All That Man Is (41 page)

‘A hobby?'

‘Yes. You know.'

‘No,' Aleksandr says. He has never had a hobby – in his
Who's Who
entry, he had listed his ‘interests' as ‘wealth' and ‘power'.

‘I suggest you take up a hobby,' Adrian says. ‘Take an interest in your garden,' he suggests. ‘Did you know,' he asks, twinkling, ‘that in his declining years Josef Stalin was more interested in producing the perfect mimosa than in fomenting global revolution?'

‘No, I didn't know that,' Aleksandr says.

‘He spent most of his time in his garden down on the Black Sea, pottering about among his mimosas, and pretty much left Beria to run the empire.'

‘I didn't know that.'

‘It's perfectly natural,' Adrian says. ‘You have to step back. I'm having to slow down a bit myself,' he admits, as the starters arrive.

‘Somehow …' Aleksandr looks miserable. ‘I've lost the
meaning
of life. Do you understand?'

Adrian smiles. He says, ‘Who needs meaning when you have soufflé Suissesse?'

Aleksandr tries to smile too.

He wonders, as he tries to smile, whether Adrian knows that he has been wiped out financially. That the Empire of Iron is no more. Adrian, now tucking into his soufflé, has shown no sign of knowing. Though he wouldn't, would he? Aleksandr picks up his fork. That was the thing with the English – it was impossible to know what was happening in their heads, what was hidden under their mild, ironic manner. Did they know themselves?

He tries to eat some soufflé. Then he puts his fork down next to the heavy, expensive plate and waits for Adrian to finish.

‘Something wrong with it?' Adrian asks, still feeding himself. ‘No, it's very good. I'm just not hungry.'

‘Oh?'

Again, Aleksandr tries to smile.

‘Are you alright, mate?' Adrian asks. ‘You look very pale.'

‘I'm tired.'

‘Yes, you seem a bit tired. What have you been up to? Tell me.'

Unable to think of anything else, Aleksandr says, ‘Ksenia's leaving me.'

Adrian looks pained. ‘Oh, I am sorry,' he says.

The turbot in chive-and-butter sauce arrives. Someone tops Adrian up with Lafon Perrières.

Aleksandr just looks at the dead fish on his plate while Adrian, with silver knife and fork, starts expertly to prise his apart.

Ampleton House, on the outskirts of Ottershaw in Surrey, is not visible from the road. Only a high wall, and the tops of the tall trees in the famous arboretum, nearly leafless now, are visible. Darkness is falling when they arrive. The long, turning driveway takes them to the expanse of gravel in front of the mansion – Sir Edwin Lutyens, 1913 – where the Maybach and the Range Rover pull up. ‘Here we are, sir,' Doug says through the intercom, as if his employer might be asleep.

Aleksandr is not asleep. He is just sitting in the silent, padded interior of the Maybach, wishing that he never had to leave it. For a moment he even wonders whether to ask Doug to take him back to London.

‘Here we are, sir,' Doug says again. His voice sounds tired. He has been on duty since early in the morning, waiting at Farnborough for the Falcon to arrive.

Normally, someone would have emerged from the house by now, with an umbrella, and opened the door for him, and held the umbrella over him as he walked over the wet gravel to the house and into the double-height hall.

The staff, however, are all on leave, or in the London house.

So it is Madis who opens the door of the Maybach for him, and lets him into the house, and, having dealt with the alarm, turns on the lights in the hall.

He asks him whether he needs anything.

‘No,' Aleksandr answers.

‘I'll be in the flat,' Madis says, ‘if you need anything.'

Madis lives in a flat with a separate entrance, at the side of the house, in what was once the stable yard.

‘Okay. Thank you, Madis,' Aleksandr says.

Alone, he unwinds his scarf and sits down in the hall.

He shuts his eyes, tries to stop thinking.

Wherever his thoughts wander they find something that hurts.

Like the face of Adam Spassky – the way he smiled as the judge delivered her verdict.

His thoughts move from the unendurable humiliation of that moment to the practical fact of his poverty. And then to the humiliation again. And then the poverty. There seems to be nothing else – only those two things.

