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

He read the notes on the score—heard them within—and the sound rinsed his imagination clean of the whining. He liked to read the orchestral part to these concerti—he liked to understand what the other instruments were doing. He liked to hear the companion songs to his own.

Eventually the train shuddered to a stop. He let a moment pass. Then, cautiously, he opened the door to his compartment. Nobody around. He began to make his way toward one of the doors at the end of the carriage. There were voices. A dozen or so people had gathered. Men smoking, a woman with two children bundled in hats and scarves, their noses streaming, their cheeks red. Somebody said the border guards would start at the front and work their way through. Another said that it could take two hours. Another ten minutes. A fourth pushed open the main door and descended, cigarette angled, hands already cupping for the match’s brief spark. Arkady hesitated a moment, but he had no wish to talk and nothing to say, so he followed this man down.

The cold was absolute and brutal. The snow crunched sharp and the air smarted in his throat, crackled in his nostrils. The train had stopped at some forgotten place. A long platform: a hut at the one end; farther away, cracks of light; a tower at the other end, all dark. What was to prevent a man from walking boldly to his freedom in whichever direction he thought it lay? Nothing. But then, not so long ago all of this was Russia—right, left, forward, back.

Though the snow was no longer actually falling, it lay heavy, and his boots left a deep trail. At first, as his eyes adjusted, the forest seemed to hem in on either side, but gradually Arkady thought that he could make out the deeper black of water through the narrow belt of trees across the opposite track. It was hard to be sure. A freezing fog beset the ground there, seeming to curl in and out of the trunks. Perhaps a lake mist. There was no sound. And the silence was blissful after the train.

He turned and stood another minute peering down the narrow cutting of the track due east, from whence he had come. The smoker climbed back up onto the train. Something stayed him awhile yet. For the first time in his life he was feeling the traveler’s thrill: a mixture of apprehension and excitement.

“All of Mother Russia is old—old rock, old geology,” his history teacher had said, “and there is nothing that she cannot provide. Why would any of us wish to leave her? The Soviet Union is the hope of all mankind!”

Someone was coming along the platform. He assumed it must be a border guard. But as the figure drew closer, he realized it was some madman of the night, carrying a samovar wrapped in heavy blankets.

“Get back on the train,” the man said in heavily accented Russian, “or they will leave you here. They give no warning. They don’t care. The real border is farther on.” He inclined his head backward to point the direction he meant but did not pause, continuing on his way to the end and entering the last carriage.

Arkady’s eyes followed where the man had indicated. Then he withdrew his hands from his armpits. They were going numb. He held them out in front, looking at them as he flexed the muscles. Then, slowly, carefully, he unwrapped the bandage on his index finger and let it drop to the ground. He kicked it across the snow until it fell onto the track, between the wheels of the train. Then he squeezed both hands hard into two big fists and shoved them deep into his pockets.

Fifteen minutes later, cradling his tea, the music still open on the seat beside him, Arkady Alexandrovitch Kolokov (as he now was) offered up his passport. The squat guard, whom no cap nor boot could elevate, barely looked at it, nodded, and left the compartment. Arkady sipped some more and felt the heat coursing inside him.

Five minutes later another official—this time a taller Latvian— entered the carriage. He sat down on the bench opposite and took out his flashlight, though the light was working well enough. He examined the passport. He pointed the beam into Arkady’s face. Arkady blinked. He examined the passport again. Then shone on the music.

He spoke in Russian. “Where are you going?”

“London.”

“Good.”

The Latvian stood. Passed back the passport. And then he was gone. That was it.

Arkady swore repeatedly under his breath. Stay here. Put some more clothes on. The cold wasn’t so bad. Better than having to talk to people. In any case, he had another glass of tea lined up.

He sat alone, listening to the guard moving down the carriage. He wondered if the British authorities would be quite so easy.

Twenty minutes later the train hauled itself into the night, heading due west again.

The next day, Sunday, was wintry sharp but pleasingly so, the faintest frost still whispering white on the branches that the two women stooped beneath, the cold air thicker on the breath. Mornings like this reminded Isabella of Petersburg—the colors all reduced to their essences and only the bravest red flash of a robin’s breast daring to challenge the cobalt of the sky. They were walking together up Swain’s Lane, the steep road that divided the famous Highgate Cemetery into two plots—east, west—and took them up to village beyond. The pavement narrowed every few steps to accommodate the wayside trees, so they went along sometimes side by side, sometimes in single file. Roots had cracked and cleft the path, and they had to be careful not to stumble or slip.

At Isabella’s suggestion, and then at Susan’s urging, they were on their way to call on Francis, the keeper of the old Highgate house. As girls and then teenagers, they had done this walk many times before, though it was the first time Isabella had been back in nearly five years. She realized that this was her allotted session: Sunday morning—cordoned off from Adam and the children, negotiated, set aside; and ordinarily such a choreographed falsity would have irritated her. But there was something about old friends, something that exonerated Susan from the usual strictures of Isabella’s unforgiving mind.

The two women passed the last tree in the immediate line and the pavement widened so that Isabella could step beside her friend again—Susan’s sensible walking shoes click-clacking on the pavement while her own sneakers made no noise.

Susan looked across. “So you can store your stuff in the old house? If you decide to move back properly, I mean.”

“If I’m coming back, I want my own flat.” Isabella shook her head ruefully. “Just watch me—twenty-four hours in London and all the psycho crap will be forgotten and I’ll be after all the usual: job, flat, man. Not necessarily in that order.”

“I doubt it.” Susan smiled and went ahead as they came to another tree. Over her shoulder she said, “And you know you are welcome to stay with us for Christmas.”

“That’s kind, Suze.”

Susan stopped to retie her lace. “You didn’t write back this morning?”

“No. Not yet. Which is pretty stupid, since I started it.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. Because…” Isabella stood watching her friend fashion a methodical double bow. “I suppose because I’m shocked to hear from him at all. Because it’s been ten years. Because of his stroke. Because I don’t know exactly what to say. And because I still really, really dislike him. Because everything.”

“Do you feel sorry for him?”

“I feel sorry for anyone who has had a stroke… but. It’s hard to explain, Suze… It doesn’t change anything. It shouldn’t change anything.”

“But it does, it does.” Susan rose and they went on. “You do want to stay in contact now, right?”

“Yeah. It’s just the idea of actually doing it that makes me feel sick. It’s almost worse, now that I know he is actually reading what I write. And I definitely can’t face the thought of talking to him on the phone or—Christ—seeing him. Then there’s the whole thing with Gabs.”