by Shamim Sarif
“Well,” Alexander tells her. “I’d like another piece of the cake that’s causing all the trouble. And I don’t want you to throw it at me, so I’m retiring from the debate.”
He holds her glance a moment longer than is necessary, a way of making amends for the altercation. She understands and is grateful that he has been generous enough to shift the focus of the conversation. For her part, she turns to Lauren.
“I can’t tell you how much I loved your work. The two abstracts in your uncle’s house. They left me with such a feeling… I don’t know why, or rather how they had such an effect.”
Lauren is flattered. She had almost forgotten those paintings, but Estelle’s remarks bring back a momentary sense of what she had felt when she produced them, several years ago.
“Thanks. They’re pretty old pieces, though. I do portraits mainly now.”
“I’d love to see them. Whose?”
“Oh, some socialites. Some old money, some new. A lot of your favourite corporate types. More and more. They’re mostly the same. They like to see themselves in suits, tailored but relaxed. The arms are usually folded, and the expression – that has to be strong yet benevolent, tough with just a hint of condescension.”
“Sounds like you have it down to a formula,” smiles Estelle, but Lauren does not smile in return. Just for a moment, she finds she cannot. Her own flippant description of her work is still ringing in her head, and Estelle’s remark has distilled it, has given it the unforgiving effect of a fluorescent light being snapped on in a pitch dark room. Lauren has, for that instant, perfect clarity about her work – and she is horrified at what she sees. A formula.
Estelle clears her throat during the ensuing silence – she is unsure of anything right at this moment except that she seems to be upsetting one or other of her guests every time she opens her mouth.
“I have to tell you, my Christmas present is anything but formulaic.” Alexander is smiling, intent, desperate to alleviate the distress he can read in his niece’s face. With alacrity, Estelle grasps the line that has been thrown.
“Really? What was it? Your present?”
There is the slightest hesitation from Alexander as he realizes that his quiet gallantry has led him to a point where he will have to mention things that he had no wish to talk about.
“A portrait,” he says. “Of Katya.”
Estelle appears immediately intrigued. “I’d love to see it,” she suggests, and Lauren nods.
“You must.”
She is too considerate and polished to allow this unexpected realization about her work to keep everyone off-balance and floundering. She will simply store it up in the back of her mind to think over later, if she dares.
“What about tomorrow?” Alexander suggests. He is almost surprised to hear himself say it. Although he would like very much to see Estelle again, the focus on Katya and Russia does not come easily to him. But the offer has already been made by Lauren, and it would be rude to ignore it.
“I’d love to,” Estelle says. “I’d like to look at your other work again too.”
She feels recovered now from the previous, edgy exchanges, and eager to ask him something about himself, and about Russia in particular, but she feels a little apprehensive of those soft brown eyes of his watching her unwaveringly, as though daring her to probe the secrets that they guard so politely. She decides against skirting around the subject since he seems so adept at side-stepping.
“Tell me about Russia, when you were there. Or the Soviet Union, rather? It’s fascinating to someone like me, born and brought up here.”
He regards her kindly but without openness. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything. How was it back then? Did you have to fight for a loaf of bread? How did you get from Russia to America? When did you leave? Why did you leave?”
There is a pause. Lauren drinks down her last sip of tea, even though it is cold.
“Gathering material for your novel?” Alexander says, and he is instantly sorry. The comment seemed to just slip out of him, unconsidered, and he had meant it as a light comment, to divert away from those questions of hers, questions that he has courted, but which have already thrown him off balance; but instead he feels he has been unkind, and accusatory.
“No.” She offers no further explanation or justification – her denial is vehement enough without them, and he apologises at once.
“I’m sorry. You must think I have the worst manners…”
“You met my husband,” she replies, with a slight smile. He shakes his head as if to assure her that he will not be made to feel better so easily.
“I left there just before Katya died,” he says. “1959. I was twenty-eight.”
“How old was she?”
“The same age as me.”
Estelle winces. In the expectant silence that follows, he senses more questions about Katya’s death, and so he quickly moves on.
“It was hard back then,” he tells her. “I can hardly remember it sometimes, and at other times I can think of nothing else. My wife has always remained the most real thing about Russia for me. But we didn’t struggle the way many people did. My father did well in the civil service…”
“A good communist?”
“Yes. He came from a well-to-do family. At least they had money before the revolution. But he believed in the fight for equality. For a better life for everyone. It was a real belief for him, and he gave up everything he had to follow Lenin. Then, he began to rise in the party ranks, during the early years of Stalin’s government, and he got back some of the privileges he had had before – a better home, better food.”
“But surely that wasn’t the communist ideal…”
“Exactly. But it is hard to keep completely aware of ideals when you are hungry and cold and have a wife and baby.”
“And did you follow the same path?”
“There was no other path to follow in the Soviet Union. If you were given the opportunities I was given, you didn’t turn them down. But I began to see many things that did not make sense. People were brainwashed.” He pauses, considering.
