16
You can get used to anything. A new pattern emerges, in which Anna gets up a little later, because there’s no Kolya to be chivvied out of bed and off to school. Andrei rises at the same time, and goes through the routine of washing, dressing, drinking tea and eating porridge. He doesn’t shave. He hasn’t shaved for three days now. Anna detests the stubble but she says nothing. Andrei is working on a letter that sets out his position, explains in detail his handling of Gorya Volkov’s case (approved and agreed by Admin at every stage), and demands reinstatement. He refuses to call this letter an appeal. No specific accusation has been made against him. It’s a professional matter, that’s all. A misunderstanding which will be cleared up once the facts are known.
He’s at his desk before she leaves for work, with his pen and a pile of books and papers beside him. She kisses him and he looks up, distracted for a moment.
They’ve stopped him from being a doctor. With one phone call they have ripped through the fabric of Andrei’s life. Her heart clenches with pity and fury. Andrei, who walked to the hospital along freezing, deserted streets all through the siege, to give whatever medical help could be given. He never flinched. He improvised, made do, eked out the pitiful stock of drugs. He believed it was his duty to be there, even when all he could do was unwind a baby’s wrappings, and tell the mother to chafe its hands and feet and put it inside her clothes, against her bare skin, so it could share her warmth. And lie down, conserve your energy, drink water, give your milk a chance.
He was there when a father with wild, staring eyes rushed into the clinic. ‘It’s my little girl. The bakery wall collapsed when we were going for our rations. Her leg’s trapped, you’ve got to come.’ He knew what it was like to kneel in the snow where the child’s blood was already congealing as it spilled, and help to lift the mess of shattered brick and mortar off her. She survived, that child.
It was Andrei they were attacking, who’d supervised the boiling of pine needles to make a remedy against scurvy, who’d operated by candlelight on blast injuries, who’d directed infants who had a chance of survival to the feeding stations. They were like one body then, those who were still alive and on their feet. Fourth-year med students, junior doctors, professors, they were equals as they battled through the lines of patients. People came to hospital not so much in hope of a cure, as not to die alone. The corridors were full of the dead. Doctors, nurses, cleaners, physiotherapists, radiographers all struggled to keep the stoves alive. It was no time for hierarchies and protocol.
He’d thought the world would change after all that, just a little. People would remember what they’d suffered and how they’d got through it. In the years of the Terror their human feelings had been suffocated by fear and distrust, but those feelings were still there, alive, like fire sleeping under a crust of earth. People had helped one another during the siege; not all the time, perhaps, but even in the most extreme circumstances they hadn’t just survived as animals do. Some, maybe – the cannibals whose eyes had lost all humanity, sunk in the gloss of their flesh. But they were a small number. They were real, but they were not the true story. He’d seen people make sacrifices for one another that he would never forget. A cube of bread or a pannikin with soup in it, taken home from the canteen instead of swallowed. The offer of a share of the wood from a chopped-up bookcase. These things may not sound much now, but in those days they were life instead of death. People wouldn’t forget. Things will be better, Anna, he said, at the worst times. When all this is over they’re bound to be a little better.
Things will be better, Anna, they’re bound to be … She remembers his words and the iron smell of cold and death in their apartment. Did she believe him then? Probably not. She was less optimistic, perhaps.
There hasn’t been a second phone call. No letter; no further communication from the hospital. They have dropped Andrei into silence, she thinks, to see if he breaks it and what he says. None of his other colleagues has been in touch. Well, that was what happened. Lena took the risk but you couldn’t expect it. Anna remembers what that’s like. People didn’t come to see her father, except when they were sent to try to persuade him of the error of his ways. Even then they were sweating. Her father was lucky. They stopped him from publishing, they denigrated his writing and called him in for reprimand, but he was never arrested. Looking back, she finds it almost incredible that he could have survived in those times, when so many were destroyed.
Yes, he could be called lucky, but all the same it hollowed him out, like drops of water falling repeatedly on his heart. Shame, isolation, abandonment. She never used those words then. She became impatient with him, and sometimes even angry. Why couldn’t he make the best of it? She hadn’t understood her father; not really. He turned inward on himself, and although she never said a word she criticized him in her heart.
She’d been a good daughter. She’d gone to work, she’d taken care of Kolya, she’d cleaned the apartment, shopped and prepared the food. She’d grown their vegetables and fruit at the dacha. All these things had been done and she’d found pleasure in them. As far as she can remember she never complained to her father. He had his tea, his books, his papers, his thoughts.
But it wasn’t enough. She hadn’t wanted to enter his inner world, because she was afraid of it, as a child is afraid of a gloomy forest. She’d left him to wander in it alone.
When she was little she used to believe that the dead could see all the thoughts of the living. She doesn’t believe it now. She has to fight not to see the clenched, frozen flesh of her father, as hard as a board.
Yesterday Andrei said, ‘I’ve had enough of this. How long do they think I’m going to sit here like an idiot? I’m going in. If there’s an investigation going on, I should be part of it. I shall demand to see Ivanov, or Kalinin.’
The room was full of reflected snow light. Full winter had come, quite early. She’d always loved the clarity such light gave to everything. You noticed one leaf hanging from a frozen shrub, or the shape of a child’s lips as he threw his snowball and laughed. Stubble sprouted from Andrei’s chin. It was darker than the hair on his head.
‘Don’t,’ she said, in her softest voice. ‘Don’t do that, my darling.’
He shrugged impatiently and flung away from her, towards the window. For a long time he remained standing, looking at the buildings opposite and the floating mass of white roofs that stretched away into the distance. Soon the children would be talking about Father Frost, Anna thought. How quickly the year went round. But all that seemed to be happening in another world, to which she no longer had access.
‘You don’t need to worry,’ he said at last. ‘I shan’t do anything.’
She looked at his back, and her throat ached. It won’t go on for ever, she wanted to say. They’ll come to their senses. You’re one of their best doctors, everyone knows that. But she knew it would do no good to say these things aloud. It wouldn’t lift his burden; it would just be pretending that the burden was lighter than it was.
She had to go to work. They’d said nothing about Andrei’s pay, and she thought it was very likely that he wouldn’t be paid from the date of his suspension. They had some savings, which wouldn’t last more than a couple of months. Her money was essential. Maybe Morozova was right, and Anna should be fighting for promotion. The main thing was to hold on to her job. It wouldn’t be easy if Morozova ever found out that Andrei had been suspended.
She knew all these things and had known them since the moment she woke to see Andrei holding the telephone. Andrei knew them too.
This morning seems a little better. Andrei slept most of the night, and he looks more like himself. She wonders if she should suggest that he shave, then decides against it. She is cooking their porridge when suddenly her head feels strange. A flood of heat comes up in her. The air grows thick with particles. She’s about to call for Andrei, but she masters herself, steps back from the stove and draws in a deep breath. Hold it for a moment, release it all the way, and again. She isn’t faint, really. She won’t sit down or he’ll ask what’s wrong.
Slowly she stirs the porridge so it won’t stick to the pan. Her body has steadied itself. She is fine.
It’s because she doesn’t want him to look at her too closely that she eats her porridge standing up. He’s deep in thought, jotting something in the margins of what he has written. He looks up without seeing the room, then returns to his papers.
‘See you later,’ she says.
‘What?’
He looks up properly this time and smiles at her with that sweetness which she has never seen in another man’s smile. ‘Of course you are,’ he says. ‘I wasn’t thinking. Are you warm enough? Have you got your shawl on under your coat?’
‘I’m fine. The baby keeps me warm. It’s like having a little stove inside me.’
‘Be careful. Don’t slip on the ice.’
‘I’ll be fine. And you’ll be all right?’
‘You don’t need to worry about me, Anna. This will all be over soon.’
In spite of the stubble he looks himself again, strong and capable, her Andrei. She smiles with love and relief. ‘I’ll see you later, then.’
‘Of course.’
It’s not until the nursery day is over that Irina gets a chance to talk to Anna properly. Anna is anxious to get home, but she’s already left on the dot every day this week. She accepts the glass of tea Irina offers, and sits down, arranging her face to look relaxed. She doesn’t want anyone – even Irina – guessing there’s something wrong.
