by Rose Tremain
“Right,” he said. “But I den’t know what. I’ll look in the airing cupboard. Donna would’ve known, but tha’s all women are good for, if yew ask me—feathering their blusted nests.”
When Lev got back to the van, swaying from the vodka, his head dying for sleep, he found the Mings putting away their mah-jongg pieces at the Formica table. They looked at him worriedly.
“Rev, your phone cawring, cawring . . .”
“Yah, cawring five, six time.”
Lev stared round the van. He knew it was late—later still in Auror. Dread tugged at his heart. He found his phone and stared at the screen. Four missed calls: Rudi’s number each time. “Call me,” said the voicemail. Rudi’s voice thin and choked.
Lev took the phone and walked out again into the night. A bright moon came and went among fast-scudding clouds. The washing left on the line billowed in the wind. Lev took big gulps of air to try to clear away the vodka fug. Dialed the number.
Lora answered. “Oh Lev,” she said. “Such sadness for our village. I can’t tell you. I’ll get Rudi . . .”
Rudi came on. “Where you been?” he said frostily. “I’ve been trying your number all fucking night.”
“Nowhere, Rudi. Having a few drinks . . .”
“Okay, well, you’re going to need a drink in your hand now. We got bad news, Lev, unbelievable news.”
“Say it.”
“I can’t hardly bear to.”
“Say it, Rudi.”
A silence. A breath. Then Rudi’s voice, very quiet: “It’s not good, my friend. They’re going ahead with the Baryn dam.”
Just for a moment, relief. Relief that the call wasn’t about Maya or Ina. But then he had to make sure they were all right—before he could concentrate on the news about the dam. “Just tell me first, Rudi, are Maya and Ina okay?”
“As of now, they’re fine. But when they know about this . . . when everybody in Auror wakes up tomorrow and learns about this . . . they’re not going to be okay.”
His daughter was safe. His mother was safe. Rudi and Lora were safe. But now something terrible was arriving. Lev cursed Midge for plying him with vodka, kept inhaling the sweet night air to try to get some clarity into his brain . . . “Tell me, then, Rudi. About the dam.”
“Oh shit . . .” Rudi exhaled a long, shuddering sigh, then said, “Well, like you predicted, surveyors came. Pretended to Lora they were testing the drinking water. But we kept our eyes on them. Back and forth, back and forth, upriver, with their stupid theodolites—or whatever you call those fucking things. I said to Lora, ‘When did anyone need colored sticks and expensive lenses to test drinking water?’
“Then, tonight, after dark, I’m coming home from Baryn in the Tchevi, and I see shadows. I see these ghosts creeping round the village, sticking up fliers on walls. Jesus! What a way to do it! Stick up notices. No village meeting. No advance warning. Just these bastards, these cowards, slapping up pieces of paper!
“They thought everyone’d be in bed, that they wouldn’t be seen, but I wasn’t in bed. My headlights got them in their glare, like fucking rabbits. I stopped the car. Ripped down one of their fliers and read it in the lights.”
“Tell me what it says.”
“Got it in front of me now. You won’t believe the language they’re using, Lev. Bastards! I nearly exploded. Got this one ghost by the scruff of his municipal collar, said, ‘What is this? What is fucking this? What the fucking shit is this FUCKING NOTICE?’ ”
Lev waited. He could hear Rudi’s breathing, distressed, wheezy, like the breathing of an asthmatic. Imagined him leaning on the hall table, his hair wild, his body wrapped in his old tartan dressing gown.
“Sorry, Lev,” he panted. “But this thing’s got my heart into such a state I can’t hardly get my breath . . .”
“Okay. Take your time. Is Lora there?”
“She’s in the kitchen, making tea. Guess we’re just going to sit up all night, because how can anyone here ever sleep again? If Marina had been alive, we’d have known, wouldn’t we? We’d’ve been able to prepare ourselves—somehow. Or maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference. God knows. The thing’s not signed by Rivas. It’s from the Central Office of Planning in Jor. But Lora and I keep saying, ‘If only Marina had been alive . . . ’ ”
“Sure.”
