A Simple Scale E-Book

David Llewellyn

• Herausgeber: Seren
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 352

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

'Beautifully told and beautifully written' – Philip Reeve (author of Mortal Engines) 'An impressive and compelling work, entirely original' – New Welsh Review 'Masterly interweaving of narratives, time periods and places, David Llewellyn's A Simple Scale is a symphony of mysteries and passions.' – Paul Smith 'A Simple Scale is a work of self-assured persuasive power, and the resounding artistic statement of a writer who has truly arrived. It is bold, it is brave, and it is the real deal.​' – Wales Arts Review​ A piece of music starts a story which ranges across Soviet Russia, McCarthyite Hollywood and post 9/11 New York, as the mystery of the lives of two gay composers is uncovered. Who wrote that music? What event caused their lives to cross? What pressures caused their actions? What are the consequences for those around them? In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, a man arrives in New York to claim that the theme tune of a popular tv series, written by Hollywood's Sol Conrad, is the work of his grandfather Sergey, an eminent Russian composer who was sent to the gulag by Stalin, and from whom Sol stole the score. Conrad's young PA Natalie is determined to defend her elderly employer, but as she digs deeper she discovers worlds of which she barely knew – Russian labour camps, McCarthyism, repressive governments, and the plight of homosexuals in the USA and USSR during the twentieth century. Natalie, Sol and Serge each tell their stories, ranging across continents and decades. A Simple Scale moves forward through their narratives of love, death, deceit, the CIA, the NKVD, atomic bombs, classical music and Hollywood. In a dramatic conclusion their pasts and presents catch up with them, as the secrecy, manipulation and betrayal that were at the centre of Sol and Sergey's lives inform a few weeks of 2001, when history is about to repeat itself. Rich in detail and atmosphere, David Llewellyn explores the points at which the personal and the political meet. His depiction of 30s Leningrad, 50s California and post-9/11 New York is only too believable.

Leseprobe

A Simple Scale

Seren is the book imprint of

Poetry Wales Press Ltd

57 Nolton Street, Bridgend, Wales, CF31 3AE

www.serenbooks.com

Facebook: facebook.com/SerenBooks

Twitter: @SerenBooks

© David Llewellyn 2018

The right of David Llewellyn to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

ISBNs

Paperback – 978-1-78172-470-5

Ebook – 978-1-78172-471-2

Kindle – 978-1-78172-472-9

A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

The publisher acknowledges the financial assistance of the Welsh Books Council.

Cover photograph: ‘The Best Pianist in the World’ is by Noah E. Morrison, an American photographer from New York City, currently based in Los Angeles. He can be found online at noahemorrison.com

Printed in Bembo by TJ International, Cornwall.

A Simple Scale

People say there is no justice on Earth,

But there is no more justice on High. To me

This is as clear as a simple scale.

Alexander Pushkin – Mozart & Salieri

Chapter 1:MANHATTAN, OCTOBER 2001

To begin with, this wasn’t her bed, nor anyone else’s; it was a sofa. The last thing she remembered: Everyone standing around a piano. Carol playing Pour, Oh Pour, the Pirate Sherry and everyone else singing. Typical for one of Carol and Louise’s parties. Food, wine, a quasi-highbrow singalong. Except for the chorus, Natalie hadn’t known the words, but she sang along regardless.

She opened one eye. Sure enough, this was Carol and Louise’s lounge. The bottles and glasses of the night before had been cleared away; the only evidence of a party the dull after-scent of weed smoke. Two black-and-white Boston terriers were staring at her from the centre of the room. From the kitchen: Louise singing along with the radio, the rattle of dry dogfood landing in separate bowls. The terriers bolted for the kitchen, and a moment later Louise appeared in the doorway.

“You’re awake,” she said.

Natalie sat up. A wave of dizziness, like the sensation of movement hours after swimming.

“What time is it?”

“Eight. Carol had to go in early. Breakfast meeting with students. Coffee?”

Natalie nodded and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She pulled her t-shirt away from her chest and sniffed. Boozy sweat and smoke. Nice.

“Here, I’ll put on the TV,” said Louise, thumbing the remote until the television buzzed and pinged to life. Theirs was an old set, the kind owned by those who make a point of telling you how little TV they watch. On the curved screen, another jetfighter was being launched into another clear blue sky.

“Crazy, isn’t it?” said Louise.

Natalie concurred with a painful nod. Louise went to the kitchen and began making coffee.

“We would have put you in a cab,” she said, her voice raised. “But you were asleep, and it’s so far. Besides, if you’d had an accident…”

“An accident?”

“If you’d puked.”

“Oh.”

