by Shamim Sarif
She stands quietly in the middle of the room and frowns. It has been almost too easy, and she still has plenty of time. She runs a finger over the shelf of books above the bed. Nothing stands out. Then she goes through the drawers, and the desk, and his books. Then the bathroom. The floor and basin are dirty and marked, and tiny chest hairs are curled into every corner, but the mirror is surprisingly clean. Vanity? she wonders, and she stops there herself and looks at her face. It appears gaunt and closed off, and distrustful. She is startled, as though she has caught an unknown woman standing right behind her, and then unsettled, for this is not how she sees herself in her own mind. She wonders if this is the face that Alexander sees. As she thinks of him, her face softens, and this change in her features is so clear on the unrelenting surface of the mirror that she quickly turns away.
She has what she came for, and so she removes the film and tucks it inside her shirt, places the camera into her handbag. Quietly she moves across the floor, and closes the front door behind her. By the time she emerges onto the street, the sunlight has begun to recede, and it feels cooler than before.
She walks slowly down the street, and around the corner. She cannot see Misha anywhere. She slows down slightly, but does not look behind, not at first; but then she can sense him walking up behind her, and without thinking she turns to look. He is not there. As she looks ahead again she bumps into him.
“Katya!” he says, for there are many people around now, leaving work. “How are you? What a surprise.”
“Yes, isn’t it?”
He laughs. “What the hell do you think you were doing?”
She swallows, then sighs. “Sorry. I thought I felt you behind me.”
“Even worse. Don’t ever look for me, and don’t ever wait for me. If they get one of us, they mustn’t get the other.”
“I know.”
“Don’t ever wait for me, Katya.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Her step becomes a little faster, as though she is trying to pull away from the conversation. Misha keeps up.
“Did you get everything?” he asks.
“Immediately. All under the bed.”
“Again?”
She nods. “Will these people never learn?” she asks dryly.
“They would,” he says, walking her in the direction of her apartment, “but they never think it’ll happen to them. More paranoia – that’s what they need.”
“You don’t think they have enough? They rule with it.”
“Maybe they need to bring some into their own homes. They’re making your job too easy.”
She pushes her hands deeper into the pockets of her long cardigan.
“Don’t worry, it will never be too easy.”
They walk quietly for a few minutes before he broaches the thing he has been considering all afternoon.
“It’s time you took something from Alexander.”
She seems startled. “Already?”
He nods. “Just once. Just a test run. See how it works.”
He wants to see how she works, to test her, she is sure of it. He is concerned that she has lost control of her emotions, that she will begin to like Sasha so much that she will no longer want to betray him.
“It’s not the right time. He’ll suspect. I don’t want to ruin it before we’ve even started.”
“I think it’s time,” Misha repeats. His tone now is authoritative. He has slipped into his role as the senior one in this partnership. She is his recruit, his responsibility, his agent. In the end, she must follow orders.
“Fine,” she replies. “What do you want me to do?”
“You see him in the evenings, don’t you? Does he bring work home?”
“Sometimes.”
“Anything interesting?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t looked yet. I was trying to be careful.”
“Take whatever he brings next time,” Misha says, and his tone is the same, firm, leaving no room for argument. “Photograph it, copy it, remember it if you have to – you decide.”
She nods. “Give me a week or two.”
“Sure.”
They have reached the corner of the street that she lives on. The light summer green of the trees casts little pools of shade onto the uneven paving stones, and in the fading sunlight, the yellowing concrete of the apartment blocks looks warm and burnished. Misha stops here, and kisses her goodbye, and as he grasps her hand fondly she slips the camera film into his palm. From here he will turn back onto the main street and walk down to the metro. No other words are exchanged between them, and she is glad of it, for he has ended the day in a way that she had not anticipated and she is feeling more than a little perturbed. He is already walking away, and she watches him disappear around the corner. She stands, lonely on the quiet street, and waits until she can no longer hear his footsteps.
Chapter Seven
Boston
“SO TELL ME ABOUT THIS PERSON we’re having tea with.” “Her name is Estelle.” Alexander watches Lauren butter her fourth piece of toast. “How do you have the appetite for breakfast after last night?” he asks.
She bites into it with relish. “Want some?”
He shakes his head. Perhaps when he was younger, and his digestion a little better than it is now, he would have been able to eat like that; though in fact he has always been satiated by a little food of excellent quality, rather than quantity for it’s own sake. It is a fastidious tendency that has served him well through all the years building a business based around food.
“And she’s the mother of the awful Melissa?” Lauren asks. “How did you meet?”
She continues eating while he tells her; she is listening intently, but is giving the impression that she is more caught up in her breakfast than in the details of her uncle’s story. She has sensed something interesting here, an attraction on his part, but she wants him to speak freely, without noticing that she is probing deeper feelings.
“Anyway, Melissa wouldn’t leave the meeting to have lunch with her, so I brought her home. I liked her.”
“How come?”