And he would be able to stomach the loss of his money, he thinks, if it weren't for the humiliation. And he would be able to take the humiliation, just, if he still had his money – though of course the loss of the money is
part
of it. The sheer idiocy of losing so much money. His other humiliations, however, would not be so total if he still had the money – the money itself would be a sort of answer to them, as it was always an answer to everything in the past.

He is still just sitting there in the hall, holding his scarf in his hands.

Madis opens the door. He seems surprised to see Aleksandr standing there, in the damp darkness.

‘Madis.' Aleksandr is trying to smile. ‘I hope I'm not disturbing you.'

‘No,' Madis says.

‘I was wondering.' The situation is definitely more awkward than Aleksandr thought it would be. ‘Would you like to have a drink with me?'

Madis is wearing a T-shirt, tracksuit trousers, has no shoes on, only white sports socks on his feet. There is the sound of a television from somewhere in the flat. He says, ‘I … I don't drink.'

‘Oh, of course,' Aleksandr says. ‘I forgot. Okay.'

Madis, perhaps out of embarrassment, says nothing.

‘Well,' Aleksandr says. His shoulders are hunched against the frigid darkness – the temperature has dropped and over his silk shirt he is wearing only a thin black sweater. ‘Goodnight, then.'

‘Goodnight, boss,' Madis says.

He is just shutting the door of the flat when Aleksandr, who has turned to leave, says, ‘Oh, Madis.'

The door is half-open. Madis is looking out at him.

‘You don't have anything to eat, do you?' Aleksandr asks, with a small laugh. ‘It's just that … In the kitchen … There doesn't seem to be …'

Madis hesitates for a moment. Then he says, ‘Sure.'

‘I'm sorry,' Aleksandr laughs. ‘It's embarrassing.'

‘No, sure,' Madis says. ‘No problem.' And then he says, ‘I'm just eating now, in fact. Do you want to join me?'

‘Well, I don't want to disturb you …'

‘No, don't worry about it,' Madis says.

‘Okay then. It's very kind of you.'

Madis opens the door and steps aside to let Aleksandr in.

It is the first time he has seen the inside of Madis's flat. Madis leads him into a living room with a small dining table and a sofa and a TV which is switched on and showing the early-evening news, and some pictures on the walls. A framed print of Titian's
Allegory of Prudence
.

‘Lamb rogan josh,' Madis says. ‘That okay?'

‘Fine. Of course.'

And then Madis says, as if something has just occurred to him, ‘It's a supermarket one.'

‘Fine.'

He leaves Aleksandr standing there, and in the small kitchen puts another Tesco's Finest lamb rogan josh into the microwave.

Madis, Aleksandr knows, lives there with his wife Liz. He is Estonian, originally. He emigrated to the United States as a teenager, and served in the army there, in some sort of special forces unit. He was in Iraq.

He must be about forty. Not very tall. Stocky.

He speaks English with a strange accent.

‘It'll take a few minutes,' he says, emerging from the kitchen.

‘Where's Liz?' Aleksandr asks.

‘She's out,' Madis says. ‘Sit down.'

It sounds almost like an instruction.

‘Thank you,' Aleksandr says, and sits.

Madis turns off the TV.

Which was perhaps a mistake. There is just silence now – just the hum of the microwave from the kitchen.

Aleksandr sits at the table, and looks at his hands.

There is something strange about the way he is sitting there, looking at his hands, not speaking.

He looks up, and finds Madis watching him. Madis is standing near the kitchen door, waiting for the microwave to finish. ‘It'll be done in a minute,' he says.

‘What's the best way to die?' Aleksandr asks him. His eyes are shining, as though with tears.

‘The best way to die?' Madis says, surprised.

‘Yes.'

‘The best way … The best way is to die happy.'

‘No, I didn't mean …'

The microwave pings.

Madis, in the kitchen, peels back the heat-darkened plastic foil of the packaging and spoons the food onto two plain white plates. He takes the plates to the table and puts them on the straw place mats, then returns to the kitchen for the knives and forks.

‘Thank you,' Aleksandr says.

They start to eat in silence.

