by Mick McCoy
Alex had found Gregory one morning in his usual spot on the concourse outside Leninski Prospekt Metro station, his back to a stone wall, knees hugged in tight and face buried inside the ragged ring of his arms. Joseph’s cushion had sat beside him, empty. The dog had been missing for three days, the first time in seven years they’d been separated. Alex had offered to help, and while he knew what Joseph looked like, the more he learnt about street dogs, the more he realised how hard it would be to pick Joseph from his brothers and sisters and cousins, if he was still alive. The dogs were all so similar: medium-sized with a thick coat in a mixture of brown, dusty white and dark grey. Their wedge-shaped heads had short snouts and almond eyes. Their ears would flatten as they approached humans, until they established someone was a friend, when they’d prick up, their tails flailing about joyously.
Hundreds of dogs lived in Metro stations, some using the trains to commute. They travelled into the city, begged, stole and frolicked, then caught the train back to the suburbs at night. One dog he followed caught the same train each morning, sleeping on the same seat in the rear carriage. Approaching Revolyutsii station, the dog would open its eyes, gaze out the window at the platform and disembark with the other commuters. Always the same. Was there a smell it recognised? Something familiar in the announcer’s voice? After a couple of months, Alex had photos of dogs sleeping and fighting and foraging, photos of them alone, with other dogs, with humans. Photos on trains, bathing in the dust, warming themselves in the frail winter sun or against each other’s bodies in the wind and rain. He hadn’t seen Joseph, but he quickly grew to love the others.
But when the first letter from home arrived on the last day of February, he was no closer to recovering Peter’s ashes, or to restoring the good thing with Sinead.
CONRAD
26th January 1971
Dear Alex,
It’s Australia Day here, although it bears little resemblance to Revolution Day in Moscow, which is a good thing. We’re staying with your Uncle Curtis and Aunty Elaine while we find our own place, where we hope you’ll join us soon. There’s been a barbecue today, the first one I’ve had in a long time, and a good number of Ruby’s family were there. They consider us an oddity, which is at least a more favourable view than they held in the old days. I had expected far worse. The lamb chops were magnificent though!
Mum gave me your letter to read. She didn’t open it until we were in the aeroplane, under your instructions as I understand it, which is when I read it too. I’m sorry I caused you such pain by lying about who was driving. I made a mistake. Same goes for the secrecy around your adoption, which was not all down to your mother. In both cases we were trying to do right by you. Your mum is very hurt by the letter. She’ll write when she’s ready.
Other news – it took Mum less than two weeks to get a job at Prince Henry’s, the same hospital she worked at before. A lower grade, but she’s enrolled in night classes to requalify. I’m not working. I’m stronger, but not up to it yet. Your mum still gives me daily beltings and the warmer weather does me good. I still cough, I still take my medications, I still can’t walk far. Being alive is more hard work than miracle now, but I’m still here.
The weather, or at least the light, is what I want to tell you about. The Australian light, it seems to me, is opportunity itself for someone skilled with a camera. I’d forgotten how stark and beautiful it is. Its extremes stretch so much further than what falls so insipidly in Moscow. It has so many more moods. It screams at you after so long under European skies, but your senses soon adapt, even those of a fifty-year-old fool with yellowing, bloodshot eyes and an oxygen-starved brain. The world is so much more vibrant and wild than the shades of grey outside your Moscow window, drained of colour by rays bent too much and travelled too far from the sun and filtered by incessant cloud. To see real colour you have to bear witness to the harsh, uncaring light. And that first assault of light and colour, that first screaming brightness, only seems like that because of your European deprivation. Now that I’ve had a diet of it every day for a just a couple of weeks I can begin to differentiate the screaming from the loud and the mellow and the whispering. Even the starlight sings more vividly.
You’d love it here, your camera and you.
Come home.
Love,
Dad
PS: In case you’re wondering, I asked Valentin to keep an eye out for you. He said he would’ve anyway and that it was his duty. Ask him about that.
