by John Boyne
‘Sorry,’ I said, noticing how much effort she had gone to with both her dress and her appearance. ‘You’re looking well,’ I added, mildly irritated that she had gone to so much trouble for a boy we didn’t even know.
‘Well don’t sound so surprised,’ she replied with an insulted laugh. ‘I do try to make an effort every now and then, you know.’
I smiled and kissed her. For years, phrases like this would have been brushed off as teasing and affectionate. Now there was an undercurrent of tension, a feeling that whatever we had managed to bury between us was not forgiven at all, and that the wrong word uttered at the wrong moment might, like with Miss Llewellyn’s boyfriend and father, lead to the most calamitous dispute.
‘Are you having a bath?’ she asked me.
‘Do I need one?’
‘You have been working all day,’ she replied quietly, biting her lip a little.
‘Then I suppose I’d better,’ I sighed, throwing my briefcase down where I knew she would be forced to pick it up and put it out of sight once I had gone. ‘I won’t be long. What time is he expected at, anyway?’
‘Not till eight. Arina said they were going to have a drink after work but they’d be along after that.’
‘He’s a drinker, then,’ I said, frowning.
‘A drink, I said,’ replied Zoya. ‘Give him a chance, Georgy. You never know, you might like him.’
I doubted it, but lying in the bath a few minutes later, enjoying the peace and relaxation of the warm soapy water, I continued to ponder the unsettling fact that Arina had reached the age where her thoughts had turned to the opposite sex. It didn’t seem like any time at all since she was a little girl. Or, for that matter, since she was a baby. Indeed, it felt like only a few short years since Zoya and I had suffered and despaired at the thought that we would never be blessed with a child of our own. My life, I realized, was slipping away. I was fifty-four years old now; how had that happened? Wasn’t it only a few months since I had arrived at the Winter Palace and marched along gilded corridors behind Count Charnetsky for my first meeting with the Tsar? Surely it was earlier this year when I stole a moment for myself on board the Standart as the Imperial Family listened to a performance by the St Petersburg String Quartet?
No, I thought, shaking my head at my own foolishness and allowing my body to slip deeper into the bath. No, it wasn’t. That all happened years ago. Decades.
Those days belonged to another lifetime entirely, an existence which was never spoken of any more. I closed my eyes and allowed my head to sink beneath the surface of the water. Holding my breath, the echo of the past filled my ears and memory and I was lost once again inside those terrible, wonderful years between 1915 and 1918, when the drama of our country played out before me. Removed from the world, I could feel once again the sharp bite of the winter air along the banks of the Neva as it nipped at my nose and made me gasp in shock, could picture the faces of the Tsar and Tsaritsa as clearly as if they were standing before me. And the scent of Anastasia’s perfume filled my senses as if in a dream, followed by a blurred picture of the young girl with whom I had fallen in love.
‘Georgy,’ said Zoya, tapping on the door and looking inside, her presence immediately making me spring upwards once again, gasping for air as I ran the wet hair away from my forehead and eyes with my hands. ‘Georgy, they’ll be here soon.’ She hesitated, perhaps unsettled by an unexpected expression of regret and sorrow upon my face. ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ I said.
‘It’s not nothing. You’re crying.’
‘It’s bathwater,’ I corrected her, wondering whether it was possible that in fact the suds had mixed with my tears without my even noticing.
‘Your eyes look red.’
‘It’s nothing,’ I repeated. ‘I was just thinking about something, that’s all.’
‘What?’ she asked me, a note of anxiety in her voice as if she was afraid to hear the answer.
‘Nothing important,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Just someone I used to know, that’s all. Someone who died a long time ago.’
There were moments when I hated her for what she had done. I never thought that I could have it in me to feel anything other than love for Zoya, but there were times, lying awake in bed beside her, my body feeling as if it would evaporate if I touched her, when I wanted to scream aloud in my frustration and hurt.
When it was over, when we were trying to repair our fractured lives, I dared to ask her why it had happened at all.
