From Aberystwyth with Love

by Malcolm Pryce

  ‘I’ve already told you.’

  He opened a drawer and took out a photo. It was the picture of the levitated dog. ‘Could you explain how a humble spinning-wheel salesman came to have this in his possession?’

  ‘I found it on the beach.’

  ‘That is not a good answer, Louie Eeyoreovitch. Mere possession of this item is a crime against our people punishable by a minimum of ten years’ penal servitude.’

  ‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’

  ‘So you say, and yet I see you have cow-horn buttons on your jacket. It reeks of guilt. Who but a malefactor has such things? Did no one tell you we have canteens in our camps? And chess sets too, so there is no need to hoard your bread and chew rooks and knights in the middle of the night. In fact, all camps have libraries with modest audio-visual facilities. We are not so backward as you imagine. You insult us with your cow-horn buttons. Tell me about the photo.’

  ‘I found it on the beach in Aberystwyth and put it in my pocket.’

  ‘And travelled on the Orient Express with this photo which you intended delivering to a contact in exchange for a large sum of money.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know how much this photo is worth on the black market? Twenty thousand US dollars.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘Yes, because you found it on the beach. If you confess this, if you admit that you came to Hughesovka in order to sell this photo on the black market, I will help you.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘I will personally ensure that you are merely deported; and, what is more, I will tell you what you really want to know: I will tell you how it was that Vanya’s daughter came to be possessed by the spirit of Gethsemane Walters.’ He noted the surprise on my face and smiled. ‘Oh yes, we know all about your errand. Jones the Denouncer has told us everything. We have been aware of the Gethsemane Walters case for many years now. The solution to the mystery can be found right here in Hughesovka. It could be yours, all you need to do is admit to something that we already know.’

  He clicked his fingers to get the attention of the guard. ‘Leave us now, Pascha. It is time you went home. The hour is late. Do not come back tonight, no matter how terrible the cries of pain you hear.’

  The guard clicked his heels in acknowledgement and left. My interrogator watched the door and then gave me a sad, wistful look, the one headmasters wear when they insist the punishment they are about to inflict will, through some miraculous mechanism unknown to biological science, hurt them more than you. He sniffed and dabbed a tear from his eye.

  ‘Louie Eeyoreovitch, you are a brave spy. Your country should be proud of you. As my parting words to you I will give you a piece of advice. In the camps you will hear many stories, most of them are not to be credited. Do not eat the wallpaper paste, it will make you ill. And as for selling the underlinen of dead comrades for a crust of bread . . . once many years ago it might have been possible but not now, you will merely be ridiculed, and quite possibly attract a further five years for desecration of the grave which belongs to the State.’

  He paused and stared at me quizzically. I shrugged. He stood up and strode past me to the door. I twisted round in my chair to watch. He turned to me and put his index finger to his mouth, commanding silence. He seemed to be smiling like someone playing a practical joke. He opened the door with exaggerated care and peered outside, then withdrew his head and softly closed the door again. He returned with a broad smile upon his face. ‘Louie Eeyoreovitch!’ he shouted. ‘My dear, dear friend Louie Eeyoreovitch!’ He threw out his arms, grabbed me in a bear hug and dragged me to my feet. He unclasped me and then with renewed fervour threw his arms round me again and squeezed me. He kissed me on both cheeks. ‘Louie Eeyoreovitch!’ he exclaimed. ‘How can I ever thank you? My daughter, my lovely daughter, my dear heart’s blood, lost to me, alone in the world full of evil predatory men, and through the exquisite offices of our benevolent and ever-merciful Lord, she met you! My darling dear Natasha has come back and all because of you, the noble, thrice-blessed Louie Eeyoreovitch!’

  Chapter 22

  His name was Pyotr. He drove with one hand lazily caressing the wheel and the other making gestures in the air to amplify the effect of his words. We drove south through town, down the broad tree-lined avenue of Praspyekt John Hughes, into Petrovsky Pereulok and then Merthyr Tydfil Naberezhnaya. He said we were heading for Sadovaya Ulitsa.

