10

In two days’ time it will be Midsummer’s Day, but the weather remains cool and blowy. The surface of the Neva is chopped up into little peaks, while fresh lime leaves shiver and dust blows about the streets. Andrei is late. He hurries along, head down so that the dust won’t get into his eyes, and he goes over the arguments he’ll put forward at today’s meeting, for the employment of another physiotherapist with experience in paediatric arthritic care. He’s coming up against a blank wall. Doesn’t he realize that there’s a shortage of funding? The decision has been taken to prioritize an increase of 14.7 per cent in surgical beds. The plan must be adhered to.

Where do they get these figures? It’s so exact, 14.7 per cent, that you could be fooled into thinking that it corresponded to reality. You get battered down by arguments on the basis of beds that don’t exist yet, and probably never will. Well, he’ll make his point again, even though last time he spoke out about the need for a physiotherapist, he noticed Boris Kamerevsky from Medical Personnel frowning and writing something down in a way that was meant to be noticed.

I’m becoming a problem, thinks Andrei. Sticking my neck out. Not a good idea. All the same, he’ll push one more time, at today’s meeting.

Anna has been seconded to a one-day course on Practical Statistics. She sits cramped behind a desk, watching the lecturer draw a graph on the board and fill it in with confident squiggles of her chalk.

She’s rather elegant, for a statistician. Grey skirt, freshly laundered white blouse, high heels and beautifully smooth, glossy black hair. She makes Anna feel dowdy. Although it’s a cool day the room is stuffy. Too many people. The chairs are uncomfortable, but the main problem is that Anna’s not used to sitting still for so long. At the nursery she’s on her feet hour after hour, and at home it’s often almost ten o’clock by the time she finishes all the chores and is able to sit down. There are so many things she wants to do in that precious hour that she doesn’t know which to choose first. Listen to the radio, knit, sew, chat to Kolya before he goes to bed, take up the novel she’s been reading on and off for months, and above all sit opposite Andrei so that every time she glances up, there he is.

Who would have thought it could take the minute hand so long to cross the small gap between the 5 and the 10? It crawls as if it were pushing its way through sand. At the nursery, time speeds by. When she’s drawing, it’s different again. She’ll emerge to find the sun in a different place in the sky.

Her bones ache with boredom. The lecturer has a good voice, light and clear, but although Anna hears every word quite distinctly, the sentences melt away without making any sense. It’s not that she couldn’t understand it if she wanted to. It’s more that she doesn’t want this information in her head. She doesn’t want to know how to collect accurate statistics about the role played by the parental level of education in the nutritional status of the child. In her experience there is very little correlation anyway. Besides, she is sick to death of handing out questionnaires to parents. They don’t like it, and why should they? ‘Larissa Nikolayevna will be wanting me to bring my soup pot in for inspection next,’ one mother had whispered to Anna, after a particularly intrusive handout about the importance of bringing yesterday’s stock to the boil for at least five minutes before adding fresh vegetables, ‘in order to minimize the risk of bacterial growth and subsequent ill health’.

But she must pay attention. Morozova is bound to question her about the structure of the day and the ‘learning outcomes’. Quickly, Anna jots down a few sentences, and copies the graph.

There’s a good side to being bored. It’s very calming. She couldn’t settle last night, and finally dropped off at about four o’clock, only to wake with a jolt when the alarm went off at six. The thing is not to think about any of it. She’s seen her father’s life eaten to the bone by too much thinking. The Volkov boy has had his operation and is making good progress. In a few more days he’ll be discharged and then Andrei will be safe. Perhaps Volkov will take his family down to the Black Sea for recuperation. There are all kinds of special Party nursing homes and rehabilitation centres down there. No problem for Volkov to get his boy into the best of them.

