On the tables were laquered boxes. On shelves that were crammed with books, Russian dolls, the heavily painted matrioshka porcelain statues. No family pictures though. It was as if they had been banished. Plants in the windows kept the light out.
“When did Greg leave?”
“A few days ago, I think. I’m not sure I remember actually.”
“I’d like that tea, please.”
“Of course,” she said and went into the kitchen, then returned a few minutes later with a tray. On it were a teapot, cups, a plate with cookies. She set it on a low table, and gestured for me to sit down.
“You’ve lived here a long time?”
“Yes,” Mrs Curtis said. “A very long time, one way or another.”
“Things have changed around here?”
“Indeed,” she said.
“Lots of Russians moving in.”
“I suppose. Yes. Why not?”
“You have some connection with them?”
“I’m not sure what you mean. I meet the odd Russian in the shops. Some are quite charming. Very well read.”
“And was Greg Russian?”
“As I told you, he seemed very nice, though I rarely saw him, he worked in the City, he was quiet.”
“How old was he?”
“I really don’t know, Mr Cohen. I imagine he was about thirty.”
“But his business was legitimate?”
“What? Of course, Grisha would never do anything wrong.”
She was angry.
“Grisha?”
I had caught her off guard. My gut tightened up with anticipation. I had been right about this. I tried to keep my hands clasped politely. I tried not to fumble for some smokes. I leaned forward to pick up a teacup. My jacket fell open.
Did she see the gun?
“He sometimes called himself Grisha,” she said. “I believe it was his Russian nickname.”
“So he was Russian.”
“Yes.”
“You would want to know if something happened to this Grisha, I guess.”
She took off her glasses, rubbed her eyes. Her body almost imperceptibly tensed up.
“Has something happened to him?” she said.
“Has it?”
Her effort to stay calm didn’t work, her hands were in constant motion, clasping each other, unbuttoning and buttoning her sweater, prodding the table as if looking for something lost.
Putting on my jacket, I went to the window, looked out, saw the rain was letting up, got ready to leave. Behind me I could hear the rustle of paper, as Mrs Curtis knocked newspapers off a table.
“Please tell me if something has happened to him,” she said. “I have to know.”
“Why does it matter? If you don’t tell me, I can’t help you.”
“He’s my son.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know,” said Mrs Curtis who took a cigarette from a box on the table, but didn’t light it.
“When did he leave?”
“He left this morning, he came home from a party, he had been out all night, I said, Grisha, darling where are you going?”
“What time did you see him?”
“I slept in until eight this morning. He was just leaving. I don’t know when he came in, I don’t know anything, he was away for several days, then I saw him leaving this morning. He was out of his mind. A few days ago he told me that Valentina, a girl he knew, was dead.” Hands shaking, she lit her cigarette. “He said I would see it in the papers. He had to find her killer, he said. I thought he was going to America. He was in a terrible way. He was out of his mind,” she said. “With grief.”
“You knew Valentina?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And?”
“She was a beautiful girl.”
“You knew her father?”
“He’s the gangster. He’s one of these new Russians who come to London, I heard he put bad wine on the market that made people ill and then sold them his own.”
“Who told you?”
“Grisha said it. You didn’t come for the room, did you?”
“No.”
“What for?”
“I’m from New York. I’m a friend of Valentina Sverdloff,” I said. “Your English is very good.”
“My mother was English. She married my father and stayed in Moscow. She admired the Soviets,” she said with disgust. “She came as a student from London and she met him, and that was it.”
“What about Grisha?”
“He was a late child. I was already thirty-three, I wasn’t married, so I slept with someone I met as a tour guide. I thought if I made a child with an Englishman, even if nobody knew- I would have lost my job-he would have English genes. Where are you from originally?”
I didn’t answer.
“From your accent when you speak Russian, I would say Moscow. Is that true?”
I nodded.
“Then you understand. Many people here don’t understand how we managed things. We managed.”
“When did you come to London?”
“Almost twenty years now, I came with Grisha when it became possible, after Gorbachev came into power. I thought I’d be free. When I was a girl, I once told my father I was going to defect. He said he would denounce me to the KGB.” She smoked without inhaling, puffing at the cigarette. “London was my dream city. My mother told me about it, the parks, the red buses. It was her fairy tale when I was a child, and later, she taught me the language, and got me books, and showed me pictures.
“I wanted it the way other young women wanted to get married. Wanted sex. It was a physical thing,” she said, speaking in her educated Russian. “I saved everything, maps, books, I got a job at Intourist, and when I met English people, I asked them for stamps or even if they tipped me, to tip me in English money. I would sit at my little desk at home, and stack them up, you understand?”
“Yes.”
“And I come here and it is beautiful. I teach, I send Grisha to school, he goes to America, to Harvard University to take his business degree.”
“He was a banker in London?”
“Yes.”
“What else?”
“What else, he makes money, he has a nice car, he travels.”
“Where?”
“Often to Moscow.”
“Go on.”
“Two years ago he says to me he wants to go back to Russia, to study there, to work, to be part of his homeland. I said to him, darling, this is your home, but he says, no, I’m Russian. It’s like a nightmare. I had escaped once. His going back was my punishment. It was fine for a while, when he first met Valentina, and they talked about helping people. She was lovely. He became serious. Soon he says he feels patriotic. He loves the soul of his country.”
“Does he have a sister, or a cousin? Elena? Yelena? Lena?”
“No, of course not. What sister?”
I told her about Elena Gagarin. I showed her the picture.
“I see a bit of a resemblance,” she said. “I don’t know her,” added Mrs Curtis and gave a short mirthless snort. “Gagarin? Yuri? A peasant. Certainly, everybody was in love with him in the old days, but now we know he was a drunk from the provinces. Who is this girl? Did she claim a relationship with my Grisha?”
“She’s dead. She’s in some photographs of him and Valentina. Somebody beat her up so bad last night, she died. You said Grisha’s hand was bruised.” I gave her a picture of the three of them.
“It wasn’t him.” Mrs Curtis put out her cigarette. She peered at the picture.
“Valentina was so beautiful,” she said, beginning to weep.
“She became my daughter.”
“What?”
“You didn’t know?”
“Know what?”
“They were both modern children, but they became religious. They wanted to make things normal.”
My head was swimming in it. How much I hated Russia. How much I hated the religion, the obsession, the sentimentality. Valentina had been sucked in. Sucked in. By a blue-eyed Russian boy who kept a Bible in his room.
“I don’t understand.”
“They were married last year.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN