world’s too big.’ There was a pause. Then: ‘I suppose you’re with Katya. How is she?’

  ‘She’s fine. So is my son. We want to see you.’

  ‘That’s not easy.’

  ‘It’s a matter of life and death. Katya says you’re the only person we know who can help. It’s about our son.’

  ‘I’m in Kiev,’ Valery said. ‘Tomorrow I’m in Prague. I mean today. Later on. After that Alaska.’

  ‘Today in Prague,’ Kofi said.

  ‘Okay. We’ll meet in the afternoon, drink tea and contemplate the Vltava. I’ll make the arrangements. Someone will pick you up.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll see you later.’

  He was just about to put the phone down, when he heard Valery say his name quietly.

  ‘Kofi?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m glad you made it.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Radka and George conversed in whispers so as not to wake Serge.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me about this?’ Radka asked. ‘We could have been in danger, me and Serge. And your mother. Liebl was watching us.’

  ‘What would you have done?’

  She didn’t reply and he already knew her answer. She would have taken the boy and left, he thought.

  ‘So what shall we do now?’ she whispered fiercely. ‘Wait until they kill you?’

  ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘If my mother has no solutions, we leave soon. In England we’ll be safe.’

  ‘Until the next time Valentin comes along with some crazy idea.’

  ‘There’ll be no next time.’

  He had a troubled and broken sleep, lying on the edge of the bed on the other side of Serge. In their own apartment the bed was large enough to accommodate them all comfortably, but here at Katya’s he had to take the rough with the smooth. In the early
hours of the morning he woke up and realised that he couldn’t get back to sleep. He went into the kitchen, made himself some coffee and stood in the sitting room looking out at the sky. It had been a full moon, but in any case, here in Berlin, the moon and stars were hardly noticeable in a sky flushed pink and yellow with the city lights.

  He heard a noise behind him and assumed that it was Katya. She used to come up behind him like this when he was a teenager and he got up in the night to stare out at the sky. ‘Is there something you want to talk about?’ she would ask in a soft voice.

  When he turned round, however, it was Kofi who sat in the armchair, one leg dangling over the side like before, looking intently at him.

  ‘Hello,’ George greeted him. He raised his cup. ‘You want some coffee? Tea?’

  Kofi shook his head.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘we can talk a little. I would like to know you better.’

  George cast around in his mind for something to say. He had dreamt of this moment many times.

  ‘This must be very strange for you,’ he told Kofi.

  ‘For you too.’

  George nodded in acknowledgement.

  ‘The strangest part of it,’ Kofi said, ‘is that you and Joseph look so much alike, but you are German and he is English.’