by Rose Tremain
It felt very warm. Lydia’s half-finished jumper was stowed in her suitcase. Her winter coat was heavy on her arm.
“Good-bye, Lev,” she said, holding out her hand.
Lev leaned forward and put a kiss on each of Lydia’s mole-splashed cheeks and said, “May you help me. May I help you.” And they laughed and started to walk away—as Lev had known they would do—each to a separate future in the unknown city.
But Lev turned to watch Lydia as she hurried toward a line of black taxis. When she opened the door of her cab, she looked back and waved, and Lev saw that there was a sadness in this wave of hers—or even a sudden, unexpected reproach. In answer to this, he touched the peak of his leather cap, in a gesture he knew was either too military or too old-fashioned, or both, and then Lydia’s taxi drove away and he saw her looking determinedly straight ahead, like a gymnast trying to balance on a beam.
Now Lev picked up his bag and went in search of a washroom. He knew that he stank. He could detect an odd kind of seaweed stench under his checked shirt and he thought, Well, this is appropriate, I’m beached here now, under this unexpected sun, on this island . . . He could hear planes roaring overhead and he thought, Half the continent is headed this way, but nobody imagined it like it is, with the heat rising and the sky so empty and blue.
He followed signs to the station toilets, then found himself barred from entering them by a turnstile. He put down his bag and watched what other people did. They put money into a slot and the turnstile moved, but the only money Lev had was a wad of twenty-pound notes—each one calculated by Rudi to last him a week, until he found work.
“Please may you help me?” said Lev to a smart, elderly man approaching the stile. But the man put in his coin, pushed at the turnstile with his groin, and held his head high as he passed through, as though Lev hadn’t even come within his sight line. Lev stared after him. Had he said the words incorrectly? The man didn’t pause in his confident stride.
Lev waited. Rudi, he knew, would have vaulted over the barrier without a second’s pause, untroubled by what the consequences might be, but Lev felt that vaulting was beyond him right now. His legs lacked Rudi’s inexhaustible spring. Rudi made his own laws, and they were different from his, and this would probably always be the case.
Standing there, Lev’s longing to be clean increased steadily as the moments passed. He could feel stinging pains here and there on his skin, like sores. Sweat broke on his skull and ran down the back of his neck. He felt slightly sick. He took out a cigarette from an almost empty pack and lit it, and the men coming and going from the washroom stared at him, and those stares drew his attention at last to a NO SMOKING sign stuck onto the tiles a few feet from where he stood. He drew in a last sweet breath from the cigarette and ground it out under his feet, and he saw then that his black shoes were stained with mud and thought, This is the mud of my country, the mud of all Europe, and I must find some rags and wipe it away . . .
After some time, a young man, wearing overalls, unshaven, and carrying a canvas bag of tools, approached the washroom turnstile, and Lev decided that this man—because he was young and because the overalls and the work bag marked him as a member of the once-honorable proletariat—might not pretend that he hadn’t seen him, so he said as carefully as he could, “May you help me, please?”
The man had long, untidy hair and the skin of his face was white with plaster dust. “Sure,” he said. “What’s up?”
Lev indicated the turnstile, holding up a twenty-pound note. The man smiled. Then he rummaged in the pocket of his overalls, found a coin, handed it to Lev, and snatched the note away. Lev stared in dismay. “No,” he said. “No, please . . .”
But the young man turned, went through the barrier, and began to walk into the washroom. Lev gaped. Not a single word of English would come to him now, and he cursed loudly in his own language. Then he saw the man coming back toward him with a smile that made dark creases in the white dust of his face. He held the twenty-pound note out to Lev. “Only joking,” he said. “Just joking, mate.”
Lev stood in a toilet stall and removed his clothes. He took an old striped towel from his bag and wrapped it round his waist. He felt his sickness pass.
He went to one of the washbasins and ran hot water. From a seat by the entrance, the elderly Sikh washroom attendant stared at him with grave, unblinking eyes under his carefully wound turban.
