The Museum of Doubt (9 page)

Look, ma’am, said Zagrebelny, touching her on the shoulder and pointing through the porthole. A green woman hanging from a torch on a little island.

You’re too familiar with me! said the Queen in a rage. Take your fingers off my shoulder! The devil, who made you one of my officers?

Zagrebelny stood straight, clicked his heels and bowed. He began to apologise.

Never apologise to me! Never! said the Queen. There can be no apologising. You have to
be
an apology.

Ma’am.

You’ll find what you need in there, she said, nodding to a box of silver filigree and birchbark on the pink granite coffee table. One of the Rivne labourers who had manhandled it into place had crippled himself doing it. She’d made sure
he had a comfortable pension. Or had she? She’d certainly intended to.

The Queen stood up and moved over to a larger porthole. There was a soft, plump couch under it, upholstered in black silk, with details from Caravaggio rendered in dark grey thread which only showed when the light caught them, and were more felt with the fingertips than seen. She knelt on the cushions with her back to the stateroom, elbows on the wooden rail below the porthole, and watched Liberty doing her duty. Behind her she heard Zagrebelny open the box. There was a pause while he sniffed and cleared his throat. She smiled. She heard his zip and slippery, sticky noises as he lubed up. He walked towards her.

What do they know of liberty here? said the Queen.

Land of the free, said Zagrebelny, lifting the hem of her chemise. She felt the cautious invasion of a nicely-manicured finger.

I hope you don’t think you’re going to be some kind of court favourite, she said. I don’t have them. Especially if they don’t know what’s a rhetorical question.

Like, What’s it all about?

That’s what you’re going to try to show me. We’ll make another statue for the Americans. Like our monument to Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. We distilled freedom into pain and pleasure while the Americans still drink the mixture. We should teach them. Not a Statue of Liberty. A Statue of Liberation.

Lieutenant Zagrebelny did his very best to show the Queen what it was all about.

Mykola left the hotel alone. The doorman who reared up to abuse anyone trying to get into the restaurant, like an old blind farm dog still chasing cars, watched him pass, the bottomless spring of hate bubbling up within him. In the
suspended influenza of Kiev’s March nights, impregnated with the fragrance of damp, smouldering coal, the depeopled crescent Kreshchatik shrank back from its own weak streetlights, shamed by its dark, blind shopfronts and its freakish towers, cupolas and friezes. Mykola began to walk home.

He entered the tunnels under Kreshchatik and strayed. Stunted teen souls in cheap Turkish leather and woollen hats shivered in the yellow-tiled catacombs, drinking bottles of Obolon. Moist scarlet mouths glistened in white faces and they laughed, shivering and tapping their heels with the cold. The flower-sellers squatted on camp stools, ziggurats of layered clothing. Trash burned and smoked in bell-shaped cans and a crowd horseshoed round a guitarist and a trumpeter playing selections from Soviet films of the 70s and 80s. The trumpeter was playing the theme from
A Stranger At Home, At Home
Among Strangers
. A pair of naval infantry conscripts from the Black Sea Fleet marched down the tunnel, faces ravaged by acne, boots two sizes too big, sleeves of their greatcoats hiding their hands, synthetic fur hats pushed back nearly vertical. They were small and crooked in the middle and the brass buttons on their greasy black coats swung loose like the eyes of old toys as they strode past bandylegged, chickenwise.

Gives a smoke, said the fair-haired one to Mykola in Russian. His eruptions were the angriest but for that his eyes were blue like forget-me-nots.

Sorry, said Mykola in Ukrainian. Don’t have any cigarettes. He smiled. The conscripts hesitated. It wasn’t the no they knew. It was a where do we go from here? and a whaddawegonnado about it?

Foreigner or something? said the dark one to the fair one.

Where you from? said the fair one to Mykola in Ukrainian.

New York.

New York, Fair whispered to Dark out of the corner of his mouth.

Ask him if he likes Dépêche Mode.

Don’t be stupid.

They’re OK, said Mykola.

Where d’you learn to speak Ukrainian?

Mykola shrugged. America.

The conscripts giggled. America! You’re what, doing business here?

Mykola laughed. His eyes ranged up and down the tunnels. All these questions! Don’t you want to go somewhere and talk?

D’you drink vodka?

Maybe.

