I went down the long wooden spiral staircase. Surely I could find someone to share this peaceful morning with me?
Everybody was still asleep in the sitting room too. I glanced into the kitchen, but there was no one there except for a dog, cowering in the corner.
‘Moving again?’ I asked.
The terrier bared his fangs and gave a pitiful whine.
‘Well, who asked you to play soldier yesterday?’ I squatted down in front of the dog and took a piece of sausage off the table. The well-trained animal hadn’t dared steal it. ‘Here, take it.’
The jaws clicked shut above my open palm.
‘You be kind and people will be kind to you!’ I explained. ‘And stop cowering in corners.’
I took a piece of sausage for myself and chewed it as I walked through the sitting room into the study.
They were asleep in there too.
Even when it was opened out the sofabed in the corner was narrow, so they were lying very close. Ignat was in the middle with his muscular arms flung out wide and a sweet smile on his face. Lena was pressed up against his left side, with one hand clutching his thick shock of blond hair, and her other arm thrown across his chest with her hand on our Don Juan’s other partner. Svetlana had her face buried in Ignat’s armpit, with her arms reaching in under the blanket that had slipped halfway off their bodies.
I closed the door very quietly and carefully.
It was a cosy little restaurant. As its name suggested, the Sea Dog was famous for its fish dishes and its shipboard interior. And, what’s more, it was right next to the metro station. And for a fragile middle class that was sometimes prepared to splash out on a restaurant, but liked to save money on taxis, that was a significant factor.
This customer had arrived by car, in an old but perfectly serviceable model-six Zhiguli. To the well-trained eyes of the waiters the man looked a lot more prosperous than his car suggested. The calm with which he drank his expensive Danish vodka without asking the price only served to reinforce this judgement.
When the waiter brought the sturgeon he’d ordered, the customer glanced at him briefly. Before that he’d been sitting there, tracing lines on the tablecloth with a toothpick, occasionally stopping and gazing at the flame of the glass-bodied oil lamp, but now he suddenly looked up.
The waiter didn’t tell anyone what he thought he saw in that instant. It was as if he was gazing into two blinding well-shafts. Blinding in the way the Light blinds when it sears and becomes indistinguishable from the Dark.
‘Thank you,’ said the customer.
The waiter walked away, fighting the urge to walk faster. Repeating to himself: it was just the reflection of the lamplight in the gloom of the restaurant. Just the way the lamplight happened to catch his eyes.
Boris Ignatievich carried on sitting there, breaking toothpicks. The sturgeon went cold, the vodka in the crystal carafe got warm. On the other side of the partition of thick cables, fake ships’ wheels and sailcloth, a large gathering was celebrating someone’s birthday, there were speeches of congratulation and complaints about the heat, taxes and gangsters who weren’t doing things ‘the right way’.
Gesar, the chief of the Moscow office of the Night Watch, waited.
The dogs who’d stayed outside shied away at the sight of me. The freeze had been really tough on them. Their bodies had refused to obey them, they hadn’t been able to draw breath or bark, the saliva had congealed in their mouths, the air had pressed down on them with a hot, heavy, delirious hand.
But their spirits were still alive.
The gates were half open; I went through them and stood for a moment, not quite sure where I was going and what I was going to do.
What difference did it make, anyway?
I didn’t feel resentful. I wasn’t even in pain. The two of us had never even slept together. In fact, I was the one who’d been careful to erect barriers. I didn’t just live for the present moment; I wanted everything right now, but I wanted it for ever.
I found the walkman at my belt and switched it on at random. That always worked for me. Maybe because I’d been controlling the simple electronic circuits for a long time, like Tiger Cub, without knowing it.
It was what I myself had wanted. I’d tried to make it happen. And now I had only myself to blame. Instead of spending all evening with Semyon, discussing the complex issues of the global conflict between Good and Evil, I ought to have stayed downstairs. Instead of getting angry with Gesar and Olga for their cunning version of truth, I ought to have insisted on my own. And never, ever have thought that it was impossible to win.
Once you start thinking like that, you’ve already lost.
‘No,’ I whispered, pulling off the earphones. ‘That’s not for me.’
We’d all been taught for so long to give everything and not take anything in exchange. To sacrifice ourselves for the sake of others, to face up to the machine-gun fire. Every look noble and wise, not a single empty thought, not one sinful intention. After all, we were Others. We’d risen above the crowd, unfurled our immaculately clean banners, polished up our high boots, pulled on our white gloves. Oh, yes, in our own little world we could never go too far. A justification could be found for any action, a noble and exalted justification. Here we are all in white, and everyone else is covered in shit.