The Smolny Institute was originally established at some point in the beginning of the nineteenth century for the education of aristocratic young ladies. A hundred years or so later it housed Lenin’s headquarters and apartment, from where he oversaw the processes which engulfed the whole of the Russian Empire following the October Revolution. Now there were no longer any orders flying out from this building across the world, but the lifeblood of Leningrad and the surrounding region still flowed from here. Alex had never been to the Smolny before, but he could roughly imagine what it would be like: wide staircases, red carpets, high-ceilinged offices big enough to ride a bike through, probably built as classrooms originally, but now every important official had one to himself. And there to guard the peace would be reliable, bulldog-faced ladies over forty, who had no idea whatsoever what life without constant constipation could be like.
Alex turned out to be a bit off-mark regarding those ladies. The woman sitting in Vladimir Vladimirovich’s outer office was no more than a couple of years older than him, she was elegant, stylishly dressed and wore glasses, and turned out to be friendly too. She offered him tea and told him he only had three-quarters of an hour to wait. Some sort of changes were clearly afoot.
When Alex entered the office he breathed a sigh of relief. Vladimir Vladimirovich, a short fisheyed man, was sitting at his desk the other end of the office, but Alex had good eyesight so he could see what was there straight away – the latest issue of the Finnish weekly Suomen Kuvalehti, open at the pages containing Alex’s interview with Silja; Alex’s picture was on the left-hand page, and there was a picture of Alex’s uncle on the right. In other words, nothing too damning.
“Now then,” said Vladimir Vladimirovich. “This here. Your doing, if I’m not mistaken?”
“Yes,” said Alex with a nod.
“Don’t interrupt me when I’m talking,” Vladimir Vladimirovich continued. “You are aware that Olga Anatolyevna coordinates public relations for your department?”
“Yes, I am,” said Alex with a nod.
“So why did Olga Anatolyevna not know anything about your interview? Eh?”
“I was planning…” Alex started to say.
“Listen, will you let me speak or not?” Vladimir Vladimirovich glared at Alex just long enough for him to start to feel that he was expecting an answer, but Alex said nothing just in case. “Anyway, make sure you don’t do anything like this again.”
Alex noticed a very handsome gold Swiss watch on Vladimir Vladimirovich’s wrist.
“I’m sorry,” said Alex, “but I didn’t say anything out of line.”
Vladimir Vladimirovich gave a weary sigh.
“You don’t need me to explain anything further, I hope,” he said, picking up the newspaper and starting to leaf through it, almost as if he were seeking confirmation for what he’d just said. He’d already turned the pages five or six times when he next looked up from the table.
“You’re still here?”
Alex had got the message.
But this is what happened next: the very moment when Alex closed the door of Vladimir Vladimirovich’s office behind him and felt his secretary’s sympathetic gaze on him, he for some reason recalled a feeling which he had last felt a very long time ago, during his first year at university. It was a feeling of yearning for another place, which he and his friends had once given a specific name. Back in those days the Marlboro-puffing Komsomol creeps got on everyone’s nerves. They would pepper their official speeches with Lenin and Brezhnev quotations without bothering to think about what they actually meant, and they would turn up at the parties organised by the prettiest girls in the student halls and tell filthy jokes, although they would be sure to keep their ties on at all times. Something just wasn’t quite right about it. The realities of student life didn’t help things much: in the autumn the students were taken out to the collective farm to dig potatoes for a month in place of their studies. They did a little work, but the ground was always cold and the tractor driver always drunk, so there wasn’t much left for it but to hit the vodka. Sometimes they were instructed to go to the vegetable warehouse on a Sunday, where they would be asked to sort through filthy boxes full of frozen, rotten crap, with scant chance of finding anything edible. And so, as unbelievable as it may now sound, they decided that the place they yearned for was North Korea. Because things must be different there. There, the students got up at five every morning of their own accord so as to have time to go and work in the factory for a couple of hours before lectures, and no one would feel any need for fancy clothes and Marlboros. You get my point. Back then they were sure that the same spirit must still exist somewhere in the Soviet Union, it had to. That ardour which had helped the Bolsheviks to beat the White Guards during the Russian Civil War, that belief in the cause.
Now that same feeling, that same long-forgotten childish feeling reared into Alex’s conscience one again. Only to immediately shatter into little pieces, like a window smashed with a stone. Let’s be honest, it was long overdue.