We haven’t got any money.

Oh, I’ve got money. Mykola looked between the two faces. Fair was interested that he was a foreigner. Dark was more intense, interested that he was a foreign man, alone in the tunnels at night, not in a hurry. Mykola looked into Dark’s brown eyes. This one was the hustler. I’ve got money, he repeated. Maybe we could work something out. It’s all the same to me.

The two conscripts looked at him. Fair’s mouth was a little open. He didn’t get it. Dark took Fair’s elbow and dragged him away. Mykola stuck his hands in his pockets and walked on slowly. He looked back over his shoulder and saw the two by the wall, close together, chest to chest. The fair one was looking after Mykola with what was supposed to be pride but looked like a penguin spotting something in the distance. Dark was fidgeting with one of Fair’s buttons and tapping him on the chest, looking up into his face while he spoke to him.

Mykola heard one of them coming up behind him. Mistr! Mistr! The dark one was walking alongside him, holding his
sleeve in his fist, leaning his head and talking out of the side of his mouth.

My friend’ll take it in the mouth for a thousand dollars.

Mykola laughed. He sighed. No need, he said. I’m going home.

So, well, come on, how much?

How about ten dollars?

The conscript was quiet for a couple of seconds. OK, he said.

Mykola stopped and looked down at the boy. They were supposed to be seventeen. This one looked younger and older. He looked like he was about to jump straight from teenager to pensioner without bothering with manhood.

How about nothing at all? said Mykola.

How’s that? said the dark one foxily, sensing he was missing the point. Here he was on the verge of a breakthrough into the world of intoxicating deals he’d always thought was his due but how to push through the cunning American’s negotiating screen?

I don’t like to pay, said Mykola.

What are you, greedy?

Money doesn’t settle everything.

It’s only people who’ve got it who say that.

Mykola looked into his eyes and said: I’m into it if you’re into it, otherwise forget it.

The fair one was coming towards them. Mykola asked the dark one’s name.

Petya. He’s Taras. Don’t think I’m a shirtlifter. Petya worked his shoulders and smacked his fist softly into his cupped palm. A man should try everything once in his life.

Mykola told them his name and shook their hands. There was a silence while they looked at each other. Petya whispered
in Taras’ ear. Mykola said: I’ve got some vodka and food back at the flat if you want to share.

Nu
, let’s go, said Petya. Taras hesitated. There was more whispering.

Mykola … said Petya. What’s your patronymic?

Cliffovich.

Seriously?

Yes. My father was called Cliff.

Mykola. Kolya. Taras wants to ask you something.

Will you buy some roses for my girl? said Taras, tightly.

Mykola shrugged. How many? he said.

Oh, the Americans and their numbers, said Petya.

It has to be an odd number, said Taras.

The Queen laid the
Voice
on the coffee table and studied the clubbing notes. Everything had changed. What happened to that place where they’d driven a herd of sheep across the dancefloor one night, and Boyz, where in transparent booths along the walls naked boys could be watched as they showered to the beat? In the space of a couple of years she’d missed entire trends and their revivals. It was wonderful to see how fashion slew its avatars. The Queen was impervious to fashion. The camera was her vassal. Her every look was history. She did not dress up or pose. It was natural. She was more than photogenic. She was optogenic. The eyes of others adored her. In every moment they watched her, people around her saw, in the present, the kind of mythologised image that in others took the distance of a twenty-year-old photograph to create. If not death. That was why the Queen always got what she wanted. Even if they hated her when they were out of her sight.

She tore the club pages out of the magazine one by one and crumpled and squeezed them into tight balls. She moved the
firescreen away from the fireplace and put them on top of the plastic logs. She lit a match from the hotel’s complimentary matchbox and set fire to the paper. She rang for Natalie.

Send down to reception for some raw pork and get Zagrebelny’s people to make some shashlyk, she said.

Yes, Ma’m … where? said Natalie.

Here, said the Queen, nodding at the fireplace. A stink of smouldering plastic was beginning to come up off the artifical logs.

Of course, Ma’m, said Natalie. The park might be even better.

D’you think? said the Queen, stepping through the open balcony door and leaning out over the parapet. The sun was just down and Central Park was dimming. Muggers, she said. Dealers, policemen. And you know how they love arresting people for the strangest things here.

