The Road Home

by Rose Tremain

  Lydia.

  He’d written a letter to her parents’ house, telling her about the restaurant, enclosing a menu, offering her and Pyotor Greszler a free dinner any time they chose. In his dreams she appeared at the door of 43 Podrorsky Street. She walked in, on the arm of the maestro. The clientele stood up and applauded as Greszler and Lydia were shown to their table by Rudi. Then Lev came out from his kitchen to greet them, and he held Lydia close and she whispered some words to him, always the same words: I forgive you, Lev. I forgive you.

  But, in fact, they never came. And when Lev told Rudi the whole awkward saga of his friendship with Lydia, Rudi said at the end of it, “The thing that amazes me, comrade, is that you expect her to turn up.”

  “I know,” said Lev. “When I asked her for ten thousand pounds, I guess that was the last straw.”

  “Yeah,” said Rudi, “it must have peeved her. But that’s not why she doesn’t come. She doesn’t come because she’s afraid of what she still feels for you. So you just have to accept it and forget her.”

  Lev thought about this. Across so much of his past life, he had attempted to lay some kind of enshrouding darkness. But the people and places underneath this darkness had an obstinate vibrancy. They kept calling to him. They were robed in bright colors. On them, the seasons still cast their alternating light.

  One of those who called to Lev was Christy Slane.

  Christy had married Jasmina in a registry-office service in Camden Town, and Jasmina had worn a white-and-gold sari, and Frankie had been her bridesmaid, dressed also in a little sari that she kept winding and unwinding as the long day of feasting went on.

  Christy wrote that his wedding to Jasmina had been “the most thrilling day of my life” and told Lev that he was replanting the garden at Palmers Green and going to yoga classes. The flat in Belisha Road was let. Christy was done with North London: he was suburbanman now, specializing in kitchen fitting. He was getting fat on Jasmina’s chicken korma.

  Then, in the early summer of the year that Number 43 Podrorsky Street opened, Christy called to say that he and Jasmina had decided to take a holiday in Eastern Europe and they wanted to include in their itinerary a visit to Baryn. On the telephone Christy said, “Jasmina knows that one of the few people I miss, Lev, is you.”

  They arrived in Baryn one Friday morning in August, driving a rented car. When Christy walked into Number 43 Podrorsky Street, he said, “Holy shit! Looks like you did somethin’ special here, fella.”

  The two men embraced. The old tar smell of Christy’s nicotine habit was gone and not a trace of eczema remained on his pink face.

  Jasmina threw her arms around Lev’s neck. “Congratulate me, hey?” she laughed. “I’m the new Mrs. Slane.”

  “Welcome, Mrs. Slane,” said Lev. “Welcome to my shop of dreams.”

  When they’d toured the restaurant, admiring the cornflowers in slim vases on each table, and the glinting cutlery and the leather chairs by the fire, and the well-stocked bar, Lev led them to the back table and Rudi opened champagne.

  To Rudi, Christy said, “It’s hard for me to believe you’re a living being. You have mythic status in my mind.”

  Lev served lunch. A rabbit terrine on a bed of salad leaves with a herb mayonnaise; duck breasts with a juniper sauce and a potato gratin; a chocolate tart, almost identical to the one he’d made in Belisha Road when Jasmina had first come to supper long ago, but with a shortcrust so perfected, so astonishingly short, it melted on the tongue like fudge.

  “Jesus,” said Christy, when the last mouthful was eaten, “you’ve made advances in the food department, fella. I can certainly say that.”

  Ina and Maya were invited to this meal. While the grown-ups drank coffee, Maya climbed onto Jasmina’s lap, and Jasmina smiled and let the little girl examine her earrings and caress her lustrous hair.

  As for Ina, this was the first time she’d ever been known to comment on Lev’s cooking. Of the chocolate tart, she suddenly said, “I liked the taste of that. It reminded me of sleep.”

  Christy and Jasmina planned to stay three days in Baryn.

  “The thing we truly want to see while we’re here,” Christy said to Lev, “is where Auror was. We want to see those hills you described and the new reservoir. We want to take all this back with us to England in our minds.”

  Lev hesitated. He seldom went up to the reservoir. Seldom had the time or the inclination. The vastness of the dam itself, the roar of the falling water, and the hydroelectric turbines created in him a stubborn kind of awe that pushed out sentiment. But driving the steep road above the dam, to where the water spread out in its vale of hills above the drowned village, made him melancholy. The thing he hated most—more than the loss of the old houses—was that the bodies in the quiet, rural graveyard, including Stefan’s body, had been dug up and reburied in the municipal graveyard at Baryn, past which construction traffic now constantly churned and growled. Often, he had dreams of the wild marguerites that used to grow near Stefan’s plot. In his imagination, these had been the scent of spring, and now the scent was gone.

