The Art of Waiting (17 page)

He tripped the bow across the strings, sat down in front of his audience – Katerina and the cat and a shelf of pickled vegetables – and he closed his eyes as he played. He was still playing that evening as Katerina danced on the beach for him, and she imagined that his face was just one of many and that his solitary violin was a whole orchestra lifting her skywards, and she felt again the ecstasy of momentary flight, and she imagined her dress trailing behind her like the pale tail of a comet on a dark and starry night.

Aldo stood in his usual place by the wire as early-evening thunderheads swept dusk in from the east. Lightning flickered across the horizon and the steppe grass whispered in the gathering breeze. Then the wind lifted its voice and the first drops of rain came down, spitting up the dust at his feet. Thunderclaps rolled overhead and a sudden curtain of water washed away the horizon, smudging the
edge of the forest into a blur. Aldo stood in the downpour and looked around him as the other prisoners hurried away to the refuge of the bunkers. No fucking imagination, he thought. A drop or two of rain and off they run, back into the mess of their bunkers when it's so beautiful out here, out here alone in the air, fresh and clean, almost like being a free man again. Then he looked towards the guards huddled beneath their capes in the watchtowers. His eyes fell upon the main gate, left inexplicably open in the storm. Could the guard really have done that for him, another unexpected kindness, risking his own life in doing so? Well, whatever, freedom was just yards away. A short walk to the gate, a dash through the long wet grass, then into the trees. Then he would run so fast not even the dogs could catch him. Freedom, unexpected and beautiful! He must grasp it now, or he would die here, he knew that now more clearly than he had ever known anything. He willed his feet to move, wrenched one of them out of the muddying earth, took a step, looking up at the guards, huddled still beneath their capes, then another step. He paused and looked around, then forward again, slowly, steadily, deliberately, not quite sure if it could really be true. And then he reached the open gate. He turned and looked back and saw a stooping figure in the place where he had been, its face towards the eastern horizon, and he turned his back on the figure, turned his back on the wire, and he ran as fast as he could from the camp, lunging forward with his arms, desperately reaching out for the trees. Then the green canopy was suddenly above him, the rain slapping down on young leaves, and he crashed into the depths of the forest, listening out for the barking of dogs, but the barking never came and he ran until he could run no further and he lay down in the sopping grass and wept himself to sleep. He woke in daylight. The storm had blown over and morning slumbered under a thin mist. The sweet smell of damp earth overwhelmed him. Running water tickled his ears with its gentle rhythm. He opened his eyes and saw a stream inches in front of him.

‘You're awake,' said a voice.

He was unsure if it was a question or an affirmation.

‘You're awake. Come with me. You can't stay here. They might be looking for you.'

He looked up and saw Katerina sitting on the ground in front of him.

She stood up. ‘Come on. We really have to go.'

Aldo stood up and followed her deeper into the forest. He paused often to rest but she chided him, urged him to walk faster. Then she took his hand and led him down to the shore of a lake. They reached a beach, hidden by rocks, and he lay down in the long grass by the shore.

‘Stay here,' she said. ‘I'll be back soon. No one will find you here.'

Aldo looked out across the water and he watched as she clambered over the rocks. He removed his coat and walked down to the edge of the lake. He got down on all fours and thrust his head into the cool water and then he stretched out in the grass and let the sun dry the water from his face. Then he fell asleep and dreamed that a wave had engulfed him, washing him clean. He woke with a start. Katerina had returned with Viktor and they helped Aldo over the rocks and down the hidden path to the house.

‘You have to sleep,' said Viktor. ‘But first you must wash and eat. A guest must not sleep on an empty stomach. Especially if he has fleas.'

He plucked one of the creatures from Aldo's hair and flicked it away.

‘I'll get you some soap and some clothes,' said Katerina and when she came back she showed him a place behind the rocks at the far end of the beach where he could wash. She passed him a jar of treacly liquid that smelt of the forest.

‘Here, look. First use this on your head. It'll get rid of those beasts you've got living on you.' Then she gave him some soap. ‘And use this for the rest.'

Aldo took the soap and Katerina left him to wash. He removed his heavy coat, still thick with the mud and the grime of winter misery, then the shirt beneath, a rotten mess of rags that fell apart in his hands. He reached down to his boots and tried to remove them but his feet were swollen and the skin was stuck to the inside,
so he sat on a rock and contemplated what to do about it, but his mind kept wandering and eventually he lay down on the rock and fell asleep. After a while Viktor came to find him.

‘Haven't you finished yet?'

No answer, so Viktor climbed across and shook Aldo awake. ‘Come on, you can sleep soon enough, but you have to get yourself tidied up a bit first.'

‘But my feet are stuck,' Aldo said. ‘I can't get them out.'

‘Nonsense. Wait there.'

Viktor came back with a knife but Aldo was asleep again so Viktor set to work with the blade, sliding it inside each boot in turn and sawing away at the rotten leather.

‘Soak your feet for a few minutes first, let the skin soften up a bit. Then you can take those things off. And when you've finished, leave everything here – I'll burn it later. No point in infesting the house with your fleas.'

