by John Boyne
I laughed when she said this, knowing how she would have planned the expedition weeks in advance, chosen the correct day when she could walk to Knightsbridge, select the gift, bring it home, inspect it, wrap it and hide it before I returned from work. I had never been inside the doors of the great department store myself, although I had walked past it on any number of occasions. I always felt a little apprehensive as I did so, however, sure that I would be turned away by some over-zealous doorman if I attempted to step inside, my inexpensive suit and émigré accent marking me out as one who had no business being on the inside. Zoya, on the other hand, was not intimidated by splendour; her avoidance of such stores stemmed from nothing other than common sense, for she would never have wasted her time longing for things that she couldn’t have.
‘Now my present, my present!’ shouted Arina, toddling towards me with her arms outstretched, a small gift in her hands, also beautifully wrapped. She was grinning wildly but still uncertain on her legs, having only recently grown accustomed to standing and walking without assistance, delighted by her newly discovered independence. She hated it when we came too close, however, preferring the freedom to run where she wanted, regardless of danger. Our daughter did not want any safety nets.
‘Another present!’ I cried, sweeping her up in my arms and lifting her off the ground, her legs flying out in the air as she rejected the embrace and pushed me away, demanding to be returned to the floor immediately. ‘What a lucky man I am! But what could it be?’
I unwrapped the package slowly and removed the gift from the tissue paper, staring at it for a moment, unsure what it was that I was looking at, and then recognizing it an instant later and drawing a deep breath of surprise, truly astonished by what I was holding in my hands. I looked across at Zoya and she smiled, a little nervously I thought, as if she wasn’t quite sure how I might react to such a reminder of my past. Lost for words and worried that I might betray my emotions with some ill-chosen phrase, I said nothing for now but stepped over to the window instead, turning my face away from my family as I allowed the sunlight to illuminate this treasure.
My daughter had given me a snow globe, its base no bigger than the palm of my hand, a white plastic dome with a glass hemisphere constructed on top. At its centre stood an awkward model of the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, its frontage a dark blue where it should have been pale green, the roof statues nowhere to be seen, the Alexander Column missing from the square in front; but despite its deficiencies, the building was unmistakable to my eyes. Indeed, it would have been immediately recognizable to anyone who had ever lived or worked within its gilded walls. I held my breath as I stared at it, as if worried that to breathe on it might cause its collapse, and narrowed my eyes to examine the small white grooves that represented the windows of the three-floored palace.
And the memories flooded back.
I pictured the Tsarevich, Alexei, sprinting away from the colonnades, running along the edges of the quadrangle while a member of the Leib Guard gave chase, terrified that the boy might fall and injure himself.
I saw his father in the first-floor study, consulting with his generals and Prime Minister, his beard flecked with grey, his bloodshot eyes betraying their anxiety at the dispiriting news emerging from the Front.
In a room above, I imagined the Tsaritsa kneeling at her prie-dieu, the starets standing before her, muttering some dark incantation beneath his breath as she prostrated herself before him, not like an Empress at all, but like a common moujik.
And then, emerging from a door of the inner courtyard, a young man, a peasant from Kashin, lighting a cigarette as he stood in the cold air, rejecting the company of a fellow guard, for he wanted to be alone with his thoughts, to consider how he could possibly stifle the overwhelming love that he was feeling for one who was entirely beyond his reach, a liaison he knew to be utterly impossible.
I shook the globe and the collection of snowflakes which had been resting peacefully on its base rose upwards in the water, floating gently towards the roof of the palace before descending slowly, and the characters in my memory emerged from their hidden places and looked towards the skies, their hands outstretched, smiling at each other, together once again, wishing that these moments might never end and the future might never come.
I turned to Zoya, moved by the gift which had, of course, been purchased by her and not by our one-year-old daughter. ‘It’s hard to believe,’ I said, my voice betraying a sudden rush of emotion.
