The Art of Waiting (3 page)

‘Come on now, Katerina, take your coat off, it's all wet. Go and change your clothes or you'll catch your death. I'll warm up some soup.'

‘He's not my dad.'

Katerina walked slowly up the stairs and into the bedroom at the top. She took off her damp coat, laid it on the bed that was shared by her half-brother and half-sister, Vladimir and Svetlana, and sat down on her own bed. She pulled the spool of fishing line out from under her jumper and admired the float, its cork whittled to a perfect sphere, a quill thrust through its heart and out the other side. She thought of all the fish the fisherman would catch on the hooks that ran up the line in a string of dull silver, and then she tucked the spool under the mattress. She sat on the spot where the spool lay hidden, to check it was undetectable among the other lumps in the bed. She removed the rest of her damp clothes and replaced them with the first ones she found in her drawer. Then she gathered everything up to take downstairs to dry by the stove. She glanced back at the bed to check again that the fishing line wasn't visible, then stepped lightly onto the landing and went downstairs. Her mother was in the kitchen and she poured the soup into a
ghzel
bowl, the rim chipped but the blue-painted leaves and flowers still perfect on a white background and undimmed by time. Katerina shovelled the pale lumpy liquid into her mouth.

‘What is it?'

‘Don't you like it? It's mystery soup.'

‘That means you don't want to say what's in it. It's not parsnip, is it? I hate parsnips. They're not like real carrots.'

‘No, it's cauliflower.'

Katerina screwed up her face.

‘And onion.'

‘What's for dinner?'

‘I don't know yet. Let's see what your dad brings home.'

‘My stepdad . . .'

She ignored Katerina's comment.

‘My stepdad.'

‘Do you like the soup, then?'

‘It's not bad, I suppose.'

Katerina suddenly jumped up and ran out of the room. Her mother heard the door open and slam shut again. Katerina reappeared. ‘Where's my fish?'

‘What fish?'

‘My fish. I left it on the doorstep earlier.'

‘Oh, that. I put it in the bin.'

‘But I wanted it for dinner.'

‘It was all dirty and battered. You couldn't eat a thing like that.'

‘But you always cook them for me.'

‘Yes, but Katerina, there was nothing left of it.'

‘That doesn't matter.'

Katerina was already ferreting through the bin. She retrieved the little lump of silver from beneath the cauliflower leaves and the skins of the other vegetables, laid it on the table, and resumed her soup.

‘Where did you get the fish from anyway?'

‘From a fisherman, over by the fort.'

‘What on earth were you doing all the way over there? How many times do I have to tell you not to go wandering around on your own? You never know who you might meet. There are some funny people around. Bad people.'

‘He wasn't a bad person. He pulled me out of the river.'

‘He what?'

‘He pulled me out of the river. I fell in the river and he pulled me out and took me to the museum. They gave me some milk and the woman wanted to take the fish away, but I told her not to and
she didn't like me any more after that, so I left. And my clothes were still wet and she pretended they weren't.'

‘Katerina, listen to me. You are never to go to the river on your own again. Do you understand? It's too dangerous.'

‘What do you expect me to do all day, then, when you're out? I can't stay at home all day. It's boring.'

‘I'm not out all day.'

‘You are.'

‘I had to go out – and you weren't here when I came back. I was worried about you.'

‘That's because you were late. I came home and the house was locked and I had to sit in the rain again, so I went to the Mushroom Woman's shop.'

‘The Mushroom Woman?'

‘I don't know her real name. The scary one.'

‘Oh, yes. Anna Suvurova . . .'

‘She's got two feet, you know, just like the rest of us.'

‘Listen, shall I cook that little fish for you?'

Katerina nodded and smiled. Her mother poured a little oil into the base of a heavy black pan and fried the remains of the fish, doing her best to keep it from breaking into pieces. She placed the fish on a saucer and put it in front of Katerina.

‘Do you want some, Mum?'

‘I don't think there's enough for two of us. Wait, don't eat it yet . . . close your eyes. All right, open them.'

A lemon, small, blotched and imperfect, sat on the saucer next to the fish.