“Perhaps that’s not quite right. We were simply brought up not to think for ourselves. Because thinking might cause you to question things, and if you questioned the Communist Party, then you were a threat, a loose cannon. They wanted everyone to conform – to think and work the same way, for the common good, supposedly. Katya made me see these things more clearly. She always thought for herself, and believe me, that was incredibly unusual in Soviet Russia, especially during Stalin’s time and just after. It seems normal to us now, in the west. But it was so different then. It was like suggesting the world was square. But I carried on with my work because there was nothing else to do. Maybe I thought I could make a change from within the government. I don’t know. And I was always reassured by the beliefs of my father, because he was a good man. I was too much reassured.”
Estelle waits, hoping for more. She is interested and intrigued; but the effort of revealing this much seems to have been enough for Alexander.
“You worked for the government?”
“Yes.”
“Interesting.”
“Not especially. I had a decent apartment and a good enough life with Katya.”
“And she changed your way of thinking?”
“She enlarged it and shaped it and refined it. She was a long, long way ahead of me on that score. She even found ways to challenge things…” he breaks off and takes a sip of tea.
“How?” Estelle asks. He can feel her watching him carefully. Lauren shifts slightly in her seat. He is suddenly defensive, tired of speaking after his unaccustomed openness; and then, with a timing he could not have wished for, the kitchen door opens, and he is spared. Melissa Johnson stands just inside the doorway, where she concentrates on pulling off her charcoal grey gloves.
“Hello, my darling. I didn’t realize you’d be back so early,” Estelle says.
Melissa blinks. “I
’m not back – I just forgot some papers. Where’s dad?”
“You really have to ask?”
Melissa turns and only then realizes, with considerable surprise, that it is Alexander Ivanov who is sitting in her mother’s kitchen. Even more discomforting, his niece is with him, watching her with an amused look in her black eyes. Alexander stands, and hesitates between a handshake and a kiss, but Melissa leans forward for the latter.
“We were just talking about you, earlier,” Alexander tells her.
“Really?” Melissa leans over to shake Lauren’s hand, and gives her mother a wry look. “All good things, I’m sure.”
Estelle smiles. “We were discussing big business.”
“And I suppose I was cast as the big bad wolf?”
“Of course.”
Just visibly, Melissa takes a breath, although she keeps the sound of it packed down inside herself. Her eyes look tired, Lauren notices, and she chooses not to take up this line of conversation, but Estelle has already moved on.
“I was also spending your money for you. Lauren is a portrait painter and I told her you might commission a portrait one of these days.”
“Of myself? I don’t think so.”
Melissa lays her gloves on the counter but keeps her coat on. She takes the empty seat beside Lauren.
“Do you do other things than portraits?” she asks.
“Sure.” At least, I used to, she thinks. “But I don’t like my potential clients to be beaten into commissioning anything by their mothers.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Melissa says. “I won’t do anything I don’t want to. I’d love to see your work though.”
Lauren opens her mouth to speak, then glances at Alexander, a glance of query.
“Why don’t you both come over to my place tomorrow?” he tells her. “Your husband too, if he’d like to. We can see some of Lauren’s pieces, and then Melissa, you and I can talk business. Or not, if you prefer.” It is an elegant way to re-open the negotiation, and Melissa takes advantage of it with good grace.
“Sounds good. There are a few suggestions I have that I’d like to go over with you, anyway. I tried you at the office yesterday and today, but you weren’t around.”
A sigh from Estelle.
“It’s Christmas,” Lauren says quickly, easily, a smile in her eyes.
Melissa looks at her, her grey eyes seem less austere for a moment. “And you all think I’m the grinch.”
“Never too late to change,” Lauren says.
Melissa holds her look. “I can try, I guess. What time do you want us tomorrow?”
“About eleven.”
“So time to stop in at the office first.”
“Or to just stay in bed,” suggests Lauren.
Melissa looks at her. “Possibly,” she says, and smiles.
Alexander coughs slightly. He is somewhat surprised to see his feisty niece charming the woman she so recently dismissed as ‘awful’. Melissa’s eyes take in the table, lingering with feigned disinterest on the cake .
“Would you like a piece of this?” Lauren asks, offering her the plate.
“Is it carb-free?”
“No, but then it’s not taste-free either.” Melissa shakes her head. “Please, don’t try and break all my rules in one day. It may be Christmas, but my goodwill to all men only extends so far.”
She stands up, reaches for her gloves, and is ready to leave almost as abruptly as she arrived. Lauren watches her, bemused.
“I have to get going,” she says. “I guess I’ll see you all tomorrow.”
