Katherine Carlyle (23 page)

Should you feel inclined to discuss the matter, I can be reached at the above address, and would be prepared to meet with you at your own convenience, though pressing business prevents me from leaving Berlin at this time
.

If I fail to hear from you, I will assume you have no objection to my proposal
.

Sincerely
,

J. Halderman Cheadle

If my father were to receive a letter like that not long after mine, he would be bound to believe the two were connected, even though they don’t refer to each other, not even obliquely. He would reply by return of post, taking care to hide his outrage and his disbelief, since he knows from experience that they would only inflame a situation that is already volatile. Shortly afterwards he would fly to Berlin for a meeting with — what’s his name again? —
J. Halderman Cheadle
. Ridiculous. Cheadle would suggest a dodgy venue. A bar or a casino. Even a sex club of some kind. Not because he’s determined to make my father uncomfortable or to create a bad impression — though, given the circumstances, he might find that prospect irresistible — but because he wants to highlight my father’s failings, his unsuitability. After all, if Cheadle considers himself the more appropriate parent, despite belonging to a world inhabited by addicts and strippers, what does that say about my father? That’s the point Cheadle would be making, even before a single word has been exchanged. He’d wait in a dark corner in his plastic raincoat and his filthy tennis shoes, a Maker’s Mark on the rocks in front of him, and the look on his face
would be steady, with just a hint of the combative, the kind of look that sorts the wheat out from the bullshit.

Suspecting himself to be the victim of a hoax — or even, perhaps, of blackmail — my father approaches the appointed venue with extreme caution. I see him in the back of a taxi, leaning forwards to talk into the driver’s ear. To whisper instructions. They pass the club in second gear. A girl lounges in the doorway, smoking. Behind her, black stairs lead down into a basement. My father asks the driver to go round the block. They pass the club again. The girl, the stairs — there’s nothing to be learned by looking. He might as well go in.

On arriving at Cheadle’s table he remains on his feet. To sit down would be to acknowledge Cheadle as an equal. The last thing he wants to do is give the man any respect or credibility.

“I’d like to speak to my daughter,” he says.

Cheadle extracts a thin cigar from the flat tin on the table and then leans back in his chair, considering my father. “You seem — I don’t know — upset …”

“Of course I’m upset. My daughter’s missing.”

“Interesting you say that —” Cheadle breaks off to solicit a light from a passing topless waitress. “You see, your daughter wasn’t sure you’d be upset. She wasn’t even sure you’d
notice
.”

My father makes an exasperated sound and looks out across the dingy dance floor. “That’s absurd.”

“Is it?”

“I don’t have time for this. I’m going.”

“Why? Is there somewhere you have to be?” Cheadle’s voice is heavy with sarcasm. When my father fails to respond he says, “That’s what you always do, isn’t it. Look the other way, use your work as an excuse. How do I know? She told me.”

My father places both hands flat on the table and looks straight at Cheadle. “Where is she? Where’s Kit?”

Cheadle laughs. “You don’t even know her name.”

“Her name’s Katherine. People call her Kit.”

“You’re never there for her, are you. In fact, you’re hardly there at all.” Cheadle slits his eyes and feels the air, the way a blind man might. “Where are you? Are you there? Hello?”

My father stands back. “I have a job. Do you have a job?”

“Yeah, right. You have a job. The only time anyone can see you is when you’re on TV.”

“Tell me where my daughter is or I’ll have you arrested.”

“What for? Writing a letter?” Cheadle signals for another whiskey and it arrives in seconds. “I don’t know where she is. She could be anywhere.”

“You don’t know. But I thought —”

“I don’t know where she is
exactly
. I think she went to Russia.”

“
Russia?
What on earth for?”

“You tell me.”

“I’m asking you.”

“You’re a real pain in the ass. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that?” Cheadle glares at my father, then shouts, “Fucking
sit down
.”

Startled, my father does as he is told.

Cheadle passes the flat of his hand over the surface of the table as if removing crumbs. “She’s got some idea about how her life ought to be.” His voice is quieter now, more patient. “That’s why she went.”

“But Russia’s dangerous.”

“So they say.”

“I thought you cared for her.”

“I do.”

“And you let her go?”

“More than that. I made it possible. I helped.” Cheadle stubs out his cigar. “She was making for a place called Cherepovets. It’s a steel town, about an hour north of Moscow.” He pauses. “An hour by plane.”

