‘Margarita! I’m surprised at you! We both know there’s no such thing as love.’
‘What do you call it?’
Tatyana snuffed out her cigarette. That sly smile. ‘Mutations of wanting.’
‘You’re not serious.’
‘I am quite serious. Look at those kids. The boys want to get the girls to bed so they can have the corks popped off their bottles, and gush forth. When a man blows his nose you don’t call it love. Why get all misty-eyed when a man blows another part of his anatomy? As for the girls, they’re either going along for the ride because they can get things they want from their boys, or else maybe they enjoy being in bed too. Though I doubt it. I never knew an eighteen-year-old boy who didn’t drop the egg off his spoon at the first fence.’
‘But that’s lust! You’re talking about lust, not love.’
‘Lust is the hard sell. Love is the soft sell. The profit margin is exactly the same.’
‘But love’s the opposite of self-interest. True, tender, love is pure and selfless.’
‘No. True, tender love is self-interest so sinewy that it only looks selfless.’
‘I’ve known love — I know love — and it is giving and not taking. We’re not just animals.’
‘We’re only animals. What does the Head Curator give to you?’
‘I’m not talking about him.’
‘Whoever. But think. Why do you think any man really loves you? If you’re honest with yourself, Margarita, the answer will be that he stands to gain in some way. Tell me. Why does he love you, and why do you love him back?’
I shook my head. ‘We’re talking about love. There is no “why”. That’s the point.’
‘There is always a “why”, because there is always something that the beloved wants. It might be that he protects you. It might be that he makes you feel special. It might be that he is a way out, a route to some shining future away from the dreary now. It might be that he is the father of your unborn babies. Or it might be that he gives you prestige. Love is a big knot of whys.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘I’m not saying anything’s wrong with it. History is made of people’s desires. But that’s why I smile when people get sentimental about this mysterious force of pure “love” which they think they are steering. “Loving somebody” means “wanting something”. Love makes people do selfish, moronic, cruel, and inhumane things. You asked, would I like to change place with those kids? It would be nice to steal their twenties off them, sure, if I could transmigrate into them with my present mind intact, but otherwise I’d rather change places with a terrier in the zoo. To be in love is to be at the mercy of your lover’s desires. If someone put a bullet through your lover, they’d be releasing you.’
I watched a horrible image of a bath-plug being yanked from Rudi’s chest, and blood gushing out. ‘If someone put a bullet through my lover I would kill them.’
The pub is jumping around too much and the music throbs in my eyes so they run. Tatyana says, ‘Let’s go outside,’ and suddenly we are, and I’ve been swept over a waterfall and down I plummet into the late light. The streets were filled with shadows and brightness and footsteps and candy-colours and tramlines and swallows. I’ve never noticed the windows above the Glinka Capella, how graceful they are. What are those things called? Jerome would know. Flying buttresses? The stars are not quite there tonight. A light is moving amongst them. A comet, or an angel, or the last decrepit Soviet space-station falling down to Earth? Some passersbys look at me askance, so I straighten myself up to show them I can walk straight, and the neck of a lamp-post swings down like a giraffe’s. One of the office lights is on. Somebody is being wanted by the Head Curator, but it’s not me, and it’s not Tatyana, not tonight. We walk past a dark car. ‘Oy, love, how much for the pair of you?’ I spit at the window and summon up my foulest curses, but Tatyana whisks me onwards.
‘Come on,’ says Tatyana, ‘let’s go back to my place for some coffee. I can make us some hot dogs. I’ll squeeze some sweet mustard into yours, if you’re a good Margarita.’ Everywhere I look, you could frame it and just by doing that you’d have a picture. Not a Jerome picture. A real picture, more real than the ones we steal. Even they are just copies. Jerome’s are copies of copies. That boy’s head. The wishing well. All those girls in green eyeshadow and apricot blusher, being herded into the back of the police van, whisked off to the cop shop, to be fined fifteen dollars before being released. They’ll have to work extra hard for the rest of the night to make up for lost time. This is where the tsar was blown up, my mother told me a long time ago, and I say it now to Tatyana, but Tatyana didn’t hear me, because my words forgot their names. The firecrackers going off in a distant quarter, or might they be gunshots? That would be a good picture. The car with bricks for wheels. The shape of the factory roof, and the chimney, sooty bricks, a picture made of sooty bricks. The horse running down an alley, how did the horse get off its pedestal? A boy with dinosaur fin-hair sways past on roller-blades. A tramp with his bag of newspapers for a pillow on the bench. Tourists in their bright ‘mug me’ shirts, the canals and the domes and the crosses and the sickles and, ah... Even the mud by the river...
I breathe because I can’t not. I love Rudi because I can’t not.
‘Tatyana,’ I say, leaning over the railings and looking into the water. ‘You’re wrong.’
‘Not far,’ her voice says. ‘Can you get there?’
A police boat moves down the river. Its red and blue lights are beautiful.
All I remember about Tatyana’s flat is a sober clock, that dropped tocks like pebbles down a deep shaft. Things gleamed, and swung, and Tatyana was close, saying she wanted something, she was warm, and I didn’t want to leave for a while. At one point I remember that today is my birthday, and I try to tell Tatyana, but I’ve already forgotten what it was I wanted to say. I remember Tatyana loading me into a taxi and her telling the taxi driver my address as she pays him.
Rudi was home when I got back. It was about three in the morning. I hesitated for a moment before going in. He’ll want to know where I’ve been. I can safely tell him about Tatyana. He shouldn’t mind. He can even check up on her if he wants to, though of course he trusts me completely.
I turned the key, opened the door, and had the shock of my life to find Rudi standing in the hallway in his boxer shorts and socks, pointing his gun at me. A pump of adrenalin flushed my wooziness away. The bathroom light was on behind him and a tap was running. He tutted, and lowered it.
‘You’re a naughty kitten, Margarita. You didn’t use the code. I’m disappointed.’
Nemya bounded across the hallway and arched herself around my calf, shoving my leg in the direction of the kitchen. ‘Darling, I didn’t use the code because I live here.’
‘How was I supposed to know that you weren’t the police?’
I didn’t have an answer. I never do with Rudi. But he was in a calm frame of mind: he hadn’t shouted at me yet. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘That’s all right. Most of us make mistakes from time to time. But kitten, don’t make this one again, or you might cause an accident. Come in, come in. You’re late back, aren’t you? I was getting worried. There’s a lot of nasty doggies out there could eat up a little kitten.’
‘I’ve been out with a colleague from work — she’s called Tatyana, and—’ I began to explain but Rudi didn’t seem to be interested. In the living room was a big bunch of roses, red and yellow and pink ones.
‘Rudi! Are they for me?’
Rudi smiled, and I melted. He remembered my birthday! For the first time in our three years! ‘Of course they are, kitten. Who else would I be buying flowers for now, hey?’ He came over and kissed me on my forehead. I closed my eyes and opened my mouth to kiss him full on the lips, but he’d already turned away. Rudi had forgotten to put any water in the vase, so I carried them through to the kitchen. They had a beautiful scent. A garden from long ago.