9

Lyuba has just finished wrapping Gorya’s stump. It’s a long business. First the wound dressing has to be changed, and the stump examined minutely for signs of healing or infection. Dr Brodskaya’s directions are specific, down to the precise width of the elastic bandage and the siting of safety pins and adhesive tape. Lyuba takes pride in carrying out the doctor’s instructions to the letter. Brodskaya’s not a nit-picker; she thinks like a nurse and she knows that if you put the safety pin in the wrong place it will chafe the patient’s other leg.

Lyuba hasn’t worked with Brodskaya before, because Brodskaya’s not usually in Paediatrics, but you can see straight away that she’s not just good, but tough too. The best sort, Lyuba thinks. She can’t stand any kind of sloppiness herself. It was Brodskaya who got the private nurse taken off the job. ‘She’s not qualified to carry out this level of care.’ Everyone on the ward was talking about it when Lyuba arrived that morning.

The poor kid would be better off in the main ward, in Lyuba’s opinion. There’s no chance of forgetting about yourself when you’re all on your own. It just goes to show that the high-ups, for all their privileges, don’t always get what’s best. Anyway, as far as she’s concerned the boy is just a boy. She’s not going to think about who his father is – or at least, not unless she has to.

The mother’s useless. She fusses all the time and comes in with swollen eyes, complaining about her bad nights. Just what Gorya needs to hear. She’s probably not all that bright either. According to her, her little boy should just lie nice and still and get better that way. With his stump covered up in bedclothes, so she doesn’t have to see it.

But Brodskaya wasn’t having any nonsense. She came in a couple of days ago just when Polina Vasilievna was spooning porridge into Gorya’s mouth – or trying to do so, at least. Gorya kept his lips pressed together, as mutinous as a two-year-old. Lyuba had to laugh, looking at the pair of them – although of course she didn’t, not aloud.

‘Please put that spoon down, Mother,’ said Brodskaya in a voice so clipped and clear that Polina Vasilievna immediately dropped the spoon, turned red even through all her make-up, and started to sulk just like her son.

Brodskaya went through the rehabilitation plan while Mum sat there goggling. No one is to assist Gorya with his basic functions. He can perfectly well manage the bed-bottle himself, and tomorrow he’ll be getting himself from wheelchair to toilet with the assistance of the support pole. The physiotherapist will be on hand to teach him the correct technique. The aim is to get Gorya doing as much for himself as he can. Gorya’s exercises must be done exactly as directed, and at exactly the times on the exercise sheet. Painful? The correct level of analgesia will be prescribed at each stage. The physiotherapist will be in at two o’clock. The aim is to keep stump oedema to a minimum. Flexion of the hips from the earliest stage is crucial for later mobility. Gorya’s exercises are designed to minimize the possibility of contracture.

Brodskaya went on and on, but Lyuba could tell that Polina Vasilievna wasn’t really taking it in. Partly it was because she didn’t understand the doctor’s language, but mostly it was because she’s mulish. The sort who’ll put up with the doctor’s instructions just as long as the boy’s in hospital, but all the time she’ll be planning to ‘do things her own way’ as soon as she gets Gorya home. She’ll turn him into an invalid by thinking he is one. As for the father – well, Lyuba keeps her eyes down when Volkov’s in the room.

Andrei Mikhailovich came in later and went through pretty much everything Brodskaya had said, but he put it into words everyone could understand, even Gorya. It was Gorya he talked to the whole time. He’s good with children. Fair play to Brodskaya, though, she’s not a paediatrician. It’s different with Andrei Mikhailovich. He even had the mother nodding her head and agreeing that it wouldn’t be long before Gorya was on the parallel bars in the hospital gym and learning to walk again. Gorya relaxed, too. As far as Andrei Mikhailovich was concerned, it was perfectly normal to have a stump. Of course there were going to be problems, but each of them could be sorted out, one day at a time. Gorya’s hard work and commitment were the key to everything. Lyuba could tell that the boy liked that. He was sick of having things done to him, and his mother hanging over him, going on and on about what a tragedy the whole thing was for her poor little boy.

