Rupert Thomson - Katherine Carlyle

My father stares at the ceiling, a knotting in his chest, around his heart. I know what he’s thinking, but he’s wrong. Then a new question occurs to him. “Was she always by herself?”

“Yes,” Lydia says. “Except for one time. There was a man with her.”

“What was he like?”

“Pale, quite thin. In his twenties.” She pauses. “He was German.”

My father reaches for the envelope that held the letter and shows Lydia the photo.

She nods. “That’s him.”

“His name’s Oswald.” My father pronounces it the English way, as you would an Anglo-Saxon king.

“You think he’s her boyfriend?”

“I don’t know.” My father studies the photo. “What do you think?”

“No,” Lydia says. “She’d be with someone more good-looking.”

“Because she’s good-looking?”

“Yes.”

Despite the circumstances they can’t help smiling at each other. In talking about me it seems they have also said something about themselves.

I turn to the window. A wall runs parallel to the railway, its concrete covered with graffiti. The words look squeezed from a tube. In the background is a row of grim apartment blocks.

Moscow.

/

No snow has fallen in the city but a shiver goes through me as I step down onto the platform. I’ve been traveling for twenty-seven hours. Before I left Berlin I booked into the Peking Hotel, which is near the station, and though it’s after midnight I decide to walk. The weather is cold and overcast. Still, at least it isn’t raining.

Once outside the station I make for a tunnel that leads beneath a raised main road. Two mismatched chairs stand by the entrance, against the wall, as if the tunnel usually has guardians who charge a fee. One is a gray office chair with wheels. The other has spindly legs and a plywood seat. A dense yellow glow seeps from the lights in the ceiling.

I’m halfway through the tunnel when a group of figures appears at the far end. One of them is freakishly tall, in a coat that has a patent-leather glint to it, and he holds his arms out in front of him, at right angles to his body, like a zombie. Another wears a Pussy Riot balaclava and a frothy tutu. Her black calf-length boots bristle with silver studs. A third carries a bottle of vodka and a scythe. They surround me before I can retrace my steps.

“Tourist?” one of them says, in English.

I nod. “Da, eto pravda.” Yes, it’s true.

The Pussy Riot girl stands in front of me, one hand on her hip. “You speak Russian?”

“Nyet.” No .

That gets a laugh.

“You want to come to a party?” The girl speaks English with a languid American accent. In the yellow light her eyes look bloodshot.

“It’s late,” I tell her. “I need to check into my hotel.”

“We prepare for Halloween,” the zombie says. “Here in Russia Halloween is — how you say — not legal.”

“We are protesters,” says the boy with the scythe.

“What if the police see you?” I ask.

The Pussy Riot girl shrugs. “We escape.”

She offers me a cigarette. I shake my head, then watch as she lights up. She sucks the smoke deep into her lungs and holds it there. I look past her at the boy with the scythe, his vest and bare arms spattered with fake blood.

“You look great,” I say. “I really like the outfits.”

“We look great,” the zombie says.

The Pussy Riot girl asks where I’m staying.

I hesitate. “The Peking Hotel.”

“Nice,” she says, “but this is not the way.”

She walks me back to the station, then points across the square to a gap between a bar’s yellow neon sign and a slowly pulsing green cross that looks like an all-night chemist. The Peking is down that road, she says. Ten minutes. There’s no reason not to believe her. I thank her, then say goodbye.

As I move away, a man’s voice floats up into the air behind me. “Maybe we visit you, in your hotel …”

Then only the rush of late-night traffic on the raised main road, and two taxi drivers on the pavement, arguing.

/

The next day, after breakfast, I approach reception and tell the man on duty — Vladimir — that I need a travel agency. Is there one nearby? As Vladimir consults his computer he makes a curious monotonous humming sound, then writes down a name and address on a sheet of paper. It’s two stops on the Metro, he tells me. Or I could walk. He gives me directions. It will take half an hour, he says.

Out on the street the air has a bite to it but the sun is shining and the sky is a vast unexpected blue. I follow Vladimir’s advice and set off down Sadovaya, my breath making pale clouds. When I woke, at half past six, I parted the tall bronze curtains in my room and stood at the window, staring out. I thought of my next port of call, Cherepovets, and pictured Anna as a young girl, her hair as yet undyed, her teeth still white. At that moment I somehow understood that Cherepovets was an unnecessary distraction and could be dispensed with. I will head for Arkhangel’sk — preferably by air.

I locate the travel agency, on the first floor of an office building, arriving before it opens. As I take a seat in the hallway, next to an old man in a black leather cap, he doubles over coughing. I offer him some water. He waves a hand, meaning no. He has white hair and thick black eyebrows, and the lines that curve past his mouth are so deep they look carved.

Finally the coughing fit passes and he asks where I am from. I tell him I’m English.

“Yes,” he says. “That is what I thought.” He touches his cheek with his fingertips. “The skin.”

He speaks English haltingly, as if the inside of his mouth is sore, but his command of the language impresses me.

“Moscow.” He shakes his head. “Too many cars. I can’t breathe.”

I murmur something sympathetic.

“You’re a tourist?” he says.

“Yes.”

He stares straight ahead, his mouth turned down at the corners.

“What about you?” I say. “Why are you here?”

He tells me he has spent the last three weeks with his mother, and that he’s now returning home, to Arkhangel’sk.

“But that’s where I’m going!” I say. “I’m about to try and book a flight.”

“I also need to book a flight.”

“Perhaps we could travel together. It would be much easier for me.”

“If we travel together,” the man says, “I can practice my English. I haven’t spoken English since I retired ten years ago.”

We introduce ourselves. His name is Yevgeny. When I tell him I’m Misty I feel like a fraud, and also faintly ridiculous, but he doesn’t seem to find it strange. He asks what I will do in Arkhangel’sk. I’ll be spending a few days with a colleague of my father’s, I tell him. I’m studying languages at university, so I’m hoping to pick up a bit of Russian. Yevgeny believes everything I say — but then, why shouldn’t he? It sounds plausible enough. All the same, I’m glad he doesn’t ask who my father’s colleague is. Arkhangel’sk isn’t exactly a metropolis. If Yevgeny knows the man, my cover story will collapse.

In the travel agency Yevgeny talks to a woman who gives off an Addams family glamour — long black hair, pale lips, black blouse unbuttoned to reveal a silver crucifix. She answers at some length and he translates for me. There are no direct flights to Arkhangel’sk until Tuesday, he says. We could change planes in St. Petersburg but that will be expensive.

He puts his head in his hands and groans. “Another four days in this terrible place.”

The woman toys with her crucifix, indifferent.

Yevgeny asks about trains. She tells us there’s a sleeper from Yaroslavsky station, with seats available tomorrow. It’s a long journey — twenty-one hours — but we will be in Arkhangel’sk early on Sunday morning, and it will cost a third of the price.