Chapter Eight
Moscow – July 1956
THE METRO IS CLEAN AND CLEAR just after school finishes. If she is able to leave by four o’clock, the ride is easier, quicker than the bus. But today she has had work after her school administration job is over; she has had to carry a message and some documents and she has had to lie. She has helped to set in motion a train of events that will undermine, delay and irritate the people and the system she hates. The usual necessary work, but it is occasionally distasteful nonetheless. And now it is late, seven o’clock, and she steps off the train with a hundred other people. She lands lightly on the platform. Before her feet lies an expanse of polished marble blocks. She watches the shoes of her fellow passengers tap and scrape across them. The walls rise high with the smooth, veined marble too, except where they end in pale grey stonework, carved firmly into imposing images of Stalin, Lenin and other heroes of the Party. Above her head hang glass chandeliers, wide bowls of glittering glass that blaze light into the subterranean cavern. The height, the space, the dramatic beauty – these have become an everyday phenomenon to the commuters who use the metro, to people who only know homes where the ceilings hang low and the walls are thin enough for a forceful fist to punch through. Katya pauses and blinks – she is standing suddenly in a ballroom, in another, prerevolutionary world, where at any moment a flock of white-necked women will be escorted to dance by tall men in ties and long jackets and waxed whiskers. Something she has read of in Tolstoy perhaps. Someone bumps into her shoulder and she spins round. An old woman disappears across the station without any word of apology. Katya rubs her shoulder, and follows the rest of them out and upwards, away from the subway station, away from this “people’s palace” built by Stalin.
What use is a station that looks like a ballroom when people are still struggling for meat and milk?
Out on the street, the air is fresher, and she turns and walks quickly into her apartment block, for Sasha will be coming soon, and she wants to bathe and change out of these clothes that she feels are soiled from the places they have just been. It is a strange idea of hers, but she cannot rid herself of it. Whenever she finishes such work, her real work, she changes all her clothes from her sweater to her underwear and washes them all, no matter how clean. She thinks it is her way of separating the strands of her life, or maybe, she laughs to herself, she believes the ideas of the people she deals with will rub off on her like a germ.
She is ready twenty minutes early, and she waits as the minutes drip by, glancing to the open window for any sign of him. She hears a firm footfall on the road below, and immediately there is a feeling of hollowness in her chest, a pleasant emptiness that she knows is a strange type of anticipation. She stands casually, with her face up against the grimy window pane and peers down, but it is not him. She breathes in to slow the sprinting of her heartbeat. This is all new to her, and all wrong, she thinks; very, very wrong. She should not be waiting like this, like a hopeful puppy, looking from windows. She has to try and be more rational about the whole situation. It is just one more step on the path you want to take through life, Katya.
Of course, it would be much easier if he was petulant, or unkind, or hungry for power, or even just ugly or inconsiderate. But there is time for her to uncover these things about him. No-one is without their bad points; she just needs to look harder to find them. And then she can work to subdue these unlooked for feelings, these slow droplets of escaped emotion that are slowly filling up inside her. It will be easier when she finds out what a bastard he really is.
She knows he will probably come slightly before the appointed hour, for he too has trouble keeping away from her, and sure enough, he is fifteen minutes early. He has taken the metro to her area, and has tried without much success to use up the extra time by walking slowly for much of the way. Now that he is before her building, though, within a hundred paces of her, it is easier to slow down, to savour the anticipation of seeing her within a very few moments. Her block is uniform, indistinguishable from the others around it except for the numbers on the front. He sighs slightly. The apartments are depressing. Pre-fabricated, hastily thrown up by Khrushchev to help solve the housing problems of the city – there are a million more people living in Moscow now than there were only ten years ago. They have served their purpose well, these apartment blocks, but the people who live in them call them khrushchoby, a joke that combines their leader’s name
with the word trushchoby – slum. They are better than slums, certainly, but are not comparable to the stone and brick buildings in which Alexander has grown up. He moves quickly through the dank, gloomy stairwell. She lives on the top floor, the fifth. These blocks are rarely higher, for they dispense with the luxury of elevators also. Her door is thrown open before he reaches the top, and she is looking out for him.
“Katya,” is all he says, as he reaches her and lifts her up into a hug and spins her around and kisses her. His briefcase and two parcels are dropped onto the floor. She pushes the door shut behind him, and he glances around.
“Where’s Maya?”
“Gone out. She’s eating with her workmates. And her mother’s staying with her sister in the country for a week.”
He smiles, kisses her again.
“Will we always be this excited to see each other, Sasha?”
“Always, my love.”
“Even when we are ancient?” She has asked the question from her heart, without thinking, but as soon as the words are spoken she feels a weight in her stomach, a weight that makes her feel slightly sick. This suggestion of hers that they will be together until they die, when she knows that she is only with him, supposed to be with him, for one reason. It is difficult to remember sometimes. To stay aware, in the way Misha said she should always be aware. But if she tries to be aloof with him, or distant, or if she holds herself back in any way he will feel it. The relationship will not progress, and the game will be over. She has to let herself go, to immerse herself in the role of a woman in love, even when the acting begins to come too easily, and she no longer has to think so hard about her lines.
“Especially when we’re ancient.” He pulls back from her and looks at her eyes and mouth and face. “You will never be old in my eyes, Katyushka,” he says, gallantly, and with complete honesty.
“Are you sure?”
“Completely. Are you hungry?”
She nods. She has not eaten since her lunchtime meal of bread and soup from the school canteen.
