And then I turned.
And I ran.
I remember nothing other than wanting to reach the trees, to leave the house behind, and I focussed on the copse, where I knew you would be waiting for me. And as I ran I tripped over something and fell. I fell and I landed in your arms.
I found you. You were waiting for me.
And the rest… the rest, Georgy, you know.
It was almost two days before we arrived, exhausted, in Minsk. We stood in the train station, staring at the timetable and the list of destinations, dreading having to spend more time in a railway carriage but knowing that we had no alternative. We could not stay in Russia. It would never be safe for us there.
‘Where shall we go?’ Anastasia asked me as we looked at the list of cities to which we could make connections. Rome, Madrid, Vienna, Geneva. Copenhagen, perhaps, where her grandfather was king.
‘Anywhere you like, Anastasia,’ I replied. ‘Anywhere you feel safe.’
She pointed at one city and I nodded, liking the romance of it. ‘To Paris, then,’ I announced.
‘Georgy,’ she said, taking my arm urgently. ‘There is just one thing.’
‘Yes?’
‘My name. You must not call me by it any more. We cannot risk detection. They won’t be looking for you, no one knew of our relationship except Marie and she…’ She hesitated, composed herself and continued. ‘You cannot call me Anastasia from this day.’
‘Of course,’ I said, nodding my head in agreement. ‘But what shall I call you, then? I cannot think of any better name than your own.’
She bowed her head for a moment and considered it. When she looked up, it was as if she had become a different person entirely, a young woman embarking on a new life for which she had no expectations.
‘Call me Zoya,’ she said quietly. ‘It means life.’
1981
IT’S ALMOST ELEVEN o’clock at night when the phone rings. I’m seated in an armchair before our small gas fire, an unopened novel in my hands, my eyes closed, but not asleep. The telephone is close to me but I don’t pick it up immediately, allowing myself a final moment of optimism before I must answer it and face the news. It rings six, seven, eight times. Finally I reach out a hand and lift the receiver.
‘Hello,’ I say.
‘Mr Jachmenev?’
‘Speaking.’
‘Good evening, Mr Jachmenev,’ says the voice on the other end, a woman’s. ‘I’m sorry to phone you so late.’
‘It’s all right, Dr Crawford,’ I say, for I recognize her immediately; who else could it be, after all, at this time of night?
‘I’m afraid it’s not good news, Mr Jachmenev,’ she tells me. ‘Zoya doesn’t have very long left.’
‘You said there might be weeks yet,’ I reply, for this is what she told me earlier in the day, shortly before I left the hospital to return home for the evening. ‘You said that there was no cause for immediate concern.’ I’m not angry with Dr Crawford, just confused. A doctor tells you something, you listen and you believe it. And you go home.
‘I know,’ she says, sounding a little contrite. ‘And that is what I thought at the time. Unfortunately, your wife took a turn for the worse this evening. Mr Jachmenev, it’s entirely up to you, of course, but I think you should come in now.’
‘I’ll be there shortly,’ I say, hanging up.
Fortunately I haven’t yet changed for bed, so it takes me only a moment to retrieve my wallet, keys and overcoat and head for the door. A thought occurs to me and I hesitate, wondering whether it can wait, deciding that it can’t; I return to the living room and the telephone, where I call my son-in-law, Ralph, to let him know what’s happening.
‘Michael’s upstairs,’ he tells me, and I’m glad to hear it, for I have no other way of contacting my grandson. ‘We’ll see you shortly.’
Outside on the street it takes a few minutes to locate a taxi, but finally one approaches, I raise my hand and he pulls in to the kerb next to me. I open the back door and before I can even close it again I have given him the name of the hospital and he’s pulling out on to the road. I feel a quick breeze in my face and pull the door firmly shut.
The streets are less quiet at this time of night than I expect them to be. Groups of young men are emerging from the public houses, their arms around each other, fingers pointing in each other’s faces in their determination to be heard. Further along, a couple are fighting and a young woman is trying to separate them by placing herself between the blows; I only see them for a moment as we pass, but their expressions of hatred are disturbing to observe.
The taxi takes a sharp left turn, then a right, and before I know it we are passing by the British Museum. I glance at the two lions standing on either side of the doors, and can see myself hesitating there for a moment before I step inside to meet Mr Trevors for the first time on the morning that he interviewed me, the same morning that Zoya began her position as a machinist at Newsom’s sewing factory. It was so long ago and I was so young and life was difficult, and I would give everything I have to be back there once again and to understand how lucky I was. To have my youth and my wife, and our love and our lives before us.
I close my eyes and swallow. I will not cry. There will be time for tears tonight. But not yet.
‘Here OK for you, sir?’ says my driver, pulling up next to the visitors’ entrance, and I tell him yes, this is fine, and hand him the first note that comes to hand; it’s too much, I know it is, but I don’t care. I step outside into the cold night air and hesitate before the hospital doors for only a moment, only walking forwards when I hear the taxi drive away.
Zoya is no longer in the oncology ward, I am told by a tired, pale young woman at reception. She has been moved to a private room on the third floor.
‘Your accent,’ I say. ‘You’re not English, are you?’
‘No,’ she says, looking up at me for only a moment and then returning to her paperwork. She’s chosen not to tell me where she comes from, but I’m sure it’s somewhere in Eastern Europe. Not Russia, I know that much. Yugoslavia, perhaps. Romania. One of those countries.
I step into the lift and press the button for ‘3’; even if the phone call had not been explicit enough, I know what it means to be moved into a private room at this stage in an illness. I’m glad the lift is empty. It allows me to think, to compose myself. But not for long, as I soon emerge on to a long, white corridor with a nurses’ station at the end. As I walk slowly towards it I can hear two voices engaged in conversation, a young man and an older woman. He’s talking about an interview he is soon to undertake, presumably for promotion at the hospital. He stops when he sees me standing before him and an irritated expression crosses his face at my interruption, even though I have yet to speak. I wonder whether he mistakes me for one of the elderly patients from the many wards which spread out like the arms of an octopus all along this corridor. Perhaps he thinks I’m lost, or cannot sleep, or have soiled myself in my bed. It’s ridiculous, of course. I’m fully dressed. Just old.
‘Mr Jachmenev,’ says a voice from behind him, Dr Crawford’s, as she reaches for a clipboard heavy with documentation. ‘You made it here quickly.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Where is Zoya? Where is my wife?’
‘She’s just through here,’ she replies softly, taking my arm. I shrug her off, perhaps more violently than necessary. I am not an invalid and I won’t be treated like one. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says quietly, leading me past several closed doors behind which are… what? The dead and the dying and the grieving, three conditions I will know myself before very much more time has passed.