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

Mark: “No.”

Louise: “Yes.”

“You are such a liar. Mum did not have to ring the fire brigade.”

He took a six-year-old’s pleasure in knowing the right word. And Isabella observed his emphasis take the wind out of four-year-old Louise’s tiny new sails.

“Well, your mum said it was okay to try again as long as I helped this time. So—you guys carry on for a bit. I’m going to be upstairs on the computer if you want me. And after the hot chocolate and the popcorn, we can decide what story you want.”

“Hobbit,” Mark said, turning back to the screen.

“It’s the prequel,” Louise added, nodding assuredly.

The slaughter of orcs began again with renewed vengeance.

She decided to compose a letter on the computer. She could write it out by hand tomorrow. Francis would have the address. If she could get something down, then she could post it straightaway. Two days maximum to Paris. No sense delaying. And e-mail clearly wasn’t getting through. She sat down, refreshed the screen, and felt her entire body go tense.

My dear Isabella,

Thank you for your last three e-mails. And I am very sorry not to have replied until now. The reasons for my silence are both silly and rather more sobering. Simply, I did not have my computer for much of November and so missed your first and second of earlier that month; and then, unfortunately, I suffered a stroke, and so missed your third until yesterday. Fortunately, I am home from the hospital now, and the individual who had the loan of the laptop has returned. And so, what a welcome surprise to hear from you, the first name I saw on my first day back.

Of course there is so much that I wish to write—in response to your thoughts about your mother’s death, your curiosity regarding her life, and in response to your oblique, but no less kind for that, inquiry about my circumstances. But forgive me if I plead a twofold pardon for the moment: though I am very lucky—the stroke was relatively minor, and recovery has been frustrating but steady—it is still rather difficult for me to concentrate (or type) for too long; and, second, well, there is so very much I would like to talk to you about that it seems altogether overwhelming to begin here on e-mail.

For now, then, let me say that I am well enough, the computer thief has become my carer by way of recompense, and so I am looked after. That I continue to live here in Paris. That I am awed by your being so long in New York and would love to hear more about this and the rest of your life. That, most of all, I am sorry we have been incommunicado for so long and hope this change is a permanent righting of that wrong. And, finally, that I think of you every day.

It seemed to Arkady Alexandrovitch as if the night itself had grown hoarse. He lay sideways across the wear-smoothed wooden seats and listened to the clank and thunder of the train heading west, his bag a pillow, his coat a blanket. He had not been able to sleep properly but wandered back and forth, sometimes wakeful, sometimes in deep reverie, never quite gone from himself. There was little purpose now—the border could not be far off.

He heard everything distinctly: the whir of the heater in his compartment, the chatter of the shutters where they refused to fasten down, the low rumble of the wheels as they plundered the uneven track and the creak of the carriages as they concertinaed through the slow curves, the grate and scrape of every road crossing, the clink of points, the jangled wail of station bells rushing by, the grunt and snort of the engine itself, the sudden press and whoosh of the tunnels, the heavy breath of spur lines, and, beneath it all, the bass croak of the sleepers. If there were such a thing as music’s jealous rival, then this train, on this December night, was it.

There was nobody else in his compartment. He had extinguished all the lights and pulled down all the screens so that he lay in darkness save for the passing of shadows. The heater was feeble—might even have been blowing cold—and he kept himself still so as not to disturb the pockets of warmth beneath his greatcoat.

The carriage jolted over some unknown junction and he pressed his hands deeper into his armpits. He had never left Petersburg in this direction before. He had never left Russia before. But he did not feel afraid—there was nothing further that the world could really do to him. All the same, though he did not recognize the feeling to give it a proper name, he was lonely.

The plan was to take the train through the Baltic states as far as Riga in Latvia. There he would transfer to a direct flight to London Stanstead on the new route operated by some bullshit British airline. It was the cheapest way, Henry said, and Stanstead was easiest. Henry had purchased his train ticket, Henry had paid for the flight, Henry had given him thirty pounds, but the two hundred and forty dollars that Arkady had in the money belt strapped to his chest were his own—secret money he had saved.

In reality, Arkady did not expect to make it as far as Riga. He expected the whole thing to go to shit as soon as he came to the Latvian border. His passport to be laughed at, confiscated, ridiculed as counterfeit. Or perhaps he might be able to bribe his way through. But that would be all his funds gone—then he’d be refused his place on the plane, and he’d have to walk or hitchhike all the way back, probably though Estonia, and hope to slip home into Russia crosscountry through the forests, the only fool going the other way. He was glad of his boots and his coat.

He shut his eyes. The train hammered on. His mind wandered close by sleep again. His imagined hell was a quasi-religious one (the memory of the dormitory whisperings of the secret “our savior” cabals): a black and broiling landscape as far from the white of a Petersburg winter as possible; nameless long-necked creatures flying across a red moon that rode out as quickly as it disappeared; a discarded sickle by the banks of an oozing yellow lava stream; and a narrow path that climbed the caldera, snaking through the smoke and sulfur, one switchback after another, people lying by the side, people crawling, people pressing in beside him, all of them dressed in rags and dying of thirst, nothing but disappearances and desolation spoken. And whatever they hissed, it was his curse not only to expect three times worse on this journey but also to encourage it—as if to prove, again and again, that neither luck nor God existed. Though why he had to demonstrate this to himself when he knew it for a fact of experience—as surely as he knew that there was blood on some of the sheets at the orphanage and that it never quite washed out—he did not know. With the piano gone, perhaps the only thing that was saving him from vodka (as he became aware of the engine altering pitch) was the thought that he needed to stay alive to hunt down Leary if his bullshit papers failed.

The brake squeal when at last it came was deafening. He rolled over, stood up, and put his coat on quickly before the warmth fled its folds. It was becoming colder. He grimaced. There was a Petersburg saying he had always liked: “Just when you think it can’t get any colder, it gets much fucking colder.” He reached his hand up to the heater. Broken. If he made it across the border, he would change compartments, even if it meant sharing. He found the light, lifted down his bag, and opened up the zip to pull out some music to read. He and Henry had made up someone to be. They had made up somewhere to be from. But he was a pianist still, and the same age. Might as well look the part.

He wasn’t anxious—rather, he just wanted his fate decided. So that he could resign himself to it. But there was no way of knowing whether the passport and visa would pass inspection. And neither did he know what would happen to him if they did not. He had looked through everything, of course, but he was no expert on such documentation, so it was a pointless inspection. And Henry was useless.