Pavel poured himself another drink, lit a cigarette and opened a cupboard where he had stored carefully numbered cassettes.
He selected one, switched the television to the video mode, put a cassette in the VCR and sat down in the chair again.
A road, the border checkpoint, woods. A shot of a bus with children in it (a different bus with different children, of course), then the still photograph of a young man, the sole survivor. He hadn't been able to find pictures of the dead men. An officer in uniform appeared and pointed somewhere behind him. 'They came from that direction.'
'Did you have any warning?' his own voice said.
'Of course we did.'
'Did you have some kind of plan worked out?'
'It was hard to make a plan with those kids in the bus. Our priority was to get them out.'
'And if you hadn't been able to manage that?'
'We couldn't risk shooting as long as the children were in the bus.'
'So you'd have let them go across the border?'
'Only in the most extreme circumstances.'
'What does that mean?'
'The plan was to detain them as long as possible. To negotiate. That's what they've learned abroad — that as soon as hijackers agree to negotiate, you're halfway there. They won't start shooting. Certainly not at children.'
'Where did you stop them?'
'We stopped them twice.'
The officer pointed towards the checkpoint. 'Here's where we negotiated with them. When they let the kids go, we raised the barrier, but meanwhile a roadblock had been set up and sharpshooters were in place.'
The scene changed. The officer pointed to the places where the sharpshooters had been concealed. Then he pointed to a tree, its bark damaged by bullets, exposing the white wood beneath.
'And nothing happened to the other one?'
Off camera now, the officer replied, 'No. He'll go to the gallows without a scratch.' The voice laughed. 'I hope you're not recording this.'
He turned off the VCR and removed the cassette. The film was never broadcast.
Three-fifteen in the morning. He poured himself a final drink. His head was beginning to ache, and he felt an unpleasant constriction in his chest.
His bed was in the other room. Baroque carvings of saints stood on shelves, along with his father's carvings of non-saints. His father had liked carving birds most of all. Once he'd told Pavel that animals have one thing that puts them way ahead of people: they don't dissemble, and you don't have to pretend in front of them. He'd thought of that often in recent years. He was drawn to animals, and the films he made about them were usually better than his films about people.
He took off his shoes, his trousers and his shirt and crawled under the covers. Outside the window, tufts of white mist hung above the meadow. But the sky was clear and full of stars.
For a time, he put the nurse named Albina out of his mind. Then, unexpectedly, she cropped up again. He was lining up for a ski-lift and there she was, at the end of the
queue. Her hair and part of her face were hidden under a red hood. Fortunately he could recall her face well. 'There, you see?' he said to her, 'I found you after all.' They rode up the hill on the same bar, talking of nothing in particular. He could feel her hesitation, her wondering if she should accept this chance encounter as an omen. They skied downhill and waited for the lift together again. As they talked, he avoided any mention of his work, but since they were a short distance from the border, he told her about his abortive escape attempt so long ago. And he mentioned the prison term that followed. He contrived to surround his life with a mystery she might find attractive. At least she didn't try to prevent him from walking her to the door of her chalet.
The following evening they had dinner together. They continued to speak of nothing important. He sensed that her world was very different from his. There were forces at work in it in which he could not believe: faith in a higher law and an omnipresent power. She was prepared to look for evidence of this power in the position of the planets, and in omens. It occurred to him that she might bring a change for the better into his life.
3
On Sunday after lunch he went to visit his mother. He used to have lunch with her every Sunday, but in the past year she'd almost given up cooking and had her meals brought in. So he started coming after lunch; he couldn't bring himself not to come, leaving his mother all alone. Besides, her home was still his registered place of residence: he'd never tried to find somewhere else to move all his things. His bed was still there, and so was his desk, with its drawers stuffed with old letters and notebooks that no one would ever open. He'd carefully sorted the fading negatives of ancient photographs and stored them in two cupboards, and his old clothes, which no one would ever wear either, were gradually mouldering in the wardrobe in the hall.
Several weeks before, the last of his mother's friends had died, and now he was all she had left. She would sit inside all day, refusing to go out if he didn't go with her. She seemed increasingly gloomy and peculiar, full of dark suspicions about a world she understood less and less. He had not felt at ease in her presence for some time — if, indeed, he ever had. Still, he did remember moments of happiness in his childhood. His father enjoyed a joke, and his mother would laugh when he teased her. In the summer holidays she played tennis and volleyball with Pavel, and he liked listening to her talk about the theatre where she worked, though she was only a seamstress. It was a time when no decent play ever made it to the stage, and most of her work involved making Russian workers' blouses or miners' uniforms. She might have lived a completely different life had his father stayed with her. And so might Pavel.
'Is that you, Pavel?' Her surprise at his arrival was probably genuine; she was having trouble telling what day it was.
'I brought you something.' He took a pair of red slippers out of his bag and gave them to her. 'They have a fur lining.'
'Why do you waste your money?' She bent over with a suppleness that surprised him and slipped them on. 'They'll be wonderfully warm,' she said, straightening up again. She was a head shorter than he was, and small-boned. He'd inherited his father's height, but his build was more like hers.
'I'll make you tea,' she suggested.
'Thanks, but let's go out.'
'I bought some nice cakes.' She limped into the kitchen and he slipped into her room. He opened the linen cupboard and, from under a pile of towels, he took the tea caddy where she hid her money. He flipped open the lid and added two green banknotes to the box, closed it again and put it back.
His mother had never kept track of how much money she had. When he was growing up he used to take advantage of this and occasionally take some small change from her to buy a cinema ticket or cigarettes. She never
knew, or if she did, she never let on. When he secretly gave her money now, he was merely repaying an old debt.
"Where are you, what are you up to?' she said from the other room.
Two steaming cups of tea were standing on the battered but clean table. His mother was just dusting sugar on the sweet buns. 'What are you doing these days?' she asked.
'I've just filmed a demonstration. And the day after tomorrow I'm going to the Castle. We're doing a documentary about the president.'
'Which one?'
'Ours. It's his birthday.'
'How old will he be?'
'Seventy-five.'
'He's younger than I am,' she said. 'I'm already old, aren't I?'