by Shamim Sarif
Lauren is crying, she cannot help herself. “Uncle Alex, he shot her himself.”
“No…” is all he can say, and then there is a moment of complete stillness in the room. All life, and breath, and sound and movement has ceased. And then the shoulders beneath her hands are shaking.
“Oh God, Uncle Alex, I am so sorry. I thought you ought to know. I thought I had to tell you.”
She is holding him hard against her as he cries. She is helpless in the face of his grief, and has no idea what else to do. To her relief his shoulders stop moving after a few minutes, and he just sits quietly, beneath her hands, composing himself. She releases her hold on him when he shifts. He is reaching into his pocket for a handkerchief. She stands and pokes the fire, and waits for him to finish wiping his face and blowing his nose behind her.
“Are you sure it’s true? He told you this himself?”
She nods. “I’m so sorry, Uncle Alex.”
“How could he?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know.”
He is sitting very still again. It is as though all life is draining from him.
“I’m sorry,” she repeats. “Sorry to tell you this.” She wants to find something to do to help him, any small thing, even though he is so far beyond relief, and so she offers to fetch him some water. He nods, and she hesitates for a moment, because his breath is short now, his chest moving too quickly. He nods again, and quickly, she turns and hurries out.
In the cool darkness of the kitchen, the light of the open refrigerator door illuminates her face. Just as she reaches in for a cold bottle of water, she hears something. She stops, head up, listening. The noise comes again. A crash, something falling. Then another. Without stopping she runs back, the bottle clutched in her hand, listening to the continuing noise, and she throws open the living room door.
He is standing up, almost panting now, and in his raised hand is a small vase. It appears that this vase is the only breakable thing in the room that is still in one piece. She throws the bottle onto the sofa and goes straight to him taking the vase from his hand, and putting her arm around him. He sits down, covering his eyes.
“How could he? We were his best friends in the world. How could he?”
“I’m sorry, Uncle Alex.” There are shards of broken glass beneath her feet. She is a little fearful now, for she has never in her life seen him do anything remotely violent, and she does not know how to reach this part of him that is so wounded it cannot speak, only act.
“Don’t be. I don’t want to have another secret, or unanswered question in my life ever again.” He is shouting now. “Do you understand? However hard it is, it’s better than lies.”
She makes reassuring noises, but he cannot hear them. His eyes are everywhere, moving wildly.
“I have to kill him. I have to. For Katya’s sake. And my own. I want him to know what she must have felt when he put the gun to her, the bastard. I want him to beg my forgiveness for taking her away. For taking her life from her when she was so young. How could he do it?”
Tears of fury and frustration leak from his eyes.
“She had everything to live for, Lauren. We both did. He could have helped us.”
He sighs, deeply, twice, and she senses that his rage is spent for now. Physically, he cannot continue without giving himself a heart attack. She sits next to him and holds him, trying to calm him. She does not know how she can go on with this story, although there is more to say. But can she really leave the next part for later?
“I miss her so much, Lauren,” he whispers. “My poor Katyushka. What a way to die.”
She takes these last words as some kind of sign that she must go through with the rest of it immediately. Checking that he is calmer, she leaves the room, and returns within a minute, feeling weighted down by the small, light suitcase that she is holding in her hands. She comes to where he sits and places it before him.
“Do you recognise this?”
He shakes his head.
“Misha says they gave him no choice but to kill her; and that she gave him no choice by confiding in him. But he says he’s been consumed with guilt ever since…”
His voice is fierce. “He could have helped her. He could have escaped with her. He was our friend, Lauren.”
“I know.”
“I’m glad I didn’t come with you. I would have killed him myself.”
“I know. But if it’s any consolation to you, he’s been drinking himself to death for years now. Trying to forget what he did, I think. He’s dying. He has a few months left at the most. I think that’s what made him give me this.”
She picks up the case, gently, rests it on her knees, and watches as realisation crosses his features. There is shadow thrown over his face, as if the inner pain he feels is somehow being reflected darkly back through his skin.
“It’s not hers?” he whispers, nodding at the case.
