In the kitchen, Mother’s old electric cooker has been reinstalled in place of the gas one, and seems to be working, even the ring that was broken before. There is a bit of clearing up to be done, but not on the same scale as last time. In Stanislav’s room I find a very smelly pair of trainers under the bed, and nothing else. In the front bedroom there are some discarded clothes, quite a lot of wrapping paper, empty carrier bags, and make-up-smudged balls of cotton wool. One of the carrier bags is full of papers. I leaf through-they are the same papers I had once stowed in the freezer. In among them I notice the marriage certificate and wedding pictures. She won’t be needing those where she’s going. Should I throw them away? No, not yet.
“Do you feel sad, Pappa?”
“First time when Valentina left was sad. This time, not so sad. She is beautiful woman, but maybe I did not make her happy. Maybe with Dubov she will be happier. Dubov is good type. In Ukraina maybe he will now become rich.”
“Really? Why?”
“Aha! I have given him my seventeenth patent!”
He leads me into the sitting-room, and pulls out a box-file of papers. They are technical drawings, fine and precisely detailed, annotated with mathematical hieroglyphs in my father’s hand.
“Sixteen patents I have filed in my life. All useful. None made money. Last was seventeenth-no time to register.”
“What is it for?”
“Tool bar for tractor. So that one tractor may be used with different tools-plough, harrow, crop spray-everything easily interchangeable. Of course something like this was already in existence, but this design is superior. I have shown it to Dubov. He understands how it can be used. Maybe this will be rebirth of Ukrainian tractor industry.”
Genius or bonkers? I have no idea. “Let’s have some tea.”
That evening, after supper, my father spreads a map out on the table in the dining-bedroom, and pores over it, pointing with his finger.
“Look. Here,” he points, “they are already crossing from Felix-stowe to Hamburg. Next Hamburg to Berlin. Cross into Poland at Guben. Then Wroclav, Krakow, cross border at Przemysl. Ukraina. Home.”
He has gone very quiet.
I stare at the map. Criss-crossing the route he has traced with his finger, another route is marked in pencil. Hamburg to Kiel. Then from Kiel the line dips south into Bavaria. Then up again into Czechoslovakia. Brno. Ostrava. Across into Poland. Krakow. Przemysl. Ukraina.
“Pappa, what is this?”
“This is our journey. Ukraina to England.” He traces the line backwards. “Same journey, other direction.” His voice is laboured, croaky. “Look, here in south near Stuttgart is Zindelfingen. Ludmilla was working in Daimler-Benz assembly. Ludmilla and Vera stayed here nearly for one year. Nineteen forty-three.”
“What did they do there?”
“Milla’s job was to fit fuel pipe to aircraft engine. First-class engine but somewhat heavy in the air. Poor lift-drag ratio. Poor manoeuvrability, though some interesting new developments in wing design were just…”
“Yes yes,” I interrupt. “Never mind about the aircraft. Tell me what happened in the war.”
“What happened in war? People died-that is what happened.” He fixes me with that stubborn clenched-jaw look. “Those who were bravest perished first. Those who believed in something died for belief. Those who survived…” He starts to cough. “You know that more than twenty million Soviet citizens perished in this war.”
“I know.” And yet the number is so vast it is unknowable. In that measureless ocean of tears and blood, where are the landmarks, the familiar bearings? “But I don’t know the twenty million, Pappa. Tell me about you and Mother and Vera. What happened to you after that?”
His ringer moves along the pencilled line.
“Here, near Kiel, this is Drachensee. I was some time in this camp. Building boilers of ships. Ludmilla and Vera came near end of war.”
Drachensee: there it sits on the map, shameless, a black dot with red lines of roads leading from it, as though it were any other place.
“Vera said something about a correction block?”
“Aha, this was an unfortunate episode. Caused entirely by cigarettes. I have told you, I think, that I owe my life to cigarettes. Yes? But I have not told you also that I almost lost my life through cigarettes. Through Vera’s adventure with cigarettes. Lucky that war ended then. British came just in time-rescued us from Correction Block. Otherwise we surely would not have survived.”
“Why? What…? How long…?”
He coughs for a moment, avoiding my eyes.
“Lucky also that at liberation we were in British zone. Another piece of luck was Ludmilla’s birthplace, Novaya Aleksandria.”
“Why was that lucky?”
“Lucky because Galicia was formerly part of Poland, and Poles were allowed to stay in West. Under Churchill-Stalin agreement, Poles could stay in England, Ukrainians sent back. Most sent to Siberia -most perished. Lucky that Millochka still had birth certificate, showed she was born in former Poland. Lucky I had some German work papers. Said I came from Dashev. Germans changed Cyrillic to Roman script. Dashev Daszewo. Word sounds like same, but Daszewo is in Poland, Dashev is in Ukraina. Ha ha. Lucky immigration officer believed. So much luck in such a short time-enough to last a lifetime.”
In the dusky light of the forty-watt bulb, the lines and shadows of his wrinkled cheeks are as deep as scars. How old he looks. When I was young, I wanted my father to be a hero. I was ashamed of his graveyard desertion, his flight to Germany. I wanted my mother to be a romantic heroine. I wanted their story to be one of bravery and love. Now as an adult I see that they were not heroic. They survived, that’s all.
“You see, Nadezhda, to survive is to win.”
He winks, and the scar-wrinkles at the corners of his mouth and eyes crease with merriment.
After Father has gone to bed, I telephone Vera. It is late, and she is tired, but I need to talk. I start with the easy stuff.
“The baby is beautiful. It’s a girl. They called her Margaritka after Mrs Thatcher.”
“But did you find out who the father is?”
“Dubov’s the father.”
“But he can’t be…”
“No, not the biological father. But he’s the father in every way that matters.”
“But didn’t you find out who the real father is?”
“Dubov is the real father.”
“Really, Nadia. You are hopeless.”
I know what she means, but after I saw the way Dubov wielded that baby-bottle, I lost interest in the biological paternity. Instead I tell her about the pink lacy baby clothes, the elasticated loop-under-heel slacks, the last boil-in-bag supper. I describe the way they hoisted the non-electric cooker on to the roof-rack, and how everybody cheered. I reveal the secret of the seventeenth patent.
“Really!” she exclaims from time to time as I talk, and I keep wondering whether I will dare to ask her about the Correction Block.
“I can’t get over how lovely the baby is. I thought I would hate her.” (I had imagined that when I looked into the cot, I would know who the father was-that her corrupt progeniture would shine in her face.) “I thought she would be like a miniature version of Valentina, a thugette in nappies. But she’s just herself.”
“Babies change everything, Nadia.” There is a scuffling sound on the other end of the phone, and a slow intake of breath. Vera is lighting a cigarette. “I remember when you were born.”
I don’t know what to say, so I wait for her to follow up the remark with some reminiscences, but there is a long sigh as she exhales, then silence.
“Vera, tell me…”
“There’s nothing to tell. You were a beautiful baby. Let’s go to bed now. It’s late.”