Дэвид Салой: The Innocent

‘I’ve been watching you. Irishka said she suspected something. She asked me to look into it.’

‘Look into what?’

‘Your involvement with Lozovskaya. Why deny it? It just makes you look silly.’

‘Deny what?’

‘A few days ago,’ he said, slightly shamefaced, ‘I followed you when you left work …’

‘You followed me?’

‘I followed you. Yes. I followed you. I’m sorry. Irishka said she suspected something. So I followed you. You went to a flat on Karl Libknekht Street. You were there for an hour or two. I waited outside. When you left, I went in and spoke to some of the neighbours. They said you were there virtually every day …’

‘That isn’t true.’

‘That you were sometimes there in the evenings. That you sometimes went out with her. I had a photo of you – they identified you.’

‘This is a joke …’

‘Is it? They said the room she lives in was formerly occupied by a Jew called Shtern, who was arrested last month. They said you moved her in soon after. I didn’t think you did things like that, Sasha.’

‘Like what?’

‘You know what I mean. They say you take her presents. Scent. Underwear. Shoes. They say you’re her lover. They’re sure of it.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s obvious. Why deny it?’

‘It’s not true!’

‘I’ve seen it with my own eyes.’

‘Seen WHAT?’

‘That you practically live there!’

‘You’ve seen nothing!’

‘Several times I’ve seen you spend hours in there.’

‘There’s nothing to see!’

‘Do you think I’m an idiot?’ he shouted. ‘Do you think I’m a total idiot?’

‘I want you to leave! Leave!’

We stared at each other. Then, slowly, he stood up and took his things. He sighed sadly. ‘Will you come and speak to her?’ he said. ‘Maybe if you say you’re sorry …’

‘No! I’m not sorry. I’ve done nothing. She should be sorry, for spying on me! And you should be sorry!’ I was shouting, following him out into the hall. Zalesky and his family were sitting down to supper in the kitchen. They pretended not to notice us. Nikita was obviously embarrassed to be part of this scene. He edged his way out, holding his hat.

He was there again a few days later. You know that – you sent him. ‘We were expecting you,’ he said.

‘Why?’ I said. ‘I told you. I’ve done nothing.’

He nodded, putting some of your underwear into a holdall. ‘Still, we were expecting you …’

‘YOU were?’

‘Irishka was …’

That’s what he said. You were expecting me! What for? You were the one who had walked out! You walked out on me without saying a word. What were you expecting me for?

I said to Nikita, ‘How long is she planning to stay with you?’

He shut the holdall and shrugged. ‘I don’t know. She can stay for as long as she likes.’

‘Why is she staying with you?’ I said. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘We’re waiting for you,’ he said.

A week later he was there again. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Just say you’re sorry. Is that too much to ask?’

‘Sorry for what?’

He shut his eyes sanctimoniously. ‘Just say you’re sorry …’

‘I’ve done nothing to be sorry for!’

‘If you say you’re sorry – and obviously stop seeing this woman – things might be okay.’

‘Might they?’

‘You look terrible, Sasha,’ he said. ‘I want to help you patch things up. That’s why I’m here.’

‘If you want to help patch things up, tell your stupid sister to stop being so stupid.’

‘Don’t talk about Irishka like that,’ he said.

And I said, ‘Fuck you.’

When he had left I started to drink.

HE HAS HUGELY overslept. It is nearly eight. The electric light is still on in the kitchen, and the bottle of Ararat Armenian konyak still on the table. He is surprised how little of it there is left. He was sure there was more than a few meagre millimetres of the stuff when he went to sleep – something of which he has no memory. For a minute, not used to the pain, he tries to pretend that it is a normal morning. He lights the stove, the hissing blue teeth, sets the pan over it to make his tea … No. No, it is not working. The hangover is like an intimation of mortality. It is like a foretaste of the pain of the last illness, when – in the fire of whatever it is that is killing him – he will find death preferable to persisting in this world, though it is surely the only world there is. He extinguishes the stove – silences its tiny hiss, which was hurting his head – and shuffles into the still shrouded bedroom. Lying there in a tight foetal position, in time the pain dies down to a quiet flame, only licking his outline. If he stays totally still for long enough it will slowly sink to a mere ember. There is a profound vacancy in his head. No thoughts, no memories. Perhaps this is the oblivion the konyak promised, the only sound the tired jostle of his own heart.

He sleeps until the early afternoon. Then – feeling spectral, weightless – he wanders into the living room. Steady rain is blackening the stout boughs of the cherry tree, the leaves of which are starting to fade and fall. He switches on the radio. The news. Kissinger is in Moscow – his wailing motorcade is just leaving the airport. The news-reader says he is there to talk about nuclear disarmament and Vietnam – Le Duc Tho is also in town – and trade. Trade . In other words, the integration of the USSR into the international financial system, as a prelude to the reintroduction of free market principles to the Soviet economy … Still very hungover, he does not feel strong enough to face this sort of thing, and switches off the radio, interrupting the next news item – ‘ For a second day, Israeli aircraft have attacked targets in Syria and –’

In the near-silence – there is only the quiet sound of the rain – he pulls the page from the typewriter. The last words he typed were When he had left I started to drink . That was what had inspired him to take the konyak from the top shelf, where it had stood for so many years. He pours what is left of it down the sink. When he had left … Nikita Stepanovich. Dead. Heart attack. 1965. Once, in their early teens, they were inseparable friends. Nikita was one of the other ‘Epshteynites’. Aleksandr has no memory of their first meeting – it would have happened in September 1924. Even the idea of ‘their first meeting’ seems strange to him. It is more or less impossible, now, for him to imagine himself in his former state of not-knowing-Nikita. His former state. He saw Sverdlovsk for the first time on an autumn afternoon of perpetual twilight. He had never seen so many people and horses. He had never seen electric light. Most of the pupils were the sons of industrial workers, and they seemed like hostile foreigners to him. When he thought of the house in the village, of the earthen floor where he slept with Ivan, on a straw-filled mattress in summer and sheepskins in winter, he had to hide his tears. The school was warm and there was always enough to eat. The teachers were mostly tough men – some of them, like Epshteyn, veterans of the Civil War, though mostly without Epshteyn’s intellect. The emphasis was not so much on intellectual excellence as the inculcation of an ethos, and in this environment differences were quickly effaced as the shared experience of the school shaped all the pupils in the same way. The way they spoke, for instance. Surprisingly quickly, the peasants’ sons lost their old ways of speaking. They spoke like their urban peers, and used their slang. Within a few months it was impossible to tell them apart, and Aleksandr felt more at home with Nikita Stepanovich’s family, with whom he spent the holidays, than with his own.