His feet, when free of their boots, were red and raw and blood ran from them in steady little streams into the lake. He removed what remained of his clothes and for the first time in months looked at his naked body. He did not recognise himself. He was ruined. He had always been pale but his skin now was silver-grey, translucent, just like the dead fish he used to pick up at the Rialto market for the lunchtime menu at Casa Luca. His veins were twisted blue rivers, his whole body covered in scabs, and sores marked the spots where parasites had fed on his flesh all through the winter. He rubbed his arm, looked at the tattoo of the wild pig, the first time in months he had seen it in full sunlight. It had lost none of its strength, as stark and ugly as ever, if anything stronger and fiercer after its hibernation, shocking to look at after so long without it, and as he looked at it, the pig allowed him to imagine a day when a little strength might return to him too.

When he had finished washing, he put on the clothes and the boots that Viktor had left for him and he walked up to the house. He sat at the table and consumed everything they put in front of him, his stomach protesting at the unaccustomed load. As he ate,
he saw the violins on the sideboard. He attempted a smile but all he could manage was an odd contorted grimace that caused the soup to dribble from the side of his mouth, though his eyes were smiling as Katerina wiped the soup away with her sleeve. They put him in the bed in the back room and he slept. He did not wake for two days, and when he did, he looked out of the window, instinctively searching for the horizon, but instead he saw the rise and fall of the hills and the waves on the lake. He turned to where Katerina sat in a chair by the door and he looked again into her eyes. There was a gentle silence between them. Aldo raised his head from the sack of clothes that served as a pillow. He looked around at the bare wooden walls, then back at Katerina.

‘You're an angel,' he said.

She smiled and looked at him, that Jesus look, the one you find on statues, the one you get in books. Then a cobweb in the corner caught his eye and Aldo closed his eyes and sleep slipped its web around him once more. When he woke he heard Katerina's voice from somewhere outside. He sat up and looked through the window and saw her, so he walked out of the house and down to the shore of the lake. Katerina and Viktor were tying tiny barbed hooks to gossamer lines that Viktor would trail later for trout over the side of his boat. Aldo squinted as the sun ignited the lake with sparks and splinters, Viktor and Katerina mere silhouettes now, sunlight brilliant on the waves behind them. Aldo turned away. So they're just another illusion, he thought. Another bloody trick of the light, something he never should have believed in. He closed his eyes and saw again the wire of the prison camp and the forest beyond, the glassy-eyed prisoners and the mud that stretched away into the trees, and he turned to walk back to the bunker, but when he looked up it was no longer there and in its place was the house at the base of the hill and when he turned around again the two figures still sat by the lakeside tying hooks to their lines. He sat beside them, saw their faces looking into his own, and he willed them to reel him in. He stretched out his skeletal hand and touched Katerina's shoulder. He felt her skin and the flesh beneath, her body warm and soft and
luxuriant, softer than Isabella's somehow. Then he spoke in a sudden jumble of quiet and unspecific words.

‘What's up with you?' said Viktor. ‘Haven't you seen a woman before?'

Aldo withdrew his hand.

‘I'm sorry. I just wasn't sure,' said Aldo. ‘I wanted to be sure.'

‘Where are you from, anyway?' said Viktor. ‘German, are you?'

‘He's not German,' said Katerina. ‘Does he look like a German?'

‘I don't know what he looks like. Romanian, then? Well, he's not Russian, is he? The way he speaks, that accent.'

‘What's your name?' said Katerina.

‘Aldo.'

‘Where are you from, Aldo, dear?' she asked.

‘Venice.'

‘Never heard of it,' said Viktor.

‘It's in Italy, Viktor. Don't you know anything?' said Katerina. ‘Are you still hungry, Aldo?'

He nodded.

‘Well, we'll cook you another fish supper later,' said Viktor. ‘I bet you'd like that, wouldn't you?'

Aldo nodded.

‘I'd better go and catch us some fish, then.'

‘Remember to get one for Koshka,' Katerina called out as Viktor pushed off in the boat with his baited lines, the oars slapping down the waves.

‘Koshka?' said Aldo.

‘Viktor's cat.'

‘Oh, yes. She was sleeping on the bed next to me when I woke.'

‘Cats cure people,' she said. ‘They know.'

‘Do they?'

She looked at him. He was watching Viktor as he rowed off into the lake.

‘Do you remember my name?' she asked. ‘From the other day?'

‘Of course. Katerina.'

She liked the way he said it, like it meant something to him already.

‘It's a lovely name,' he said. ‘The same as my grandmother's.'

‘Is she from Venice too? Your grandmother?'

‘No, from Ukraine. But she's lived so long in Italy she's almost more Italian than I am. My grandfather's ship stopped off at Odessa and she was selling lace and he bought a tablecloth and went back a year later and she was still there.'

‘So he bought another?'

‘Exactly. How did you guess?'

‘And they fell in love . . .'

‘Yes, I suppose.'

‘They're very lucky,' she said. ‘To be the owners of such a beautiful story.'

‘The owners? Doesn't the story own them?'

‘No, Aldo. I don't believe in fate. You make your own luck. Your life is your own, it is what you make of it.'

‘I've seen things over the last few months that would make you think otherwise.'

‘Hey, Aldo,' she said brightly. ‘How about a swim? I'll show you a beautiful spot out by the island there, where the water drops down deeper than those hills. You swim and look down and the water's so clear it feels like you're flying.'

‘I'm not sure I'm ready for that.'

‘Of course you are. The water will do you good.'

Aldo felt Katerina's hand in his and they stepped into the water together and the lakebed fell away beneath their feet. Katerina swam a couple of strokes ahead of him and then she dipped below the surface, the water rippling and flattening where she had submerged, and then he too slipped beneath the water and as he did so he was almost smiling.