by David Szalay
His mother was surprisingly old. She eyed Aleksandr suspiciously when he told her who he was. Her eyes were leathery slits, and she was smoking a sort of cheroot made of newspaper. Yudin smelled terrible – the filthy sour-milk smell of someone who has not undressed, let alone washed, for weeks.
‘There’s been,’ Mikhalkov said, out of the side of his mouth, ‘some news. Important. I’m telling everyone individually how it’s going to affect them. General Veklishev is leaving us. He’s off to Moscow. A job at the ministry. A whole new world of shopping for madame. He’s over the moon, but nervous. I’ve been asked to take over here.’
This was not surprising. It was well known that Veklishev was looking for a Moscow job, well known that Mikhalkov hoped to succeed him. Aleksandr said he was pleased for him – Mikhalkov smiled, and in his smile, which was warm, Aleksandr saw, not for the first time, the extent to which his suave superior thought him unworldly, even slightly simple. He knew that this was what Mikhalkov thought of him. He also knew that he liked him, that in unimportant ways he even looked up to him. So he was not surprised, either, when he said, ‘I’m putting you in for promotion.’
‘Thank you.’
Mikhalkov smiled once more, in the green upward illumination of his desk light. ‘You did well with Lozovsky,’ he said. ‘It was a sensitive situation.’
He went to his office and lay on the chaise longue. He wondered what Mikhalkov had meant when he said, ‘It was a sensitive situation.’ He wished he had asked him. He had not wanted to seem naïve. Slowly the light faded, and lying there, hearing the natter of typewriters, he thought of Lozovsky, of the events leading up to his arrest, and of the part he had played in them.
His office was dark. Though it had been dark for some time, he had not switched on the electric light. When he finally stood up and did so, it was only to take his things and leave. For the first time in two weeks, he did not go to the flat on Karl Libknekht Street. He went home and slept on the divan. In fact he did not sleep much. In the morning he had to use Zalesky’s razor, and when he had shaved, he sat for a long time on the divan, worrying a loose tile of parquet with the toe of his shoe. The room looked strange to him, stripped of Irina’s things. He would be leaving it himself soon. His promotion included new privileges, one of which was his own flat. There was a place on Studencheskaya Street, in a quiet suburb near the lake.
When he told her, later the same day, that he did not think they should see each other any more, first she just said, ‘Okay,’ as if it was a small thing. She seemed unsurprised. Then, for a long time, she was silent. On the table, still wrapped in tissue paper, was the dry-cleaning he had put there a few minutes earlier – some of her winter things that she had taken with her from Metelyev Log. She stared at it and smoothed the tissue paper with her fingers.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
She had been talking about his new flat. He had told her about it, and it seemed to be her assumption that she would move there with him. Things she said suggested this. For instance, she said she hoped there wouldn’t be too many mosquitoes in the summer since they seemed to have ‘a particular predilection’ for her blood. It was when she said this that he had said, with what immediately seemed a savage lack of preamble, that he did not think they should see each other any more. She stood next to the table staring at the dry-cleaning. With a sort of shrug, as if it hurt her pride to say it, she said, ‘Why?’
He did not understand exactly why. Only years later did he see that it was from this that he found the strength, in 1960, to say that he did not think Lozovsky was innocent, from this sacrifice.
20
IT IS KNOWN as ‘The Summit’ – two superpowers, meeting on equal terms in the autumn of 1972 to thrash out their differences. The Soviet Union and Canada. Or to be precise, the ice-hockey teams of those two nations. The series started in Montreal, and from there proceeded to Toronto, then to Winnipeg. The fourth match was in Vancouver, where the Canadians were whistled off the ice by their own fans, the Soviets having won a second time to put themselves 2–1 up with the four Moscow meetings to follow. And when they won the first of those meetings, on 22 September, their opponents found themselves far from home, with food poisoning in a Soviet hotel, and seemingly facing defeat. They stopped eating in the hotel. Their food was flown in from Canada, and they took their meals at the Canadian embassy. Of the next two matches Tarasov said, ‘They fought with the ferocity and intensity of trapped animals.’ They levelled the series, with one match left to play.