Irina is fed up: really fed up this time. Her sister has let her down. She’s got a steady boyfriend now, which is bad enough given that she’s two years younger than Irina. Natasha had suggested that she and Yura and Irina and another boy who’s a friend of Yura’s go as a foursome to a dance at the Palace of Culture.
‘The other boy is supposed to be really nice. He’s only twenty-five, but that’s not too big an age difference, is it?’
‘Three years is nothing,’ says Anna.
‘But now, would you believe it, he’s suggested bringing another girl along as well. She’s not his girlfriend, apparently, just someone from work.’
‘Well, surely that’s all right, then? I mean, if he’s still really going to the dance with you and she’s just tagging on.’
‘That’s what he says, but you’d have to be a bloody fool to believe it, wouldn’t you? He just fancies having two girls for the price of one. And nitwit Natasha goes along with it. She hasn’t got the sense she was born with. Besides, she’s nicely set up with Yura, so what does she care? I won’t go, that’s all.’
‘You should. You never know what might happen. You could go there with them, and then you might meet someone else. Someone much nicer! No, you really should go, Irinochka. I mean, sitting at home doesn’t do any good, does it?’
‘True. The only person who comes knocking on my door is our mad old neighbour who’s always trying to borrow an egg. “Just one little eggie, my darlings, and I’ll let you have it straight back tomorrow, as sure as I’m standing here.” ’
Suddenly Anna remembers the green dress. She promised to let Irina borrow it.
‘You could wear that dress I made to your dance.’
‘You mean the green one?’ asks Irina immediately, and Anna knows she hasn’t forgotten the offer for a moment.
‘You said you liked it. I’ll bring it in tomorrow and you can try it on. We’re pretty much the same size – well, we were, anyway.’
Andrei won’t want her to lend the dress. She was wearing it that night, at the dance, and then after the dance; the night the baby was conceived. He hates her borrowing or lending clothes. To him, they seem to be part of her, like her skin. She’s promised it to Irina, though, and Irina will be careful with it.
‘Oh, that’d be lovely,’ says Irina, her eyes bright. ‘I’ll definitely go in that case. Natasha hasn’t got anything half as nice, and I bet Miss Gooseberry hasn’t either. But are you really sure?’
‘Of course I am. Besides, I think that dress is lucky, Irina. It was for me, anyway.’
‘Was it? How?’
‘I can’t really say. It’s a bit –’ Anna feels herself blush.
‘Intimate?’ Irina offers, laughing, and Anna laughs too.
‘Something like that,’ she says.
‘Let’s hope some of the luck rubs off, then. I could do with a bit of intimate. My God, Anna, you’re looking better. You’ve been miserable as sin for days.’
‘Have I?’ asks Anna quickly. ‘I’m all right. There’s nothing wrong.’
Irina stretches, examines her nails and then slides a look at Anna. ‘How many years have we been working together?’ she asks.
‘I’m not sure – five, it must be.’
‘Exactly. So I do know a bit about you, and when you come in one day all happy, the way you’ve been for weeks, because of the baby, and then the next day your face is pinched up and you jump when the door bangs, then I know something’s happened. Something bad,’ she adds quietly, her eyes intent on Anna’s face.
‘Irina –’
‘Don’t worry, I’m not asking questions. I shouldn’t think anyone else has noticed. Certainly not our dear leader, the exceptionally brilliant manager of our showcase workplace, because she’s one hundred per cent thick about people. Alla’s wrapped up in herself, and the others don’t know you well enough. The kids notice, though. That little Masha’s been hanging off your hand all week, and she was coming on nicely before.’
‘You see too much, Irinochka.’
‘I always have done. It’s very inconvenient. Probably the reason I haven’t got a man. Damn it, this nail’s cracked. It always happens to me in the cold weather. You haven’t got a file, have you?’
Anna rummages in her bag, keeping her head down. ‘Here you are,’ she says at last.
‘Thanks. You look after yourself, Anna. With the baby coming and everything.’
‘I’ll do my best.’
When Anna gets home from work she is greeted by Andrei, cleanshaven. She presses herself against him, nuzzling his cheeks and drinking in the smell of his skin.
