Your Father Sends His Love (26 page)

‘They look tired,' he said.

Karel sat at the card table. By the time he'd finished, the flesh of the tenth orange was almost pithless.

‘And you're just going to sit there, are you?' Eugene said. ‘Eating your oranges? Eating one after another?'

The tenth one tasted of nothing; the eleventh one the same. Karel was not even bothered by the stickiness of his
fingers. There had been twenty oranges in the plastic sack and he felt he could eat them all.

‘What's wrong with eating oranges?' Karel said.

‘It's the way you eat them,' he said. ‘Your father would be ashamed at the way you eat them, the way you peel them, with your long nail.'

‘Nina likes the way I eat oranges,' Karel said. ‘She says it's like art.' He picked up the perfect coil of peel to show Eugene.

‘Does she know how many you can eat, though? Does she have any idea of the smell? And speak Russian, for the grace of God!'

‘She's normal. She likes the smell of oranges,' Karel said in Russian.

‘She says that now, but believe me she'll soon—'

‘Can you just be quiet and let me eat my oranges?' Karel said and looked the other way. Half of the twelfth orange remained. It would dry up there, pucker in the summer evening's breeze.

Eugene tapped a cigarette against the wall, went to the window and opened the sash.

‘Are you seeing her tonight?'

‘We're meeting at ten.'

‘You're going out that late? You need to be up in the morning. We have a job.'

‘I'll be awake.'

‘No good will come of this. Let me tell you that.'

Eugene lit his cigarette and looked out of the window, down onto the street. All the men and women, all the boys and girls. He wondered what Karel's mother would make of it all. What a woman, what Nastia, would make of this house of men. The smells and manners, the grubby nests of sheets. Nastia whose face appeared at the computer screen when he was out. Eugene was always out when Nastia and Karel talked. He did not want to see her, hear her. The way she spoke, the way the words sounded from her mouth. Not like that, anyway.

‘What's going on outside?' Karel asked.

‘There are a few lights on. The man with the baby's there. Jigging him up and down.'

‘He's too rough with that boy,' Karel said. ‘Every night too rough.'

‘The child's got wind. Even I can see that.'

‘He's too rough with him.'

‘Since when did you think that?'

‘I've always thought that,' he said.

Karel took no time or pride in peeling the first orange. He ate a quarter in one, then a half. Then peeled another.

Outside the Turkish restaurant a woman with tightly pulled-back hair was smoking a cigarette. Eugene watched
her take a phone from her handbag and press a button. Karel's phone rang. He answered it, licking his fingers. Eugene watched the woman speak. He heard her talk into Karel's ear. He heard the frustration in Karel's English. His manic corrections. He heard him say no three times; say no three ways. Eugene watched the woman end the call. She looked to the window where he was smoking. He waved and she walked away, up towards the bus stop.

‘Are you not seeing her, then?' Eugene said.

‘Not tonight, no,' Karel said in Russian.

‘You go and see her, don't worry about me. Don't let me ruin your fun.'

‘You wanted to watch the football together. I told her that's what I was doing.'

‘But—'

‘No,' Karel said. ‘We watch the football.'

Karel had a laptop and when Eugene was in they watched American cop shows, Russian soap operas, British football. It was a nothing match that night, but they sat on their beds, the laptop propped up on a crate, and drank bottles of Budweiser. At the end of the game, Karel's phone rang. He answered with apologies, but moved on to anger.

‘Trouble in paradise?' Eugene said when the call had ended.

‘I'm going to bed,' Karel said. ‘A long day tomorrow.'

‘Every day is long,' Eugene said.

‘She's a beautiful girl, that Nina,' he said. ‘But the most beautiful women are from Minsk. I remember the first—'

‘I must sleep. Please, Gen, let me sleep now.'

‘It's not even eleven.'

‘I know, Gen. I know.'

It was a Saturday and so there was vodka. Eugene was by the window, smoking the last of his cigarette, a glass in his hand. Outside three women were hailing a taxi, a kid in a baseball cap was talking loudly to another boy, the windows opposite empty save for nets and curtains.

‘Were you always in love with my mother?' Karel said.

‘Yes,' Eugene said. ‘Always. Everyone knew that. Your father used to make jokes. When I was a young man they called me the lapdog. I didn't care.'

There were piles of rind and pith and ribbons of peel on the plate in front of Karel.

‘Does she ever talk of me?' Eugene asked.

‘She says you're the kindest man she's ever known.'

‘Ah!' he said. ‘You know what that means.'

Karel took a sip of his vodka and his phone vibrated in his pocket.

‘Maybe,' he said, ‘in another life you could have been my father.'