“Yes.”
He reaches out for it, hands shaking, and she hands it over, placing it gently on his lap.
“She had it with her when she…. She was all packed to try and get out. He told her he was taking her to a safe house.”
The click of the catch opening sounds deafening in the quiet of the room. Alexander slowly lifts the lid. On top of a small pile of clothes is a photograph in a tarnished silver frame. He picks it up and looks at it. Then he sets it down on the table before Lauren.
“Her parents. Your grandparents.”
She resists the impulse to take it and examine it well. There will be time for that later. She looks respectfully at the photograph, but then watches her uncle closely. In his hand he has a yellowed envelope that has been lying, sealed, just beneath the frame.
“She gave Misha that letter,” Lauren says. “To give you in case anything should happen to her. He put it away after he…after she died and never looked at the case since. He says he couldn’t stand to see it, and couldn’t bring himself to throw it away. He said that keeping it in his house, knowing it was lying there, was his punishment these last decades.”
“There is no punishment hard enough for him,” Alexander says savagely. He holds the letter, passing his fingers over it, caressing it, a look of such seriousness and sorrow on his face that Lauren can hardly stand to watch him. Then, at last, he lifts it and hands it to her.
“Shall we keep it for later?” she asks. “You’ve been through too much already tonight.”
“Please open it,” he says. He is right, she feels that. How could either of them carry on without finishing this tonight? She gently pulls open the envelope and slides the thin paper out. It crackles slightly as she unfolds it. Then she hands it back to him.
“It’s in Russian,” she says, redundantly.
He nods, and begins to read.
My darling Sasha
I am on my way to you. My heart is so light at the thought of starting this journey towards our new life together, I have to force myself to remember you will only be reading this if I never reach you.
I love you more than I knew I was able to love anyone or anything. Please remember this always – I don’t worry that you will ever forget, but I am afraid that you might come to doubt it because of everything you have so recently found out about me. You know now that I have spent most of my life working against the system that killed my parents. I used to think it was a life of such honour and nobility. But I have had enough of it. Enough of being driven by revenge and pain. That is why I am so happy that we have decided to try and get away from here. Outside, we can tell the truth about our country, about my parents. We can say it all, loudly, without fear of being silenced.
You opened up my eyes and made me see a world that is worth living in. You have made me love life. I never did before. What a gift to be given – three years of discovering that the world can be an exhilarating place to be in. No matter what happens, I will always be grateful to you for that.
Which brings me to the point of this letter. If something has happened to me, Sash
a, don’t let it ruin your life. Carry on well, as though we were with you. I say “we”, my darling, because I have just found out I am pregnant. I wanted this to be the first news I told you when we meet again, so forgive me for not confiding it before you left. I am so full of hope for our new baby. I will always admire my parents, but their politics left me an orphan – it was a terrible childhood, and I will not put our baby through it, if there is a chance we can get out of here and live together in freedom. All I really wanted to say was I love you, and adore you. More than anything, I live to be with you again. But if that does not happen, I rely on you to live the life we dreamed of on my behalf.
Yours always
Katya
She thinks he has finished reading, but she cannot be sure. She is holding her breath, reluctant to make any sound or movement at all in that room. The fire crackles like distant gunfire in the stillness around them. His eyes have stopped reading, but his head is still down. Something is about to happen, she can feel it, but just as she makes a move towards him, he makes a sound, an utterance that is beyond the human or even animal, a noise that seems to have been ripped out of the very centre of him. The letter falls back into the suitcase, and his hands are lifting the clothes inside, lifting them up, and he is crushing the cloth and garments to his face, sobbing and trying to inhale the scent of his dead wife at the same time. He is rocking back and forth, his hands still clinging to the clothes, his arms drawn up around his head and ears, as though seeking protection. The sounds he is making are new to her, and are sounds that she never wants to hear again – a distillation of sorrow, pure sadness and a deep raging that she cannot begin to reach. She sits, paralysed, on the edge of her chair. She cannot touch him or comfort him at this moment, so she just waits, helpless, and watches her uncle disintegrate before her.
