The Art of Waiting (2 page)

PART ONE

Russia

Katerina

Leningrad, winter 1928

The little girl thrust her head up through the surface of the river and gulped at the freezing air. She opened her throat and let out a roar of extraordinary rage and volume as the water rushed into her mouth and her head dipped below the surface again. For a moment it looked as though she was giving up the fight, sinking down into the darkness of the River Neva, but then she beat her legs frantically once more and thrashed her arms and fists and pulled herself towards the surface. Her head emerged again into the fading afternoon light, the icy wind snatching at her skin, and she gasped, a spluttering, coughing, spraying exhalation. And then a strong hand took hold of her wrist with a certainty that sent death slinking back beneath the waves, back into its hole among the dark, inert and rusting things that littered the riverbed. The fisherman hauled the girl out of the water and deposited her on the quayside. The wet bundle sat and stared back at him in shock.

‘What the hell are you doing falling into the water on a day like this? Or any day, for that matter? And you shouldn't be out and about on your own anyway, a little thing like you. Does your mother even know where you are?'

His tone was harsh and reproachful, and as she listened to his scolding, her wide eyes blinked slowly and dissolved into tears.

‘Come on, you can't sit there like that. You'll freeze to death in no time. But don't think I'm going to carry you, all soaking wet like that.'

He picked her up, placed her on her feet, and hurried her along to the nearest building – a museum – chiding her as they went, his stride lengthening as he spoke. Her little steps quickened to keep
up and she felt a warmth edging through her and her shivers became less violent in the dusk.

‘I bet you, when I get back, someone will have taken all my fishing gear,' he said.

‘Do you really think so?' she whispered, feeling guilty now for the trouble she was putting him to.

‘Yes, I do. I honestly think so! You come along bothering me for fish every day, and then you go and fall in the river and now I . . . I don't know.'

‘I'm sorry,' she said.

‘And there's no point in you coming and asking me for fish any more, is there? Because I'm not going to have any, am I?'

‘No?'

‘No, not if someone goes and steals all my stuff! And they'll take the fish I caught too! They're probably half-way home with them now, all pleased with themselves, wondering if they're going to cook them nice and simple with a few potatoes and maybe a little dill and a nice bit of butter sauce, some onions . . . damn it. Or maybe they'll fry them up and have them with blinys.'

‘I like blinys,' she said.

‘Oh, really? Honestly, I've been there all day in the freezing cold and now I've got no food for this evening.'

He looked down at the girl. Her big eyes were watching him as she tripped and hurried along. She stopped and raised a clenched little fist, blotched blue and purple with the cold, and held it out towards him.

‘For you,' she said, as she opened her hand.

A little fish lay in her palm, crushed and broken by her tenacious grip.

‘No, I think that's your fish now,' the man said, smiling at last. ‘You hold onto it.'

She closed her fingers around it once more. They went inside the museum and a clerk took the girl into an office where a fire burned in the grate and they sat her down next to it. The girl took off her wet coat and dried her hair with a towel, then watched the flames through her ragged fringe as someone brought her a mug of hot milk.
When she turned to look for the fisherman he had gone. A little later a woman came and spoke to her as she sipped the milk.

‘Are you all right, my dear?'

The girl nodded.

‘What's your name?'

‘Katerina. Katerina Kuznetsova.'

‘Well, Katerina. I think you've been very lucky today. If that man hadn't seen you, well, you wouldn't be here now, would you?'

‘No. I'd have been with the fishes.'

The woman looked at her sternly. ‘Yes. You'd have been with the fishes.'

Katerina opened her fist again and the woman saw the broken little silver thing in the palm of her hand.

‘Where did you get that from?'

‘The river. It was a present, from that man. But he doesn't have any fish now. Somebody stole them. And his fishing lines. He said he won't have any dinner now.'

‘Don't worry, I'm sure he's got plenty of fishing lines . . . and fish. He was just giving you a telling off.'

‘No. It's true. He hasn't got any fish now. Someone will have wandered off with them.'

‘Who will?'