“I know I shouldn’t say that to you. Doesn’t help one fucking bit. But it’s what I keep thinking—that she protected us from a lot of bad things, because she understood how bureaucracy works and how to fight it. And now there’s no one to fight it.”
“I know, Rudi. I know . . .”
“Okay, I’m sorry, Lev. I don’t know why I keep bleating on about Marina. I’m going to read the shitting thing to you now.”
Lev waited. He sat down on the cold grass. The wind flapped foolishly in the legs of his trousers.
“Here goes,” said Rudi. “ ‘The people of Auror District . . . are hereby informed . . . that the Central Office of Planning (COOP) . . . has given the Baryn Dam Project Code One Status as a Project of Outstanding Public Utility (POPU). The COOP accordingly . . . serves upon the people of Auror District Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs) of all Property, whether domestic or commercial, before the end of the calendar year, so that we may proudly begin’—proudly begin!— ‘construction work on this POPU. All residents currently housed in Auror District . . . will be relocated at the State’s expense to apartments now under construction in Baryn Perimeter Zone 93 . . . ’ ”
Silence in Rudi’s hall for a moment. Then another sound: a sob rising in Rudi’s wheezing chest, a long whine, then a breaking down into a storm of weeping.
Lev felt dizzy, sick. Only once in his life had he ever heard Rudi cry before: when they scattered Marina’s ashes. Now Lev wanted to hold on to something, saw only the swaying posts of the washing line, too far to reach. Put his head between his knees, still clutching the phone to his ear. Heard Lora trying to comfort Rudi, felt relieved she was there, because what could he say, far away as he was, what could anybody say when their village, Auror, would soon vanish under the water. And now he saw it: the dam itself—ten million tons of concrete—rising like a tidal wave between the southerly hills.
Rudi kept crying. Lev fought down his sickness. He heard Lora repeat Rudi’s name helplessly: “Rudi, Rudi . . . please, come on, Rudi . . .”
The wind kept blowing over Suffolk.
18
It Almost Had a Scent
THE FEELING THAT he was responsible, that his abandonment of his village had brought about its fate, began to cling to Lev, like a chill. He knew this wasn’t rational, but it gripped him now, a clammy fever of guilt. As though he’d been the one to decide to build the dam. As though it were he who’d reduced Rudi to tears.
The fever deepened after he’d talked to his mother. On the phone, Ina said to him, “I’m not leaving Auror. Not for anyone on earth. No one’s going to put me in a hutch in Baryn. You’ll just have to drown me.”
So then Lev sweated through nightmares, not only about Auror disappearing under the water, but about his mother’s death. Sometimes she simply lay down in the middle of the road and waited for the river to rise. Groups of villagers gathered round her. “Come away, Ina. Come away, dear, before it’s too late,” they begged. But Ina refused to move. In other dreams, she weighted herself down with her jewelry—her head tugged forward by the tonnage of rusty tin that hung round her neck, her skinny feet hobbled by ankle chains, hammered out to resemble garlands of leaves—and walked into the reservoir. Lev stood on the shore, helpless, unable to call out, watched Ina float for a moment or two on the pearly surface of the water, the shards of tin glinting in the sunlight, then disappear without a sound. Ripples fanned out from where her body had once been.
He kept working. Something about each bright May morning drove him on. In fleeting optimistic moments, he told himself it would come to him soon, the thing he had to work out, the plan he had to make, to find a future for himself and
his family. Meanwhile, he tried to save his money. Kept his phone switched off most of the time. Bought fewer cigarettes, gave up Pepsi, looked for the cheapest bargains in the co-op—beans and ravioli, ravioli and beans—lived on these and water and stale loaves and Midge’s free potatoes.
He wondered, through this pathetic scrimping, whether he should abandon everything—abandon the whole arduous enterprise—and go back to Auror. Sometimes he went there in his mind, organized protests against the Central Office of Planning in Jor, imagined himself scribbling on billboards and banners, marching up and down in the rain. But part of him knew this was useless. He knew the ways of the Central Office of Planning. The people of Auror were too few in number to matter.