ALEX
Alim Börteki stopped Alex in the apartment block foyer one Saturday evening in late March. Alex didn’t like the man, despite Vashka having been Peter’s best friend. Because of it. While Alex was sure their friendship had been genuine – he regretted his allegations on the last afternoon of Peter’s life – he was equally sure Alim Börteki was a stukach. An informer. He was sure Vashka’s father had used his son’s friendship to collect information.
Alex had one foot on the bottom stair when Börteki called his name.
‘Mr Börteki,’ he said. The man was panting, as if he’d run to catch up.
‘Mne bylo zhal’ slyshat’ o vashem brate. I was sorry to hear about your brother,’ he said. ‘My Vashka was very close, always spoke well of him.’ The hand he planted on Alex’s shoulder felt like a clamp. ‘He was fond of you, as well.’
Vashka didn’t like Alex and Börteki probably knew his lie would be obvious.
‘It was the worst day of my life,’ Alex said.
‘I heard about the accident,’ Börteki said. ‘It would have been very hard for you with so little driving experience.’
How had he heard?
‘I said to Vashka that in the same circumstances I hoped he’d be as brave as you were.’ Sweat beaded Börteki’s forehead and a sharp, sweet odour seeped from his pores.
Alex smiled uncomfortably. He could think of nothing to say.
‘Conrad is well now?’ Börteki said, his calloused hand bearing down more heavily on Alex’s shoulder. ‘Enough to have travelled home to Australia with your mother?’
‘Yes,’ Alex said. ‘Well enough.’ Every piece of information Börteki knew about his family added to his growing anxiety.
‘I was surprised he left, but not your mother. Her adventure with my friend Karl Wadek would have been difficult for your father. I would not have stood for it.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
Börteki laughed, the stench of stale cigarettes wafting over Alex. ‘Good boy, right answer.’
‘I’ve got to go now,’ Alex said, but Börteki’s grip on his shoulder prevented it.
‘And you? You didn’t want to go home with them?’
Alex became aware that his legs were trembling. ‘I’m studying.’
‘Yes, of course,’ he said, before pausing. ‘You know, it’s better for you she’s gone. Her unpatriotic activities reflected poorly on you.’
‘My mother?’ His reflexive protectiveness surprised him.
‘And you know it is forbidden for your English girlfriend to visit, let alone stay overnight?’ There was an edge to his voice, as if Alex had provoked him.
‘I didn’t know,’ Alex lied, focusing on what appeared to be ice crystals spreading from a crack in a filthy glass pane next to the foyer door.
‘She doesn’t have the right permits, you know that, so you should be careful. These kinds of irregularities can be difficult if they become known.’ Börteki watched him. ‘Yes?’
Alex nodded.
‘Yes?’ Börteki repeated, digging his thumb into the hollow under Alex’s collarbone.
It was important not to flinch. It was important not to answer too quickly. ‘Yes.’
Börteki smiled, satisified with himself. ‘Oh,’ he said, as he climbed the stairs. ‘You have mail.’
Alex slumped onto the bottom step, listening to Börteki’s breathing as it became progressively more laboured with his slow progress up the stairwell. There were five rows of open pigeon holes on the foyer wa
ll into which mail was sorted. Top row, second from the right, there was a letter waiting. The envelope had already been roughly torn open.
CONRAD
8th March 1971
Dear Alex,
It’s Labour Day here. I seem to choose public holidays to write to you – there are so many of them, it should guarantee a steady supply of correspondence from me. Feel free to reciprocate and send me or your mother a letter … although I trust that no news is good news. I hope your study is going well and Valentin is keeping you company. And that the weather is starting to warm up a little.
I want to tell you about the beach not far from our new flat on Park Street, West St Kilda. It’s only one hundred yards from our door to a big grassy park – Catani Gardens – and then I’m on the beach. This last week I have reached a significant milestone – I can walk there by myself! I have the assistance of a walking frame (your mother calls it Ginger, after Ginger Rogers, which makes me an unlikely Fred Astaire) with two small wheels on the front legs, which gets me as far as the edge of the sand, where it promptly sinks. A few steps into the sand and I sink too. But a few steps is all you need because the beach it is so blissfully quiet. On a weekday when everyone else is at work, the only sounds are the seagulls and the hiss of the water rippling ashore. You can lie flat on your back, close your eyes and enjoy the crimson veil of the sun against your eyelids. All there is to hear is the blood pulsing at your temples.
