Your mother kindly agreed and paid a sum before each term to the conservatory. (In my opinion, she rescued him.) I think the total was something like £8000 a term. He is now midway through his second year of three.
As well as for his own reasons already mentioned, there is a real practical career need for Arkady to finish the course: the whole system here still favors those who come up through the conservatories. It’s virtually a requirement. This is how a pianist is first booked on the concert circuit. This is the system. This is how they get entered for the big competitions. And so on.
Personally, I’m not sure that he needs any more lessons, and I’d prefer to see him at the Moscow Conservatory anyway. But, well, after this term, which she also paid for in advance, there are three more terms to go. (Two a year here.) You would have thought there would be some provision for the likes of him, but I’m afraid the conservatory is a pretty ruthless (and corrupt!) place and he’s too old now, I think, to qualify for the few established scholarships.
In short, Arkady is completely stymied without your mother’s help. It’s a sad and desperate situation.
Money being what it is, the remaining fees represent a huge sum if you do not have any, and nothing at all if you have lots! I would have liked to pay toward his lessons myself, but, well, that is no longer possible…
The fact is this: if you or the wider family can contribute, then you’ll be giving the world a really great artist. And I always think we need them! And I’m afraid it does feel a bit now or never. Arkady has an all-or-nothing approach to his music (the Russian mentality!), and I have a real worry that if he does not finish the course, he will see it in some way as proof that he was never meant to do so, and consequently take another path out of something like spite. You will appreciate that because of his age, this is absolutely his last chance. There are already ten years’ worth of talented young Russians elbowing him out of the way. But I honestly believe he’s better than any of them. I am a great follower of music, and I say here without any shadow of a doubt that he is the best pianist I have ever heard. In any case, you can also be absolutely sure that your mother wanted him to finish the course.
In one way, I am afraid corroboration for all this is a bit thin on the ground. Below is the number of Zoya Sviridova, the woman your mother hired to trace Arkady. She is an independent private detective and will, I am sure, confirm your mother’s instructions and corroborate much of what your mother told me. On the piano side of things, Arkady is registered at the conservatory and of course there is no better proof than listening to him yourselves… As for myself, if it makes any difference, I trained to be a Catholic priest at St. Steven’s Seminary in Birkenhead, was then a teacher at St. David’s College in Reading—by all means check the records! My e-mail is below, as well as my postal address. And of course I am happy to arrange to speak on the phone (we don’t have one at the flat, I’m afraid, and I’m between mobiles!) or best of all in person if you are planning to come to Russia.
Once again, I am sorry so boldly to intrude on your grief like this and bitterly regret now that I did not establish better communication with your mother, whom I found to be a highly intelligent, warm, and charismatic human being. But I hope you will understand that I write with honest intentions. I wish Arkady only the very best of luck and the opportunity that he has so far not seen too much of. One feels a duty to do one’s best by one’s friends. And I am very fond of him.
48
The Snow Begins to Fall
There was a tremendous banging. Some stupid bastard trying to break into or out of hell, he wasn’t sure which and he didn’t care. He wanted to shout and tell them that either way there was no point. But there was no point, so he didn’t. And so the hammering continued. Which was annoying and distracting. Because he was alone in his cell—deliciously warm, sitting at his desk, trying to study for an exam, which he had in fact already passed the year previously but which for some reason he was now required to take a second time, tomorrow. He was going through past papers. Question number one: “By which great philosopher’s light are we now living?” Now there’s a question. Not Aristotle or Augustine, not Kant or Hulme or Bentham or Nietzsche, not Hobbes, not Marx (that cunning old mule), not Sartre nor Descartes nor good old Machiavelli, not even Christ (not if we’re now going to be honest), nor Moses, nor Muhammad, nor Brahma, nor the Buddha for that matter, not even…
Shit! The door was opening. He sprang upright, yelling, awoken, hoarse.
“Jesus, Is. Fucking hell. What are you doing?”
“Ssshh. Ssshh. It’s okay.” She was standing just inside the room, the light from the hall behind her shadowing her face.
“It’s not fucking okay. Jesus Christ.” He stared at his sister.
“Ssssh. There are police downstairs. They don’t know you are here. You were dreaming, Gabs. You were asleep. That’s all. Ssssh.” She closed the door behind her, but then it was completely dark again.
“Dear God, woman.”
“Gabs, where is the light?”
“No! Don’t you dare turn it on.” He held up his hand in anticipation of the glare. “Use the side lamp.”
“Okay.” Leaving a crack of light from the door, she crossed the room and got to the desk.
“You scared the living shit out of me, Isabella.” He was shivering from a cold sweat, and his heart would not go back to normal.
She found the switch and twisted the Anglepoise so the bulb lit the sloping attic wall behind, stretching the shadows.
“Get dressed.” She was looking at him with the widest smile he had ever seen her manage. “You have to come. You have to come now. With me. Get dressed.”
“Where?”
“Now, come on. Get dressed.”
“Isabella, what?” He was recovering.
“You have to come with me.” She beckoned. “I’ll tell you everything in the cab.”
“What in the name of fuck is this about? What are you doing?”
“Will you please just get dressed? Please, Gabs. Please. I can’t explain everything here now. You are wasting time.” Her face implored him. “There’s a cab waiting. The driver has already tried to rip me off.”
“Is, you can’t just—”
“Gabs, please, I am. Come on.” She was picking his clothes up off the floor.
“If this is about—”
“It’s nothing to do with Dad.” She paused. “Or this morning. Just please, please, please come on. Hurry.”
He looked at her directly for a moment, holding out his jeans in the strange light thrown by the lamp, her eyes dark like his own; hurt contending with forgiveness, injury with loyalty, hostility with the closest lifelong kinship—kinship all the way back, and further. Further. Maybe that was the point. Something altered in the chemistry of his body. Almost against his will, aggression and anxiety deserted him; it was one of only two or three times in his life that he had felt the reality of his and Isabella’s being twins—the actuality of it—in his twinned blood running, in his twinned heart beating.