Pravda (32 page)

And so far it was damn well working: his prayers had been answered. Okay, so Paris was a nothing. Perhaps Arkady was right—what man wants to hear from his wife's long-forgotten love child? Perhaps the address was wrong. But Henry's assiduous Internet fishing for Gabriel and Isabella had finally produced results: too many Isabella Glovers, and no matches at all for Isabella plus Maria, but a single match for Gabriel and Maria Glover—an article from a local newspaper. A godsend. From this Henry had learned that son had "followed mother's footsteps into journalism." So, a search for journalists called Gabriel Glover. Disregarding the Americans and subtracting those listings attributable to the same person, three possibles. Next, some very expensive calls to receptionists at the companies most recently served by these Gabriels to "confirm the e-mail because I have to send something..."

Then nothing for five days.

So more calls.

No, Gabriel Glover did not work here anymore, try the
Camden Journal.
Passed about like a pedantic reader. Until someone on the
news desk said, Oh yes, that Gabriel Glover used to work here, on features—God, that must have been about five years ago now. Ask Jim. But Jim was off on holiday.

One week later he had found his lead again: try the contract-publishing firm Roland Sheekey Ltd., Jim advised. Another call to another receptionist, another e-mail pretending to be from Arkady. This time, despite the cost, Henry waited at his desk in the cheap-Internet-and-foreign-calls café near Primoskaya, hoping. Three hours later, he had his man.

Sure, by all means, get in touch when you arrive, look forward to talking very much.

It was enough. It was hope. Arkady was going to London.

The red door remained shut. Henry dared not suggest they press the buzzer again, and Arkady seemed content to wait. The bulb hissed periodically. Three minutes must have passed before, with a shock, Henry realized that Arkady was standing in the middle of the passageway because a camera was set up high in the lintel. He wondered who might be looking at them and what they were looking for. He noticed afresh that his friend was growing more ragged. That greatcoat, those tattered jeans, those boots, the frayed collar on that favorite shirt, fake Armani. When the time came, Henry knew, he would not have the courage to suggest that Arkady clean himself up: cut his hair, shave, find a new shirt at least. And yet it was his duty to do so. To improve Arkady's chances. Simply, there was nobody else to say these things. No other person who could see beyond the struggle of their own circumstances as to what goodness or salvation the wider world might yet bestow if only they could keep on believing. He
must
say something. What did it matter if Arkady came to despise him, as long as he made the best possible impression when he found his family? The danger was that on the streets of London, Arkady would simply look insane or worse—frightening. Besides everything else, the Russian had his right index finger wrapped and bound in a fat bandage, which he had recently taken to wearing all the time, even though he had not been near the conservatory this week or last, as far as Henry knew. And the injury looked gruesome. Violent. Henry understood—up to a point—that Arkady had to live his lies religiously once asserted, had to actually believe in them himself, had to
perform
them. (There was something especially Russian in this, he thought.) But all the same, Henry hoped that the grimy bandage would come off as soon as they had the passport.

Without warning, the door started to move. There was a whirring, as though the hinges were motorized. The corridor within was better illuminated; a series of doors—some shut, some half open—led off, right and left. They passed a filthy toilet, a bedroom of sorts with the floor covered in mattresses, a decrepit shower with its head dangling loose, and, last of all, on the left, a big kitchen—gas rings, saucepans. Ten more paces beneath weak multicolored light and they emerged into the wide cavernous low-lit room—the spider's den: Club Voltage.

The place was almost empty and there was no music, but then, it was only eleven in the morning. They were in a vast cellar. Like the passageways, the walls were all bare brick; a glowing row of yellow, orange, and red light bulbs set in two plastic bulb racks was wedged up by a series of nails hammered irregularly into the mortar behind the makeshift bar, the cables looping down like ossified tapeworms. There were no drinks on display save sample cans or bottles of the range available—one Russian beer, one Polish beer, vodka, vodka, vodka, cheap, cheaper, cheapest—standing strangely spaced across the solitary shelf. Aside from a few other bulb racks and one or two random strip lights, the decoration was limited to a series of poster portraits that had been lacquered like fliers for forthcoming gigs to the bricks of the far wall—poster portraits of famous Soviet athletes in various attitudes of exertion, muscular repose, or medal-winning triumph. In English, across the face of each, someone had sprayed the words "Drugs are for winners" with scarlet paint. High up, behind the bar, there was a second series, these much smaller, pages cut from magazines rather than posters: presumably the bartender's true love, some model never quite dressed.

