So that’s what’s been here all along.
Now Mum’s stopped.
What’s been here all along?
The gas metre and the geyser are broken. I pay a visit to the landlady and she says that a frozen pipe burst last winter, but that she’s in the midst of getting everything fixed. She looks shiftily away from me and I can’t help thinking that this place is disintegrating on every possible leveclass="underline" the apartment, the building, the country.
When I get back to the apartment, I find Alexey humming to himself as he adds a dollop of jam to his tea. His glass sits in a nickel-plated holder, the kind I have not seen since leaving Russia. He swirls the liquid with his spoon.
‘Did you see the reading list I left for you?’ he asks. ‘Most of those books should be here somewhere.’
‘Should I get started right away?’
‘Not quite yet.’ More swirling. ‘First, I’ve had Lev unearth my old map box. You’re looking for a village called Popovka, in Tula, and I’m telling you now, it’s not the Popovka in Aleksinsky District. It’s a different one, much smaller. It might not even be on any of my maps – in which case I’ll send you to the state archives.’
‘No problem,’ I say, curiously. ‘And what should I do once I—?’
‘Kukolka was born at a nearby estate called Otrada,’ he continues. ‘It would be worth making the trip, to see if anyone’s left who knows anything.’
I pour my own cup of tea. When is Alexey going to tell me who Kukolka really is? For someone whose entire life has been about describing the indescribable, about revealing the unimaginable, he’s a bit cagey, isn’t he? Oh, and now the milk’s gone off. I’ve poured too much already, and the tea is covered with ropy white strands.
‘Sod it,’ I say, under my breath, and I dump it out in the sink.
Does anything work in this bloody country?
Alexey catches my eye and smiles. ‘It’ll start to hurt,’ he says, ‘coming home. Because you meet your old self when you do. And the one has to kill the other.’
A group of young men in grey-blue camouflage fatigues are gathered in front of the GUM department store in Red Square, leaning casually, gracefully, against its archways. They talk in low voices, occasionally pausing to eyeball passers-by. They have small metal badges pinned to their chest pockets and oval-shaped patches with a yellow insignia on their sleeves. Alexey’s driver is the only one in civilian clothing, but he doesn’t stand out. Whoever he is now, he used to be one of them.
Military? Some kind of police?
He peels away from the others. ‘You said ten,’ he says as a greeting.
‘I’m sorry. I missed the metro stop.’
‘It’s some distance to the car.’
‘I really appreciate this,’ I say.
We walk without talking. I feel lopsided from staring up at the coloured domes of St Basil’s Cathedral and have to double my pace to keep with his. To calm my nerves, I dip my hand into my bag and find a solid shape, the curve of small feet, the sandy feel of artificial hair. The only doll that isn’t part of Mum’s collection. The doll that has been in the dark as long as I have.
Lev doesn’t say much in the car either. He pushes the Mercedes hard, the tyres squealing as he changes gears.
‘I was born here,’ I offer. ‘I just haven’t been back for years.’
He nods to indicate he’s heard me.
‘I answered an advert Alexey posted at my university.’ I let my bag drop between my feet. The weight of it settles against one ankle. ‘Have you read any of his work?’
‘The Last Bolshevik.’
‘I went to a reading he gave. It took my breath away.’
‘I didn’t like it,’ says Lev.
‘Oh. Is it really a question of liking? It is a memoir.’
‘It’s well written,’ he concedes. ‘But too careful. There is something missing. I think he left things out, things that didn’t fit.’
‘Maybe he had to. For it to make sense.’
Lev shrugs. ‘OK.’
‘Well, my mother didn’t like it either,’ I say. ‘Someone gave her a copy once. She actually burnt it, page by page. By candle flame, of all things.’
‘Really?’ he says, and I feel encouraged.
‘I think she had this idea that he was making Russia look bad. She was quite a patriot, always getting upset when people criticised the government. It’s ironic, because we ended up moving to—’
Mamulya.
Zoya.
Mamulya.
It is unmistakably my sister’s voice – but she has never spoken to me before. Not once. All I can think of, though, is that I don’t consider our mother to be ‘Mamulya’ any more. Mamulya was beautiful, soft, fluttery, with a youthful, lilting voice. Mum sounded like whatever was destroying her liver was crawling up her trachea. Mamulya would pirouette in front of the mirror every morning, checking every angle. Mum had no angles any more, in that shapeless nightgown that eventually became her second skin.
Mamulya died fourteen years ago. Mum died in June.
‘Moving to?’ says Lev.
‘Sorry. I just … I heard …’ Nothing comes to mind but the truth. ‘I’m being haunted.’
‘Haunted,’ he says.
‘By the ghost of my sister.’
Lev looks at me for the first time on this drive, his eyes solemn, like a fox’s. ‘How did she die?’
My confession is still echoing in my head: I’m being haunted. I’ve never told anyone, not even Richard. How could I explain that I just knew it was Zoya, from the very first time she made me smell something? Smells; now voices. Richard would think I’m having some kind of psychotic break.
Maybe I am.
‘She was shot. Point-blank,’ I say.
Our fledgling conversation cannot sustain this final blow. He lets it lie and I hunker down in my seat. I’m being haunted. I wonder if I’ve even said it to myself, before. I give directions to Lev. This way. That way. I’m being haunted.
The words don’t go away, not even as we reach the section of the double-lane Rublyovskoe Highway that zips together what looks like large swathes of forest. This area is riddled with the homes of Moscow’s most powerful and influential people – and people who like to live behind high walls. As we turn off the highway, we start to see a few of those walls crop up.
Lev glances at me as he pulls out a new cigarette. He knows that we’re not supposed to be here.
‘It’s that house,’ I say, pointing to a towering gate and the soldier standing in front of it, holding an assault rifle. As our car draws in close the soldier motions for Lev to pull over. A patchwork of red and white can now be seen through the black bars of the gate. I remember a three-storey brick house with elaborate window detail from my first visit. At the time, I kept my eye on that window detail, told myself not to look anywhere else.
Lev rolls down the driver’s window.
‘What are you, lost?’ demands the soldier.
I lean over. ‘I’m here to see Ivan Vasiliev.’
He scowls. ‘The colonel knows you’re coming?’
‘Tell him it’s Raisa Simonova.’
The soldier pulls out a two-way radio and barks into it. The radio rumbles in reply, and then, with a harassed grunt, he begins to open the gate. Lev eases the Mercedes through, pulling up alongside a fleet of black BMWs. He drums his fingers on the steering wheel. He hasn’t lit the cigarette.
‘I thought your name was Rosie,’ he says. ‘And why are we here?’
‘It is Rosie. But you can use Raisa, if you like it better,’ I say, because I can’t answer the other question.
‘Do you like it better?’
I don’t have an answer to that either.
As I’m unclipping my seat belt, I see a lone figure making his way along the house’s wrap-around white porch. Down the stairs now, towards our car, towards me. He’s as small and slim as I remember from childhood, and he still exudes an aura of terrifying power. He doesn’t need the gate or the armed guard or the bulletproof German vehicles to seem invulnerable.