Doctor Gavrilov (27 page)

Dmitry said, ‘I don't want to discuss this… it is quite irrelevant. As a matter of fact, I am separating from my wife…' He wanted them to think that he no longer cared about his family, that they could not be used to threaten him. He had thought through all the things he could say to them and come up with only one, but this lie was harder for him than all the others. The words he found shocked him with their intensity. ‘I have utterly repudiated her… she has been unfaithful.'

How could he say this? It was a terrible thing to do, to blacken Katie's character in this way; he did not believe that she could ever betray or hurt him. He thought how different she was to his first wife, who had been unfaithful not once, but many times, who had gone to bed with other men for no other reason that he could see other than to hurt him; he tried to imagine to himself that he was talking about Masha, not Katie. He couldn't shake off a superstitious feeling that by saying these things he might make them true, that he would be suitably punished for his terrible lie. The Libyan, as if embarrassed at this personal revelation, held up his hand. He said, ‘I understand.' He ordered another drink. ‘Of course, you could always arrange for your children to come with Libya, if not now, then later… do you have them on your passport?'

Dmitry shook his head; for an instant he wondered if he hadn't made things still worse for himself; he could see them making arrangements for a child abduction. Everything he said, every lie he invented, seemed to further twist the knot he sought desperately to undo. He said, ‘No, they belong with their mother. The boy is a small baby and the girl… she is not even my child. What matters is that I now no longer have to spend time in London with them. I can come to your country and dedicate myself entirely to my researches… please arrange everything as quickly as you can.'

The Libyan rose. He said, ‘Please wait,' and went out to the telephones. He came back after fifteen minutes and handed Dmitry a slip of paper. ‘You are booked tonight, on a flight to Malta, at three a.m. Your ticket will be held for you at the airline desk. Someone will be there to meet you and take you on a boat to Tripoli.' He paused. ‘Don't worry, everything has been arranged. We shall send a cab for you at midnight.'

So now there was no time left; just an hour until he had to leave. He'd packed his suitcase, a big old leather one that belonged to Katie, the only one they had which was large enough. Dmitry sat at the kitchen table. The clock ticked, it seemed, interminably slowly; it was impossible to say anything. Katie moved silently around the room, picking things up off the floor, putting them away, folding the heaps of crumpled washing into neat piles, one for her, one for Anna, one for Sasha. From time to time she glanced at Dmitry, he could feel her eyes rest on him, but he couldn't look at her.

The clock struck eleven. Dmitry leaned forward and put his head on his arms. On the radio they were playing some baroque choral music, the voices rising high in a chorus of gathering intensity. Dmitry couldn't listen to it; it implied the existence of beauty, of hope, of certainty in the world, from all of which he felt he had utterly isolated himself. Katie must have felt the same, because she suddenly switched off the radio. She gathered up the dry washing and went to the bottom of the stairs. She said, ‘Please, Mitya, please, come upstairs now.'

‘What is the point? The taxi is coming in half an hour.'

‘But at least then I can be close to you.'

He looked up at her, then; it was as if for an instant she was offering him an alternative to damnation. He got up from the table and followed her upstairs. They lay on the bed, close to one another, holding one another, but did not make love.

At midnight the doorbell rang. Katie moved to get up, but Dmitry said, ‘No.' He kissed her and she pulled him close to her so that he had to tear himself away. He stood and looked at her for an unendurable moment, understanding and feeling her pain and not being able to comprehend how he had come to inflict it, the one thing in the world which he would have done anything to avoid. Then he turned away and ran down the stairs.

Tim, still awake, drew back the curtain. He saw the taxi, the rain falling, a man taking Dmitry's heavy suitcase, and Dmitry's agonized glance back at the upstairs window before he climbed into the cab. He heard the slamming of the door and saw the raindrops glittering in the headlights as the taxi drove away.

He didn't know why he had this strong impression, but he somehow knew that Gavrilov had gone for good.

Tim hadn't seen Katie for some time. Since she had told him about Anna's accident he had deliberately kept his distance from them, and particularly he had avoided Dmitry, who had seemed to be at home all the time. He had talked to him once briefly on the steps when he was letting himself in, and heard that Anna was back at school and doing well; he had left a card for Katie but felt that he shouldn't intrude.

But in the morning, as soon as he heard Katie moving round upstairs, he went up and rang the doorbell.

She opened the door and stood looking at him, blinking. She said, dully, ‘Oh, hello Tim. Have you run out of milk?'

Tim was taken aback. She looked terrible, with uncombed hair and red-rimmed eyes, and it was the first time she hadn't seemed at all pleased to see him.

‘I hadn't seen you for some time… I thought I'd say hello… see if you were all right.'