‘Your level of fitness is going to help you, Gorya. You’ll have lost a bit because of the operation, but people who’ve got good basic fitness get mobile really quickly. And once your stump’s healed we’ll be looking at the best kind of prosthesis for you. You remember what a prosthesis is?’

‘It’s a false leg.’

‘Yes, but that’s not really an accurate description. It’s not a false anything. It’s a real prosthesis and it’s going to open up your life.’

Gorya’s eyes were fixed on the doctor’s face.

Poor kid. The tough time comes when they go out. In hospital people don’t stare. Everyone’s got something wrong with them, and often it’s worse than an amputation. Well, thinks Lyuba, you can’t do anything about the world. The thing is to be sure your bandage is perfectly smooth and just tight enough to support without too much compression.

‘There,’ she says to Gorya, smiling, ‘my masterpiece is finished. Now let’s get you comfortable. You remember, Dr Alekseyev’s coming in again after his clinic, before you see the physio. Now, where’s that book of yours?’

‘Under the bed.’

‘Did you just throw it under there, young man?’

‘I did when Dr Brodskaya came. I didn’t want her to see it.’

‘That’s no way to treat a book –’ She bends down and retrieves it. ‘There you are.’

It must have cost a fortune, that book. Great Engines of the Soviet Union. Thick, glossy pages, full of photographs and information. She riffles the pages. It looks a bit technical for a child of his age.

‘Do you understand all this, Gorya?’

‘Course I do!’

‘Then you’re cleverer than I am. Here you are. Going to be an engineer when you grow up, are you?’

‘I don’t know.’ His face clouds. She knows what he’s thinking.

‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t,’ she says briskly, ‘if you work hard and get your qualifications. We need engineers. Now, let me have a look at those hands … Even lying in bed you get dirty hands. Wait while I bring you a bowl of water and your flannel and you can give yourself a good wash.’

It’s not until six days after the operation that Andrei sees Volkov again. He’s intending to pop in and see Gorya on his way back from a lecture on gold therapy, but Gorya’s room is empty. The bed has been made, with the sheets and blankets pulled back. He looks up and down the corridor and at that moment Volkov appears, pushing his son in a wheelchair. He doesn’t notice Andrei, because he’s leaning forward to listen to something Gorya’s saying. Their heads are close and their hair is almost exactly the same colour. Volkov looks up, sees Andrei and acknowledges him with a nod.

‘We’ve been to the gym,’ says Gorya. ‘I’m not allowed on the parallel bars yet so we just had to look at them. There was a girl like me, only she lost her leg when she fell under a tram. She’s got a new leg. Her leg was cut off even higher than mine, she told me. She’s not in hospital any more, but she comes in for physio.’

There’s a touch of colour in his face. Lyuba would have suggested going to the gym, thinks Andrei. She believes it’s bad for Gorya to be stuck in a room on his own, not seeing how the other children manage. ‘Let him see there are plenty worse off than he is. He’ll soon be racing them on his crutches.’

‘That’s good. Now, are you going to show your father how you get out of that wheelchair and into bed?’ asks Andrei.

‘No need for that,’ says Volkov. ‘I can lift him.’

‘He knows how to do it. It’s quite a complicated technique but Gorya’s a quick learner.’

Volkov frowns, but doesn’t resist. They back the wheelchair parallel to the bed, and lock the wheels.

‘Now, Gorya, remember: step one.’

Gorya grips the wheelchair’s arms. Slowly, he levers his own weight upwards.

