The Art of Waiting (19 page)

Katerina and Oleg sat by the River Neva, opposite the Fortress of Peter and Paul. Oleg's eyes were blank and cold as he recalled the day in October '42 when he emerged at first light from the train in the marshalling yard next to the burning banks of the Volga and saw for the first time the panorama of Stalingrad spread out in front of him, fear draining his face white as he gazed at the flames on the far side of the river. He dashed through the mud and the din in the scramble for the boats, the NKVD guns at his back in case he should turn and question the wisdom of crossing the water to the hell that awaited him. Under the screaming dives of the Stukas he boarded a barge as the Volga burned bright with oil from sunken boats and men leapt overboard in fright and were shot by the commissars.

‘I was drenched in the blood of others. The Stukas kept turning and diving, again and again, and I saw my best friend ripped apart by a shell, standing right next to me, and when the boat reached the far bank I was somehow still alive and he was dead, and the last I saw of him was a mess beneath a blanket on the riverbank. And that was how his story ended, Katerina. At the end of that day I was alive and he was dead, and I'm still alive and he's still dead, and that's all there is to it. They herded us inland, among the rubble and the brick and buildings that looked like they were melting. The next night I found myself near the tractor plant and at dusk starving dogs came creeping out of the buildings, down to the riverbank, wanting to get across the river, I suppose, or drown in the attempt. I remember thinking that those dogs were a hundred times luckier than me because the dogs had a choice and I didn't. What chance did we have, flesh and bone among all that fire and stone and metal? And then it happened and they put me on a boat back across the Volga and all I remember
is the motion of the waves and a dog licking the blood from my face. And then I was just one of hundreds in a field hospital. I tried to stand, to get out of bed, but my legs wouldn't move. The doctors told me I was lucky to be alive, and I wondered for a long time exactly what they meant, and I still don't really know. And now we're both back here again, looking at this bloody river. Do you remember, Katerina, when we were children, how we used to come down here and tell each other all the things we were going to do with our lives?'

‘Yes, Oleg. And we've done a lot of them.'

‘Yes, we
did
a lot of them. We
did
. But what are we talking about now? The past, the things that went wrong, the things that now we'll never do.'

‘We have to keep looking forward.'

‘Easy for you to say.'

‘There's always a future.'

‘No, Katerina. There is not always a future.'

‘Come on, Oleg. You're depressing me.'

‘Oh, poor dear! I'm depressing you, am I?'

‘Fuck you, Oleg. Fuck you!'

Katerina screwed her hands up into fists and punched the top of his legs repeatedly.

‘There's no point in hitting me there. You know I can't feel a thing.'

She put her arms around him and rested her forehead on his shoulder and wished he could grip her around the waist and lift her high as he had done so many times in the past on a stage, but instead she felt the arm of the wheelchair where it dug her in the ribs and the bony shoulder that had replaced the muscle, and the hard little pebbles that dug into her knees as she knelt.

‘So what does this bright future hold for you, Katerina?' Oleg finally said.

‘The same as it always did.'

‘And what if they won't take you back?'

‘But they will. Of course they will. I was one of the bright young things, remember?'

‘I hope it works out for you, Katerina. I really do.' His voice tailed away and they watched the river turn a limpid blue in the evening light.

‘You know, I fell in the river over there once, by the fort,' she said. ‘Did I ever tell you that story?'

‘You and your river stories . . .'

‘I was about seven or eight and it was winter and there was ice floating around all over the place, and I just sort of fell in.'

‘You just sort of fell in?'

‘Yes, I just leant over and let myself go. It wasn't like I really wanted to do it, I guess, I just didn't bother stopping. And once I was in the water I went through the motions – you know, struggling a bit, trying to swim – but then I let the river take me, let myself go. And I was really going and I wasn't coming back. And then for some reason, when I was almost gone, I started to fight, and I only just got my head above the surface and I screamed and I screamed and I was going under again, swallowing down water and about to give up, when this big fisherman reached down and pulled me out of the water and dumped me on the quay. He took me to a building over there and they sat me in front of a fire and when I turned to look for him he had gone. He hadn't even waited for me to thank him. He just went back to where he'd left his gear and his fish, as if he'd done nothing.'

‘And why are you telling me this now?'

‘Because you're the one who's drowning now, and I can see you don't really want to swim. But I won't let you do it. I'll keep picking you out of the water and putting you on the quay until you finally get up and walk away from the river. But you have to help me do it. You have to start to struggle and fight or you'll go under and you'll sink out of reach and I won't be able to lift you out no matter how much I want to.'

‘And would you be happy if I didn't thank you for saving me? Like you didn't thank the fisherman?'

