Foreigners (20 page)

They followed back streets and alleyways to the safe house, having at one point to hide themselves in the narrow confines of a doorway to avoid a
gendarmerie
patrol that passed on a nearby thoroughfare. They made sure to move quickly, but did not run, knowing that to do so would have drawn attention.

When they arrived, the old woman who kept the house, the mother of a local party member, was waiting for them with warm bowls of
chikhitma.
She also set out dark bread and a plate of cherries and currants. Iosif sat down at the table and tore off a chunk of bread; dipping it into his bowl, he began to eat with great fervour. But the smell of the mutton soup caused Alexander's stomach to turn; he thought of the horse with its belly laid open. So instead of the
chikhitma,
he took some currants from the plate and sucked on them, allowing their sourness to leach into his tongue.

“You are not hungry?” the woman asked.

“I do not have much of an appetite at the moment,” Alexander apologized. “It is all the excitement, I think. Though I am sure it will return to me soon enough.”

The old woman smiled, and in her face Alexander saw again the old woman from the square. He had to look away.

“You should eat, Alyosha,” Iosif said. “It will settle your nerves.”

“You are right, of course, Koba,” Alexander replied and took up his spoon. It took more effort than he thought himself capable of to chew the greasy meat, and more still to swallow it.

Iosif, however, did not appear to suffer a lack of appetite; he ate like a man who had not seen food for days. Positioning his mouth close to his bowl, he spooned his soup with one hand and dipped his hard bread with the other. When he'd finished, he took a handful of currants from the plate and poured them into his mouth, sat back in his chair and released a satisfied belch. He then began to prepare a pipe.

It was a wonder to Alexander, this apparent detachment, this ability to carry on as normal after all that they had witnessed. He could not deny his envy of such composure.

Once his pipe was lit, Iosif set it between his teeth, stretched his arms out and brought his hands together behind his head.

“It is a good day, Alyosha,” he said. “Today we have done a good thing.”

“Yes,” said Alexander somewhat uncertainly. “I suppose we have.”

“Oh, there is no supposing, Alyosha. We have. It is a fact.” Iosif sat forward in his chair again. He took the pipe from his mouth and pointed its stem at Alexander. “In fact, Alyosha, today is a doubly good day.”

“Really, Koba?” said Alexander. “How so?”

“I have come to a decision, Ayosha,” Iosif said and waited, his head tilted back slightly so that he gazed at Alexander down the length of his nose. It was something of a demanding posture, but Alexander could see in the faint wrinkles of his eyes that it was a pose and nothing more. Iosif was playing with him, so he agreed to play along.

“It is cruel to keep me in such suspense, Koba,” he said, accepting his role with an actor's feigned distress. “I must know what it is that you have decided.”

“You will be pleased,” Iosif said.

“Not if I am kept in the dark,” said Alexander. “In the dark I will be miserable.”

“Then I shall bring you into the light,” Iosif said, his tone becoming serious once more. He placed his pipe in his mouth and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “Alyosha,” he said, “your dear sister, Yekaterina Svanidze, my darling Kato, is the only woman I will ever love. There is nothing in the world as dear to me as she. I cannot live without her. For without her, nothing matters. Without her there is nothing of worth in this world, not even human life. And I shall marry her, Alyosha. Yekaterina shall be my wife.”

Alexander, hearing these words, recalled his vision of Yekaterina waiting happily in the doorway of her gingerbread house.

“But, Koba,” he said. “You know how she feels.”

“Yes, yes,” said Iosif, pushing himself up again and waving his crooked hand. “She will only be married in the church, I know. But I tell you this, Alyosha, if that is what sweet Kato wants, then that is what she shall have. And I do not care a damn what the party has to say about it. Besides, was not Comrade Lenin himself married in the church? If he, then why not I? I said as much to the soldier in the square.”

Alexander looked confused: “What do you mean, Koba?”

“Yes,” said Iosif, “I know. You are her brother; I should have spoken to you first. But I only decided right at that moment. You must understand, Alyosha, I felt such joy, such absolute joyous certainty, that I had to tell someone. He was closest to hand. And do you know what he said to me, that foolish boy?”

“What, Koba?” said Alexander. “What was it that he said to you?”

“I'll tell you,” replied Iosif, sitting back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. “He said, ‘You are a pig.'”

Iosif was quiet for a moment, and Alexander could see his eyes darken.

“I told that Tsarist that he should not have said that to me. I breathed it into his ear like his mother when she whispered him to sleep. I told him that I was the Man of Steel, Stalin, and no longer a whore's son from Tiflis.” Iosif thumped his withered hand against the arm of the chair. “And I told that useless stripling that my word was worth more gold than could be carried in one hundred armoured coaches, that it was worth more than the lives of one thousand jumped-up carriage drivers. Yes, Alyosha, that boy would have been wise to stay quiet. Now he no longer has the choice.”

Alexander remembered how Iosif had leaned in close to the young man, how he'd cradled his head with one hand and pressed his lips to the soldier's ear and how he'd then put the bullet in his brain. “Yes, Koba,” he said quietly.

Iosif's face broke into a grin again; his eyes brightened and he slapped his knee.

“So, what do you say to that then, Alyosha?” he said through his silly smirk. “We are to be brothers.”

