Katherine Carlyle

by Rupert Thomson

  “I’m not sure my father would approve.”

  “Don’t tell him.”

  “Isn’t that bigamy or something?”

  Cheadle laughs so loudly that people at the nearby tables turn and stare at us.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “I’d take better care of you than he does.” A prawn cracker explodes between Cheadle’s teeth. “I’d probably leave you more money too. You’d be better off all round.”

  “What’s in it for you?”

  He stops chewing and I realize I’ve impressed him. Perhaps that’s what he likes about me: the quickness, the unpredictability — the cheek.

  “Nothing,” he says. “I’m a philanthropist.”

  “In the great American tradition.”

  “Right.”

  “No small print? No hidden clauses?” I’m thinking of Klaus’s promise of privacy. “No strings attached?”

  Cheadle opens his raincoat, like a man about to try and sell me watches. “No strings.”

  “Where are these Russians, anyway?”

  “They said they’d be here at ten.”

  I glance at my watch. It’s twenty past.

  “So you’ll think about it?” Cheadle says.

  When you’re young, a lot of older people have a grasping quality, like vampires. They’re all over you, even if it’s only with their eyes. They used to be like you, though you usually can’t see it. That’s why they need you around. They want to siphon off a bit of what they’ve lost. Because you’ve got plenty and you don’t even know it — or if you do, you take it for granted. I don’t think Cheadle’s any different, though he’s more adept at disguising it.

  A metallic-sounding guitar starts up, bright chords with surf crashing and hissing underneath. Cheadle takes out his phone.

  “I spent a lot of time in Santa Cruz,” he says.

  He puts the phone to his ear and stares past me at the wall. He says yes and no, and very little else.

  When the call’s over, he tells me that his Russian friends aren’t coming after all. “Still, Pavlo should be here soon.”

  “Who’s Pavlo?”

  “He runs a gallery on Winterfeldplatz. He sells icons. Beautiful things.” Cheadle pauses. “Pavlo’s from Sebastopol.”

  “That’s not Russia.”

  Cheadle shrugs. “Close enough.”

  Actually, I think, you’re wrong. It isn’t.

  /

  Pavlo is a small muscular man with a closely trimmed gray beard and mustache. His clothes are sober — a black jacket over a black V-necked sweater — but he has a pumped-up, skittish quality, like a thoroughbred before a race. The moment he sits down he tells Cheadle he’s in love.

  “Who’s the lucky girl?” Cheadle asks.

  Pavlo ignores the sarcasm. She’s twenty-three, he says. From Lithuania. Her name is Katya. She works in the Laundromat next to his gallery. For the next hour he talks about nothing else, his eyes welling up when he describes her.

  It’s not until we order coffee that the conversation turns to icons. Most of the pieces he acquires have a Russian provenance, Pavlo tells me — or sometimes they come from Greece. They tend to date from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It’s always been profitable, he says, but he would never have been able to open a gallery if Cheadle hadn’t come in as a partner.

  “So he really is a rich American,” I say.

  “Rich?” Pavlo’s mouth turns down. “I don’t know. All I know is, he invested in my business.”

  Cheadle reaches into his inside raincoat pocket, takes out a piece of paper, and passes it to me. It’s a bank statement. The account is in the name of J. H. Cheadle, and the balance is in excess of one million euros.

  “Believe me now?” he says.

  I’m not sure what to believe, but Cheadle seems to feel that he has proved a point.

  Later, when Pavlo has left, Cheadle walks me to the nearest U-Bahn station. We pass a shop that sells electrical equipment. There must be forty or fifty TVs in the window, all tuned to CNN. I come to a standstill, shock waves spreading outwards from my heart. It’s a moment before Cheadle notices I have stopped.

  “You want a TV? I’ll buy you a TV.” He steps back and stares at the sign above the shop. “I’ll buy the whole damn place.” He drank beer and whiskey with dinner, and his eyes have a fanatical glitter.

  I point at the window. “That’s my father.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “I am. It’s him.”

  We stand in the gauzy Berlin drizzle and watch my father talk into a microphone with the earnest controlled enthusiasm so typical of TV journalists, his royal-blue shirt thrown into beautiful relief by the sun-blasted landscape behind him. With his free hand he gestures to lend emphasis to the point he’s making. Once or twice he half-turns to incorporate a heap of rubble, a burnt-out car. Reading his lips, I decipher the words chemical weapons.

  “You don’t look anything like him.” Cheadle sounds disgruntled.

  Ordinary everyday reality isn’t good enough for my father. He has to appear to me in HD. I turn from the window and walk over to the gutter. Trees line the curb. Are they maples? Limes? I ought to know.

  “He doesn’t even know you’re here,” Cheadle says.

  A dark van races past, its tinted windows closed. From inside comes the thud of hip-hop, as if the van is an animal. As if it has a heart.

  Cheadle swivels on the pavement, jaw tilted, truculent. “I’d be a better father.”

  Now the TVs are showing golf.

  My collar up, my hands in my coat pockets, I peer down the road. Two sets of traffic lights glow red.

  “Where’s this U-Bahn station?” I say.

  /

  Waiting on a damp platform, I replay the scene outside the TV shop. Not one image of my father. Dozens. So perfect, that. The duplication questions — or even mocks — the idea of an intimate relationship, and then there’s the fact that I watched him from outside, on the street, that we were separated by at least two sheets of glass.

  I didn’t notice if his report was live or not but I feel he must be on his way to Rome by now. Those shock waves round my heart again. I suppose I have been waiting for this moment the way a bullet waits in its chamber, cold and snug, for someone’s finger to squeeze the trigger. That sudden burst of speed, a lightning transition from cool oiled darkness to a world that is brilliant and odorless. It won’t be long before he notices my absence — if he hasn’t already. After all, it’s his job to sense when something’s not quite right. Who will he call first? Adefemi?

  “I haven’t seen her, Mr. Carlyle, not for months.”

  “Really?”

  “We broke up.”

  “Oh.” My father pauses. “I’m sorry to hear that.” And he is sorry. He likes Adefemi.

  “We broke up in May.” Now it’s Adefemi’s turn to pause. “She didn’t tell you?”

  “No.”

  An awkward conversation, which only lasts a minute or two.

  A cul-de-sac.

  My father will contact my friends and it will rapidly become apparent that none of them knows where I am. They will be disconcerted, bewildered; they might even feel betrayed. Massimo is the only one who might be able to help. Intuitive and oddly transparent, he’s always spilling people’s secrets, things he doesn’t even know he knows. My father might pick up on this tendency in him. If Massimo is still in Rome my father will arrange a meeting — probably at his favorite café, in Campo di Fiore.

  Late September. The sunlight a tarnished gold that turns the shadows purple. Cut flowers in buckets. My father sits outside with a black coffee and a paper. He thinks Massimo is lazy and spoiled. What do you see in him? he always says. I don’t know what you see in him.

  Massimo is half an hour late.

  “Mr. Carlyle.” He drops into a chair next to my father and runs a hand through his unruly dark-brown hair. “It’s good to see you.”

  My father, who has been growing imp
atient, is surprised to find himself disarmed by Massimo’s smile.

  Massimo orders a cappuccino. Someone is playing scales on a piano, the notes spilling from an upstairs window.

  “Have you seen Kit?” my father says.

  “Not for a while,” Massimo says. “She hasn’t returned any of my calls. I thought she might be in England.”

  “She doesn’t seem to have been in our apartment — at least, not recently — and she’s not in Oxford either.” My father hesitates. “You don’t know anything?”

  Massimo toys with a sachet of sugar. He wants to do right by my father — he probably wants to impress him — but he doesn’t respond well to questioning or pressure. He might be wondering if I’ve gone off with someone. He knows I’m capable of that. Little jagged shafts of jealousy might be going through him. It’s you I want.

  “When did you last see her?” my father asks.

  Massimo starts talking about the night we went to the club in Testaccio.

  My father interrupts. “What date was this?”

  “What date?” Massimo frowns. “It was a Wednesday. About three weeks ago.”

  “What happened?”

  “The usual things. We talked — and danced. There were a few of us. Then she came back to my place. I don’t remember too much after that. I was a bit wasted.”

  “What about Kit? Was she ‘wasted’ too?” My father’s tone is acidic but Massimo doesn’t notice.

  “No,” he says, “not really.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She rode home.” Massimo thinks back, then remembers. “I offered her some coke. She didn’t want it.”

  My father gives him a look.

  Massimo gazes off into the distance. Once again it’s possible that he doesn’t register my father’s disapproval — or if he does, he might murmur, Yes, I know. I really should stop.

  He has no intention of stopping, of course.

  “I had a feeling that night,” he goes on.

  My father leans forwards. “Tell me.”

  “She seemed — I don’t know — different …”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “Not really. It was just a feeling.” Massimo smiles complacently.

  My father sits back. Though inwardly infuriated by how calmly Massimo is taking the news that I’ve gone missing, he senses that Massimo knows something. What he needs to do is tease that knowledge out of him. It shouldn’t be a problem. He has done it hundreds of times, all over the world.

  Then Massimo jerks upright in his chair. “I just remembered.”

  “What?”

  “She talked about going away, and I said, ‘You mean, to Oxford?’ And she said, ‘No.’ ” Massimo looks at my father. Massimo’s eyes have filled with tears. “You don’t think she’s —” He doesn’t finish the sentence. He can’t.

  /

  Back at the apartment on Walter-Benjamin-Platz, Klaus is perched on a high stool at the breakfast bar, working his way through a plate of profiteroles. His two mobiles and his reading glasses lie nearby. I watch him from the kitchen doorway, my arms folded, the TV muttering behind me.

  “Is that supper?” I ask.

  “It’s just something I found in the fridge,” he says. “How was your evening?”

  “Good. How about you?”

  “I stayed in. I was tired.” He rests his spoon on his plate. “Are you hungry?”

  “No, I’ve eaten.”

  Ever since our attempt at sleeping together, he’s had a guilty, embarrassed look. It’s not easy being on the end of it. And there’s another thing. My time with him was always going to be limited — I told him so at the beginning — but he has consistently refused to acknowledge the fact. There’s a stubborn wounded weight to much of his behavior, an insistence that won’t go away. He’s like someone who hammers at a door and goes on hammering, even though he knows it’s locked and nobody’s inside.

  I stifle a yawn. “I’m tired too. I think I’ll go to bed.”

  He looks at me for a moment longer and I feel I ought to give him another chance but I just can’t face it.

  He spoons up the last profiterole.

  “Sleep well,” he says.

  /

  On Monday morning the sky is dark. The air crackles, and my scalp seems to have tightened round my skull. Though I sense a storm is coming I decide to walk to Winterfeldplatz. When I asked Pavlo about icons at dinner on Saturday he was too distracted to tell me much. I want to find out more.

  On entering the square it’s the Laundromat I notice first. I look through the window. A young woman is loading wet clothes into a dryer. Her dirty-blond hair is tied back in a ponytail, and her breasts push against a pink T-shirt that is a size too small. Gray sweatpants hang low on her hips. This must be Pavlo’s dream girl, Katya.

  I move next door and ring the bell. After a few moments the Ukrainian emerges from a back room. He’s dressed in a white T-shirt and dark-blue jeans. The clothes look brand-new, as if he only bought them a few hours ago and has just put them on for the first time.

  “Ah, Cheadle’s friend,” he says.

  The gallery has plain white walls and spotlights in the ceiling, and there are about half a dozen icons on display. Behind it, through a narrow archway, is Pavlo’s office, as cluttered as the gallery is bare, with out-of-date computers, a dusty plant, and piles of unopened junk mail. Four mismatched chairs crowd round his desk, and several hands of cards lie facedown in a cleared space at one end, together with a couple of shot glasses and a full ashtray, smoke twisting upwards from a half-extinguished cigarette.

  “Did I interrupt?” I say.

