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Zoya had wanted to go somewhere else, but he had said that he was busy and if she wished to talk, they could talk here. So she had sat down on the hall stairs and sprung open her briefcase and begun handing him photographs and documents, which he had glanced at without concentration and then handed back. All the while, the
sounds of a football match came through the open door. Russia losing again. Either paid to lose or losing because nobody paid them. Hard to say. But then that was the main amusement in watching the national team play.

Five minutes later, when he had reentered the room, he had not told his friends anything but had simply laid back down on the floor with Polina to watch the rest of the game. He had kept Zoya's card, had agreed to come to the café on the day she suggested and nothing else. He did not believe her story. The documents meant nothing to him. Could be forgeries, could be fakes. The photograph of the woman meant nothing. Could be anyone in the world. Because (as he well knew) this sort of bullshit happened to Russian children from orphanages a lot more often than the rest of the country realized. He had seen it himself: the time that Mongol had turned up for Sako, an athletics star with shrinking balls from his dormitory, for example—the point being that Sako had just come in third at shot put in the Olympics and was all over the bullshit papers and the television. No—the reality of the situation was that ninety-nine percent of the abandoned children in the Soviet Union were poor desperate scum when they were born, the parents were poor desperate scum when they fucked them into existence, and poor desperate scum all parties remained. And scum seldom wasted its time looking for long-lost more of the same. As far as Arkady was concerned, therefore, the only calculations to be made were these: was there any money and would it be easy to get without having to do anything?

Thus the single eventuality that Arkady Alexandrovitch was not prepared for when he set out that morning in the acid rain was that the woman he was about to meet might actually be his mother. But that's what life is: one eventuality after another, and none of them prepared for.

She came ahead of Zoya, moving swiftly between the tables. She was a slight woman of a little less than average height, but there was a certainty and pride in her aspect that created the impression that she was taller, stronger, more intense and vital than the mere time-and-space coordinates of her corporeal presence. Her hair was tied back against her head and dark as sable. She wore a fine charcoal-gray coat, but her black clothes were unostentatious beneath. There was no jewelry—not even a wedding ring. She carried a slim, elegant bag under her arm, also black, pressed in tight against her. And it was only now, as she came right up to the table and stood before him,
that he became aware of the effort that was she was making to hold herself in check. Her cheekbones told of a tightened jaw, her lips seemed almost blue, and a dozen tiny needles were knitting cross-purposes in her brow. Her eyes, sunken and turquoise like his own, were scouring his face as if by this act of such determined looking she might find his entire history plainly written there.

"My name is Maria—Maria Alexandrovna."

Her accent was pure old Petersburg. He said nothing.

"You are Arkady Alexandrovitch Artamenkov?"

He nodded but he did not get up.

She turned. "Thank you, Zoya. Please leave us." It was an order—an echo from a time long ago, before the Soviet era—and there was no accompanying smile.

Zoya bowed, suddenly a servitor, before backing away in the direction of the bar.

He watched this Maria Alexandrovna sit down, resolute. Outside the wide windows, the rest of Russia was carrying on with its life.

She faced him directly. He said nothing.

She had no interest in ordering anything either. So their menus lay untouched. They simply sat, mother and son, staring at each other, a lifetime's silence, everything and nothing, between them.

"Arkady Alexandrovitch, may I call you Arkady?"

He remained silent. But his clothes were now drying from the heat rising within him.

"I...I wanted to see you. I hoped that we could ... I hoped that we could talk."

And suddenly, surprising himself, surprising the very air that they were breathing, and because he knew already by the recoil and thrashing of his heart that this woman was indeed his mother, he asked the one question he would not have asked if he had thought her mad or another crazy liar seeking solace, the first four words that came to him: "How do I know?"

"Know?"

"How do I know?"

She kept her eyes steady on him, breathed in, throat tight as she swallowed, and he watched her gather herself.