‘Foot off the footrest. Good. Now let your weight go down on to it. Slowly. Shuffle your bottom forward, remember. Good. And now here’s your right crutch. Got it? And the left one coming up. Ends of the crutch firmly on the floor. Test them. That’s right, you remembered. And now, slowly, up you come. Good, Gorya, much better than yesterday. Stand still while I get the wheelchair out of your way. Excellent. Now you turn until the back of your leg touches the bed. Don’t worry about looking round, the bed’s not going anywhere. Let yourself down. Good. Sit back as far as you can. Check you’re in position. Slowly, move yourself round, bring your leg up and use it to push yourself up the bed a little. Well done. Have a rest now, that was pretty tiring.’

Andrei adjusts the cage over Gorya’s stump, and then brings up the bedclothes. The boy slides a sideways glance at his father. He wants praise, doesn’t Volkov see that?

‘Gorya’s working very hard,’ says Andrei at last, to break the silence. ‘The quicker he can regain his fitness, the sooner he’ll be fully mobile.’

‘How long will that be?’ asks Volkov abruptly.

‘His wound is healing well. Dr Brodskaya’s very satisfied with his progress.’

Volkov makes an impatient gesture. ‘It’s you I’m talking to. My son is no longer Dr Brodskaya’s patient.’

Andrei looks at him. Does he means that he’s spoken to Brodskaya – maybe even dismissed her, as you’d dismiss a servant? No, that’s impossible.

‘Excuse me,’ he says quietly, ‘it’s vital that Dr Brodskaya continues her post-operative care.’

Volkov does not reply. Gorya has shut his eyes. Andrei knows him well enough by now to realize that this means Gorya wants to block out what’s happening. Why couldn’t Volkov have praised him? A few words, that’s all it would have taken. The boy wants so much to please his father.

‘Gorya,’ he says, ‘I have to go now. Remember about lying on your stomach for a while, won’t you? Use the correct technique for rolling yourself over, and then you won’t put pressure on your stump.’

He uses the word ‘stump’ deliberately. It’s no good for the child to hear euphemisms, as if the reality of his body is too obscene to be named. Of course Volkov cares about the boy. Any fool can see that. But how is Gorya supposed to know that his father isn’t angry with him, but with the rest of the world that is still walking around on two legs? If you want to turn your boy into a cripple, thinks Andrei furiously, just carry on like this.

Sunday is bright but cool, with a few high clouds scudding in a sky the colour of a blackbird’s egg. Perfect for cycling out to the dacha. Anna cooks porridge for everyone, and packs bread, tea and sausage. Her panniers are full. As well as their own food, she’s bringing goods to barter: four tins of sardines, a bag of cooking salt, a couple of school exercise books, some HB pencils, and – the big prize –the bar of Petersburg Nights Special Chocolate that the Parents’ Committee gave to her on May Day. She has high hopes for what that chocolate will bring. Anna is never without her string bags, and an eye for what can be bought in the city and exchanged for butter, fresh milk, seed potatoes or a piece of pork.

For once Kolya doesn’t grumble at being turfed out of bed early, and by eight o’clock they are on their way. The wind of their passage lifts Anna’s hair as the scarred, exhausted city streets fly past them. The breeze is from the west today, and smells faintly of salt. It’s one of those mornings when gulls wheel lazily overhead and the city is like a ship about to launch itself on to the Baltic.

It doesn’t take too long to reach the edge of the city. Andrei says all this land is earmarked for housing. Nothing’s happened yet, but huge developments are going to be built all around Leningrad, to house the surge of migrants who came in post-war. To replace the ghosts, Anna thinks. She remembers how empty the city was when at last the siege was lifted. Since then people have poured in from all over the Soviet Union, looking for work and a place to live. The streets are full of strangers now, not half-familiar faces. But Leningrad knows how to make the newcomers its own, just as it’s always known how to transform each newborn baby into a child of the city.

She often thinks about the nursery children from before the war. She took it for granted then that they would grow up and that every so often she’d be stopped in the streets by a mother with an older child, dressed for school. ‘Do you remember our Nastya? Yes, I knew you would! She still remembers you teaching her “Magpie, Magpie”.’

Most of them didn’t grow up, and those who survived are scattered. Starved, shelled, sent off on evacuation trains that were bombed from the air, killed in German reprisals, orphaned and taken into children’s homes so that they forgot their parents and homes and even their own names. Very often those pre-war three-and four-year-olds rise into her mind, watering their sunflowers with proud concentration. ‘Mine’s the biggest!’ ‘No, it’s not, Petya’s is the biggest. It nearly touches the sky!’ They fly across the playground in a game of chase, shrieking with laughter. They arrive at the nursery on freezing mornings, their faces glazed with snot, and she helps to unpack them from their layers. She rubs Vaseline into their chapped cheeks.

Other children have taken their place. New little Leningraders play in the courtyards and fill up the schools. Anna glances around at the flat, marshy land with its scrub of birch and larch. It seems impossible that the city can really grow outward as far as this. People would be living so far from the centre that they’d have to get up at dawn to come into work. The thing about her city is that you learn it through the soles of your shoes. You walk it, day after day and year after year. From the day you are born you learn every possible permutation of bridge, water, stone, sky. Your own life becomes part of the alchemy. You’re born, and soon you’ll die, but meanwhile and for ever you’re a Leningrader.

‘Andrei! Kolya! Wait for me a moment!’

She cycles around a pothole. There are sharp stones all over the road and she has to swerve to avoid punctures. Has she remembered her repair kit? Yes, she put it at the bottom of her left-hand pannier. Andrei’s got the pump. It’s really warm now and she’s sweating. You’d think those two were in a bike race, the way they rush on ahead.

It’s beautiful here. Lots of people wouldn’t think it was. But when you’ve hunted mushrooms in the woods year after year, and you know all the best places; when you’ve fished every pool and stream and know where the trout hide on the stony bed while water ripples over their backs; when you’re covered with scratches from foraging for berries; when you come home dusty, sweaty and triumphant with a load of firewood; when the marshes have sucked at your boots as you’ve jumped from tuft to tuft; then you love it with all your heart. You want it to live for ever. Your own death doesn’t seem to matter as much.

But people need somewhere to live. They are crammed in, three families to an apartment. What if she had to share an apartment with the Maleviches? The thought makes her shudder, but it could easily happen. Plenty of people have to live in a nest of voluntary spies, with every word censored and every thought concealed. Or they live worn down by constant rows about slivers of household soap and by accusations of bringing up their children like hooligans because they make the normal noise of children. She’s had nursery mothers break down in tears after a vicious early-morning row over spending too long in the bathroom with the children.

‘I just don’t know what to do, Anna Mikhailovna, every morning he wakes up crying with the sheets wet and I’ve got to get them rinsed through and him washed, and then this old bitch starts banging on the door and screaming at me to get out –’

What’s a scrub of birch or the electric green of new leaves on the larch, compared to that?

The truth is, I’m not an idealist, thinks Anna as she pedals on. I just want the children to be washed without someone screeching at them through the door. I don’t suppose that woman’s neighbour is really so bad. Probably just desperate to get to work on time. But we end up hating each other for lack of a bit of space.

Out here, you can breathe. They are cycling into the woods now. The road is a potholed, dusty track, running uphill. Every turn is familiar. In a few minutes they’ll burst out into the sunlight again, and they’ll hear dogs barking from the old Sokolov farm. They still call it that, although the Sokolovs don’t live there any more. Her childhood playmate Vasya Sokolov died in the war, driving convoys over Ladoga ice. His aunt, Darya Alexandrovna, lives in a little cottage with her son, Mitya, Kolya’s friend. The farm was swallowed up in the German advance, and burned to the ground when they retreated. Now it’s been rebuilt as part of a huge collective.

The Levin dacha, amazingly, survived the war. At least, the walls still stood, and there was a roof. The first time Anna came back here after the siege was lifted, she could barely recognize the place. So many trees had been cut down for fuel that the landscape looked quite different. Their plot was buried under a thick coat of weeds. Ivy, woodbine and wild clematis twined all over the dacha itself, softening the destruction. Both exterior and interior doors were gone. All the windows were smashed. Someone had chopped out the wooden floor of the verandah with an axe. Inside, there was German graffiti on the walls, and they’d lit open fires. Lucky that the place hadn’t burned down, like so many other dachas – or been torched deliberately, as the Germans retreated.