That match is today. Aleksandr waits in the twilight. When the series started, no one expected the Soviet Union to win a single match – if they succeeded in winning just one match it would be seen as a moral victory. The Canadians were professional sportsmen. The Soviets, steel workers and train drivers. So when the train drivers and steel workers won the first match in Montreal everyone was shocked – the players themselves seemed shocked that for long periods they had outplayed their opponents. And when the series moved to Moscow, with the steel workers and train drivers in the lead, some people started to think that they might even win it. Perhaps some people even started to think that they would win it. Aleksandr turns on the overhead light. Yes, perhaps some excitable people thought that it was more or less already won. And now? To lose now would be terrible. To lose when victory had seemed there for the taking.
It has started, and he turns up the volume. Within the first few minutes, Kompalla, the West German referee, penalises two of the Canadian players, and soon the horn sounds – with a two-man advantage the Soviets have scored. A minute later, Kompalla penalises another Canadian, who smashes his stick on the ice and yells foreign obscenities. When Kompalla increases the penalty, the Canadian makes to attack him with the stub of his stick. His teammates prevent him. The atmosphere is tense and ugly. The first period ends 2–2.
The Soviets score early in the second and, sensing a wavering of their opponents’ self-belief, they attack implacably, trying to press home the win while they have the psychological upper hand. It seems to work. In the swish and smash of the event, they surge into a two-goal lead. And now, surely, it is time to start thinking of victory.
A minute into the final period the Canadians score. The next ten minutes seem to last an hour. The tension, the fear, are more intense than at any time in the entire series. Then the Canadians score again. One of their players smashes his way through the Soviet defence like a maniac. Tretiak saves, or so it seems for a fraction of a second, until a second Canadian slides in to whack home the puck. And then something happens. There is shouting. The horn has not sounded and the Canadian team staff are shouting at the match officials. The situation threatens to descend into a melee … Aleksandr is suddenly aware of another voice mingling with the shouting from the radio, and Ozerov saying, ‘I don’t … I don’t know what’s happening …’ Someone out in the street, shouting ‘Uncle Sasha!’ Standing impatiently, he throws open the window and looks out. ‘I think the goal’s been given,’ Ozerov is saying. His nephew, Andrey Ivanovich, is standing there in the damp darkness.
‘Andryusha,’ Aleksandr says, surprised. ‘What is it?’
‘My father’s had a heart attack.’
Aleksandr says nothing.
‘Yes. It’s been given. The score is 5–5…’
‘I’m going to the hospital now,’ Andrey says.
‘I’ll … I’ll come with you.’
Without turning off the radio – ‘Maltsev passes to Mikhailov, who skates forward …’ – he fumbles on his overcoat and hat. Andrey was wearing neither – that was how he knew, as soon as he saw him, that something terrible had happened.
He is waiting at the wheel of his father’s Lada. He looks like Ivan, and it is strange to see him there, sitting in that seat, smoking with such similar mannerisms. He shoves the engine into gear, however, with an unsolicitous violence that would make his father wince.
‘What happened?’ Aleksandr says.
‘I don’t know. I
wasn’t there. Agata phoned for the ambulance. And they took him to the Vilonov Street hospital! I said to her, “Why didn’t you tell them to take him to the Fourth Department hospital?” They knew where he lived. What did they think?’
‘How is he?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’
Andrey twists down the window and flicks his cigarette-end into the wind. He is forcing the Lada to travel at speed. The engine whines unhealthily.
‘Is he …? Will he …?’
‘Live? I don’t know.’
Aleksandr has never seen his normally phlegmatic nephew so impassioned. He seems furious, on the point of lashing out. He has never got on well with his father. There is an ever-present tension, a truculent edginess, to do with the way that Ivan treated Katya, who now lives with Andrey and his wife.
Aleksandr himself feels nothing. He even finds himself wondering, with a sort of sad shame, who won the ice hockey. It will be over now. ‘Where’s Agata?’ he says.
