by Adam Roberts
‘I am a recent recruit to their commendable plan.’
‘I see.’
The lift doors wheezed open. Standing on the landing was, I would have been prepared to swear, exactly the same old lady as we had seen exiting downstairs: the same woody deep-wrinkled face, the same low-slung head and black hump, the same string bag. She shuffled into the lift as we stepped out onto the fifteenth floor.
Saltykov’s tiny apartment was as minimalist as I would have expected it to be: sparsely furnished and ferociously neat. The worst that could be said of it was that it was a little dusty, and that the windows could have done with a wipe; but everything inside was certainly carefully arranged. The books were arranged (by the colour of their spines) so tightly on the bookshelves they effectively formed laminated blocks. I did what any lover of books would do: I checked to see what volumes Saltykov had upon his shelves. Most of these books were novels by the English writer Agatha Christie - in Russian, of course - although there were several technical manuals relating to nuclear power. Apart from the books, the tiny apartment was undecorated. There were no photographs on the wall, no knickknacks, no distractions. A narrow settee was arranged exactly in the centre of the living room; and exactly in the centre of the settee was the ample frame of Dora Norman: as large as life. Larger, indeed, than most lives.
She looked exactly as I remembered her, although her face bore signs of grief, and those, rather surprisingly, suited her. Her ample features appeared dignified and, even, beautiful in their sombre repose.
She saw me, and smiled. ‘[Mr Koreshy!]’ she said. [‘Oh how pleased I am to see you again!]’
‘[I am delighted to meet you again, Ms Norman,]’ I said. ‘[And my name is still Skvorecky.]’
It looked for a moment as if she might cry. ‘[I am sorry,]’ she said, bleakly. ‘[I am struggling to get the hang of Russian surnames.]’
‘[There is no need to apologise.]’ Feeling awkward standing over her, I sat myself on the corner of the settee. ‘[I was sorry to hear of the death of your friend, Mr Coyne.]’
‘[He told me, you know,]’ she replied.
‘[He?]’
‘[Jim. He said it would be dangerous. He warned me he could die. I pooh-poohed him.]’
‘[You,]’ I asked, after a pause, ‘[did what?]’
‘[I dismissed what he said.]’
‘[Ah!]’
‘[But he was right! Oh, the poor foolish man.]’
‘[Please accept my commiserations.]’
She looked straight at me. ‘[I have been sitting here in wonderful Mr Saltykov’s flat, just thinking and thinking about it. Do you know, I barely knew Jim? I knew him a little from the Church, of course. But I was never very close to him. And now he is dead, I find myself more upset in principle than in actuality. Does that sound heartless?]’
‘[Of course not,]’ I said.
‘Remember,’ said Saltykov, coming into the room, ‘don’t tell her about the death of Lunacharsky. If she discovers that Lunacharsky is dead, she could go all to pieces.’
‘[What’s that?]’ she said, looking up. ‘[What was that about Mr Lunacharsky?]’
‘You idiot,’ I snapped. ‘If you didn’t want her to hear about Lunacharsky, why did you mention Lunacharsky.’
‘She does not speak Russian!’ Saltykov objected, in a surprised tone of voice.
‘You may be surprised to hear,’ I retorted, ‘that the English for Lunacharsky is Lunacharsky.’
‘[What are you saying about wonderful Mr Lunacharsky?]’
‘[Ms Norman,]’ I said. ‘[Mr Lunacharsky is unable to join us right now.]’
‘You mentioned his name!’ objected Saltykov. ‘What are you doing? Are you telling her that Lunacharsky is dead? I told you not to tell her that Lunacharsky is dead!’
‘[I have only picked up a few words in Russian, I regret to confess, in my time here,]’ said Dora, in a low voice, ‘[but doesn’t smertz mean dead?]’
‘[I’m afraid so, Ms Norman,]’ I told her, glowering at Saltykov. I essayed a mournful face, but my face is not a very flexible organ.
‘[How dreadful! Your friend!]’
‘[It is regrettable, yes,]’ I said. ‘[But he was hardly my friend. I met him for the first time yesterday.]’
‘[Oh.]’