‘I did thank him, in the end. I stole a reel for him from the Mushroom Woman's shop.'

‘The Mushroom Woman!' Oleg laughed. ‘Wasn't she strange! Her house took a direct hit last year, you know. They never found her. Must have turned to vapour in the blast.'

‘Poor Mushroom Woman,' said Katerina. ‘I never really liked her anyway.'

Two years later, Oleg wheeled himself along the riverbank. He found the spot that he had been looking for, and he leant back in his chair and looked at the stars. He closed his eyes and thought of Katerina, of the night's performance, his pride at having finally seen his best friend on stage in a major production, the thrill of her achievement and his continuing crushing despair at his own fate. He had seen her briefly afterwards, congratulated her sincerely, shared her quiet delight, and had then attempted to take his leave.

‘Stay, Oleg,' she had said. ‘We can go to the coffee-house later. I'll be out of here in a few minutes.'

‘No, really, Katerina, I'm tired. I'll see you tomorrow.'

‘No, no, wait, I'll get you a drink. Stay there a minute.'

But she had been distracted by well-wishers and when she returned he had gone. He wheeled his way through the streets, lingering over each personal landmark with a fondness that almost broke his resolve, but each time his memories sliced him both ways with their double-edged sword, and so he pushed on until he came to the spot with the steep bank and the sudden unprotected drop where the handrail ended. He sat there beneath a warm black starry sky and he focused on one distant star and imagined it was a tiny hole in the fabric of the universe through which the clean bright light of another dimension strove to illuminate the world. He knew the time had come for him to seek out the source of that light. So he released the brake of his wheelchair, removed the walls of his prison, the wheels beneath him slowly turning, their motion like the liberating revolution of a key in a door that has never been opened, and he moved forward down the slope, gathering speed, and then the chair tipped over the
lip of the bank and he felt again, for the last time, the joy of momentary flight that had ruled over him since he was ten years old, and his eyes were still somehow fixed on the bright distant star as he entered the water, and then the dark blanket of the river blocked out the sky and he held tight to the heavy chair as he floated down into the depths, gripping its cold wet metal in the dark, and he was carried away by the current, and the deeper he went so the nearer he was to the star in the sky, the hole in the universe, the light, the door.

PART FOUR

Italy

Homecoming

Milan, July 1950

Aldo passed his ticket to the inspector. The inspector looked him up and down, looked back at the ticket and frowned. ‘Where did you get on?'

‘Brescia.'

‘Brescia?'

‘Eight years ago.'

The inspector shrugged, clipped the ticket and handed it back. He moved off down the carriage, muttering to himself.

Fucking inspectors, Aldo thought, and he turned again to look through the window at the plains of northern Italy, the land dotted with small farms set among clusters of poplar and oak. Fat pigs rooted about in their pens beneath the trees, feeding on the acorns the farmers had left for them, while the pig on Aldo's arm, grown wild and hungry and impatient during long years on the steppe, raged beneath his sleeve, causing him to clench and unclench his fists in a manner that made the old lady opposite shift uneasily in her seat, as if she were contemplating moving to a different carriage. Five years in the gulag had cut Aldo off from the norms of civilian life. He closed his eyes and thought of the places he had been, the sights he had seen, the strange mental landscapes he had endured in the eight years since he caught a boat away from Venice and a train to Brescia. Through all those days, weeks, months and years of waiting, he had longed for the moment that was now approaching, the moment of homecoming, a reunion with the people and the places, the sights and smells and sounds that he had kept tucked away in his heart, but now the moment was arriving with undue haste and he felt
desperately unprepared. And he felt another kind of longing now: for the wilderness he had left behind, for the person he had become in the intervening years, a person no longer comfortable in this benign environment, a person perhaps only fit for the life of a beast. And so, as the Italian countryside reached out to hold its long-lost son to its abundant breast, he shrank back and longed to be anywhere other than this land of apparent calm and serenity and beauty grown fat on endless spring and summer. The feeling had crept up on him gradually during the long journey home. The further the train crawled west across the steppe, the more the longing and the loss inverted themselves, the more the Russian emptiness seemed like home, and the greater became his anxiety at what he might find when he got back to Italy. His stomach bumped along sick and empty as the train steamed on and Russia slipped away, the last of its birch trees sinking out of sight beneath the horizon, like the masts of a stricken ship sinking out of sight beneath the waves. And Aldo sank ever deeper into doubt as the train rolled on, and then there was a spell in a camp before he could be released for repatriation. Finally he boarded another train and crossed into Italy and got off as instructed in Milan. He followed the directions he'd been given and pitched up outside an office door at the allotted time, nine o'clock sharp. He waited an hour before someone turned up. He followed the man inside and sat beside the desk as the man busied himself with the necessary paperwork. Then he took an envelope from the desk drawer and carefully counted out the notes.

