“More or less every second of the day. I wake up and I can’t stand the news—the radio and the TV—not just the crap that’s on but the way that it’s on, and the way that the people behind it try to make it seem. I hate the whole thing. I hate that the newsreaders stand up because their stupid producers told them that standing up is cool. And I hate it when they sit down because some idiot told them to sit down again.”
Gabriel picked up. “Oh, I am way past that. I have started actually hating individual words. I hate the word ‘mayo.’ I hate… I hate ‘latte.’ I hate people who say ‘win-win’ or ‘going forward.’ I hate sports writers who cite that fucking Kipling poem.”
“That’s nothing. I have even started to hate the font—that fucking font they use on those women-and-shopping books. I mean, how can a typeface become so insidious?”
“No. Don’t.” Gabriel shook his head. “Do not start me on typefaces. That stuff gets me really angry.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I hate every billboard I ever see. Like, I am not in conversation with your fucking stupid brand. There is no relationship. I don’t know you. I don’t like you. I don’t want to know you or to learn like you or feel part of your phony cl—”
“Okay. Okay, okay.” Gabriel interrupted, holding up both hands. The two men at the adjacent table were listening in, he could tell, watching his sister’s animation with ever more frequent glances. “Feel better?”
“Yes. Thank you.” She finished her drink. “You?”
“Remember, you are a nut case, Isabella. The rest of the world is just going to work, the supermarket, on holiday. We are the ones with the problems.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“I do. That doesn’t help either.”
Chumps, the pub cat, an intelligent-looking ginger with bright eyes and a languid manner that spoke of a happy, untroubled life full of food and the loving whispers of some latter-day Aphrodite in both his ears, blocked Gabriel’s route to his chair on his return. Man and cat exchanged glances a moment; cat accused man of crimes innumerable, man pled guilty and enduring disgrace; then cat set off at a contemptuously slow pace toward the kitchen, allowing Gabriel to put down the drinks at last.
“Did you get any letters?” Isabella asked.
“No. Only one or two ages ago. Like I said, I used to get phone calls. More or less every night…”
“I don’t know if that is more or less weird.”
“It was pretty harrowing… she wouldn’t let me go. She kept me on the phone for hours.”
Last orders had been called. The men at the other table had left and they were alone in the room. One of the candles was guttering on the mantelpiece. Jesus seemed to be slouching a little above them. And the alcohol was deep and warm in their veins. Their conversation had ranged and wandered, but now there seemed to be nothing else worth talking about.
“What did she say in her letters?” Gabriel asked. “I’d love to read them. I get scared I am forgetting her.”
“You won t. You never will.”
“I wish I’d recorded her voice or something.”
“Don’t you hear her all the time in your head?”
“I used to—a lot,” he said. “But now… now it’s changing. Now I talk to her, but she doesn’t talk to me so much. You?”
“I catch myself all the time—thinking with her mind, almost. Thinking her thoughts. But no, you’re right—I suppose I don’t hear her voice specifically.”
Gabriel picked at the dried wax on the neck of their candlestick-bottle. “What did the letters say?”
“Nothing, really… Well, that’s not true.” Isabella sipped her pepper vodka. “Just all mixed up, you know—about the Russian government and Chechnya and all of that… America going backward too, the stuff I told you about—Jefferson—that the Founding Fathers were great men who believed in all the right things and how disgusted they would be if they could see what was happening. And you—she talked about you a lot… About your work and what you were going to do and how you had to be shocked into something radical.”
“I wish.”
“And other stuff. About how…” Isabella’s latest cigarette seemed to make her cough. “About how she loved Dad. And how I was supposed to go and see him.”
Gabriel looked up, his eyes liquid black and shimmering in the candlelight. “What for?”
Isabella frowned, lowering her brows as if to duck the direct question that she feared he might ask. “She said… She said that he would… She said that he was a little schemer or something and that he would be sure to distort everything.”
He kept his gaze on his sister, compelling her to continue.
“She said that he would want to be certain—”
“About what?”
“Certain that I… that I loved him, Gabs, especially now that he was getting older.”
“He made her life a wasteland of misery and suffering for over thirty years. Every good thing she offered him, he sneered at, he scorned, and he trampled upon. He can be certain that—”
“But distort what, Gabs?”
“Who gives a fuck?”
“I need to speak to him to find out.”
“No. No, you don t.” Gabriel took half his Talisker at one sip. “You need to speak to him for oth—”
“Gabs, Dad has had a stroke.” She lowered her eyes. “I went home to talk to Francis about storing some stuff there this morning. He told me. Dad has had a stroke. I thought you should know.”
36
Pat’s Place
He walked within himself. And there was nothing about him to suggest that he was Russian and only six hours in the country—none of the usual giveaways, at least: not the luminous tracksuits of the poor, nor the leather jackets of the racketeers, nor the overdone designer suits and jewelry of the moneyed; nothing to suggest he was a foreigner at all save a barely detectable apprehension in the movement of his head, which turned too quickly this way and that, seeking to absorb as much of the vast, strange, teeming city as he could. He feared police, spot checks, authority. He was in his boots, his jeans, and an anonymous sweater—no coat, despite the gusting wind. Beneath, he felt as tense as a submariner under the ice. But his aim was invisibility.
After the Internet café—his first job to make contact—he had decided to attempt the exploratory journey from his hostel on foot, surreptitiously following the map he had printed out—eight cheap pages that did not quite meet at any of the borders. He did not expect anything back today, but he hoped that tomorrow, by noon, this Gabriel would reply.
Presently he stopped again, turned his back on the traffic, and leaned into an alleyway, trying to read the smudgy print. He had been sick on the plane—a terrifying experience that had left him knotted and shaking—and even now the queasiness lingered and he hunched rather than stood at his full height.
He reemerged and met the suspicious eyes of a man setting up a newspaper stand. He went quickly on. A muscle worked in the hollow of his cheek. The map appeared to indicate that the Harrow Road flowed easily onto the Marylebone Road or crossed the thick-drawn Edgware Road at an obvious right angle, but there was no clear way through the giant intersections he had come upon, and the foot tunnels confused him further. So for half an hour he wandered around the Paddington basin, crossing and recrossing the pretty canal, which reminded him of home, except for the great glassy office developments and thunderous overpasses, which reminded him of Moscow. Eventually he saw a sign pointing to Paddington station. He followed its direction. At least the station would be a way of placing himself on the map again. From Paddington to Marble Arch looked easy enough.