‘I don’t know, Georgy,’ she said, sighing, as if it was unkind of me even to want an answer.
‘You don’t know,’ I repeated, spitting out the words.
‘That’s right.’
‘Well then. What am I supposed to say to that?’
‘I never loved him, if that matters at all.’
‘It makes it worse,’ I said, not knowing whether this was true or not, but wanting to hurt her. ‘What was it all for, after all, if you never loved him? At least that would have been something.’
‘He didn’t know me,’ she said quietly. ‘That made him different.’
‘Know you?’ I asked, frowning. ‘What do you mean?’
‘My sins. He didn’t know my sins.’
‘Don’t,’ I shouted, lunging towards her, my fury rising. ‘Do not use that to justify what you have done.’
‘Oh I’m not, Georgy, I’m not,’ she said, shaking her head and crying now. ‘It was just … how can I explain something to you that I don’t understand myself? Are you going to leave me?’
‘I would like nothing more,’ I told her; a lie, of course. ‘I would never have done this to you. Ever.’
‘I know that.’
‘Do you think that I’m not tempted? Do you think that I never look at women and want to make them mine?’
She hesitated, but finally shook her head. ‘No, Georgy. I don’t think you ever do. I don’t believe you are ever tempted.’
I opened my mouth to argue with her, but how could I, after all? She was right.
‘That is what makes you you,’ she insisted. ‘You are kind and decent, and I …’ She paused and when she spoke again, enunciating every word, I had never heard her sound so determined. ‘I am not.’
We stood in silence for a long time and a thought occurred to me, one so monstrous that I could not even believe that I was suggesting it.
‘Zoya,’ I said, ‘did you do it so that I would leave you?’ She looked at me and swallowed, turning away, saying nothing. ‘Did you think that if I left you, it would be a punishment of sorts? That you deserve to be punished?’
Silence.
‘My God,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘You still think it was your fault, don’t you? You still want to die.’
The front door opened at precisely eight o’clock and Arina stepped in first, a shy smile upon her face, the expression she had always worn as a child when she had done something mischievous but wanted her escapade to be discovered. She stepped over to Zoya and me and kissed us both, as she always did, and then, emerging from the dark shadows of the hallway stepped a young man, hat in hand, his cheeks a little flushed, clearly anxious to make a good impression. Despite myself, I found his nervousness endearing and had to concentrate in order to stop myself from smiling. It must have been a day for memories, for his disquiet reminded me of my nervousness when I was first introduced to Zoya’s father.
‘Masha, Pasha,’ said Arina, indicating the young man, as if we couldn’t see him standing there before us in all his awkwardness, ‘this is Ralph Adler.’
‘Good evening, Mr Jachmenev,’ he said immediately, extending a hand for me to shake and stumbling over my name, although it sounded as if he had prepared his opening gambit many times before delivering it. ‘It’s a great honour to meet you. And Mrs Jachmenev, I’d like to thank you very much for the great honour of inviting me to your home.’
‘Well, you’re very welcome, Ralph,’ she said, smil
ing too. ‘We’re delighted to meet you at last. Arina has told us a lot about you. Won’t you come in and sit down?’
Arina and Ralph took their seats at the table and I sat opposite Ralph as Zoya finished preparing the food, which gave me an opportunity to examine him in more detail. He was of average height and build, with a mop of shocking-red hair, a fact which surprised me, but he was not a bad-looking boy, I supposed. As far as boys went.
‘You’re older than I expected you to be,’ I said, wondering immediately whether Arina was only the latest in a series of girlfriends he had seduced.
‘I’m twenty-four,’ said Ralph quickly. ‘Still a young man, I hope.’
‘Of course you are,’ said Zoya. ‘Try being fifty-four.’
‘Arina’s only nineteen,’ I said.