Chapter 22
We see them at the moment when the same thought passes through both their minds: what if our marriage is over? Come to an end? Raim’s father is in the loo, he has just tugged his flies closed but not yet flushed the toilet, and he has coughed up the phlegm accumulated in his throat and spat it out. They’ve got a Polish toilet bowl, with a flush button on the side of the cistern, not a cord hanging from ceiling height. Meanwhile his wife, who expects him to be absent from the room for a while, has swiftly opened the drinks cabinet door, taken out a bottle of Kirsberry Danish liqueur and a glass, and started pouring herself a drink. The large glob of spit and phlegm strikes the surface of the water at exactly the moment when the stream of sweet sticky liquid reaches the bottom of the glass, and that is the very same moment when, completely independently of each other, they both think exactly the same thought: what if it is over, what if it really is? What next? Not that either of them had done anything wrong exactly, no, they strictly adhered to all the moral norms, or at least their understanding of those norms. But without some minor, petty breaking of the laws, rules and conventions, it was impossible to survive in a society which was organised so that every single person felt a little bit guilty before the state – which itself was completely pure and holy. After all, only humans make mistakes, the system was flawless. But let’s not stray from the subject. Raim’s mother blames herself for secretly having been a little too proud of her son. She’d already seen a perfect little man in him from that time at Grandfather’s funeral when, barely five, he was all dressed up in a black suit. It had seemed to come naturally to him to take up his place at the end of the row of people receiving the condolence messages and endure there for a whole hour and a half, looking serious and dignified as he shook every last guest’s hand. She remembered that image the clearest of all from her father-in-law’s funeral – not the journey to Pärnamäe, not the graveside speeches, nor the hysterical biddy and her dim daughter, whose existence they’d known nothing about while her father-in-law was still alive. No, she remembered her grown-up little boy most of all. He still caused a slight sense of unease which she couldn’t properly describe; she still wanted to poke her head round his door every evening and wave him goodnight, but it just wasn’t appropriate any more. Her tough little boy. But maybe she shouldn’t have made so many assumptions. A person can’t be shiny and indestructible like a precious stone – and even some of those can be quite opaque. But once you have got used to thinking of them as strong, then it doesn’t occur to you that they may also have their weaknesses, and may occasionally need your help. Raim’s mother did not know what her son’s weaknesses were, but something clearly wasn’t right if he didn’t come home at night any more. It’s not that he simply didn’t turn up, leaving her waiting until morning, sitting in the kitchen tugging on a cigarette; he would phone in the evening and inform them that he wasn’t coming home, but with no further explanation. You’re not going to say: What do you mean you’re not coming? We’re having cheesecake for pudding and the latest episode of Hercule Poirot is showing on Finnish television. Because if he still doesn’t come, then it must be your fault, you must have been doing something wrong all along, why else would he rather be somewhere else? Raim’s father asks himself the same question, although from a different perspective: Maybe I should have been stricter with him, demanded more of him? You should always ask more of someone who is capable. Meanwhile he is waiting to hear the plopping sound at any moment, because the glob of spit and phlegm has already reached the surface of the water; technically the process which will produce the plop has already begun, it’s just that the air vibrations have not yet transmitted that information to his ears. Maybe I should have insisted on a regime of early rising and workouts; that would have been good for me as well. We went running in the forest now and again in the summer, he liked that; we did squats and pressups by the tree felled by the storm. Maybe I should have thought something up for winter as well, like cold showers to toughen the constitution, and I could have fixed a bar in the doorway to do chin-ups. Although to hell with cold water, the main thing is discipline, order, respect for one’s parents. It’s just not on, phoning like that and saying you’re not coming home, without a word of explanation about where you are or what you’re doing. What kind of home is it if you can just decide not to come back like that? What kind of family? No kind of family at all. Hell. Damn it. I toil like a draught horse and that’s the thanks I get. And then, a millisecond or so later, the plopping sound reaches his ears, he presses the flush and the water washes everything away. But what it leaves behind, his world, is just the same as before. Raim’s parents don’t yet know it, but in less than ten years Estonian television will start to show home-grown serials depicting everyday life, and the scriptwriters will try to create characters just like them for the viewers to have a well-meaning laugh at. And Raim’s parents will laugh too, because they won’t recognise themselves in those characters. And that is for the best.