‘I found it in a jewellery store on the Strand,’ she said, stepping over to the window too and laying her head gently on my shoulder as I held the globe out between us. The snow continued to fall; the palace continued to stand; the family continued to breathe. ‘There was a whole shelf of them,’ she told me. ‘Different places in the world, of course. The Coliseum. The Tower of London. The Eiffel Tower.’ She hesitated for a moment before looking up at me again. ‘But I didn’t choose it, Georgy, I swear it. I let Arina look at all of them and she picked the one she liked the best. She picked St Petersburg.’
I stared at her in surprise and couldn’t help but smile. ‘It’s just so unexpected,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘It’s been …’ I thought about it for a moment and calculated the time in my head. ‘It’s been almost twenty years, can you believe that? I was so young then. Just a boy.’
‘But you’re still young, Georgy,’ she said with a laugh, running her hand through my hair. It was such a delight to see her so happy. Those were joyous years, with our little Arina, the most unexpected gift of all, by our sides. ‘And anyway, I’m growing old alongside you,’ she added. ‘I’ll be getting wrinkles soon. Turning into an old woman. What will you think of me then?’
‘What I have always thought of you,’ I replied, kissing her, putting my arms around her as I held on to the globe carefully before we were separated by our daughter, who was pushing her way between us, determined to be part of our happy number.
‘Father,’ she said, sounding so serious now, the way she always did when she had a question she considered to be of the highest importance. ‘Whose present is the best, mine or Mother’s?’
‘I like them both equally,’ I said, refusing to choose one over the other. ‘And I love you both equally too,’ I added, picking her up and kissing her, holding her tight, wrapping her closely in my embrace, refusing to let her go.
When we first came to London, we rented a small flat in Holborn, where we had the misfortune of living next door to a tedious, middle-aged civil servant who leered at Zoya whenever he passed her on the street but glared at me as if I was beneath his contempt. On the few occasions that I attempted conversation with him, he behaved in an abrupt fashion, as if my accent was enough to convince him that I was unworthy of his time.
‘Can’t you do something about her crying?’ he shouted one morning as I closed our front door behind me, blocking my way as I tried to ascend the steps to the street.
‘Good morning, Mr Nevin,’ I replied, determined to be polite in the face of his rudeness.
‘Yes, yes,’ he said quickly. ‘That child of yours. She keeps me awake at nights. It’s ridiculous. When are you going to do something about it?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, not wishing to antagonize him any further, for his cheeks were crimson with rage and he had black circles beneath his eyes from sleep deprivation. ‘But she is only a few weeks old. And,’ I added, laughing a little, hoping that this might appeal to his humanity, ‘we are new at this, after all. We’re trying our best.’
‘Well, your best isn’t good enough, Mr Jackson,’ he snapped, poking a gnarly finger at me that, fortunately for him, did not make contact with my chest; I was tired, too, and my patience might have snapped if he had touched me. ‘A man needs his sleep, I’ve lived here for—’
‘It’s Jachmenev,’ I said quietly, feeling my own anger beginning to build now.
‘What’s that?’
‘My name,’ I said. ‘It’s not Mr Jackson, it’s Mr Jachmenev. B
ut you may call me Georgy Daniilovich, if you like. We are neighbours, after all.’
He remained silent for a moment, staring at me as if he wasn’t sure if I was deliberately trying to provoke him or not, before throwing his hands in the air and marching off, leaving a few jingoistic comments flying through the air to remember him by.
It was an irritation, of course – the man was a boor, but neither Zoya nor I had any desire to fall out with our neighbours. However, the matter was resolved happily a few months later when he moved out in a fit of pique and his flat was taken over by a widow in her mid-forties, Rachel Anderson. And rather than being irritated by our daughter, she seemed utterly charmed by her, a reaction which naturally endeared her to a pair of proud parents, and we quickly became friends.
She regularly volunteered to babysit for us, and as our friendship grew, so did our trust in her, and we took her up on her offer. She was alone and lonely, that was easy to see, and enjoyed playing grandmother to Arina, a surrogate perhaps for the children and grandchildren that she had been denied.
