The Road Home (4 page)

Lev repacked his things and went toward the door. The Sikh was still motionless on his hard plastic chair, but then Lev saw that near him was a saucer and that it contained a few coins—just a few, because people here were apparently in too much of a hurry to bother with a tip for an old man with bruised eyes—and Lev felt troubled that he had no coin to put in the saucer. After all the soap he’d used and the amount of water he’d splashed onto the floor, he owed the attendant some small consideration. He stopped and searched in his pockets and found a cheap plastic cigarette lighter he’d bought at the bus depot in Yarbl. He was about to put this in the saucer when he thought, No, this Sikh man has a job and a chair to sit on and I have nothing, which makes every single thing I own too precious to give away to him. Lev’s thinking in relation to the tip he was refusing to give grew more sophisticated when he told himself that the Sikh appeared so unmoved by everything that went on around him that he would therefore certainly be unmoved by a paltry cigarette lighter. And so Lev walked away and out through the turnstile, heading for the sunshine and the street, and he imagined that the Sikh wouldn’t even bother to turn his head to give him a reproachful stare.

Where the buses pulled in and drove out, Lev paused. Long ago—or it seemed long ago to him—when he’d booked his seat on the Trans-Euro bus, the young girl in the travel office had said to him, “On your arrival in London, you may be approached by people with offers of work. If these people come to you, do not sign any contract. Ask them what work they are offering and how much they will pay and what place they will find for you to sleep in. Then you may accept, if the conditions appear right.”

In Lev’s mind, these “people” resembled the policemen of cities like Yarbl and Glic, heavy types with muscled forearms and healthy complexions and handguns slung about their anatomy in clever places. And now Lev began hoping they would appear, to take from him all responsibility for the next few days and hours of his life. He didn’t really care what the “work” was, as long as he had a wage and a routine and a bed to lie in. He was so tired that he felt almost like lying down where he was, in the warm sunshine, and just waiting until someone showed up, but then he thought that he didn’t know how long a day was, a summer day in England, and how soon afternoon and evening would arrive, and he didn’t want to find himself still on the street when it got dark.

People arrived and departed in buses, taxis, and cars, but no one came near Lev. He began to walk, following the sun, very hungry suddenly, but devoid of a plan, even a plan for getting some food. He passed a coffee shop, and the smell of the good coffee was tempting, but though he hesitated on the pavement outside the place, he didn’t dare go in, worrying that he wouldn’t have the right denomination of money for the food and coffee he desired. Again, he thought how Rudi would have mocked this pathetic timidity and gone bounding in and found the right words and the right money to get what he wanted.

The street Lev was in was wide and noisy, with red buses swaying along close to the curb and the stench of traffic spoiling the air. There was no breeze. On a high building he saw flags hanging limp against their poles and a woman with long hair and a gauzy dress standing at the pavement’s edge, silent and still, as if a figure in a painting. Planes kept passing overhead, embroidering the sky with garlands of vapor.

Lev turned left off the crowded boulevard and into a street where trees had been planted, and he stood in the shade of one of these trees and put down his bag, which felt heavy now, and lit a cigarette. He remembered that when he had started to smoke, all those years ago, he had discovered that smoking could mask hunger. And he’d remarked on this to his father, Stefan, and Stefan had replied, “Of course it does. Didn’t you know this till now? And it’s much better to die from the smoke than to die of hunger.”

Lev leaned against the tree. It was a young plane tree. Its patterning of shade on the ground was delicate and precise, as though nature were designing wallpaper. Stefan had “died from the smoke,” or from the years and years of sawdust at the Baryn mill, died at fifty-nine, before Maya was born, long before Marina fell ill or the rumors of closure began to circulate in Baryn. And all he’d said at the end, in his frail voice, like the breaking voice of an adolescent boy, was: “This is a rotten death, Lev. Don’t go this way, if you can help it.”

A sudden spasm of choking assailed Lev. He threw away his cigarette and drank the last dregs of vodka from his flask. Then he sat down on the iron grating that circled the plane tree and closed his eyes. The feel of the tree on his spine was comforting, like a familiar chair, and his head fell sideways and he slept. One hand rested on his bag. The vodka flask lay on his thigh. Above him, a nesting sparrow came and went from the tree.