‘An orange!'

‘A lemon . . .'

‘Wow, a lemon! Where did you get it?'

‘From the Mushroom Woman's shop.'

‘No!'

‘Here, let me cut a piece of that off for you.' She cut the end off the lemon, and squeezed a few drops onto the fish. ‘There, try it now.'

Katerina lifted the fish and looked into the empty hole where its eye had been.

‘I'm sorry, little fish,' she said, and bit off its head. ‘Delicious. Can I have the rest of the lemon? Please.'

Her mother nodded. ‘So, are you looking forward to starting school next week?'

‘No.'

‘But it'll keep you away from that river.'

Later that evening, Katerina sat on her bed in the darkness and looked at Vladimir and Svetlana as they slept in the bed by the door. She reached under her mattress and felt for the fishing line. She pulled it out and ran her fingers along the wooden rim, feeling the rough edge. Then she picked at the line until she located the hooks, felt their cruel points in the darkness, rubbed her thumb against one of the barbs. She put the spool back under the mattress, placed the lemon next to it and went to sleep. The next morning, Katerina got up early to dress Vladimir and Svetlana while her mother prepared breakfast. Her stepfather left early for the engineering works and her mother then had to take the infants to their grandmother's before going to work at the factory.

‘Why don't you come to your grandma's too?'

‘No, thank you, I'll stay here.'

‘Well, all right. But you know where she is – you can always go later. And no wandering today, Katerina!' she called out from the hall. ‘I might come back at lunchtime to check on you. I've left that book you like on the chair in my room – the one about France.'

The door was pulled shut and her mother's footsteps faded away down the alleyway. Katerina took the spool and the lemon out from under the mattress, tucked the spool up her jumper, and went downstairs. She put on her coat, still a little damp, slipped the lemon into a pocket and left the house. Outside in the courtyard, she saw the boy from the house opposite looking out of the window, his face grey in the weak light that reached down between the tall houses. He looked at Katerina longingly.

‘What are you looking at, stupid?' she said.

He continued to watch her, his passive face, mild and good, now overcome by some sort of ill-defined misery. Katerina remembered the lemon in her pocket.

‘Look,' she said. ‘Look, I've got a lemon.' She waved it at the boy, who stared back, unmoving. ‘I've got a lemon.'

She put the lemon to her mouth and pretended to suck on it. The boy looked back at her from behind the glass, his sallow skin and hollow cheeks expressing the apparent emptiness of his existence. His deep sigh misted the pane, his face became blurred, and then he was gone.

Katerina went straight to Anna Suvurova's shop. ‘Hello! Hello! Mushroom Woman? I'd like a lemon, please.'

She ran out of the shop, squealing with delight as the Mushroom Woman lurched at her from the darkness of the back room. She headed straight for Nevski Prospekt and the Summer Gardens, then across the bridge towards the fort. As she approached the far side of the river she saw the hunched figure by the quayside and her heart lifted. She hurried up to the man. ‘Can I have a fish, please?'

He turned round. ‘Not you again. I thought I told you not to come to the river on your own?'

‘They didn't steal your fishing line, then?' She sounded disappointed.

‘No, they didn't steal my fishing line.'

He looked back at the float as it bobbed in the water and was dragged under by the current.

‘And did they steal your fish?'

‘No. I had them for dinner. Very nice too.'

He didn't look back at her this time. She stood behind him watching the float. Several minutes passed.

‘I think you had a bite there. I saw a fish next to the float.'

‘No, the bait's down in the water, deeper down. So are the fish.'

‘There, look, you had another bite.'

‘It's just the current.'

Katerina stood next to the man for a while longer as he watched his float intently.

‘Those fish thieves,' she said at last, ‘I was hoping they'd stolen your line.'

‘I rescue you from the river and you were hoping they'd stolen my line? Thanks a bunch.'

‘Yes, I wish they'd stolen your line because I got this for you . . . but now it won't mean so much.'

The man turned round. Katerina had removed the spool from under her jumper and was holding it out towards him. ‘For you,' she said.

