Pravda (54 page)

"I know she was ill. I guessed it was cancer. I didn't know you visited."

"We spent three days together." Nicholas raised his face once more, and this time Gabriel saw an unfamiliar expression—but whether it was the effect of the stroke or some twisted contour of grief, he could not tell. "We even managed to go to the Hermitage
for a few hours. I knew she was in agony, but I didn't really appreciate the sheer ... the sheer
incapacity
of serious illness—not until this." Nicholas gestured with his cane. "The damage it does to your sense of self, your mind. The courage you need."

At last he collapsed heavily into his leather chair. "I couldn't go back. Not after that. And—selfish, perhaps—but I have better memories this way. Masha lecturing me on painting techniques—those eyes of hers, shining."

Gabriel took the chair opposite. There was a side table between them. And the radiator beneath the window caused the hot air to quaver as it reached the draft. He let his eyes go to the river, hoping to bathe his mind clean. Then he reached across to stop his father's cane from falling and prop it against the chair.

"Thank you. She forgot the pain, I think, for a few minutes each day. I sourced some excellent pills for her—they don't sell them here. Cox-2 inhibitors, they're called. I tried to persuade her to come back. I was prepared to return to London and see her properly cared for. We could live together in the old house. But she said, of course, that she was
already
back. Typical. Headstrong. I don't think she really had a chance. In any case, I can't take bloody funerals. Make sure they burn me, won't you, Gabriel?"

Gabriel flinched inwardly.

The door opened and Alessandro appeared, carrying a pot of tea on a tray with two mugs. He had the manner of a bit-part actor who wished the audience to know that they were witnessing not so much a play (by whoever, about whatever) as one of the great injustices of modern casting. Nonetheless, Gabriel found himself grateful for the simple speed with which the guy moved.

"Thank you, Alessandro. Thank you for waiting in," Nicholas said.

Alessandro seemed to make a point of ignoring his father and instead addressed Gabriel. "I wasn't sure whether to go for Russian Caravan or Lady Grey or Higgins Afternoon. In the end I thought
Russian
Caravan."

Nicholas said nothing.

Gabriel said thank you.

Alessandro said,
"De rien."
And began to faff with the table and then with the tea.

Gabriel's eyes returned to the river. The problem, as ever, was that both things were simultaneously true. His father was struggling more than necessary, Gabriel was sure, but the stroke, the indignity,
the difficulty, were genuine. His father was playing out his charm, but Gabriel sensed there had also been real relief and pleasure in his greeting. His father knew that he would not have been welcome at the funeral, but he also genuinely had not wished to be there. And now, most duplicitous of all, Gabriel could not escape the feeling that his father's revelation of a reconciliation with his mother was calculated to hurt as much as to heal. Sly, always sly; but steadfast too—never gave in. You think you're dealing with slime, you shut your eyes, you hold your nose, and just where you plunge in your hands, you hit granite. Perhaps after all his father had loved his mother, but he had also treated her like ... like shit. For
decades.

Alessandro was about to leave. This was it. Speak now; use the fact that the Italian was still in the room and his father's manners would require him to wait until they were alone. Speak. First. Speak now. No more of your theater, Father. No more. Now.

"Who is Arkady Alexandrovitch?"

His father's pupils contracted. "Arkady is probably your mother's son. Has he turned up? I thought he might."

"Don't speak in riddles, Dad." Nastier for the casualness, Gabriel thought. "Just tell me the truth. Who is he?"

"I am doing so. Masha had a son. Before I met her."

"And so you think Arkady ... Why
probably?"

"She was unmarried, of course. She was attacked. Or close enough to make no difference. She never discussed it with me."

That expression again on his father's face: the pain of memory, of movement?

"Why probably?"

"She never spoke of the matter at all. It was her secret. The father was somebody high up in the Party, I think. I really don't know. Assuming that this person, Arkady, is not lying, then it's probably him. That's why
probably.
I can't be sure."

There could be nobody else in the world who understood how to make a general nonchalance hurt so precisely.