Lev washed his face and hands, tugged out his razor, and shaved the four-day stubble from his chin. Then, careful to keep the threadbare towel in place, he soaped his armpits and his groin, his stomach and the backs of his knees. The Sikh didn’t move, only kept staring at Lev, as at some old motion picture he knew by heart, which still fascinated but no longer moved him. The feel of the warm water and the soap on Lev’s body was so soothing he felt almost like crying. Reflected in the washroom mirrors, he could see men glancing at him, but nobody spoke, and Lev soaped and scrubbed at his body until it was pink and tingling and the sea stench was gone. He put on clean underpants, then washed his feet and stamped on the towel to dry them. He took socks and a clean shirt from his bag. He ran a comb through his thick gray hair. His eyes looked tired, his clean-shaven face, gaunt in the cold light of the washroom, but he felt human again: he felt ready.
Lev repacked his things and went toward the door. The Sikh was still motionless on his hard plastic chair, but then Lev saw that near him was a saucer and that it contained a few coins—just a few, because people here were apparently in too much of a hurry to bother with a tip for an old man with bruised eyes—and Lev felt troubled that he had no coin to put in the saucer. After all the soap he’d used and the amount of water he’d splashed onto the floor, he owed the attendant some small consideration. He stopped and searched in his pockets and found a cheap plastic cigarette lighter he’d bought at the bus depot in Yarbl. He was about to put this in the saucer when he thought, No, this Sikh man has a job and a chair to sit on and I have nothing, which makes every single thing I own too precious to give away to him. Lev’s thinking in relation to the tip he was refusing to give grew more sophisticated when he told himself that the Sikh appeared so unmoved by everything that went on around him that he would therefore certainly be unmoved by a paltry cigarette lighter. And so Lev walked away and out through the turnstile, heading for the sunshine and the street, and he imagined that the Sikh wouldn’t even bother to turn his head to give him a reproachful stare.
Where the buses pulled in and drove out, Lev paused. Long ago—or it seemed long ago to him—when he’d booked his seat on the Trans-Euro bus, the young girl in the travel office had said to him, “On your arrival in London, you may be approached by people with offers of work. If these people come to you, do not sign any contract. Ask them what work they are offering and how much they will pay and what place they will find for you to sleep in. Then you may accept, if the conditions appear right.”
In Lev’s mind, these “people” resembled the policemen of cities like Yarbl and Glic, heavy types with muscled forearms and healthy complexions and handguns slung about their anatomy in clever places. And now Lev began hoping they would appear, to take from him all responsibility for the next few days and hours of his life. He didn’t really care what the “work” was, as long as he had a wage and a routine and a bed to lie in. He was so tired that he felt almost like lying down where he was, in the warm sunshine, and just waiting until someone showed up, but then he thought that he didn’t know how long a day was, a summer day in England, and how soon afternoon and evening would arrive, and he didn’t want to find himself still on the street when it got dark.
People arrived and departed in buses, taxis, and cars, but no one came near Lev. He began to walk, following the sun, very hungry suddenly, but devoid of a plan, even a plan for getting some food. He passed a coffee shop, and the smell of the good coffee was tempting, but though he hesitated on the pavement outside the place, he didn’t dare go in, worrying that he wouldn’t have the right denomination of
money for the food and coffee he desired. Again, he thought how Rudi would have mocked this pathetic timidity and gone bounding in and found the right words and the right money to get what he wanted.
The street Lev was in was wide and noisy, with red buses swaying along close to the curb and the stench of traffic spoiling the air. There was no breeze. On a high building he saw flags hanging limp against their poles and a woman with long hair and a gauzy dress standing at the pavement’s edge, silent and still, as if a figure in a painting. Planes kept passing overhead, embroidering the sky with garlands of vapor.
Lev turned left off the crowded boulevard and into a street where trees had been planted, and he stood in the shade of one of these trees and put down his bag, which felt heavy now, and lit a cigarette. He remembered that when he had started to smoke, all those years ago, he had discovered that smoking could mask hunger. And he’d remarked on this to his father, Stefan, and Stefan had replied, “Of course it does. Didn’t you know this till now? And it’s much better to die from the smoke than to die of hunger.”