  But he gave way to Christy’s request. He asked Rudi to drive them in the Tchevi, so that whatever feelings might overwhelm him, his friend would be there to understand them.

  They made the journey on Sunday morning, which dawned fair and warm. Rudi and Lev sat in the front of the car, on the newly polished upholstery, with Christy and Jasmina in the back.

  The Tchevi’s enormous gas-guzzling engine bore them effortlessly away from the town and out onto the old road to Auror. They passed the deserted lumber yard and the gray slopes above it, still bare of trees. Long before they reached the dam, they could hear its roar.

  They fell silent as this noise grew in intensity. Lev saw Christy’s face looking anxiously out of the window, as though the sound might have been the first rumble of an earthquake or some other catastrophe from which there would never be any retreat.

  At the dam’s edge, they got out of the car to marvel. Jasmina took photographs with a disposable camera. The August sun spread its hot, flat light across the extraordinary scene. Spray from the cataract was hurled upward and flattened their hair, like rain.

  “My God,” said Christy. “The things man dreams up! It could make you horribly afraid.”

  They drove on. Upriver from the dam, where the reservoir pooled to a depth of several hundred feet, an almost-silence returned and the sound of birds and tiny insects was audible once more. Here, Rudi parked the Tchevi in the shade of some tall pines and the four of them got out and walked down to the water’s edge. Small ripples broke near their feet.

  “Plenty of fish now,” said Rudi. “Eh, Lev?”

  Yes, thought Lev, concentrate on this, on the fish in the lake, on the way the sunlight on the water dazzles the eye. Don’t think about Auror down there in the darkness. Don’t think about the past.

  He stood without moving. He lit a cigarette, then disliked the taste of it and threw it away. After a moment or two, he was aware of Christy’s hand on his arm. “We won’t stay here long,” said Christy quietly, “because I can imagine what you’re feeling. I surely can, because you know what? There’s something about it reminds me of Ireland. Something extreme. Eh, fella? Know what I’m sayin’? Something wild and beautiful and full of woe.”

  Acknowledgments

  My grateful thanks to Jack Rosenthal for showing me how to pick asparagus properly, and for the introductions to his Polish field-workers, who told me true and invaluable tales from Eastern Europe. Thanks equally to Alan Judd, whose impressive knowledge of cars and how their engines work enabled me to run with the Tchevi saga. My thanks to Susan Hill for introducing me to her helpful and courteous police contacts. Also to David Lightbody, Vivien Green, Caroline Michel, and Alison Samuel for their useful interventions. Abiding love and thanks to Richard Holmes, to El and Johnny Lightbody, and to my dedicatees, Brenda and David Reid. And lastly, and as always, love and thanks to my editor, Penelope Hoare, to whom my
debt of gratitude is now of historic proportions.

  R. T.

  Copyright Acknowledgments

  Words from The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck (Penguin Books, 2001), copyright © John Steinbeck, 1936. Used by permission of Penguin Group UK and Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Lines from “Over the Rainbow”: words by E. Y. Harburg, music by Harold Arlen © 1938 EMI Catalogue Partnership and EMI Feist Catalog Inc., USA. EMI United Partnership Ltd., London WC2H OQY (Publishing) and Alfred Publishing Co. Inc., USA (Print). Administered in Europe by Faber Music Ltd. Reproduced by permission. All rights reserved.

  Lines from “Some Enchanted Evening”: words by Oscar Hammerstein II and music by Richard Rodgers © 1959, Williamson Music International, USA. Reproduced by permission of EMI Music Publishing Ltd./EMI Virgin Music London WC2H OQY.

  Lines from “Say a Prayer for Me Tonight”: words by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe © 1957 (renewed) Chappell & Co. Inc. All rights administered by Warner/Chappell Music Ltd., London W6 8BS. Reproduced by permission.

  Lines from “People”: words by Bob Merrill and music by Jule Styne © 1963 (renewed) Chappell-Styne Inc. & Wonderful Music Ltd. All rights administered by Warner/Chappell Music Ltd., London W6 8BS. Reproduced by permission.

  About the Author

  Rose Tremain’s fiction has won the Whitbread Novel of the Year (Music and Silence) and has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize (Restoration) and the Orange Prize (The Colour). Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker and The Paris Review, among other periodicals, and one was selected for The O. Henry Prize Stories 2008. The Road Home received the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2008. It was also one of four finalists for the 2008 Costa Novel Award (formerly the Whitbread Award). Rose Tremain lives in Norfolk and London with the biographer Richard Holmes.