"How do you know any of this?" Gabriel deliberately withheld what he knew of Arkady's story. He wanted to know if his mother had told his father that she had met her son again in Petersburg.

"Grandpa Max."

No, she hadn't.

"Grandpa Max," Nicholas continued, "took great care to tell me all about it when he knew I had fallen in love with her. He was that kind of a man. I'm afraid you didn't ... But he mis calculated. If anything, it caused me to love Masha more. She was working for the Party then. She probably had to go and see the bloody brute who got her pregnant every day. Some fat fake Communist in a uniform. They were all such fakes. Except good old Joe. Oh,
he
meant it. Every minute. You want to know what I think?"

Gabriel said nothing.

"I think she tried to have the child aborted and there was some horrific botch job and—"

Gabriel's eyes reached for the river. "That's why she couldn't have children."

He forced them back, dark as ink but incandescent, as if they might set fire to whatever they beheld, and he fixed them directly on his father. "Who am I, then? Who is my sister?"

"Don't worry. You are twins."

"Don't speak to me facetiously."

"Don't ask me these questions as if I am some kind of Old Testament mystic, then."

"I'm asking you as your son. You are my father. Answer me as a father."

"No. That's just it." Nicholas was unflinching. "I am not your father."

"We were adopted." Neither did Gabriel's face change. "I accept that. But you are still my father."

"And yet I can't speak to you as if you are my son. I have never been able to. That is our problem. That is what lies at the root ... the root of all these twisted branches between us."

"Who am I?" Still Gabriel held his father's hollowing gray eyes.

"As a brother, though, maybe as a brother..."

"For Christ's sake, please, just tell me the truth. For once. As a fellow human being."

"Your real father is my father. Your real father is Max."

Only now did Gabriel let himself look away a moment. Then back. "And my mother?"

"Your real mother's name is Anastasiya. She was one of ... one of our father's lovers. There were many."

Gabriel felt his blood prickle, as if her very name were causing it to seek the surface.

Nicholas said, "I have a single letter she wrote. It was in his papers. It's in Russian, of course. She refers to you as Maxim and Anna. Masha changed your names. She wanted to invent you all over again. As hers."

"How old were—"

"Not yet a year old."

"What—"

"I never met your real mother. I was at Cambridge when they began their affair, and she was not at any of the parties when I went back—or not that I knew. I don't have any photographs—I am sorry. You might want to look at some of the pictures of the Kirov from that time. She was in the chorus for a while, I think. A bad dancer."

"Is she alive?"

"No. She died. Our father ruined her life. He gave her money. And of course she was reported. Not very intelligent."

"How do you know?"

"I know that she is dead. I do not know how she died. In Max's will there is a provision for a certain sum of money to be paid annually for flowers. I went through everything when I went out there after he died. It was not an insubstantial amount. The solicitors gave me the name of the recipient of the money. It was a family of florists at Troitsky. It turned out that Max had arranged for them to put flowers on a woman's grave once a week. I called them pretending to know all about it. They were happy to tell me where it was—I went to see for myself. The grave is there. The flowers too. The name on the headstone is the same as that on the letter. She never married. I am sure she is your mother."

"Thank you." Gabriel dropped his eyes a moment. His face was expressionless. But inside he felt as though his lifeblood were reversing direction. He was empty. He was full. He wanted to suck air into his lungs. He wanted to be sick.

Nicholas put down his cup. "The funny thing is that I never thought I would have this conversation with you. I never thought I would be saying any of this, Gabriel, I really didn't. It was the one principle, the one silence I set myself to honor. For your sake. For Izzy's sake. For Masha ... And yet now, all of a sudden—now I find that it's the only conversation I have ever wanted to have. Indeed, I realize I have been thinking about it all my life. Ever since the day I first saw you—here in this city, not two miles away. You and Is, side by side, crammed together in a single pram on the corner of the Rue des Islettes."