Lev leaned against the tree. It was a young plane tree. Its patterning of shade on the ground was delicate and precise, as though nature were designing wallpaper. Stefan had “died from the smoke,” or from the years and years of sawdust at the Baryn mill, died at fifty-nine, before Maya was born, long before Marina fell ill or the rumors of closure began to circulate in Baryn. And all he’d said at the end, in his frail voice, like the breaking voice of an adolescent boy, was: “This is a rotten death, Lev. Don’t go this way, if you can help it.”
A sudden spasm of choking assailed Lev. He threw away his cigarette and drank the last dregs of vodka from his flask. Then he sat down on the iron grating that circled the plane tree and closed his eyes. The feel of the tree on his spine was comforting, like a familiar chair, and his head fell sideways and he slept. One hand rested on his bag. The vodka flask lay on his thigh. Above him, a nesting sparrow came and went from the tree.
Lev woke when someone touched his shoulder. He stared blankly at a fleshy face inside a motorcycle helmet and at a bulging belly. He’d been dreaming about a potato field, about being lost in the enormity of the field, among its never-ending troughs and ridges.
“Wake up, sir. Police.”
The policeman’s breath smelled stale, as though he, too, had been traveling without rest for days on end. Lev attempted to reach into his jacket pocket to produce his passport, but a wide hand seized his wrist and now gripped it with fearsome force.
“Steady on! No tricks, thank you kindly. Up you get!”
He pulled Lev roughly to his feet, then pinioned him against the tree, giving his ankle a nudge with his boot to force his legs apart.
The vodka flask clattered to the ground. On the policeman’s hip, his radio made sudden, violent sounds, like the coughing of a dying man.
Lev felt the policeman’s free hand move over his body: arms, torso, hips, groin, legs, ankles. He held himself as still as he could and made no protest. Some faraway part of his brain wondered if he were about to be arrested and sent back home, and then he thought of all those unending miles to be covered and the shame of his arrival in Auror with nothing to show for the pain and disruption he’d caused.
The radio coughed again and Lev felt the iron grip on his arm relax. The policeman faced him square-on, standing so close to him that his fat belly nudged the buckle of Lev’s belt.
“Asylum seeker, are you?”
He uttered these words as though they disgusted him, as though they made him want to bring up some of the food that had soured his breath. And Lev recognized the words. At the travel office in Yarbl, the helpful young woman had said, “Remember, you are legal, economic migrants, not ‘asylum seekers,’ as the British call those who have been dispossessed. Our country is part of the EU now. You have the right to work in England. You must not let yourself be harassed.”
“I am legal,” said Lev.
“See your passport, please, sir.”
Lev’s arms were still held high, against the tree. Slowly, he lowered them and reached into his pocket and produced his passport, and the policeman snatched it away. Lev watched him look from the passport photograph to Lev’s face and back again.
“All militiamen are dumb bastards,” Rudi had once said. “Only stupid people want to fart around with handcuffs and two-way fucking radios.”
“All right,” said the policeman. “Just arrived, then, have you?”
“Yes.”
“Look in your bag, please, sir?”
The policeman squatted down, his belt creaking, the tubular folds of his belly squashing themselves into an uncomfortable-looking huddle. He dragged open the zip of Lev’s cheap canvas bag and removed the contents: the clothes Lev had taken off in the station lavatory, his grimy wash bag, clean T-shirts and sweaters, a pair of new shoes, packs of Russian cigarettes, an alarm clock, two pairs of trousers, photographs of Marina and Maya, a money belt, an English dictionary and his book of fables, two bottles of vodka . . .
Lev waited patiently. Hunger growled in his gut, which he knew was constipated from all the hard-boiled eggs Lydia had pressed on him. He stared at the fragility of his possessions, laid out on the pavement.
At last, the policeman repacked the bag and stood up. “Have an address in London, do you? Place to stay? Hotel? Flat?”
“Bee-and-bee,” said Lev.
“You’ve got a B&B? Where?”
Lev shrugged.
“Where’s your B&B, sir?”
“I dunno,” said Lev. “I find one.”