Eugene wanted to strike him. To get up from the bed and cuff the boy around the ear. So stupid a reaction; this man, his not-son, was the size of a bear, had arm muscles to make boxers seem girlish. He could never hit him. Would never have hit him.

‘I wouldn't have made much of a father,' Eugene said and sat down at the card table. ‘You were lucky there. Your mother was lucky too.'

It had changed nothing: his story, his confession. He'd hoped the boy would understand. That men who wander fall in love easily. That Karel's mother was just the first and therefore most pungent of memories. That Eugene knew best. Karel peeled another orange and Eugene went to the window, opened the sash.

‘What's going on outside?' Karel asked.

‘The man and the woman and the child are there. They—'

Eugene looked over his shoulder and Karel was talking on his phone in a low voice. As he listened to Nina, he mouthed sorry in Russian.

Eugene plotted his route again on the small map, though he already knew exactly where he was heading, how long it would take and where to get off the bus. Karel's laptop was useful now he knew how to use it. He'd been
on Google Earth and had seen the road on which Karel lived. There were no shops, no bedsits and studios running like a mezzanine above them; just blocks and blocks of flats, trees outside on the pavement, cars double parked in white-lined bays.

Despite the planning, Eugene was a half-hour early. There was a pub around the corner and he drank an expensive bottle of Budweiser while a large crowd watched the rugby. He ordered a vodka and the bar staff, as accented as him but better dressed, served him his drink. The customers were eating roast dinners, drinking wine and beers and Bloody Marys. The pitch of the referee's whistle cut through the loudness of their voices. Some of them looked at him. He downed his drink and headed out the door.

There were forty-seven buzzers outside Karel's block. He pressed number twenty-two and Karel answered as quickly as peeling an orange. He was buzzed through and Eugene took the stairs two at a time. Concrete-grey. A smell of something new, recently fabricated. At the top of the stairs he saw a long corridor with a single door open. Karel appeared, wide smile on wide mouth, waving with his goalkeeper's hands.

‘Gen!' he called out down the corridor. ‘So good to see you!'

‘And you, Karel, my boy,' Eugene said. ‘But speak
Russian, boy, it's Sunday. Don't you know to speak Russian on a Sunday?'

‘Come on in, Gen,' he said in Russian after they embraced. ‘Come see my new place.'

The flat was ferociously tidy, three rooms – kitchen/living room, bedroom, bathroom – with laminate flooring and the cheapest kind of furniture. The small table was set for three. Nina was stirring a large pot on the stove. She looked like she had been stirring the pot for a hundred years.

‘I brought something for you,' Eugene said and took out some beers from his shoulder bag.

‘Thanks,' Nina said. ‘Good to see you, Gen,' She kissed him on the cheeks.

‘You're looking well,' he said tapping her stomach. ‘It must agree with you.'

She nodded and Karel put his arms around her. She pushed him away and went back to stirring the pot.

‘We have a balcony too,' Karel said and opened the fridge, poured beer for them both. ‘Let's go outside, yes?'

They opened the door onto the smallest balcony Eugene had ever seen. It was just about big enough for them to stand side by side. There was an ashtray set on a very small wooden card table.

‘So how are you?' Karel asked.

‘Fine. You?'

‘Fine,' he said. ‘Excited.'

‘You have a lot to be excited about.'

Eugene smoked a cigarette and they both drank their beer and both agreed how good it was to see each other at last. Then Nina called Karel inside to help with serving lunch.

Nina was a fine cook and Eugene had three helpings of stew.

‘You can come any time, Gen,' she said.

‘Thank you, Nina,' he said. ‘I would be honoured.'

After they had cleared the plates, the two men went outside again. The wind had got up and there were teeth in it. They agreed the food was good, that Nina was a fine cook.

‘I have something for you,' Eugene said as they went back inside. Out of his shoulder bag he took a plastic sack and handed it to Karel.

‘Here,' he said. ‘I thought you must be missing them.'

‘Thanks, Gen,' he said. ‘Look, Nina, Gen has brought us oranges!'

‘Oranges?'

‘Yes, look, from the shop I used to live above. Best oranges I ever tasted.'

‘They were nice, yes,' she said and shrugged everyone back to the table.

Karel sat at the table peeling an orange. By the time
he'd finished, the flesh of the orange was clean, pithless and perfectly round. He passed the plate with the orange to Nina. She split open the orange and quickly ate it. He peeled another, split it, and quickly ate. Eugene watched the two of them, the juice on their chins, the way they licked the juice from their fingers. He watched them smile and with his right hand, Eugene took an orange from the plastic sack. He dug in his thumbnail and began to peel.