Little Apple (26 page)

Light slanting down from a landing window revealed the stairs, the worn banisters, the whitewashed walls. Slowly and laboriously, Vit¬torin climbed the last few steps. He was outside the apartment now.

The unfamiliar name on the door meant nothing to him. The sight of it jolted him like an electric shock: perhaps he was too late. "Herr Selyukov? He moved out yesterday. No, he left no forwarding address
..."
While he was still debating this possibility, he caught a whiff of something in the air, some faint and exotic fragrance emanating from behind the closed door. He knew it of old - he knew it from Siberia, from Chernavyensk Camp. It was the aroma of Chinese tobacco, the aroma of the cigarettes Selyukov used to smoke. Vit¬torin shut his eyes and breathed in the scent of bygone days with an ineffable sense of well-being.

Then he rang the bell. He knew it now: Selyukov was beyond that door.

Facing the door stood a bed with a striped counterpane. The space between the bed and the window was occupied by a peculiar piece of furniture, a kind of small table fitted with a treadle and two wheels. Screwed to the right-hand wall was a bookcase far too capacious for the few books it contained. Some of the remaining shelf space was taken up by a spirit lamp and a stoneware teapot. The wardrobe, the chest of drawers, the windowsill - every surface, every nook and cranny teemed with carved wooden figures: village musicians in colourful costumes, sabre-wielding Cossacks, carousing peasants, a troika, a village smithy, dancing bears, and, beside the ewer on the washstand, a multitude of little wooden pilgrims converging on a church with a blue onion dome.

The table in the middle of the room was a clutter of small knives with curved blades of different shapes, pots of paint, lengths of wood. Seated at the table was an unshaven, bespectacled man in a threadbare jacket, and that man was Selyukov.

Still holding the doorhandle, Vit¬torin surveyed the painted wooden figures, the torn counterpane, the bespectacled man, the chipped ewer. The room was cold, the cast-iron stove unlit.

Selyukov rose. His slippers were down-at-heel and his trousers had worn through at the knees. The table fitted with a treadle was a lathe.

"Do you remember me, Mikhail Mikhailovich?" Vit¬torin asked at length.

No, Selyukov didn't remember him. He took off his glasses and polished them. His eyes were inflamed.

"Lieutenant Vit¬torin, ex-prisoner of war, Hut 4, Chernavyensk Camp."

The man whose face resembled Selyukov's smiled and spoke in Selyukov's voice. "Chernavyensk! That was along time ago. I was an officer in the service of Russia in those days."

"And now?"

"You can see for yourself. I get by. I make toys, and a comrade who used to be my orderly during the Great War peddles them in the street. Sometimes he sells a few, but sometimes he returns at nightfall empty-handed."

Vit¬torin dredged his memory for a word, but in vain. A great void yawned inside him. He stared out of the window at the buildings opposite.
Pashol -
wasn't that the word?
Pashol!
This man with the stubbly chin and worn-out slippers was Selyukov. Where was his St George's Cross? Where was his cigarette? He'd never seen Selyukov without a cigarette, so why was there no aroma of Chinese tobacco? All he could now smell was varnish, glue, and wet paint. He produced a packet of cigarettes.

"Do you smoke, Mikhail Mikhailovich?" he asked in a low voice.

"No. I used to, but I don't any more."

"But weren't you smoking just before I came in? Foreign tobacco?"

"No," said Selyukov. "I haven't smoked for a year, but if I may ..."

He helped himself to one of Vit¬torin's cigarettes and lit up. Holding it in the old, inimitable way - clamped between two fingers of his left hand - he blew a succession of smoke rings. For a moment Vit¬torin felt that he was confronted by Staff Captain Selyukov of the haughty face, holder of the Cross of St George and the Order of Vladimir . . .

"How are you faring these days, Mikhail Mikhailovich?" he asked, and there was a cold, hard edge to his voice. "Are you content with life?"

