Katherine Carlyle (30 page)

I creep up the hall and peer through the Judas eye. My breath rushes into me, abrupt and shallow. Standing up against the door is Bohdan, the man I spoke to Zhenya about. I don’t dare move. He’s unshaven, as before, and the snow in his black hair is beginning to melt and trickle down his face. His cheeks are covered with a patina of grime. He looks like someone who was on fire and has only just been extinguished. Above his left eye is a deep cut in the shape of a crescent moon, the edges crusted and black. He brushes at the wound, smearing blood across his face, then he stares at the ground and mutters a few incoherent words. All I can see is the top of his head, the scalp showing through his thinning hair. He fought in Chechnya and his only reward was to lose his wife. Is it any wonder that he drinks?

Once, as if intent on catching me off guard, he tries to look through the Judas eye. Idiotic, of course, since that’s what Judas eyes are designed to prevent. In that moment, though, we’re only three or four centimeters apart, and my heart is beating so hard that I worry he might hear it. After a few long seconds he stands back and fiddles with the front of his jacket, then he swings away and walks into the stairwell. At last I can see the whole of him. His shoulders are wet — the green of his jacket has darkened to a sodden black — and snow sticks to the heels of his boots. His back still turned, he glances over one shoulder, in the direction of my door. He thinks he forgot something, perhaps, or that something changed while he wasn’t looking. His cracked lips move. He’s talking to himself again.

Standing near the stairs, he undoes his trousers, then he takes out his penis and stares at it, as if he wasn’t expecting to find it in his underpants and is wondering how it got there. A dark grayish
mauve, it reminds me of certain vegetables — a beetroot when it is first lifted from the earth, or purple sprouting. He tries to masturbate but he’s too drunk to get an erection. Leaving his penis dangling outside his trousers, he reaches into his jacket pocket and brings out a bottle of vodka. He lifts the bottle to his mouth. The vodka lurches left then right as he takes two or three fierce gulps, then he lowers the bottle and wipes his mouth on his sleeve. His eyes veer towards my door again. I back away. This could go on for hours.

Later, lying in the dark, it’s hard to put the drunk man out of my mind. Noises keep coming from the corridor outside. The chink of glass on concrete, the shuffle of boots. Muttering, and more muttering. Shouting. Then a crash. He must have fallen over. I switch on Mrs. Kovalenka’s radio. The classical music station she used to listen to is playing a song cycle. I turn the volume down and leave it on all night.

In the morning I go and look through the Judas eye. The stairwell appears to be deserted. I crack the door open. Bohdan’s gone. The vodka bottle lies next to the wall, and there’s a pool of vomit on the floor. The poor man. He’s such a mess. What can I do, though?

/

The Moscow–Arkhangel’sk flight lands on time, and my father follows Lydia down the metal steps and across the tarmac. Outside the airport they climb into a waiting taxi. They have reserved a room at the Best Eastern Dvina, which is where I stayed. It’s not such a big coincidence; the city only has a handful of decent
hotels. All the same, I wonder if my father can sense my presence as he walks towards reception. Is that what brings him to a halt halfway across the lobby?

“What are you doing, David?” Lydia says.

He pats his pocket, then appears to relax. “Sorry. I thought I left my passport in the taxi.” But he knows exactly where his passport is. He’s lying to her and he’s not sure why.

The next day, as they scour the city for evidence of me, they take a shortcut between some old wooden houses. Lydia stops by a window. Between the net curtains and the glass panes, arranged on the thin shelf of the sash, is a row of snow globes. Lydia suggests they go inside. Though my father is eager to keep moving he doesn’t want to seem inflexible or stuck in his ways — and it’s hard at this stage in their relationship to deny her anything. Reluctantly, he agrees. The two men are there, just as before, one folded into the armchair by the counter, the other curved against the shelves, oddly boneless. Despite himself, my father feels a stirring of curiosity. The atmosphere intrigues him. Something otherworldly, anachronistic. The tin-lined ceiling, the dark boards on the floor.

“How old is this place?” he asks the man who is leaning against the shelves.

The man surveys him, the glitter in his eyes reptilian and cold, then he turns and speaks to the other man, who might or might not be his brother. He fails to answer my father’s question. Probably he didn’t understand.