‘I don't know, he didn't say. Thieves, I guess. Fish thieves.'

‘Fish thieves?' The woman smiled at the thought.

‘It's not funny, you know.'

‘Well, don't worry, he'll catch some more fish tomorrow, I'm sure of that. Here, let me get rid of that smelly little thing for you.'

‘No.' The firmness of the girl's voice took the woman aback. ‘No,' she repeated, then added, ‘It's a roach. They eat worms!'

The woman's expression hinted at a sudden waning of sympathy for the spiky little creature sitting in front of her. ‘I think you're dry now. Where do you live, Katerina?'

‘Not far from here. I can walk.'

‘You shouldn't really go on your own. It's getting dark. Do you want me to get someone to walk you home?'

Katerina knew that the woman's tone was less than genuine. She had heard that tone before. ‘No, thank you. I'll go on my own. I go everywhere on my own.' She stood up. ‘Goodbye,' she said. ‘Thank you for the milk.'

She walked out of the museum, turned towards the river, and went to look for the fisherman. She walked quickly to the spot near the Trinity Bridge where he had been, but the quay was deserted. She wandered along opposite the Fortress of Peter and Paul, towards the arsenal and the zoological gardens, but he was not there either, so she went back and sat at the end of the bridge and looked at the inky water of the River Neva as it swirled around the arches. Across the river, the long walls of the fortress, dusted by an early fall of snow, stretched around the perimeter of the island. The sun had set and Katerina watched as a waning moon crept low across the horizon. In the centre of the island, the body of Peter the Great lay somewhere beneath the long thin spire of the cathedral as it stitched constellations upon the sky with its needle point.

The cold finally forced Katerina up and she crossed the long bridge over the Neva and passed through the summer gardens, the trees now devoid of leaves, the red squirrels busying themselves with the last of their chores before the onset of winter's depths. No one paid any attention to the eight-year-old girl as she hurried up Nevski Prospekt and along the Griboedova Canal. A few minutes later she was in the familiar alley that led towards the small courtyard. The washing still hung from an upstairs window, the sheets stiff with ice. The girl banged on the door.

‘It's me, Katerina! I'm home! Open the door!'

She banged again, then stepped back and looked up at the window, but the room beyond lay in darkness. She knocked again.

‘It's me! I'm home!'

But no one came to the door. She sat on the step and rested her chin on her knees. Her clothes were still damp from the river and she felt the cold rising up through the glazed green tiles of the doorstep and into her bones. A freezing rain began to fall, irregularly at first, then steadily, the heavy drops exploding off the cobbles until the
courtyard was covered in a layer of water that would soon turn to ice. Katerina looked at the fish that still lay in her hand. Its belly had split open and a grey sludge was slipping out. She raised it to her nose and sniffed, and then laid the fish on the step and swished her hand around in the puddle that had collected at her feet. Tiny silver scales swirled in the pool of water, glinting as they slipped into the gutter. Katerina stood up again and walked back down the alley, feeling a peculiar delight at the numbness in her feet, no longer aware of the ground beneath her as she walked.

A couple of streets away, a bell rattled dustily as Katerina pushed open the door of Anna Suvurova's general store. Rumours proliferated among the neighbourhood's children as to what Anna Suvurova kept in the back room of her shop. When the bell rang, she would emerge from the shadows and stand by the till and glower at whoever had disturbed her nefarious activities. Her nicknames were various, but the balance of opinion seemed to favour the most opaque. No one could quite remember why she had come to be known as the Mushroom Woman, but the name was lent thrilling substance by tales of her cultivating poisonous fungi on shelves in the back room for use against her enemies, which in her case meant most of the human race. The absence of mushroom-related deaths in the area somewhat undermined this theory, but it was still enough to terrify the local children.

Katerina looked towards the counter and saw the Mushroom Woman loom out of the darkness. She glared ferociously at the child who had dared to enter her lair unaccompanied. Katerina screwed up her face and glared back with fierce little eyes.

‘What do you want, you little scumbag?' snapped the Mushroom Woman.