“Someone told me they fine you, like, a hundred dollars. So we thought it was better if you stayed here. And some of those drivers. I don’t trust them.”

“Thank you.”

“I hope you slept okay.”

“Yes. Thanks.”

Other details of the party were coming back to her. Trying to get one of Louise’s colleagues, a cellist, to dance, and him demurely turning her down. Knocking a woman’s wineglass into her handbag. Standing on a chair shouting, “Toast! Toast!” And then the toast itself. Oh God.

“To those of us who didn’t die!”

Awkward faces. Nervous laughter. Carol helping her to get down off the chair and asking Natalie if she would like a glass of water. Then, nothing. She must have passed out on the sofa. But had she really slept, or was she simply unconscious? Probably the latter. She felt exhausted.

This wasn’t her. Or, at least, it hadn’t been her. Not before. Before September she would never have done a thing like that. There had been parties before and she had got drunk before, but the memory of that “toast” made her want to implode with shame. She was only glad no-one present had lost anyone.

It was 8:15, and she had to get from Harlem to the Upper East Side by 9am. She thought about the subway. Going down, sliding her Metrocard through the reader; that trapped feeling as she passed through the turnstile. A crowded platform, a crowded carriage. She couldn’t do it. The walk would take an hour. She was going to be late.

In the bathroom she carried out a routine inspection. Minimal damage to her make-up. Hair kind of shabby, though she could always pretend it was the look she was aiming for. She opened her mouth wide, poked out her wine-blackened tongue, pulled the flesh taut around her eyes. Her face felt like an unconvincing mask. This can’t be me. She applied lip-liner, dabbed away the smudges of mascara, tamed the worst excesses of her hair and went back to the lounge.

“Here’s your coffee. Black, one sugar, right?”

How did Louise remember a thing like that? How was she so organised, so alert after a late night? Typical. Natalie had always been a little envious of Carol and Louise, of everything they had, but lately it was getting worse. It was her problem, not theirs, but they were the light behind a window, and Natalie was the moth bashing its head against the glass. When she’d drunk only half of her coffee, she began preparing her exit.

“I feel like I should stick around, help you to tidy up…”

She had no intention of doing so.

“It’s fine,” said Louise. “You have work, and besides… I’ve got this.”

The hallway was lined with framed photographs: Carol and Louise in Paris, Carol and Louise in Rome, Carol and Louise in Machu Picchu and in Marrakech and next to the Great Wall of China. Louise and the dogs followed Natalie to the door.

“Listen,” Louise said. “You’re Carol’s friend, so it’s probably not my place to say anything, but are you okay?”

This had all the makings of something heartfelt. Natalie cringed.

“Of course,” she said, hoping it would end there.

“It’s just. Last night… you seemed a little…”

Crazed? Desperate? Lacking in all sense of decorum?

“We’re just worried about you, that’s all.”

“I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

“I’m fine.”

“Because… you know… these last few weeks have been crazy for everyone, and with Gino being away and you being home all by yourself –”

“I’m fine.”

“– we just thought, you know, if you want to talk with anyone. I mean, it doesn’t have to be Carol. If you’d find it easier to talk with someone a little removed, I’d be more than happy to –”

“No, I’m fine. Really, I am.”

“That’s so English of you.”

New Yorkers never missed an opportunity to tell her just how English she was, or compare her with some actress who was either ten years younger or twenty years older than her.

“I’m fine,” Natalie said. “Honestly.”

“Okay. Well. You know where we are.”

It was a sunny morning, but it had been raining throughout the night, and the wet streets’ glare was blinding. Natalie had a $5 umbrella in her bag but hadn’t brought a pair of shades. She squinted her way down 121st Street and stuck to the shaded side of Frederick Douglass Boulevard until she reached the park.

It was almost a month since she had last used the subway. A childhood phobia of enclosed spaces had returned. Understandable, really. But was she the only one? There were faces she remembered from her old commute; the Korean woman with two small kids, the skinny guy with the pronounced Adam’s apple, the old man who wore a cashmere coat even in summer. She’d passed none of them walking along Third Avenue each day, so perhaps it was just her. Perhaps everyone else was fine.

She reached the house on East 73rd Street an hour after setting out. Jamilah, Sol’s carer, was leaving just as Natalie arrived. She paused at the bottom of the stoop to light a cigarette, saw Natalie and murmured a good morning. Jamilah never had much to say to her, and Natalie had the impression that the carer didn’t like her. She had that impression with a lot of people.

There were four women in Sol Conrad’s life, four women who tended to him daily: Natalie, Jamilah and the sisters, Rosa and Dolly De Leon. Their responsibilities often overlapped, but the De Leons kept the house clean and homely; no small task in a place this big. Rosa handled things most days, but that morning it was Dolly who leaned out into the hall, waving a soapy yellow glove at her, and calling out, “Good morning, Miss Natalie.”

“Morning, Dolly. Where’s Rosa?”

“Hospital. An operation. Her face.”

“Her face?”

“She has a mole, here.”

Dolly pointed to the place where her left nostril met her cheek and she slipped off the rubber gloves with a snap.

“You’re late.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I stayed at a friend’s last night…”

“Boyfriend?”

Every time. Every single time. They were like the elderly neighbours where Natalie had grown up, an English village where her mother still lived. Always asking if she was “courting”, from the second she’d hit puberty. Courting!

“A friend,” Natalie said. “I slept late. How’s Mr C.? Is he okay?”

“Not so bad. He thought I was Rosa, but, you know…”

If Sol could remember Rosa’s name, it was one of his better days. She would give anything for one of his better days.

“Where is he now?”

“In his study.”

For a moment Dolly carried on putting away the plates and cutlery from breakfast.

“Oh yeah,” she said. “There was a call. Eight o’clock, eight thirty. A man wanted to speak with Mr Conrad. He had a accent. I told him Mr Conrad was busy, so then he asked to speak to his secretary. So I told him Mr Conrad doesn’t have a secretary, he has a per-so-nal ass-is-tant. Then he asked if he could speak to you, so I told him I would pass on his message.”

“Which was?”

“Just to say he called.”

“Did he leave a name?”

“I wrote it down.”

Dolly shuffled out into the hallway, her plimsolled feet slapping against the parquet floor. She was wider in the hips than her sister and already had a fat woman’s waddle. Rosa would have finished cleaning the house by now. Dolly had barely made a start.

She came back with a scrap of yellow notepaper on which she’d written “PAVEL GREKOV” and the address of a hotel on West 32nd.

“He’s staying here?”

“No,” Dolly huffed. “He’s staying at Four Seasons in Jersey. Course he’s staying here. Why you think I write it down?”

“Did he say what he was calling about?”

Dolly shook her head. “He wouldn’t tell me. Very rude.”

Chances are this Grekov was a fan. Unusual for a fan to get hold of Sol’s telephone number, but stranger things had happened. Fans had been known to turn up on the stoop, asking for autographs, before now.

Natalie left the kitchen and went down the hall. The study door was open, and she heard music; one of the Fischer-Dieskau recordings of Schwanengesang. Sol was seated in the wing-backed chair nearest the window, awake but with his eyes closed; a copy of today’s Wall Street Journal folded and unread in his lap. She couldn’t remember the last time she had seen him actually reading the paper. It was probably for the best.

“Good morning.”

The old man stirred, snuffled and opened his eyes. That morning they looked more grey than blue.

“Sorry. What? Yes. Good morning. Good morning.”

“Schwanengesang,” she said, adding hopefully: “Because of Sunday?”

Two days ago they’d heard Christian Gerhaher perform the same pieces at the Frick; its first concert since the attacks. Lower Manhattan was still smouldering, and the mood in the concert hall that night was charged, bristling with something unsaid. Natalie saw more than one person crying, but Sol looked happier and more serene than she had seen him in months. Now, his expression was blank. He remembered nothing.

For a moment more they sat without speaking. The sunlight made constellations of the house dust and a corona of the stubble on his cheeks and chin. Later, in what was bound to be another brief exchange, she would ask Jamilah to shave him. From the kitchen, Dolly called out, asking Natalie if she would like more coffee, and she left Sol to his music and his unread paper.

When Dolly had finished for the day, Natalie called the hotel and asked for Pavel Grekov. There was a pause, hold music, and the receptionist told her Mr Grekov wasn’t answering. Fine. At least she’d tried. Maybe this would be the end of it. Maybe he was just another fan of Battle Station Alpha,Thunder Squad or The Man from Lamar, trying his luck. Maybe, when all he got was a confused Filipino housemaid, he’d decided to quit. This suited Natalie just fine.

These hours, between the De Leons’ exit and Jamilah’s return, were her favourite part of the day, and each day at Sol’s was much like any other. She spent her mornings going through whatever mail had arrived. On occasion, there would be fan mail, forwarded on by the network.

Dear Mr Conrad,

I am writing to tell you that I am an enormous fan of your work, and especially the theme from Battle Station Alpha. I bought it on vinyl record when it was first released in 1979. I was 14 years of age and I still have that very copy in my collection, and in excellent condition. I had hoped to get it signed at Alpha-Con in 1995 but I was unable to attend. Perhaps, if you appear at another convention you would be so kind as to sign it for me.

