Once in a while I notice things — a row of rust-red radiators, three reindeer picked out in dark tiles on the wall above — but mostly my mind floats free. Then something alters, and I have the sudden conviction that somebody else is in the pool. When I turn at the deep end and peer ahead of me there’s no one there, just a wide, shifting box of green-brown water. I struggle to explain the rush of apprehension and euphoria. As I keep swimming back and forth, the sense that I’m not alone intensifies, becomes specific. There are people on either side of me, and slightly behind me, just out of range of my field of vision. Turning at the shallow end, I look left and right. The pool is empty. But as I swim back towards the deep end I have the feeling once again that I’m accompanied. We’re in a loose V shape, like geese flying south for the winter. A shiver ripples through me. I’m remembering a conversation with Aunt Lottie, in her house in Norfolk. This was a few days after my father took me to the restaurant in Kensington. We sat in armchairs by the fire, with cups of tea nearby. You weren’t alone when they put you inside your mother’s womb, Lottie said. There were three of you. Three of me? I didn’t understand. Three embryos, Lottie said. I know. I was there. Outside, the wind hurled itself at a row of conifers. On the ultrasound you showed up as small specks floating side by side. Something so brave about it — like spaceships launched into a huge, uncertain universe. She prodded the logs with a poker, and the chimney sucked up all the sparks. Your mother was worried none of you would make it. Because that was what happened before, more than once, and it nearly destroyed her. You were the last throw of the dice. Lottie reached for my hand and squeezed it, her eyes wide open, almost scared. You know what she told me later, after you were born? She told me she was amazed by you. Why? I said. Why was she amazed? You were the strong one, the charmed one. Lottie’s eyes found mine, flames leaping in her pupils. You were the one who wanted to live.
After forty-five minutes my body begins to tire. I should build up slowly. Not overdo it. As I climb out of the pool I glimpse something in the corner of my eye, a shadowy scissor movement that might be someone’s legs, a person walking quickly, but when I stand dripping on the tiled edge and look around, there’s no one there. I think of the thawed embryos implanted at the same time as me. I imagine them looking for stability, security, and failing to connect, their cells degrading, their gorgeous yellow darkening to a grim doomed black. How to remember them? They had no names, no faces. There were no funerals, no graves. No ashes to be taken by the wind or washed away by rain. They left nothing in the minds of those from whom they came, nothing except — what? The memory of those white grains in the pulsing gloom, and a sense of regret, as indescribable as the taste of water.
/
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 eye
s 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.
“And you?” I say. “What are your plans?”
He shrugs. “My ex-wife lives in Bergen, with my children. I will visit them.”
“You have children?”
“Two boys. Six and nine.”
I ask if he has pictures.
He takes out a wallet and slides a small photo across the table. The nine year-old is the image of his father, with rugged features and crinkly rust-colored hair. The other one has a round smiling face and his hair is greenish blond. All of a sudden I can picture Olav’s ex. I think of the children on top of Mrs. Kovalenka’s TV, their soggy complexions, their matching fleeces. No one looking at them now.
“They’re lovely boys,” I say.
“Yes.” He turns the photo on the table and studies it dispassionately as if he has been asked to make some kind of appraisal. As if the children aren’t actually his.
“Will you take them sailing?”
He smiles faintly, bitterly. “Their father, the sea captain.”
“It’s not something to be ashamed of.”
“My ex-wife wouldn’t agree.” He sighs. “In any case, in Norway we sail only in the summer.”
“Of course.”
He looks at me and something tightens in his face.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“You look so different.”
“My hair, you mean? I know. I didn’t do a very good job, did I?”
“No.”
“It’s more appropriate — for my work. Besides, no one’s going to see me, are they, not out here.”
“I see you.”
Not sure what to say, I let my eyes drift past him. A man is sitting near the door, under a mural of a knight on a white charger. I think I recognize the man from the birthday party. He’s one of Gleb’s friends. Oddly, though, he doesn’t acknowledge me. No smile or wave. Not even a nod. When I look at Olav again he’s gazing down into his empty coffee cup.
“You look younger,” he says at last.
“Is that bad?”
“No, not bad. Only …” He tails off, unable to grasp hold of his feelings, uncertain how to put them into words.
“It will grow again,” I say.
He glances at me, as if he disagrees with this, then checks his watch. “I should be going.”