‘She’s at the hospital. I left her there. Why don’t you have a phone?’
Andrey parks the Lada impatiently in front of the hospital and hurries inside, into the dingy light, the smell of disinfectant and under that the soup-kitchen smell, the wide humid hallways, the sinister quiet.
Agata is wearing a jacket seemingly made of gold sequins, and her face is thick with make-up that has smudged and spread with tears. Her eyes are pink, and she is holding a silk handkerchief. There is a young woman with her, a doctor. They are standing in a passageway next to a trolley on which a man is lying. His eyes are shut, his face grey and swollen. There is a transparent rubber oxygen mask strapped over his nose and mouth. His hair, Aleksandr thinks, looks very obviously dyed. To see him like that, Ivan does not seem the same person. So much so that Aleksandr almost expects to see him standing there with the others. That he is not there, nervously smoking, shocked like everyone else in this moment of family trauma, seems strange and terrible.
‘What’s happening?’ Andrey says. ‘How is he?’
The doctor looks at him sadly. ‘He’s okay.’
‘Is he awake?’
‘He’s had a lot of morphine.’
Andrey says, ‘I want him moved. He can’t stay here.’
The doctor looks puzzled. ‘Moved?’ she says. ‘Where?’
‘To the Fourth Department hospital. I don’t know why they brought him here …’
‘We can’t move him now.’
‘Why not?’
‘He’s too weak.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘He won’t be able to move for days.’
‘You said he was okay.’
‘He is okay. But he’s very weak …’
‘Please, Andryusha,’ Agata says.
‘He shouldn’t be here!’ Andrey shouts. ‘I want him moved.’
On the wall over the trolley on which Ivan is lying there is a picture, a page from a magazine that someone has put in a plastic frame. The picture is of a smiling little girl feeding a lamb from a horn. When he sees it, Aleksandr’s eyes fill with tears and he lowers his head. Who did that? Who put that picture there? As if it had the slightest hope of offsetting the suffering to which it was witness every day. And yet why else would someone put it there? The innocence of this person, more than the innocence of the image itself, is what moves him. He snorts with emotion, inhales through his nostrils and looks up.
‘I’m sorry, he is here –’ The doctor.
‘And he shouldn’t be! I want him moved!’
‘Please don’t shout.’
‘Andryusha, please,’ Agata’s voice is pleading, tearful.
‘I just told you –’ the doctor says.
‘He shouldn’t be here! Don’t you understand that?’
Aleksandr stares sadly at Ivan’s lifeless face under the transparent rubber of the oxygen mask. Agata has stopped pleading with Andrey. She weeps quietly, her handkerchief over her face, her shoulders shaking. Andrey insists on speaking to the senior doctor, who turns out to be a man in his fifties with hairy ears and a weighty, weary presence. Andrey speaks to him with strained politeness. ‘My father was brought here by mistake,’ he says. ‘I want him moved to the Fourth Department hospital. That’s where he should have been taken in the first place.’
‘He’s too weak to be moved,’ the doctor says.
‘How can he be too weak to be moved? He was moved here, wasn’t he?’
‘That was necessary.’
‘And it’s necessary to move him now.’
‘No, it isn’t –’
‘Yes, it is!’
Aleksandr says, ‘Andryusha …’ and puts a hand on his arm. He throws it off. ‘No! What do you care?’
‘What do I care? What do you mean? Andryusha!’ With tears in his eyes, Andrey is leaving, walking quickly towards the lift. ‘Andryusha!’ Aleksandr follows him for a few steps. The senior doctor sighs, and lights a cigarette. ‘He’s upset,’ Aleksandr says.
‘I know.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘He can’t be moved tonight. Or tomorrow.’
‘I understand.’
‘I might be able to find a room for him. Somewhere.’
‘If it’s possible …’
‘We’re very full at the moment.’
Agata has not been listening. Suddenly something in her seems to snap. As if in slow motion, she sinks to the red linoleum, sobbing violently. Her legs slide out in perpendicular directions. She starts to wail.