Katerina ignored her and ducked up the aisle, moving quickly to the far end of the shop. Out of sight, she looked quickly around the shelves. Where were they? She was sure she had seen them here the previous week, had picked one up and pushed one of the little hooks into the end of her finger to test its sharpness, licked the blood away and put the line back on the shelf. Yes, it was definitely this shelf. The Mushroom Woman had probably moved them up higher, just
to stop her playing with them again. The witch! Now Katerina could hear the woman's footsteps tracing their way round the counter and towards the aisle. She knew that this in itself was a cause for concern, as the Mushroom Woman rarely ventured out from behind the tall worktop that housed the till, a fact which had led to ever more colourful rumours about her not having any feet, or even possessing more of them than she should. A boy from across the river swore that she did in fact have two feet – he had seen them with his very own eyes – but the Lord had put them on backwards as a sign that he had disowned her at birth. Or that she wasn't a Communist. Or something equally dreadful.

Katerina caught sight of one of the fishing lines, a nice one, a bit old and dusty – it had probably been here since before the Great War – but wound round a nice wooden holder and with a float, one of those round painted ones, and a weight and several small hooks. She reached up and grabbed it, then turned her back as the Mushroom Woman appeared at the end of the aisle. She tucked the fishing line up under her sweater, drew her coat around herself, and folded her arms tightly across her chest.

‘What do you want?' hissed the Mushroom Woman.

‘Nothing in particular. I'm just looking, thank you.'

Katerina looked down at the Mushroom Woman's feet, just to make sure.

‘Get out! Get out!'

‘I said I'm just looking. I haven't found what I want yet – I'll tell you when I do.'

The Mushroom Woman lunged at Katerina. The girl skipped backwards, then up another aisle, past the vegetables and dried apples and some sort of yellow fruit she had never seen before. Then she saw a shelf of small white cheeses and slipped one into her pocket, then ducked under the nearest rack of shelves and past the till. The Mushroom Woman was standing by the door.

‘Turn out your pockets, you little wretch. Come on!'

Katerina drew one hand out of a pocket and opened it slowly, mockingly.

‘See? Nothing.'

‘And the other. Come on, show me, or I'll call the police.'

‘They wouldn't come. Even the police are afraid of you! Even Comrade Stalin would be, you . . . you . . . you Mushroom Woman!'

‘What did you say?'

‘Mushroom Woman! Everyone knows your secret.'

‘What on earth are you talking about? Show me what you've got in that pocket.'

Katerina drew her other fist from her pocket and held it up to the woman. ‘Come and see . . .'

The Mushroom Woman edged towards the fist, stooping down until it was inches from her face. Her nose twitched. ‘Open it!'

Katerina opened her fist and pushed the palm of her hand, still smelling of the guts of the dead fish, into the woman's face. Then she dashed past her and the bell clattered as the door slammed shut. She heard the Mushroom Woman howling some way behind as she ran through the narrow streets, her legs no longer numb, her little body lit up by adventure, and soon she was back in the courtyard outside her house where the sheets still hung solid and the water on the cobblestones had formed itself into a sheet of black ice. Katerina looked up at the window. A dim yellow light hung behind the condensation that coated the inside of the pane. Katerina banged on the door and a few seconds later it was thrown open.

‘Come on, come on. In you come,' her mother scolded as she stumbled in. ‘Where in heaven's name have you been all this time? I've been worried sick about you. And who said you could go out? I asked you to get the vegetables ready and put them in the bowl.'

‘I've done the vegetables.'

‘No, you haven't. You did the potatoes, some of the potatoes. I can't do everything, you know. Your dad's out at work all day, and . . .'

‘He's not my dad. My dad's dead.'

Katerina's mother put her arm round her shoulders.

‘Katerina, he
is
your dad now.'

‘He isn't.'

‘But, Katerina, he loves you just the same as the others. He loves you just the same.'

Katerina said nothing.

‘You know that, don't you? He loves you just the same.'

‘No, he doesn't. And I don't love him just the same, and neither should you. He's not my dad and you can't change that, and neither can he.'