While St Kilda Beach is so ordinary it’s unloved, for you the nearest thing like it is three days away by train. The Black Sea at Odessa, as good as it is, is not really a sea, bounded on all sides by coastline, cut off from the real wilderness. Not that St Kilda Beach is wild, but if you were to sail away, out through the heads at the mouth of the bay, you could just keep going and never run aground. The wilderness is truly at your doorstep.
You’d love it here, your camera and you.
Come home.
Love,
Dad
PS: Please write to your mother.
ALEX
‘I’ve got to tell you about this man from downstairs, Alim Börteki,’ Alex said. It was Sunday afternoon and everyone was sitting around the table drinking vodka. ‘He bailed me up yesterday and asked me why I didn’t go home with my parents. He knows so many things about me and he opened my mail.’
Valentin put a finger to his lips.
‘What …’ Sinead began.
‘It’s mild out,’ Valentin said. ‘And I need some reviving – why don’t we walk before dinner?’ Without waiting for a response he headed for the door.
‘Good idea,’ Alex said, grabbing his keys while Galina turned off the soup of pork and pearl barley that had been heating on the stove.
No one spoke as they clambered down the stairs, the echoes of four pairs of feet sounding like an army. As they stepped outside, Valentin said to Sinead, ‘Do you mind if I borrow Alex for a moment?’
‘I do, actually,’ she said. ‘I’d like to hear whatever was important enough for us to up and leave all of a sudden.’
Alex was torn. ‘I’ll fill you in later,’ he said.
‘You won’t have to if we all hear it at once,’ she said.
Smiling, Valentin took Sinead gently by the elbow. ‘That’s fair enough, but let’s keep walking.’ They headed through the rows of young chestnut trees lining the laneway that ran behind the neighbouring blocks. ‘This Alim Börteki is informing on you,’ Valentin said as they reached Gagarina Street, empty but for a motor scooter accelerating loudly towards Leninski Prospekt. ‘That won’t be a surprise?’
‘No. It’s not,’ Alex said. He watched Sinead, her eyebrows raised, as she walked silently beside them.
‘But I believe the flat may have been bugged,’ he said. ‘Not by him. His type is usually of no account, but I can’t say that for whoever he reports to.’
‘You’re a mechanic, aren’t you?’ Sinead said. ‘How do you know all this? And what makes you think the flat is bugged?’
‘I don’t know for sure,’ Valentin said, his agreeable tone vanishing. ‘But something has changed for this man to suddenly behave this way. For him to open Alex’s mail.’ He stopped, exchanged a glance with Galina, then said to Sinead, ‘It would be better if this part was between Alex and me.’
‘I want to hear,’ she said.
‘Let me tell Alex first.’
As Valentin led him away, Galina asked Sinead about her thesis, but she showed no sign of listening, her eyes fixed on him. He kept walking, his stride in time with Valentin’s.
‘Three weeks after I met your family in my parking lot all those years ago, I told your father I was KGB and had been assigned to him.’
Hearing Valentin’s admission was like finding a piece in a jigsaw puzzle you knew was missing but hadn’t been searching for. It was good to fill the gap, but he couldn’t be sure he liked the picture, now that it was all clear. ‘I see,’ he said.
Valentin chuckled. ‘Do you know, your father used those exact words when I told him.’
‘I was going to say fucking hell.’
‘That would be reasonable,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘But it’s better this way. Better me – a friend – who can report how benign you all are, rather than a Börteki, who is too stupid to tell the difference.’
Alex gazed at his father’s old friend, too naive to judge how much trouble he was in.