  ‘You can imagine how I felt,’ he said. ‘I knew sooner or later the moment would come. For years I worried about it, how I would cope without her mother to guide her. At times like that, when a girl starts to become a woman, she needs the company of other women. I flatter myself I did all right, together we managed to get through the trials of those years. Yes, there were boyfriends, some of which I disapproved; others I tolerated. Then a few weeks ago she came home and said in the sort of voice a girl uses to say she wants to be an actress that she wanted to be a honey-trapper. Imagine it! I was thunderstruck. Of course, I didn’t want to stand in her way . . . She thought it was glamorous, being a spy, a Mata Hari, but I knew better, I knew how the world works, especially the grimy shabby shadow-world of secret agents. I told her, it’s not like in the James Bond movies: you don’t get many counts and countesses, handsome spies and debonair millionaires travelling on the Orient Express these days. It’s just a train, like the one to Dnipropetrovsk, full of bourgeois riff-raff. She wouldn’t listen, of course.’ He made an especially dramatic wave of his hand. ‘Who would be a father, eh? Louie Eeyoreovitch, who would be a father!’

  We turned into a street of solid nineteenth-century civic buildings, and parked outside the Museum Of Our Forefathers’ Suffering. The chain was hanging loose, the jaw of the padlock open. The door was ajar. We climbed the steps and entered.

  ‘And then, after everything I told her, what does she do? She meets a handsome James Bond on the train, the wonderful chivalrous knight Louie Eeyoreovitch who shows her the error of her ways and sends her back to her father.’

  We walked into a lobby of scuffed linoleum and faded paint. Pyotr pressed the button on an old wire-cage elevator. There was a rumble from the basement and far above our heads wheels and pulleys creaked into motion. The cage arrived and Pyotr pulled back the concertina door and bid me enter. We travelled up to the second floor.

  ‘We closed the museum about fifteen years ago.’

  ‘Why did you close it?’

  ‘Budget cuts, as usual. It was my initiative. I was in charge of the five-year plan for dream husbandry at the time.’

  We emerged on to a landing. Next to the door leading to a gallery there was a table, chairs, vodka and Vimto. A girl sat at the table leafing through a dossier, pencil perched on her ear and an earnest expression on her face. It was Calamity. She looked up briefly from the dossier. ‘Oh, hi Louie, good you could make it.’ Her attempt at nonchalance was betrayed by the wide grin which flashed across her face. I rushed forward and, as she stood up, I hugged her. ‘How was the interrogation?’ she asked, struggling to breathe under the pressure of my arms.

  ‘A lot nicer than the ones you get in Aberystwyth, but I was worried about you the whole time.’

  ‘I was worried about you, too.’

  Pyotr sat down and poured out the vodka and the Vimto. He drank to our health. Calamity pointed to the dossier on the table. ‘It’s Uncle Vanya’s file.’ On the cover there was a picture of a young man in Soviet labour-camp clothes staring blankly into the camera. Pyotr took the photo of the levitated dog out of an envelope and placed it on the table top.

  ‘Natasha has asked me to apologise to you for stealing the photo.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘She is very upset. She has enrolled on a course to become a speech therapist for children with learning difficulties, and all because of you, Louie Eeyoreovitch. You restored my daughter to me and now you are my brother to whom I will be eternally in debt. However, duty dictates that, for reasons of State security
, I must confiscate the photo. As recompense I make the exhibits of this the former museum available to you. It is my belief that you will find the answer to your quest here in the dust.’

  I placed my fingers on the dossier and twisted it round to face me.

  ‘Vanya’s case is very sad,’ said Pyotr. ‘Twice he was denounced and sent to the camps. And the years in between were worse: he was captured by the Germans in Stalingrad and spent two years as a prisoner-of-war eating bread made of floor sweepings and leaves. When finally he returned to Hughesovka he did what he had to in order to survive and this meant taking employment in the criminal fraternity. His life was heading for the abyss, but then a remarkable transformation occurred. He was engaged to assassinate a woman for reasons that are now lost and, by all accounts, he fell in love with her face presented to him down the sniper scope of his rifle. He sought out the girl, paid off the people who wanted her dead, and proposed. How could she refuse the gallant man who had forborne to shoot her because he was so struck by her beauty?’

  ‘This much I know. He married Lara and Ninotchka was born, and then he was sent to a labour camp.’

  ‘Yes, of course, you are anxious to learn the truth behind this great mystery. You have come a long way and desire to know how it was that the spirit of Gethsemane Walters could inhabit the body of a little girl here in Hughesovka in the mid-fifties. Please, sit.’

  I took my place at the table and chinked glasses with Pyotr and Calamity and tried to keep the impatience from my face.

  ‘It is indeed a very strange story,’ said Pyotr. ‘You see, not long after Vanya was sent to the camps there was an outbreak of diphtheria in Hughesovka and Ninotchka fell ill and died. And for reasons known only to her, Lara kept this terrible news secret from her husband. It is not hard to imagine her motives. She intended no doubt to spare Vanya the extra suffering. The camps along the River Kolyma were infamous, everyone knew that a spell in the gulag was the worst fate that could befall a man or woman and of this the worst of the worst was to be found in Kolyma. Lara must have thought that the extra burden of this evil news would have been too much for her husband’s poor heart to bear. She didn’t tell him, and thereby though acting from the most honourable of motives she constructed a trap that ensnared her. Because what was to happen when Vanya came home? It must have preyed on her mind a lot during those years. She found work as a cleaner in this museum. Then one day a strange event happened. They had just taken delivery from Mooncalf & Sons of some traditional Welsh furniture which would form part of a reconstruction of a typical nineteenth-century peasant’s cottage. And in a Welsh dresser they found some curious items: a bottle of dandelion and burdock, a tin of corned beef, and a child’s colouring book. One evening, a few days later, as Lara was mopping the floor she found a little girl hiding in the basement. This girl was Gethsemane, who it seemed had been hiding in the Welsh dresser and inadvertently shipped from Wales to Hughesovka. The streets of Hughesovka in those dark lean days shortly after the war were full of waifs and strays – so many mothers and fathers who went to war and never returned. It was a common thing to find a poor shivering half-starved child hiding in the warm museum at night. The girl was about the same age as Ninotchka would have been had she lived, and looked similar. Vanya had not seen his daughter since shortly after her birth; suddenly Lara saw a way out of the trap she had built for herself in the lie she told Vanya. She decided to adopt Gethsemane, to pass her off as Ninotchka and deceive her husband.’ Pyotr paused and refilled our glasses for the fourth time. He raised the glass and held it to his lips without drinking, lost for a moment in contemplation. ‘But of course there was a problem. The child stubbornly refused to accept the name of Ninotchka and not unreasonably insisted that she was called Gethsemane and was from Wales. And so, Lara invented this astonishing story about the imaginary friend in order to dupe her husband when he returned from the camps. “My darling, something very strange has taken place. Last week I gave our little daughter a Welsh doll from the museum and now she has acquired an imaginary friend from Wales called Gethsemane. I thought it was charming at first but recently the imaginary friend seems to have taken her over. Our daughter no longer answers to the name Ninotchka and insists that I call her Gethsemane. Yesterday she told me I was not her real mummy and asked for a strange dish of lamb and cheese called caawl. I am at my wit’s end, whatever shall we do?” What a completely brilliant and totally crazy idea! Who knows whether such a subterfuge could ever have hoped to work? But Fate was not kind to the ingenious Lara. Shortly after Vanya returned home Dame Fortune inserted another player into the scene: Laika, the first dog in space. Gethsemane was fascinated by Laika and spent entire days glued to the collective TV set. Laika, the sweet yapping mongrel, staring out at us from her goldfish-bowl helmet, her eyes bright pools of trust for the masters who had put her in this strange contraption, and who had only ever shown her kindness . . . Laika sitting wearing a soiled nappy stencilled with the motif of the glorious Soviet Space Command. But as you know, Laika died up there above the clouds. Of heat exhaustion, they said. When news of her death broke, Gethsemane was inconsolable, and Vanya, unable to take the tantrums of his daughter, hit the bottle. He took to beating his wife, perhaps in some deep dark recess of his heart he blamed her or suspected that she had – in some way he was unable to divine – been responsible for the terrible turn of events that had so ruined his happiness. One night, he hit his wife a little too hard and that was that. He found himself behind bars for murder and the girl was taken into care. There the truth slowly emerged. It would have been a trivial story but for a twist to the tale that assumed dimensions of State security. Laika, you see, had been recruited for her heroic role during the visit to our town of Premier Nikita Khrushchev. A stray was presented to Khrushchev during a visit to Hughesovka and he in turn presented it to the Space Programme. But it turned out that the puppy belonged to Gethsemane and had followed her from Wales by the same route; no doubt by following the scent. Imagine it! Laika, the national hero, the pride and joy of our nation and proof to the world of our technological and moral ascendancy over the United States, was not a Russian dog as we assumed, but was Welsh. The puppy of Clip the sheepdog, now housed in your museum on Terrace Road. For the sake of our national honour all traces of this fact were duly expunged from the historical record.’

