Irene shielded her eyes with her hands, as if the light was too bright. Her hair almost hid her face. Zhenya already knew that something dreadful was going to happen, had happened then… but allowed herself to hope against hope.
«Then I got up and went through to Diana. She had a high fever,» Irene continued, and Zhenya noticed how her nostrils and her pale English eylids had reddened. «I called the doctor. She immediately started injecting her with antibiotics. After two injections Diana had an allergic reaction. She was covered in rash. Well, she was my daughter. I'm allergic myself. They prescribed her Seduksen, the same drug I use, only the dosage was twenty times less. I felt worse and worse. My temperature was forty, at times I felt I was floating away. I would come to myself, give Diana yoghurt, give Mother yoghurt. Now and then someone would look in and go away again. I had a shouting match with the doctor who was demanding she should be taken to hospital. I remember glimpses of friends, my neighbour. The car mechanic rolled in, drunk. I kicked him out.»
I would get up half asleep, put Diana on the pot or change her, give her a tablet. My little angel would turn away from the mirror, saying, «No». She didn't like the rash on her face.
«Zhenya, the packaging was completely identical, my Seduksen and hers. I don't know how much I gave her. The more so because I had no sense of time. My temperature was forty degrees, what understanding of time did I have? I couldn't tell morning from evening. But I remembered clearly that I had to give Diana her medicine. It was December, dark all round the clock. The twenty-first of December, the day of the winter solstice. I got up, went to Diana, touched her. She was cold. Her temperature had gone down, I thought. The nightlight was burning. I looked. Her face was as white as chalk. The rash had gone. I didn't try to wake her. I went back to bed. Then I got up again, thinking it was time for her medicine. It was only then I took in that my lovely Diana was stone dead.»
Zhenya could picture the scene as if she were watching a film: Irene wearing a long white nightgown, bending over the child's cot, lifting the little girl out of the cot, also in a white nightgown. Only Zhenya could not see the the little girl's face, because it was hidden by that gleaming red hair, which even now was alive, curling, shining, while Diana was no more.
Zhenya could no longer cry. Something in her heart had crusted over into a hard scab, and tears no longer came to her eyes.
«I wasn't there for my little girl's funeral.» Pitiless Irene looked Zhenya straight in the eyes, and Zhenya thought, «My God, how can I be so concerned about all manner of nonsense when things like this happen in the world.» «I had meningitis. For three months I was out of it, being moved from one hospital to another. Then they taught me how to walk again, how to hold a spoon in my hand. I have nine lives, like a cat.» Irene laughed ruefully.
Yes, Irene had an unusual, unforgettable voice. It was throaty, soft, and you felt that it was the voice of a singer who was holding herself back, because if she were to sing out her voice would have everybody sobbing and weeping, and longing to fling themselves to wherever the siren sound directed.
Zhenya was finally overwhelmed by her wonderful, if imagined, singing and burst into tears, and the searing grief evoked by this story streamed down her face. Irene supplied her with a lacy white handkerchief, perfumed, which Zhenya soaked instantly.
«She would have been sixteen now. I know just what she would have looked like. The way she would have talked and moved. Her height, her figure, her voice. I know every detail. I know the kind of people she would have liked, and whom she would have avoided, the food she would have loved, and what she would have hated.»
Irene broke off here, and it seemed to Zhenya that she was peering into the darkness as if there, in the corner, stood her daughter, slender, blue-eyed and black-haired, and completely invisible.
«She loves drawing more than anything,» Irene continued without for a minute lowering her eyes from the darkness condensed in the corner. «By the time she was three you could already tell that she would be an artist. Her pictures were completely out of this world. By the age of seven she most resembled Ciurlionis. After that her drawing became firmer, although the mysticism and gentleness remained.»
«She's lost her mind,» Zhenya surmised. «She's really out of her mind. She lost her child, and then she lost her mind.»
She said nothing out loud. Irene, however, laughed, tossed her mane of copper wire, and her hair even seemed to give a metallic rustle.
«Call it madness, if you like. Although madness always has a rational explanation. Something of her soul has lodged in me. At times something comes over me, and I have a desperate urge to draw. I do draw, what my Diana would have drawn. In Moscow I will show you whole folders of pictures Diana has drawn in the course of these years.»
The port had long been despatched. It was past three in the morning, and they parted. There wasn't a single word that could be added to what had already been said.
In the morning they set off on a long walk together. They came to the post office, rang through to Moscow, then had lunch on the embankment in a cafe selling crisp meat chebureki. Zhenya was certain the enticing smell of the chebureki would lure them into some gastric misfortune straight out of the medical encyclopaedia, like dysentery, but reassured herself with the thought that Sasha's alimentary minimalism would cause him to reject the aromatic triangular pies. Sasha, however, said «yes» and again, for a second time, consumed a product not on his sacramental list.
Their evening port-drinking, at least on such intimate terms, would soon be over. Tomorrow two friends of Irene would be arriving, one of whom, Vera, was also well known to Zhenya. It was she who had given Zhenya this address on Primorskaya Street. Zhenya was feeling a little sad in anticipation of no longer being able to enjoy a private friendship with Irene.
Their last evening together began later than usual, because Sasha was difficult for a long time. He wouldn't let Zhenya out of his sight. Already asleep, he would wake up, whine, and fall asleep again. Zhenya curled up beside him and dozed. If Irene had not knocked at her window when it was already past eleven, she would have slept through the night just as she was, in her slacks and sweater.
Again they had two bottles of Crimean port, and again it was dark outside the window, without even the streetlight this time, because there was a power cut that day, and the terrace was lit by two thick white candles brought from Moscow for just such an eventuality. Susie and Donald had long been asleep in the room, but Irene was out sitting in a deep armchair on the verandah, swathed in her red and green tartan blanket and with the cards spread in front of her.
«This is Road to the Scaffold, an old French version of Patience. You're lucky if it comes out once in a year. I was just waiting for you to come, and lo and behold, it fell into place. That is a good sign for this house, this time and this place. To some extent, for you also, although you have quite different guardians, from a different element.»
Zhenya was vaguely attracted to the occult, if rather ashamed of such atavism, but ventured to ask the proffered question: