A slight change in pressure in the workshop told me that my wife had opened the front door at the other end of the house. There was almost immediately a distant exclamation of surprise and I could hear her inviting the visitor inside. She was talking excitedly to somebody as she brought them through the house, inevitably heading for my workshop. I looked up with annoyance, but when I saw that the caller was Nikolai Bednyi I put down my tools and told him how genuinely pleased I was to see him.
‘I know I should’ve written to tell you I was coming…’ he said.
I walked over and I gave him a hug that seemed to make him feel uncomfortable. It wasn’t the kind of thing we had ever done back when we had known each other so well at University.
‘Is Maya not with you?’ I asked him.
‘He wouldn’t explain,’ said Anna, concerned.
Nikolai looked from me to my wife and then took hold of her hand.
‘I thought I should tell you together. Maya’s dead,’ he announced.
It would have been an awkward reunion even without Nikolai’s tragic news. Somehow we had remained distantly in contact with him and Maya since University at Petersburg some thirty years earlier, but it was inevitable that the intimate friendship of the past had been neglected. When we had all acted together in the Theatre Group in the early 1900s we had been very close. We had witnessed the troops firing on the striking workers in 1905 and had believed that we would never see anything so horrific again. But then came the war, just as we were settling to marriage and jobs. Somehow I and Nikolai both survived when so many didn’t, and I settled in Toksovo with Anna, while he came back for Maya and returned to his family farm somewhere outside of Strelna. Perhaps we should have made the effort to see each other, there were opportunities, but the upheavals and uncertainties brought about by political terrors and years of shortages meant that we all had little concern for anything but ourselves and our own survival. This was the first time, for instance, that Nikolai had ever visited us in Toksovo, and yet we had been living there for fifteen years.
In addition to the sad news we also had to come to terms with the fact that Maya had died six months earlier and Nikolai had not told us before.
‘I was so upset,’ he said. ‘Her family had to arrange the funeral. I forgot to let them know about old friends like you two. I should’ve written.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I told him. ‘It’d been a long time.’
We did understand and besides, we weren’t going to add to his distress.
‘Would you mind if I stayed for a few days?’ he asked.
‘Of course we don’t.’ My wife and I had replied almost in unison.
‘We’d love to have you here,’ added Anna. ‘How are you coping?’
‘Not well, actually. There’s something I want to talk to you about,’ he said to me. ‘But not now, not just yet.’
‘Shall I leave you two?’ asked Anna.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, obviously realising that he sounded rude. ‘I have to do some thinking first.’
‘Take as long as you like,’ I assured him. ‘The room at the front of the house is all yours. We’ll make you up a bed there.’
‘I think, perhaps, that I’d like to do some walking. I can get out into the forests easily enough from here?’
‘Yes, just continue on up the road and there they are…Not that you’ll have many hours of daylight for walking, not at this time of year.’
‘Thank you, thank you both,’ he said, slightly pathetically.
Anna showed Nikolai to his room while I tidied my workshop and then cleaned myself up. When my wife came back I could hear her putting the kettle on the stove in the kitchen before coming out to talk to me.
‘We’ve lost so many friends over the years,’ she said. ‘And Maya was a friend so long ago, but time doesn’t mean anything. If she’d arrived with Nikolai it wouldn’t have mattered that we’d not talked in years.’
‘I know,’ I said, and we held each other tight. ‘I’m really upset, but I’m not sure if I have a right to be, not after all this time, not after everything we have all been through. But we’ll do what we can for Nikolai.’
‘I’ll go and talk to him,’ I said, and Anna unwillingly let me go.
‘We will,’ she said.
I kissed her forehead and went into the house, where I found Nikolai in the front room, staring out of the window.
‘Six months isn’t long enough to come to terms with it,’ I said.
‘I still find it hard to believe she’s gone. The stupid thing is that every now and again I forget she’s dead. I’ll turn around to tell her something and be surprised that she’s not there.’
‘I’m sorry. If there’s anything we can do…?’
‘Thank you.’
‘And please treat this place as your own.’
He lowered himself into one of our shabby armchairs. ‘As I said, there’s something I want to talk to you about, but I need some time to get it all sorted out up here,’ he tapped his forehead with his index finger.
‘Of course,’ I said, resolving that I would be patient with him.
It took Nikolai several days before he would say anything. He did go out for walks, but he seemed singularly indifferent to the scenery or the weather. When we were able to observe him indoors he seemed very preoccupied and at first we tried not to leave him to his own thoughts. He had told us that he wanted time to think, but it seemed natural to try and stop him from dwelling on matters that obviously upset him. When he decided to talk to me he chose an awkward time, but perhaps he realised that if he didn’t say something at that particular moment then perhaps he would not say anything at all.
I was in my workshop still trying to carve the stylised foliage into one of the panels. The party official who had commissioned them was very embarrassed when he said what he wanted, but I was pleased that they weren’t going to be entirely utilitarian. To make the panel match the preceding example took a lot of concentration, but Nikolai suddenly asked if I remembered us acting in a play by Ostrovsky.