She’d never have thought that she could be so hard about a child. Perhaps it’s because she’s never met him and so he remains just a name. But it’s more than indifference, if she’s honest. She feels a cold opposition to the very idea of this boy and the contact Andrei’s been forced to have with him. Let him see private doctors and be whisked into the most private of private clinics. Let him be anywhere, except where his existence could leak into that of Andrei and Kolya, contaminating it and threatening it. She sees the boy as a sort of Malevich writ large, with infinitely more power to do harm.

A bee buzzes at the top of the window. It’s far too high for Anna to help it out. This ceiling must be almost four metres high. You’d think that would make the room airy, but it doesn’t. The proportions are wrong, because it’s only half of a room that has been subdivided by a stud wall. If she listens carefully, she can hear another lecturer droning on the other side. A male voice, monotonous, going on and on uninterrupted. Meanwhile, on this side, the lecturer’s clear, sure voice has stopped at last.

‘Any questions?’ she asks them with an air of daring, as if questions are an unusual and almost illicit departure from normal procedure. Anna shifts her cramped legs and hopes that no one asks anything that might delay their release.

A woman several desks to her right pipes up in the self-righteous tone of one who knows that she’s asking the correct question: ‘Allow me to ask, comrade, whether or not these graphs should be prepared on graph paper, or whether it is permissible to prepare them on plain paper that is ruled for the purpose. In case of need, you understand. Some of my colleagues work in remote areas where access to the full range of stationery is not always possible. I myself am recently returned from a tour of duty in the Ufa region.’

‘Tour of duty’! How ridiculous – who on earth does she think she is? We’re not soldiers, for heaven’s sake, thinks Anna so violently that for a moment she’s afraid she may have spoken out loud.

‘Graph paper is most certainly not a necessary requirement,’ replies the lecturer in a voice which is even clearer and sweeter than before, as if to show how much she welcomes this question, which reveals the indomitable spirit of those who are determined to make graphs even in unfavourable territory.

‘I am most grateful to you for your clarification, comrade,’ says the woman, and subsides, glancing left to right with a brief, triumphant flash of her spectacles.

Anna’s left-hand neighbour stirs. ‘Allow me to ask,’ she says, in a voice which to Anna’s ear has a trace of some unusual feeling in it, ‘exactly how long, in your view, it is recommended that we retain all our statistical evidence after our graphs have been completed? Or is the existence of the graphs sufficient to obviate the need for indefinite retention of such material?’

Is it mockery? Is it even, perhaps, a touch of humour? Anna glances sharply at the questioner’s face, but it remains bland. As smooth as silk, like the face of a clever child who has been caught in some misdemeanour but knows he can out-think his interrogator.

The lecturer nods with sharp enthusiasm. ‘A very interesting point!’ she exclaims. ‘Indefinite retention of evidential material is of course the ideal, but we have to also give consideration to questions of space, and indeed time.’

‘Children certainly tend to take up a good deal of both,’ murmurs the questioner, too low for the lecturer, but not too low for Anna.

‘Excellent questions!’ announces the lecturer, making it clear that she wants no more of them. Sure enough, the class begins to stir and gather up paper and pens. Anna knows the form. Most will make for the door as swiftly as they can, keeping a mask of discretion until they are out in the corridor. A toady or two will gather around the lecturer to ask ‘a few questions which relate directly to their own professional formation’, and to make sure that the lecturer has registered not only their enthusiasm but also who they are and where they come from. The woman on Anna’s left is already putting her possessions into her bag.

‘Excellent question,’ Anna says to her quietly.

The woman smiles. ‘Are you staying for the afternoon lecture?’ she asks.

‘Yes, I’ve been seconded for the entire day.’

‘The ent-i-i-ire day …’ The woman widens her eyes comically as she drags out the syllables so that the day sounds just as long as it’s really going to be.

‘But you’re going now?’ asks Anna.

‘Yes. Fortunately they couldn’t get cover for me this afternoon. Good luck.’

‘I’ll need it.’

