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

She had forgotten about the weather. When she surfaced at Kentish Town it came at her again, as if she had returned to the deck of some desperate storm-pitched boat in the North Atlantic instead of stepping up onto the high street. The rain was almost evil, bending down in the wind to come up and under umbrellas, hoods. The cell phone she had borrowed from Susan beeped. There was a message. She stepped back inside the station’s shelter and huddled with all the other refugees. It was the guy from Petersburg, confirming their arrangement for that evening.

She had forgotten. And of course she hadn’t reminded Gabriel. Shit. Now her brother would not hear whatever the Russian had to say. She bit her lip hard. Well, fuck him.

She had already spoken to Arkady Artamenkov earlier in the week—this was how she knew Gabriel had not been at work, because the Russian had told her so. Anxious, Arkady had explained that he had been calling Gabriel, leaving messages, increasingly apprehensive as they were ignored, until eventually one of her brother’s colleagues had picked up the phone and explained that Gabriel was ill and not expected in before the weekend. Given the fiascos thus far, the Russian was clearly very worried about the reliability of Glovers in general. And so during that call she had reassured him and promised to confirm again on Friday. Yet again, therefore, she had failed to keep her word.

She listened to the Russian’s voice a second time. The message was short. She guessed that he was on a pay phone. “Hello, this is Arkady again. We are meeting tonight at Kentish Town tube station. Please call me on…” He read out the number slowly, and then again. And suddenly she was looking forward to talking with this man more than any other thing in her life that she could remember. What did he know of her mother? Please God he was still going to come.

“Hello, Pat’s Place.” A hard voice, of Northern Irish extraction.

“Hi. Can I leave a message for someone?”

“You can try.”

She was caught out a moment. “Oh. Can I—”

“There’s seventy people in and out of here every day, and half of them don’t speak a word of English, and none of them give their right and proper names. But go on—your fellow just might be the one exception. Who’s it for?”

“Arkady Artamenkov.”

“You’ll have to spell that.”

Isabella did so.

A weary breath and then: “Go on then, now. Your message.”

“Just that—just that I will be at Kentish Town tube at seven-thirty tonight as planned.”

“Your name?”

“Isabella Glover.” She hesitated. “Will you be able to give it to him? I’m pretty sure that’s his name.”

“No—no, we won’t, I’m afraid. We’ll put it on the notice board. That’s where we put all the messages. You’ll have to hope he can read.”

“Thanks.”

There was nothing else she could do. She pulled up the hood of her borrowed anorak and stepped into the sleet.

After he left La Cantina, there was nowhere else to go, so he started for home—or rather the new place. He got off a stop early to go to the supermarket in Camden; he needed to eat, something wholesome.

The weather was worsening when he came out—the wind was rising, and the pavements were no longer misty but ravaged and gnashed. He decided to walk back—up Camden High Street. Rain was coming.

It was not yet eleven. But the legion of drunks swerved and swayed and sloshed around the Camden Town station entrance, cans still cocked despite the wind, rictus grins, top of the morning to you, but even they knew that the veil was too far torn and hell was leering boldly through. The dealers and the pushers talked among themselves. The junkies lined the high street to beg his approach and plead at his heels as he passed by. He crossed the old canal, shaking his head and muttering “No, thanks” over and over. Somehow, somewhere, all that would-be counterglamour of punk, hippie, goth, and skin had drained away, vanished with last night’s disappearing tides of money and youth, and those people who remained—running the PVC and piercing stores, rolling tobacco on the street corners—now seemed far too old for their bolted brows, their blue-green hair, their black facepaint, and their careful beads. Gabriel saw through the respect-expected manner of their bearing, saw instead the undefended lines of past decades scored deep in the battlefields of their faces, the thin glaze of self-confidence like joke-shop contact lenses disguising the color of their frightened eyes.

He hurried on as the first rain came, past the petrol pumps, past the brothel, past the school. He turned onto Prince of Wales Road. Another drunk pawed at him as he came to the Maitland Park monument. This time he paused, capitulated, gave what he had, and waved away the abject thanks. There is nothing sadder than a drunk in the rain wishing you well. He reached the new and unfamiliar house, climbed the street stairs, and let himself in after struggling with the sticky lock. The others, his new flatmates, were out. Regular people. Regular jobs. Regular lives. He stowed the milk in the choking fridge and put the rest of his provisions in their places, then made straight for his bedroom at the very top.

It was a mess.

It took him a moment to understand.

He had been burgled. His laptop was gone. His portable stereo. His printer. His scanner. The floor was covered with his clothes, his compact disks, books, papers, everything.

He turned on his heel and went across the tiny attic landing to check Sean’s room. It was the same. Some part of him felt an odd comfort. They weren’t just after him.

Probably he should go down. Probably he should find out where the burglars came in. Probably he should call the police.

He looked out of his attic window for a while: defunct chimneypots and hooligan seagulls. Then, slowly, grimly, he turned. He bent under the bed. He dislodged the baseboard. He wriggled his fingers into the gap. Thank Christ. He pulled out the little box. He opened it up. The ring that his grandfather had given him was still there. Like everyone else, the burglar wasn’t very good at his chosen occupation. The mess, as ever, was just a way of diverting people from this fact.

He locked his door. He took off his coat. He prized off his shoes. He selected “Señor” on his MP3 player and threw himself down on his bed with the ring. There was no place a man could go, no matter how high or how low, that Dylan had not been before. You lay down your head in the strangest of rooms and the guestbook by the bed always said that he had passed through this way at least once before—sometimes last week, sometimes a lifetime ago.

He half woke. The weather was raging. Sleet scratching at the windowpane. A million invisible claws.

He half slept. He wanted a woman so badly that he felt he could barely breathe. Yes, this room, this mess, all of this would not matter if only there were some woman with whom he could now lie down and open up the constricted passageways of his heart. He turned away from what light was left in the day. From the age of fifteen, he had never gone more than a fortnight without someone to share his thoughts, to touch, to listen to, to laugh with—some he had admired, some he had simply desired, and those very few whom he had loved. And, oh Christ, they were haunting him now, slipping away just beyond the edges of his vision, their laughter vanishing just as his ear seemed to catch the happy chime. He drew the blanket over him. A woman’s kiss. The whole sorry, shitty, solitary slog of a man’s life could still be redeemed by a woman’s single kiss.

He was going to have to go back. He thought he was strong, but he was not. He was going to have to call her. Get up, man, get up. Rest awhile first.