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

She was back in the same Internet café. And this time, as well as the rotting carpet, she could smell the milk turning sour where someone had spilled it beside the help-yourself coffee stand.

Hey, Dad, are you gay? I’ve suspected it for years deep down. Francis is an old boyfriend, isn’t he? Well, good. Great, in fact! It’s fine. It really is. Nobody cares anymore. That’s one victory we have won. You can tell me. You can trust me. If trust is what you need. Anyway, it explains a good deal, and thank you for your honesty.

Oh yeah, and were you in Petersburg before Mum died? Your friend Mr. Avery nearly gave you away, you know. Did you go to see her die? That would suit you, wouldn’t it? The ultimate combination of pain followed by histrionic displays of affection, you sadistic bastard. See, she suffers almost to death! And see, I love her after all! All you who doubted my capacity for compassion. You were wrong. I held it back behind these castle walls of cold gray stone for dire moments such as this. So now… now see the iron man’s bleeding heart! See how I demonstrate my love. Hitler fondles his dogs. Stalin pats the children’s heads.

Well, understand this, you vainglorious little shit: I’m not fooled. Because I do see, I see it all clearly: because still, still, still, it’s all about you, isn’t it? Even your own wife’s, my mother’s, cancer is nothing more than a stage on which you can strut and preen your narcissism. Admire me, admire the drama of the strongman’s unexpected kindness. Admire his great reservoir of love released. Count yourselves lucky to see such a glimpse. Because you never ever forget how it plays, even if only to the rapturous audience in your head, do you, Dad?

Oh Christ. Christ. Christ. She felt the grief kraken rising from the deep, sending ripples through the underground lake of her tears.

Shitting hell.

She looked around. The Internet café was almost empty this afternoon. She bit her lip. This was going to be a long, painful process. She must ask her questions singly. She must win her father s trust. She must persuade the portcullis guard one ratchet at a time. Only then… With a tremendous effort, she gathered herself. And then, falsely calm, she deleted everything except the first paragraph (as she had always known she would) and let the phrase “I don’t want to interfere in your life” stand as the most oblique invitation to a father’s frankness that had ever been written.

Next, Sasha.

Though maybe she didn’t plan to end it forever. After all, she liked the guy. He was sweet. He was intelligent. He was on the same side. Lazy, immature—yes; but good-hearted beneath all the pretentious film-industry jargon he talked; and all he needed was some confidence, someone to take him seriously out there so that he could take himself seriously too.

When she had met him, he had just sold a scene from one of his screenplays—something to do with a dog being set on fire by accident—and he was riding high. He made her laugh—properly, wholeheartedly, like the young Woody Allen made her laugh. He had a nice line in existential incredulity. Since then, he had seemed to grow younger or more puerile. And either she’d begun to see the banality of the form for what it was or he had started to write more banal things. In any case, his work had foundered. And his mother, she knew, was now giving him money. Which wasn’t good for him. He was turning in on himself. She suspected he was spending hours online in chat rooms. He needed someone to draw him out again, to love him without secret reserve, to whisper reassurance to him in the night.

Their recent antagonism, which had started a good few months before her mother had died, was officially about space. Sasha worked at home, and he needed some undisturbed zone of his own: namely, the main table. This she duly ceded, accepting the piles of papers, the ostentatious laptop, the stacked books, the newspaper clippings, the printer on the floor with its wretchedly too-short cable stretched lethally taut from desk to socket at shin height. In return, the sofa was hers. She lived around his mess. She did not complain.

Beneath this, though, she had known that there was a second and more truthful level of the argument. Sasha thought that she did not believe in his efforts. Did not really believe in his talent. Did not believe in the persona he wanted her to believe in. Did not, in fact, believe in him. And the more he thought that she did not believe, the more the paper and the mess expanded, as he tried to seek her affirmation by subconsciously forcing his work again and again back under her retreating nose. Because in some furtive way, Sasha also knew that this was the real argument, and so he wanted to prize her out into the open to challenge her. And yet he was also a coward. So, having goaded her out with his mess from time to time, he would then devote all his energy to pretending that the argument was only about space after all and what the hell was she getting so crazy about when, sure, if it was a problem, he’d tidy up every night and she could use the goddamn table.

All this changed in the weeks after Petersburg. After Russia—dear God, the endless false floors—after Russia, a new and even deeper level had gradually revealed itself to Isabella: that Sasha was beside the point. Simply, she didn’t care. She didn’t care about the space. She didn’t care about his work. Not really. Not in the way you are supposed to care about the people you love. All of it was… was irrelevant. Because really this argument was with herself: where she was, who she was, what she was doing. And she was determined now to fight her way clear of the emotional wreckage of her parents (and their whole spineless generation), and Sasha would never understand this. She could neither count on nor confide in him. Either go in repetitious circles or break free: this was the choice. Fondness but not love.

Having left work in the morning and despite the hours at the Internet café, she was home early—it was only just three. She climbed the narrow stairwell with no plan of what to say but knowing that she must say it.

Her keys caught him out. She put her bag down by the sink. She did not look over again, to save him that indignity at least. Instead, leaning against the doorjamb, she bent awkwardly, her skirt restrictive, and removed her wretched shoes as slowly as she could, while he did himself up.

Fifteen bad seconds passed. The apartment smelled close, fetid.

“Hi, baby,” he said.

He was crimson. Torn between candor and dissembling. Uncertain of her reaction. Trying to click screens shut surreptitiously now.

“Sasha, I resigned from work today and I’m going back to London as soon as I can. I’m not sure for how long.” She did not advance but remained on the threshold. “I don’t want you to wait for me, though. I don’t want you to wait for me to come back, I mean.”

His face was blank, then bewildered. His attention divided. He was still trying to shut down whatever it was he had been looking at. And she could see that he was not sure what exactly she was saying. Understandable. So she had better just say it.

“Sasha.” She had him now. She had never said his name like that before. “Sasha, this is over for me.”

“What?”

“I don’t want to say…” Clean break, cruel to be kind: she felt the clichés gathering like a circle of bitchy teenage girls. So she stood her ground. “I don’t want to say that this is about me and not you, because it isn’t. This is about our relationship together… coming to an end.” She almost said “for now”—anything to make this easier. “But it is true, I have so many things I have to get straightened out—on my own. Partly about my mother and father and all that, but I think also about me. My life has been on pause for too long. I feel like I can’t move on until I have… okay, until I have sorted out who I am. And until then, I can’t be anything to anybody. I can’t be anything to you. I’m sorry.”