By the time the meeting’s over, Andrei is desperate for some air. There can be no ‘additional release of hours’ for the employment of a specialist physiotherapist. No, thinks Andrei savagely, we’ve to go on admitting patients, operating on them and leaving them to sink or swim without proper rehabilitation. It’s so short-sighted that he cannot keep quiet. A ‘waste of resources’ of the purest kind, and surely that’s what they were always preaching about, these managers and administrators who knew so much more than the clinicians. This time he’s sure that he saw Boris Kamerevsky write down his name.

He’ll have a cigarette in the courtyard. It seems like a while since he’s been out there. In fact, he suddenly realizes that he’s avoided the place since that time there with Russov.

The sky is grey and heavy. It’s going to rain soon. A chilly breeze whips up leaf debris, and lets it drop again. Andrei checks his pockets, and then remembers that he’d intended to buy cigarettes from the kiosk on his way this morning, but in his rush he forgot. He’ll stay out here for a few minutes anyway, to get the stale meeting room and the glances of Boris Kamerevsky out of his mind. A few minutes’ peace will do him good.

The door from the corridor opens. It’s Brodskaya. ‘Andrei Mikhailovich, may I join you for a moment?’

‘Of course.’

Brodskaya stands close to him, as Russov did, but her judgement is finer than Russov’s. She doesn’t crowd him. When she speaks her voice is low and clear. ‘I came to tell you that I’ve accepted a transfer to Yerevan.’

‘Yerevan!’

‘Yes. I accepted the post as soon as it was offered. Medical services in Yerevan are not, of course, equal to what we have here, but there is plenty of exciting work in progress.’

Impossible to tell from her tone what she really thinks. Impossible, also, to know why the transfer is really taking place. It sounds like a demotion; the kind of thing that happens to a doctor who makes too many mistakes. Not professional mistakes, as a rule.

‘So you’re leaving Leningrad?’

‘Yes,’ she says briskly.

‘But from a professional point of view –’

‘There’s an excellent university and Academy of Sciences in Yerevan. The climate will be good for my mother. These winters don’t suit her; she has severe rheumatism.’

Clearly not a promotion then, or Brodskaya would have mentioned it. Anxiety clutches at him. He was the one who recommended her to Volkov. He committed the cardinal sin of drawing attention to her.

‘You should also apply for a transfer,’ she says, in a voice so low that for a moment he thinks he’s misheard. ‘As soon as possible. You have a family.’

‘But the boy’s doing well.’

‘Who can say at this stage?’ Brodskaya’s face is sombre. ‘Listen to me. Drop out of sight. You can be a doctor anywhere. You’re not a Leningrader, are you? No, I thought not. So you know that life is possible elsewhere. Don’t try to cling on here.’

‘Riva Grigorievna, have you got a cigarette?’

She offers him a packet. Andrei fumbles for one, and lights it. What she’s suggesting is impossible. He can’t walk out of his life just like that. ‘Nowhere’s safer than anywhere else,’ he says.

Brodskaya shrugs. Her eyes are experienced, ironic, even pitying. ‘You may think that,’ she says, ‘but listen to me, because I know what I’m talking about. Get out of Leningrad as soon as you can. Discover a vocation for primary health care in a pioneer area. Out of sight is out of mind.’

‘But –’

‘I must go and check my list for this afternoon.’

When she’s gone, he drags smoke deep into his lungs. My God, who could have imagined it would come to this. Brodskaya giving up home, career and friends; even uprooting her mother. Is it possible that she knows something he doesn’t? Or perhaps her instinct is sharper. Anna’s face rises in his mind. ‘We could go to the dacha. It’s safe there … Once they get hold of you they never let go. They go on and on, and then they go on some more.’ They’d be no safer there. Anna understood that really. She knew she was panicking, and the sensible thing to do was to carry on as usual.

He would never have thought Brodskaya was the type to panic. She took a risk, though, in saying as much as she’d said to him. She must have decided he could be trusted. She’s always kept herself to herself. He didn’t even know she lived with her mother. But it’s different for her …

Why?