‘Here you go. Fifty thousand lire. You'll need it for lodging and sustenance, a new suit and shoes, perhaps, and your ticket home. When it's gone, you're on your own – sort things out as best you can. Sign here, and
arrivederci
.'

Aldo signed, took the money, and left. Fifty thousand lire! He'd never seen so much money. He went to the station, bought his ticket for Venice, and went to wait on the platform. He looked around him. How different it all seemed to that day in Brescia with the flags and the crowds with their tangible sense of adventure and his own tangible sense of dread. Well, he'd certainly been right about that.
But now he was back, just him and his suitcase, alone on the platform. He watched as a group of pigeons scrapped over something on the ground. Then he heard footsteps and voices behind him. He heard a heavy bag thumping down onto the platform, then laughter. He turned to look at the group of young men in sunglasses who stood by the far wall. He noted their frivolity, the backslapping and the horseplay, and suddenly he felt crushed and old. They must be, he thought, only a few years his junior, but those few years had made all the difference. They had grown up just too late to be called up and he looked upon them now as a completely different generation, almost another species. Who was left now among those who might understand what it was to be twenty-seven years old and already broken on the wheels of life? Gianni lay cannibalised in the Russian soil outside the prison camp, the sergeant decomposed in the mud of the steppe, Luigi had wandered off blind among the tanks in the night, and Pietro Lombardo probably still believed he was a postman in Umbria. And Katerina? What of Katerina, his unexpected angel? She had been swept away from him by the same tides that washed him up on the lost island of the gulag. Aldo took out the photograph that she had given him, that he had kept wrapped in a cloth in his breast pocket throughout the intervening years. He held it delicately in his long thin fingers and looked at the face that smiled out at him now from the hall of the ballet school, the face that had smiled at him in the photo throughout his time in the gulag, the face that was now slowly cracking and flaking as the fabric of the paper gave way to time, a process of decay accelerated by the kiss he placed on the photo at the start and the end of every day. He thought of the night at the house by the lake when he had drawn Katerina the map of his hometown, had scrawled his address at the end of an arrow, and their toast to the hope of meeting in Venice one day, and he almost allowed himself to believe the one thing he had not allowed himself in all the time since he had last seen her, that when he arrived home on Fondamenta della Sensa there would be a bundle of Katerina's letters, that his mother would have kept them bound by a pale pink ribbon in a safe place for when he returned. But now he looked
again at the railway tracks, two parallel lines running side by side into infinity, and his hope was crushed before it had even been formed, and so he unbuttoned his cuff and rolled up his sleeve and looked into the eyes of his demon pig, his only eternal companion, and he saw that its eyes were still undimmed by time, still blazing, stronger than ever, and he smiled and stroked its face, pinched the skin hard until he winced with pain.

Oh pig, my faithful pig. The only one who has stood by me all these years, the only one. Where would I be without you, if you hadn't carried me all these years, if you hadn't stood strong for me, hadn't spoken to me every night in the moments before I slept, hadn't understood me, hadn't promised me that if I only waited long enough you would bring me home and it would all be worth the wait? What big ears you have, pig, all the better to hear me with. And what big, bright, burning eyes, all the better to see me through the long dark night. And soon we'll meet again for real, dear pig, in the flesh, and we'll see who's stronger then. I'll make you admit it, you'll see, all that you did wrong. You thought I'd gone away forever, didn't you, that I was out of your life for good, but I'm coming back now, pig, you've brought me back, you've helped me more than you can know, and now you're going to get what's coming to you.

He rolled down the sleeve again and tears would have run down his cheeks but the pig was a thirsty companion and had drunk him dry years before, and so he simply sat and blinked and wrinkled his nose and looked again at the tracks. Then there was an announcement over the tannoy. His train would be delayed. He had three more hours to kill. He stood around for a while, purely out of habit, unaccustomed to the freedom he now had, only vaguely aware that he was free to leave the station and go for a walk around the town, to stop for a coffee somewhere, maybe even strike up a conversation with someone in a bar, buy a newspaper and read about the triumphs and troubles of others. So he stood there for an hour, walked up and down the platform several times, and then finally stepped out into the street. The town was busy and he drew back from the cars and buses and the people that criss-crossed the streets and pavements.
He passed through the market, the fruit and vegetables dazzling him with their waxy brightness. He bought an apple and a peach and ate them as he walked, wiping away the juice that dripped from his chin. He stopped to buy a newspaper at a kiosk on a corner near a bar. The bar was dark and noisy, the wooden floor and large old bar top reminiscent of Casa Luca before the war. Aldo went in and rubbed his fingertips lightly across the wood. It was a good heavy wood, probably oak. He opened the paper and looked at the headlines. Most of the news was bad. The barman came over and Aldo ordered a coffee and a sandwich and sat at the end of the bar on a stool. The barman brought them over to him.