As you wish, Ma’m, said Natalie. I’m sure the law doesn’t apply inside the hotel.

This is the best suite in New York, isn’t it? said the Queen, raising her voice.

Yes Ma’m.

Well, get about it.

Ma’m, your press attaché wishes to see you.

Tell him to wait. Get Kiev on the phone. I want to speak to the SBU.

Natalie went out. As she opened the door to the reception room the press attaché, Vasily Hrynyuk, slithered in through the gap. The Queen looked at him and as he opened his mouth put her fingers to her lips. She pointed to a chair in the corner. He sat down. The room was filling with white smoke. Hrynyuk began to cough and the smoke detectors went off with an eardrum-drilling
wheee wheee wheee
. The Queen took one of
the phones and went out onto the balcony, closing the door behind her. Turning up the collar of her Prada jacket she sat down in a lounger as the phone rang.

I’ll tell you what time it is, she said. It’s not Kiev Time, it’s not Eastern Standard Time, it’s Royal Time. Which just now is seven pm. Time for a snack and a drink before changing. Not Kiev, New York, New York, if I was in Kiev I’d tell the general to come to the palace. Yes, I’ll wait.

She lay back in the lounger, laid the phone on her heart and closed her eyes. She heard tapping on the glass of the window. She opened her eyes. Swirls of smoke and spurts of foam could be seen, and faces, swimming up to the glass with wide eyes and strangely working mouths like fish.

Good evening, General.

Your Majesty.

Say it again.

Your
Majesty
.

Oh, it was better the first time. Are you in full dress uniform?

Your Majesty, I regret … I’m naked, apart from the bedsheet.

You spies! You know why I’m calling.

The missing one.

Mykola.

We’re trying new approaches. We contacted ZAGS and the residence registration bureaux and we’ve drawn up a list of men in Ukraine named Mykola aged between 25 and 45. We could fit them all inside the Republican Stadium.

Then what?

Well, they could file past you. It would take a few days.

It’s very sweet of you. I can’t allow it. The humiliation would be intolerable.

They’d have to put up with it.

Don’t be a fool. For me! It can’t be known that there’s such an emptiness in the Queen’s life. You’ll just have to find him.

The general said: We had another idea. There was a KGB research department in Bukovina where they experimented with trying to synthesize the dreams of dissidents and western leaders. The operatives would be supplied with hypnotically introduced false memories to correspond with their targets and dressed and fed accordingly. In the morning they would report on the dreams of Ronald Reagan and Andrei Sakharov. The data wasn’t reliable and most of the researchers have gone into advertising now but perhaps we could try it with you.

What did Reagan dream of?

The Lone Ranger was queuing for sausage and there was a college football quarterback played by James Stewart who started reciting Pushkin in a Georgian accent every time he made a touchdown. As I say, it wasn’t reliable.

Why did you never get married, General?

I did, your Majesty. Don’t you remember? We live in separate parts of the flat now. I still love her, but she won’t sleep with me. Our children carry messages between us.

Stay on the line. But lie back. Put your head on the pillow, said the Queen. Here’s what I remember. Perhaps it was a vision. Mykola’s in Independence Square, in black jeans, teeshirt and an open black cardigan. He’s tall and thin, not muscular but not flabby. He’s in his late thirties, early forties. He’s standing there by himself, listening to a soldier just demobbed who’s sitting on the edge of the fountain, playing a guitar and singing. It’s May, there’s that long, slow, bright twilight that never seems to end. The first thing you notice about him is how he can stand alone and not look alone, as if the whole world was keeping him company but was too shy to step forward. All the young girls are looking at him, of course, but he doesn’t notice. All his
attention goes to the guitarist and the guitarist feels it, it inspires him and he sings better. When his song’s finished Mykola goes over to the guitarist who gets up and shakes his hand and they talk for a while. After a few minutes Mykola wishes him well and walks away by himself, with his beautiful walk, looking to one side and the other like if there’s anything good to be found in the city, he’ll be there. The guitarist looks after him and even though his friends are around him, it seems as if the world is following Mykola, a few steps behind him, and the guitarist has been left behind. He thinks about running after Mykola but he doesn’t, he’s too proud, and he doesn’t have anything to say to him, he just wants to be with him. He knows he’s lost something and the next song he plays is a Russian lover’s lament.