‘[Our situation is precarious, here in Moscow, and I’m afraid we must get out. I do not seek to alarm you. But you ought to know that not only the police but also the KGB have become involved.]’
‘[Oh my,]’ she said.
‘What are you saying?’ said Saltykov, hovering awkwardly by the door. ‘What are you telling her?’
‘I’m saying we need to get out of Moscow.’
‘And so we must,’ he agreed. ‘Just as long as you’re not telling her that Lunacharsky is dead.’
‘[Kiev,]’ said Dora. ‘[It must be Kiev.]’
‘[I would prefer to take you to the American embassy here in Moscow, my dear Ms Norman,]’ I said.
‘[We entered the USSR via Ukraine. The terms of the visa are very clear. I won’t be allowed out from Russia - only from the Ukraine.]’
‘[Going to the Ukraine, Ms Norman, will not protect you from the KGB. Only last year President Shcherbytsky reaffirmed the close bonds between the Ukraine SSR and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The jurisdiction of the KGB is . . .]’
‘[Nevertheless, I must get to the US embassy in Kiev,]’ she insisted. ‘[Can you do that?]’
‘[You are quite sure that is what you want?]’
‘[I’m serious, Mr Koreshy. If you leave me in Moscow, the Russians will block my leaving the country on the grounds that my travel permit was for the Ukraine only. They will request I be handed over to their law enforcement officers.]’
‘[The American embassy here would never hand you over!]’
‘[Perhaps not. But I could spend years sitting around the embassy building. Get me to Kiev; I’ll be on a jet to New York in a day. Please!]’
‘What is she saying?’ Saltykov wanted to know.
‘She wants to go to Kiev.’
‘But of course we must go to Kiev! Where else would we go?’
‘What on earth do you mean? Why not Finland, or the Crimea?’
‘Kiev! Of course Kiev! Didn’t Coyne explain to you?’
‘[Is it far?]’ put in Dora. ‘[Is it too far to drive?]’
‘[It is about as far from here as Madrid is from Paris,]’ I told her. ‘[Which is to say, in American terms . . .]’ But my knowledge of American geography was too rudimentary for me to call to mind a comparison. ‘[Well as far as between any two American cities that are as far apart from one another as Madrid is from Paris,]’ I concluded lamely.
‘You and I are going to Kiev,’ said Saltykov emphatically. ‘Let us take her too.’
‘And why are you and I going to Kiev?’ I asked him.
‘Didn’t Coyne explain to you?’
‘He did not.’
‘Because we are the only ones left,’ he replied.
‘Left to do what?’
‘The others are dead,’ he said. ‘If we don’t get to Reactor Four at Chernobyl it will be exploded, and many millions will die. Which would be a regrettable turn of events.’
‘Regrettable indeed. You’re sure?’
‘Of course!’
‘I thought Lunacharsky knew the details, and you did not.’
‘Oh I know about the attack on Chernobyl. I know about that!’
‘Who is going to attack it?’
‘The aliens.’
‘I see. And why are they going attack this nuclear facility?’
‘That,’ said Saltykov, ‘I don’t know. Presumably in order to make war upon humankind’
‘And Lunacharsky knew all about this?’
‘Oh yes. And so did Coyne.’
‘[Chernobyl,]’ said Dora. ‘[You’re both talking about Chernobyl, aren’t you? Did James discover which reactor was going to be the target?]’
‘[Her
told me,]’ I replied. ‘[Four.]’
‘We must go straight away!’ said Saltykov. ‘Immediately! Immediately after, that is, I have voided my bladder into the toilet. We must go to Kiev!’ He repeated this phrase as he made his way across his little hall to his toilet. ‘We shall go to Kiev!’ Then he closed the toilet door behind him, and Dora Norman and I waited for him. The silence between us was a little awkward; and was punctuated only by the faint sound of a stream of fluid striking porcelain.
CHAPTER 13
Thirteen. That unlucky number. In this thirteenth chapter we travel to Chernobyl, where I shall be blown up and exploded and destroyed.
Unlucky enough.
We went down in the lift and out through the hall like outlaws, glowering and looking all around. But of course we were outlaws. Dora had no luggage; all her belongings, including her passport, were in her hotel room, and there was no possibility of returning to retrieve them. We would have to make do without these things. She was more anxious about lacking her toiletries, and a change of clothes.