‘A stroke of luck for us that Rachel likes babies,’ I said to Zoya as we strolled towards the Holborn Empire one evening, enjoying the romance of being alone again, if only for a few hours. ‘I can’t imagine leaving Arina in the care of our previous neighbour, can you?’
‘Definitely not,’ said Zoya, whose initial reluctance to spend an entire evening away from home had dissipated almost immediately when we had left the flat. ‘Still, you are sure you want to go to the pictures, aren’t you?’
‘We can go somewhere else if you want,’ I replied, for all that mattered to me was that we would spend some time together. When I had seen what was playing at the Empire I had made the suggestion without fully thinking it through, immediately realizing that it was either the best idea I had ever had, or the worst.
‘No, no,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I’m looking forward to it. I think. Aren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I replied eagerly. I will make a confession: I had been to the cinema only three times before that night, but each time it was to see Greta Garbo. The first occasion had been five years earlier, when I had wandered alone into the Empire, not knowing what was playing, and watched the actress as Anna Christie, a former prostitute trying to improve her lot in life. I saw her again two years later, playing Grusinskaya, the fading ballerina of Grand Hotel, which charmed me less. But she won me over again the following year as the Swedish queen, Christina, and now I was back for a fourth visit, with Zoya by my side, to see her play a part close to my heart, Anna Karenina.
Those two simple words were enough to transport me back twenty years. Looking at them printed in large black letters above the cinema’s facade, I could feel the ache in my bones still from Count Charnetsky’s endless training sessions and my own disorientation at trying to find my way back to my room in a palace which was still unfamiliar to me.
He’s the one who was shot in the shoulder, isn’t he? Tatiana had asked, looking across at me, welcoming this brief respite from her lessons.
No, I heard it was someone terribly handsome who saved Cousin Nicholas’s life, replied Marie, shaking her head.
It is him, said Anastasia quietly, meeting my eyes.
The cinema was full that night, the air already filled with cigarette smoke, the theatre noisy with the chatter of courting couples and single romantics, but we found two seats together on the balcony and settled back in contentment as the lights faded and the buzz of conversation began to diminish. A newsreel was shown first and we saw images of a hurricane hitting the coast of Florida, destroying everything in its path. A man called Howard Hughes, we were told, had just set a new airspeed record of 352 miles per hour, while America’s president, Mr Roosevelt, was shown at the Black Canyon, between the states of Arizona and Nevada, preparing to open the Hoover Dam. The newsreel ended with a five-minute film of the German chancellor, Herr Hitler, parading through the streets of Nuremberg, inspecting the army and delivering speeches at rallies attended by tens of thousands of German citizens. The audience gasped at the devastation of the hurricane, cheered at the antics of Mr Hughes, talked loudly over the oration of Mr Roosevelt, but sat in rapt silence as the chancellor addressed the masses, shouting at them, screaming at them, pleading, imploring, insisting, demanding, as if he was only too aware that his speech would be heard even five hundred miles away in the Holborn Empire and he wanted to hypnotize every member of the audience with his ferocious battle cries, despite the fact that they could not understand a single word he said.
Zoya and I understood enough German, however, to grasp the essence of what Hitler was saying. And we sat a little closer to each other as he roared, but said nothing.
When he finally left the screen, the film began and the train carrying Anna and the Countess Vronskaya pulled in at the Moscow station, emitting huge clouds of smoke which parted gradually to reveal Garbo – Anna Karenina – her large, clear eyes perfectly centred on the screen, the dark mink of her hat and coat in stark contrast to her simple, flowing curls.
‘The way she looked!’ I enthused to Zoya afterwards, smitten by the performance as we walked home. ‘The passion in her eyes! And Vronsky’s eyes too, for that matter. They didn’t even need to speak a word, they just looked at each other and were overwhelmed by their passions.’
‘You thought that was love?’ she asked quietly. ‘I saw something else.’
‘What?’
‘Fear.’
‘Fear?’ I repeated, staring at her in surprise. ‘But they don’t fear each other at all. They are meant for each other. They know it from the very first moment they meet.’
