Pravda (31 page)

She ordered some inscrutable confection of muesli and he went for the half English, which, after all, was what he was. Conversations of football crises, of such and such a figure in the news getting exactly what he deserved, of so and so needing to get her act together, of problems, rumors, plans, and hopes reached his ears. To Gabriel, the whole experience already felt as though it would be something that they would look back on and remember ... Someday, twenty or so years from now, when visiting one of their children at university perhaps: breakfast at the local college café, newly independent child assuming parents had never dreamed of eating such a thing, mute parental complicity as child talked through the menu as though it were the most recent thing on earth.

Lina reached up to remove a stray eyelash from his cheek and took the opportunity to hastily rearrange his hair more to her liking, a habit that he vehemently disliked.

"Lina. Pack it in."

"What have you been up to, then—apart from throwing yourself at the local pavements?"

He grimaced. They had only talked about her trip so far—her real dad's birthday.

"Larry came up last night," he said. "It was terrible. He's an alcoholic. He's definitely an alcoholic."

She smiled. "What did you do?"

"We went to the pub for a quiet one and then into Camden ... Ended up drinking in some pig-packed shit hole until Christ knows when."

"Fun?"

"At the time."

"Sounds it."

"Actually, it wasn't."

"When did you get in?"

"Two."

"Larry meet anyone?"

"No, he just got a cab home."

"At least none of your friends can stay over when they're drunk at the moment, so you don't have to go through all the rigmarole with the futon."

What she really meant was not all the rigmarole of turning the futon into a bed but the secondary rigmarole of putting a sheet down
—one of her pet insistences. She was the most hygienic woman in the world. She would physically cringe at the thought of a man falling asleep on their furniture without the prophylactic of a clean sheet, duvet, pillowcase. And yet there was never a word of censure about what he was
doing
until two in the morning. He could have turned up three days later without his trousers and said that he had been in Rio judging the Miss Porniverse Pussy-Pumping Pageant and she would have been just as calm. And he loved her for that.

Her coffee (decaffeinated) appeared, his tea hot on its trail with a jug of milk. There was a sudden sizzle of sausages arriving for the workmen on the next table. She spoke over the top of her raised mug. "You should get him a girlfriend. Then you could both go out and do something you actually enjoy."

"What do we enjoy? I've lost track."

"Swimming on the Heath."

"Lins, it's absolutely freezing at this time of year."

"Joke." She eyed his hand, gauging his minor thumb injury as he gingerly removed the teabag.

"He wants
you
to get him a girlfriend."

"Me?" She raised her eyebrows.

"He thinks you know loads of beautiful Swedish women."

"What? From ten years ago?" She affected consideration. "Well, there's Anya—she's thirty-one and about to have a cesarean any day. She's my oldest friend and happily married, but I could ask if she'd like to give it all up for an overweight TV producer."

"No. Forget it. She goes out clubbing. Larry only goes out eating."

Someone swore at a bottle of ketchup that could not be bullied into dispensing its chemical treasure.

"I could have a look at the office. What type does he like?"

He also loved it that Lina wasn't on some phony high horse about womankind; he loved it that she could talk about other girls—minds, bodies, behavior—without all the invidious ancillary crap that so many women had to shovel into such conversations all the time.

"Medieval barmaid type."

"Blond?"

"Yes. Blond, big baby eyes, breasts..."

She wrinkled her nose. "It's such an easy look."

"...comely, honest but saucy, daughter of local miller, weaver, wainwright. You get the idea."

"I'll do a round-robin e-mail."

"You still want me to order your mum music for Christmas?"

"Yes. Thanks for doing that, Gabe. Choose things she would
like,
though. Nothing too weird. Maybe those cello pieces you listen to."

"Nothing too weird."

"I'll give you the money."

Their breakfast danced into view. He was starving. Having poured her milk—she always swamped her cereal, causing Gabriel to think that what she really wanted was muesli-flavored shake—Lina did not start eating but instead began to watch him with mild disapproval (which she never could hide) at the sheer speed with which he was devouring his food.

"Try not to eat so quickly, honey—it's really bad for you."