My father sits at the table, staring at his hands.

“That’s all I know,” Cheadle says.

The liar. There’s another name, which he has kept concealed. Why? So he can come for me himself? Or is it simply that he wants my father to suffer?

I see Cheadle weigh the options. He is tempted to withhold information, make things difficult, but if he imparts — no, flaunts — his knowledge he will be asserting his own superiority.

“Actually, there was somewhere else she mentioned,” he says as he rises to his feet, his voice casual, indifferent. “Arkhangel’sk.”

He buttons his raincoat, then heads for the stairs that lead up to the street. As he circles the dance floor, bits of silvery light from the mirror ball whirl across his back, making him look, for a moment, like a man caught in a blizzard.

My father goes on sitting at the table, even after Cheadle has gone. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t even blink.

A girl in a floaty negligee approaches. “Something I can get you?”

He doesn’t look at her. “Arkhangel’sk,” he whispers.

She shrugs, then walks away.

Outside, the weather is dry but very cold. In my room on the third floor I sit by the window and watch the lights come on in buildings on the far side of the river. Cars ease over the bridge
towards me. In a nearby yard or garden somebody has lit a fire. The drifting smoke looks blue against the snow.

/

The plane is small, with old-fashioned propellers, and the other passengers are all men. The man seated next to me ignores me, transfixed by the card game on his phone. No sooner have I fastened my safety belt than the propellers start to click over. They hum, then roar. The whole interior vibrates.

We bump along the runway and then suddenly, almost haphazardly, lurch up into the air. As the plane banks, Talagi airport appears, the dark runway in stark relief against the whiteness of the landscape. Some distance to the east is Arkhangel’sk, the city sprawling on a big bend in the river. Creamy smoke pours from chimneys in the industrial zone. I think of Yevgeny, who I befriended, then avoided. He’s speaking to his mother on the phone.
Yes, I’m home … I met a girl … No, she was English …
The plane banks again. Far below, the White Sea is a color that reminds me of my childhood, the muddy gray-blue I used to get if I mixed too many paints together.

Once, when I visited my mother in hospital, a wind was blowing, something that hardly ever happens in Rome, not in the summer. It was one of those days when it’s impossible not to imagine being intensely, unthinkingly, alive, and yet there she was, propped in a chair, her face slack and grainy from the pain relief they had given her. The blanket had slipped onto the floor, and her feet and ankles, which were swollen, no longer seemed a part of her. Every now and then she would appear to fall asleep.
She was adrift between two states, neither completely there nor completely gone.

“Do I look awful?” she said that afternoon. “I do, don’t I.” She glanced down, past her knees. “My feet are purple!” She let out a laugh, somehow both astonished and disgusted. Then her eyes closed again. Even the smallest outburst could exhaust her.

My father went to refill the water jug, though it was still half-full. He couldn’t stand it, and had to get away, if only for a few moments.

“I killed you,” I murmured. “It was all my fault.”

My mother’s eyes opened wide. “Of course you didn’t. What a thing to say! And anyway, I’m still here, aren’t I?” She looked around, trying to make light of her predicament. “It wasn’t anybody’s fault. It was just bad luck.”

That last exchange didn’t happen. Instead, we sat in silence, her hand in mine. The pulse on the inside of her wrist was weak and feathery; it didn’t beat so much as flutter. Through the half-open window came a smell of resin from the umbrella pines on the main road. Then the harsh tearing noise of a plane going overhead. Rome’s second airport, Ciampino, was close by.

My father returned with the water. He stood at the end of the bed, clutching the jug.

“Are you going to give me some of that or aren’t you?” my mother said, her eyes still closed.

Later, as we drove back into Rome, my father remarked on how tiring the treatment was. But that wasn’t the whole story. I see that now. If my mother let go, it was because she suspected there would be no more good days. There was nothing to look forward to, and everything to dread.

The plane tilts sharply. The land beneath us looks unoccupied, unyielding. Bare black trees stick up out of the earth. It’s like flying over a bed of nails. I check my watch. In twenty minutes we’ll be landing in Norway.

I remember the two customs officials in Talagi airport studying my passport.

“You leave Russia?” the woman said.

I told her I was flying to Tromsø and then on to a place called Longyearbyen.