‘[I apologise,]’ she said to me, as we made our way to the car. ‘[I have been in the same clothes for two days now. I’m afraid I must not smell good.]’
‘[By no means,]’ I replied.
‘[I must smell. And it’s only going to get worse. I must smell.]’
‘[Your smell is delightful,]’ I said. ‘[Believe me. Your scent possesses an intoxicating femininity and delicacy which fills my nostrils with joy.]’
She looked at me quizzically. ‘[Do you have a good sense of smell? I only ask because, if you’re pardon me saying so, your nose is a little - scarred.]’
‘[I have almost no sense of smell at all,]’ I said, smiling. ‘[My scent receptors were all burnt out when my face was scorched.]’
She looked at me again, and then burst into birdsong-like laughter. ‘[How comical you are!]’
‘[Others have noted my ironical nature,]’ I conceded. To smile broadly was to stretch the skin of my face uncomfortably, but I smiled to the extent that I was able.
‘[All that blarney about my lovely smell, and you can’t smell anything!]’
‘[The smell is in my heart, beautiful Ms Norman, rather than my nose. A nobler organ, I feel.]’
She laughed again. We were at the car.
‘I shall drive,’ Saltykov announced. ‘I shall listen to the radio. You,’ he said to me, ‘must sit on the back seat with Ms Norman.’
‘Ms Norman,’ I replied, ‘would surely prefer to have the back seat to herself.’
‘Because of her bulk?’ Saltykov said.
I believe he meant nothing offensive in saying this; it was merely the weirdly blank straightforwardness of his manner. I looked at her, as she, all unwitting, smiled back.
‘For shame!’ I said, to Saltykov. ‘Why must you be so rude? I meant simply that, as a single woman, in a strange country, I am certain she would prefer her own space. I am certain she would rather not share the seat with an ugly, old Russian man she barely knows.’
‘You need not accuse me of discourtesy,’ said Saltykov. ‘She cannot speak Russian.’
‘Nevertheless.’
‘Besides, you are making assumptions about her. Should you not ask her?’
‘[Ms Norman,]’ I explained, ‘[We are discussing our seating arrangements in the car. Saltykov wishes to have the front entirely to himself. I am insisting that I sit up front and that you be given the rear seat to yourself.]’
‘[Because I’m so heavy,]’ she said, with a slightly mournful tone. She tried to add a trilling laugh to this, but it gurgled into nothing.
‘[No!]’ I said, rather over-insistently. ‘[Not at all! No no!]’
‘[It’s quite all right,]’ Dora said.
‘[Please, Ms Norman,]’ I insisted, with old-style Russian courtesy. ‘[I insist upon it.] I shall sit up front.’ I said this last in Russian to Saltykov, speaking with finality.
‘Nonsense,’ said Saltykov. ‘You cannot sit in the front passenger seat. It would distract me. It would make for unsafe driving.’
‘You are an absurd and rather childish fellow,’ I said.
‘I am neither! But we must get on quickly, and I am resolved to get on safely, so I must have no distractions as I drive. Driving,’ he added, with a spurt of sudden energy in his voice, ‘is a complicated process. I must concentrate wholly upon it.’
‘Much of the process is governed by the autonomous nervous system,’ I offered.
‘Nonsense,’ said Saltykov, as if this were the most absurd notion he had ever heard. It dawned on me then that perhaps he was not like other men when it came to driving cars. Perhaps he had to distil every atom of his concentration into the process of operating all the various levers and pedals that make a car move forward. I was, at any rate, disinclined to contest the point. ‘I shall inform Ms Norman of your intransigence,’ I said, stiffly.