Chapter Twenty Two
South Boston 1960
THE SMELL OF FISH – even the pickled fish that they stock – makes Yuri’s wife dizzy, she says. All that vinegar, she complains, evaporating into the air around her head. Yuri and Alexander laugh about it, and tease her. Today, her complaining is defiant and loud, a challenge to her husband to listen. Yuri picks up a whole fillet of pickled herring, and chases her around the shop with it. Around the central table piled with candles and cans, past the sweet counter, and behind the cheeses and meats. She runs from him, screaming and laughing at the same time, finally gaining the front door and throwing it open with such force that the shop bell rings for ten whole seconds. She disappears down the street, and will probably not come back for two hours, because they know she will simply keep running, and go to see her friend Lulu, who works at the hairdresser’s on the next block.
Yuri comes back into the shop from the street where he has been watching her go, and he smiles. Alexander opens the big wooden barrel for him to put back the fish.
“Why do you torment her like that?” he asks.
“It’s good for her. Anyway, she likes it. Women like a strong man, who gives them some trouble.”
“Chasing her with a pickled herring?”
“Whatever,”Yuri says, shrugging. “She likes it. And it gives her an excuse to run away from her own shop, which she doesn’t like, and sit and gossip with her friends.”
It is true that she prefers not to be tied to the shop. She is young and restless, and of little real help to Yuri, and he seems to have recognised this fact long ago and has stopped trying to change her. And so he is even more grateful for Alexander. His brother-in-law is conscientious and clean, and works hard. He is, Yuri thinks, always keen to prove himself an asset, and eager not to be thought a burden to them, as if such a thing would be possible from his sister’s husband. His dead sister’s husband. Yuri wipes down his counter tops, and thinks about the day he arrived at their door. Yuri had known at once that this man whom he had never met, had loved his sister Katya well. He had understood immediately the depth of Alexander’s love because beyond his brother-in-law’s polite words, and earnest tone, and uncomplicated appearance, were his eyes, and when you looked into those eyes you saw the clear, unseeing eyes of a dead man. Alexander, he realized at once, was a man for whom everything was now over.
In the months following his defection, Alexander had been fully investigated, interrogated and finally, congratulated by the American government. He had his papers, and he had declined the offer, the pressure, of continuing work with the government, and he was then free to continue on with his new life, except that he did not have one. Yuri had happily fed him and clothed him and he also put him to work immediately in the shop, for if Alexander, despite his anguish, were willing to continue in the outward forms of living, Yuri decided that he would help him as much as possible. In truth he is grateful to Alexander for loving his sister. In the midst of his own grief at her death, he is relieved that she found happiness and love, even for such a short time. She was always a sensitive child, she had always felt everything deeply, and she suffered terribly after their parents’ deaths. Yuri has always felt guilty for leaving her completely alone. He had been handed an opportunity to get out of the Soviet Union by travelling out with the circus, but he had hesitated to take it because there was a place for only one person, and she would have to stay. Katya, though, had encouraged him, even pushed him to go.
“In this place, Yuri,” she had told him, “If you get a chance to do what you want, you must take it.”
He remembers leaving her at her workplace that day, after she had said this to him, and he had hurried away, for he was late for work himself. He remembers he had found her gloves in his pocket as he ran, and he went back to give them to her, and then he found her crying alone, outside, crying over the fact of him going. She had only doubled her encouragement after that, and he had faltered, hating to leave her alone, but he had taken his chance in the end. Now, he welcomes this chance that has been so unexpectedly thrown at him, to make amends to her by caring for her husband.
The two men stop talking to each other and begin chatting to customers; there are now two in the shop. An old lady is buying bread from Yuri, complaining that the crust hurts her teeth.
“Are you sure you want it then, Mrs Davis?” he asks, his tone teasing.
“Of course. It hurts, but it strengthens my teeth. Anything that hurts you must be good for you, right?”