"Content? You could even say I'm more than content. I've always been lucky. 'Selyukov has the luck of the devil,' my comrades used to say. 'He'd find a cool spot in hell itself.' I'm doing fine. Just to show you, I had a mistress in Moscow, an opera singer. Well, she's now in Vienna too, living in that house across the street. She doesn't know I'm here, though, nor is she going to find out. I don't want her to see me as I am today, but I can watch her from my window, sitting at the piano and singing. I see her every day. Sometimes a young man accompanies her. He isn't her lover, I've made inquiries - he's the singing coach from the opera house. Why shouldn't I be content with life?"

Vit¬torin said nothing. Without knowing it, he gave a little sigh.

"So you've done me the honour of calling on me," Selyukov said. "What can I do for you?"

Vit¬torin started. He had been far away in the snow-lashed Russian steppe, in the streets of Moscow, in open country with bullets whistling past his ears, in the isolation ward of a fever hospital, in a brilliantly lit Parisian hotel. A jazz band was blaring. The girl he loved had just said goodbye and walked off on someone else's arm, and now this ageing man had asked him a question: what did he want, why had he come . . .

"I wanted," Vit¬torin said haltingly, "I thought - I mean, someone told me there were Russian toys for sale here. I'm looking for some Russian toys - I'd like to buy some."

"By all means," said Selyukov, making no attempt to conceal his surprise and pleasure. "Buy as many as you like. They aren't expensive, but the materials, the paints, the incidentals - you understand, I'm sure. My assistant will deliver them to your home."

He produced a selection of garishly painted Cossacks, a white-bearded Orthodox priest, two hares with movable ears, a St Ivan, and a peasant woman carrying a pitcher of milk. Vit¬torin bought the entire set.

Grisha appeared in the hallway. He bowed low.

"Sdravstvuy,
Grisha," said Vit¬torin, who had awoken from a kind of dream.

"My humble respects, Your Honour."

"I went to your village, Grisha - to Staromyena. I spoke with your mother. She's sitting at home, pining for you."

"So she'll laugh when I return," said Grisha, looking down at his hands, which were red and swollen with the cold.

"Your godfather Gavrila Shikulin is dead," Vit¬torin went on. "They've sent the blacksmith to prison."

"May a hundred bricks fall on his head there," muttered Grisha. "So he's dead, Gavrila Ivanich, and I'll never see him again. My godfather, he was. Well, God ordained it so. It was His holy will."

"The blacksmith sold some stolen horses. Your mother says to tell you she's being careful with money. She was all right for bread until March, but she doesn't have anyone to dig the garden for her."

"She should get hold of Katyusha, the tailor's daughter. She's only got one eye, Katyusha, but she's a sturdy creature and knows the work. Tell my mother to have a word with the tailor," said Grisha, looking at Vit¬torin as if it were a foregone conclusion that he would go straight back to Staromyena in the Government of Kharkov and advise the old woman accordingly.

"And here's your watch," said Vit¬torin. "Your mother asked me to give it to you."

Grisha took the watch and beamed all over his broad, flat face. He lovingly stroked its battered case, then wound it and held it to his ear.

"Dear little Mamushka," he cried. "She thinks of everything. Yes, this is my watch right enough. I knew she'd send it on - she promised she would."

Outside in the street the wind blew a cloud of snow into Vit¬torin's face, but the cafe was only just across the way. Oskar jumped up and came over as soon as he entered.

"Well?" he asked.

"That's that," said Vit¬torin. "What foul weather - I'm wet through. I might have picked a better day to come."

"What went on in there? What happened?"

"Nothing much - I really don't know why you're so worked up. I brought a Russian peasant greetings from his mother and passed on a few items of news about his village. Good lord, eleven o'clock already. I've wasted the whole morning."

And with one little gesture Vit¬torin wiped his life's slate clean of two years that had cast him in the role of adventurer, murderer, hero, coal-heaver, gambler, pimp, and vagrant -with one little, unrevealing gesture expressive of a wasted morning and a sodden overcoat.