Marina Lewycka - The Lubetkin Legacy

All the while, Eustachia was hovering in the hallway, struggling to make sense of the scene she had stepped into.

I reached out my hand to her. ‘Come on in, Eustachia,’ I said. ‘Can I offer you …? What have we got, Mother?’

I half hoped Eustachia would make her excuses and leave at this point. I could see the situation had little potential for intimacy, and was rife with danger. Although I had experienced her kindness and touched her vulnerability, I still did not entirely trust her bureaucrat heart.

‘Golabki we ev. I mekkit for you.’ Inna edged towards the kitchen, keeping her eyes fixed on Lookerchunky. She was wearing her pinny, which also had fragments of cabbage on it. On the counter in the kitchen were some large sliced cabbage leaves.

‘Thank you, Mrs Lukashenko. That’s most kind. I’m absolutely ravenous.’ Eustachia turned to the stranger, who had seated himself proprietorially at the head of the table. ‘Was it you who wrote to us at the Town Hall, Mr Lukashenko? About the flat?’

‘Yes. Flat. Very nice.’ He winked at Inna, who lowered her eyes. ‘I heff lost flat in Donetsk from recent bombinks. So I decide return in London to live wit my darlink Lilya.’

‘Oh yes, I saw it on the news. It looked awful.’ Eustachia shook her head. ‘All those homeless people needing to be rehoused.’

‘Criminal fascist US-backed government bombink own citizens because they speak different language. Six thousand dead. Many children.’ Drops of perspiration appeared on his brow. ‘They wanted Europa but they got USA. Only the Putin can save us.’

‘Putin?’ Eustachia and I exclaimed in simultaneous horror, then our eyes met, and we laughed.

‘He is small man but clever.’

‘But he’s trying to take over the world!’ cried Eustachia, her cheeks prettily flushed. ‘It was on the BBC!’

‘Your BBC are incorrect, madam. Putin not take over world, he only want control in Russia. But he afraid America want take over world by criminal fascist Netto expansionism. This make him big patriotic hero in Russia. Like your great Mrs Tetcher.’

Putin like Mrs Thatcher? The man was clearly a dupe of Russian propaganda. Did Mrs Thatcher oil her muscles? Does Putin have a handbag? Enough said.

‘But hang on, Lookerchunky, Mother divorced you. You can’t just come breezing back in here because you’ve had a real-estate misadventure.’

‘What divorce? I no divorce. I love my wife.’

‘You it galubki, Lev?’ Inna called from the kitchen.

‘I am eat everythink, my darlink.’ He turned to Eustachia, and murmured in a low rumble, ‘You nice fatty lady. In my country fatty lady is very popular. Why you no come in Ukraina? I will find you nice husband.’

‘That’s very kind of you,’ she replied, ‘but …’ Flustered, she flunked the excuse.

‘Look here, Lookerchunky,’ I said, ‘or whoever you are … this lady is …’ Spoken for. Those were the words I held on my tongue but couldn’t quite utter.

We eyed each other confrontationally. The cut on my wrist was throbbing and I was desperate for a drink.

Suddenly he burst out laughing. ‘You think I am Lukashenko from Belarus? You think I am madman? No! Same name but not me! I am from Kharkiv! Ha ha ha!’ He chuckled at his own non-joke, while Eustachia smiled weakly, relieved to be off the hook. ‘East West. All same Ukrainian people. Why for fight war? Better eat galubki and drink vodka. Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha!’

It was then that I noticed the two-litre bottle of vodka on the table.

‘You from Kharkiv?’ Inna appeared in the doorway with four dinner plates and four sets of cutlery. ‘Nice city. I been there wit my husband.’

I glanced at Eustachia, who was still smiling bemusedly and had missed Inna’s slip of the tongue. So far so good.

‘Kharkiv. Kiev. Krim. Even London. Wherever you like, darlink Lilya, we can live together.’ He gleamed his golden smile.

I remembered that Mother’s Lev Lukashenko came from the west of Ukraine and had stainless-steel crowns on his teeth. So who was this chunky-looking impostor? Did Inna know that he was not the real Lev Lukashenko, whom Lily had married? Did he know that she was not the real Lily, ex-wife of Lev Lukashenko, but an impostor too? Watching the two phoneys shadow-boxing, I crossed my fingers and hoped that Eustachia, who knew neither the real Lev nor the real Lily, would remain none the wiser. But I had not reckoned on the intervention of Flossie.

Just as Inna emerged from the kitchen with a steaming dish of globabki she squawked, ‘God is dead!’

‘My God, Lilya! Where you get this bird?’ cried Lookerchunky.

‘Don’t you remember, Lev?’ I butted in quickly. ‘You gave it to Lily when you got married. Have you forgotten?’

‘This bird? I give Lilya this bird?’

‘You even taught her to say God is dead!’

‘As I recall, there were two parrots. One dead and one alive.’ Eustachia looked from him to me with a canny smile.

‘Two bird?’

‘Yes, two, Lev,’ I said firmly, avoiding Eustachia’s eye. ‘One is dead. It’s in the box over there.’

‘My God!’ He blew his pork-pie nose on a crumpled handkerchief from his pocket.

‘God is dead!’ cried Flossie.

Eustachia gave me a slow, sexy wink.

Inna fetched four small glasses, then she spooned the galoshki on to our plates with a generous dollop of yushchenko. ‘Pliss, sit and it it.’

The impostor Lookerchunky, who had already seated himself at the head of the table, got busy with the vodka bottle and glasses, passing the first glass to Eustachia, who raised a delicate finger as she sipped.

‘It’s so nice of you to welcome me into your family reunion. It gets quite lonesome in the evenings, just me and Monty.’

When her glass was half empty, I reached for the bottle and topped it up to the brim.

‘Oh, you shouldn’t, Berthold! It doesn’t mix with the medication! And it’s absolutely chocker with calories!’

‘Sod the medication, Eustachia. Sod the calories.’ I downed my vodka in one gulp, and the room rippled like an underwater theatre. A glimmering haze of magic descended on everyone, even on Flossie, and a song from the seventies drifted into my head. ‘Love is the drug!’ As the warmth hit my vocal chords, I started to sing, ‘Mmm mm mm mmm … and I need to score!’

Lookerchunky stood up waving his empty glass like a conductor’s baton. When I finished the song, he took up in his chocolate-sweet baritone, ‘ Vistoopeela na bereg Katyusha! ’ The melody drifted from major to minor, haunted by yearning, heroism and lost love, as in the black and white Soviet war films that Mother and I used to watch at the Curzon. I listened, and tears sprang to my eyes. Inna was weeping too. She dabbed her eyes with her apron and joined in the chorus in a high-pitched wail. I noticed that the vodka bottle was now two-thirds empty.

‘ Povee! Povee! ’ Flossie wailed from her perch.

In a moment of quiet, Eustachia pitched in with a warbling soprano: ‘Keep on the sunny side! Always on the sunny side!’

‘Bravo!’ Lookerchunky clapped his hands. ‘Great philosophia! You must come in Ukraina! We heff too much of pessimism at present time.’

‘It’s what my speech therapist used to say,’ she giggled.

By now, of course, I had put two and two together, but I did not voice my suspicion that her speech therapist had been none other than my mother. There would be plenty of time for that in the future.

‘You are my sunny side, Eustachia.’

The night was sweet with human warmth, ample with dimpling flesh, moist with body fluids, and punctuated by trips to the bathroom. I woke late, with a jumble of songs running through my head. Occupying most of the bed, and hogging all of the duvet, Eustachia was snoring lightly. I kissed her on the nose and went in search of coffee.