“You don’t like Russia?” The question was gentle, but pointed. She had noticed that I was leaving the country three weeks before my visa expired.

“Yes, I do,” I said. “I like Arkhangel’sk very much, but it’s not cold enough.”

The woman laughed. Once she had translated for the man sitting next to her she turned back to me. “Is joke, yes?”

“Not really. Svalbard will be colder.”

The man spoke quickly, then signaled for the woman to translate.

She looked at me. “He says, maybe next time you try Siberia.”

/

The flight from Tromsø to Longyearbyen takes approximately ninety minutes. For the first hour thick white cloud reaches all the way to the horizon, where it blurs and softens like the edge of a wool blanket. The Barents Sea is thirty thousand feet below but you wouldn’t know it. Tucked into my window seat I study Russian verbs and speak to no one.

At last we begin our descent and spits of land appear, ghostly white with dark streaks where the rock shows through. There are dirty-looking glaciers and long tongue-shaped fjords, and in the distance, in the northern sky, there’s a single strip of purest pale green. In some places the ground is frozen to a depth of five hundred meters all year round. Permafrost, they call it. Not many people live this far north but I’m going to be one of them. One of the few.

I’m in my mother’s Alfa Romeo, racing up the slip road that leads off the
autostrada
. Bright sunlight flashes through the inside of the car like something splintering. A petrol station, the grating of cicadas. My mother’s eyes behind dark glasses. Blue-gray irises, black lashes. I know what she wants me to say, so I say it.
Are we there yet?

She smiles.
Nearly, my darling. Nearly there
.

Wedged into a narrow river valley between two mountain ridges, and sloping gently down to a fjord, Longyearbyen has a magnetic quality I can feel in my bones. People tell me I could find a job — in a hotel, or a restaurant — but I stick to my original plan and after three days I hear about a tourist ship that can drop me in Ugolgrad, the Russian mining settlement Elena mentioned. The man who sells me the ticket works out of a large-scale Nissan hut on the waterfront. I’m lucky, he says. The season is almost over. It’s likely to be the last boat of the year. The skin around his eyes is wrinkled, a pattern of miniature diamond shapes, but the eyes themselves are a clear washed pale blue. The voyage will take three hours, he tells me. Though daylight is limited, I might glimpse a ringed seal — even, perhaps, a whale. I’m curious to know how long he has lived in the town. Twenty years, he says. Everyone in Longyearbyen has a story, he goes on. Either they’ve run away from something or they’re looking for something. He studies me for a moment, as if wondering how I might fit into the equation. I ask him about Ugolgrad, and there’s a subtle shift in his face that reminds me of a gust of wind moving across a lake.

“It’s interesting,” he says.

“When English people use that word,” I say, “it often has a negative meaning.”

“Yes.”

His ambiguous response only fuels the mystery and makes me still more determined to see the place. Longyearbyen, Ugolgrad … These, after all, are the names I pored over in the Meridian. Polysyllabic, clumsy, they seem appropriate to me, like numb fingers trying to grasp something in the cold. Ugolgrad is part of Russia, but it’s also nowhere at all, adrift in subzero waters, virtually unreachable during the winter months. In a travel agency near the Radisson I notice a poster issued by the Norwegian Ministry of Tourism.
You are welcome to Svalbard
, it says,
as long as you leave no trace of your visit behind
. They are doing their best to protect the pristine environment, of course, but they might be talking directly to me. It’s as if they knew I was coming.

/

My hotel is by the docks. Converted from a row of miners’ cabins, it has a wide gateway with antlers arranged along the top. At the back is a conservatory where you can sample Arctic delicacies like smoked whale. On my last night in Longyearbyen I take a seat by the window and write to Oswald. The postcard has a picture of a husky on the front.
Not a patch on Josef
, I scribble, then sign my name and add two kisses. Later, I start talking to Natasha, the girl with the tongue stud who runs the bar. Within minutes, our conversation becomes intimate, even confessional. She’s from Ukraine, and has been living in town for about nine months. During the day she works in a hairdressing salon. Two years ago she lost her boyfriend in a crash on the outskirts of Kiev. She was in the car at the time, but escaped without a scratch. “He
died in my arms,” she says. “On a roundabout, in the rain.” Then she smiles and says, “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. I don’t even know you.”