‘[Thank heavens I wrote such a fat book,]’ I said.
‘[A slim volume would hardly have been much of a weapon,]’ she agreed, grimacing; in pain, I thought at first; but, no: because she was laughing.
‘[We can be grateful,]’ I told her, kissing her good hand, ‘[that science fiction novels are so fat.]’
‘[We may be grateful in a general sense for fatness,]’ she agreed.
The ambulance brought us to the hospital — a different building, and indeed a different site, to the place in which I had convalesced. Two rows of cherry trees displayed their ridiculous pink and white blossom in enormous profusion. They wheeled her through the main door. They gave her a painkiller. I sat with her in the emergency room. I held her good hand as they cut off her shirt and bandaged up her wounds. ‘The wound to the stomach is superficial,’ the doctor said. ‘The wound to the arm is a little more serious, but not life-threatening. The tip of the blade has scratched the tibia. I’m afraid it will be sore for some time. There will be bruising.’
I translated this for her. ‘[Black and blue!]’ she said in a mournful voice. ‘[I have always bruised like a peach.]’
‘[You are a peach,]’ I told her, as tears seeped from my ridiculous old-man eyes. ‘[You are my peach. You are my beautiful luscious American peach.] I love you,’ I added, in Russian.
‘[What’s that?]’
So I told her then how to say I love you in Russian. It involves putting together three English words: two colours and a human bone — as it might be, the colour of a fading bruise, and the colour of a fresh bruise, and a bone in the arm: just those three English words. Say them together, rolling from one to the other as you speak, and you will find that you are saying I love you in Russian. It was a delight for me to hear her say that Russian phrase, over and over. It was delightful.
Frenkel’s body could not be found, although — according to the Militia — there was blood on the pavement beneath the hotel window. I do not believe that Frenkel could simply have stood up and walked away after such a fall. I couldn’t help the Militia explain who might have moved his body, or why.
Saltykov’s body was recovered from the park. The Militia had no suspects; and since we were the only two people in the whole of Kiev who knew him, we were formally questioned. He had no dependants, it seemed; and no friends or partners. He was buried in a Kiev municipal graveyard.
We were warned by the Militia not to leave the city, since investigation into the death of Saltykov, and the assault upon Dora Norman, was still ongoing. We stayed in the hotel room, both of us slowly recovering our health. My grief for poor old Saltykov was strangely modulated by my joy that Dora was alive, even though I had thought her dead. Every night I laid my hands gently upon her enormous belly, her fluid hips, and gave thanks to her sheer bulk for saving her life.
We made our doddery way about the city; me actually old and she temporarily aged by her wounds, her arm in a sling. She expressed repeated astonishment at the beauty of the Ukrainian springtime. We took the tram along the lengthy, wide streets, where rows and rows of chestnut trees and cherry trees were in blossom. One day, when we were feeling a little more hearty, we went down to the beach, by the river. It was a bright day, and the space was filled with large Kiev women in polka-dotted swimming costumes, and blocky Kiev men in trunks. The men were sunbathing standing up, all of them putting their chests out towards the sun, and slowly turning like human heliotropes.
‘[Why are they all standing?]’ Dora asked me. ‘[Why don’t they just lie down?]’
‘[They are standing,]’ I told her, ‘[to show that even after a full day’s work of building Communism they are not tired.]’
We both of us healed from our respective wounds, although slowly.
What happened next was that the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl suffered a catastrophic malfunction. News was at first confused and contradictory. The explosion happened on 26 April. By the 27th there was no official confirmation — although the reactor is less than seventy miles from Kiev, and smoke was evident over the northern horizon. Rumours circulated through the city. Lights in the sky. Over the night of the 27th and the morning of the 28th trucks and buses containing the inhabitants of Pripyat, the nearby town, began rolling into Kiev. There was no official news for almost a week, but everybody in Kiev knew that something terrible had happened.
You, doubtless, remember that particular disaster.
I sat with Dora in a restaurant in the city one evening, the two of us as subdued and alarmed as any person in the city. ‘[Do you think Frenkel—]’ she asked.
‘[Dead,]’ I insisted.
‘[Or Frenkel’s people. His organisation. Do you think that they…?]’
‘[Trofim exploded a grenade inside the main reactor. Two months later the reactor explodes. Perhaps that is no coincidence. Perhaps there was damage to the pipes, or the structure, or something; and it took two months or so for the damage to lead to the malfunction.]’
‘[Or,]’ she said. ‘[Perhaps Frenkel’s people came back and finished the job. That driver you talked about — the red-headed one.]’
‘[Or perhaps,]’ I said, ‘[the radiation aliens blasted it from orbit,]’
We agreed that we must leave the city, for I feared the effects of radiation poisoning. Besides, we did not belong. I needed to get her back to Moscow. It was not difficult: the Militia, certainly, had more important things to occupy their time than attending to us. We took Saltykov’s cab, and drove out of the city together.
I filled the car with fuel and drove east. The main road to Russia went north to Chernilhiv, and then east along the River Desna; but I did not want to take my beautiful Dora closer to the source of radioactive contamination than absolutely necessary. I took small roads, and felt my way, as it were, through eastern Ukraine. The sky was filled with apocalyptic clouds. Even this far south the fir trees were tinted rust and red by the fallout.
Eventually we reached Russia. We were stopped at the border, something, of course, that had not happened to us on the way in to the Ukraine — but things were different now. There was considerable panic. I told the soldiers manning the border crossing that Dora was my wife, a naturally shy woman who preferred not to speak. They detained us for four hours, and finally they let us through on the understanding that we would give one of their number a lift to Moscow — a young lad who had to get back to the capital for some reason.
‘I was supposed to take the train,’ he said, getting into the front seat beside me, after stowing his kitbag in the boot of the car. ‘But none of the others wanted to drive me to the station. It’s like the whole Ukraine is a plague zone. Are you Ukrainian?’
‘I am a Muscovite.’
The young fellow swivelled in his seat and addressed himself to Dora. ‘Good day to you, madam.’
‘She doesn’t speak much,’ I told him.
‘Don’t be shy, madam! I’ll not alarm you, I promise! Cat got your tongue, has it?’
Dora looked at me, and then at the young fellow. ‘I love you,’ she told him.
He blushed, and faced front. ‘Why did she say that?’ he asked me, in a low voice.
‘She’s not all there in the head,’ I told the young soldier, as I drove off along the country road. ‘She takes sudden fancies to people. Especially to good-looking young men. Don’t encourage her, I’d advise. Just ignore her and she’ll cool down.’
‘Whatever you say, chief,’ said the soldier, fixing his eye on the passing landscape.
Dora remained perfectly silent for the remainder of the day.