Of course, as I considered my own retirement I had no intention of allowing anything like that to happen to me. For one thing, Zoya and I were lucky enough to be in good health. We had each other, as well as our nine-year-old grandson Michael to keep us young. There was certainly no question of me succumbing to depression or a feeling of uselessness. But nevertheless, a year after my retirement began, I started to feel a longing, not to go back to my old employment but to revisit the atmosphere of scholarship which I so missed. To read more. To learn about those subjects of which I remained ignorant. After all, throughout my working life I had been surrounded by books but had rarely had the opportunity to study any of them. And so I decided to return to the tranquillity of the library for a few hours every afternoon, making sure not to cause any trouble for my former colleagues, usually hiding away from their view, in fact, so that they would feel no obligation to talk to me. And I felt content with this arrangement, happy to spend whatever years I had left engaged upon the act of self-education.
In the late autumn of 1970, however, shortly after my seventy-first birthday, I was seated at my usual desk one afternoon when I saw a woman – some thirty years my junior – I guessed, standing by one of the bookshelves, pretending to examine the titles when it was perfectly clear that she had no interest in them at all, but was intent on watching me. I didn’t think too much of it at the time; she was probably lost in her own thoughts, I decided, and unaware that she was staring in my direction. I went back to my book and thought no more about it.
I noticed her again the following afternoon, however, when she sat at a desk three seats along from my own and I caught her glancing at me when she thought that I wasn’t paying attention, and I confess, I began to find the experience both unsettling and annoying. Had I been a younger man, perhaps I would have thought that the woman was in some way attracted to me, but there was no possibility of that in this instance. I had entered my eighth decade, after all. What little hair remained on my head exposed a bumpy, speckled skull beneath. My teeth were my own, and remained passably white, but they added nothing to my smile, as they might have done when I was a younger man. And while my mobility had not been too badly impaired by ageing, I nevertheless had begun to employ the services of a fine Malacca cane, the better to ensure a steady balance as I walked to and from the library every day. In short, I was no matinée idol and certainly not a figure of desire for a woman half my age.
I considered moving seats, but decided against it. I had been sitting in that same place every afternoon for the previous five years, after all. The light was good, which assisted my reading, as my eyesight was not quite as perceptive as it had once been. Also, it was peaceful there, for I was surrounded by bookshelves that contained such unpopular subjects that few people ever disturbed me. Why should I move? Let her move, I decided. This is my place.
She left shortly after that, but not before hesitating as she passed me, as if there was something she wanted to say, but then thought better of it and moved on.
‘You seem distracted,’ Zoya said to me that night as we were preparing for bed. ‘Is there anything wrong?’
‘I’m fine,’ I said, smiling at her, unwilling to go into the problem in any detail with her lest she thought I was imagining things and losing my mind. ‘It’s nothing. I’m just a little tired, that’s all.’
Still, I lay awake that night, fretting about what this woman wanted with me. Thirty years before, even twenty, such a visitation would have filled me with paranoid fantasies about who had sent her to spy on me, what they wanted, whether they were looking for Zoya too, but this was 1970. Those days had long since passed. I could think of no sensible reason for her interest in me and began to worry that she was not in fact the same woman I had seen before, or that I had imagined her entirely and senility was setting in.
That worry was put to rest the following day when I arrived at the library shortly after lunchtime, only to see the lady standing outside next to the great stone lions, wrapped up tightly in a dark, heavy overcoat, and she tensed noticeably when she saw me walking along the street towards her.
In return, I frowned and felt immediately nervous. I knew that she was going to speak to me, but thought that if I simply walked past her without an acknowledgement, then she might leave me in peace. For by now, I knew exactly who she was. It was perfectly obvious. I had never laid eyes on her before she started coming to the library – I hadn’t wanted to – but now here she was, confronting me, which was a presumption in itself.
Walk on, I told myself. Ignore her, Georgy. Say nothing.
‘Mr Jachmenev,’ she said as I approached her and I lifted my gloved hand a little in the air and gave her a half-smile and nod as I passed by, realizing as I did so that I truly had become old. This was the action of an elderly man, a royal personage passing by in a gilded carriage. It put me in mind of the Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaievich offering a benediction to the gathered crowd as he paraded his horse through the streets of Kashin, ignorant of the dangers that lay ahead. ‘Mr Jachmenev, I’m sorry, could I have a word—’
‘I have to go inside,’ I said, muttering the words quickly as I hurried on, determined not to allow any contemporary Kolek to take aim at me. ‘I have a lot of work to do today, I’m afraid.’
‘It won’t take long,’ she said, and I could see her eyes welling up with tears as she stepped in front of me, blocking my way. She was nervous too, that was obvious from her expression, and the way her hands trembled could not entirely be ascribed to the cold weather. ‘I’m so sorry to disturb you, but I had to. I just had to.’
‘No,’ I muttered under my breath, shaking my head, unwilling to look at her. ‘No, please…’
‘Mr Jachmenev, if you tell me to go, then I’ll do as you say and I promise I’ll leave you in peace, but all I’m asking for is a few minutes of your time. Perhaps you’d let me buy you a cup of tea, that’s all. I know I have no right to ask anything of you, I know that, but please. I beg of you. If you can find it in your heart…’
Her words trailed off as the tears came and I was forced to look at her now, feeling the great ache in my heart, that terrible pain that came upon me at the most unexpected moments of the day, times when I wasn’t even thinking about what had happened. Moments when I hated her so much that I wanted to find her myself, to wrap my ancient hands around her throat and watch her expression as I squeezed the life out of her.
But now she had found me. And here she was, offering to buy me a cup of tea.
‘Please, Mr Jachmenev,’ she said and I opened my mouth to answer her, but heard nothing but a great cry of anger emerge from within, a mere fragment of the pain and suffering that she had caused me and that was twisted around my soul as tightly as any of my great secrets or torments.
We had waited so long to have a child. We had suffered so many disappointments. And then one day, there she was. Our healthy Arina, who it was impossible not to love.
When she was first born, Zoya and I would lay her down on the centre of our bed and sit on either side of her, smiling like people who had been touched by the moon. We’d place her feet in the palms of our hands, marvelling at how happy she was, astonished that we had finally been blessed in this way.