Fortunately the dacha had never been much more than a glorified hut. They repaired it bit by bit, as they managed to scavenge wood and nails, corrugated iron and glass. Anna scrubbed every inch of the walls, inside and out, as if she were exorcizing evil spirits. They got hold of some exterior paint – a sombre green, and not the colour they’d have chosen, but it kept the weather out. The verandah floor was the biggest challenge. It was Andrei who fixed it. He had a contact through work: Sofya Vasilievna, one of the radiographers, put him in touch with her father-in-law, a retired carpenter who still took on small jobs. He did the work in exchange for Kolya giving his youngest granddaughter a year’s course of piano lessons. Kolya gave those lessons so well, almost like a professional. By the end of the year the little girl was able to play a concert of baby pieces for her grandpa. The floor was down and the railings fixed, waiting for varnish.

Kolya loves the dacha. Sometimes it seems to Anna as if the dacha is the one remaining beacon of family happiness. Kolya chops wood, digs up potatoes, waters the little lilacs Anna planted to replace those that the Germans chopped down and burned. Kolya’s dream is that when the silver birches grow big enough again, he’ll sling a hammock between them and laze in it, reading all day long. He talks about the dacha before the war as if he were talking about paradise. He was only five when the Germans came, but he says, ‘I remember everything.’

The Germans must have hated trees. They snapped and uprooted even the smallest saplings, which would have been no good for fuel. They wanted not just to conquer but to erase, just as they’d wanted to wipe Leningrad from the face of the earth. But they couldn’t get rid of all the Russian trees, Anna thinks, any more than they could get rid of all the Russians. We were too many for them. Everything is growing back. Wherever she can, she plants trees.

‘If they’d had enough salt, they’d have sown all our fields with it,’ the old men in the village said, and then they would spit on the ground. Anna would look at them and think: All the time we were inside Leningrad, you saw them face to face. They walked down these tracks. They took over your homes, ate your food, slaughtered the pigs and sheep, threw the chickens in a pot. Whenever they wanted, they killed you. Marina’s dacha was totally destroyed, and no one knew what had happened to her old nanny. Three entire families from the nearby village were wiped out in reprisal for a partisan attack. Seven children, aged three to fourteen. They didn’t shoot them. They hanged them one by one, starting with the youngest.

They are almost at the dacha now. Andrei and Kolya are cycling abreast, talking. Anna’s too far behind to hear what they’re saying but she feels a surge of pleasure. Once Kolya’s through this difficult stage, those two will be real friends. Not that she has anything to criticize Andrei for. He’s patient and consistent in just the way you need to be with a boy of Kolya’s age. Sometimes, though, he withdraws. Anna hates that. They seem not to be a family any more but just three random people, forced together and ideally equipped by their intimacy to make one another unhappy.

‘Anna! Anna!’

They are there. Anna dismounts, pushes her bike through the gate and up the little path. They prop their bikes around the back of the dacha, where the gooseberry patch is full of bright, immature fruit.

‘Let’s make a gooseberry pie,’ says Kolya.

‘They need at least three weeks more,’ replies Anna. ‘It’ll be a good crop, look how many there are. And the white currants, too – that’s the best we’ve had for years. But we’ll have to tie string over the bushes, Kolya, or the birds will get them all.’

If only she had some muslin curtains. She saw a little cherry tree wrapped in muslin once, with all the fruit untouched –

‘Can’t we pick just some of them?’

‘Not the currants. It’s just a waste when they’re not ripe. But if you and Andrei catch a trout, I’ll make green gooseberry sauce.’