"I know."

Maybe that was it: the fact that she couldn't hide a single thought that came into her head ... This relentless compulsion for honesty, transparency, as if the epitome of human goodness was merely the willing ability to broadcast every last waking thought, no matter how trivial. Was it actually possible to resent someone for being so honest? What kind of a monster was he becoming? Anyway, why was he attacking her all of a sudden? Her request was perfectly reasonable. Slow down, Gabriel. Slow the fuck down.

"I've got an easy couple of days," he said.

She made a start on her muesli. "What's the next issue again?"

"'Inner Voices.'" He forced himself to stop eating. "I should try to make this one better. I think ... I think I lost it a bit with the last one. I'm already struggling with the whole idea, though—I mean, how can anybody trust their inner voice when inner voices are universally famous for coming and going at random? And when they tell you all kinds of contra—"

"What you should do is take a break from living and thinking on behalf of the rest of the world." There was concern as well as humor in her tone. "Leave it to someone else for a while—the pope or the president or someone."

"People in power
can't
think on behalf of anyone else. They get cut off. That's the problem, Lina. Power may not corrupt every time, but it always isolates." He raised a fist to his chest in a gesture of mock heroism. "That's why everything is up to you and me."

She smiled but shook her head. "We should go on holiday and you should not be allowed to think about anything except pizza toppings and ice cream flavors. Have you thought any more about doing the play?"

"No. I need to call the man in Highgate again."

"You should do it."

Care, consideration, and total, unquestioning support.

"I know."

"I think May is perfect," she said. "And I was working it out on the plane this morning ... If you can start everything at the beginning of your working month, like now—just after an issue is out—then you can probably get loads done from your office and sneak out for rehearsals. Then take your holiday for the next fortnight, while the issue is actually coming out—let your deputy do some work for once—and then put on the play the week after, when you are back at work but when it's easy again. That way you get a six-week run. Have you thought any more about which play you want to put on?"

"Steven Berkoff." He picked up his fork.

"You've gone off the Shakespeare idea?"

"No. Just ... not the first one."

"Shakespeare is not necessarily very commercial anyway." She nodded. "You want something that the audience can get to grips with easily."

Maybe that was it. Something lurking behind that "not very commercial" or that "get to grips with"—that attitude. Which, again, was fair enough.

"And if you have to take a month off unpaid, then you should do that. You know the money is not an issue. I'll support you."

Or maybe
that
was it: maybe the money was an issue—though not in the way Lina thought. He had never borrowed; the house and the holidays were strictly fifty-fifty, his expenses were his own, but she paid more restaurant bills than he did, paid for more tickets, furniture, food. He finished his breakfast as slowly as he could manage.

"You need a new coat," she said.

"I know."

"How come Frank managed to persuade you to go and fetch the permit?"

"It just kind of happened. The buzzer went and he let on as if I was supposed to have organized it all ... and I ... I said I would go. I don't exactly know how it happened."

She laughed lightly. "Well, don't bother becoming friends with him like you did with Bernie. It doesn't seem to help. You don't have
to be friends with everyone in the world. Let's keep Frank at arm's length. I have given him pretty strict instructions, so we'll see ... He's doing the new sink, then he's going to sort out the dishwasher, and I've told him not to fit the new surfaces until he has properly sealed them."

"What time is it?"

"Eight forty-five. I'd better get going. I'm going shopping with Frank at lunchtime for at least two hours. I'll keep an eye out for coats you might like."

Or maybe there was no reason. Maybe there was no reason at all. Maybe he just did not like safe harbors. Maybe he was the sort of idiot who enjoyed throwing away the best things that he had found. Nothing would surprise him these days. They finished their breakfast and he put down money enough to cover their food.

Their lines parted at King's Cross. She continued south. He had to go west. He kissed her and jumped off. He put on his headphones—Martha Argerich playing Bach's Toccata 911. The Hammersmith and City train was first to arrive. He stepped inside, eyed the other madmen a second or two, dropped into his favorite seat at the end of the carriage, and closed his eyes.

