After Love (2 page)

‘Is there anything wrong, Fyodor Mikhailovich?' I asked the tall dark shadow of the famous writer. Of course there was no reply.

I thought I would finish for the night at the library, pack up and go. But then I put on my glasses, turned on the table lamp and continued to work.

After an hour or two I looked up and saw that Anna was still working too.

It took me a while to learn to use a camera properly. I found it hard to look at the world like a photographer. My ineptitude frustrated me but I kept trying. To click non-stop and wait for the moment to trap itself wasn't an option. I wanted to create the moment itself and that required patience and perseverance.

That's why I decided to take up sketching. I would get up early each day and go into the city to catch it more or less empty. The silence helped me remain focused. I would find a suitable position to sketch a building and begin picking out its dominant shape. Once I had established that I would make a quick drawing. Only then would I set the camera on its tripod for a lengthy exposure. I would take just three or four photos each day, and while the camera was doing its job, I would make more sketches.

This is how I learnt to use the camera to fill in the details the sketches often missed. My pencil outlined the bones; the camera added the flesh.

In the library, Anna and I were often at our favourite tables. On Wednesdays I worked late but on Mondays and Fridays I arrived and left early, around three or four in the afternoon.

At first we didn't take much notice of one another, but soon we started exchanging harmless smiles. There were no expectations, no promises – just an acknowledgment of the other's presence.

One week I changed my library day from Friday to Thursday and after a few weeks noticed that Anna too had started coming in then. It didn't take us long to observe that we had started doing other things together too. If one of us decided to pack up and leave, the other followed. The smiles we exchanged weren't innocent any more, and we both knew that soon we would stop and chat.

‘So you're an architect?' she asked.

It was our third meeting and the second in the library's café. She had seen me immediately, nodded and smiled.

‘You have a new scarf,' I observed.

‘My father's present from Budapest.'

‘It's a beautiful city. The Paris of the East.'

‘So you've been there?'

‘Only for three days. I was stranded there.'

‘How come?'

‘It's a long story. But I love old cities with cobbled streets and arched bridges.'

‘So you're an architect?'

I had been waiting for such a question. It opened a door for me. But perhaps the door had always been open, waiting for someone to walk in. It was mere chance that I accepted the invitation. I don't believe in fate. I am a scientist, trained to be rational, and yet every now and then I find myself wishing for a bird to fly out of my dreams and drop a bright new feather on the windowsill.

‘Not really,' I answered. ‘I design cities.'

‘That must be interesting.'

‘Not as interesting as what you do. You dig up ancient cities, don't you? You're an archaeologist. I can tell from the books on your table.'

‘That's why you slow down when you walk past me. Why don't you stop and invite me to go for a walk? An architect walking with an archaeologist. Sounds romantic.'

‘We did walk once. Don't you remember?'

‘Yes – in the company of Dostoevsky.'

‘He was an archaeologist too.'

‘To me he seems more like a pathologist.'

We talked for a while, until I noticed that my coffee was cold, and went to get a fresh cup. The queue was long and I had to wait and wait. Anna kept on reading, every now and then looking in my direction and smiling. But when I took her glass of orange juice back to the table, I found she had left. There was a note on the table with a phone number: ‘
Prosti
(Sorry), I have to go. Call 322-83-68. Anna.'

I didn't call. Exams kept me busy.

And then I fell ill.

Anna

I was surprised that Aunty Olga hadn't said anything. To hide something from her is next to impossible since she knows me inside out. I can't imagine life without her. I was four when she took me to live with her in Kiev since my busy father didn't have time for me. She taught music in a school and from her I learnt to play the cello. It wasn't her favourite instrument; she wanted me to choose the piano. But as soon as she saw me with it, she realised that I was made for the cello and the cello for me.

Now Papa must have mentioned something to her. He answered the phone and turned to me. ‘A foreigner is asking for you,' he said, smiling. But whoever it was had hung up before I picked up the phone.

Surely it was the young Indian I had met in the library? ‘I don't even know his name,' I thought. Had I been too arrogant merely leaving my number on that piece of paper? Was I testing his patience, his persistence, his resolve?

He must have fallen ill. The flu this year is terrible and foreigners always go down first. I wondered if he had friends who could take care of him in this big alien city.

He was very friendly towards me. Shy but friendly.

‘Who is this foreigner?' Aunty Olga soon asked. ‘They aren't like us,' she added. ‘Too different to live with.' Aunty Olga says she isn't a racist but just believes that we Russians are special, not superior or inferior – just different. I don't even bother any more to say that I don't agree with her. I know she doesn't want me to rush into a new relationship so soon after the messy break-up with Sergei.

‘Sort out the mess with him first,' she said. There is no mess. That relationship is truly dead and buried. Seven years of life together. What a terrible waste! Didn't I work hard to make us happy? In the first few years it was great fun. But we were young, inexperienced and made mistakes.

Then Sergei asked me to come with him on his ship. I agreed. What a trip! I decided there and then that I wouldn't make that mistake again. Like all voyages the life onboard was monotonous, tiresome and boring, especially when we sailed from one site where they collected samples to another.

We tried hard to make the trip bearable by inventing new ways of entertaining ourselves, often at one another's expense. An atmosphere of lecherous indulgence prevailed and only sudden violent conflicts provided some relief. I was amazed that people who were otherwise so respectable and correct, so polite and considerate, would suddenly turn into such monsters. These middle-aged scientists, overweight and alcoholic, tried to outdo one another in seducing the young lab assistants. The girls were bored as well, of course, and some were more predatory than usual. They knew that confined to the ship they had a rare opportunity to catch a
big fish
. They themselves changed hands like batons between the scientists. What disgusted me most was that the men who ravished them so casually didn't refrain from spreading sordid stories of their exploits.

‘How can you live like this?' I asked Sergei. ‘It's my job,' was all he said.

After my return from that awful voyage I asked him to give it up. He flatly refused. I asked him to stop going on expeditions. He refused again. He was a marine biologist and the expeditions were a part of his job.

I know I shouldn't even have asked. I too would have refused if he had asked me to give up my archaeological trips. It wasn't as if they were nice and clean either.

Then after one of his trips to Chukotka, he left me. I had been expecting it to happen because we had a huge row just before the trip. While he was away there had been no phone calls nor letters. Absolute silence.

A week after his return I found him waiting for me one evening at our place, his suitcase packed and ready to move out.

‘Go, if that's what you want,' I told him. ‘Go and never come back. And don't tell me that you're sorry, because you aren't. Nor am I.'

‘Do you want to know why?' he asked.

‘You mean your excuse.'

‘I want children and you don't,' he said, ruthlessly.

What could I say? He was right.

‘Galya wants to have babies,' he slyly continued. ‘As many as we like.'

I finally lost my temper when he told me that he still loved me. I was the first love of his life, he said.

I picked up the vase from the table and threw it at him. He moved his head quickly to one side and the vase hit the wall and fell to the floor. It didn't even break.

He left at once.

Sergei Shumakov was
my
first love. Like all first loves, I suppose, it had to end.
Slava Bogu
(Thank God) we didn't have children.

Vasu

The hospital ward to which I was taken was full so the nurses found a bed for me in the corridor. There were already three others lying there. At around midnight a Czech tourist was brought in. He looked bad and three doctors and two nurses crowded round him. He died the next morning.

I spent that night between sleep and wakefulness. ‘Sister,' I called to the nurse, Valya, ‘tell me if that's the moon outside. Why is it stuck in a corner like something made of papier-mâché?'

‘It's the street light, silly,' she replied, giggling and feeling my forehead for fever. Her hand was cold as the winter moon.

Next day Maria Fyodorovna, the doctor, showed me my X-rays. She pointed at several white splotches on the images and explained that I had flu-related acute pneumonia, and that both my lungs were infected. I was prescribed a heavy dose of antibiotics supplemented by vitamins. She knew that I suffered from bronchial asthma and said she would keep a close watch on me. ‘In three or so weeks you'll be ready to go home.'

Soon I was moved into a ward with six other patients. It was much quieter and yet it took me a few days to get used to the snoring, the farting, the coughing, the sound of piss trickling into a urinal, the creaking beds, the flip-flop of slippers and occasionally someone swearing loudly. Most unsettling of all was the groaning from the bed closest to the window. Factory Director Vasili was dying, his body collapsing bit by bit. His legs were swollen, his lungs infected and his kidneys rapidly failing. Sensing that I was often awake, he would call on me for help. I would pass him the urinal and watch him struggle to release a few drops of urine.

Lonely and unable to sleep, I would pace the corridor most nights. If Valya was on night shift and not busy I would talk to her or sit silently nearby. She found my behaviour touching and started calling me ‘my lonely little mouse'.

‘I don't know what to do with you,' she said. ‘You won't eat anything – which I understand because of the awful food – and you refuse the pills I bring. Plus no one ever comes to see you. Do I have to sing you lullabies?'

I smiled. Finally I said: ‘Just a few stories will do.'

‘What kind of stories?'

‘Any kind. And I'll draw you a picture. A portrait, if you like.'

Most of Valya's stories were about the coalminers of Donetsk, her home town, where her father was a geologist and her mother a surveyor. One night I came across her and one of the other patients having sex in the injection room. I should just have walked away, but for some reason I stood and watched. Valya saw me looking.

Our night-time conversations came to an end.

Sundays were the most tiresome days in the hospital. I wanted them to disappear off the calendar. On weekdays the hustle and bustle of the ward kept everyone occupied. On Sundays everything, including the nurses, went into slow motion. No visits from the doctors, no tests, no examinations. Just the monotony of getting up and after long hours of pointless waiting, going back to bed.

On Sundays, more than ever, I waited for someone to phone or visit me. I envied Vladimir, the patient in the bed next to me. He had a continual stream of visitors. They came in throngs loaded with flowers, supposedly forbidden because of the asthma most of us suffered. His visitors brought packets of chocolates, cakes and biscuits and bottles of wine and vodka. Most of these goodies were given to the nurses, the orderlies and the cleaners, ensuring that Vladimir was treated like a king.