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

“I used to practice on your mother’s piano at her apartment on the Griboedova in St. Petersburg.”

“You are a musician?” Why hadn’t Gabriel told her anything about this?

“Yes. I play the piano. She… she said to me many things about you. We were supposed to talk together today.”

“Right, right, right. Oh, well, we have to arrange another time.” She glanced at the car. A scaffolding truck was turning into the road. It would not be able to get past. “I—we—would love to meet up. We really would. Is there a number I can call you on? I’m so sorry about this.”

“No. I—I—I do not have a phone.”

“Okay. Is there a way of getting in touch with you?”

His head fell and he seemed to be looking at his feet.

“How about… how about this Friday?” Give Gabriel some time, she thought; yes, he would want to be there. “Erm… whereabouts are you based?”

“I do not understand.” He looked up again.

“Where are you staying?”

“Oh, near Harrow Road.”

“Well, to be honest, the simplest thing to do is say… seven-thirty on Friday evening… at Kentish Town tube. I will definitely be there. Hang on a sec.” She opened the passenger door, reached pen and paper out of her bag, apologized to Adam again, and scribbled down her cell phone number on a piece of paper. The scaffolding truck pulled up behind the car. “This is my number. Call me anytime to confirm. I promise I will be there. Friday, Kentish Town at seven-thirty. What’s your e-mail?”

He told her an address.

“Write it down.” She handed him the pen.

The driver leaned out of the window of the truck. “Oy, love, how long you gonna be? We’ve got houses to rob.”

“Okay. See you… on Friday.” She met the Russian’s eyes a second time, hoping to convey her sincerity. A car was coming in behind the truck.

“Yes, okay.” He seemed to be about to say something but then stopped.

“Friday at Kentish Town. I promise. I am so sorry about this.”

“I will call you.”

“Yes, call me whenever. I’d love to talk. I’ll send you an e-mail to confirm.” She turned to open the door and climb into the car. When, three seconds later, she looked back through the window to wave, he was already walking away.

The sickness passed toward the end of day four. He washed himself over and over in cold water on day five. Shaved. Face and head. Bin-bagged his bedclothes and as much of his filthy room as he could. Carried the bags out into the narrow hall. Left them by the hole. He ate a tin of beans, a biscuit, and some dried figs. As much as he could stomach. Then he took the last of the sleeping pills and moved into Arkady’s room. He slept for ten hours in the cleanliness of his friend’s bed.

On the sixth day, he thought he could appear almost normal again, though his knees ached and his stomach was still uneasy. He dressed in Arkady’s oldest clothes—sweater sleeves and trouser legs rolled, the same gulag prisoner but liberated this very morning, emaciated and all but drowning in borrowed civvies. He lugged out the black sacks. Hauled out his mattress, kicked it down the stairs one flight at a time. Burned everything on the fires outside.

There was never any real daylight in the winter. A light snow began to fall.

He climbed the stairs one flight at a time, amazed at the simple functioning of his lungs. He found another sweater, put some socks on his hands, squeezed into his old raincoat, and walked slowly all the way to Sennayska market. He went straight to Tsoikin, the CD seller from whom he had bought so much of his beloved library. The darkness returned. He walked back. He sat waiting. (Had he known all along that he would sell the music? It now seemed so.) Tsoikin arrived at seven and offered him a derisory sum for everything. He accepted immediately and took the cash. He apologized for the hole in the wall and the dust on all the cases. He explained that he was leaving. He asked to keep a single disk—Vivaldi’s holy music. He left Tsoikin boxing up and went straight out to call Grisha from a pay phone.

He hung around Primorskaya station, scared that he would miss him, nursing tea that was forever cooling. Three hours later, at eleven, Grisha arrived in his car. They went for a ride. Henry agreed to meet with Leary the following day. He gave Grisha his money. And Grisha, all grins and goodwill, gave him a little extra in return.

He climbed out by the bank of the Neva. He waited while Grisha pulled cautiously away—mirror signal maneuver, fog lights on, a scrupulous and law-abiding driver. The wind had dropped, but snow was falling thickly again, flakes like crumbled Eucharist, sticking to everything. The river was frozen. He stuck his hand out and took the first car that came skidding in to the curb. At the lights the man offered him half a bottle of vodka—very special, he said. He gave the man the rest of his money. Just what he needed to make sure.

Tsoikin was gone. The room was empty now save for the dust, the stereo, and the tattered sofa. He found an unused syringe in his desk. (Had he been saving it there for this? It now seemed so.) He put on the only CD he had kept, seeking Beatus vir, in memoria aeterna. He knew his tolerance level would have dropped. But he prepared a bigger hit than his usual. He drank some of the vodka as he did so, wincing against the sting. Vivaldi’s voices sang. He thanked God for his good veins, thanked God that he had taken care to rotate. He swigged another slug of vodka. He thought, I do not want to be here. He thought, This is my friend. He thought, This is coming home. He thought, Don’t push it all in at once. Push and stop. Push and stop. Push and stop.

And when it came, it was like the pure-purer-purest relief and the tranquil-happy surge of every good thing in the world, every sweet taste, every scent, every sound, and then an ever-flooding and perfect absence; and the music played and he didn’t care, and his breathing slowed, and he really didn’t care, and he lay back, and he felt himself going going going and he didn’t care. And his breathing slowed a little more. And he knew he was going over. He knew he was going over. But he didn’t care. His soul at last was circling that most blissful zero, angels falling, ragged wings ripped and broken, circling that very center of nothingness.

And on the seventh day he was dead.

London was in a damp and rheumy mood when he awoke at six; his windowsill wet with the night-long tears of some passing ghost or other. A hundred generations of Londoners seemed to have been weeping in the streets when he set off half an hour later. The parked taxi opposite, the red pillar box on the corner, the trees and the lampposts—all seemed to loom at him out of the murk as if to signify a cold aggression on the part of his new surroundings. So suddenly did the first figure he encountered appear that he almost fell into the dead pools of the other’s eyes before he had time to stand aside. They stopped a moment before passing each other, and the stranger muttered something unintelligible, which Gabriel’s imagination took to be more of the same: “What are you doing here? Get out of the way. Yes, you, asshole.”

Perversely, he was relieved that he wasn’t sleeping. Now that he had been off work for a week, he would have resented waking up in the cold darkness and setting out for this breakfast meeting if it meant missing out on lying warm in his bed. But for the first time in his entire adult life, his bed was womanless and had become little more than a cradle for nightmares, waking or otherwise.

He emerged onto the main road at the bottom of Haverstock Hill, walked past the Salvation Army, and crossed for the tube station. There was no real reason for him to be going. Though that did not bother him: there was no real reason for doing anything. Actually, there was a reason: perhaps he half wanted to find out a little something about the job himself. Or was this too an effort on behalf of his subconscious to pretend? In fact, he didn’t give a fuck about TV. Why lie to himself? He would rather edit the new bottled-water magazine in the Roland Sheekey basement than waste his life’s dwindling energy making yet more crap for Channel Eight and its ten million catatonic viewers. Hard these days to convey how little he cared for what people did, said they did, wanted to do. His life henceforward, he feared, would be all about disguising himself, concealing his natural reaction, burying it deep. Oh Christ… Not yet six days and he missed Lina like his own limbs. And Connie, whom he must not call again. Never again—unless and until he was clear. His head ached, physically ached, so that he thought maybe he really did have the flu. He went underground.