Maya had whispered into the phone, “I’m frightened, Pappa. When are you coming back? When?”
Lev had to tell her, “Not yet, angel. Hang on. Keep practising your skating. Because I heard you’re getting really good at it. I want to see some beautiful spins . . .”
But, whispering still, she said, “I can’t go skating anymore, Pappa.”
“Why not?”
“Because the bus comes at the wrong time.”
“Doesn’t Rudi take you in the car?”
“The car’s sick.”
He could barely hear her, this quiet little mumble of hers. “What, Maya? What did you say?”
“The Tchevi. It can’t take me to Baryn. It can’t move.”
So this began to torment him, too, the knowledge that Maya was deprived of the thing she loved, and that all his consoling images of her small, graceful body leaping and gliding over the ice were now inappropriate and had to be put aside. When he next spoke to Rudi, he heard himself say crossly, “Is it true you can’t get as far as Baryn in the car?”
“Yes, it’s true,” said Rudi, his voice slow and weary. “The Tchevi’s kaput.”
“What? The cooling system?”
“And other things now. Tires worn out. Fan belt broken. It’s a heap of junk.”
Lev knew what this meant: no taxi business, no money. “Can’t you get it fixed?”
“No. I can’t get the parts and I can’t afford the tires. It’s over, my friend. Everything’s over.”
So it came down to this. This was what he had to fight: not only the chill of guilt but the idea of final catastrophe. Because no one back in Auror was fighting anymore—not even Rudi. The flame of the fight had to be kept alive by him and him alone.
But it was tough. He didn’t yet understand how to do it. His thoughts turned in circles. As he followed the rig along the gray furrows, he kept asking himself whether he was wrong to stay on with Midge, where he lived for little but earned little. Should he bolt back to London, take whatever job he could find? Should he try to get a loan, so that he could bring Ina and Maya to England? If he got them here, where would they live? How would he support them? Should he try to unravel the complexities of the Benefits office? Who would help him? And even if he found the means to support them, how would Ina survive in London with not one word of the language? So the circles wound on, always beginning again where they ended . . .
“Rev,” said Sonny Ming sadly, “this bad shit for you. We know. China side, many dams. Many, many virrige gone. Fuckin’ bad shit.”
“Yah. We know gubman bodies. Lirrel people wipe out.”
“Yes. That’s what they’re doing, wiping us out.”
“What you do now, Rev?”
“I don’t know.”
“But what you do, Rev?”
“I really don’t know. I’m trying to work it out.”
They were tender toward him, as though he’d become the third brother. They tried to teach him mah-jongg. During the mah-jongg games, they sometimes stroked his hands. Out on the asparagus fields, they slowed the line if he was failing to keep up, but keeping up—or trying to—was what got him through the days. He prayed for fine weather so that these days would be long and the pay at maximum; he offered to work overtime in the chiller for extra cash.
Midge Midgham knew his plight. Came down to the van one evening carrying a brand-new mattress cover he’d bought in Asda. Said to Lev, “Reckon it’s hard to sleep, eh, when you’re worrying about this blusted dam business? Whack this on the bed, bor, and yew may get better nights.”
He was touched by the kindness of these people whom he hardly knew, people who’d never seen Auror or anywhere like it. Only Vitas was fierce. “I told you,” he said moodily, “I told you about the dam at Auror way back in the winter and you didn’t believe me. Like you still don’t believe me that G. K. Ashe is an arsehole.”
To be, or not to be . . .
Lev reached these famous lines on a night of sudden rain, with the new mattress cover soft under his body and the Mings sighing and whimpering in their complicated sleep. He remembered with a smile how, on the bus, Lydia had confused the words with the term B&B. He read on:
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? . . .
Lev lay back and let the book rest beside him. Even he, with his still-flawed understanding of English, could admire the economy with which this question was expressed. And he wrestled with the thought that if only language could always be as simple, as sweet and unambiguous as this, then life itself would somehow be less complicated.
To be, or not to be . . .
