Carol Birch - Orphans of the Carnival

Two women came up to him. ‘Are you the proprietor?’

‘I am.’ He bowed graciously.

‘Have you got Cleopatra?’

‘Room number three, ladies,’ he said, twinkling at them but turning it off as soon as they’d gone. He walked to the door and stood blinking out at the cold bright Saint Petersburg sunshine. The girl in the ticket booth was worrying her nails.

‘I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ he said tetchily.

‘Oh. Sorry, Sir,’ she said, turning bright red and looking as if she was going to cry.

‘It’s all right,’ he snapped. ‘Just don’t do it, that’s all. Puts people off. Don’t forget you’re in the public eye.’

‘Yes,’ she whispered, dropping her eyes.

He stepped out and strolled down Nevsky Prospect. She’s still mine, he thought, I can bring her back whenever I like. On the corner of Nevsky Prospect and Sadovaya Street he saw Liliya Grigorievka Levkova hurrying along on the other side of the street with her hands in a muff and her head down. Surely not. Can’t be her, she’d be — what? — surely getting on for fifty now. Is it her? What’s she doing in Petersburg? God, my eyes. Hardly looks a day older. Before he’d had a chance to think, he found himself attempting to jog in a sprightly manner across the road and intercept her. It made his legs ache. ‘Liliya Grigorievka,’ he said brightly, ‘what a surprise!’ She glanced up once, startled, saw him, appeared about to speak but immediately blanked her eyes and hurried past, drawing herself imperceptibly away from him as she did so as if he was something slimy. And then he wasn’t even sure that it was her. He went down to the river and walked along as far as Tuchkov Bridge. It was her. Danced with her once. Oh, Mr Lent. Wrinkling her nose. Well, that was nice, wasn’t it? Running away like that. Snob. Who does she think she is? Full of snobs this country. He stood shivering, looking down into the Neva’s melting ice. The river was choppy, a sharp breeze gusting from the Gulf of Finland. What was wrong with her? Listening to the things people said, that’s what. Monster. Vile. Easy to talk. He felt a quivering, a funny feeling in the nerve ends.

Sometimes, in the middle of an ordinary day, a dark flame of terror licked round his gut. The water was black but full of light. The sky was dirty. His head was about to burst.

He turned and walked back, needing a drink. The sounds in his head, the eternal inner babble swishing around like the flux of waves, mingled with the sounds in the street. He kept an eye out for Liliya Grigorievka Levkova but she was nowhere to be seen. If he saw her, he’d go up to her and say — he didn’t know what. It didn’t matter as long as it was honest. That was the trouble, no one was honest. From now on, he thought, what if I never said another word that was not the honest truth? They’d think he was mad, but he’d be sane for the first time. He smiled as he walked. When he reached the museum, he passed the same two women coming out.

‘I saw a much better Cleopatra than that,’ one of them said. ‘It moved. You saw the snake bite her.’

‘Yes, Madame,’ he said, ‘some displays are more vulgar than this one.’

He went upstairs and started getting undressed, caught sight of himself in the mirror: a small insignificant man with a double chin. He’d always been pleased with his looks, but not any more. He got into bed. Marie was out with the boy somewhere. She had friends he didn’t even know. He didn’t sleep but closed his eyes and pretended. After about half an hour, he realised he had no idea what time of the day it was. It could have been the middle of the afternoon, the dead of night or a fine spring morning. At that moment Marie came swanning into the room with Oscar in her arms. ‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘you’re not ill again, are you?’

Theo bolted upright and screamed, ‘Get out!’

She flinched. The baby started crying.

‘Don’t you dare speak to me like that!’ she said, shushing the baby.

‘Don’t you dare speak to me like that.’ He threw his head back down on the pillow so hard it bounced.

She’d had her hair done. All frizzed out. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ she said, jogging the child up and down. ‘Aren’t you well?’

‘I’m just very, very tired.’

‘Go back to that doctor,’ she said and walked out.

The doctor couldn’t be sure but gave him mercury and potassium iodide to be on the safe side. He got a twitch in his left eye, which started driving him mad. Oscar started imitating it. By the time he was eighteen months old, the child showed signs of being a brilliant mimic. He was a sturdy, smiley boy, not given to tantrums. Most of the time he ran about the place chuckling and chatting amiably to himself, and Theo, often in his chair by the fire, vaguely unwell, sulking but not sure why, felt a kinship with him he’d never known with Theo Junior on his perch. The way Marie bossed them about as if they were equal in status forged a bond between them, and sometimes when she walked out of the room they would smile conspiratorially at one another. Sometimes the boy would sit on the floor by his chair and lean against his legs. Once, he fell asleep there. Theo wondered why the feel of the boy against his legs caused a feeling of sadness to rise up inside him. Something to do with the picture that kept coming into his mind, Theo Junior’s stiff unnatural stance on his pole, a stance impossible for any real baby.

‘I’m bringing them back,’ he said, unsure whether Marie was in the room with him or not.

‘Yes,’ she said, proving her existence, ‘soon.’

Soon.

A rash came and went on Theo’s back and sides. For six months it raged and itched, and Oscar mimicked his scratching.

‘Stop it, you two,’ Marie would say. ‘You’re driving me mad.’

Sometimes he stayed in bed or mooched about at home in a foul mood for days on end, unable to see the point in doing anything else. Marie told him to make an effort. ‘Look at you,’ she said, ‘in your dressing gown. Do you know what time it is?’

‘No.’

‘Do you want some soup?’

‘I don’t know. Yes.’

She pulled a small table up to his knee, set down a bowl of soup and a spoon. ‘Do you good,’ she said. ‘Eat it.’

‘Any bread?’

‘Here, Precious One.’ Marie ripped off a hunk from the loaf and gave it to Oscar. ‘Give Daddy this bread.’

Oscar trotted over and solemnly handed it over. Theo took it listlessly and dipped it in his soup.

‘Say thank you!’ she ordered.

‘Thank you,’ Theo said.

‘Silly Daddy forgot to say thank you!’

‘For God’s sake,’ she said a little later, ‘at least go out for a walk or something. Clear your head.’

‘Can’t,’ he said, ‘my legs hurt.’

‘That’s because you don’t use them enough.’

‘Can’t.’

And this went on like fog, till one day he awoke at noon and felt different.

The sun slanted in across the rug. Pigeons purred on the windowsill. It was high summer. He lay for a while trying to place the feeling then realised it was vigour and excitement, a peculiar elation that felt like childhood, though it was no childhood he could ever remember having. He sat up. His head was clear. He knew from the quietness that the flat was empty. He couldn’t remember when he’d gone to sleep but he was wearing all his clothes, so he got up and walked straight out and down to the street. He put his hand in his pocket and found notes and coins. Plenty. He couldn’t remember putting it there. A drink, he thought, heading for the river.

The sunlight on the water hurt his eyes. It was incredibly beautiful, a million small ice-white fishes winking frantically in and out of existence. He tried fixing his eyes on one spot without blinking, but it was no use. Everything moved.