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

And this led him to thinking of his own grandfather, Max, and how little he had talked to him—twenty-six-year-old Max, already working for the British with the Russians against Hitler. Or so the story went. But perhaps none of it was true. All that could be certain was that his grandfather lived in Russia, in Moscow and then in Petersburg, doing who knows what for most of his life. Weighing in on one side or the other, or both, and thereby canceling himself out. He wondered what his grandmother had made of it all. Dead thirty years now. Perhaps the real difficulty was that life was far too short. Just as one generation learned their lessons, they died; and the next had to step forward and start again from scratch, with nothing to work from but those anonymous deep-coded atavistic imperatives, the secret commands of the genes, and whatever few cogent guidelines they had managed to rescue from the minute-by-minute demonstration of human contradiction, confusion, and hypocrisy that was their parents. Or guardians. Childhood: it was like trying to chart an entire continent by the brief flare of a firework. Except that you had no idea that this was your only chance to explore for free, and instead you spent the five seconds of precious light gawping at the sky, stuffing treacle into your mouth. And then it went dark again.

He could not love Paris. Because his father lived there and the whole place seemed to exude his father’s manner. This was ridiculous, of course, and he knew it; but then, underneath he had started thinking that everything was ridiculous, so why discard one notion and hang on to others? Nonetheless, he decided to walk to his father’s flat and see if the Christmas streets would make him happy, sad, angry, or full of goodwill to all men. He had the notion that he should start treating himself as a human experiment, an ongoing private investigation into the effect of environment on the emotions. Maybe even take some notes. A purpose, at least.

After arriving late yesterday afternoon, he had gone straight to the place he was staying, at the top of the Rue de la Chine, up in the twentieth. His friend Syrie, Anglo-French aspiring actress turned massage therapist, had given him her spare room; they had done a play together years and years ago.

Syrie had gone out early that morning with her boyfriend, Jean-the-physiotherapist. She had left him a map, but he knew the way, more or less—down to Gambetta, past Père Lachaise, and then in along the Chemin Vert. He had set off at twelve, in plenty of time.

Now he stopped at a café and ate a light lunch—mussels in white wine—preferring not to risk the tiredness that heavy food might bring on. He needed to be alert. He tried to read Le Figaro and regretted his bad French. He drank a delicious coffee, smoked a perfect cigarette, and watched the passersby. He was beginning to feel more and more disengaged—freewheeling, almost—as he set off again. Perhaps it was Paris after all, his London self hushed, the personality appeasement of a foreign city.

At length, after the Place de la Bastille and the canal, he came to the river and began walking north along the embankment in the direction of the Hotel de Ville and the Pont Marie. The weather was cold, but at least it wasn’t snowing or raining. He was glad of his gloves. Maybe, he thought, if it were not for Isabella, then he wouldn’t have bothered. Sure, he would have believed Arkady. He would have uncovered Nicholas’s whereabouts. He would have written Arkady a second letter addressed to his father, bought the Russian a Eurostar ticket, and sent him on his way. Sorry, but I can’t help. These people, whoever they are—these relations —they’re an accident. Please, take what you need, do what you can, and good luck. Shout if you are ever in London again.

He came to the bridge and turned left, over the river, a slight wind cold on his right cheek. Or maybe Isabella was right: maybe you simply needed to know. Maybe you could not go anywhere, in any direction, unless you knew where you had started. As a human being, perhaps you had a deep and inescapable requirement to understand your history, your genesis, as clearly and as fully as possible, however painful, however unpleasant. And those who did not, or could not, come to this knowledge walked the earth as if inwardly crippled, forever compensating, forever uneasy, forever secretive. (Jesus, just look at it: Notre Dame like some mighty queen termite, belly-stranded in the middle of the river by the sheer volume of her pregnancy.) But strange that being human was never enough on its own. That the need went further. The need to belong. To belong to one tribe or the other. This is my land, these are my people, this is what we believe—which is where the trouble began. Why could we not be content with species-pride, the staggering good fortune of belonging to humanity itself? Mankind, the mother of all miracles. Wasn’t that enough?

And here he was: the Café Charlotte. So this… this must be the quay. He seemed to remember this street vaguely from a childhood trip. Ice cream. He turned left, looking up at the numbers as he went along. He had the odd sense of the day as intensely normal and abnormal at the same time—something like watching the closed-circuit footage on the news a week later: this is the station five minutes before the bomb. The sky was as many shades of gray as black and white could fashion. A little windier now, and a bite in that. Curiously, he had remembered the Seine as wider. But of course this was only half of it. This was an island.

Here.

He went under the arch and into the courtyard.

And now, now that he was actually at his father’s address, his heart, his spirit, his mind, everything suddenly felt like a million maggots writhing. And he was astonished to find that there was no anger either—or no anger anywhere near the surface, no hostility, no upset, no sadness or seething. Instead there was only this overwhelming, excruciating sense of embarrassment.

He stopped at the bottom of the century-worn stairs. He felt painfully, agonizingly nervous, shy. He felt ashamed of himself. And it was beyond anything he had ever experienced before—terrible nerve-squirming embarrassment. Worse, he was not just embarrassed for himself but also, unbelievably, embarrassed for his father. Dear God. Despite everything, here he was, stuck still, empathizing with the old goat for having to enact his part in this ghastly meeting with so ridiculous a son.

He leaned against the wall in the semidarkness. He felt physically sick with it. Of all the reactions, he had least expected this one.

Time stalled. He could neither go up nor turn around. He became apprehensive that at any minute someone might come out of one of the other doors on the staircase and wonder what the hell he was doing. So, madly, he took his telephone from his pocket and began thumbing through the names in his address book for no reason. He had the idea that he might call someone. Might, in fact, call Isabella.

Christ, today was the wrong day. Maybe it was the train ride. But there was nothing there. No fury and no flame. No injury, no hurt. He was terrified that he wouldn’t be able to remember what it was all about ever again, that he might go in there, go through with it all, and at no point do justice to whatever it was he had previously thought had been so traduced all his life. This was a new malaise altogether: standing in the shadows of his father’s stairway, scared to move in case anyone heard him.

The door opened.

“Okay… I have to go,” he said to nobody, into the receiver of his telephone, before making a show of pressing a button to end the call.

“Gabriel. I thought it must be you.”

The figure in the doorway looked nothing like his father. He was an old man, completely white-haired, with rheumy eyes, and thin, very thin; and now, as the door was pulled back, Gabriel could see that this old man moved with great difficulty and with a cane.