"You were born here in Petersburg. Your father was a government official. I was not married. I was twenty-two years old. He came to my flat one night. He was a violent man ... He died." She faltered a moment. Then the constricted rush to speak beset her again. "He does not matter. There were complications. But when
you were born, my mother, your grandmother, took you away. She was trying to save my career, my prospects in the ... in the Party. It was different then. Soviet times." She raised her jaw a fraction. "I was married very quickly afterward. To a British man. I defected. I lived in London with two children and my husband ... I could not come back for a long time. They would not permit it. For many, many years. I could not risk it. Until the Soviet era ended. Even then it wasn't possible to remain for more than a few days. Not until recently have I been able to stay as long as I wish. So I found somewhere to live. And then I found Zoya. But I returned only to find you. It has taken too long. I am sorry." She indicated an envelope protruding from her bag. "I have proof that your grandmother registered you at the orphanage. And I have proof that I am her daughter. You must believe the rest." She paused. "I hoped ... I hoped we could become friends. At least, I hoped you would tell me about your life."

Even as he sat there expressionless, even as he sat there in silence, his blood was spuming white in the deep gorges of his veins. He could think of nothing, could neither speak nor move, could only feel.

"What are you? I mean ... do you have work? Are you married yourself, Arkady?"

The one human-to-human bond that should come as guaranteed, without question, given unto all, she had denied him. She had abandoned him. How dare she turn up now? How dare she turn up now and sit here like this? How dare she think that he would ever want to see her, even to know of her existence? The stupid bitch. The stupid fucking bitch.

"I know this is probably very difficult for you ... And I'm sorry. I don't know quite ... I...I want to know about your life. I want to help you ... I can't change anything but I ... I want to make up for what I can. We could begin today. Slowly, of course. Make a start. On becoming friends at least."

But all he wanted to do was hurt her as viciously as he could.

"Can you tell me anything about your life, Arkady?"

To ram her words back down her throat until she choked. To show her every second of it. All the years of bullshit he had been through. Every fight. Every beating. Every bruise. Do to her what had been done to him. Every last thing.

"Okay, well ... let me tell you something about
my
life. After I left, I went to Paris with my husband..."

He was absolutely still, his face expressionless, steam visibly rising from his clothes. Yes, he was in the grip of pure, visceral feeling, but pulled in so many opposing directions that the net result was a kind of ferociously vibrating immobility. And the only cogent thought that he could register, the one thing he kept thinking, was that he did not want to give her even the impression that he hated her—no ledge of his spirit on which she might get the slightest purchase. Nothing. She had given him nothing. She would have nothing from him. She had not wanted him. Now he did not want her.

"...I did not discover my mother and my sister were dead until ten years ago. I knew nothing. I have lived another life, Arkasha ... Arkady. For more than thirty years I have been another person. An exile. I wrote to them, of course, but I received nothing in response. Maybe they wrote back and their letters were stopped. I knew nothing. I did not know if I would ever find you. How could I know? I did not even know which orphanage they sent you to." She shook her head and raised her hands to press her fingers to her brow. "And it has taken Zoya a long time. My God, when we found the records, it was your grandmother's name on your certificate. Not my own name—as your real mother. Not my name. They tried to erase us both, but now here we are and we—"

He could take it no more; he stood up and said the only other words he would ever say to her: "I do not want to see you ever again."

"I...I understand." Now, at last, despite the strength of her self-possession, her alarm was visible. Though still marshaling her dignity, she was shaking with the effort; she was desperate, and her lips were taut as she spoke. "I would like to help you, though. How can I help you? What do you need? At least tell me what you need." She stood and faced him. "We don't have to see each other ever again. I do understand. We don't have to, but maybe I can make your life easier in some way. If you can just tell me a little bit about your life, then I could ... I could ... And Zoya will do everything. Between us. You don't have to see me again, Arkady. But please let me help."

Her face enraged him. Her voice made him deaf. He wanted to send her sprawling to the floor. He wanted to shout. To denounce her at the very top of his voice. That she should stand in front of him, to ask him one single question about his life. That she should think that he might care about her or any of this. It was all he could do to bend his rigid will to the single purpose of leaving without violence. But he did so. And only his eyes told as he put on his coat. He would give her no satisfaction. Nothing.

"You have Zoya's number. If you change your mind." She barred his way a moment, her eyes too, like those of her son, lit from within. "Call Zoya. She knows where I am. Anything you need."