‘I do,’ I said, looking up. ‘And we weren’t very good! It only ran for one week, to poor audiences? And on the last night the whole cast got exceedingly drunk in some awful bar.’
‘Something happened that very night,’ he said.
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know how to explain it. But something did, or so I’m told.’
I laid down my tools, not realising that this apparently random recollection was the matter that he had come over from Strelna to talk about.
‘Are you telling me that our bad performance was what persuaded you to take up your career in farming, and mine in carpentry?’
He was lost in thought, not registering my lame attempt at a joke. Then, as though this preamble was totally unrelated, he said: ‘Two months ago, one Saturday evening, I was at home. It was almost midnight and I was ready to go to bed when there was a loud knocking at my door. It was completely unexpected. The fire had burnt down in the grate and my eyelids were heavy. I think I’d been determined to finish the book I was reading, but I was about to admit defeat and turn in for the night.’
Nikolai was staring out of the window at the view out towards the forests, but I don’t believe that he saw anything.
‘It was an appalling night,’ he continued. ‘The rain was lashing at the front of the house and I did wonder whether I hadn’t imagined it. But no, three distinct knocks came again.
‘Now, you may think you’re pretty isolated up here in Toksovo, but a visitor to our house at any time of day is a rarity because we’re so isolated, even though we’re only a few miles from Strelna.’
Then he shook his head and said ‘I keep saying “we”…’
‘It’s alright. Carry on,’ I assured him. I swept away the shavings and sat on my bench.
‘A caller so late on a winter’s night was almost unimaginable. I got up warily, sensing trouble, or bad news, and went into the hall. When I opened the door
I did so cautiously. I found on the step a man I didn’t recognise who was probably a little older than me. He was wearing a large waxed coat that didn’t appear to be very effective in the driving rain, and he was very apologetic. He asked if I knew a blacksmith or a wheelwright because his carriage was damaged and needed repair.
‘I explained that it was some miles to Strelna and he was quite upset. He asked if there was any accommodation locally, and I said no. I was loath to ask him in, he was a complete stranger, but then he said that his wife was still sheltering in the stricken carriage. He said she was unwell and I had no choice but to offer them a bed for the night. I asked if I could help him bring his wife up to the house.
‘ “Oh no,” he thanked me. “She can walk.”
‘I felt a little strange letting him back out into the wild night, and it was some time before the knock came again at the door. By then I’d stoked-up the fire and in the kitchen I’d put on the kettle.
‘I found my visitors standing on the doorstep looking forlorn and miserable. I insisted they both immediately go through to the front room while I found some towels.
‘When I got back the woman said to me, almost inaudibly, “We are very, very grateful.” She looked much older than her husband, and moved slowly, but no slower than any other elderly woman might do. They took the towels and agreed to let me make them coffee. I offered them vodka but they said they didn’t drink alcohol.
‘When I returned ten minutes later with hot drinks he was drying the woman’s hair for her and put the towel down to take both of the cups. “I know these roads a little, by daylight,” he was saying, “but on a night like this …”
‘I told him that there was a blacksmith I could recommend just three miles away. It wasn’t really that far to walk normally, but on a night like that….’
Nikolai seemed to register my presence suddenly. ‘You’ve not visited us out near Strelna, have you?’
I shook my head and he admonished himself again for saying ‘us’.
‘You should come over,’ he said absently, and then resumed. ‘And then I noticed the woman. She said something very quietly like “We don’t want to impose,” and she was staring at me intently in a manner that I found very disconcerting.
‘The man said that they didn’t want to cause any trouble; they would stay in the front room until morning. I told them I had a second bedroom and I only needed to get out some clean sheets. He didn’t seem to know whether to be pleased or disapprove, but the weather outside had turned more violent.
‘He insisted on helping his wife to sit down in a chair, and he draped the towel around her shoulders. Then he moved her cup of coffee on to the table beside her.
‘ “My wife suffers from an obscure form of premature aging,” he said.
‘I tried to sympathise, saying something about my mother and her aches and pains, but he was having none of it:
‘ “My wife’s symptoms are quite extreme,” he said, effectively putting an end to my bland attempt at sympathy. He said that she was only forty-nine, the same age as me! This left me flailing around for an appropriate reply. She looked at least thirty years older.
‘ “I’m sorry,” I replied, as simply and as levelly as I could, and all he could say was “Yes, well…” His tone was confrontational and made me feel uncomfortable.
‘ “Do you live here alone?” he asked.
‘I said that I did, and was about to explain that I was recently widowed when he said “It seems like a very large house for one person.”
‘I told him about Maya, wondering why I had to explain this to a complete stranger. “My wife and I used to have a large farm and farmhouse,” I explained, “but we had to move here.”
‘ “Much more equitable,” he said, and, really, I know I shouldn’t complain, but to be lectured by him when I was offering him my hospitality!
‘ “You were married?” asked the woman with such a tone of surprise that I was rather taken aback. Her husband changed the subject. “You have some expensive-looking paintings and ornaments.”
‘I explained that our nicest pieces were there in the front room, to show them off.