  ‘What became of Gethsemane?’

  ‘I do not know. In the fifties, after they started emptying the camps, there were many people moving to and fro across our vast land; so many fates and tragedies. Who knows where she ended up? She may be dead but there is no reason to suppose it. I like to think she is still alive, that she journeyed along the same railway line to Vladivostok that her father took before her and that somewhere along the way, perhaps some insignificant wayside halt, she got off the train. Perhaps there she found a man and a home and had children of her own; perhaps there she found that most ardently coveted of treasures, human felicity.’

  ‘How did Natasha know I was travelling on the Orient Express with the photo?’

  ‘Mooncalf told us, of course. There is a substantial reward available for information leading to the acquisition of these photos. We do a lot of business with Mr Mooncalf. He is a great man.’

  ‘So people keep telling me. Why didn’t he try and steal it from me in Aberystwyth?’

  ‘Mr Mooncalf is an honest man, not a common thief!’

  ‘Why not simply wait until I arrived in Hughesovka and arrest me?’

  Pyotr looked apologetic. ‘Call it bureaucratic inertia, if you like. These things have always been arranged this way. Reform is long overdue but who wants to throw thousands of honey-trappers out of work?’

  Calamity took me into the gallery and showed me the exhibits. The room occupied the height of three ordinary floors and was open to the skylights high in the ceiling. It was like the nave of a vast cathedral, one in which the false god of Aberystwyth had been worshipped for a while before the people forsook the old ways. Most o
f the hall was in darkness, but occasional shafts of dawn light illuminated areas like sunlit clearings in a dark wood. Calamity led me to a tableau representing, according to the dusty sign, a typical Welsh serf’s dwelling from the 1950s. There was a hearthside and a false roof of low timbers. Two rocking chairs were drawn up before the fireside. There were brass fire-irons, a soot-blackened kettle and teapot complete with tea cosy. Next to the fireside was a pen for the livestock which, it was said, wintered in the same quarters. Another tableau entitled ‘Mysticism and Superstition’ detailed, through life-size waxwork figures, the three-way tug of love for the serf’s soul between the Church, the spiritualist and the dispenser of opiate for the masses in cornets, the ice-cream vendor. Next to this was a stack of framed photos recording the historic bank holiday food riots. Starving peasants dressed as Teddy boys fought with members of the local constabulary, using deckchairs as weapons. Calamity led me to a traditional Welsh dresser with a large cupboard.