Moskva

23 Wax Angel

Once upon a time there was a girl. Very young, very beautiful, very clever. She was not that girl. She’d never been any of those things. Not really. But she’d given birth to the girl who was…

Wax Angel had problems getting beyond that.

She didn’t like the bit that came next, not when it had happened and not now. The girl, the beautiful girl, was on the list of things she tried not to remember.

Perhaps top of it.

Crossing the stream of traffic on Petrovka Street without looking – one of life’s little thrills, and God knows there were few enough these days – she kept the Englishman and the rusty Moskvitch shadowing him in sight. The Englishman was walking slowly and in something of a daze, which was just as well given the state of her knees. She hoped his thoughts were happier than hers but, judging by the bleakness in his face, she doubted it.

Once upon a time there was a girl. Very young, very beautiful, very clever. She was not that girl. She’d never been any of those things. Not really. But she’d given birth to the girl who was and an ambitious little fool had turned her daughter’s head with flattery and presents and later denied the child she carried was his.

They were bad days in the shadow of worse ones. The state was poor and food scarce but the USSR had Sputnik and the Americans didn’t, and there was supposed to be consolation in that…

From the back of a maroon-and-cream Volga, the model with the ivory steering wheel and chrome grill with a five-pointed star, she’d watched people queue for hours for food and wondered if the old men behind the Kremlin Wall really thought being able to watch a satellite launch on the newsreel made up for that.

No one asked her to queue, obviously.

They simply asked her to dance and dance she did.

All of the great roles in all of the great theatres. Until London. Nureyev wasn’t even meant to be on that tour. He was too temperamental, too unreliable. The little brat was only there because the Kirov’s lead had injured himself. Anyone but a fool could see that Nureyev was self-obsessed enough to do something stupid, like defect.

Wax Angel’s beautiful girl was gone by then.

She shouldn’t have been surprised that the rest of her life followed.

The Englishman was speeding up now, head down and shoulders hunched in that heavy wax jacket of his. She let him go like a fish that snaps its line and surges on.

She knew where he was headed like a lamb to the slaughter.

Where he always went: to get drunk with the cripple and get fed by General Dennisov’s pyromaniac daughter. Following him had been fun. Especially as he obviously considered himself too skilled to be followed. But she was Wax Angel… There’d been times she’d lain for hours in rubble to get the right shot, and left without declaring herself, if the target never materialized.

Besides, she was a beggar. Beggars didn’t exist in the Soviet Union, so being invisible was easy.

She wondered if the Englishman knew their father was dying, if he realized the general was holed up in Leningrad in a dark and gloomy flat, brooding on his legacy and the ingratitude of children. These days you could add cancer of the body to cancer of the soul.

In her experience, injured wolves were worst.

They were cursed, that family. The Englishman should ask not about the general but about the general’s own father. Now there was a story to make nightmares look like nursery rhymes.

Dennisov was at his own bar, perching awkwardly on a chrome stool that hadn’t been there the last time Tom visited. The flask of vodka in front of him was empty. The bowl of soup beside it was full. Yelena glared from behind the bar, swept through the curtain in the wall of records and let it flap heavily behind her. As if everything wrong in her life was Tom’s fault.

Her brother had fewer customers than usual.

Those who were there clustered round the cracked screen, watching one of their own play Tetris with Zen-like intensity. The room was in near silence except for the slow thudding of a water pipe, the hammering of fingers on the keyboard and the growl of traffic from the street below. Just as suddenly as she had left, Dennisov’s sister reappeared. It was obvious she was spoiling for a fight. So obvious that the Tetris-watchers switched their attention to Tom.

‘What do you want now?’ she demanded.

‘Who said I wanted anything?’

‘You always want something,’ Yelena said. ‘It always causes trouble. Why don’t you just leave us alone?’

She was right and it was true, he did want something. He wanted the use of Dennisov’s motorbike, the one the Russian was too crippled to ride any more.

‘What’s happened to everyone?’ Tom asked.

‘We’re out of vodka.’

‘This is a bar. How can you be out of vodka?’

‘He drank it…’ She put her hands on her hips and glared at Tom. She looked tired and pale, and readier than ever to speak her mind. ‘It’s your fault,’ she said. ‘It’s always your fault.’

