Lars tries to increase the intensity to his smile a notch or two — from wryly expectant, say, to definitely amused.
‘So you know what Alain does?’ Aleksandr asks him, as Mark, standing at his shoulder, pours more Pouilly-Fuissé.
Still smiling — and though he does in fact know what Alain does — Lars shakes his head, and pats his mouth with his napkin. He murmurs a word of thanks to Mark.
‘He phones Ubon in London,’ Aleksandr says. ‘You know that restaurant?’
‘Yes,’ says Lars.
‘He phones them and he orders something like…something like a thousand quid’s worth of sushi,’ Aleksandr says, ‘to take away.’
Lars’s eyebrows jump up politely.
‘Then he arranges for someone to take the sushi to Farnborough, and has it flown, by private jet,’ Aleksandr emphasises, ‘to Ulaanbaatar.’ He says, ‘It gets there about eight o’clock, local time, just when I want to eat. So Alain is very pleased with himself. And I say to him, “This is excellent sushi, Alain. Where did you get it?” And he tells me from Ubon in London. And I say to him, “London? Are you out of your mind? It would have been quicker to get it from Japan!” ’
Lars manages a quiet laugh.
Aleksandr tells him, quite seriously, ‘That was in the newspapers.’
‘Oh?’
‘The most expensive takeaway in history, they said it was.’
Quietly, Lars laughs again.
‘They said it was fifty thousand pounds. I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s true.’
At that time — not so much any more — Aleksandr kept everything the newspapers printed about him in a large scrapbook. For a while there was quite a lot of material — he was known as the ‘Emperor of Iron’ and his lifestyle and wealth were a matter of fascination to them. It was someone’s job, full-time — an attractive young woman, just out of Oxford — to manage the scrapbook.
‘I should have put some money into commercial property in Ulaanbaatar,’ Aleksandr says wistfully. ‘I thought about it.’
‘It would have been a successful investment,’ Lars says, sipping wine. He does not mention that he himself owns a small amount of stock in an investment trust, managed by an acquaintance of his, specialising in Mongolian property — one of the best-performing assets in the world, the last few years.
Enzo joins them.
Aleksandr had asked to see him. He says, ‘We’re going to Monaco, Enzo. I’ve offered Lars a lift home.’
The offer had been made earlier in the meal.
It is what Lars had hoped for.
It is why he has his suitcases with him.
Though it does mean, for most of the afternoon and evening, listening to Aleksandr talk. Aleksandr does not seem to be able to stop talking now.
—
Over dinner, he talks about Russian history, a subject he is obsessed with. He seems tired, as he explains how Russia ended the twentieth century exactly where it was at the start — a somewhat shambolic authoritarian state lagging behind Western Europe and America in terms of economic and social development, its natural wealth held by a small number of families, with a stunted middle class, and most of the population living in sullen fatalistic poverty. The whole Communist experiment, with all its hope and suffering, had passed like a storm, he says, and left things exactly as they were.
Lars nods at that appraisal.
On the other side of the table, Aleksandr is slouched in a fog of cigar smoke. He is talking about his own attempt in the 1990s to transform Russia, as he tells it, into a liberal free-market democracy, about how that failed.
They are inside, in the small dining room where the smoke hangs heavily in the air.
On the table is a large plate of chocolates. They have an artisanal misshapenness, a dusting of pure cocoa powder. Lars has already eaten two. He says, wondering whether to have another now, or wait until Mark arrives with the coffee, ‘It was a missed opportunity.’
‘It was a historical tragedy,’ Aleksandr tells him.
Historical — his favourite word.
Lars knows that Aleksandr thinks of himself as a historical figure. He likes to talk about the sweep of history as one who knows it at first hand. He had once asked him, ‘How do you think history will see me?’
Lars had not known what to say. After a moment’s hesitation, he had fallen back on a hackneyed quip: ‘It depends who writes the history.’
It was then — in Davos, a few years ago — that Aleksandr had told him about his plan to write a monumental multi-volume account of his own life and times.
He has not, as far as Lars knows, started it yet.
He is talking about his uncle now. Lars has heard about this man before. The KGB officer — a man who sent people to their deaths in the purges of the thirties and forties. And yet — Lars knows the story — someone whom Aleksandr admires.
‘When I was a kid I thought he was just an old fart,’ Aleksandr says. ‘Old-fashioned — you know.’
‘Yes,’ Lars says, trying to seem interested.
‘He wore an old-fashioned hat,’ Aleksandr says.
‘Yes?’
‘He had a shit haircut. That’s what I thought about him. Later I understood he had iron in his soul. He was strong. When the wind changed, in the fifties, he was in a tough position.’
‘I’m sure…’
‘I mean, Stalin,’ Aleksandr says, as Mark arrives with the coffee, ‘was his hero. He worshipped him. Sincerely.’
‘There were some who did.’
‘And then Khrushchev makes that speech.’
‘Yes, the so-called Secret Speech,’ Lars says.
‘And so everyone was supposed to say they’re sorry, and how they never liked Stalin anyway. Well, he wouldn’t say it. Even though he knew he might be killed. He wouldn’t say it. It was like the end of Don Giovanni,’ Aleksandr says, ‘when he won’t say he’s sorry, even with hell opening in front of him. He won’t be a hypocrite. You know.’
Lars just nods.
‘My father, he said sorry,’ Aleksandr tells him.
‘Yes?’
‘Oh, yes.’
Having served the coffee, Mark has slipped out.
‘My father said sorry. My uncle — his name was Aleksandr, like me — he wouldn’t say sorry. In his own mind he had done nothing wrong. It was his enemies who were wrong, he thought. He thought history was on his side. It wasn’t. In the end, he took his own life,’ Aleksandr says. ‘He killed himself.’
‘I’m sorry to hear it.’
Aleksandr shrugs exhaustedly. ‘He was old, then. He had nothing left to live for,’ he says. ‘He had devoted his whole life to the cause of Communism. It was his whole life. He had nothing else.’
Lars nods thoughtfully.
‘What did he have left to live for?’ Aleksandr asks him, insisting on the point.
‘Nothing, I suppose,’ Lars says.
Aleksandr nods and presses out the soggy end of his cigar. ‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘It was over. That was it.’
—
In the morning, Capri passes off the starboard side. Naples under a layer of smog. Lars, from his little terrace, wearing a fluffy Europa-logoed towelling robe, watches them pass. The air is mild, fresh. He did not sleep well. Too much fine wine and pre-war Armagnac last night. And then, when he was back in his cabin, he had found among the hundreds of films available on the entertainment system, Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia. He had started to watch it. It was strange to see Erland Josephson, whose voice, speaking Swedish, was so familiar to him, dubbed into Italian. He had fallen asleep less than halfway through.
There is a knock at the door.
It is Mark.
He says that Aleksandr has invited Lars to join him for breakfast.