‘You’re so lovely and smooth.’
‘I realized that a beard didn’t suit me.’
‘Good.’
‘Did you have a good day?’
‘Not bad. The children are making an igloo. You wouldn’t believe the number of skills it teaches them. Spatial awareness, practical mathematics … Their mittens get sodden, though, and then they cry. We’ve got rows of mittens hanging by the stove and they’re more or less identical. They’re supposed to have their name stitched in but you know how it is. Nobody bothers, no matter how many notices Morozova pins up. I mean, the mothers are all doing overtime and late shifts and God knows what, they haven’t the time. And so they were furious at home time about their child getting a pair with a hole in the thumb, and everybody was having rows. And just listen to this. Morozova’s latest bright idea is that we should use the experience of making snow bricks to teach the children about the cooperation required for a production line.’
‘Well, I suppose it does teach them to cooperate,’ he murmurs.
‘Of course it does, but why does everything have to happen for the sake of something else? Why can’t it just happen for its own sake?’
‘You’ll have to ask Morozova, and I expect she’ll have a very good answer.’
‘I’m sure she will. She’s probably writing it up into a research paper as we speak.’
Beneath their conversation there lies another, shadowy and unspoken.
Any news?
No, nothing.
Six days now. You’d think at least they’d have sent a letter to confirm the phone call.
They’re leaving me to sweat.
There must be something we can do?
I’ve written another draft of the letter.
Don’t send it, Andrei. Please.
All right then, you tell me what I’m supposed to do. Meekly accept that I’m not a doctor any more? Let them take my profession away from me as you take a toy from a child who has misbehaved?
Andrei, please. Please don’t get angry with me.
I’m not angry with you. How can you think that?
I’m sorry. I was just tired.
Of course. You’ve been working all day.
*
They eat their supper. Lena’s roses are on the table, wide open now but scentless. Anna has made vegetable soup with dumplings, and there is sliced sausage on the table. She eats conscientiously, although she isn’t hungry. Andrei leaves half his soup. He should go out for a walk at least, she thinks. Surely that wouldn’t matter. No wonder he has no appetite, stuck in like this all day long.
‘Shall we go out for a while after supper?’ she asks. ‘Just for a breath of air?’
He looks at her, surprised. ‘But you’re tired,’ he says. ‘You’ve been on your feet all day.’
‘I wouldn’t mind a little walk. Have you been out today?’ She asks the question casually as she gathers up the plates.
‘No.’
She goes over the telephone message in her mind, for the thousandth time. She asked Andrei to tell her every single word that was said. He is trained to remember such things, from years of listening to symptoms before he forms a diagnosis.
‘This is a message from Medical Personnel. I am to inform you that, with immediate effect, you are suspended from your duties, pending investigation of serious irregularities. You are required to hold yourself available for investigatory interview without notice. You are not permitted to enter hospital precincts during the period of investigation.’
Available without notice. Clearly that meant there would be no appointment made beforehand, and no warning given; but did it also mean that Andrei had to sit beside the telephone day and night? If they went out for just a quarter of an hour, and the telephone rang, then it would ring again, surely?
The caretaker would see them go out. He might be asked about their movements. They might say that Andrei had gone out in order to meet someone, or to communicate with someone.
‘You’re right, I am quite tired after all,’ she says slowly. ‘Do you know what I’d really like to do?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Just have a quiet evening. Be really lazy. Put my feet up on the sofa and you read to me. Would you mind? You know how I love being read to.’
Andrei smiles. ‘Of course I will,’ he says. ‘What do you fancy? That’s right, you lie down. I’ll fetch a rug and a pillow.’
She considers what book to choose. ‘I’m not sure … You know, I think my brain is dissolving with this pregnancy. By the time I get back from work I can barely think.’
Andrei eases a pillow beneath Anna’s head. He unfolds the rug and carefully tucks it around her knees and feet.
‘How’s that?’
‘Perfect.’
‘I could read you some poetry,’ he offers tentatively, and Anna’s heart contracts. Andrei is one of those people who doesn’t believe that he has the right to read poetry aloud. He remembers her father, a real writer who had Pushkin, Lermontov and Nekrasov by heart, and would recite with every inflection perfect. Even though Anna has never written a word, Andrei believes the inherited gift is hidden in her somewhere.