Not necessarily, thinks Alexander. He opens the barrel of fish for the other customer to look at. The vapours of vinegar and salt and the sea rise up and spread through the room. Your wife is right, Yuri, he thinks, while he waits for his customer to decide; the vinegar is strong. The man asks for a pound of the herring, and Alexander reaches in and pulls the fish out. Across the room, Mrs Davis is asking why they don’t have cakes and pies.
“Alexander!” calls Yuri. “Why don’t we have cakes and pies?”
Alexander shakes his head. “We don’t make them.”
Yuri is enjoying teasing the old lady. “Alexander! Why don’t we make them?”
Alexander replaces the lid on the barrel, and places the wrapped fish onto the scales. Then he scribbles down the cost and the weight with a pencil on some waxed paper, and multiplies them, underlining twice the price that he arrives at.
“I don’t know,” he says, and his tone has lost the bantering edge that it had. Yuri looks up at him. “I don’t know,” he repeats thoughtfully. “Perhaps I should try.”
“You like to cook, Sasha?”Yuri asks, placing the chosen loaf in the bag that the old lady is holding out for him.
Alexander shrugs. “I used to. Though, what did we have there to cook with?”
“Don’t remind me.”
Yuri goes to the door and holds it open for the old woman, and follows her out, where he stands looking at his fruit and vegetable displays, set up on trestle tables against the windows.
“These plums will have to go,” he calls in. “After today.”
Alexander follows him out and catches the plum that his brotherin-law tosses to him. They both bite into the f
ruit, soft and overripe, and they lean forward as they eat, so that the juice will not fall onto their shirts or shoes.
“They are not bad,” Alexander tells him. “Just soft.”
“They can’t be sold.”
“No, but they can be cooked.”
Yuri laughs, but watches his brother-in-law closely. “My God, were you serious?”
“Yes.”
“Another thing my wife will love you for,” smiles Yuri. Alexander looks at the plums, and waits for Yuri to explain. “Not only do you keep her out of the shop, but now you want to keep her out of the kitchen.”
“She hates cooking, Yuri.”
“I know. So, whatever ideas you have swimming around in that head of yours, go ahead and try them out. I won’t stop you, and God knows, she won’t. And if any of it is any good, we can sell it.”
“Good,” says Alexander. “Can I take them now?” he asks, pointing at the plums.
“When we close, Sasha, when we close. We may still sell some, you know.”
Yuri pats him on the back, and the two men walk back inside. Good, thinks Yuri to himself, watching Alexander walk briskly ahead of him. Something else to occupy his time, he thinks, and a good chance on top that we will get better food to eat.
It is two hours since they have all finished supper. Bowls of steaming vegetable soup and lots of thickly buttered bread. It is the first time that Alexander has gone into the kitchen to help his sisterin-law prepare the evening meal. She was disconcerted at first by his presence, but soon reconciled herself to it when he showed her how quickly and willingly he could chop the vegetables. He stirred, and tasted and added salt and herbs, persuading her to go and wash her hair, while he looked after the dinner. His soup was a great success, and Yuri ate three bowls and secretly congratulated himself on his latest suggestion.
The house is quiet now. Yuri is reading beneath a weak lamp in the living room, with the wireless providing a low hum of dance music in the background. His wife has gone to bed. Alexander still sits in the kitchen, a cookbook open before him, and a bowl of flour and butter by his side. He frowns as he reads, and then abruptly stands up and plunges his hands into the bowl. He works the pieces of butter into the flour, lifting it up high above the bowl and letting it fall. He rubs and sifts with his fingers, again and again and again until he has before him a bowl full of fine crumbs. He consults the book once more, and then goes to the sink and fills a large spoon with cold water. He carries it back, carefully, to the bowl and pours it in gently. Again he repeats the movement, knowing full well he could easily take the bowl to the sink, but somehow enjoying the extra steps, the extra effort, the concentration required to carry back the full spoon without losing a drop. Then he cracks an egg, and puts his hands once more into the bowl, turning and binding and pulling together. With some innate instinct he does not handle the dough much, but lightly rolls it out and places it into a buttered flan dish, which he fills with heavy, dried beans, and places into the oven. He goes out to the living room, where Yuri looks at him from over the top of his book.