‘I know Börteki,’ Valentin said. ‘Before, I acted like I didn’t in front of Sinead because she can’t know about me.’
‘In Dad’s first letter to me, he said I should ask you about your duty to keep an eye out for me.’
Valentin frowned. ‘Was that letter opened?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Good. It would be difficult if it had been opened. Collusion with targets – like this – is not exactly policy.’
Alex stared out across the square and past the lanes of Sunday-afternoon traffic hissing and burbling along Leninski Prospekt to the cool green expanses of Gorky Park. ‘Targets,’ he said. ‘I’m a target.’
‘Let me explain …’
But Alex interrupted. ‘So you’re not really my father’s friend. It’s just your job.’
‘A job, yes. But one I have to do,’ he said. ‘The friendship, though, is optional. My choice. Your father’s choice. And very, very genuine.’ Valentin watched Alex closely. ‘You know I am your father’s friend. And your mother’s. And yours. You know it, I hope.’
The clear evening sky carried an hour’s more light, but a shiver went through Alex’s body. ‘My choice, as well,’ he said.
‘And you have made it? Your choice?’
‘Friend.’ Alex smiled. ‘You always did seem over-qualified for a car mechanic.’
‘You’re not going to question the intelligence of mechanics like your girlfriend did, are you?’
‘Not sure she’s still my girlfriend.’ Alex fell quiet again. ‘Did my mother know about you?’
‘No. And your father thought it was best she not know,’ Valentin said. ‘It was your mother’s role at Novy Mir that was of interest to the KGB.’
‘Dad kept it from Mum?’
Valentin nodded. ‘Your mother was careful. And innocent. Your father thought if she knew about my real job she might quit. She might disown me and stop trusting your father, and that would increase her desire for you all to leave, or some of you.’
So many secrets, Alex thought. So easily kept. Ten steps away, out of earshot, Galina was still talking to Sinead, who now appeared to be listening. ‘Does Galina know about what you do?’
‘Of course. But she is a nurse and only a nurse.’ He smiled. ‘And a beautiful woman.’
‘So you’ve been the family guardian all this time.’
Valentin held out his arm towards Galina and Sinead. ‘We should join them.’
‘Wait – what makes you think the flat is bugged?’
‘I don’t like that Börteki asked why you didn’t leave,’ Valentin
said. ‘It sounds like someone thinks you might be more than a student. And if there is a bug they hear me too. That’s what I need to investigate.’
‘And are you assigned to me, now that’s Mum’s gone?’
‘I thought so, but maybe someone else as well.’
Hands in his pockets, Alex pressed his arms in tight to his sides. He swung the toe of his shoe idly across the wet flagstones of the square.
‘It is not time to worry,’ Valentin said. ‘I will tell you when that time comes, if it ever does.’
‘Why me?’
‘You stayed. It’s that simple.’ Valentin signalled to Galina. ‘Let’s rejoin the women.’
Alex gazed around. In the mild weather people ambled through the square, every one of them ordinary, every one of them watched or watching, or both. He could trust no one, suspect everyone, or he could trust Valentin.
He didn’t hear Sinead approaching, the light touch of her fingers at the nape of his neck making him jump.
‘Galina tells me you know people,’ she said to Valentin. Whatever else she’d been told, it appeared to have only added to her anxiety. Alex could empathise with that.
‘Everyone in Russia knows people. Me? Only enough to look after my friends,’ he said. ‘Shall we continue to the park?’
They stepped around the shadow of a fountain as a stiffening breeze blew showers of water across their path. Alex filled in some details of the conversation he’d had with Börteki, omitting the bit about Kark Wadek. Valentin explained what made him think the flat might be bugged.
‘I don’t know why you’re all so blasé about this,’ Sinead said. ‘Having people watch you and open your mail. And plant bugs in your flat.’
‘It might not be bugged,’ Valentin said. ‘I’m only guessing.’
‘Are you?’ Sinead turned her stare from Valentin to Alex. ‘Is he?’
Alex shrugged. ‘Valentin has lived here all his life. This is normal. This is what it’s like.’