Sitting just inside the door to the right on the threadbare sofa and chairs were four or five youngsters—couples, friends, strangers, it was hard to be sure—all as thin as coat hangers, their faces oddly blue beneath the fizzing of one of the strip lights. One girl sat forward, her banknotes ready, clutched thick and tight in her scrawny fist.

Someone came through the door behind them, sped past at an incongruous jog, and circled back behind the bar. Arkady moved forward and spoke in Russian.

"Hello, Genna."

"Piano." Offering a raised fist (held sideways for Arkady to knock
with his own), Gennady, the teenage tender, greeted Arkady from behind the makeshift bar with a grin.

He could be no more than fourteen years old, Henry thought. Eyes like flattened lead shot, flared nostrils, skin like congealed lava.

Arkady declined the fist, enveloping it in the mighty palm of his left hand instead.

"How you doing, Genna? Still running. Next Olympics is your Olympics, I just know it."

"If I can get the invisible drugs that the pussy-boy Americans use, then I'll be the fastest man on the planet." Gennady sucked in a sharp breath. "Whoa, shit, you bust your finger."

"Yeah—stupid. Should have known. Never try to fuck two fat girls at the same time. Some shit is just too dangerous."

Gennady's laugh caused him to screw up his face.

Arkady raised an introductory thumb. "Henry."

Gennady paused, self-consciously rehearsing the look that he had laboriously formulated from the hundred films that informed his every expression, then raised his fist again.

Henry had no choice. Embarrassed, he raised his own bony knuckles, his long sleeves hanging lankly from his scrawny bones.

"We will take two vodkas. And you can pour them," Arkady said.

"Sure."

All customers had to order a drink—one of the rules. This was a bar, after all. Some just paid the money and Gennady knew not to bother opening the bottle. Henry rubbed his hands together, agitated. He was suddenly anxious that Arkady was actually going to drink. He'd never seen the Russian have so much as a sip of beer. And yet he dared not speak. So he pretended to stare into space instead, careful not to glance up at Tatiana. He sensed that Gennady would die rather than allow anyone even to touch these posters. But he felt stupid and panicky watching the teenager pour the vodka, so he turned away to face the room, hoping to appear casual.

The main wooden tables were all empty save for one over in the corner beneath a barred and blacked-out window, where two men sat: the one with a hollow face, a decorator by the look of his paint-streaked overalls, who seemed straight enough; the other a fat man with a black beard, dressed (without irony) in sports shoes and track-suit, who was slouching sideways on the bench, his head nodding back and forth. This was the cheapest shit you could buy in Petersburg; God knows what they mixed it with, but it was supposed to be
safer than the street. They sold clean needles too. And people came back. The place was busy nights, Arkady had said, passing itself off as a normal club. Part of Henry, the sickest part, was actually grateful to Arkady for the inadvertent introduction. If he needed to, he could now return alone.

Henry paid. And Arkady picked up the drinks.

"So, Genna, when your uncle is free, tell him I am here to speak with him."

Gennady made two guns with his fingers and thumbs. "I'll tell him."

They sat down at the table nearest the bar, the Russian leaning back with his arms stretched out in front as if he were about to play, the Englishman with his shoulders folded, hunched in, sharp as vultures' wings.

Gennady passed them again at speed.

Arkady swilled his vodka around, looked at it a moment as if another—maybe better—life was therein contained, then sloshed it out onto the sawdust floor.

Voice low, Henry asked, "Has this guy done a passport for you before?"

"I have never left Russia."

Henry felt himself recoil involuntarily. Idiot. Keeping his sallow face blank but suffering cringes within, he cast his glance away as if to reassess the room.