‘Yelena,’ Dennisov said.

She glared him into silence. ‘If it wasn’t for him, they wouldn’t have come back. If they hadn’t come back, you wouldn’t be scared. If you weren’t scared, you’d drink less. If you drank less, we might have some vodka left to sell.’

He nodded at each of her points.

‘So,’ she said, ‘how is it not his fault?’

‘I like him.’

‘Because he drinks as much as you.’

Dennisov squinted at Tom and shook his head. ‘He drinks like an Englishman. For a Russian, he’s practically a monk. Look at him; he’s been in here two minutes, possibly three and he hasn’t even asked for alcohol.’

Yelena put her hands to her head.

No fight. Not even a real argument.

The Tetris-watchers went back to their game, just as the man playing stopped being able to key the blocks fast enough and swore as lines built up and filled the screen. He gave up his place reluctantly.

Dennisov said, ‘My sister’s not happy.’

‘He should leave,’ Yelena said.

‘She thinks we shouldn’t be friends. She doesn’t trust you.’

‘Why?’ Tom asked.

‘Why is none of your business,’ Yelena said.

Dennisov ran his hand through his cropped hair, wiping his fingers on his trousers. ‘They came back, okay? They came back…’

‘Last night,’ said Yelena. ‘When the bar was shut. They wanted to know if you’d been in. They wanted to know if we knew where you were. They said they had a photograph of my brother changing dollars. That’s treason. They could send him to the gulag. My brother told them he wouldn’t wipe his arse on dollars.’

Dennisov grinned. ‘Things were a bit better after that.’

‘Who are they?’ Tom asked.

‘You know who they are,’ he said crossly. ‘There’s only one they. All those old men standing shoulder to shoulder on the podium, barely able to stand each other.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Yelena’s right. You don’t belong here. Go home, see your kid, make peace with your wife, put flowers on the grave of your daughter. This isn’t your fight.’

‘I can’t leave.’

‘Try?’ Dennisov suggested.

Have you? Tom wondered.

He knew the answer. For all Dennisov bristled at every mention of his wife, he’d probably never stopped trying. Dennisov drunk in his bar was the tip of the emotional iceberg. The bulk of the man’s misery lay below water.

As for Tom, how could he explain that he’d pinned his entire hope of redemption on finding Alex? He needed redemption as much as she needed saving. If she was still alive to be saved. If there was enough of him left to be redeemed. He wouldn’t allow himself to leave the Soviet Union until that was done. He couldn’t…

Tom knew how absurd that was, how arrogant, how messianic.

He didn’t care.

‘They’ll kill you,’ Dennisov warned.

He didn’t care about that either. When Tom shrugged, Yelena looked as if she wanted to slap him, so he turned to go. Dennisov grabbed him.

‘We still have beer,’ Dennisov said.

‘Out of date? From your glorious neighbours?’

‘Of course.’

Yelena sighed. ‘Tell my brother what you want this time.’

The Ural was a rip-off of a 1940s BMW flat-twin, still turned out in the thousands by at least three factories in the Soviet Union. The plans were found when the Red Army took Berlin. The electrics were poor, the headlight weak and the drum brakes virtually useless over fifty. Not that that was a problem, since the bike hated going over fifty anyway. Dennisov kept it in a little courtyard at the back of the bar.

On first kick, the starter was soft.

The second built pressure and the flat-twin fired on Tom’s third kick, ticking over with a satisfying if smoky thud. Before Dennisov had let him kick the bike into life he’d insisted that Tom build a small fire under the crankcase. When Yelena protested that it wasn’t necessary, he told her that knowing how to warm oil was an essential skill for an honorary Russian to have.

‘Bring the bloody thing back in one piece,’ Yelena said. ‘He likes it, all right? It doesn’t matter that it cripples his stump to ride. It’s his. From the old days.’

‘When he still had a leg?’

‘No,’ said Dennisov. ‘When I was with Sophia.’

‘His wife.’ Yelena spat.

‘My sister doesn’t like her,’ Dennisov said, as if that wasn’t obvious.

‘No one likes her,’ Yelena said.