Alexander forced himself to smile: “I say it is the most wonderful news, Koba. I say that you will make Yekaterina very happy with it.” But he was no longer so certain. It was as if a sliver of ice had worked its way into his belly and there settled in him a chill of uncertainty.

CASUALTIES

• I •

W
HEN
E
DWARD OPENED HIS EYES AGAIN
it felt as if a vise were clamped to his temples. He leaned forward and adjusted the vent on the dash so that the cool air-conditioned breeze blew straight into his face. The sheen of sweat began to slowly evaporate, leaving him with a chill. He reached for the can of Coca-Cola that he'd opened and left untouched in the cup holder before drifting off to sleep. It was warm and slightly tinny but he swallowed it greedily. The syrupy sweetness was welcome, but as the carbonation reached his stomach, he began to feel nauseated. He only spoke to hide his discomfort.

“Is this an autobahn?”

Paul responded without looking at him: “Autobahns are in Germany. We're in Belgium now.”

Edward nodded, though it hurt him to do so, then turned and gazed out the passenger window toward the city that stood
some miles to the north. It sprawled hazily across the horizon, beyond the dry and dusty flatlands that shimmered in the midsummer heat, its outskirts obscured by a low-lying smog that was broken finally by stark high-rise buildings.

“What's that?” he asked.

“Brussels.”

Edward felt as if he should say something more, but his hangover had too firm a grip on him. So he said nothing and leaned his aching head back against the headrest. The previous evening was little more than a blur to him now. There had been a great deal of laughter, he remembered that. And something had been broken; he was fairly certain that he'd done the breaking. And there'd been angry words between him and Paul, though he wasn't certain what about. It had been very late at that point and he was stretched out on the bed in the guest room. Possibly something about the woman, whose name was now well beyond his powers of recollection. Best let things alone, he decided, having learned long ago that drunken words are redressed at peril.

He had wanted a quiet night. On the flight across he politely refused the offerings from the drinks trolley and pressed his forehead against the window, watching the silvery waters so far below. He was full of nervous energy, jittery. If he were back in London he wouldn't have thought twice about taking a drink to chase the feeling away. But not now. Now he wanted a clear mind.

The airport at Maastricht was comforting. The Dutch, Edward noticed immediately, unlike the English, were not
ones for clutter. And as he passed unchallenged through customs, it was like walking into an automobile showroom: all glossy polished floors and glass walls that looked out onto the passing traffic. Clean lines and smooth surfaces, the polar opposite of grubby, confused London.

Edward half-expected his brother to be in uniform. Not his utilities but his dress blues, complete with sharp creases, epaulettes, spit-polished boots and peaked cap. But Paul was wearing narrow-legged, faded blue jeans with a mauve golf shirt tucked in snugly at the waist. On his feet he wore a pair of new white trainers. Edward felt strangely disappointed.

They hugged awkwardly and Paul reached down and took up Edward's suitcase before he could protest, then led the way through automatic glass doors to a silver four-door Mercedes sedan in the parking lot outside.

“Whose is this?” Edward asked as Paul tossed the suitcase into the back seat of the car.

“Mine.”

“Very nice.”

“Don't be too impressed. They're dirt cheap over here.”

A calm descended on Edward as they drove out of Maastricht and toward the German border. Only an hour's flight from London, and yet he had the sensation of having come home; this part of Europe held a distinctly Canadian flavour. The roads touched him first: excessively wide with gravel shoulders sloping away into shallow ditches. And then there were the fields that stretched out on either side after they'd passed into Germany—the only indication of the border now a subtle blue EU signpost. The crops of sugar beet, their stalks shifting in the breeze, were not hidden behind the
tall privet hedges or stone walls of the English countryside, but openly displayed—a sea of deep green to bathe the eye. And as they reached Geilenkerchen and made their way along the sleepy residential streets to Friedlichstrasse, the cul-de-sac where Paul lived, Edward felt as if he were in the suburbia of his childhood. Large single-dwelling homes with proper paved driveways and closely trimmed weedless lawns, flower beds rather than planters, and cement walks leading to front doors with steps and screens. It made the cramped flats and narrow car-crowded streets of Kennington seem unnatural. In the parked Mercedes, looking at the scene around him, he imagined the past three years of his life in London fading away into nothing.

“Where's Sheila?” Edward asked after removing his shoes in the front hall.

“Home. Flew back a few days ago to visit her mother. Didn't I tell you?”

Paul hadn't told him, and Edward was sorry to hear that his sister-in-law was away. He'd hoped to have both of them there. He wanted to talk and had been counting on Sheila's level-headed perspective.

After he'd settled himself away in the guest room, and taken a quick walk through the house—which he found slightly cold now, even in the intense July heat—he found Paul reclining in a chaise longue on the concrete patio in the backyard. He accepted the cold can of Labatt's Blue out of nostalgia rather than thirst. The first crisp sip chased away the chill from indoors, and sitting down in a lawn chair opposite his brother, he was overcome by an intense feeling of familiarity.

“I've arranged a little get-together,” Paul said, raising his can to Edward. “In your honour. What do you think of that?” “Sounds great,” Edward replied, hiding his disappointment.

People started arriving before they'd finished their first drink. They were fellow airmen, Québécois mostly. They came with their wives, some brought along their children and all brought cartons of Canadian beer and steaks and hamburgers picked up that day from the CANEX on the NATO base.