‘[It makes me shudder to think of it,]’ she said. There was something simply delightful in the way a quiver might pass across the amplitude of her flesh. I said as much to her, and she blushed again.
‘But why does he wish such harm to Ms Norman?’ Saltykov pressed.
‘He wishes to kill her for the same reason he killed Dr Coyne,’ I replied. ‘I am sure of it. Although I am not sure, exactly, why he needed to kill Dr Coyne.’
I told them everything that Trofim had told me in the reactor room at Chernobyl; but it did nothing, precisely, to clear up the mystery.
Every day, Saltykov accompanied me as I undertook a ponderous, awkward walk in the park opposite the hotel. Every evening we ate together, and I translated between my beautiful Dora and my friend. We were waiting, simply enough, for me to become well enough to withstand the lengthy car journey back to Moscow; that is all. But some of the happiest moments in any life are moments of waiting. It has taken me a long life, and old age, to understand this important truth, and to slough off my youthful impatience.
‘A week. No more,’ I said. ‘Then we can journey back.’
Three days passed in this manner. I told Dora of the strange encounter with Frenkel in the hospital, late at night. ‘[Perhaps I only dreamt it,]’ I said. ‘[But it was a curious and vivid dream in that case.]’
‘[Ugh! You scare me.]’
‘[It is my intention. I love watching the shiver run through your flesh. It is a very sensual thing.]’
This had become a piece of common banter between us, and usually she laughed at it. But on this occasion she burst, suddenly, into tears. This wrongfooted me rather. ‘[My dear Ms Norman! Please do not cry.]’
‘[I’m sorry! So sorry!]’
‘[You have nothing to be sorry for, my dear Ms Norman!]’
‘[It was when you said flesh.]’
‘[I apologise! I am a monstrous and cruel man!]’
‘[No! No! I know I have too much flesh — that’s all.]’
‘[All the better!]’
‘[It cannot be better — I’m ashamed of being so fat…]’
‘[There’s no shame,]’ I said severely. ‘[Since your flesh is beautiful, the amplitude of your flesh magnifies that beauty. Shame? Shame is not welcome here. Shame is how you feel in front of other people, that is the definition of shame. But there are no other people here, only me, and I am a part of you now. You cannot be ashamed of yourself, by yourself.]’
On another occasion she said, ‘[You were married before. I bet she was thin.]’
‘[I was married in the 1940s. Everybody was thin. People starved to death — that’s how thin they were. When you have watched that you never again find thinness to be a beautiful thing. This strange modern aberration that praises thinness — it’s a function of an anomalous, global glut of food. Now, at this end of this terrible century, we find ourselves with more food than we can eat. But the human condition, taken as a whole, has not been plenty, but dearth. And it will be dearth again. Yours is the default position of beauty, my dear Ms Norman.]’ Perhaps I was not quite so eloquent as I have here recalled, but this was the gist of what I said.
‘[You are a sweet and lovely man,]’ she said.
‘[I don’t know about that. I am, I would say, a ruined man,]’ I noted.
‘[You mean money?]’
‘[I mean physically.]’ I gestured at my scarred face; at the still livid, scorched-looking marks on my temple; at the bristly cropped hair. ‘[I am old, and disfigured. I know you cannot love me, you, young and lovely as you are. But it is enough for me to have seen you again. It is enough for me that you are alive.]’
She looked at me for a long time. Then she laid a hand — one of her tiny, delicate hands — on my cheek. ‘[But you have a beautiful soul,]’ she said, simply.
Later she and Saltykov examined the back of my neck: she moved the back of my collar down, so that he did not have to touch me, and he peered. ‘There is a lump,’ Saltykov told me. ‘A redness and a lump. Something under the skin.’
‘A boil,’ I said.
‘Perhaps. Or perhaps your dream was not a dream?’
‘You think Frenkel crept into my hospital room in the middle of the night, injected me with this, and then crept away again without killing me? It doesn’t seem very likely to me.’
The two of them pondered that.
‘You could cut it out,’ I said, to Saltykov.
‘What!’
‘’Get a knife and cut it open… to see if there’s anything inside.’
‘Not I,’ said Saltykov, very emphatically.
I pondered making the same proposal to Dora, but thought better of it.
‘Come,’ said Saltykov. ‘Time for your constitutional.’
‘I would prefer to sit here.’
‘[Come along,]’ said Dora, tipping the perfect sphere of her body forward in the settee just enough to kiss me on the end of my scarred nose. ‘[You need your exercise.]’
‘[Very well],’ I replied. ‘[But I shall expect you to wait upon me like a geisha when I return, as a reward for my efforts.]’
She laughed, and rolled backwards, settling into her seat again.
Saltykov and I went down in the lift and exited the hotel. We waited for an especially shuddery and noisy tram to pass by and, crossing the road, made our way unrapidly into the park. Above us, barely visible flying saucers darted from the cover of one cloud to another. All the onion domes of all the towers of the Kremlin had detached themselves and flown straight up, and now they were flying in V-formation in the very high blue sky. Then, with an effort that brought a sweat to my skin, I walked a hundred yards, with Saltykov walking beside me. ‘It would be easier for me,’ I said, ‘if I could lean upon your arm.’
‘Perhaps you have forgotten,’ he said. ‘I suffer from a syndrome, one symptom of which is—’
‘Syndrome, syndrome, syndrome. Do you know the English name for your syndrome? [Fuckwittery].’
‘Really? I have come across American studies of my syndrome, and have never yet heard it so described.’
‘You live and learn,’ I said.
‘Is [Fuckwitter] perhaps the name of a doctor who…’
‘I have to sit upon this bench,’ I said, lowering myself into the wooden slats.
‘I shall sit beside you,’ said Saltykov, primly. He sat at the other end of the bench, ensuring of course that there were several feet of wood between us. It would not do for him to come into contact of any kind with another man.
For a while we simply sat, and the sweat cooled on my face. The chill of early spring was in the air. It being a weekday, the park was more or less deserted.
‘I do not comprehend love,’ said Saltykov, out of the blue. I understood this to be his oblique way of making reference to the situation between Dora and myself.
‘No?’
‘People talk about it as a wonderful thing. An exciting and pleasurable thing. Certainly I can see that it is, in terms of the successful transmission of genes, an immensely useful thing. But to elevate love to transcendental, cosmic and godly proportions, as people do? Is this not a little self-regarding? As if because I enjoy eating beefsteaks, and because beefsteaks serve the useful purpose of keeping me alive, I therefore declared that the universe is beefsteak, God a beefsteak and beefsteak the universal core value of everything?
‘Your words produce in me,’ I replied, ‘an enormous desire to piss.’
‘Are you referring to an actual desire, or a metaphorical one?’ he replied, blandly.