My God, perhaps they should all get on the move. Russov – Retinskaya –

Or perhaps, he thinks grimly, those two are on the move already. Russov’s already proved that he knows how to look after number one. He’s well in with Admin too. Russov won’t end up in Yerevan; it’ll be something better for him.

If Brodskaya’s right, though, better is worse. Her plan is to drop out of sight by taking the kind of obscure post that won’t arouse attention or envy. She’s moved so quickly, too. She must have started looking out for a new post even before she operated on the boy.

He’s not going to waste any more time thinking about it. He can’t leave Leningrad, and that’s the end of it. His patients need him. Anna’s got her job, and these are important years for Kolya. Who in their right mind abandons residential status in a city like Leningrad? They would never find an apartment like theirs again. And surely Anna would never abandon the dacha?

They are all excellent reasons, but he knows they are not his real reason. Andrei is not one for imagining things, but Volkov’s face is as clear in his mind as if the man were standing here in the courtyard with him. A clever face, and a compelling one. Yes, it’s possible to see the boy in him. It would be possible to like the man and even to want to please him. But he’s marred by an expression he can’t hide. It’s a deformity, but not of the flesh. A confidence that everyone who sees him will be cowed. No one should look like that.

Andrei stubs out the cigarette.

‘She said I had vandalized her doormat,’ says Anna. Her face is flushed and her eyes sparkle with anger. ‘You know it was my turn to clean the hallway and the bathroom? Well, I took the mats down to the courtyard to beat them, as usual, and when I came back upstairs old Ma Malevich was waiting for me. She grabbed the mat from me, turned it over and then said I’d torn the backing. Deliberately. Because I’ve got something against her and hers, apparently. And she’d left some soap in the bathroom by accident and when she came to look for it after she’d heard me cleaning in there, it was gone. So that’s theft as well as vandalism.’

‘But it’s ridiculous, Anna. You can’t take that woman seriously.’

‘Can’t I?’

‘You don’t want to let her upset you.’

‘She hasn’t upset me,’ Anna almost shouts. ‘But I tell you, she’s not going to get away with any more of this.’

He looks at her sharply. She is only just holding back tears of rage and mortification. That’s not like Anna. She’s much better than he is with the neighbours, as a rule. She expects nothing good of the Maleviches, and guards herself with a profound, ironic certainty that daily life just has to be dealt with.

‘What did she say?’ He sees her hesitate, and colour more deeply. She doesn’t want to tell him. ‘Anna?’

‘She said we don’t know how to bring up Kolya, because we have no parental instincts.’

His heart floods with anger, tenderness and pity. He wants to cover Anna up from the world, shield her so that no word or blow can ever touch her. ‘Remember that what she’s brought up is the Weasel,’ he says.

‘I shouldn’t let her get to me.’

‘You’re worth a hundred of them, Anna. Don’t listen to them.’

Anna sighs. ‘I know I should have walked away. I’ve never thought of myself as a violent person, but I could have brained her with my broom.’

‘And then you’d have been a thief, a vandal and a murderer.’

‘Even worse, the broom might get damaged.’

‘It doesn’t sound as if she knew about the downfall of the petition.’

‘He won’t have told her. He was scared.’

‘Do you think they’d inform on one another, those Maleviches?’

‘I’m sure they would, if it came to it. Andrei, do you think they were always like that? Sometimes I’m afraid that it’s like an infection. You keep on scrubbing things and washing your hands, but it’s in the air.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Whatever has made the Maleviches into the Maleviches, doesn’t only work on them. You know that. We think we’re not like them, but perhaps we’re deceiving ourselves.’

‘You are the most honest person I know, Anna.’

‘But perhaps that’s only because I am honest with you.’

‘She’s really upset you, hasn’t she? Come on, cheer up, Kolya will be home soon and we don’t want him starting another vendetta against the Maleviches. The less he knows about all this the better.’

‘You’re right. He’s so fiery, Kolya …’ She smiles, rather sadly. ‘Well, he’ll grow out of that.’