Snowdrops (24 page)

"I wanted to ask you, do you know where the old lady is, the one who used to live here? Where is Tatiana Vladimirovna?"

"No," he said. "I don't know. I'm sorry."

He smiled and slowly closed the door.

I went outside and stood beside the pond. I thought I'd try Masha's number one more time, for the last time. This time it rang and rang and rang but didn't cut into the automated out-of-order message. It rang and rang and rang, and then she answered.

"Allo?"--in that impatient, time-is-money way the Russians have.

It didn't sound like Masha, and it took me a few seconds to work it out. It was Katya.

"Allo?"

"Katya?"

She went quiet. A bottle smashed somewhere on the other side of the pond, somewhere near the basking fantasy animals. I guess there must have been some credit left on the SIM card that they didn't want to waste. I guess they reckoned that I and anybody else they'd been trying to lose and didn't want to speak to would have given up dialling that number, and that they could safely switch it back on.

"Katya, it's me, Kolya."

She was quiet again. Then,
"Da
, Kolya."

"How are you?"

"Normal."

"Can I speak to Masha?"

"No, Kolya. It is not possible. Masha has gone away."

"To see Seriozha?" I said, in a voice that didn't sound like me. "Has she gone to see Seriozha?"

"Da, Kolya. To Seriozha."

I hadn't thought it through properly, what I wanted to say, what I wanted to get out of it. I could hear her almost hanging up.

I went back to the beginning. "Why me, Katya? Why did you choose me?"

She paused, I suppose trying to figure out if it could
cost her anything to tell me the truth. She must have decided that there was nothing I could do to them.

"You watch us too long, Kolya. In Metro. We see you are easy. We have other possibilities. But then we see that you are lawyer. This for us was very interesting, very useful. Also foreigner is good. But it could have been another person. We need only someone she may trust."

"So that was all? For Masha, I mean. That was all. Just useful."

"Maybe not all, Kolya. Maybe not. I don't know. Please, Kolya." She still sounded the same, half child, but very tired. "It was business," she said. "Just business."

"Why the money too?" I said. "Why did you take my money?"

"Why not?"

I remember that I wasn't as furious as I wanted to be.

"When I saw you at the Uzbek restaurant--you know, during the winter--why didn't you want me to say anything to Masha?"

"I worry maybe she will be angry. She will think maybe you see everything is not true. For me it is not good when she is angry."

"Are you really cousins, Katya? Tell me. Are you really from Murmansk? Who is Stepan Mikhailovich?"

"This is not important."

There was only one thing left.

"Where is she?" I said. "Where is Tatiana Vladimirovna?"

She hung up.

T
HE AFTERNOON BEFORE
I left Russia, the last day of four and half years that feel like a whole life, I went down to Red Square. I made my way around the Bulvar, past the summer cafe and the beer tents to Pushkin Square. Then I walked down Tverskaya and through the underpass beneath the crazy six-lane highway at the bottom. A small crew of diehard Communists with ragged hammer-and-sickle flags and wild eyebrows were holding a demonstration, trickling in from the direction of the Ferrari showroom and the statue of Marx. There were about three hundred riot police, most of them sitting in the funny rickety buses that they always roll up in, a few outside smoking and tapping their truncheons against their shields. The Lenin impressionist was having his photo taken with a cluster of Chinese businessmen.

I walked up through the gates. In front of me the make-believe domes of St. Basil's soared above the cobbles. Far above the Aztec mausoleum, the giant stars on the Kremlin towers glowed blood-red in the sun. It was high summer, but even then you could sense that the winter was recuperating somewhere across the Moscow River, getting
ready for its comeback. You could feel the cold germinating in the warmth. I stood in the middle of the square, tasting the air and the city, until a policeman came over and moved me on.

You've wanted to know why I haven't talked to you about Russia. It's partly because it seems so long ago and far away, my old life without a seat belt, too hard to explain to anyone else, too private. I guess maybe that's true of all our lives. Nobody can ever live yours except you, whether you live it in Chiswick or Gomorrah, and there is only a limited point in trying to revive it in words. And it's partly that, the way it ended, it seemed best to let it die. I didn't think I could tell you the whole story, until now, so I've just kept quiet.

But it hasn't only been that. Since I'm being honest, or trying to be, since I'm telling you almost everything, I should tell you the other reason, maybe the main reason. It's up to you what you do about it.

Of course, when I think about it there is guilt, there is some guilt. But most of all there is loss. That is what really hurts. I miss the toasts and the snow. I miss the rush of neon on the Bulvar in the middle of the night. I miss Masha. I miss Moscow.