A growling, urgent voice now came through on the radio. The policeman (whose rank Lev was unable to judge) jammed it to the side of his head and the voice laid a stream of incomprehensible words into his ear. Now Lev could see the police motorbike, flamboyantly striped with fluorescent decals, parked nose-on into the curb, and he thought how Rudi would have been interested in the make and c.c. of the bike, but that he, Lev, was indifferent to it. He waited silently and heard for the first time the bird disturbing the leaves above his head. It felt hot, even in the shade of the tree. Lev had no idea whether it was still morning.
The policeman moved away, talking on his radio. From time to time he looked back at Lev, like the master of a dog without a lead, to make sure he hadn’t wandered away. Then he returned and said, “Right.”
He picked up Lev’s bag and the empty vodka flask and shoved them toward him, together with his passport. He now reminded Lev of a bully at his school called Dmitri, and Lev remembered that Dmitri-the-bully had died in a tram that had overturned in the Yarbl market, and that when he and Rudi had heard about his death, they’d laughed and stamped around, screaming with joy.
“On your way,” said the policeman. “No sleeping in streets. This is antisocial behavior and liable to a heavy fine. So get yourself sorted. Clean your fucking shoes. Get a haircut, and you may just have a chance.”
Lev remained where he was. Slowly, he returned his passport to his jacket pocket and watched the policeman heave his bulk onto the heavy bike and maneuver it out into the road. He kicked the engine into clamorous life and rode away, without glancing at Lev, as though Lev no longer had any existence in his mind.
Lev looked at his watch. It said 12.23, but he had no idea whether this was English time or only time in Auror, when the children in Maya’s little school would be sitting on a bench and eating their lunch, which would consist of goat’s milk and bread and pickled cucumber, with, sometimes in summer, wild strawberries from the hills above the village.
Reaching the river, Lev set down his bag and extracted one twenty-pound note from his wallet. He bought two hot dogs and a can of Coca-Cola from a stall, and a hoard of change was put into his hand. He felt proud of this transaction.
He leaned on the embankment wall and looked at London. The food felt rich and burning, the cola seemed to pinch at his teeth. Though the sky was blue, the river remained an opalescent gray-green, and Lev wondered whether this was a
lways true of city rivers—that they were incapable of reflecting the sky because of all the centuries of dark mud beneath. Traveling on the water, going in both directions, were cumbersome tourist boats, with carefree people clustered into seating on the top deck, taking photographs in the sun.
Lev’s eye was held by these people. He envied them their ease and their summer shorts and the way the voices of the tour guides echoed out across the wavelets, naming the buildings in three or four different languages, so that those on the boats would never feel confused or lost. Lev noted, too, that this journey of theirs was finite— upriver a few miles, past the giant white wheel turning slowly on its too-fragile stem, then back to where they’d started from—whereas his own journey in England had barely begun; it was infinite, with no known ending or destination, and yet already, as the moments passed, confusion and worry were sending pains to his head.
At Lev’s back, joggers kept passing, and the scuff and squeak of their sneakers, their rapid breathing, were like a reproach to Lev, who stood without moving, bathing his teeth in cola, devoid of any plan, while these runners had purpose and strength and a tenacious little goal of self-improvement.
Lev finished the cola and lit a cigarette. He was sure his “self” needed improving, too. For a long time now, he’d been moody, melancholy, and short-tempered. Even with Maya. For days on end, he’d sat on Ina’s porch without moving, or lain in an old gray hammock, smoking and staring at the sky. Many times he’d refused to play with his daughter or help her with her reading, left everything to Ina. And this was unfair, he knew. Ina kept the family alive with her jewelry making. She also cooked their meals and cleaned the house and hoed the vegetable patch and fed the animals—while Lev lay and looked at clouds. It was more than unfair; it was lamentable. But at last he’d been able to tell his mother he was going to make amends. By learning English and then by migrating to England, he was going to save them. Two years from now, he would be a man-of-the-world. He would own an expensive watch. He would put Ina and Maya aboard a tourist boat and show them the famous buildings. They would have no need of a tourist guide because he, Lev, would know the names of everything in London by heart . . .