Outside, the air is sharp, abrasive. You could almost graze yourself on it. Light from the canteen windows lands on the square paved area in yellow slabs. As Olav walks to his snow scooter I notice that he’s limping. I ask if he has hurt himself.
“It’s sciatica,” he says. “I’m getting old.”
We embrace quickly. We’re wearing so many layers that it feels chaste and faintly humorous. He fits a pair of goggles over his eyes, then climbs onto the machine and turns the key in the ignition.
“You’re not old,” I call out over the urgent high-pitched buzzing of the engine.
He grins. “See you in April.”
The red glow of his taillight dissolves in the grainy darkness. It will take him at least three hours to get back. I hope he will be all right.
Standing in the cold, I think about Natasha and Klaudija, who I met in Longyearbyen. I should have asked Olav to call at the hotel and give them a message. They were good to me. I don’t want them to think I have forgotten them.
/
Not long after Olav’s visit I stay up late, leafing through my guide to Svalbard, the TV on in the background. Girls in glittery bikinis twirl behind a host who is more than twice their age, his hair peach-colored, his teeth all capped. I wonder which girl he’s sleeping with. If this was Italy, he probably would have had them all. Who watches these shows? I reach for the remote. In the sudden quiet after I turn the TV off I hear a sound I don’t recognize at first. When it happens again, I realize it’s my front door shaking in its frame, as if someone just collided with it.
I creep up the hall and peer through the Judas eye. My breath rushes into me, abrupt and shallow. Standing up against the door is Bohdan, the man I spoke to Zhenya about. I don’t dare move. He’s unshaven, as before, and the snow in his black hair is beginning to melt and trickle down his face. His cheeks are covered with a patina of grime. He looks like someone who was on fire and has only just been extinguished. Above his left eye is a deep cut in the shape of a crescent moon, the edges crusted and black. He brushes at the wound, smearing blood across his face, then he stares at the ground and mutters a few incoherent words. All I can see is the top of his head, the scalp showing through his thinning hair. He fought in Chechnya and his only reward was to lose his wife. Is it any wonder that he drinks?
Once, as if intent on catching me off guard, he tries to look through the Judas eye. Idiotic, of course, since that’s what Judas eyes are designed to prevent. In that moment, though, we’re only three or four centimeters apart, and my heart is beating so hard that I worry he might hear it. After a few long seconds he stands back and fiddles with the front of his jacket, then he swings away and walks into the stairwell. At last I can see the whole of him. His shoulders are wet — the green of his jacket has darkened to a sodden black — and snow sticks to the heels of his boots. His back still turned, he glances over one shoulder, in the direction of my door. He thinks he forgot something, perhaps, or that something changed while he wasn’t looking. His cracked lips move. He’s talking to himself again.
Standing near the stairs, he undoes his trousers, then he takes out his penis and stares at it, as if he wasn’t expecting to find it in his underpants and is wondering how it got there. A dark grayish mauve, it reminds me of
certain vegetables — a beetroot when it is first lifted from the earth, or purple sprouting. He tries to masturbate but he’s too drunk to get an erection. Leaving his penis dangling outside his trousers, he reaches into his jacket pocket and brings out a bottle of vodka. He lifts the bottle to his mouth. The vodka lurches left then right as he takes two or three fierce gulps, then he lowers the bottle and wipes his mouth on his sleeve. His eyes veer towards my door again. I back away. This could go on for hours.
Later, lying in the dark, it’s hard to put the drunk man out of my mind. Noises keep coming from the corridor outside. The chink of glass on concrete, the shuffle of boots. Muttering, and more muttering. Shouting. Then a crash. He must have fallen over. I switch on Mrs. Kovalenka’s radio. The classical music station she used to listen to is playing a song cycle. I turn the volume down and leave it on all night.
In the morning I go and look through the Judas eye. The stairwell appears to be deserted. I crack the door open. Bohdan’s gone. The vodka bottle lies next to the wall, and there’s a pool of vomit on the floor. The poor man. He’s such a mess. What can I do, though?
/
The Moscow–Arkhangel’sk flight lands on time, and my father follows Lydia down the metal steps and across the tarmac. Outside the airport they climb into a waiting taxi. They have reserved a room at the Best Eastern Dvina, which is where I stayed. It’s not such a big coincidence; the city only has a handful of decent hotels. All the same, I wonder if my father can sense my presence as he walks towards reception. Is that what brings him to a halt halfway across the lobby?
Katherine Carlyle Page 23