‘How much?!' Aldo said, when he saw the bill.

‘That's the going rate these days. You did ask for ham
and
cheese. Most people have one or the other.'

Aldo took out his wad of notes and paid him. My God, he thought, fifty thousand lire won't go far. He started to fret about money as he ate, flicking through the paper as he did so. He read about the migration from the south to the north, from the country to the cities, about the thousands in search of work and the aid programmes and the government and the problems with the communists.

‘Is it true what they say in the papers?' he asked the barman. ‘About the unemployment and everything?'

‘Sure it's true. Been living under a stone, have you?'

‘I've been away.'

‘Oh, really?'

‘But I'm on my way home now.'

‘Lucky you. Everybody wants to go home. I've got another six hours here before I clock off.'

‘I haven't been home for eight years.'

‘Oh, is that right?'

The barman poured a bag of beans into the coffee grinder and switched it on.

‘I've been in Russia.'

The machine clattered on.

‘In Russia, I said.'

‘Why on earth did you go there?'

‘The war.'

‘But the war finished five years ago,' said the barman, switching off the grinder. ‘You been away all that time? In Russia, you say?'

‘All that time.'

‘But most of you lot came home in '45 or '46. Even the last of the top brass are back now, Battisti and the others. There was something about them in the paper just the other month.'

‘Well, I guess I got lost in the system. I escaped, and when they got me back they sent me to Siberia. Then you just disappear.'

Aldo was suddenly aware of someone at his shoulder. He turned to look. It was a woman, around thirty years old. She was looking at him with a vague sort of longing.

‘Excuse me,' she said. ‘But I couldn't help overhearing. Did you say you were in Russia?'

He nodded.

‘With the Eighth Army? I don't suppose you knew my husband? I haven't heard a single word from him since the start of '43.'

He looked at her, not knowing what to say.

‘I don't think we would have met,
signora
. There were an awful lot of us over there.'

‘Yes, but . . . I just thought, perhaps . . . He was in the Alpini, the Tridentina Division. His name was Marconi. Carlo Marconi.'

‘I'm sorry,
signora
, but I was in the Vicenza Division. We were closer to the Cuneense – the Tridentina were some way along the line from us and then everything went to pot. I'm sure I wouldn't have met him.'

‘Oh,' she said. ‘That's such a shame . . . Um, I also heard you say you've just come home?'

‘That's right.'

‘Perhaps Carlito will come home too, then, one day? Do you think that's possible?'

‘It's definitely not out of the question,
signora.'

‘Thank you, er . . . oh, I'm so sorry, I haven't even asked you your name. I'm Lucia. Lucia Marconi.'

‘Gardini. Aldo Gardini.'

‘Well, Aldo, thank you,' she said, suddenly smiling. Something had lit up in her since they'd been speaking – he could see it in her eyes, and he remembered the feeling well. ‘Thank you, Aldo,' she repeated, ‘for giving me hope.'

‘It's my pleasure,' he said. ‘Consider it a debt repaid.'

She looked confused.

‘It's a long story.'

‘Listen,' she said. ‘Would you mind if I gave you my name and address, just in case something comes to mind? Memories come back sometimes. Or you might hear news of him somehow, you never know. Would you mind that?'

‘No, Lucia. I wouldn't mind that at all.'

She wrote her address on a scrap of paper and she pushed it into Aldo's hand. ‘Thank you, Aldo,' she said again, resting her hand on his shoulder as she did so. Then she walked out of the bar and into the street and Aldo lost sight of her among the cars.

‘She's always in here,' said the barman. ‘Always talking about that bloody husband of hers, as if he'd just gone away yesterday.'

‘Is that so surprising?'

‘He really was a fascist, you know, down to the bone. We're better off without his sort. This country's moved on.'

‘Moved on? What on earth do you mean by that?'

‘If you want to get on, get in with the communists.'

‘The communists? I've had enough of them to last me a lifetime. And I know more about them than you could ever imagine – they tried drilling it into me for years.'

‘And it still didn't stick?'

‘In one ear, out the other. Just as it should be.'

‘See, I knew you were a fascist. But the communists get things done. Half the partisans were communists, you know, organised by the Russians behind the scenes. They know how to run things properly, a proper society, where everyone has their place.'

‘The Russians couldn't even run a prison camp properly, so how could they run a society?'

‘Get the system right and everything follows.'

‘Fuck the system. What about the individual? It's the individual that suffers, mate, whatever system you care to choose.'