Эдвард Докс - Pravda ['Self Help' in the UK]

“You have to go back there.”

“I’m not going back there.”

“You have to go back there.”

“Is, I am not going back there. I can t. You can go when you come or tom—”

“Gabriel, I need you to go back there today, tonight.”

“We’ll go together. When you get here.”

“Too late. It might be too late.”

“I can’t—”

“How was she again?”

“How was she?”

“How was she?

“I told you… I told you. She was on the floor. In the main room. What are you asking me?”

“There was nothing wrong with her?”

“Yes. She was dead, Is, she was dead.”

“For Christ’s sake. I know that.”

“What are you asking me, then?”

“I’m asking you… I’masking you if… She wrote me this letter… I’m asking you if it looked like she did it herself.”

“Jesus.”

“I mean… anything… was there anything strange about her? Anything that—”

“Is… Is, she had a stroke. That’s what happened. That’s all.” “How do you know?”

“Yana. The ambulance men said—there was dried saliva and other stuff—her skin was all mottled—they told Yana it looked like a stroke and I—”

“You sure? Can you check? Will there be an autopsy?”

“Is—”

“Did they say that there would be some kind of autopsy?”

“Is, for Christ’s sake. She didn’t want to kill herself. I spoke to her on the phone on Sunday night. She was… she was fine. So will you stop. Will you stop being such a crazy idiot. She’s dead. She is just dead. She died.”

Silence.

Gabriel again: “Shit. Shit, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. I’m sorry. I’ll be there tomorrow night if I can get my visa. I’m on my way to the embassy now.” Isabella breaking. “Sorry… I’m sorry. You are right—I’m being crazy and you’re there by yourself and… Gabs, will you be all right? Is Yana there? Or Arytom? Someone you can stay with?”

And so Gabriel pulling himself together. “I’m okay. Just make sure you get the visa and a flight, Is, that’s all you have to do. This had to happen one day.”

“I know. I know, I know.”

“And you were right about the consulate. They’re helping a lot. I’m… I’m talking with them again first thing. A guy called Julian Avery. When I called, they knew who I was. They remember Grandpa Max. They know who Mum was too—who we are, I mean. They’re going to help… with everything. We’re lucky, in a way.”

A long silence, and then Isabella asking the question: “Does he know?”

Another silence. Then: “Yes.”

“They contacted him?”

“Yes. The hospital contacted the consulate before me. The consulate guy—Avery—seems to know where he is. And he’s next of kin. So they got hold of him. They told him. He knows.” Gabriel drew his heaviest breath. “But we’re going to bury her here, Is. We’re not going to fly her home. She wanted to be buried in Petersburg. We’re going to do that as fast as we can. We’re not going to tell him. We’re going to do it before he can get here. That bastard can go fuck himself.”

Nicholas Glover had in fact spent his entire adult life fucking himself. However, estranged as they had been these past ten years or so, neither Gabriel nor Isabella could know this; and even before their antipathy ossified, Nicholas knew well that they could scarcely have imagined the ongoing mêlée in which he lived. Indeed, in the past twenty-four hours, Nicholas had come to an awful and existence-rearranging realization: that the only other person in the world who might ever have grasped the true nature of his lifelong war was his wife—Maria, Masha, Mashka, Marushya.

But it was too late now. Too late to confide. Too late to be open. Too late to start the one journey that he might have taken with any hope of reaching understanding at the end. Was this a tragedy? At present, Nicholas had no idea. Because as of the past thirty minutes, he was ignoring all such thoughts, ignoring them with a strength of will which, had it been available to most other men, would have sent them rushing from their dreary lives pell-mell in pursuit of their disappearing dreams.

Yes, Nicholas was ignoring all thoughts save those directly associated with process and procedure. In these, at least, there was a kind of ease… As six o’clock chimed back and forth across the steeply raked Parisian rooftops, there was even some satisfaction in the sound of his handmade soles upon the medieval cobbles of the Rue des Barres. Everything procedural was taken care of. Thank Christ. Her rent was paid for another six months and then the flat would simply be leased to another tenant and his problem no longer. Her possessions, such as they were, Gabriel and Isabella could have. Welcome to them. Under Russian rules, all the money in her bank accounts would be returned to him… And even if this was not exactly the law, his solicitors could be instructed to make sure that it was done anyway. Who would challenge him? Surely nobody was going to fight him through the double jungle of a U.K. passport-holder (spouse, defector, repatriated) deceased on Russian soil. Not even Isabella. The Russian system could be relied upon to be as opaque as he required it to be. And what a relief that all could be conveyed through the Paris office; he had no wish to return to London. Even the wretched ache in his neck—a residual crick from his travels—seemed to have eased.

Almost jauntily, then, as if to put this improvement to the test, he looked up for the first time in two or three years at the crooked fa¸ade of the old building on the corner of the Rue du Grenier sur l’Eau—the oldest building in the city, so they said, beam-warped and brick-crooked as the eight hundred years of history it had witnessed. Yes, sixty-two was not so bad. Still in good shape. Still in sound mind. Still thinking. And still very able.

Yes, indeed: tout était dans l’ordre. Had he been carrying a cane to match his tailored linen suit, he might have twirled a spry thanks at the tourists now parting to let him make his way between their collective craning. Had he had a hat, he might have doffed it to the venerable old sisters now entering the mighty church of St. Gervais opposite. Good evening, sister, good evening, and a fine one too. Paris is behaving itself? The delicate scent of scandal, the salt tang of corruption, the sweet savor of vice—all vanished, all banished? Excellent. But now I must hurry home to my young friend, who has promised Tanqueray and tonic for my ills. And I am so very fond of him this evening.

Slim and trim, neither tall nor short, with pale eyes and a thin mouth (which between them disguised a fine, disparaging intelligence and a lifetime of immoderate appetite), Nicholas Glover had the kind of demeanor that Dorian Gray might have developed if that asinine portrait had never been painted and the young fool had relied instead on the excellence of his genes and the incisiveness of his wit to see him handsomely through to his sixties. His hair was turning white, still thick but close-cropped; his skin was clean-shaven and well attended to. Indeed, the only thing Nicholas took pains to conceal was his crooked teeth, which in the upper case were uneven and shading to yellow, and which in the lower were at war in such a manner as to have forced one another into partial overlap and sudden protruding angles. For this reason, a smile seldom parted his lips.

He stepped sprightly past the early diners at the café on the shallow steps and sprightly too across the main road, up onto the embankment, and so to the Pont Marie. The light was softening and even the lazy Seine seemed a little less raddled—the city’s favorite older woman come out once more, dressed in the flattering colors of the evening sun, slinking through the town again, turning heads, remarked upon, while her most loyal admirers, the distinguished old buildings on the Quai de Bourbon (likewise lit most handsomely in shades of pale sand and amber-yellow and blanc cassé), kept their devoted station. Bonsoir, Madame Seine, bonsoir; our compliments. The air, softening too, he thought, linen loosened by an afternoon of love… Ah, yes, he could see the satisfactorily large windows of his own apartment.