‘Five years then,’ he replied, as if this difference in age was neither here nor there, and cutting me off from offering any further observation on it. Every time he spoke he looked across at Arina for approval, and when she smiled, he smiled too. When she spoke, he watched her, and his lips parted slightly. I felt there was a part of him that wanted to lean towards me and explain, in an entirely academic fashion, that he really couldn’t believe his luck that someone like her was interested in someone like him at all. I recognized the mixture of passions in his eyes: admiration, desire, fascination, love. I was pleased for my daughter, unsurprised that she could inspire such emotions, but it made me a little sad, too.
She was so young, I thought. I wasn’t ready to lose her.
‘Arina tells us that you’re a musician, Ralph,’ Zoya said as we ate the kind of dinner we usually only ate on Sundays. Roast beef and potatoes. Two different types of vegetables. Gravy. ‘What do you play?’
‘The clarinet,’ he replied quickly. ‘My father was a wonderful clarinettist. He insisted that my brother and sisters and I took lessons from the time we were very small. I used to hate it when I was a child, of course, but things change.’
‘Why did you hate it?’ I asked.
‘I think it was the teacher,’ he said. ‘She was about a hundred and fifty years old and every time I played badly she would beat me at the end of my lesson. When I played well, she would hum along to accompany Mozart or Brahms or Tchaikovsky or whoever.’
‘You like Tchaikovsky?’ I asked.
‘Yes, very much.’
‘I see.’
‘But your attitude must have changed eventually,’ said Zoya. ‘If you play for a living, I mean.’
‘Oh, I wish I could say that I do,’ he said, interrupting her quickly. ‘Forgive me, Mrs Jachmenev, but I’m not a professional musician. Not yet, anyway. I’m still studying. I take my classes at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, just off the Embankment.’
‘Yes,’ she said, nodding her head. ‘Yes, I know of it.’
‘A little old to be still studying, aren’t you?’ I asked.
‘It’s an advanced course,’ he explained. ‘So that I can teach as well as play, should the need arise. I’m in my final year now.’
‘Ralph plays with an orchestra outside of class too,’ said Arina quickly. ‘He’s performed at the Christmas service in St Paul’s for the last three years; last year he was even given a solo, weren’t you, Ralph?’
‘Really?’ said Zoya, sounding impressed as the boy smiled and blushed to be the centre of so much attention. ‘Then you must be very good.’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, frowning as he considered this. ‘I’m improving anyway, I hope.’
‘You should have brought your clarinet with you,’ she continued. ‘Then you could have played for us. I played piano, you know, when I was a child. I’ve often wished we had the space here for one.’
‘Did you enjoy it?’
‘Yes,’ she said and opened her mouth to say more, but then seemed to think better of it and became immediately silent.
‘I never learned an instrument,’ I said, filling the silence. ‘I always wanted to, though. Had I been offered the opportunity, I might have studied the violin. I’ve always considered it to be the most elegant of musical instruments.’
‘Well you’re never too old to learn, sir,’ said Ralph and the moment the line was out of his mouth he flushed scarlet with embarrassment, which was not helped by the fact that I was staring directly at him with the most serious expression I could muster, as if he had just insulted me terribly. ‘I’m awfully sorry,’ he said, spluttering out the words. ‘I didn’t mean to imply that—’
‘That I’m old?’ I asked. ‘Well, what of it? I am old. I was only thinking about it earlier. You’ll be old yourself one day. See how you like it then.’
‘I simply meant that one can take up an instrument at any age.’
‘It would be a comfort to me in my dotage, perhaps,’ I suggested.
‘No, not at all. I mean—’
‘Georgy, don’t tease the poor boy,’ said Zoya, reaching across and taking my hand for a moment. Our fingers interlaced and I looked down at them, noticing how the skin on either side of her knuckles was starting to become a little more taut with age; for a moment I imagined I could see the blood and phalanges beneath, as if her hand was being made translucent by the passing years. We were both growing older and it was a depressing thought. I squeezed her fingers tightly and she turned to look at me, a little surprised, perhaps wondering whether I was trying to offer her reassurance or hurt her. The truth was that at that moment I wanted to tell her how much I loved her, how nothing else mattered, not the nightmares, not the memories, not even Henry, but it was impossible to speak such words. And not because Ralph and Arina were there. It was just impossible.
