The boy shrugged, making a noise as he drank from the can. ‘You know what the army’s like. They don’t have any idea where their ass is most of the time.’
There was no apology for the expression, which Natalia did not really understand. ‘You don’t know?’
‘Shouldn’t be more than another two or three months but there’s no way of telling.’
Eduard helped himself to another vodka before she served the meal, for which he opened one of the bottles of red wine and for which he sat down without washing his hands. The boy ate bent low over the table, head close to his food, practically spooning it into his mouth in a hand-circling, conveyor-belt fashion. He finished long before her and helped himself to a further complete plateful. He gulped at the wine with food still in his mouth, swallowing and chewing at the same time. Natalia forced the conversation throughout, telling him as much as she felt able about her new job and explaining the overseas travel and how different it was from anything to which she’d been accustomed before. Eduard grunted acknowledgement sounds from time to time but she didn’t get the impression he was listening fully to what she said.
Eduard allowed her to clear away without offering to help, settling with his legs outstretched once more, another glass of vodka resting upon his stomach between cupped hands. He’d undone his tunic and shirt collar and Natalia thought he looked very scruffy, a conscripted soldier instead of a would-be officer.
‘There’s some laundry,’ he announced.
‘I’ll do it tomorrow.’
‘Some of it is pretty disgusting. There’s been a lot of moving about. Not much time to change.’
‘That’s all right,’ accepted Natalia. ‘You seem to be drinking a lot.’ He’d had the majority of the wine, too.
Eduard examined the vodka glass as if he were surprised to find it in his hand. ‘You should see the officers’ mess at the weekend!’ he said with bombastic teenage bravado. ‘I can drink the rest of them unconscious: actually done it!’
The ability to drink more than anyone else, and never suffer a hangover, had been one of Igor’s boasts, thought Natalia, isolating other similarity. She said: ‘You’re not in an officers’ mess now.’
Eduard grimaced, not appearing to regard it as the rebuke she intended. ‘Good life, the military,’ he said. ‘I’m enjoying it.’
Another thing Igor had often said. It had taken her a long time to realize it was because of the freedom it gave him, to whore and impress women at air shows and exhibitions by flying faster or lower than anyone else. She guessed her ex-husband would have by now gained a substantive promotion in the Air Force. Igor would like that, insignias of rank on a fine uniform, medals and ribbons arrayed in lines. She wished it were not proving so easy to think of the man today. She reckoned the last time she had consistently done so was when she’d been with Charlie, here in Moscow, the reflections then those of persistent comparison, good against bad. Which, she supposed, was what they were again. She still wished it weren’t so. She said: ‘I’ve managed to get tickets for Saturday for the State Circus! It’s a new season: quite a lot of fresh acts.’
Eduard stared at her with that frowning, about-tolaugh expression again. ‘The circus!’
‘It’s hardly children’s entertainment!’
Belatedly he realized her disappointment. ‘It’s just…well, I wish you’d mentioned it before.’
‘I didn’t think of it until about a week ago, when it was too late to write. And I wasn’t sure I could get tickets anyway. They’re not easy to come by, you know!’
‘I made plans, that’s all.’
‘Plans!’ exclaimed Natalia, genuinely upset at the flippancy with which he was discarding her proposed treat.
‘With some of the other cadet-officers I came up from Baku with.’
‘For Saturday night?’
‘You don’t mind, do you?’
‘Of course not.’
‘It’s our first time off base for months.’
‘I understand.’
‘One of them says he knows some good places here where we can enjoy ourselves. Have a few drinks…a few laughs.’
And more, thought Natalia. The unchanged pattern: drink, whore, boast, exaggerate. ‘I said I understood.’
‘I knew you would.’
Eduard slept late, snoring loudly. His bedroom was redolent of him when Natalia crept in to collect up the laundry and she wondered how long the windows would have to be left open to air the place after he’d gone. The washing was filthy, a lot personally stained, and she doubted her son always emerged the victor in the drinking contests, as he claimed. If Eduard could handle his drink intake one way he did not appear to be able to do so in another. She pressed him to bathe when he finally arose and he said he supposed he should, though there was little enthusiasm. He had his first drink before noon, although only a beer. Eduard kept prowling around the apartment and Natalia guessed he was bored or felt restricted or both. She suggested an ice-hockey game that afternoon and he said OK without much interest although when they got to the stadium his demeanour changed. He yelled and shouted and swore uncaringly, although not obscenely, and when it ended said he’d enjoyed himself.
Afterwards Eduard said there didn’t seem any point in his returning to Mytninskaya and then having to come out again so soon, so why didn’t they have a drink to fill in the time before he had to meet friends. Because it was convenient they used the bar in the Berlin Hotel, on Zhdanova. Eduard ordered vodka with a beer chaser again, telling his mother to get more than one purchase ticket to save time when they wanted refills.
‘There’s no real reason for me to go back to the apartment, either,’ said Natalia when they were seated. ‘I might as well go on to the show straight from here.’
‘Show?’ queried Eduard blankly.
‘The circus,’ reminded Natalia sadly. ‘It would be silly to waste both tickets.’
‘Right!’ agreed Eduard, with surprising eagerness. ‘You’ll have fun.’
Natalia moved to make the obvious reply but then stopped, saying nothing. Eduard took the tickets which lay between them and returned with more vodka and beer. ‘You didn’t want another juice, did you?’
‘No,’ said Natalia.
‘I didn’t think you would. That’s why I got the beer, instead.’
‘That’s fine.’ Natalia had no real interest in going to the circus on Vernadskovo by herself, but the alternative was to go home by herself which wasn’t really an alternative at all. She realized that quite apart from wanting to see Eduard again she had been looking forward to some brief hours of simple companionship.
‘So you won’t need the car?’ demanded Eduard, smiling.
‘What?’ she said, confused by the question.
‘The car. You won’t really need it if you’re going to the circus, will you?’
‘I’ve got to get home, afterwards.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Eduard, waiting expectantly.
‘Why?’ she asked in weary resignation.
‘I just thought…well…’ shrugged Eduard. ‘I mean it might have been useful if I could have borrowed it…’ He smiled, a little-boy-misunderstood expression. ‘Silly idea.’
‘I suppose I could always get a taxi.’
‘Sure you wouldn’t mind?’ said Eduard, eager again and too impatient to bother with the charade of protesting that it would cause his mother too much inconvenience.