‘But their expressions, Georgy,’ she said, her voice rising a little in frustration at my simple view of the world. ‘Oh, they’re only actors, I know, but didn’t you see it? To me it felt as if they looked at each other in absolute horror, as if they knew that they couldn’t possibly control the chain of events set in place by that simple, inevitable meeting. The lives they had lived until that moment had come to an end. And then it didn’t matter what happened next, their destinies were already decided.’
‘You have a very bleak way of looking at things, Zoya,’ I said, not entirely pleased by her reading of the scene.
‘What was it that Vronsky said to Anna later on?’ she asked, ignoring my remark. ‘You and I are doomed … doomed to unimaginable despair. Or bliss … unimaginable bliss.’
‘I don’t remember that line from the novel,’ I remarked.
‘Don’t you? Perhaps it’s not there. It’s been so many years since I read it. Still, I feel that I know this woman.’
‘But you’re nothing alike,’ I said, laughing.
‘Aren’t we?’
‘Anna does not love Karenin,’ I pointed out. ‘But you do love me.’
‘Of course I do,’ she replied quickly. ‘I didn’t mean that.’
‘And you would never commit an infidelity, as Anna does.’
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘But her sadness, Georgy. Her realization when she steps off the train that her life is already over, it’s only a matter of enduring the time ahead until she reaches the end … that doesn’t seem familiar to you at all?’
I stopped in the street, turning to her with a frown clouding my face. I couldn’t decide how to respond to this. I needed time to consider what she had said; time to understand what it was that she was trying to tell me.
‘It doesn’t matter anyway,’ she said finally, turning around now and smiling. ‘Look, Georgy, we’re home.’
Inside, we found that Arina was already asleep, and Rachel assured us that our daughter was quite simply the most wonderful child that she had ever had the good fortune to spend an evening with, something which we already knew, but delighted in hearing anyway.
‘I haven’t been to the picture house in years,’ she said as she put her coat on for the short walk next door. ‘My Albert, he took me there all the time when we were courting. We saw all sorts of th
ings, we did. Charlie Chaplin, he was my favourite, though. You like his films, do you, loves?’
‘We’ve never seen him,’ I admitted. ‘We know of him, of course, but—’
‘Never seen a Charlie Chaplin?’ she asked, outraged. ‘You want to keep an eye out for the next one. I’ll babysit again for you then, happily. He’s the best, is old Charlie. I knew him well when he was a boy, you see. Grew up in Walworth, didn’t he? Right round the corner from me. Can you believe it? I used to see him running around as a lad, all short trousers and parlour tricks, never giving anyone a moment’s peace. I lived round on Sandford Row, and my Albert, he were from Faraday Gardens. Everyone knew each other back then and old Charlie, well he were famous even as a lad for his nonsense. Made good, though, didn’t he? Look at him now. A millionaire over in America with all the nobs at his beck and call. It’s hard to believe it, I swear it is. Who was in that film you saw tonight, then? Never seen a Charlie Chaplin? I never heard the like of it!’
‘Greta Garbo,’ said Zoya with a smile. ‘Georgy’s half in love with her, didn’t you know it?’
‘With Greta Garbo?’ asked Rachel, pulling a face that suggested she’d just noticed an unpleasant odour. ‘Oh, I can’t see it myself. She has a terrible manly quality, I’ve always thought.’
‘I am not “half in love with her” at all,’ I said, blushing at the suggestion. ‘Really, Zoya, why would you say such a thing?’
‘Look at him, Mrs Anderson,’ she replied, laughing brightly. ‘He’s embarrassed.’
‘He’s gone redder than a prize tomato,’ she said, laughing too, and I stood there, looking away from them and frowning in my humiliation.
‘A lot of nonsense,’ I said, marching over to my armchair and sitting down, pretending to read the newspaper.
‘Well, what was it like, anyway?’ asked Rachel, looking over at my wife. ‘This Greta Garbo film of yours. Any good?’
‘It reminded me of home,’ said Zoya quietly, in a tone that made me glance across at her, examining the wistful expression on her face.