Even with its windows shuttered, the dacha welcomes them. There are fresh weeds pushing up everywhere in the vegetable garden. She’ll have to weed by hand this time. A hoe does too much damage when the growth is young and tender. The carrots and beet are doing well, and her onion patch is coming on nicely –

‘Anna, let’s have some tea.’

They go inside the dacha. As always, when they first come, it smells damp and woody.

‘It’s all the rain we had last week,’ says Andrei. ‘I’m going to light the stove.’

Wood is piled beside the stove, left there to dry from last time. Arriving at the dacha is always the same. A ballet of tasks, so familiar that they could all carry them out with their eyes shut. Kolya, who doesn’t lift a finger without complaint at home, is already fetching the bag of charcoal for the samovar.

‘We’ll have tea on the verandah,’ Anna decides. She doesn’t want the dacha full of smoke. Andrei is on his knees, feeding wood into the stove. This one doesn’t draw as well as their old, fat-bellied cast-iron stove. That was ripped out, either by the Germans or by someone local.

‘Is Galya here this weekend?’ asks Andrei. Galya is an old friend and colleague of Anna’s mother, and she has one of the few neighbouring dachas that survived. It was never a big dacha colony here, because the land was too poor. It’s taken decades of farm manure, days and days of back-breaking trundling and muck-spreading, to make the soil at the Levin dacha as fertile as it is now. Their compost heap is a legend. After the war a new dacha area was opened up six kilometres to the south. There was enough land there for everyone to get a decent-sized plot. They are trade union plots, of course. Anna or Andrei could have applied for one, but they prefer it here. They like the uneven land, and the little gorge where the stream flows. Besides, they wouldn’t want to add another six kilometres each way to their bike ride. There’s a railway halt near the new plots, but Anna and Andrei prefer to cycle. The weekend trains are always so packed.

‘Anna, will Galya be here?’

‘She should be. Now she’s retired she’s here most of the time.’

The samovar hisses. They drag the wooden chairs on to the verandah, and Kolya fetches cushions. They are spotted with damp, but it doesn’t matter. She’ll scrub them, and put them out in the sun.

‘And the sugar, Kolya!’

This is the moment she’s been waiting for: the first glass of tea, with the sun coming down on the pine planks, and the smell of earth all around. Anna relaxes and shuts her eyes. She can smell wild garlic. Wood pigeons are purring in the distant trees. All around her, food is growing. The day stretches ahead of them, full of work. Later on she’ll take the chocolate down to Darya Alexandrovna, who has a sweet tooth and keeps chickens. Darya Alexandrovna always wants to chat these days. She used to be so brisk, but now, sometimes, you can hardly get away from her. She can’t be bothered with ‘all these new people’. It’s people like Anna that she wants to talk to, because they remember the old days, and because Anna was her nephew Vasya’s playmate when they were little. Even Andrei is of no great interest to her, although she did once remark that he had very good teeth, and Anna had done well for herself.

Vasya has no grave, of course. Darya Alexandrovna has set a stone for him in the corner of her cottage garden, beyond the hen-run. She had his name carved into it. That must have cost a chicken or two.

Anna sighs, sipping her tea, and Andrei glances at her but says nothing. She doesn’t notice. Kolya’s eating the sugar again. Do boys of that age ever stop eating? And the more he eats, the skinnier he seems to get.

‘Leave the rest of it, Kolya, you can’t just eat sugar.’

‘I’m starving.’

‘I’ll make you a sugar sandwich. Bring me the bread, it’s in my bag, and the big knife.’ Thick slices of bread, spread with a smear of butter and sprinkled with sugar. Kolya will eat sugar sandwiches for as long as she’s prepared to go on slicing the loaf. ‘There you are, and that’s got to keep you going until lunch, so don’t wolf it down. I’m sure if you ate more slowly you wouldn’t be so hungry.’

‘Only old people eat slowly,’ says Kolya.