  “Some friends were here.” Pavlo’s eyes drift past me to the open door at the back of the office and the cramped courtyard beyond.

  Later, as I sip treacly Turkish coffee, he tells me that when he first started out he used to treat icons as simple merchandise. He just bought and sold. Did deals. Icons were known as “wooden dollars.” He chuckles. It was only recently that he began to look into their significance. I recall something he said at dinner about icons not functioning as paintings do, and ask him to elaborate. Icons are conduits, he tells me. Aids to contemplation. The person who truly “reads” an icon is able to pass beyond it and achieve a kind of spiritual communion with the prototype. For that reason people often refer to them as “windows on heaven.” For that reason, also, the names of icon painters are never mentioned, and are not to be found on the icons themselves. Painters are seen as servants of God. Mere vessels.

  “There’s another aspect.” He ushers me back into the gallery and points at a Virgin Mary hanging a few feet away. “That Virgin, for example. Her gaze moves beyond you, into another world. Her world. It rebounds off reality, turns inwards. It’s like she’s looking in a mirror.” He steps closer. “You see the hand, how it seems to gesture? The Greek for it is hodegetria — ‘that which points the way.’ ”

  I remember the outdoor screening in Rome, and how a random conversation between two strangers reflected me back into myself, revealing the path I needed to take.

  A loud whirring starts up as a washing machine clicks into its spin cycle, and Pavlo’s eyes veer towards the wall his shop shares with the Laundromat.

  “Did you see her?” he asks.

  “She’s very pretty.”

  “You think I have a chance?”

  “No harm in trying.”

  “How old would you say I am?” He stands up straighter, his chest swelling beneath his crisp white T-shirt.

  “I don’t know. Forty-two?”

  “Fifty-six!”

  “You’re in good shape,” I tell him.

  Eyebrows raised, he glances at his mobile, pretending my compliment is neither here nor there, but I see him carry it off to a place deep inside himself. He will pore over it later, in private.

  I open my notebook. While I make a drawing of the Virgin’s hand, Pavlo tells me about the wanton destruction that took place during the years of the
Red Terror. He once saw a piece of film footage in which Soviet officials emerge from a church with armfuls of icons, tear off the silver covers, and throw the actual icons onto a fire. He talks on. He’s a good talker, Pavlo. I imagine it comes in useful in his line of work. It might even be indispensable.

  The gleam of gold leaf, the steady hum of the machine next door. The rain streaming down into the square.

  Pavlo asks if I would like more coffee.

  “No thanks,” I say. “I’m good.”

  /

  When I walk into Klaus’s apartment that evening I sense that he’s already home and that he has been waiting for me. The place fizzles with impatience; the air itself is on edge. Sitting in an armchair, he appears to be reading, but I’m sure he only opened the book when he heard my key turn in the lock and his eyes aren’t even focused on the page.

  “You’ve been very kind to me, Klaus …”

  In an attempt to avoid a gaze I know will be reproachful I move beyond him, to the window. The lights are on in the yellow gabled house across the street, but the rooms look empty.

  “The time has come for me to leave,” I say.

  “Where will you go?”

  “Friedrichshain. I met someone who’s got an apartment there.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I didn’t say it was a he.”

  “It is, though, isn’t it?”

  “He’s like a father — or an uncle. He’s older.”

  “Ah, so that was the problem. I wasn’t old enough.” Klaus laughs bitterly. “All this time you made me wait. You let me hope. Why didn’t you say something?”

  I turn to face him. “How could I? I didn’t know.”

  “Oh, you knew.”

  “You’ve been lying to yourself,” I say. “You weren’t helping me or being generous. You were just out for what you could get.”

  There’s an ominous silence during which he gathers himself. “If we’re telling the truth now, perhaps you’d be so good as to explain yourself.”

  “Explain myself?”

  He rises to his feet in stilted, loosely assembled sections, like a film of a dynamited chimney run backwards, then stands in front of me, swaying slightly, as if the film might start running forwards again, as if he might collapse. “Explain what’s been happening here,” he says.