21
THE NEXT MORNING, Aleksandr finds her her normal self. Everything seems more normal, though it is the first time that he has seen her without make-up, and she looks older. Older than she is, in fact. Of course, she is exhausted. Her face is very pale, except for the semicircles under her eyes. She has almost no eyebrows, he notices; the way her hair is scraped back emphasises this. They are standing in the hallway, outside the small ward where space was found for Ivan. There is a window, slightly steamed up, with some pot plants on the sill.
She tells him matter-of-factly how she and Ivan were preparing to leave for a dinner party. Ivan was tying his tie and inspecting himself in the mirror when he started to sweat profusely. ‘He was panting like a dog,’ she says. He said he felt sick, and strange, and that he did not think he would be able to go to the party. He seemed very worried. And then suddenly he was in terrible pain. That was when she phoned for the ambulance. Everything happened so fast. She says that even then she thought how lucky it was that Natalya, their four-year-old daughter, was not there. She was with Agata’s parents for the evening.
While she waited for the ambulance, sitting tearfully on the floor in the hall next to her struggling husband – ‘he was struggling like a fish out of water, exactly like that’ – she phoned Andrey. The ambulance men, when they finally arrived, would not take her with them, so she had to wait for Andrei to drive her to the hospital. They went first to the Fourth Department hospital, but Ivan was not there, so they went to the hospital on Vilonov Street. ‘I thought he would be dead by the time we got there,’ she says.
Some yellow leaves still cling to the birches behind the hospital – yellow in the otherwise grey space of the hospital garden, where they are walking slowly on a cement path. ‘The doctor says his heart might be damaged. And there’s a chance he’ll have another attack. Especially in the next few days. They say he can’t have any physical or psychological stress. He can’t have any visitors for now. I’m sorry you can’t see him, Aleksandr Andreyevich.’
‘I understand.’
‘And he needs to stop smoking,’ she says.
He holds open the door for her and they step inside, into the humid interior of the hospital. She has been there all night, is still wearing the same sparkly evening wear. The sequined jacket is on her shoulders like a shawl.
‘I slept for a few hours,’ she says, in the lift, when he asks her. ‘On a sofa downstairs.’
‘You should go home and sleep prope
rly.’
‘Andryusha will be here later. I’ll go then.’
‘Okay.’
Looking at her now, in the neon light of the lift, he feels that he has misjudged her in the past. In particular, he had not noticed, until now, how much she loves Ivan. He has never taken her, or their marriage, entirely seriously. She is his fourth wife, and was his secretary first, and is twenty years younger than he is. Aleksandr had always felt that she somehow tricked Ivan – foolish, sensuous, soft-hearted Ivan – into marrying her. Now it strikes him for the first time how much she puts up with. Ivan himself sometimes seems not to take her, or their marriage, entirely seriously. He is patronising to her, offhand, impatient, offensive – often in front of other people, in ways that seem intended to hurt and humiliate her.
‘Andryusha says he’s sorry,’ she says.
‘Sorry for what?’
‘For what he said last night.’
‘What did he say?’
‘I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me. He said he said something to you.’
‘Did he?’
‘Yes.’
He shakes his head – pretends not to know what she means. However, he has been wondering ever since what his nephew meant when he said, What do you care? It stung him, no question. He wonders in particular what Ivan might have said to his son to prompt a question like that; wonders what sort of things are said about him in Ivan’s family. It strikes him that if he had a family some fairly unpleasant things might sometimes be said, en famille, about Ivan.
‘Well,’ Agata says, ‘he says he’s sorry. He was upset.’
‘I know.’
‘Thank you for visiting, Aleksandr Andreyevich. I’m sorry you couldn’t see him.’ He is walking towards the lift when she says, ‘Oh, Aleksandr Andreyevich?’
‘Yes?’
‘Would you mind stopping by our place and feeding Lovkach? That would be very helpful. The poor thing hasn’t eaten since yesterday. I’d forgotten about him.’ She starts searching through her handbag for the keys. ‘Give him a tin of sardines – there’s plenty there – and some milk.’