Then she stood aside.

He walked out into the rancid rain.

She watched him go.

They neither saw nor spoke to each other again.

It was Henry Wheyland who did the deal. And it was Henry Whey-land who now, two years later, circled the main room of flat number 1327 on the thirteenth floor of tower block number two, Kammennaya Street, Vasilevsky Island, St. Petersburg.

Undeniably, and though only forty-two years into his allotted, Henry looked ill: his wheat-stalk hair was fleeing his forehead, twin valleys razed behind; and he was extremely thin, which made him appear taller than his average height and created the general impression of too many bony angles, of awkwardness, of sleeves too short, fingers too long, shirt too wide, shoulders too narrow, of elbows, knees, wrists, and nail. But in actuality, Henry was feeling fine—as fine, indeed, as only an able and happily functioning addict can feel.

The space around which he turned was low-ceilinged, box-square, drab, and spartan. In every one of the other 520 apartments in the building, it would have been called the living room. Here, though, in apartment 1327, living was music and music was living and there was no worthwhile difference between the two. Indeed, the only furniture consisted of an upright piano, positioned centrally and raised on six or seven layers of torn carpet; a piano stool, likewise raised; a tattered sofa, a stereo, two of the best speakers Henry's remaining funds could buy, and something like five thousand CDs, stacked, banked, and ranked along the dun-beige walls head high. And that was it. What saved the place from wretchedness was the vast window and the beauty of the view beyond: the Gulf of Finland.

Out there, unseen as yet by the rest of the city, a second line of rainclouds was smearing itself across the western horizon, advancing low and fast, a running smudge on the canvas where Baltic sky met Baltic sea. There would be another downpour before the afternoon was out.

Henry continued his circling, inclining in the manner of an academic before this or that pile of disks, matching inserts to boxes and returning the completed results to their rightful station in the library—a library without order or sense to any but himself. On such afternoons, he had come to suspect, Arkady Alexandrovitch's ill humor was not really ill humor at all but nerves. Or, if not quite nerves—Arkady, six feet, lean as the last Siberian lynx, could never really be described as nervous—then perhaps the outward manifestation of the arrival of whatever unknowable incubus took possession of his body in the hours leading up to a performance.

Arkady, who had been lying in his customary position across the sofa for the past thirty minutes, now raised the long index finger of his left hand and pushed up the peak of his cap.

"Everything is bullshit today, Henry. Everything."

"Surely everything is bullshit every day. This is Russia. This is life. What else do you expect?" Henry laid an errant disk gently in the case that he had at last located. "I'm afraid we're all just waiting for the next big idea, society-wise. Sorry I can't hurry it up for you."

They spoke in English—Arkady was almost fluent these days, though his accent was inflected not only with the intonations of his native tongue but with his native disposition. "Everything I see or hear—full of bullshit. Every person I meet—full of bullshit. Every place I go—full of bullshit." He let his head loll back on the ridge of the sofa's arm so that he was addressing the ceiling. Or a much discredited eavesdropper. "Every minute, more bullshit."

"It could be worse," Henry said softly.

"Yes. We could be fucking goats on the TV to get famous." Arkady pulled the English-language newspaper over his head. "Perhaps I will donate my balls to the war on terror."

Henry considered the top of the piano, where a foolscap-sized flier advertising the evening's concert had been placed carelessly over an untidy pile of sheet music. He picked it up, noticing again that all the scores beneath were perfectly clean—his flatmate never marked a single note for fingering. Arkady stared out from the color publicity picture. Large-handed, cragged, inscrutable: sunken and steady eyes, hollow cheeks (forever unshaven in light shades of brown that looked almost gray), unruly blond hair that straggled out from beneath the ubiquitous cap and over his collar—and all without the usual compensating vulnerability in the mouth or that carefully oblique invitation to would-be admirers in the artist's brow. Not so much defiant as distant. Unconnected. Arkady Alexandrovitch was neither handsome nor plain, so Henry often thought, but like some
feature of the landscape for which such fastidious descriptions were beside the point. A face that it was as pointless to oppose as it was to champion or implore. The face of a rag-and-bone man or a prophet-king returned in disguise.