“Mum, you’re so funny when you’re drunk. I’ve never seen you like this, it suits you.” Her son pulled her away from the door.
Maika went over to Irina and touched her shoulder.
“Let’s go, I’ve had enough.”
Her face was stern.
Lean Irina took off down the street after her doughy daughter, and suddenly realized that something was happening between them, had happened already maybe: it was as if the tension of the last years, when she had constantly felt her little girl’s sullen dissatisfaction with her, had dissolved and disappeared.
“Mum, who’s Pirozhkova?” Maika asked.
This was the first time she had heard this surname.
Irina didn’t answer at once, although she had long prepared herself for this moment. “I’m Pirozhkova,” she said at last. “We had an affair when we were very young, at about the same age you are now. Then we quarrelled. Years later we met up again. It didn’t last long, and in memory of the meeting Pirozhkova kept his baby.”
“Good for Pirozhkova,” Maika nodded. “Did he know?”
“Then, no. Later, maybe.”
“Good parents,” groaned Maika.
“Don’t you like them?” Irina stopped walking; she was still hurt by the things her daughter didn’t like.
“No, I do. Other parents are worse anyway. He knew of course.” Maika’s voice was weary and adult.
“You think so?” Irina was startled.
“I don’t think, I know,” Maika said firmly. “It’s terrible that he isn’t here.”
The hum of Russian and English voices was broken by a sudden shriek. Flinging her black Chinese slippers off her feet, Valentina ripped off the top button from her yellow shirt with a gesture reminiscent of a dashing guitarist striking a chord. A shower of buttons fell to the floor as she strode out shuffling her thick pink ankles, her face shining like a lacquered Russian doll, and sang in her high, seductive voice:
Hey there boy!
Stir your tar
I’ll mix my dough
We’ll mix and stir together!
She slapped her thighs and nimbly stamped her feet on the dirty floor. She had spent her student years in a whirl of field trips through northern Russia, collecting fragments of living Russian speech in Polesye, around Arkhangelsk and the upper reaches of the Volga, studying her bawdy folk-songs the way others study the nucleus of a cell or the movement of migrating birds. She remembered ditties by the thousand, in all their innumerable variants, dialects and intonations, and she had only to open her mouth for them to come pouring out, alive and unspoilt, as though she had just come from a village party:
Spit on my iron,
My iron is hot …
She scattered little lumps of burning coal around her, and her dark heels drummed the floor as though stamping on them as they fell from the stove.
The Paraguayans were beside themselves with joy, especially their leader.
“What kind of music is this?” the saxophonist asked Faika, but she had no words to describe it and merely said, “It’s Russian country music.”
Shortly before Valentina’s folk number, Nina had walked dramatically to the bedroom, her head high, her back straight. As she sat on the edge of the bed in the semi-darkness she heard the jingle of glass, and realized that she wasn’t alone. Squatting in the corner with his back to her she saw Alik, going through the remaining bottles, looking for something.
She was unsurprised, but didn’t move from her place.
“What are you looking for, Alik?”
“There was a small bottle here, of dark glass,” he grumbled.
“There it is,” she replied.
“Ah, so it is.” He stood up, happily clutching the dark bottle to his old red shirt.
Nina wanted to warn him to be careful, because the mixtures left disgusting brown stains. But he walked right past her, and she saw that he really was fully recovered and was moving exactly as he used to, with his old light step, slightly disconnected at the knees. There was more. As he passed her he touched her hair, not carelessly but in the old special way he had, parting his fingers like a comb, lightly pushing them into the roots and drawing them back from her forehead to the nape of her neck. And again she saw her cross hanging on his chest, and she realized that everything was all right.
“I must tell Valentina,” she thought as her head touched the pillow.
She wouldn’t have been able to find Valentina, for Valentina was far away. In the shower-compartment of the bathroom, the squat, muscular Indian was pounding into her with his short, massive organ. She saw his black hair falling over his sunken cheeks, and the livid strip of skin stretched tightly over the scar. Her wrists and ankles felt encased in iron, yet she was suspended, unsupported, hammered powerfully upwards … What was happening to her was unlike anything she had ever experienced before.
TWENTY-ONE
“It’s probably Nina calling up drunk,” she thought, picking up the receiver. She glanced at her watch: it was just after one a.m.
But it wasn’t Nina, it was one of the gallery-owners, the one who did the paperwork.
“An urgent matter has arisen regarding your client,” he said briskly. “We wish to acquire all the remaining works in his studio without further delay.”
Irina held the pause, as she had been trained to.
“Of course, we assume you’ll halt all legal proceedings,” he went on. “Our relationship will now be reviewed.”
One, two, three, four, five … Get this!
“Well, in the first place, as regards legal proceedings, that is a matter quite separate from the other issue, and we couldn’t under any circumstances connect the two. As regards my client’s work, I can discuss that with you at the end of next week after I return from a visit to London in connection with these works,” Irina lied, with great professional satisfaction.
She wasn’t the least bit tired. Getting up, she walked into the living-room. Two strips of light poured from under Maika’s door. She knocked and went in.
Maika, wearing a long nightshirt despite the heat, propped herself up on one elbow and pushed away her book. “What’s the matter?”
“It seems Alik was a good artist after all. Those sharks just called and want to buy all his paintings.”
“You mean it?” Maika smiled.
“Yes. I’ll dig out an inheritance for you yet, my girl.”
“You’re joking, what inheritance? And what about Nina?”
“Nina’s no concern of mine. And we’re going to have to work like hell for that money.” Irina’s face was very tired, and it seemed to Maika that she was ageing, and at night, without makeup, her mum didn’t look beautiful at all, just ordinary.
“You know what, let’s go to Russia,” Maika moved aside, making a place for her on the mattress.
For years Maika hadn’t been able to sleep alone, and Irina would hurry from the other side of town so that her unhappy, silent child could bury her head on her shoulder and fall asleep.
Now Irina lay down beside her and arranged her bones more comfortably on the bed. “I thought about that, too. Yes, we’ll go, definitely, only let’s wait for them to get sorted a bit first.”
“Get what sorted?”
“You know, wait for things to settle down a bit, whatever.”
“But Alik said if things ever settled down it wouldn’t be the same country any more.”
“Don’t worry, things will never really settle down there …”
Irina stroked her daughter’s red hair, and for once Maika didn’t twitch or grunt.