And more, thought Natalia. The unchanged pattern: drink, whore, boast, exaggerate. ‘I said I understood.’
‘I knew you would.’
Eduard slept late, snoring loudly. His bedroom was redolent of him when Natalia crept in to collect up the laundry and she wondered how long the windows would have to be left open to air the place after he’d gone. The washing was filthy, a lot personally stained, and she doubted her son always emerged the victor in the drinking contests, as he claimed. If Eduard could handle his drink intake one way he did not appear to be able to do so in another. She pressed him to bathe when he finally arose and he said he supposed he should, though there was little enthusiasm. He had his first drink before noon, although only a beer. Eduard kept prowling around the apartment and Natalia guessed he was bored or felt restricted or both. She suggested an ice-hockey game that afternoon and he said OK without much interest although when they got to the stadium his demeanour changed. He yelled and shouted and swore uncaringly, although not obscenely, and when it ended said he’d enjoyed himself.
Afterwards Eduard said there didn’t seem any point in his returning to Mytninskaya and then having to come out again so soon, so why didn’t they have a drink to fill in the time before he had to meet friends. Because it was convenient they used the bar in the Berlin Hotel, on Zhdanova. Eduard ordered vodka with a beer chaser again, telling his mother to get more than one purchase ticket to save time when they wanted refills.
‘There’s no real reason for me to go back to the apartment, either,’ said Natalia when they were seated. ‘I might as well go on to the show straight from here.’
‘Show?’ queried Eduard blankly.
‘The circus,’ reminded Natalia sadly. ‘It would be silly to waste both tickets.’
‘Right!’ agreed Eduard, with surprising eagerness. ‘You’ll have fun.’
Natalia moved to make the obvious reply but then stopped, saying nothing. Eduard took the tickets which lay between them and returned with more vodka and beer. ‘You didn’t want another juice, did you?’
‘No,’ said Natalia.
‘I didn’t think you would. That’s why I got the beer, instead.’
‘That’s fine.’ Natalia had no real interest in going to the circus on Vernadskovo by herself, but the alternative was to go home by herself which wasn’t really an alternative at all. She realized that quite apart from wanting to see Eduard again she had been looking forward to some brief hours of simple companionship.
‘So you won’t need the car?’ demanded Eduard, smiling.
‘What?’ she said, confused by the question.
‘The car. You won’t really need it if you’re going to the circus, will you?’
‘I’ve got to get home, afterwards.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Eduard, waiting expectantly.
‘Why?’ she asked in weary resignation.
‘I just thought…well…’ shrugged Eduard. ‘I mean it might have been useful if I could have borrowed it…’ He smiled, a little-boy-misunderstood expression. ‘Silly idea.’
‘I suppose I could always get a taxi.’
‘Sure you wouldn’t mind?’ said Eduard, eager again and too impatient to bother with the charade of protesting that it would cause his mother too much inconvenience.
‘I’d be upset if it were damaged.’
‘You can trust me.’
It had never before occurred to Natalia to doubt that she could but she did now and was disturbed by the ease with which the uncertainty came to her. She recalled her reflection in the concessionary store: Eduard was a man living in a rough, even brutal, all-male environment of an army camp. She should be more understanding of how difficult it must be for him to make in minutes, at the snap of his fingers, the transition from one existence to another. She was letting her emotions become jumbled and convoluted, fashioning images where none existed. Natalia handed over the car keys and then, reminded, said: ‘What about a key to get back into the flat?’
‘You haven’t a spare?’
‘Not with me. I’ll wait up.’
‘I might be late,’ said Eduard in quick warning.
‘If it gets too late I’ll go to bed and you can wake me up with the bell when you get home.’
‘Sure you don’t mind?’
There was a lot she was being asked not to mind tonight, thought Natalia. ‘No,’ she said.
The State Circus was spectacular, some of the acts so good that Natalia genuinely forgot the disappointment of not having Eduard with her. During an interval a woman on the far side of the empty place said how could people be so selfish as not to bother to use a seat that was so difficult to get, and Natalia said she couldn’t imagine.
She stayed up at Mytninskaya until almost one o’clock in the morning and guessed she managed to remain awake for nearly an hour after she got into bed. She jerked awake in the morning, aware at once of not having let Eduard in. His bed had not been slept in although it was possible to detect a trace of his having occupied it the previous day: unthinkingly Natalia opened a window.
She sat tensed at the kitchen table, hands held tightly before her, unsure what immediately to do. The emergency services, she supposed. But in what order? She’d use her KGB rank and position to get the proper response: she’d never experienced it herself but the civilian militia were legendary for uncaring disregard. So who first, police or hospital services? Hospital services, she decided. There were other things that could have happened to him, beyond a traffic accident. He could have become involved in a fight or got so drunk he’d fallen down and hurt himself. Be in a sobering-up station, in fact. She wasn’t sure but she didn’t think such places, necessary to get fall- down drunks off the Moscow streets to prevent their freezing to death in the winter, were administered by either the police or medical authorities. Definitely try hospitals first.
Because of being in the KGB Natalia possessed that rarest of Moscow commodities, a telephone directory, and was actually looking up the numbers when the doorbell shrilled.
She ran to the door, hesitating for the briefest second to compose herself before opening it, expecting some official conveyor of bad news. Eduard stood with one hand outstretched against the frame, as if he needed its support. His uniform and shirt collar were undone again, sagging, and his face was red and bloated and his eyes red-veined.
‘Didn’t wake you up after all,’ he avoided.
Eduard was still drunk Natalia decided: if not drunk then very close to it. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Decided not to disturb you. Slept in the car,’ he said, grinning, making the lie obvious.
Were mothers supposed to hope quite so quickly that their sons didn’t become infected by the whores they slept with? She said: ‘You look dreadful. Come in and clean yourself up.’
‘Little sleep first,’ insisted Eduard, giving the lopsided smile of his father. He stayed grinning. ‘Not very comfortable, sleeping in a car.’
It was past noon when he emerged from his bedroom, and once more Natalia had to insist upon his bathing. She tried to keep any distaste from showing in her voice when she asked if he’d enjoyed himself the previous night and pretended to believe the haphazard account of what he’d done. Throughout the rest of the day there were long silences between them, neither with anything left to say, and on the Monday, their last day together, Natalia took him out into Moscow again, trying to use up the time with constant activity in restaurants and bars and among the stalls in the GUM store.
Eduard had to leave very early on the Tuesday morning and Natalia got up to see him off. He said he had had a wonderful leave and Natalia said she had enjoyed it too. He wasn’t sure when he would get his next furlough but he would let her know and Natalia said that would be fine and that she hoped the new job wouldn’t clash with it, taking her out of the country. Eduard said he hoped that too. The farewell kiss was as clumsy and embarrassed as the greeting gesture had been. Each was relieved at the parting.
Natalia stripped the bed and washed the blankets as well as the sheets and opened all the bedroom windows to their fullest extent. As an afterthought she put both sets of flowers in the room, although they did not seem particularly scented. Afterwards, still with time to spare before having to get to the First Chief Directorate building, she sat at the same kitchen table and with the same tenseness in which she’d been held imagining Eduard lying injured or dead somewhere on the Sunday morning. It had been an appalling weekend: ugly and disgusting and awful. She didn’t believe Eduard’s behaviour had been the difficulty of adjusting from one environment to another. She believed he found it easy – easier than to conform any other way – to be brutal and coarse, like his father had