She dusts toast crumbs from her hands as he talks; he mentions Estelle’s wit, her quick mind, her unnaturally blue eyes. The romantic slant of this last observation is not lost on Lauren.
“So are you going to ask her out?”
“Of course not. She’s married.”
“Happily?”
He stands up to pour more tea. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know. I guess, if she’s unhappily married, would that be less of an obstacle for you? In pursuing her?”
He is taken aback. Not because the wish that Estelle was single has not crossed his mind, but because he is disconcerted that his innermost thoughts, which strike him as ignoble, have been guessed at by his niece.
“You know me,” he tells her, tersely. “I wouldn’t even think like that.”
“I know. But passion has been known to drive people to madness.”
“It’s hardly passion. We just met. It’s a friendship, barely. A possible friendship.”
The city is as quiet as Lauren has ever known it, the heavy, grey light adding to the sense of isolation, and desolation. They walk together without speaking, glancing in at the window displays of the closed shops. Then, deliberately, they turn off the main road and stroll through silent back streets. Cooking smells slip into the air around them as they walk past the brownstones that loom up on one side. Across the broad, deserted street, through the stark winter trees, the vast river lies cloudy and still.
A few windows have coloured lights or candles in them, but the decorations here in this street of academics and students are largely subdued or absent. Few residents remain here during university holidays, and it shows. Only one house on the corner sports a garish display on its small front patio. A large plastic Santa Claus, streaked with soil and snow melt, stands forlornly in a flower bed; behind him a plastic reindeer lies on its side in the earth, st
aring up at the sky.
“That’s a nice look,” Lauren comments. “Take a tip for next year.”
They walk back up the street, purposefully now, scanning the door numbers until they find Estelle’s entrance. There are lights in the second floor windows and Estelle’s voice floats over the intercom, altered and indecipherable; the door clicks open and they walk in and up the stairs.
She is waiting on the landing, and Alexander stands aside for his niece to precede him. It is innate courtesy on his part, but he is also grateful for the buffer, for someone to shield the unlooked for nervousness that he now feels. Before they reach the top of the stairs he hands the bouquet of roses that he carries to Lauren. Estelle receives them from her with a smile, but is slightly awkward, he feels, and fusses for a while over the flowers as she leads them into a long, narrow hallway, lit with lamps that cast a delicate light onto pure white walls. Before they manage more than a few steps, a voice thunders out from a darkened hallway to their left.
“Christmas Day. It must be Santa Claus.”
In the dimness of the unlit passageway stands a tall man whom Alexander assumes must be the husband, the professor. The balance of his large body looks strangely precarious, as though a slight breeze, or a gentle push, might cause him to list to one side. In is holding in one large hand an even larger cup from which steam rises.
“Not even the tooth fairy, I’m afraid,” Alexander replies.
Estelle smiles. “This is Lauren, Frank. She’s an artist. And Mr Ivanov, her uncle. It’s his company that Melissa was trying to buy.”
“Ah. Ivanov, you say?”
Alexander nods. The professor raises eyebrows that are unkempt but expressive.
“Are you of Russian extraction?” he asks.
“Yes, I am.”
“You know, you share your name with a play written by your compatriot, Chekov?”
“Ivanov. Yes, that’s right.”
“Do you know it?”
“A little.” Alexander smiles, and so does the professor.
“A rather dull play, is it not?”
“It has never been one of my favourites.”
“And tell me, is your Christian name also Mikhail, like the character?”
For a brief moment he feels like a schoolboy, standing there, being given a sneaky test by the teacher. Perhaps Professor Johnson knows no other way of communicating.
“My name is Alexander,” he replies. “Not Nikolai, as I believe the other Ivanov was called.”
There is a barking noise from the hall, which Alexander takes to be a laugh, because Estelle smiles also. Perhaps he is imagining it, but he sees a trace of pleasure in her eyes – perhaps she is pleased that he has kept up with her difficult husband. In the meantime, the professor turns around and continues walking away from them. Lauren’s eyebrows are slightly raised; she is beginning to understand from where Melissa must have learned, or inherited, her somewhat deficient communication skills. She glances at her uncle, her lips curved into a half-smile.
“You will excuse me if I take my tea in my study, Mr Ivanov,” Professor Johnson calls over his shoulder.
“Of course.”
A door clicks shut, and he is gone. Estelle sighs slightly.
She doesn’t remember the last time she was able to enjoy this banter of his, this brand of humour, even though she is the type who enjoys laughing. She has always been an easy-going counterfoil to the foibles and moods of her husband, the more serious professor. An out-going character to balance his deep introversion. She has a wisecracking, dry, quick sense of humour that he had liked when they first met, which was so long ago that on the odd occasions when she recalls those memories to her mind, it seems to her that they play themselves out in black and white. He too was ironic at times – is still ironic, but in a less pleasant way than he used to be. His intellectual strength has made him impatient, or even contemptuous sometimes, of people who try to engage him. She does not remember him being like this before, though she is willing to admit to herself that this may be nothing more than a trick of nostalgia; the inevitable filtering out of the hard pieces of grit through the fine mesh of memory. What she remembers is watching sly-eyed through his study door at the university, as she typed in the reception area outside. He would leave his door ajar during the summer months, when the sweltering Boston heat rose moistly up the red brick building and overflowed in through the windows.
