‘Nice to meet you,’ says Rachel. ‘I must be getting back. Ivan is getting cold.’
‘This is not a good place to buy vegetables,’ says Karl, speaking with a strong Kiev accent and pointing to the bunch of onions she has hooked over the pushchair handles.
‘No.’ Rachel recalls the banana seller’s bandaged fingers and tells herself that next time, when she is alone, she’ll definitely give away her gloves. ‘But I am doing a survey, you see. A consumer survey. And I have to find three prices for everything.’
‘Ah, the UN!’ exclaims Teddy. ‘Vee put you on to this, didn’t she? You’ll be the most popular expat in town if you hike up the dollar prices. Everyone’s been waiting. The diplomats, the execs from the internationals – you’re setting the hardship allowance for the next three years. Just imagine the bribes…’ He stops, sees Rachel staring, round-eyed. ‘Hey, I’m joking. Three prices? That won’t be easy.’
‘I have to find dishwashers,’ she says. ‘Max Factor lipstick. One hundred per cent Arabica coffee beans.’ Suddenly, the enormity of the task overwhelms her. She shivers, and wishes she is back in the flat. She needs her rituals, her pages.
‘You’re freezing. Come with us,’ says Teddy. ‘We know a warm café.’
Karl looks up, contemplates the grey sky. ‘And Max Factor,’ he says.
The café is in a cellar in Podil, so Karl flags down a Lada saloon to take them there. The driver, a middle-aged man in khaki fatigues, glares at the pushchair with its dirty wheels and Ivan with his runny nose and his bright red cheeks, but Teddy feeds a dollar bill through the half-open window and soon they are bumping along the cobbles in the old part of the city, past the small huddle of protesters waving their placards near Independence Square, past the ragged line of schoolchildren at the top of the funicular and through narrow lanes that have wound their way down to the river between the merchants’ wooden warehouses since the days of old Kiev Rus.
‘Welcome to my gallery,’ says Teddy, once the three of them are seated on stools in a low-ceilinged back room with a stove blasting out heat in the corner. A young woman wearing an oversized purple sweater places three black coffees in front of them. The coffee is thick with grounds that leave a residue around the inside of Rachel’s cup. She takes a sip and stares at the photos that cover the smoke-stained walls; some are in clip-frames, most are just tacked up with tape. The images are of people, mainly, in washed out greys and greens, captured so that only part of each face is showing, unsmiling, a single eye staring away from the lens as if there is something far more important happening outside the frame.
Teddy seems pleased with the attention Rachel gives them. ‘So, I believe Ivan is the first baby to come here. He’s definitely the first English baby.’
Rachel hugs her son protectively on her knee. He gazes upwards, eyes bright, absorbed by the macramé lampshade that dangles from the ceiling. She wipes his nose with a paper napkin and rubs his cool hands in hers.
‘Most people in Kiev don’t like babies,’ she murmurs.
‘We love babies,’ says Karl.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…’
‘We love babies, but there are problems, and the cancers. Many cancers. Also diphtheria. Everywhere there is sickness and no one is paying the doctors. People are afraid for any little ones. You are a foreigner, protected from danger. So they watch to see what you do.’
‘Oh.’ Rachel frowns as she processes this logic.
‘Vee says you’ve been unwell,’ says Teddy, stirring his coffee with his finger. ‘But here you are, out and about, no Lucas in tow, doing your thing, getting a job…’
‘It’s not a proper job,’ says Rachel. ‘Only collecting prices. It seems a bit pointless, really. They’ll have changed again by tomorrow.’
‘Dear Rachel,’ says Teddy, mock sighing, rolling his eyes. ‘You’re already infected.’
‘What do you mean?’ asks Rachel.
‘I mean you’ve picked up Expat Disease. It’s the wall we all hit. And then you have to decide. You can sink into the system, tie yourself up in red tape and grow cynical and sticky with all the misery and corruption, even when you tell yourself you’re above it all.’
‘Or?’
‘You say fuck it, and have a good time!’
Rachel is silent for a moment. ‘I just meant the price rises,’ she says.
‘Ha!’ Teddy smiles. ‘So – this survey. You ought to be careful. If I were you I’d just make it all up, because the kiosks have always been compromised, but now the gangsters are deep in every fancy import store. You’ve seen them – the thugs in their shell suits, the money men in fancy tailoring and cashmere coats. No price tags or bar codes. I mean,’ he glances at Karl with just the hint of a wink – ‘take a Max Factor lipstick. Eight bucks back home in Kalamazoo. Here, fifteen? Twenty? And it’s still fake.’
‘I’m supposed to give a store name, or at least a location,’ says Rachel.
Now Teddy is leaning back and reaching into a drawer behind them. He rummages a little, then extracts a shiny black cylinder of lipstick and places it on the table in front of her. The Max Factor brand name is embossed in gold on the lid.
‘Special for you, ten dollars, Café Karl!’ says Teddy with an exaggerated salesman’s drawl.
Ivan lurches forward and grabs hold of the lipstick, almost hitting his chin on the edge of the table. Rachel prises it from his hand before he can jam it in his mouth, then puts it down, out of reach.
‘Shame it’s not my shade!’ she says, brightly, needing to know that Teddy is still joking.
Teddy nods, then smiles as he always does.
‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Hey, that little tyrant looks hungry. Let me know when you’re ready to go home.’
By the time Rachel returns to Staronavodnitska Street, Ivan is howling. He’s thirsty, and his nappy is bloated and sagging inside his snowsuit. She prays that the lift is working, that she won’t have to climb the stairs. Her need to count the depleting pile of Pampers beneath her bed is making her heart race.
She navigates the double doors of the entrance by pushing backwards with her hip and rocking the buggy wheels over the metal grate. As they rattle into the foyer, she remembers she’s forgotten to knock the snow off the wheels. Clumps of blackened ice drop in her wake as she hurries across the floor. She’ll have to be quick so that the caretaker won’t catch her. Ivan’s wails echo around the walls, but the lift is ahead of her now, yawning open, its interior empty like the vertical box that the magician’s assistant climbs into before the door is locked and trick swords are thrust through its sides. It’s all right, she thinks, we’ll make it. Then as she approaches the toneless bell pings and a weak light glows above her head. Someone on the ninth floor has just called the lift, so she shunts the pushchair quickly over the threshold. This is a mistake. The scuffed brown doors make a grinding noise and judder towards each other. Before she can pull back, they clamp against the metal frame. The pushchair is trapped.
Rachel tugs, so hard that an onion from the string dangling down from the handle breaks off and rolls out into the middle of the foyer. She stabs at the buttons on the control panel as her mind floods with visions of her son’s head crushed beneath the lintel as the lift starts to rise. Then sense kicks in and she stoops forward, releases the straps and lifts Ivan out of his seat. Holding him against her shoulder, she yanks again at the pushchair. The frame is stuck tight. Ivan’s feet scrabble for a purchase beneath her ribs. Perhaps she should simply abandon the pushchair and take the stairs. But what if someone else removes the pushchair? She can’t manage without it. There is only one thing to do. She’ll have to find the caretaker.