‘ “It isn’t in keeping with the new, modern Russia,” said the man. “You’re clinging to a past that is no longer relevant.” ‘
‘It’s something one hears all too often,’ I told Nikolai, remembering the family pieces that Anna and I had been forced to part with.
‘I decided that we should start again,’ said Nikolai. ‘I said that we hadn’t introduced ourselves properly and that my name was Nikolai Bednyi.
‘ “Vasili Gladkov,” he replied, and walked over and gave me a curiously formal handshake. “And my wife is called Gala.”
‘I said something about it being good to meet the both of them, in spite of the unfortunate circumstances. It was really very awkward because Gala Gladkov was still staring at me, as though desperate to catch my eye or communicate with me. I noticed that she was not drinking her coffee and I explained that it wasn’t the real thing, of course, but I hoped that it was to her taste.
‘ “It’ll be fine,” Mr Gladkov answered for her. “Gala can’t very well pick it up, and certainly shouldn’t try to when it’s hot.”
‘I apologised and he insisted that it wasn’t a problem. But he’d dismissed my thoughtlessness rather too quickly, and an awkward silence followed. To alleviate it I asked:
‘ “Were you travelling far tonight?”
‘ “Back to Leningrad, from visiting friends in Petrodvorets,” he replied. “We were horribly delayed.”
‘ “I used to know the city when it was Saint Petersburg,” I said, attempting to be friendly. I made a joke about it having been a completely different city in between, Petrograd, but he didn’t share my sense of humour.
‘And then she said something like, “It’s such a shame.” She said it so quietly that I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly, and I certainly didn’t know what she was referring to.
‘ “Calling the great city after Lenin is fitting! It is just!” said the man, and I would’ve been inclined to tell him to go and wait in his carriage if I hadn’t felt so sorry for his rather strange wife. But, really, she was making me feel very uncomfortable as well. She’d returned her absorbed gaze to me.
‘ “You don’t approve of the glorious Revolution?” her husband persisted, annoying me further.
‘I think I told him that our country was a better place for it, but the discomfort of the situation increased. He walked over to his wife and proceeded to help her drink the coffee. He lifted the cup to her lips, with a handkerchief at her chin to catch any drips, and none of us spoke. I didn’t feel inclined to make any more small-talk, and anyway, I wasn’t sure that it would’ve been appropriate while he was carefully helping her.
‘I went and prepared their bed. It was easily done and when I returned I told them that I was tired and that they were welcome to retire for the night whenever they wanted to. To my great relief they agreed to do just that. I showed him the room and explained the other arrangements, and he went back to help his wife out of her chair.
‘Later, before we all retired, I passed her on her own in the hall and said goodnight. In reply she quietly said: “You really don’t know who I am, do you?”
‘I wasn’t sure that I’d heard her correctly because of the sound of the rain and wind, and I didn’t have the chance to reply because her husband appeared and wished me good night.’
‘Did she get the chance to explain her comment?’ I prompted Nikolai, and he nodded.
‘Eventually, yes. The following morning Vassily Gladkov set off to find the blacksmith and left me with the company of his wife. I asked her if she thought she knew me and at first she was so tearful she was almost incoherent. She asked if I remembered all kinds of things and when I denied all knowledge of them she became upset. She said we’d first met in Petersburg. She said that she was staying there with other students who had come up from Moscow. While she was the
re she’d seen an amateur performance of a play by Ostrovsky…’
‘Not our production?’
‘Apparently, yes.’
‘What a coincidence.’
‘I didn’t know what to think about it. Apart from anything else, I was certain that the poor old woman was mixing me up with another person entirely. All the details, except those of the play, seemed to be sheer fabrication.’
‘She’d have been our age?’
‘Having seen her in my house thirty years later it was hard to believe, but yes.’
‘And this is the business that’s been troubling you?’
‘Yes. It’s related to Maya, though not in any way you can possibly imagine.’
At this point in his narrative we heard the front door open and Anna coming into the house.
We didn’t resume the conversation until later that evening. I told Anna that Nikolai had started to talk to me about what was troubling him and she decided to go up to bed strategically early. Nikolai and I were alone in the front room and we had started on a bottle of vodka that he had brought with him.
‘The prematurely aging woman?’ I prompted him.
‘Ah yes. And that play…’
‘Didn’t you have some romantic intrigue with a girl that last night of the play?’
‘I did, and that was Gala Gladkov.’
‘Then, apart from the coincidence, what an amazing memory the woman had. Imagine her recognising you all these years later.’
‘I said to her that it had been a long time ago,’ Nikolai continued. ‘And she replied that it had been twice as long for her as it’d been for me. When I said that I didn’t understand she managed to compose herself, and started to explain.
‘ “I don’t know if it is really much of a coincidence coming across you?” she said. “I’ve spent the last thirty years looking at every face in every crowd, hoping to see you again. I moved to Petersburg in the hope of finding you, hoping you were still there. I knew it was probably a forlorn hope. In all these years so many people have died, or moved…But I’ve never really given up looking, and then, last night, you let us into your house. But you didn’t recognise me.”
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