Andrei and Kolya will go fishing. She’ll sweep out the dacha and prepare the potatoes for dinner, then she’ll get into the vegetable garden. There’ll be radishes and lettuce thinnings to have with their bread and sausage for lunch. She’ll just have five minutes in the sun before she gets to work. How good the wood smells as the sun warms it. My God, Kolya’s already demolished that sandwich …

And later, they’ll bury the manuscripts. She’s decided to tell Kolya about it. If anything should happen, it’s best he knows. Kolya is old enough now, and families are stronger, she thinks, when there aren’t too many secrets.

She opens her eyes. ‘Do you remember how Father used to smoke and keep all the mosquitoes away?’ she asks Kolya. He nods, so casually that she probes further. ‘When you think of Father, can you see his face?’ she asks, then immediately wishes that she hadn’t. Kolya drops the knife with which he’s been whittling a leftover piece of pine, and chucks the wood over the railings.

‘I keep telling you. I remember him perfectly,’ he says in such a cold, angry voice that for Anna the light of the whole day is dimmed. Why couldn’t she have kept her mouth shut? But suddenly Kolya relents. ‘I’m going over to see if Mitya wants to go fishing with us, and then I’ll dig the manure into the new fruit patch. We are going fishing later, aren’t we, Andrei?’

‘Yes, later,’ says Andrei. ‘I’ve got to fix those panels to the side of the shed first.’

Everything’s all right. It will be a perfect day. But when should she tell Kolya about the manuscripts? Now, or later? After dinner, she decides, when he’s full of fish; if they catch anything, that is. If not, it’ll be soup with the sausage again. And then putting out the fire, closing everything up, and cycling slowly back to Leningrad in the evening light.

‘Tell his mother I’ll be over later,’ she calls to Kolya, who is already through the gate.

The sky has clouded over by evening. Dinner’s over – one rather small trout each, and a steaming pile of potatoes – and it’s too cold to sit out on the verandah any longer. It might even rain.

‘Let’s get it done,’ says Andrei.

‘You mean the manuscripts?’

‘Yes.’

Andrei has told Kolya, on the way back from Mitya’s place after fishing. Kolya didn’t seem surprised, or even all that interested.

Anna has forked away some of the compost from the edge of the heap. It felt like sacrilege, because she grew up being told that she must never mess about with the compost heap in case it stopped heating itself up properly. She has dug down deep through the warm, crumbling soil. It’s so fertile that even a manuscript might start growing there.

‘Come on then. Kolya!’

They troop alongside the vegetable patch, past the raspberries and down to the compost heap. Anna glances round, but of course no one’s there but themselves. Andrei produces the biscuit tin, and another, larger package wrapped in oilcloth.

‘Is that hole deep enough? It doesn’t look it.’

‘Put the package at the bottom and then the tin can go on top of it. I dug really deep.’

Kolya stands back, not committing himself to the scene, but watching everything. Once the oilcloth-wrapped package is in, Anna steps forward with the biscuit tin, and crouches down. She doesn’t want to throw it in; it seems disrespectful. She has sealed all around the lid with adhesive tape. It should keep the water out once autumn comes.

Her hands are strangely reluctant to let go. She looks down at the beautiful skating ladies with their impossible arabesques. Her fingers remember them. The figures are slightly raised and she used to trace them, fascinated –

A voice calls from the dacha, ‘Anna? Anna, are you there?’

‘It’s Galya.’

‘Quick, Anna, put it in. I’ll fill the hole. Hurry, before Galya comes out here looking for you.’

‘Put all the compost back where it was.’

‘It’s like a murder,’ Kolya says suddenly, ‘and here we are secretly burying the corpse.’

His words come back to her later, as they’re cycling the long, dusty road home. The light is grey and pallid. A grey evening will switch imperceptibly into a grey dawn. It’s late – past ten already. Kolya was right. It was a rushed, guilty burial. It was her father’s life-work, thrust away under the soil. His words hidden, never to be read any more. It was a kind of murder.

But it’s not our fault, she argues with herself. We didn’t choose any of this.