Marriage, commitment, clever wife, pretty wife, dependable wife, capable wife, children, one, two, three, love and money coming in, love and money going out, security, the family breakfast table, homework help sessions, holidays, hobbies, barbecues with friends at the weekends, picnics in the summer, occasional reflections on politics, television, exhibitions, mortgage paid off, holiday home, grandparents, contentment ... How had Lina come to represent these things, and why did he alone in all the world think that this wasn't what life was all about? Why did he alone find it so nauseating and depressing and escapist a proposal? What disfigured gene of contrariety was he carrying? Why was he furious with her for noticing that pianist's scruffy shoes? Why was he miserable because she bought him a sweater that matched his socks? And what were these minor, minor things beside his own persistent deception and monumental cruelty, which had now been going on for
ages?
Oh, Ma. All he had to do ... all he had to do was get it together. And there it was ahead of him, the motorway through the mountains, the best of the Western human being's life—laid out, smooth as freshly smeared tarmac in all its satisfying, fulfilling, familial glory, and yet ... And yet here he sat, knuckles white, looking desperately this way and that for another
route, determined to assert the other, eager and willing as a fool for love, chaos, pain, any kind of feeling that would lead him away, off this main road; here he sat, implacably ready to oppose whatever was asserted and to assert whatever was opposed, steadfastly determined to champion the antagonist, the great adversaries, the counterlifers, to ask the same questions again and again despite knowing that they were probably meaningless, despite knowing that such questions were
the wrong questions to ask;
here he sat, searching the rain-smothered crags, hoping for that moment when the sun might slice its brief light between the heavy clouds and show him some other way. Some steep and shining path.

The old pipes must have cracked or backed up somewhere. The stink was foul. And the sound of their squelching made him want to retch. Someone appeared to have laid a makeshift pathway of plastic carrier bags across the rancid courtyard; but, torn and thin, they were of no use at all, and the slime simply engulfed them with every footfall. Henry cursed the hole in his sole. The freeze, when it came, would be welcome here. Hard ground. A filthy gull barked as it circled in the cold gruel of the sky.

They passed into a stairwell opposite—a door banged high up above them, there were drunken shouts and then the sound of two or three coming down. Then they were out in the daylight again, into a second, smaller courtyard beyond. This one was muddy too, but not so bad underfoot, mostly broken cobbles, miniature steppingstones. The smell here, if anything, was worse. Fate seemed to have shackled them together, as if two prison friends escaped Sakhalin and slogged these three years three-legged all the way across Siberia in ever-deepening silence, all but abandoning any hope of severance.

They entered the dimness of the building on the far side, crunched on broken glass, and turned down the dark and crumbling stairs below ground level. They walked along a scarred brick corridor, under a low beam, around a corner, past a bare bulb; stepped over bags of damp cement; went past a second light, around wires that stuck out sharp and bent and crazy from the wall, like the severed tendrils of some grotesque creature whose body was trapped on the other side—wherever that was. They went further into the gloom, a jink right, a correcting jink left, and three final steps as far as the third bulb,
which illuminated a Lenin-red rusty iron door square across the passageway.

Arkady pressed a half-hidden button to one side, then stood in the glare of the bulb. There was no sound from the buzzer itself and no sound from within. Henry leaned against the wall. Neither spoke.

There had been nothing back from Paris. But London—London was good. London was hope. London was their chance. All Henry had to do was hand over the down payment and there would be no turning back. Arkady would be on his way.

Henry prayed. And he didn't care that prayer was as big a joke as communism. He prayed with fervor and dutiful urgency, as if he were thirteen again and trying not to touch himself and come top of the class in Latin and not be punched in the arm by Mark Rolke on the bus. He prayed without a second's counterthought, prayed to God's only son, somehow both fully human and fully divine, somehow born of a virgin, died (definitely died), and somehow resurrected for our sins—he prayed that they would have enough money, that there would be no problem with Arkady's friend of a friend of a friend, that the passport and visa would be ordered and collected safely, that Arkady would go, would not delay or stall, that the Russian would make it unhindered to London, and that his family would treat him kindly.