He said it over and over. Tried to translate it into his language. Fell asleep saying it, remembered in his dreams how, when Marina had died, he’d wanted not to be. But woke the following morning with the early sun, and no will to die. Though he was in a “sea of troubles,” he’d find the means to “take arms” against them. Somehow, he would.
His phone rang and it was Lydia calling, very late, from Paris. She thanked him for the fifty-pound check he’d managed to send her, then said, “I just learned about the Auror dam, Lev. Pyotor and I are so shocked. I told him I had to call you.”
“That’s kind of you . . .”
Her voice was soft and affectionate; no trace of exasperation or anger. “I’m calling on the phone in our private sitting room in the Hôtel Crillon,” she announced gaily. “Pyotor is asleep next door. He’s very tired after the concert tonight. Sibelius: exceptionally demanding. Such a complex score, you know.”
“Yes? More complex than Elgar?”
“I think so. But we’d better not talk about Elgar, Lev. We’re going to talk about Baryn. However, before we discuss that, shall I describe our bathroom to you?”
“Yes, describe your bathroom to me, Lydia.”
She told Lev the bathroom had two washbasins and a floor of marble. The shower cubicle and the side of the enormous bathtub were also tiled in marble. The space was lit with thirteen halogen spotlights and the taps were gold. What she loved most were the bathrobes, thick and white as bales of cotton, put out for her personal use.
Lev stared at the crumbling furniture of the caravan, the filthy two-ring burner, the tilting cupboards, the sink crammed with unwashed crockery and stinking of baked beans. But kept his voice bright when he said, “That’s thoughtful of you, Lydia. Now I can imagine you in the Hôtel Crillon. Are you wearing one of the bathrobes?”
“Yes, I am, as a matter of fact, Lev. But you were never interested in what I was wearing, or what was underneath it, were you? So all I can report to you is that the robe is very comfortable. Now tell me what you are feeling.”
“About what you’ve just said?”
“No. About the Baryn dam.”
He wanted a cigarette, fumbled in the half-light to find and light one. Behind their curtain, the Mings snored.
Lev inhaled deeply and said, “What am I supposed to feel, Lydia? My mother says she’s going to let herself be drowned with the village . . .”
“Oh,” said Lydia, with a sniff, “ignore that. This k
ind of emotional pessimism, or pessimistic emotionality, is typical of our older generation! Just for heaven’s sake ignore that completely.”
“Well, I guess—”
“She won’t do it, Lev. You know that. She may keep threatening it, because it’s so lovely and dramatic, but she won’t go through with it. You’ll see. Your mother will rebuild her life in Baryn and you will help her.”
Lev was silent. Stared at his hand, burned by the English sun, holding the half-smoked cigarette. Then he said, “I don’t know how to help her, Lydia. Not really. I don’t know how to help any of them.”
“Hold on a minute,” said Lydia. “I’m just going to walk through into the lovely bathroom. I don’t want Pyotor to be disturbed.”
Lev heard a heavy door closing, imagined the hotel taps, mirrors, and washbasins shimmering with light.
When Lydia came back on the phone, she said, “Are you there, Lev? Right. Well, now, listen to me. The first and most important thing is to fight for the best choice of the new accommodation in Baryn.”
“Yes. And then what?”
Lydia sighed, said, “Just do one thing at a time, Lev. Get the accommodation sorted out first. Are you still sending money home?”
“Yes. When I can. But I earn so little now.”
“Well, never mind. Tell your mother to go to the offices in charge of rehousing. Tell her to go with your friend Rudolf.”
“Rudi.”
“Rudi. Okay. He’s a fixer, from what you’ve told me. Get a wad of money to him. Send him fifty pounds and tell him to use it. The housing people will have a gray side, for certain, but fifty English pounds should go quite far with them. Some of the new apartments will be on the river. Get him to acquire two of those, one for him and his wife, one for your family.”
“On the river? There won’t be much river, Lydia. Not downstream of the city.”
“Of course there will! I thought you used to work with engineers. The dam will create a reservoir and a falls. The falls will drive the electric turbines. Where d’you imagine electric power will come from, if not from the falls?”