“Something I forgot to say,” he shouts down from the bridge. “There’s only one hotel, and it’s full of rats.”
“I don’t believe you,” I shout back.
Though combative, he’s honest and reliable, made of the same durable material all the way through. He would fiercely defend anything he loves. He would make a good father.
I approach the workers, who are patching up a hole in the quay with old car tires, smashed-up bits of concrete, and shovelfuls of coal.
“Gastinitsa?” I say. Hotel?
A bearded man moves his hand in the air to show me which way I should go. It seems straightforward enough. I thank him in Russian and set off for the steps.
Halfway to the top, my heart pounding from the climb, I stop to rest. I seem to hear the crunch of my footsteps on the shallow crust of snow, as if my brain is lagging, out of kilter. I glance back down. The dockside swamped in silver light, the boat the size of a toy. Darkness all around. No stars, no moon.
I pass several houses with planks nailed over their windows, and then a large brown-and-white building, also boarded up, that has the word STOLOVAYA above the entrance, and come out into a sort of square. There are park benches and streetlamps, and the side of one of the buildings is covered with a mural of a forest. Birch trees with speckled trunks. Green grass. There is nobody about. Still walking uphill, I cross the square and turn into a street paved with uneven slabs. Yellow spotlights shine down from the rooftops. The rumble of my suitcase fills the silence. In between the buildings are areas of wasteground, bits of buckled metal fencing, and warped lengths of wooden boardwalk. I’ve never seen — or even imagined — a place like this.
The hotel is a four-story block raised off the ground on concrete piles. I climb a flight of steps to the front door and suddenly I’m at the end of my strength. It’s partly all the traveling — the journey, which has always felt driven and yet open-ended, has taken it out of me — but it’s also the conversation I had with the captain. There’s nothing more exhausting than having to listen to people who think they know what’s best for you.
Once through the entrance I stand in a hall that is small, brightly lit, and deserted. A glowing sign above the glass-paneled double doors to my left says BAR. To my right is another set of doors, also with glass panels, a dim yellow corridor beyond. When a woman walks up the corridor towards me, her presence feels supernatural, since she appears suddenly, from nowhere, like a jump cut in a film, and her approach is silent, the sound of her footsteps deadened by the doors that stand between us. She offers me a key, then says something about “dinner” and “seven o’clock.” Her eyes keep slanting downwards and to my left, as if I have a child with me.
I climb the stairs to the third floor. In a corridor that is bright as the entrance hall and just as empty I put down my case and look around. There’s a strong smell of paint. With its gray doors and its imitation parquet floor the building reminds me of a show house — somewhere no one has ever actually lived. I stand quite still and listen hard, but can’t hear any sounds. No TVs, no voices of any kind. No running water. I unlock the door to my room, switch on the light. The twin beds have shiny blue covers, and the pale wooden furniture looks new, unused. Above the desk is a photo of an iceberg-studded sea, as if the management felt guests needed reminding of their whereabouts. A vent near the ceiling breathes warm, slightly musty air into the room.
I part the curtains. My view is of a rugged snow-encrusted hillside that lifts from right beneath my window, a number of heavily lagged pipes snaking up the slope to the top of the ridge. Like the hotel — like the room — I feel new. I’m a blank slate. A gamble. Axelsen told me there will be one last boat before the season ends. He said that when he returns, in a week’s time, he expects to find me waiting on the quayside with my case. He’s sure I will have had enough by then. I’m already looking forward to seeing his face when he hears that I’m staying.
That evening, at seven, I go down to the bar. A woman in a royal-blue tunic emerges from the kitchen and shows me into the far room through doors whose glass panels are engraved with polar bears and crossed pickaxes. There are maroon tablecloths and walls of lacquered pine. The TV is switched off. Only one table has been laid, and dinner is already waiting. A scoop of Russian salad, some sliced white bread. A jug of processed apple juice. No sooner have I sat down than two more dishes are put in front of me, a bowl of hot clear soup with globules of fat floating on top and a small plate containing a thin piece of meat and a spoonful of plain rice.
I eat in silence, and alone. My vision blurs. A disco ball spins wearily. Its rails of silver light make the matte-black walls look dusty. A girl in high heels and a sparkly thong climbs awkwardly onto a low stage and begins to dance. Her solid, surgically enhanced breasts only serve to emphasize how thin she is; the tendons stand out in her neck and behind her knees. This is the dive Cheadle chose for his confrontation with my father, but Cheadle is long gone. My father sits with his head lowered, ignoring the tacky eighties music and the gyrating girl. He’s trying to process the information Cheadle has just given him. Cherepovets, Arkhangel’sk … But what if Cheadle never wrote to my father? What if he never summoned my father to that dingy club? Is there any other way my father could learn of his existence?
I replay the Berlin scenario. When my father reads my second letter, the letter Lydia hands him, he is bound to be concerned, but he takes Lydia back to his hotel and they make love. He falls asleep. An hour later, he jerks awake. Of course. Why didn’t I think of it before? While Lydia showers, he puts in a series of calls to fellow journalists. Using his contacts — his influence — he makes a televised appeal that goes out nationwide. This is a version of my father I have rarely seen before. For once, he isn’t an authority. He’s just an ordinary man, helpless and weak. Still, I don’t doubt he will bring a certain flair to the role. His voice will falter at exactly the right moment; he might break down, or even cry, which is what a parent who has lost a child is supposed to do. My daughter, Katherine Carlyle, is missing … She’s all I’ve got … Kit, if you’re listening, please come home … Most important of all, they will show a photograph of me, though hopefully it won’t be the one in my passport. Taken when I was fifteen, I have dark rings under my eyes and hollow cheeks. When Massimo first saw it he laughed and said I looked like a junkie.
Cheadle will miss the broadcast — he doesn’t own a television; TV’s for losers — but Klaus Frings, who has three, one in the kitchen, one in the living room, and one in the master bedroom, sees my picture and almost chokes on his profiteroles. Still coughing, he calls the number given at the end of the appeal.
My father appears at the door of his apartment later that same evening. Klaus offers him a drink, which he declines.
“She lived here for about ten days,” Klaus says. “She often sat where you are sitting now.”
“When was this?”
“September.”
My father surveys the apartment — the coffee-table books, the soft furnishings, the art. At last his gaze comes to rest on the big unlikely German.
“I don’t understand,” he says. “How do you know my daughter?”
Klaus looks past him, at the mysterious gray painting. “I also don’t understand.”
He describes how he first saw me, at the café-konditorei round the corner, on a foggy Tuesday morning. He says he suspects me of having followed him.