‘Did your father attend the same school?’ Zoya asked a moment later. ‘When he was learning the clarinet, I mean?’
‘Oh no,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘No, he never took any lessons in England after he arrived here. His father taught him when he was a child and he simply practised on his own after that.’
‘After he arrived here?’ I asked, picking up on the phrase. ‘What do you mean by that? He isn’t English, then?’
‘No, sir,’ he said. ‘No, my father was born in Hamburg.’
Arina had told us quite a lot about her young man but this was something she had not mentioned before, and Zoya and I immediately looked up from our plates to stare at him, entirely surprised by this news. ‘Hamburg?’ I said a few moments later. ‘Hamburg, Germany?’
‘Ralph’s father came to England in 1920,’ explained Arina, her expression betraying a little nervousness, I thought.
‘Really?’ I said, considering it. ‘After the Great War?’
‘Yes,’ said Ralph quietly.
‘And during the other war, the one that followed it, he returned to the Fatherland, I suppose?’
‘No, sir,’ he replied. ‘My father was vehemently opposed to the Nazis. He never returned to Germany, not since the day he left.’
‘But the army?’ I asked. ‘Wouldn’t they have—’
‘He was interned for the duration of the conflict,’ he explained. ‘In a camp on the Isle of Man. We all were. My father and mother, our whole family.’
‘I see,’ I replied, considering this. ‘And your mother, she’s from Germany too?’
‘No, sir, she’s Irish.’
‘Irish,’ I said, laughing and turning to Zoya as I shook my head in disbelief. ‘Well, this just gets better and better. I suppose that would explain the red hair.’
‘I suppose,’ he replied, but there was a resilience in his voice now which I admired. Zoya and I knew only too well what it had been like to be in England during the war with an accent that did not fit with our neighbours. We had been insulted and abused; I had found myself on the receiving end of violence. The work that I had done during those years had been conducted, in part, to affirm my solidarity with the Allied cause. But still, we were Russians. We were émigrés. And while this was difficult enough, I could scarcely imagine what it might have been like to have been a Germa
n family in England at the same time. I suspected that young Ralph had more steel in his bones than his nervousness around his girlfriend’s parents implied. I imagined that he knew very well how to defend himself.
‘That must have been difficult for you,’ I said, aware of the understatement.
‘It was,’ he said quietly.
‘You have brothers and sisters, I suppose?’
‘One of each.’
‘And did your family suffer?’
He hesitated before looking up and nodding, his eyes staring directly into mine. ‘Very much,’ he said. ‘And not just mine. There were others there too. And there were many who were lost, of course. Those are not days that I like to remember.’
A silence descended on the table. I wanted to know more, but felt that I had asked enough. Telling us this much, I decided, was a testament to how much he cared for my daughter. I decided that I liked this Ralph Adler, that I would be his supporter.
‘Well,’ I said, refilling everyone’s wine glass and raising mine before them in a toast. ‘We all live here now, émigrés together. Russian, German, Irish, it doesn’t matter. And we have all left people behind us and lost people along the way. Perhaps we should drink in memory of them.’
We clinked our glasses together and returned to our meals, a family of four already, not three.
Arina begged me to buy a television set so we could watch the coronation of the new Queen at home and I resisted at first, not because I was uninterested in the ceremony itself, but because I couldn’t quite see the point of spending so much money on something that we would only use once.
‘But we’ll use it every day,’ she insisted. ‘Or I will anyway. Please, we can’t be the only family on the street not to own one. It’s embarrassing.’
‘Don’t exaggerate,’ I told her, shaking my head. ‘What is it that you want anyway, that we sit here every night, the three of us, staring at a box in the corner of the room and never speak to each other? Anyway, if everyone else has one, why can’t you sit with one of the neighbours and watch the service there?’