Aleksandr does not seem to want to eat after all – he just pushes the food around the plate.

Eventually he stops, and sits there, while Madis, embarrassed, finishes his own meal.

‘I'm sorry,' Aleksandr says. He indicates the half-eaten meal on his plate.

‘No problem.'

‘I'm sorry,' he says again. When he stands, Madis stands too, and walks with him to the door.

‘Goodnight, Madis,' Aleksandr says on the threshold.

‘Goodnight, boss,' Madis says. ‘If you need anything … I'm here, okay.'

‘Yes. Thank you. Goodbye.'

Without undressing, he falls asleep at some point, and wakes in the darkness later – is wide awake and knows he will not be able to sleep again.

Waking itself is a terrible experience. Everything still there, just as it was, there in the darkness.

Except for a second after he wakes there is nothing. An empty second. A sort of peace, for a second. And then it is over, and everything is there again.

He lies there in the darkness.

He is thinking of the last time he saw his father, in that hospital in Sverdlovsk, the
nomenklatura
hospital. The hospital seemed luxurious then. His father was proud to be treated there. He had told his son, when he visited him, who else was there – some well-known general – and it was almost as if he was happy to have had the heart attack just so that he could share a hospital with such a high-status individual.

And his son had enjoyed the sense of privilege too, sitting in his father's private room. He had tried to impress his father by translating the German text on a packet of medicine. He was at university in East Germany then, and spoke German perfectly, and his father, who spoke not a word of anything except Russian,
was
impressed, and he enjoyed impressing him. And that was the last time he saw his father, since the operation went wrong somehow and he was in a coma for a few weeks, and then he died.

There was someone else in the room, he thinks, when he was translating the German on the medicine packet. Someone else was there. Who was it?

Strangely, he imagines Stalin, unshaven, silver stubble on his chin, doddering among plants with a pair of secateurs …

It is light in Surrey.

Light outside. Yellow leaves.

One more day.

He is still just lying there.

He feels numb.

And also tired. Just so tired. So tired of everything.

It was his uncle, he thinks, who was in the room while he was translating the German on the medicine packet.

His uncle, Aleksandr. Aleksandr, like him.

And ten years later he took his own life.

He had nothing left to live for. He had devoted his whole life to something, and it had failed.

What else did he have left to live for?

Nothing.

It was over.

That was it.

Time will say nothing but I told you so,

Time only knows the price we have to pay;

If I could tell you I would let you know.

The next morning he needs to do the shopping. There is nothing in the house. He drives, as soon as it is fully light, at about eight, to the Lidl in Argenta. From the house, near Molinella, the main road points straight towards it. Dead straight, and lined in places with windy poplars. This is flat land. The horizon dominates here.

Argenta: a suburban fragment in the middle of the plain. He waits at a traffic light and passes through the centre, and then along the canal, its surface giving back the winter sunlight. The car park is empty this early on a weekday morning. He parks near the entrance and wheels a trolley into the bright warmth of the interior.

He knows where to find what he needs. When he was last in Italy, earlier in the year, he started shopping here. He pushes the trolley past the piled-up stuff, sometimes taking things, or stopping to look at what there is. He needs to put his glasses on to study the label on a packet of tea. Then he takes them off and nudges the trolley on to the next thing. He is evidently in no hurry. He takes a moment to remove his overcoat and fold it over the edge of the still nearly empty trolley.

He selects his fruit with care. He tears off one of the small plastic bags and then, after failing for a few moments to separate it open, starts to fill it with tangerines.

He turns his attention to the apples.

He selects, with inquisitively squeezing fingers, an avocado.

One lemon.

He takes his list out of the pocket of his trousers to make sure he has not forgotten anything in this part of the shop. Apparently satisfied, he pushes on, towards the drinks, where he spends some time comparing the prices of the various lagers they have, still packed on pallets. The prices of things hang on signs – loud yellow signs, with the price printed in a font that looks almost as though it has been handwritten with a marker pen. (He wonders, for a moment, whether the signs are, in fact, handwritten. No – too uniform.) He puts a six-pack of Bergkönig lager into his trolley and moves on. He ignores the wine. He would never buy wine here.