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

“ Grisha did not get all your money.”

“We don’t know that it was Grisha. Okay, he’s… he’s a dealer. But he’s not a… not a psychopath.” Arkady swore in Russian.

Henry rushed on. “I have around a thousand pounds sterling left in another bank account,” he lied. “And we can use this to buy the passport.”

“Whatever you have, you need.”

“Please, Arkasha. Let me finish.” Henry drew shallow breath, coming past the window again. “I am not sure how much the passport will cost, but I assume this is enough. And I am not giving you the money. You can pay me back in a few years, when you are taking your huge concert fees. Or maybe right away—when you come back from meeting them! If it goes well. Who knows? Regardless. It doesn’t matter. The point is that you have to go now. And I can help you.”

“You need your money for your shit.”

Henry came to a halt at the top of his circuit. He said the words quietly, addressing the back of the Russian’s head. “I am stopping.”

Arkady laughed out loud.

“I am stopping.”

“You are never stopping. Nobody ever stops.”

Henry passed the bedroom door once more and stood at the foot of the sofa, meeting the other’s eyes for a second before taking off again along the far wall. He spoke quickly now, his bony arms jerking as if he might sheer off from his desperate orbit at any moment.

“Arkady, listen to me—I don’t want to have any money left. And I don’t want to have anything. I… I have a bet with myself. If I have nothing left and I can’t buy any more, then I will give up. Pull myself together. Yes, okay, yes… I will buy enough food and water to last until you are back. I will spend what I need to get that. Water—some food. And we will fix the hole. But that’s all. After that, I don’t want the money in the bank because I don’t want to burn it all—and that’s what will happen. I will burn it on the shit. Every penny. So this…“He indicated the room with a throw of his arm. “This is a blessing in disguise. Not the piano. But I mean all my money gone. Everything taken. Because I would only have spent it on shit… shit, shit, and more shit. And it would have gone on and on—until I ran out of money, anyway. So all that has happened is that I have the opportunity to stop sooner. To stop when you go to find your family. And I don’t want to have any more secret money in the bank. I don’t want it there. I don’t want it, because I tell you: I will go and I will spend it on shit. So you have to take my money. I want you to take it. I need you to take it. It’s a loan. That’s all. A loan until I am off. And then you can give it back to me.”

Arkady was watching Henry closely.

“Do you understand, Arkasha?”

At last the Russian sat up. “You say this now because you know there is so much more hidden in your room. But when the time comes, when you have no more, you will do anything. The money or the no-money is not the difference. When the time comes, you will do anything—you will sell your body, you will kill if you have to.”

“If it makes no difference, then take it. If the money is not the difference, then take it. Please. Let me try.”

She came out of the bedroom barefoot, wearing nothing but one of Arkady’s T-shirts. Henry tried to nod a greeting, but her expression reflected only a sudden aversion back at him. He walked quickly past the sofa and entered the wreckage of his room.

The faster he used, the faster he ran out, the faster he would get to zero.

There comes a time in every man’s life when the fucking around just has to stop. Operating (as ever) in the murky, muddy, potholed, all-sides-fired-upon, no man’s land of modern secular ethics (which might, of course, be no ethics at all), Gabriel could not be certain whether it was his mother’s death, his life stage, or the quasi-religious ache of some ancient human gene that had brought him abruptly to this realization. But once beheld, this flinty truth, he realized, could no longer be avoided. And he knew for certain that he must now make some decisions about his life—ideally, good ones, though he recognized with stolid candor (as he faced down an unnecessarily confrontational lunchtime sandwich) that any decisions at all would likely be greeted with much emotional bunting as a sign of progress.

The telephone interrupted his thoughts.

“Hi, Gabriel. Francine.”

“Hello, Francine. I was about to call you. How are you?”

“Fine, fine, fine.”

He detected more than the usual vinegar in the various acid ratios of her voice.

“Hang on… I’m in the car.” There was the sound of an ill-timed and aggressive gear change. “You know, I’m not being funny, but I really don’t think that the… the Indians know how to drive.”

He twisted the proofs around so he could read them. No, she was not being funny. Francine O’Brien was never being funny.

“Gabriel, I wanted to say that I personally am really looking forward to ‘Toxic Parents.’ And that—get this—Randy himself is taking an interest in this one. His assistant called last night from Los Angeles. Have you met her? Caroline. Lovely girl. She’s had surgery, of course, and I think it’s affecting her skin, but she’s got such a great smile in her voice. Do you know if they’ve shut the M40?”

“Haven’t heard anything here, Francine. Are you off to somewhere exciting?” His eye fled to a quarter-page advertisement for one of Randy K. Norris’s herbal “rescue remedies.” “Fight Stress,” it screamed. But surely, he thought, that’s exactly what stress wanted—a fight.

“I’ve got this half-day of brand-new treatments. Sumatran Indulgence Therapy. It’s that seventies singer’s ex-wife—God, you know who I mean, she’s in all the mags at the moment—it’s her new place.”

“Can’t think who you mean, offhand.” Gabriel knew exactly whom Francine was referring to. He’d spoken to the woman in question on the phone. Yet another avaricious, harrowingly insecure, narcissistic little claw-wielder who had recently about-faced into a guru of well-being and life balance. How did any of these people expect to be taken seriously? At least Francine let the toxins flow.

“Davina Trench That’s her But anyway, they’re trialing in bloody Maidenhead. I mean—hello?—who ever wants to go to Maidenhead? It might as well be in…”

“Indonesia.”

“Wherever.”

“Be great when you arrive, though. You can really relax and pamper yourself.” He hated the word “pamper” almost as much as he hated the word “indulgence,” which in turn was almost as much as he loathed the word “treatment,” with its wretchedly inane pretension toward medicine. Even more dispiriting was that this kind of idiotic vocabulary had become his daily vernacular; most of the people he dealt with these days could not even imagine him employing such words sarcastically, never mind noticing any nuance in his voice. No more than they could imagine the seven solid years of round-the-clock blood-and-agony life-and-death slog that it actually took to become a doctor. “Are they just an indulgence outfit, or do they do other stuff too?”

“Yoga.”

“Expensive?”

“Very.”

“Well, three-sixty inner calm is priceless, I suppose.”

“Oh, you cow — that fat cow just cut me off.” There was the sound of a horn. “This is a freebie. Said I might do a write-up for them.”

And he hated the word “freebie.” And the thought of Francine never doing any of the write-ups for all the million “freebies” she accepted, and the thought of how excruciating it would be to have to run one of her pieces if ever she did.