Gabriel, his eyes back on the river, gave no sign that he was still listening, but above the din of the revolution burning through his body, he was hearing something in Nicholas—his father, his brother
—that he had never heard before, and he was stuck fast to his seat, pulled equally between his ferocious desire to leave forever and his need to stay close to the sound of something true, to hear every last word.

"You were less than a year old, and ... and you were helpless, Gabriel, totally helpless." Nicholas let out a tightened breath. "I had been with your mother some time then—let's call Masha your mother, because that is what she is. There were difficulties. She could not have the children she wanted. I had my own troubles. We were also very poor. Excruciatingly so. We were enjoying our lives in Paris, but we needed to find work. I had not heard from my father since I left Russia with your mother. Then, out of the blue, he sent a message—we did not even have a phone—he sent a message, with a messenger—can you imagine that?—sent a message that he was in Paris. He had come for a visit, he said. And just like that he arrived at our tiny apartment on Goutte d'Or."

Gabriel's face was still turned slightly toward the window. He was rigid against the waves of sickness within. He realized what it was: it was fear stalking his father. His father was afraid. As simple as that.

"But actually Maximilian had come to strike a deal with me. Do you want a real drink?"

"No thanks."

"Look, Gabriel." Nicholas grasped his cane. "I know you cannot forgive me, and really I don't ask you to—I am not interested in forgiveness—but I would like now to tell you at least some part of what my life has been. No excuses and no self-exoneration—I am not a fool. I know ... I know that we are all of us able to choose, and my choices have been, with no exception I can think of, selfish. I do realize all of that—and such as they are, I stand by my choices. I and no other am responsible for my actions."

He sought Gabriel's eyes again, as if to fix them with an intensity that he could not evade.

But Gabriel, aware perhaps of their keenness, continued to look steadily away, his gaze on one particular turbulent spot in the moving water.

Nicholas, exasperated, sat back, his knuckles white around his cane. "In essence, the old bastard offered me the house in Highgate and an annual sum for maintenance—I'm giving you all the details —to adopt you two as my own. Your mother was desperate to have children anyway. I saw no grave harm in the idea. You were my
brother and sister, after a fashion. I bore you no ill will. I never have. Our father would pay for your education and upkeep. For the rest of my life, I would be free to pursue what I was interested in rather than forced to work for work's sake. I said yes. And I—we, all of us—have been living with the consequences of this deal, for good, for bad, ever since." Now Nicholas also looked out. "That was the choice I made. I could have said no, of course. But I did not. I was offered a life of relative ease. I took it."

Gabriel felt his breathing becoming shallow. There was acid in his throat. He had faced all he had come to face. He was exhausted.

"I also rescued you. And I never once went back on ... I never went back on my bond to you. However bad a would-be father I have been, I never once—though sometimes circumstances screamed at me to do so—I never once broke the spell. Not even when I was drunk and furious with you, with Isabella, your mother, myself." The cane fell with a clatter. "I kept to it. I kept you believing that she—that fine, fine woman—was your mother, and that I—I was your father. I have always wanted you to believe Masha was your mother." He held his shaking hands out in front of him over the table, staring, as if appalled that they belonged to him. "I did it ... I kept the necessary secrets ... I did it as much for your mother's sake as for any other. I knew she was capable of loving you as her own. And I wanted ... I wanted her always to have you two—you two pretty, clever, troublesome children—to love and to care for. In her exile. And you both to love her in return, as if she were your own flesh and blood. To love her without distance, bridle, or complaint. Unequivocally. Since ... since I have always known that I would be a failure in this. I did it for my wife."

Gabriel looked down at his father's trembling hands for a second, then abruptly stood. His vision was suddenly blurred. And his heart was traveling too fast, ricocheting from fury to confusion to numbness to exhilaration and back again. He could not trust himself anymore. He had to leave. And no, he was not ready to agree to this last devious bargain: to accept his father as a brother was to absolve him as a father, and this he could not do. When in fact nothing was changed. Not a single cruelty was excused. Not to him, his sister, or his mother. No, there could be no understanding, and certainly no forgiveness.