A Simple Scale
Page 23
**
They were in the study; Sol listening to Schubert, Natalie going through old letters, shredding anything they didn’t need to keep. It was a day much like any other. And there was something immensely satisfying about watching those old bills and circulars sliding into the shredder, the crackle of the paper passing through its metal teeth. What if you put everything into one of these? Birth certificate, driver’s licence, social security, everything. Every photograph, certificate and diploma. Just fed it into the shredder and watched it turn into confetti. Would you become someone new, or would everything remain the same?
The music came to an end. Natalie left the shredder chewing up another circular from Juilliard and went over to Sol’s record player.
“More Schubert?” she said.
Sol made a face. “That was Schubert?”
“That was Schubert.”
“Not Schubert, then,” he said. “Mozart. One of the piano sonatas.”
“Which one?”
“Eleven.”
“Which recording?”
“Anything but Glenn fucking Gould. Life’s too short.”
Natalie laughed. He was having a good day. She put Schubert back on the shelf and looked for the Murray Perahia recording of K.331. She held it up.
“Yes, yes, good, yes,” said Sol.
Natalie placed the record on the turntable and lowered the stylus. The music began and she closed her eyes and listened to it for a while. She felt an almost unfamiliar sense of calm, the world settling all around her with the grace and elegance of the leaves on Fifth Avenue. When she opened her eyes again, Sol was tracing invisible curlicues in time with the music. Life’s too short, he’d said. She wondered how much time he had left. No-one could say. There wasn’t a timer, counting down. There was just this. The two of them alone together, listening to music. She was happy with that.
Pavel would be on the plane by now, or at least she hoped he would. How long did that whole process take? Before September they might have dragged their heels, passed him around from pillar to post, but now? Now she imagined it would be quick. INS vehicles and police cars outside the hotel within minutes of her call. Officers rushing into the building with their badges ready, beating on Pavel’s door and, if he answered, cuffing him immediately. They’d gather his things while he sat there, handcuffed, on the bed. He wouldn’t understand. Why had they come for him now? Who sent them?
Maybe he told them what had happened. There was always that chance. It wouldn’t be grounds for them to let him stay, but it might be enough to prompt a visit from the police. They would ask if she had the manuscript.
“Some ballet score, or something?”
And if they didn’t come asking for it, Carol might. She wouldn’t let this go so easily. Natalie would have to lie, but it wouldn’t be a first.
“He went home,” she’d tell her. “He wasn’t interested in publicity. He took the score with him before I had a chance to get it scanned.”
It was sitting there, on Sol’s desk. Purple card and yellow paper. It must have been a beautiful object when it was new, when Sergey Grekov made his first mark.
So many things had already been lost, destroyed. What difference would another make?
Chapter 32:
LENINGRAD, APRIL 1938
Thin traces of the dawn, splayed across the ceiling like fingers of light. Outside, an early morning tram jangling its way along Volodarsky Prospect. Sol stirs, mumbles something and draws Sergey’s arm around him, and they lie like this a moment before Sergey gets out of bed.
Neither of them says much as they get dressed. He senses Sol’s guilt, or his shame. Will there be a scene when he gets back to the hotel in last night’s clothes? Does he regret what happened here?
Sergey regrets nothing. If he feels anything at all, it’s a sense of injustice; that the world could be shaped in such a way to force them apart, that these moments together will be their last. How many minutes do they have? How many seconds?
When they’re dressed and ready, Sergey walks Sol back to his hotel, and they stroll along the Palace Embankment, side by side, without touching. It is a sunny morning, and a light mist clings to the Neva. Along the river wall fishermen are angling for koryushka or whatever else can be caught this early in the year. Broken ice sheets drift downstream, clunking into one another as they move. The sun is low in the sky, and Sol and Sergey’s shadows are drawn long and indistinct before them as they walk.
Outside the hotel Sol asks, “How do you say ‘goodbye’ in Russian?”
“Mi ne umeyem proshatsya.”
“All that means goodbye?”
“No,” Sergey laughs. “It is from a poem. It means, ‘We do not know how to say goodbye’.”
Nothing more can happen. They shake hands, like two travellers who exchanged small talk while waiting for separate trains. Sol enters the hotel alone, pausing briefly to look back through its revolving door as it turns. Out in the cold street Sergey watches Sol’s face flicker with his own reflection, one face replacing the other, over and over, until he’s gone.
THE END
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of the second chapter of A Simple Scale originally appeared in a short story collection, Speak My Language, edited by Torsten Højer (Robinson, 2015). An abridged version of chapter 21 appeared on the Wales Arts Review website.
About the Author
David Llewellyn is the author of three novels published by Seren: Eleven, Everything is Sinister and Ibrahim and Reenie. He has also written short stories, scripts for the BBC and novelisations of the Torchwood and Dr Who tv series. He was born in Pontypool and is a graduate of Dartington College of Arts. A freelance writer, he lives in Cardiff.
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