Lev woke when someone touched his shoulder. He stared blankly at a fleshy face inside a motorcycle helmet and at a bulging belly. He’d been dreaming about a potato field, about being lost in the enormity of the field, among its never-ending troughs and ridges.

“Wake up, sir. Police.”

The policeman’s breath smelled stale, as though he, too, had been traveling without rest for days on end. Lev attempted to reach into his jacket pocket to produce his passport, but a wide hand seized his wrist and now gripped it with fearsome force.

“Steady on! No tricks, thank you kindly. Up you get!”

He pulled Lev roughly to his feet, then pinioned him against the tree, giving his ankle a nudge with his boot to force his legs apart.

The vodka flask clattered to the ground. On the policeman’s hip, his radio made sudden, violent sounds, like the coughing of a dying man.

Lev felt the policeman’s free hand move over his body: arms, torso, hips, groin, legs, ankles. He held himself as still as he could and made no protest. Some faraway part of his brain wondered if he were about to be arrested and sent back home, and then he thought of all those unending miles to be covered and the shame of his arrival in Auror with nothing to show for the pain and disruption he’d caused.

The radio coughed again and Lev felt the iron grip on his arm relax. The policeman faced him square-on, standing so close to him that his fat belly nudged the buckle of Lev’s belt.

“Asylum seeker, are you?”

He uttered these words as though they disgusted him, as though they made him want to bring up some of the food that had soured his breath. And Lev recognized the words. At the travel office in Yarbl, the helpful young woman had said, “Remember, you are legal, economic migrants, not ‘asylum seekers,’ as the British call those who have been dispossessed. Our country is part of the EU now. You have the right to work in England. You must not let yourself be harassed.”

“I am legal,” said Lev.

“See your passport, please, sir.”

Lev’s arms were still held high, against the tree. Slowly, he lowered them and reached into his pocket and produced his passport, and the policeman snatched it away. Lev watched him look from the passport photograph to Lev’s face and back again.

“All militiamen are dumb bastards,” Rudi had once said. “Only stupid people want to fart around with handcuffs and two-way fucking radios.”

“All right,” said the policeman. “Just arrived, then, have you?”

“Yes.”

“Look in your bag, please, sir?”

The policeman squatted down, his belt creaking, the tubular folds of his belly squashing themselves into an uncomfortable-looking huddle. He dragged open the zip of Lev’s cheap canvas bag and removed the contents: the clothes Lev had taken off in the station lavatory, his grimy wash bag, clean T-shirts and sweaters, a pair of new shoes, packs of Russian cigarettes, an alarm clock, two pairs of trousers, photographs of Marina and Maya, a money belt, an English dictionary and his book of fables, two bottles of vodka . . .

Lev waited patiently. Hunger growled in his gut, which he knew was constipated from all the hard-boiled eggs Lydia had pressed on him. He stared at the fragility of his possessions, laid out on the pavement.

At last, the policeman repacked the bag and stood up. “Have an address in London, do you? Place to stay? Hotel? Flat?”

“Bee-and-bee,” said Lev.

“You’ve got a B&B? Where?”

Lev shrugged.

“Where’s your B&B, sir?”

“I dunno,” said Lev. “I find one.”

A growling, urgent voice now came through on the radio. The policeman (whose rank Lev was unable to judge) jammed it to the side of his head and the voice laid a stream of incomprehensible words into his ear. Now Lev could see the police motorbike, flamboyantly striped with fluorescent decals, parked nose-on into the curb, and he thought how Rudi would have been interested in the make and c.c. of the bike, but that he, Lev, was indifferent to it. He waited silently and heard for the first time the bird disturbing the leaves above his head. It felt hot, even in the shade of the tree. Lev had no idea whether it was still morning.

The policeman moved away, talking on his radio. From time to time he looked back at Lev, like the master of a dog without a lead, to make sure he hadn’t wandered away. Then he returned and said, “Right.”

He picked up Lev’s bag and the empty vodka flask and shoved them toward him, together with his passport. He now reminded Lev of a bully at his school called Dmitri, and Lev remembered that Dmitri-the-bully had died in a tram that had overturned in the Yarbl market, and that when he and Rudi had heard about his death, they’d laughed and stamped around, screaming with joy.

