“Arkady Alexandrovitch?”
It was the same fat, square-faced, red-haired woman who had called at his flat three days earlier. He stopped where he was but said nothing.
She came toward him along the length of the bar.
“Hello again. I’m so pleased you came. Good.”
He did not return her greeting, nor take her hand (momentarily offered, instantly reemployed), but met her eyes until she looked away. He had guessed that she was some sort of professional finder, maybe even thought of herself as a private detective. She spoke with a slight Georgian accent, which she tried to hide. She had a flashy cell phone, which she clasped in her hand as if it were jewelry. And today the dark tracksuit was gone; instead she was wearing the usual bullshit with which ugly women tried to fight the truth: an expensive crocodile bag, matching shoes, designer suit. Obviously she hadn’t been fucked in years.
Determinedly ignoring his silence, she continued: “Come this way. We have a quiet table at the back. I was only waiting at the bar because you might not have been able to see me.”
She sounded relieved. She was certain of her fee now. He followed, still silent, ignoring the looks from the two women sitting with their department store bags.
“Maria is not here yet, but she will be joining us in a few minutes. What would you like to drink? Some coffee or maybe—”
“Nothing.”
“Are you sure?”
A barely perceptible nod.
“Okay. Well…” She was at a loss for a moment.
He took off his greatcoat and placed it over the back of his chair. Then he sat down, leaving her standing awkwardly.
“Well, I am going to make a call and just check that Maria, your mother”—he watched her yank a false smile up across the rusting hulk of her flat face—“is on her way. So I’ll be back in two seconds. Please order whatever you want. Lunch is on us today!”
He was silent and he made no move. He was here only because he had nothing better to do.
Back then, Arkady was living with two others—one a fellow musician in his band of that time, Magizdat, the other a friend from the orphanage—in two rooms next door to one of the hostels behind Ligovsky Prospekt. When Zoya (for this was the finder’s name) had turned up at the door for the second time, he had decided to be in. He had come out with his shirt open, in scruffy jeans, unwashed, bare feet covered in powder. He had been in a good mood. He had been fucking the would-be actress from the cinema kiosk all morning. And he had been struck by the sheer physical difference between fair-skinned Polina and the swarthy pig-truck in front of him.
Zoya had wanted to go somewhere else, but he had said that he was busy and if she wished to talk, they could talk here. So she had sat down on the hall stairs and sprung open her briefcase and begun handing him photographs and documents, which he had glanced at without concentration and then handed back. All the while, the sounds of a football match came through the open door. Russia losing again. Either paid to lose or losing because nobody paid them. Hard to say. But then that was the main amusement in watching the national team play.
Five minutes later, when he had reentered the room, he had not told his friends anything but had simply laid back down on the floor with Polina to watch the rest of the game. He had kept Zoya’s card, had agreed to come to the café on the day she suggested and nothing else. He did not believe her story. The documents meant nothing to him. Could be forgeries, could be fakes. The photograph of the woman meant nothing. Could be anyone in the world. Because (as he well knew) this sort of bullshit happened to Russian children from orphanages a lot more often than the rest of the country realized. He had seen it himself: the time that Mongol had turned up for Sako, an athletics star with shrinking balls from his dormitory, for example—the point being that Sako had just come in third at shot put in the Olympics and was all over the bullshit papers and the television. No—the reality of the situation was that ninety-nine percent of the abandoned children in the Soviet Union were poor desperate scum when they were born, the parents were poor desperate scum when they fucked them into existence, and poor desperate scum all parties remained. And scum seldom wasted its time looking for long-lost more of the same. As far as Arkady was concerned, therefore, the only calculations to be made were these: was there any money and would it be easy to get without having to do anything?
Thus the single eventuality that Arkady Alexandrovitch was not prepared for when he set out that morning in the acid rain was that the woman he was about to meet might actually be his mother. But that’s what life is: one eventuality after another, and none of them prepared for.
She came ahead of Zoya, moving swiftly between the tables. She was a slight woman of a little less than average height, but there was a certainty and pride in her aspect that created the impression that she was taller, stronger, more intense and vital than the mere time-and-space coordinates of her corporeal presence. Her hair was tied back against her head and dark as sable. She wore a fine charcoal-gray coat, but her black clothes were unostentatious beneath. There was no jewelry—not even a wedding ring. She carried a slim, elegant bag under her arm, also black, pressed in tight against her. And it was only now, as she came right up to the table and stood before him, that he became aware of the effort that was she was making to hold herself in check. Her cheekbones told of a tightened jaw, her lips seemed almost blue, and a dozen tiny needles were knitting cross-purposes in her brow. Her eyes, sunken and turquoise like his own, were scouring his face as if by this act of such determined looking she might find his entire history plainly written there.
“My name is Maria—Maria Alexandrovna.”
Her accent was pure old Petersburg. He said nothing.
“You are Arkady Alexandrovitch Artamenkov?”
He nodded but he did not get up.
She turned. “Thank you, Zoya. Please leave us.” It was an order—an echo from a time long ago, before the Soviet era—and there was no accompanying smile.
Zoya bowed, suddenly a servitor, before backing away in the direction of the bar.
He watched this Maria Alexandrovna sit down, resolute. Outside the wide windows, the rest of Russia was carrying on with its life.
She faced him directly. He said nothing.
She had no interest in ordering anything either. So their menus lay untouched. They simply sat, mother and son, staring at each other, a lifetime’s silence, everything and nothing, between them.
“Arkady Alexandrovitch, may I call you Arkady?”
He remained silent. But his clothes were now drying from the heat rising within him.
“I… I wanted to see you. I hoped that we could… I hoped that we could talk.”
And suddenly, surprising himself, surprising the very air that they were breathing, and because he knew already by the recoil and thrashing of his heart that this woman was indeed his mother, he asked the one question he would not have asked if he had thought her mad or another crazy liar seeking solace, the first four words that came to him: “How do I know?”
“Know?”
“How do I know?”
She kept her eyes steady on him, breathed in, throat tight as she swallowed, and he watched her gather herself.
“You were born here in Petersburg. Your father was a government official. I was not married. I was twenty-two years old. He came to my flat one night. He was a violent man… He died.” She faltered a moment. Then the constricted rush to speak beset her again. “He does not matter. There were complications. But when you were born, my mother, your grandmother, took you away. She was trying to save my career, my prospects in the… in the Party. It was different then. Soviet times.” She raised her jaw a fraction. “I was married very quickly afterward. To a British man. I defected. I lived in London with two children and my husband… I could not come back for a long time. They would not permit it. For many, many years. I could not risk it. Until the Soviet era ended. Even then it wasn’t possible to remain for more than a few days. Not until recently have I been able to stay as long as I wish. So I found somewhere to live. And then I found Zoya. But I returned only to find you. It has taken too long. I am sorry.” She indicated an envelope protruding from her bag. “I have proof that your grandmother registered you at the orphanage. And I have proof that I am her daughter. You must believe the rest.” She paused. “I hoped… I hoped we could become friends. At least, I hoped you would tell me about your life.”