My father doesn’t pursue it. Looking round, he finds himself drawn to the left side of the room, and then to one snow globe in particular. Inside the plastic dome is a replica of the airport
where he and Lydia landed the day before, every detail faithfully re-created. The long low terminal building. The blue-and-white light aircraft mounted on a pedestal outside and placed, bizarrely, in among some birch trees. The chunky pale-pink control tower. Tiny passengers thread their way across the tarmac towards an old-fashioned turboprop that is preparing for takeoff. My father is about to call out to Lydia when he sees something that almost stops his heart. At the top of the steps that lead up to the plane is the figure of a young woman with hip-length hair. Dressed in a dark-brown coat, she glances over her shoulder, taking one last look at the place she is about to leave behind. The air between my father’s eyes and the plastic dome seems to contract, congeal.

“David?” Lydia says. “What is it?”

He doesn’t reply. Instead, he snatches up the snow globe and carries it over to the man sitting by the counter. He points at the inside of the dome.

“This girl,” he says. “Have you seen her?”

The man looks past my father at the other man, and his lips draw back to reveal receding gums.

My father pushes the snow globe up against the man’s face, too close to focus on. “You’ve seen her, haven’t you. Where did she go?”

Lydia touches my father’s arm. “He doesn’t understand, David. He doesn’t know what you’re talking about.”

He shakes her off. The man
does
understand.
Both
the men understand. He’s convinced of it. They’re communicating, all three of them, at a level beyond language.

“Tell me where she is,” he says, “or I’ll call the police.” He searches for the word in Russian.
“Militsaya.”
He seizes the man
by his lapels, hauls him to his feet and shouts into his face.
“Militsaya!”

The man begins to shake, as if he has a fever — he’s shaking all over — then he opens his mouth, showing all his teeth, some of which are thin as matchsticks, and he’s shouting too, in a high-pitched voice, like a bird.

Lydia steps back into the shadows. She’s used to thinking of herself as practical, efficient, but the situation frightens her. She has no idea what to do.

The snow globe slips from my father’s hand and smashes on the floor.

Everything stops.

My father lets go of the man, who slumps back in his chair. The man’s chin rests on his chest, and he’s panting. His hair has fallen over his eyes. It occurs to my father that the man might be a cripple, or an epileptic. Or even mentally deficient. The other man leans down and straightens his brother’s clothes, then whispers in his ear. There’s a thin acrid smell, like blown lightbulbs or melted fuse wire. Lydia still hasn’t moved.

The man in the chair is saying something in Russian. The same words, over and over. This time it’s my father who doesn’t understand. The man reaches for a pencil and paper. With a trembling hand he begins to scribble.

It’s a number.

A price.

He says the words again, then aims a finger at the shattered globe. He seems to be pointing at the tiny figure in the cashmere coat. She is still poised at the top of the metal staircase, still glancing nostalgically over her shoulder, but the plane has lost a wing,
and the airport is in pieces, and the granules of snow are scattered across the dark wood floor.

As my father stares at the broken globe, the man comes out with a simple quiet sentence. My father doesn’t know what the man is saying. I do, though. I know exactly what he’s saying.

If you don’t pay, your daughter will die
.

/

A few nights later I rise up slowly through several layers of sleep. My feet are so cold they feel separate from the rest of me. The clock says twenty to three. A symphony is playing on the radio. Stealthy apprehensive music. Feelings that aren’t permitted. A cleansing wash of sound from the strings, but then anxiety and turbulence from the brass instruments. I turn the volume down and listen. There are no noises in the corridor, not tonight. Bohdan is in Pyramiden, perhaps. Once I have rubbed some warmth into my feet I leave the bed and walk to the window. I never tire of looking out at this unlikely place; I still marvel at the fact that I am here. The smooth white sports field, spotlights casting soft-edged circles on the snow. Buildings that seem unnaturally motionless, as if braced against the cold. One of the older houses sinks, lopsided, into the earth. To the left and lower down, not far from the old canteen, is the wooden church with its blunt black spire. The lights have been left on, and the two windows glow, sinister as the eyes in a Halloween pumpkin.

I’m about to turn away when a shift in the shadows to my right distracts me. A polar bear shambles down the slope, moving like an athlete, with a loose easy muscularity, its coat a musty yellow white.
The breath stalls in my throat. Once on level ground, the animal rears up on its hind legs. Head swaying on its powerful neck, it lifts its muzzle and sniffs and scours at the air. Then it drops lightly back on all fours and disappears into the darkness beyond the football pitch, and I’m left standing at the window, buds opening inside my body, a tingling on the surface of my skin. Torgrim told me that polar bears do most of their hunting on drift ice. From April onwards, though, the ice begins to melt. Polar bears can survive without eating for eight months, but they are so hungry by late autumn that they will go almost anywhere in search of food. All the same, I can’t quite believe what I’ve seen. Back in bed I reach for the radio and turn the volume up again. The symphony isn’t over yet. The music has an insistent rhythmic quality — risks are being taken, avenues explored — and I lie awake until it finishes.