The fat man suddenly came to life and began snapping his fingers, his upper body bobbing about to music only he could hear, chant-sing-talk-murmuring some kind of maddened song that sounded to Henry's ears as though it were memorized word for word without the speaker understanding the language, the subject, the meaning, anything. The man kept up for a minute or two, then collapsed forward; his friend, the decorator, helped himself once more to the other's drink with a scowl.

"The guy's name is Kostya," Arkady said quietly. "He is Gennady's uncle. He is from Kyrgyzstan. He can get anything. He is the man who let us in. Speak only if he speaks to you. Then be nice. No fucking English."

Silently grateful that Arkady appeared not to have taken any offense, Henry turned back and gingerly tipped his own vodka out onto the floor. Stop being such a fool. He watched his vodka soak away. Stop saying such stupid things. Of course of course of course Arkady had not left Russia: Arkady
was
fucking Russia.

The smell of spirits mingled with chemicals was overpowering. You had to be an addict or an alcoholic simply to breathe in here. Henry widened his nostrils a moment and then began patting his leg involuntarily.

Arkady stared with narrowing eyes at his finger.

Henry spoke again. "Do I hand over the money in here—at the bar?"

"No. And wait until we know the exact price. You have it in separate hundreds, yes? If we don't have enough, then fuck it. No promises you cannot keep. It does not matter."

"Okay. But it
does
matter. You need to go to London."

Arkady said nothing.

A happy thought was occurring to Henry ... He had started to wonder again whether he might be able to buy a hit. Try it out. It looked to be working for the fat man. (And, dear Lord, he needed one—cutting down was
hard.)
He shut his eyes a moment. Even thinking about his boy gave him strength. He leaned his head forward onto his fingertips and felt the bones of his skull. Then he faced Arkady directly, whispering.

"Is there anyone else who can do it, if—if Kostya says no?"

Arkady grinned his hollow-cheeked grin. "Leary."

"No."

"Yes, Leary can do it easy."

"Not now."

"Yes, now."

"Not—"

"Yes, more now." Arkady shook his head and kept his voice low. "You do not see the plans all the way, Henry. You do not see anything."

"Why ... why would Leary help us? So far he has sent Grisha to smash up the piano, stolen all my money, and left us with nothing but an arse-shaped hole in our wall."

"Because he doesn't give a fuck about me." Arkady's face was scornful. "Because he wants
you
to owe him. For the sake of Jesus. How many times? He does not do these things because you are a few days late to pay him. He does not give a piss about a few days late. He does everything to bring you to nothing. And if he thinks you are spending whatever you have left on a passport, then he is happy to help. The sooner you are desperate, the sooner you work for him."

Henry patted at his knee. "I'm not—"

"Listen, Leary will buy you a brand-new suit if it helps. He'll rent you a big apartment on the Nevsky. He'll get you a fucking
Russian
passport. And if he is bored with waiting or you don't do as you're told, he can just tell the police about you. And then you are really in the big shit, my friend."

"I'm quitting." Even here, even now, Henry loved to talk about it: the subject warmed him, made him tingle, killed the remaining wheedle. They were leaning close together now. "I'm not a dealer, Arkady."

"You will do anything when the time comes."

"No. I told you, I'm going to stop." He meant it. But the strange thing was, he could say it with any kind of strength or conviction only when he was thinking about his next hit. "When what's left runs out, that's the end. You will be gone by then."

"So you hope."

"I believe it."

"Great. We hope and we believe. We are impossible to defeat." Arkady curled his lip. "Here he comes. No English."

Eyes red, nose streaming, face like a suppurating pumice stone, Kostya looked as if he had been at the baths all his life—beaten with the birch, then steamed, frozen, steamed, plunged, and steamed again. His gray-white overwashed Doors T-shirt was loose and clung damply here and there about his massive frame where the sweat slicked most copiously. He wore long, loose shorts and sandals, and the flesh on his feet, like the skin of his nose and ears, was cooked red and cracked.

They spoke in Russian.

"Kostya."

"Piano." He embraced Arkady and then took a seat.

"This is Henry."

"Hello." Henry nodded. No hand was offered. Kostya's attention left him almost immediately and came to rest on Arkady's finger.