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

“So why write about it?”

“Fund the documentary.”

“Yeah… bet the local paper pays big for pieces from undercover student meatpackers. I’ll tell you when you get here.”

It was December 1991. Isabella had just (unofficially) dropped out of Cambridge—failed to complete even a single term, appalled beyond reasonable doubt by her fellow students’ staggering mixture of naivete and smugness. But she’d been home for only one strained (though mercifully meal-free) Sunday evening with her mother, who was clearly suffering from a fervently denied but virulent depression of her own, when the news came that Grandfather Max had died on an unholy bender in Scotland. A distillery tour, a walk on the Black Cullin, skinny-dipping. His heart.

Gabriel, meanwhile, was working double shifts with his friend Larry, packing frozen foods in Southampton, trying to earn money to fund what remained of his year-off travels, because “Dad won’t give me a penny and I wouldn’t take it from the bastard anyway.” Though Isabella calculated that by the time her brother had saved enough to make it across the Channel, it would be next September and he’d have just a month before he started at university himself.

Gabriel clicked his tongue. “I’ll be back Friday… I’ll just have to take the afternoon off. They’re not going to like it. We’re not supposed to have any holidays, and the bosses get their hard-ons from firing casuals. The service is definitely on Saturday?”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus, Is, it’s so brutal, isn’t it?”

“I just can’t believe he’s actually dead.”

“Do they know anything about what happened?”

“It was a series of heart attacks, apparently. Mum says that the people with him told her he kept trying to crawl across the mountain—even when it had started. He wouldn’t lie down. But he had been swimming or something, so he must have been half naked.” She paused. “I just wish I had gone to see him more often—you know.”

“Me too.”

She cupped the receiver. “I’m trying to persuade Mum to get Dad to pay for us to fly to Petersburg and deal with anything that needs to be dealt with. It’s an excuse, but—you know—I reckon that Mum will be allowed back soon. I can tell she’d love to go.”

“Is she upset?”

“Kind of… yes.”

“Is Dad back?”

“No.”

“No?”

“Mum doesn’t know where he is exactly. We can’t call him.”

“Jesus Christ. What the fuck is he doing?”

“We don’t even know if he knows about Grandpa.”

“Where the fuck is he? Oh… oh shit.”

She heard the pips and then the receiver clattered.

“Oh bollocks, the money is running out again. I’ve got no more coins.” He spoke quickly. “Tell Mum I’ll phone tomorrow and speak to her again.”

“Okay. See you at the weekend. Bye bye bye bye.”

The old house stood at an odd diamond shape to the road so that it met visitors with a corner angle and seemed to present two different aspects, both designed to be the front. The modest, badly kept lawns gave no clue. And nobody was sure quite when Max had bought it. Sometime during the war, was the rumor.

Isabella sat with her mother in the long basement kitchen warmed by the ancient cooker, neither of them knowing where Nicholas was—Paris somewhere?—passing the time watching the portable television, waiting for him to show up or call and trying to measure the mightiness of history in two-minute segments between show biz and sports. And all the while the telephone kept ringing with Foreign Office officials, the odd MP, old friends, clipped-speech men whom neither of them had ever met, asking for Nicholas and wishing them sincere condolences in his absence; and her mother furious and sarcastic half the time, nostalgic and maudlin and tearful the rest; and Isabella panicked and petrified half the time, thankful and relieved the rest, that the overwhelming stupidity or wisdom or madness or vindication of her leaving Cambridge had somehow been overshadowed.

“Grandpa Max gone, Izzy. Dear oh dear— there’s a chapter finished. Hard to believe, isn’t it? Very hard. And just as the Soviet Union is finally put to death as well. Can you believe it? Can you believe anything?”

“Shitting hell.”

“Please don’t use bad language.”

Isabella looked away from the screen. “I quite liked Gorbachev. Is he going to stay with us in some capacity?”

“He’s better than the fat drunk.” Her mother paused. “But poor Gorby was finished a year ago, Is. And now there is no Soviet Union to rule—even were he able to cling on, which he isn’t. Now we have this CIS,” she scoffed. “The Commonwealth of Independent States. But of course it’s rubbish. There will be chaos. We need a great man now, Izzy, if Russia is to survive. A strongman.”

“You mean a tyrant?”

“Exactly so.”

“Mum, your worldview scares me.”

“Yours me, Isabella.” Her mother lit another cigarette. “Yours me.”

“I don’t have one.”

“Exactly. You don’t believe in anything. Which is understandable.” She waved out the match. “You cannot believe in anything—if you have learned your history lessons. But still, you are the rising generation.”

“And we want marzipan and chocolate.” Isabella rose, her chair scraping on the floor.

Her mother gestured at the television “So here—we bequeath you this desperate, flailing, lopsided world, in a worse and better state than we ourselves received it. We ask only that you look after it as best you can. And make sure that when your time is over, there’s something to pass on. For truly, Izzy, this unlikely blue ball is it. This blue ball is all there is.”

“Anything else you need to tell me?” Isabella tried a second cupboard.

Her mother looked across and smiled. “Whenever you have the chance, try to raise your head from the busy living of your life. And if everything seems compromised or unworthy, then remember the simple and fundamental aim: to reduce human suffering wherever you find it. At least you can be sure that this is a good plan, regardless of God, money, fashion, and the bloody news.”

“Please don’t use bad language, Mum.”

“I meant news of blood.”

“Aha!” Isabella eased the bar out from behind a wall of condiment jars. “Toblerone. Jesus, Mum, you must be the only person in the world who still buys this stuff. Not quite what I was after, but there’s no sense being all judgmental about things before we’ve tried them, is there?” Isabella came back to her chair at the table.

“Your father’s favorite,” her mother said softly. “Half each. You break, I choose.”

Isabella snapped the bar in half and said, “I can’t believe that they are going to let all the states split off.”

“Do not be so sure. Soviet times are over.” Her mother took the smaller piece. “But now we see what happens when Russia wakes up.”

“Do you reckon there’s going to be fighting?”

Her mother nodded. “Lots of things will happen in the night, and we will never know.”

The television cameras left the Kremlin and returned to the studio in Shepherd’s Bush where assembled experts prepared to expatiate.

“Oh, Isabella, will you look at their smug faces. They’re disgusting, these people. Where do they come from? And my good God—listen to that stupid newsreader’s voice! She can hardly read the cue. No idea what she says or what any of it means. These people make me sick. Even that pretentious buffoon of a reporter in Moscow is better than this silly tit. Surely you have some intelligent people in this country somewhere? They can’t all be like this. For the love of Pete. And they think the good guys have won—ha. Idiots. Idiots. Idiots with their news. The KGB will win, you fools. Oh yes—and I’m sure Mr. Bush and the baby Jesus and the World Bank and the pope and all the lovely boards of directors are delighted tonight. Singing into their swill. Well, I leave you in their very good company and care.”