“On your way,” said the policeman. “No sleeping in streets. This is antisocial behavior and liable to a heavy fine. So get yourself sorted. Clean your fucking shoes. Get a haircut, and you may just have a chance.”

Lev remained where he was. Slowly, he returned his passport to his jacket pocket and watched the policeman heave his bulk onto the heavy bike and maneuver it out into the road. He kicked the engine into clamorous life and rode away, without glancing at Lev, as though Lev no longer had any existence in his mind.

Lev looked at his watch. It said 12.23, but he had no idea whether this was English time or only time in Auror, when the children in Maya’s little school would be sitting on a bench and eating their lunch, which would consist of goat’s milk and bread and pickled cucumber, with, sometimes in summer, wild strawberries from the hills above the village.

Reaching the river, Lev set down his bag and extracted one twenty-pound note from his wallet. He bought two hot dogs and a can of Coca-Cola from a stall, and a hoard of change was put into his hand. He felt proud of this transaction.

He leaned on the embankment wall and looked at London. The food felt rich and burning, the cola seemed to pinch at his teeth. Though the sky was blue, the river remained an opalescent gray-green, and Lev wondered whether this was always true of city rivers—that they were incapable of reflecting the sky because of all the centuries of dark mud beneath. Traveling on the water, going in both directions, were cumbersome tourist boats, with carefree people clustered into seating on the top deck, taking photographs in the sun.

Lev’s eye was held by these people. He envied them their ease and their summer shorts and the way the voices of the tour guides echoed out across the wavelets, naming the buildings in three or four different languages, so that those on the boats would never feel confused or lost. Lev noted, too, that this journey of theirs was finite— upriver a few miles, past the giant white wheel turning slowly on its too-fragile stem, then back to where they’d started from—whereas his own journey in England had barely begun; it was infinite, with no known ending or destination, and yet already, as the moments passed, confusion and worry were sending pains to his head.

At Lev’s back, joggers kept passing, and the scuff and squeak of their sneakers, their rapid breathing, were like a reproach to Lev, who stood without moving, bathing his teeth in cola, devoid of any plan, while these runners had purpose and strength and a tenacious little goal of self-improvement.

Lev finished the cola and lit a cigarette. He was sure his “self” needed improving, too. For a long time now, he’d been moody, melancholy, and short-tempered. Even with Maya. For days on end, he’d sat on Ina’s porch without moving, or lain in an old gray hammock, smoking and staring at the sky. Many times he’d refused to play with his daughter or help her with her reading, left everything to Ina. And this was unfair, he knew. Ina kept the family alive with her jewelry making. She also cooked their meals and cleaned the house and hoed the vegetable patch and fed the animals—while Lev lay and looked at clouds. It was more than unfair; it was lamentable. But at last he’d been able to tell his mother he was going to make amends. By learning English and then by migrating to England, he was going to save them. Two years from now, he would be a man-of-the-world. He would own an expensive watch. He would put Ina and Maya aboard a tourist boat and show them the famous buildings. They would have no need of a tourist guide because he, Lev, would know the names of everything in London by heart . . .

Reproaching himself for his laziness, his thoughtlessness toward Ina, Lev walked in the direction of a riverside stall selling souvenirs and cards. The stall was shaded by the pillars of a tall bridge, and Lev felt suddenly cold as he moved out of the sunlight. He stared at the flags, toys, models, mugs, and linen towels, wondering what to buy for his mother. The stall holder watched him lazily from his corner in the shadows. Lev knew that Ina would like the towels—the linen felt thick and hard-wearing—but the price on them was £5.99, so he moved away.

Slowly, he turned the rack of postcards, and scenes from life in London revolved obediently in front of him. Then he saw the thing he knew he would have to buy: it was a greeting card in the shape of Princess Diana’s head. On her face was her famous heartbreaking smile, and in her blond hair nestled a diamond tiara, and the blue of her eyes was startling and sad.

Buying the Diana card exhausted Lev. As he slouched back into the sunshine, he felt spent, lame, at the end of what he could endure that day. He had to find a bed somewhere and lie down.