The man's hard old face melted into a smile and he took the spool in a great swollen paw, red with cold, the skin round the knuckles cracked and raw. He ran his fingers around the rim of the spool, examining the float in great detail. ‘It's very beautiful. Thank you.'

Katerina looked at him seriously. ‘You're very welcome,' she said with studied gravitas, her chest swelling with pride at her achievement. ‘Did you have your fish with blinys yesterday?'

‘No, with potatoes.'

‘Potatoes with butter sauce?'

‘No. Potatoes with potatoes.'

‘Just potatoes? I had fish for dinner yesterday too. With lemon.'

‘Very nice.'

‘I have something else for you.' She plucked the piece of lemon from her pocket. ‘It's to have with your fish.'

The man took the lemon, scratched at the skin with a nail, and sniffed. For a moment he looked like a little boy. ‘I tell you what,' he said. ‘The next fish I catch is yours. A present for a present, all right?'

‘All right.'

‘And then you must promise to go home. Promise now?'

‘Promise.'

A little later the float ducked under the water, the quill rose up again, then slid across the surface and slowly submerged, like the periscope of a departing submarine. The man pulled the line tight and it moved across the surface in irregular jags and pulls as the fish turned with the current and nodded a repeated acceptance of its fate.

‘It's a big one,' he said.

‘Really? How big?'

‘Very big. A whale.'

‘A whale's not a fish.'

‘Very good – a whale is not a fish.'

He swung the fish up onto the quayside and it slapped around on the stones. He struck it across the head with the spanner he carried in his bag for that purpose and it lay still.

‘Here, it's yours. Must be nearly a kilo.'

Katerina took the fish in both hands.

‘It's a perch,' he said. ‘Have you seen one before?'

‘No. Is it good to eat?'

‘Very good, especially fried with a little garlic. Take it home to your mother now. And watch the spines on its back – they're sharp.'

Katerina turned and went. On her way she stopped off at the museum. The woman from the previous day was behind a desk in the entrance hall. Katerina walked in with the fish in her hands. ‘Hello,' she said.

The woman looked up. She regarded Katerina with studied reproach from behind her glasses, then raised a single arched brow. ‘Yes?'

‘Do you like my fish?'

The woman looked back down at her work.

‘I said do you like my fish? It's nearly a kilo.'

‘No, I don't like your fish.'

‘That's because you're an idiot.'

Katerina turned and walked out and across the bridge again, heading towards home. As she turned the corner near her house she saw that the door of Mrs Ilieva's house lay wide open. She paused in the street outside and peered down the hall. A huddle of black shifted around the base of the stairs and then parted as the visitors began to move up towards the first-floor room where Mrs Ilieva's daughter lay in her wedding dress, her eyes closed. Katerina slipped in through the door as more figures in black arrived. She followed them up the stairs to the landing and peered through a gap to where Mrs Ilieva sat by a table in the middle of the room, the place
suspended in a twilight of candles, their flames slowly dying in the small airless space. Mrs Ilieva looked towards the doorway and her son rose from his place beside her and ushered the newcomers in. They stood a respectful distance from the table and bowed their heads in silence. Someone nudged Katerina to the front. She stood clutching her fish in both hands and stared at the coffin. They had adorned it in the red cloth of the young and the dead and had dressed Nadia Ilieva in the bridal clothes she had never been able to wear in life. Her fiancé stood alone in the corner furthest from the door and watched in empathy as the flame of the candle struggled with its own existence. Then the pall-bearers arrived and they lifted the coffin and carried Nadia Ilieva down into the street. She stared through closed eyelids into the grey of the sky as the mourners followed her to the cemetery, passing between the headstones that lay among a riot of nettles and ivy. Katerina followed somewhere near the back and watched from one side as the coffin was placed next to the empty grave. The remnants of an earlier passing squall leapt from the lid as the nails were driven home, and then Nadia Ilieva was lowered into the ground. The mourners trailed back between the tombs, then out through the heavy iron gates and back along the sodden streets to Mrs Ilieva's house. Some time later, each of them left with a small wooden spoon and a handkerchief bearing the name of Nadia, so that they might remember her while they salted their soup with their tears.