I relayed Saltykov’s insistence to her in English. As I did so, I became conscious of the possibility that she, unable to understand Saltykov’s Russian, might suspect me of inventing his peculiar insistence as an excuse to place myself near her. As I thought this I blushed, and even stammered, for it filled me with a strange and sudden anxiety. As I chattered on in English, that strange vocalic language, I ran through the following sequence of thoughts in my own head. First I tried to reassure myself: she would not assume that a man as old as I could have sexual designs upon a woman as large as she. Then I thought, But she is a woman, for all that, and young, and single. Why might she not assume sexual predation as my motive? For all she knows, I prefer bulky women to the skinnier kind. And then, as she acquiesced heartily enough in my request, ‘[Of course you must sit on the back seat! It wouldn’t do to distract the driver!]’, I felt a counterflush. For as she smiled I was gifted a glimpse past the apperception of an anonymous spherical quantity of human flesh; and into the individual. Her eyes were very beautiful. Her eyes struck me. When she smiled, the extra flesh on her face dimpled, and this had the effect of spreading the expression more widely, really for all the world as if her whole face, and not just her mouth, were smiling.
I found an unexpected joy kindling inside me at this smile. I found myself wanting to do something to make the smile re-emerge. For a glittering moment, the veil lifted just enough to give insight past the external epiphenomena of Dora Norman and into her soul. And then she pulled the rear car door open and climbed inside, or rather she tackled the job of climbing inside, leaning forward and hauling the various fleshly components of her mass through the opening and rearranging them into a sitting shape, and the spell was broken. I was, once more, blind to her, and I saw only her bulkiness. She ceased, indeed, being a human being, for that portion of time that I was unable to uncloud my view of her.
I got in next to her. Conscious, I suppose, of my inner failing, and self-aware enough to be a little ashamed, I was excessively polite to her.
‘[It’s extraordinarily kind of you to permit this,]’ I said, like a genteel character from a Dickens novel.
‘[Don’t be silly!]’
I promised not to be silly.
We made our way quickly through the outskirts of Moscow, and soon enough we were on the almost deserted highway heading southwest. In those days, in Russia, few people drove, and nobody but delivery drivers and truckers drove between cities (things are very different now). From time to time another vehicle would pass us in the other direction, or a tractor would appear in front of us, scattering scales of mud from its dinosaurian rear wheels as it grumbled along the road at fifteen miles an hour. If the road were perfectly straight and perfectly empty then Saltykov might overtake such an obstacle; but if there were the merest reason to be cautious, then Saltykov was cautious, and we crawled behind the tractor until it turned off the road into the field of some enormous farm.
We drove all afternoon. At some point, with the sun low and elderly in the sky, Saltykov turned off the highway and made his way into a village to try and buy some di
esel. The place possessed one solitary petrol station, and its owner told us that he had none to sell. He directed us to a second village. So we left the village, and Saltykov manoeuvred his taxi very slowly along a one-track road whose surface was suffering the tarmac equivalent of psoriasis. It was thirty minutes before we rolled into the next village along: a set of concrete cubes and boxes distributed upon and amongst cold green fields. The petrol station there was shut, and nobody seemed to be about. We bought some sausage and bread from a shop owner. When I asked for directions to the nearest petrol station the owner offered to sell us some diesel himself. In a yard at the back of the store he had a pile of jerry cans, and after sniffing at the uncapped mouth of one of these, and insisting a portion of the stuff be poured into a cup for him to inspect, Saltykov agreed to the purchase.
We drove back to the main road, Dora and I eating bread and sausage quietly on the back seat, and Saltykov - who seemed to need no solid sustenance at all - complaining peevishly about the quality of the diesel he had just bought. ‘It is making my engine knock.’
‘Is it distracting you from driving?’ I asked.
‘It’s distracting the engine from functioning optimally.’
I dozed for an hour or so. When I awoke we were still in motion, and the sun was going down in rural splendour, laminating the horizon with two dozen shades of alien reds and beetle-iridescences, and aqua-yellows and Jupiter-oranges. There are no sunsets finer than those in the level country of western Russia.
The road ran along the edge of a vast forest, and for a long time we skirted the gloom.
‘[I can’t sleep,]’ said Dora. ‘[I keep thinking about James.]’
I couldn’t think of anything to say to this, so we sat in silence for a while. The sky deepened, and grew darker: thrush-coloured; crow-coloured; then finally an ice and transparent blackness.
‘[The stars!]’
I craned to peer through the glass. ‘[There they are,]’ I agreed.
For a while she was silent, and then she said, ‘[I’ve been trying to find a way of raising this subject.]’