And now, he scarcely looked up when she came in. The studio was bitterly cold, but he was working regardless, in fingerless mittens and a woollen cap, the paint-spattered table at his side set out with jars and tubes and brushes. He painted hastily, with bold, rapid strokes, stabbing away at the immense canvas that towered above him.
‘Lakoba?’ said Maroussia. ‘I wanted to ask you something.’
Petrov didn’t look round.
‘I will not paint you today,’ he said. ‘That picture is finished. They’re all finished. This is the last.’
‘What are you doing?’ she said. ‘Can I look?’
He shrugged indifferently and turned away to busy himself at the table. Maroussia stared up at the picture he had made. It was colossal, like nothing he had made before. At the centre of it was a giant, laid out on a black road, apparently dead, his head and feet bare, surrounded by six lighted candles, each set in a golden candlestick and burning with a circle of orange light. A woman in a white skirt — suffering humanity — threw up her arms in grief. Dark, crooked buildings, roofed with blood, loomed around them. Behind the roofs and taller than all the buildings a man walked past, playing a violin. He seemed to be dancing. The lurid yellow-green sky streamed with black clouds.
‘This is good,’ she said. ‘Really good. It’s different. Has it got a title?’
‘It’s Vaso,’ he said. ‘The Death of the Giant Vaso, Killed in a Bank Raid.’ But he didn’t look round. Her presence seemed to irritate him.
‘Lakoba?’ she said. ‘I want to ask you something. It’s important. I want to find Raku Vishnik.’
Petrov didn’t reply.
‘Raku Vishnik,’ she said again. ‘I need to see him. He didn’t come to the Marmot’s last night.’ She paused, but he didn’t answer. ‘Lakoba?’
‘What?’ he said at last. ‘What did you say?’
‘Raku Vishnik. I need to find him. Quickly. I need his address.’
‘Vishnik?’ said Petrov vaguely. ‘You won’t find him during the daytime. He wanders. He always wanders. He’s on the streets somewhere. He walks.’
‘Where then? He wasn’t at the Marmot’s.’
‘No. I haven’t seen him there. Not for weeks.’
‘Where then?’
‘You must go to his apartment. At night. Late at night. Very late.’
‘What’s his address?’
‘What?’
‘Vishnik’s address? Where does he live?’
‘Oh,’ said Petrov vaguely. ‘He’s on Pelican Quay. I don’t know the house. Ask the dvorniks.’
For the first time he turned to look at her. Maroussia was shocked by how different he looked. He had changed so much in the weeks that had passed. His hair was wild and matted, but his face was illuminated with a strange intense distracted clarity. His pupils were dilated, wide and dark. He was staring avidly at the world, and at her, but he wasn’t seeing what was there: he was looking through her, beyond her, towards some future only he could see. And he stank. Now that he was close to her, she was aware that his breath was bad, his clothes smelled of sourness and sweat.
‘Something’s wrong, Lakoba,’ she said. ‘What is it?’
Petrov opened his mouth to speak again but did not. He looked as if his brain was fizzing with images… ideas… words… purpose — what he must do — But he could say nothing. He tried, but he could not.
‘Lakoba?’ Maroussia said again. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Go,’ he said at last. ‘You have to go now.’
‘Why? What’s happened?’
‘You have to go.’
‘Why?’
‘I want you to go. I won’t need you again. Don’t come here again. Not any more.’
‘What are you talking about? What have I done?’
‘Everything is finished now. I am leaving it behind.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘There is no more to say. No more words. Words are finished now. Personal things don’t matter any more: my personal life is dead, and soon my body will also die.’
‘Lakoba—’
‘Go. Just go.’
Maroussia left Petrov to his empty room and the immense dead giant. Once again, for the second time in as many days, she walked away from a door that had closed against her. She didn’t want to go to work, and she didn’t want to go home — not home to her mother, trapped in quiet shadow, waiting silently, too terrified to leave the room, too terrified to look out of the window, too terrified to open the cupboards, too terrified to move at all — she didn’t want to go anywhere. But it was still early, not even afternoon: she would have to wait till night to go to Raku Vishnik’s. Vishnik might tell her about the Pollandore. He was the historian. He might know
17
That morning, after Lom left, Raku Vishnik went to the Apraksin Bazaar. He liked the Apraksin, with its garish din and aromatic confusion, its large arcades and sagging balconies of shopfronts and stalls, the central atrium of market sellers and coffee kiosks. Areas of the Apraksin were reserved for different trades: silver, spices, rugs, clothes, shoes, umbrellas, papers and inks, rope and cordage, parts for motors and appliances, tools, chairs, tobacco, marble slabs. Poppy. One distant corner for stolen goods. And at the very top, under a canopy of glass, was an indoor garden littered with unwanted broken statuary: a dog, a child on a bench, a stained sleeping polar bear. Katya’s Alley.
Vishnik wandered from stall to stall, floor to floor, making lists, drawing sketches, taking photographs, picking up discarded bits of stuff — a tram ticket, a discarded theatre programme. He recorded it all.
Mirgorod, graveyard of dreams.
He had roamed back and forth like this across the city every day for more than a year, a satchel slung over his shoulder with a fat oilskin notebook, a mechanical pencil, a collection of maps and a camera. The official historian of Mirgorod. He took his duties seriously, even if no one else did. He was systematically mining the alleyways, the streets, the prospects. Blue–green verdigrised domes. Cupolas. Pinnacles. Towers. Statues of horsemen and angels. The Opera. The Sea Station. The Chesma. The Obovodniy Bridge. It all went into his notebooks and onto his maps. He noted the smell of linden trees in the spring and the smell of damp moss under the bridges in the autumn. He photographed chalk scrawlings on the walls, torn advertisements, drinking fountains, the patterns made by telephone wires against the sky. A wrought iron clock tower with four faces under a dome.
What he found was strangeness. Vishnik had come to see that the whole city was like a work of fiction: a book of secrets, hints and signs. A city in a mirror. Every detail was a message, written in mirror writing.
A wrong turning has been taken. Everything is fucked.
As he worked through the city week by week and month by month, he found it shifting. Slippery. He would map an area, but when he returned to it, it would be different: doorways that had been bricked up were open now; shops and alleyways that he’d noted were no longer there, and others were in their place, with all the appearance of having been there for years. It was as if there was another city, present but mostly invisible, a city that showed itself and then hid. He was being teased — stalked — by the visible city’s wilder, playful twin, which set him puzzles, clues and acrostics: manifestations which hinted at the meaning they obscured.
Tying myself in knots, that’s what I’m doing. There must be cause and pattern somewhere. I’m a historian: finding cause and pattern is what I do. And it’s here, but I can’t see it. I just can’t fucking see it.