It’s true that he doesn’t read aloud particularly well. His voice becomes stilted. His breath comes from his throat, and not his chest. The rhythm of the lines falters. Her father read so well. She remembers the deep, sonorous note in his voice as he recited Lermontov’s ‘The Dream’. All the same, she is more at ease listening to Andrei’s voice than she ever was her father’s, once she’d left behind the fairy stories she used to love.
‘Do you know, what I really feel like is one of those old stories of Kolya’s, from the blue fairy book. “The Mountain King”, maybe, or “Little Anastas”. You know where it is, on the shelf above his bed. It’s the one with gold lettering on the spine.’
‘I’ll go and have a look.’
She lies back, closes her eyes and listens to his footsteps. Kolya’s bed creaks as Andrei puts his weight on it. He’ll be kneeling as he scans the shelf. It’s the third from the right at the end, she thinks, but she says nothing. In a way it’s even nicer when someone you love is just close, in the next room, not actually speaking to you but doing something that will bring him back to you.
It’s funny going into Kolya’s room these days. The bed is always made. She misses the sound of the piano more than she would have thought possible. You get so used to it. It becomes part of the rhythm of your life.
‘Got it,’ calls Andrei, and then there’s a silence. Idly, Anna wonders what he’s doing. She’s intensely aware of the rug over her feet, the pillow under her head. The rug prickles a little. They ought to replace it with something newer and softer, but it’s good quality. Rugs are expensive. She wonders if there was enough money in the envelope she left on Galya’s table. It was all she could afford. She’ll send more as soon as she can.
‘Here we are,’ says Andrei, pulling up a chair to sit by her side.
‘What were you doing?’
‘Looking at the inscription. I’d forgotten that the book used to be yours.’
‘Let me see.’
The inscription is in her mother’s handwriting. ‘To our dear Anna, from her loving Mama and Father, 7th May 1925.’
‘I think it’s the only book left that has her writing in it,’ says Anna. ‘We burned so many books.’
He nods, thinking back to the little stove they had fed with books, in the darkest, coldest days of the winter of ’41/2. Anna still has the burzhuika, put away ‘in case’, just as she makes sure there is always a row of jars at the back of her store cupboard, ‘for emergencies’. Jam she’s made from fruit they grow and berries they gather out at the dacha – wild raspberry, elderberry and blackberry, bilberry, apple jelly. There are pickled cucumbers and dried mushrooms, and always two jars of Sokolov honey. It’s all there to be eaten, of course. Anna’s not one of those obsessives who fill pillowcases with crusts of black bread. But Andrei has noticed that Anna never opens a jar until she has another ready to replace it.
‘Isn’t it strange,’ says Anna, ‘to think of my mother opening that book when it was new, and writing in it.’
‘Do you remember getting it?’
‘Oh yes. I was about seven. I’d won a small prize for recitation at school. It was only a certificate, but my parents were so pleased that they bought me this book. It was probably the only prize I ever won, but in those days they were still hopeful. My mother was so busy. I was always longing for her to be ill so she could stay at home and I could bring her tea in bed, but of course she never was.’
‘Why “of course”?’
‘Oh well, she was so strong. Everyone relied on her. I can’t remember her taking a day off work until she was pregnant with Kolya.’
He frowns. He’s intensely aware of Anna’s mother’s death, immediately following Kolya’s birth. Part of the placenta must have been retained. Maybe the death couldn’t have been avoided. She suffered a heart attack after an uncontrolled haemorrhage. Anna’s younger, of course, but he’s determined that she will have the best obstetrician he can arrange. Andrei will explain the family history. He doesn’t want to worry Anna, but a quiet word will do no harm. A doctor who knows he’s attending a colleague’s wife is bound to take extra care.
A stab of fear goes through him. Who will want to be associated with the birth of his child if he is disgraced? He’s hardly surprised that no one except Lena has been in touch with him, but what will Anna do, if she’s left alone?
Anna mustn’t be frightened.