When I walk into the library the following morning Zhenya’s eyes are swollen and I suspect she has been crying. I ask if she’s all right. She shrugs and doesn’t answer. Later, over a cup of dark sweet tea, she tells me that she and Gleb had an argument the previous night, and that she couldn’t sleep for hours afterwards. It was about money, and about their son. She wants to return to Ukraine but Gleb thinks they should stay on, perhaps beyond the summer. He claims it would be an investment in the future. If you don’t have a present, she told him, there
isn’t
any future. After that he said cruel things, hateful things. He’d been drinking, of course.

“It’s hard to be in this place.” Zhenya gives me a direct, almost accusing look. “Sometimes I don’t understand why you are here.”

“I don’t have a husband,” I say, “or any children either. I’m free to go where I want.”

“You have no boyfriend?”

“There was someone.” I sigh, then look away. “It’s over now.”

“Your heart is broken? That is why you came?”

“No, no. Nothing like that.”

Zhenya’s eyes are still fixed on me. “Strange you have no boyfriend,” she says, “a girl who looks like you.”

Outside, the darkness is absolute, even though it’s the middle of the day. It has been like this since November 12, when the last of the light disappeared. I pick at a loose thread on Mrs. Kovalenka’s sweater, then reach for my cup. The thin clean smell of tea.

“I can’t tell you why I’m here,” I say, “not now.” I hesitate. “Perhaps if I get to know you better.” And then, in an attempt to lighten the mood: “If you stay for long enough.”

“So that will be my reward,” Zhenya says matter-of-factly, and without a trace of sarcasm. “To hear your story.”

“It’s a long story. I’m not sure how to tell it yet.”

“Does it have an end?”

“No. But it has two beginnings.”

“A story with two beginnings and no end.” She looks beyond me, into the library, where all the books sit undisturbed. “That’s something new.”

Her dry delivery makes me laugh. “You’re very funny, Zhenya.”

“Really? No one’s ever told me that.”

“It’s true.”

“My husband doesn’t think I’m funny.”

“Well, he’s wrong.”

She takes her cup over to the sink and stands with her back to me for a few moments, not doing anything, and I worry that I might have caused offense. Then she looks at me, over her shoulder. “I feel better. Thank you.”

I finish my tea and join her at the sink.

“Guess what I saw last night,” I say.

/

Winter grips. Satellite images show the town from above, blurred, buried, close to being obliterated by whiteness. A southeasterly rushes between the buildings, shrill and relentless, and the cloud cover is dense and low. I ask Zhenya if the wind has a name. In most countries, I tell her, winds have names.
Chinook, meltemi. Tramontana
. Maybe it does, Zhenya says, but she isn’t aware of it. The streets are deserted except for when the miners return from their shifts, lights shining on the front of their orange helmets, faces wrapped in scarves or balaclavas. The temperature has plummeted twenty degrees since my arrival, though the wind-chill factor makes it feel more like thirty. In the evenings I make endless cups of tea and coffee and sit in bed with my hot-water bottle, learning Russian or listening to the radio. If Bohdan’s keeping vigil in the corridor I haven’t heard him.

On the first Saturday in December I arrange to have dinner in the bar of the hotel. It’s an extravagance — I will have to pay in Norwegian kroner, like a tourist — but I’m tired of cooking for myself and I feel like a change from the canteen. That night, as I pass the half-open door to the kitchen, Ivonna looks round. We say good evening to each other, but Ivonna’s expression is neutral, as always. Everything is the same as I remember it — the dark-red tablecloths, the pine-clad walls that gleam like glass, the vodka and Toblerone behind the bar. What I’m unprepared for is the presence of two middle-aged men, seated where the doctor used to sit. One
of them is balding, with a beard. The other has fair hair and pink cheeks. They’re deep in conversation, though they fall silent and look round when I walk in. My old table is set up for me, with three or four pirozhki, some sliced white bread, and a jug of processed apple juice. As soon as I sit down Ivonna brings the hot part of the meal — a small plate of cannelloni and a piece of grilled meat.