Rupert Thomson - Katherine Carlyle

/

I’m leaving for work one day when a man comes up the stairs as I’m going down. I hear him before I see him, each footstep harsh and gritty, like a spade being driven into gravel. Then he appears below. He’s wearing a dark-green jacket, and his boots wouldn’t look out of place on a parade ground if they weren’t so scarred and scuffed. So far as I know, there’s no military presence in the town, though I remember people in Longyearbyen telling me that the Russians continue to occupy Ugolgrad not for its coal, which has long ceased to be profitable, but for its strategic position. The mine is just an excuse, they say. A smoke screen. But this man looks too dissolute to be a soldier. Even from a distance I can smell the alcohol on him, and it’s only eight-thirty in the morning.

He stops and gazes up at me. His eyes are puffy, and his black hair is receding. His lips are livid, cracked. I lower my eyes and move on down the stairs. When I reach him, he blocks my way, leaning close to me and swaying slightly, the reek of spirits overpowering. He mutters a few words, then lurches back and lets me pass.

Later, at the library, I repeat the words to Zhenya.

“Who said this?” she asks.

I describe the man.

Zhenya nods slowly. “I think it’s Bohdan. He has some problems.”

“Does he live in my building?”

“Yes. Sometimes.”

After lunch, we sit in Zhenya’s office drinking black tea with sugar. I question her further about Bohdan. She tells me that he fought in Chechnya. When he was discharged he discovered that his wife had been seeing someone else. In a fit of jealous rage he set fire to his apartment. He was arrested. Spent time in prison. Later, he started drinking heavily and lived on the streets. This was in Kharkiv. Somehow, he ended up in Ugolgrad, working as a security guard for the mine. She doesn’t know whether it was the horrors of war that unhinged him or the fact that his wife betrayed him.

“You said he isn’t always here,” I say.

“Sometimes he’s in Pyramiden.”

Pyramiden is another mining concession, she tells me, built at the foot of the angular mountain from which it takes its name. Once home to a thousand Russians, it was closed down a decade ago. It’s a ghost town now, she says, with only three inhabitants — the men who guard the place. A bust of Lenin still gazes out over the water, and there is grass in the streets, imported from Siberia. She shakes her head. Some say Pyramiden is being turned into a tourist destination, and that Bohdan is involved in the salvage work.

“Where is it?” I ask.

“About one hundred kilometers north of here,” she says. “At the top of the Isfjord.”

“Sounds pretty isolated.”

Zhenya nods. “I don’t know how he survives.”

I finish my tea.

Zhenya advises me to avoid Bohdan. Some people carry catastrophe around with them. She turns her cup on the table thoughtfully, then looks up at me.

“Are you frightened?” she says.

/

That night, in Mrs. Kovalenka’s apartment, I open my silver locket for the first time in weeks. As always, the sight of my mother’s hair sparks memories — her kissing me goodbye on a rainy school morning, my toes tucked into the back of her knees when my father was away and I was allowed to share her bed, her face during chemotherapy, drained of all color, timeless and terrifying, like an oracle, a seer … I fetch the kitchen scissors and walk into the bathroom. Standing in front of the cracked mirror I snip off a piece of hair. If I place it next to hers I will always be near her. It will be like being buried together, in the same small grave. The piece I’ve snipped off is too wispy, though. The ends are split. I cut another piece. Now one side’s longer than the other. I’m about to try and even things up when I realize that long hair makes no sense in a place like Ugolgrad, especially given my new job. I keep on cutting, and soon the sink is full of hair. I study myself in the mirror. My eyes seem prominent, my ears stick out. I have become a waif. I select a piece of hair and fit it into the silver heart, between the two locks of my mother’s hair, then I snap the lid shut and turn on the shower.

Later, I stand at my living room window. Outside, the air is motionless. In the distance I can hear a steady, hollow roar that must be coming from the power station or the mine. Fingering the locket absentmindedly, I hear my aunt’s voice. You were the strong one, the charmed one . The snow is so thick and perpendicular that it reminds me of a curtain coming down after a performance, a curtain continually falling, a finale that never ends …

Three thousand kilometers away, my father is also standing at a window, his hands in his pockets. It’s a cold wet evening in Berlin. A police car speeds past below, bits of blue light flung recklessly across the road. Weeks have passed since our failed rendezvous, and yet he has stayed on. Is it the thought of me that keeps him there, in the last place I was seen? Is he still trying to solve the mystery of my disappearance?

“Arkhangel’sk,” he murmurs.

My heart heats up. What will he do?

Still standing at the window, my father selects a contact on his phone, then puts it to his ear.

“Lydia?” he says. “It’s David.”

/

One day in late November, when I’m having lunch in the canteen, the door swings open and Olav appears. His eyes find mine even before the door has shut behind him. He glances down quickly, taking off his gloves, then he removes a couple of outer layers, hangs them on a hook on the wall, and walks over. There’s a wariness in his face and also a kind of pride, which makes him look younger, almost boyish.

“This is a surprise,” I say.

“Yes,” he says. “I was just passing through.”

But Ugolgrad isn’t on the way to anywhere, as he knows perfectly well. No one just “passes through.”

“How did you get here?” I ask.

“Snow scooter.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?”

He watches me, half-smiling. “How would you know?”

“They told me. In Longyearbyen.”

“I did it before.”

“It’s completely dark, and the snow hasn’t frozen properly. You could hit a rock. Or there could be an avalanche.” I push my empty plate away. “It’s crazy.”

“Now who’s worrying?”

“I have good reason, not like you. This place isn’t as terrible as you made out.” I pause. “There aren’t any rats in the hotel.”

Still smiling, he looks away, across the canteen. The silence is filled by rap music coming from the TV on the wall.

“I need a coffee,” he says. “How about you?”

“OK. Thanks.”

He walks up to the counter. Though I’m upset about the risk he has taken, I’m happy to see him. There’s something about his gaze that anchors me. Olav, Zhenya … These new friendships feel deep-rooted, resilient, and yet we hardly know each other.

“It was my birthday last week,” I tell him when he returns.

His eyes drop to the brown sweater I found in Mrs. Kovalenka’s wardrobe. “Was that a present?”

“This? No. I borrowed it.”

I talk about the party at Zhenya’s and about my speech and how I made everybody laugh.

“They are treating you well,” he says. “I’m glad.” But he doesn’t look glad. He hunches over his coffee, lines stacked up on his forehead. “You could leave now and come back in the spring. It’s beautiful in the spring. You wouldn’t believe the sky.”

I tell him I’m staying. Apart from my job, which takes up more time than I expected — I now clean the museum, as well as the library — I’m determined to become fluent in Russian. I also swim most days. I’m recovering my old fitness.

He has nothing to say to this.