The book falls open easily, as books do when they’ve been read dozens of times. ‘The Mountain King’ is the first story. Andrei clears his throat. He’s glad Anna has her eyes closed. He feels self-conscious, reading in front of people. He didn’t like it at school. He would never have got a prize for recitation, although he has to admit he got so many prizes in maths, chemistry, biology and physics that his parents took them for granted. If he hadn’t won, they’d have wanted to know what was wrong.
‘ “In the place where night sits on top of the highest mountain, there dwelt a king who had never been seen with human eyes …” ’
He reads on. The mountain king is angered because the people who live at the foot of the mountain have forgotten about him and no longer leave fruit and flowers and loaves of fine wheat bread on the lowest slopes. He decides that he will punish them. Very slowly, so slowly that even if you were watching you would never see it, he begins to shrug his giant shoulders. A tiny pebble comes loose from the very top of the mountain. As it skitters down the slope it loosens another pebble, a bigger one, and this pebble loosens another, until the sides of the mountain echo with the rumbling of boulders chasing one another down the steep valleys, smashing into trees, hurtling across rivers, gathering speed until they …
‘ “Until they reached the shepherd’s hut where the shepherd was sleeping while his daughter guarded the flock on the mountain pasture …” ’ recites Anna.
‘Who’s reading this? “And then the mightiest of all the boulders smashed into the walls of the hut and sent them spinning down the mountainside until there was no piece of wood left that was bigger than a matchstick. But the shepherd, who was sleeping, was thrown high into the air on his mattress of straw.” ’
Anna shifts restlessly under her rug. ‘Don’t go on, Andrei. I don’t want to hear any more.’
‘But Kolya used to love this bit. Anyway, the shepherd isn’t killed.’
‘I know, and he finds his little daughter alive because she’s been playing in a cave instead of looking after the sheep. He clears away the stones from the entrance with his bare hands.’
‘So it’s a happy ending, what’s wrong with that?’
‘How about the sheep?’
‘What?’
‘Do they get crushed to death?’
Andrei skims the pages. ‘It doesn’t say anything about the sheep.’
‘How about the people who lived at the bottom of the mountain, when the boulders came hurtling down on top of them?’
‘No, nothing about them either.’
Anna opens her eyes. ‘Funny, isn’t it, all I used to care about was the shepherd and his daughter. I suppose it was because they were the main characters. Maybe that’s the moral: you can’t care about everybody.’
‘It’s just a children’s story, Anna.’
‘I know. Sorry. Doesn’t it seem odd without Kolya playing the piano?’
‘I hope he’s getting on all right.’
‘I’m sure he is.’
‘At least he’s old enough to understand why it’s all happening.’
‘He’ll be fine, Anna. I expect he’s glad to miss some school.’
‘D’you think it would be all right to write to him?’
‘Maybe not just yet. Let things settle down a bit first.’
Suddenly, without warning, a terror which she hasn’t felt in years seizes on Anna. Her hair is parted by icy fingers. Her skin crawls. Her heart pounds in her throat, suffocating. ‘Andrei!’
‘What is it? Are you ill?’
‘Andrei, I don’t feel too good.’
‘Lie still. Don’t move. Have you got a pain?’
‘No, it’s not that. Hold me a minute.’
He kneels beside her, awkwardly, and gathers her to him. ‘You’re not bleeding? No cramps or anything like that?’
‘No. It was just a horrible feeling. It’s going already.’
She won’t tell him any more, not a word. Things are bad enough as it is. It won’t help for her to blurt out that she felt as if someone were standing over her with a hammer in his hand, ready to smash it into her temples. And that his face was unemotional as he looked at her carefully, judging the best and most vulnerable spot.
‘I’m all right now,’ she says. ‘Hold me tight. Tighter than that.’
‘I don’t want to hurt you.’
‘You won’t hurt me.’
He shifts position, easing her into his arms. ‘There, is that better?’ He feels her nod. Freeing a hand, he begins to stroke her hair. ‘You and the baby, that’s all that matters.’ He feels And Kolya start in her, but she says nothing aloud. ‘There, there,’ he says, jogging her slightly, rocking her in his arms. ‘It’s all right. Don’t worry, my darling, I’ll make sure you’re all right.’