She remembers watching him teach his students. A tall, imposing presence he seemed to her, lowered into a wooden captain’s chair, listening intently while different young boys and girls, by turns nervous and bold, read aloud their essay for the week. He listened well, and without self-consciousness, so that she felt sure that he was not aware that she half-observed him. Later, when they were together, he would laugh, a gruff sound that seemed to her to match perfectly the rough-hewn contours of his features, and he would tell her that he had always known that she was watching him. She would listen to him, intrigued, absorbing into her own mind the lush overflow of words, of poetry and prose and criticism that issued from that room. The inside of his room always looked summery in her mind – she could not remember it dark or cold, although it must have been so for many months at a time. But whenever she put her mind to it, she could still summon up the smell of old books and dust that pervaded it, no matter how bright the light that washed the walls. It was the smell of scholarship and absent-mindedness, and it brought to her mind the sensation that she was stepping into one of those Victorian novels that she loved so well. She would often put her head into the empty room before she left at the end of the workday, just to get a last lungful of that air, a sense of understanding and kinship with the professor, and with the contents of those age-speckled books, something to take home with her; an unusual need that she could never explain to anyone.
“Come on in. He doesn’t mean to be sarcastic,” she says, leading her guests into a kitchen that blazes with light and seems the direct antithesis of the dark hallway outside. “It’s just his way. I think too many years shut up with only his books have left him not knowing how to speak to people. Even to say hello.”
The kitchen is large, for an apartment, and about half of it is taken up with a well-used wooden table and chairs. The table is already set with cream coloured china, the perfect delicacy of the plates and cups at odds with the lived-in, almost faded feel of the rest of the kitchen furnishings. There are only three settings, Alexander notes. Evidently she has not expected her husband to join them, nor her daughter.
She talks mainly to Lauren at first, asking her about their Christmas, and Alexander watches them, his eyes drawn particularly to Estelle, for his morning conversation with Lauren is till playing on his mind. He tries to be casual in his examination of her, but when Estelle looks to him, politely, during the course of the conversation, she is instantly disconcerted. He transfers his attention at once to the slices of cake that sit on the table before them. Lauren has already tasted a piece.
“This is amazing…”
Alexander tries it and asks at once for the recipe but Estelle appears hesitant.
“It’s kind of an old family secret.”
Alexander shakes his head. “Everyone has a price, Estelle. And when it comes to food, I can usually find it.”
“Really? Now I see the no-nonsense businessman.” She frowns and pours cups of aromatic tea. He can see her considering whether or not to tell.
“Well, since you are a man who loves his food so much…It’s an autumn cake. You have to wait till fall – preferably late fall.”
He sits a little forward in his chair, intrigued.
“You need to dress up warmly,” she continues, nodding at Lauren. “And then… do you know Fisher’s Pond? Where all the berries grow?”
Alexander nods.
“You walk over there. When you get to the northeast corner, where most of the fruit bushes are, turn left down the pathway.”
“And then?” he asks.
“And then when you get to Marion’s Bakery Stall, you go in and buy as many as you want from the counter. She makes them fresh every day except Monday.” The women look at each other and laugh.
“Come on, Uncle Alex, didn’t you see that coming?”
“I had you going, didn’t I?” Estelle adds, with satisfaction.
“You have a naughty streak, Estelle.”
“Sorry I couldn’t oblige you with a new dessert recipe. What will you do now?”
He tastes his tea. “Maybe I’ll suggest that whoever eventually buys our company contact Marion as a potential new supplier.”
“Of course.” Estelle shakes her head. “And before you know it, Marion will be a conglomerate, and her cakes will taste like plastic.”
The strong tone of her words leaves a slight pause hanging between them for a moment, before Alexander puts down his cup.
“Firstly, have you considered the fact that Marion, whoever she is, might not want to go on baking only ten cakes a day for the rest of her life? And secondly, not all big business means poor quality.”
“Maybe, but you have to agree that companies like yours are the exception rather than the rule. And,” she adds with a note of triumph, “even you are on the point of selling out. You know things won’t stay the same. That home-made touch that you’re so famous for will probably disappear.”
“I’m ‘selling out’ because I’m getting old and I want to do other things with my life.”
“I know. I’m not accusing you of taking the money and running. But no matter what your reasons, the outcome will be the same.”
Her eyes dance; she seems impassioned by this exchange. Lauren is noting the change in her electric blue eyes and the sudden colour in her cheeks.
“And Melissa?” Alexander asks. “Do you include her as part of those impersonal business machines that you seem to hate so much?”
He stops short, realizing that his niece is giving him a warning look. But Estelle does not seem insulted as much as eager to explain.
“Melissa and I don’t see eye to eye on many things. And definitely not big business.”
