She asked him how he came to be in Russia. He explained that he had left his teaching job on his thirty-fourth birthday and that after his mother had died he had used the money from selling her small house in Reading to set off traveling. He described how he had come to Russia (after three years, mostly in India) overland, from the south, and fallen in love with Petersburg on his first visit.
She nodded as if such a conclusion were quite understandable and told him—with great feeling—that she had been born here. She reminisced a little about how the city used to be when it was Leningrad. He asked her how she had left. She told him she defected. She told him she had effectively “started again” in London. She became more and more loquacious. She told him a great deal and much that was personal, though she left out the names; and he began to form the impression that she was in some odd way trying to unburden herself, and that she was answering his polite curiosity with something like relief.
Then, precisely as the second hour ended, she put to him the question that he realized was the real reason behind her asking to see him again: did he, Henry, think it possible that she might hear Arkady play?
Henry was caught out. He was moved by her plea. And yet, knowing Arkady as he did and fearing Arkady’s reaction both toward Maria Glover and toward himself if he were ever to bring the two together again, he considered that he could not risk effecting such a meeting, even covertly. Despite all that she had told him, he felt he had little choice but to answer no.
4
Gabriel and Isabella
A brutalized dog whimpered in the shadow of the crumbling courtyard. Six P.M. now in Petersburg; eleven A.M. in New York; and this was just the fourth or fifth call of nine or ten between them. Gabriel sat by the window of Yana’s mother’s apartment, the telephone never in its cradle, the undernourished light lingering, the better to slip away unnoticed when he turned; Isabella heading uptown, battery running down, the New York morning like a set of freshly whitened teeth. She fixated, he terrified—real and unreal, one and the same.
“You have to go back there.”
“I’m not going back there.”
“You have to go back there.”
“Is, I am not going back there. I can t. You can go when you come or tom—”
“Gabriel, I need you to go back there today, tonight.”
“We’ll go together. When you get here.”
“Too late. It might be too late.”
“I can’t—”
“How was she again?”
“How was she?”
“How was she?
“I told you… I told you. She was on the floor. In the main room. What are you asking me?”
“There was nothing wrong with her?”
“Yes. She was dead, Is, she was dead.”
“For Christ’s sake. I know that.”
“What are you asking me, then?”
“I’m asking you… I’masking you if… She wrote me this letter… I’m asking you if it looked like she did it herself.”
“Jesus.”
“I mean… anything… was there anything strange about her? Anything that—”
“Is… Is, she had a stroke. That’s what happened. That’s all.” “How do you know?”
“Yana. The ambulance men said—there was dried saliva and other stuff—her skin was all mottled—they told Yana it looked like a stroke and I—”
“You sure? Can you check? Will there be an autopsy?”
“Is—”
“Did they say that there would be some kind of autopsy?”
“Is, for Christ’s sake. She didn’t want to kill herself. I spoke to her on the phone on Sunday night. She was… she was fine. So will you stop. Will you stop being such a crazy idiot. She’s dead. She is just dead. She died.”
Silence.
Gabriel again: “Shit. Shit, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. I’m sorry. I’ll be there tomorrow night if I can get my visa. I’m on my way to the embassy now.” Isabella breaking. “Sorry… I’m sorry. You are right—I’m being crazy and you’re there by yourself and… Gabs, will you be all right? Is Yana there? Or Arytom? Someone you can stay with?”
And so Gabriel pulling himself together. “I’m okay. Just make sure you get the visa and a flight, Is, that’s all you have to do. This had to happen one day.”
“I know. I know, I know.”
“And you were right about the consulate. They’re helping a lot. I’m… I’m talking with them again first thing. A guy called Julian Avery. When I called, they knew who I was. They remember Grandpa Max. They know who Mum was too—who we are, I mean. They’re going to help… with everything. We’re lucky, in a way.”
A long silence, and then Isabella asking the question: “Does he know?”
Another silence. Then: “Yes.”
“They contacted him?”
“Yes. The hospital contacted the consulate before me. The consulate guy—Avery—seems to know where he is. And he’s next of kin. So they got hold of him. They told him. He knows.” Gabriel drew his heaviest breath. “But we’re going to bury her here, Is. We’re not going to fly her home. She wanted to be buried in Petersburg. We’re going to do that as fast as we can. We’re not going to tell him. We’re going to do it before he can get here. That bastard can go fuck himself.”
5
Nicholas Glover
Nicholas Glover had in fact spent his entire adult life fucking himself. However, estranged as they had been these past ten years or so, neither Gabriel nor Isabella could know this; and even before their antipathy ossified, Nicholas knew well that they could scarcely have imagined the ongoing mêlée in which he lived. Indeed, in the past twenty-four hours, Nicholas had come to an awful and existence-rearranging realization: that the only other person in the world who might ever have grasped the true nature of his lifelong war was his wife—Maria, Masha, Mashka, Marushya.
But it was too late now. Too late to confide. Too late to be open. Too late to start the one journey that he might have taken with any hope of reaching understanding at the end. Was this a tragedy? At present, Nicholas had no idea. Because as of the past thirty minutes, he was ignoring all such thoughts, ignoring them with a strength of will which, had it been available to most other men, would have sent them rushing from their dreary lives pell-mell in pursuit of their disappearing dreams.
Yes, Nicholas was ignoring all thoughts save those directly associated with process and procedure. In these, at least, there was a kind of ease… As six o’clock chimed back and forth across the steeply raked Parisian rooftops, there was even some satisfaction in the sound of his handmade soles upon the medieval cobbles of the Rue des Barres. Everything procedural was taken care of. Thank Christ. Her rent was paid for another six months and then the flat would simply be leased to another tenant and his problem no longer. Her possessions, such as they were, Gabriel and Isabella could have. Welcome to them. Under Russian rules, all the money in her bank accounts would be returned to him… And even if this was not exactly the law, his solicitors could be instructed to make sure that it was done anyway. Who would challenge him? Surely nobody was going to fight him through the double jungle of a U.K. passport-holder (spouse, defector, repatriated) deceased on Russian soil. Not even Isabella. The Russian system could be relied upon to be as opaque as he required it to be. And what a relief that all could be conveyed through the Paris office; he had no wish to return to London. Even the wretched ache in his neck—a residual crick from his travels—seemed to have eased.