She said, ‘Come in… I'll make some coffee.' He followed her up the stairs and into the kitchen. All her movements seemed slow, listless; she moved carelessly, nearly chipping the edge of the coffee pot on the tap as she rinsed it out, seeming to have difficulty in opening the packet of coffee. Sasha sat gurgling in the highchair, sucking on a half-eaten tangerine.

Tim asked, ‘What's the matter?'

Katie said, ‘Mitya and I have separated.'

Tim said, ‘Oh, I see.' Then he said, ‘I didn't know.'

‘No, of course not. How could you know? He only left last night.'

‘Where to?'

‘Oh, I… I don't know.' She poured boiling water on to the coffee; her hand was not quite steady. Tim wanted to offer to help but couldn't, quite.

‘You don't know where he is?'

‘What? Who?' She hadn't been listening. Tim said, ‘Mitya.' It seemed odd to use his name, or at least, that familiar form of it, because he despised him; but it would have seemed artificial here to call him anything else.

Katie said, ‘I don't want to.'

‘Don't you?' He was standing close behind her, near enough to touch her. She poured milk into the coffee and turned to look at him, offering him a mug. Was it hostility between them, or something else? Were they, then, intimate enough to be angry with one another? Katie handed him the coffee. She sat down. She said, ‘Tim, don't ask me these things, please, not now… I am so miserable.'

Her lips trembled; she was going to cry; with an effort that was obvious and painful to him he saw her force back the tears. Tim said, ‘But isn't it for the best? That you've split up. I've heard a lot through the floor, you know. I've heard you both shouting and you crying as if your heart would break. I never understood why you stayed with him when he made you so unhappy. What kind of a hold has he had over you?'

Katie turned her head away. She put her hand across her forehead to shield herself from his view. He said, ‘Katie.' She looked at him. She was crying, now. He went and put his arms around her and she turned her head into his shoulder. He said, ‘Look, Katie, I want to help you. I really care about you, you know that, don't you. I can't bear to see you unhappy like this. Is there anything I can do for you?'

‘Oh, Tim, I don't know…. everything is such a mess.' She wiped her tears away clumsily with the back of her hand. ‘Tim, I'm very fond of you, but I can't…'

‘You can't what?' He kissed the back of her neck and she didn't resist. She turned round to face him and he took both her hands in his, looked at her in the eyes, and said, ‘You look so beautiful when you cry.' She stared at him wildly, stood up, pulling her hands away from him, and went over to the window; he could see that she was trembling. She said, in a shaky voice, ‘Please Tim, can't you see? Please don't do this, you're making things worse for me.'

Instantly he knew he'd gone too far. She was too upset, he mustn't take advantage of her in this state. ‘I'm sorry, I'm not asking you for anything, Katie, I just wanted you to know how I feel. What I'm trying to say is, if there's anything you want me to do for you, you can ask me, I won't mind…'

Her voice was very quiet, controlled. ‘Well, right now, Tim, if you don't mind, you can go downstairs.'

He hesitated, uncertain, unsure whether she really meant this or not; then he decided he should take her at her word. He was upset, but not too downhearted, by her reaction; he was determined that in time he would convince her, would win her over; he was sure she was attracted to him, was held back only by a sense of guilt. He felt no guilt at all about his feelings for her, did not feel that he was unfairly making use of her misery. After all, he thought, I have been waiting for a long time.

T
HE HEAT from the ground struck Dmitry like a physical blow as he stepped out of the building. The late afternoon shadows fell heavily across the courtyard; the plants hung limply in the dusty garden. Even the Libyans said that it was hot.

From the moment he arrived back in Libya he had decided he would get on with his work and not think about anything else. His work was the one thing that kept him sane. Shut up in his room, he made hundreds of calculations. Half the time they were irrelevant to his work, he just followed the chain on, seeing where it would lead. Perhaps the abstraction of numbers was his only way of resisting a reality which was intolerable to him.

The project was going well. He could do exactly as he liked, follow his instincts, make short cuts, take risks in a way he would never have been allowed before, and it was paying off. He only had ask for something and it was his. He and Suzarbayev had set up the first test cell, had run the experiment and the first measurements of the degree of separation had been higher than he had anticipated. Suzarbayev had looked at him with complete astonishment.

‘This thing is working.'

‘I told you it would work.'

Still, promising as this was, it was only the beginning. They had been lucky so far, but the main problem would be how create a pressure variation in the gas to allow the lighter particles containing U235 to be pumped off. In fact, this preliminary promising result might go against him, encouraging Masoud to press for him to try to set up a small cascade before he was really sure that he had sorted out the problems.

When he began to think of Katie and the children he simply stopped himself, then and there, by an effort of will. They were part of another life, distant and unattainable.