Yours gratefully,

Steven McGregor, Des Moines

She had saved a template reply to Sol’s computer that she could then customise.

Dear Steven,

Thank you so much for your kind words. Though I have been retired for some time and make very few public appearances it gives me great pleasure knowing my work still brings joy to people. You have made an old man very happy!

Yours sincerely,

Sol Conrad, New York City

There were no fan letters that day; just a bill, two circulars and a notification from the Department of Planning, concerning a building on East 74th. She saw the words “rooftop bar” before she fed it, along with the circulars, into the shredder.

The fan convention invites were few and far between. Not that she minded. Going away provided a change from her daily routine, but little else. Sol had never much enjoyed them. The last he attended was at San Diego, two years ago. He appeared on a panel with some of the stars from Battle Station Alpha. Natalie hardly recognised them, with their toupees, girdled bellies, fake boobs and facelifts – familiar faces rendered strange by time and too much effort – and Sol remembered few of their names without prompting.

His dementia was referenced in the job description; she knew what she’d signed up for. Even so, they shouldn’t have gone to San Diego. It was all too much for him. All that traipsing around a convention centre the size of an airport, an endless maze of walkways and escalators. There was a question, during the panel, about Sol’s testimony before the HUAC. Fat guy, glasses, balding. His stretched grey t-shirt based on the Alpha Crew uniform. A living, heavy-breathing archetype. The room was full of them.

“Sir. Do you think your testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee is why your movie career dried up? Is that why you moved into writing music for television?”

Either Sol didn’t understand the question or he pretended not to. The panel’s chair looked to Natalie for his cue. She shook her head, and the chair said they should stick to questions about Battle Station Alpha. In better days, Sol might have preferred a few questions about the hearing. He had never had much time for Battle Station Alpha or its fans. She hadn’t told him that as a child she had watched all of its twenty-four episodes and watched them again, a decade later, when they were repeated on British television.

Like the radio signal on a long car journey, Sol came and went throughout the day, but after lunch she sensed that he was there, that he was with her, and so she asked if the name Pavel Grekov meant anything to him. It was a long shot.

“Who?”

“Grekov. Pavel Grekov.”

He shook his head. It didn’t mean anything to him right now; but then, he could have worked with Pavel Grekov for decades and still not recall his name.

Mid-afternoon, the phone rang. She picked it up instinctively. Occasionally, it might be an old friend of Sol’s. Sometimes, it might be Dolly, Rosa or Jamilah. She answered and before she’d even finished saying her own name she guessed who it was.

“You are Mr Conrad’s assistant?” he asked.

The accent Dolly had mentioned sounded Russian.

“That’s right,” Natalie said. “Is this Pavel Grekov?”

“I want to speak with him.”

Didn’t even answer her question. So Dolly was also right about him being rude.

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

“Why not?”

“Mr Conrad is old and a little frail. But I’m sure I can answer any questions you have.”

“We will meet.”

Neither a question nor a request. What was this guy after? He didn’t sound like a fan. A part of her wanted to hang up. The other part needed to know.

“Okay. We can meet, if you like. I’m free most evenings, or –”

“Tonight.”

She laughed as if her diary was crammed with appointments. It was not. Meet him, humour him, and if it turns out he’s a pervert or a psychopath, raise hell. But meet him somewhere public.

She went through a mental list of bars that might be busy on a Tuesday evening. If her roommate, Gino, was anything to go by, gay men rarely took a night off, and so she told him to meet her at Julius Bar, on West 10th Street and Waverly. When she’d hung up she wrote Grekov’s name and the name of the bar on a Post-It note and stuck it to the kitchen notice board, where Dolly or Rosa would see it.

She spent the rest of the afternoon with Sol, reading him a review of Idomeneo at the Met and slipping Sunset Boulevard in the video, but she was distracted and paid little attention to the film.

There was no reason why she had to meet Pavel Grekov. She could go straight home, take a long bath, walk around the apartment naked for a while. Maybe get a couple of beers.

No beers. Her headache had cleared by lunchtime but her stomach was still uncertain. She saw her wineglass falling into that lady’s handbag. Embarrassing in any circumstances, but the lady in question was someone senior from the Lincoln Center. She had gazed down into her wine-drenched bag with appal and Natalie apologised and tiptoed into another room as if making a stealthy getaway. She was still mischievous at that point; she hadn’t yet crossed the line into the final phase, the mean phase. Somebody should have put her in a cab long before then. She would be surprised if Carol and Louise ever spoke to her again.

Jamilah returned shortly after five, her denim rucksack on her shoulder and a canvas book bag under her arm.

“He been good today?”

“So so.”

“Hoping I’ll get a little peace tonight.”

“He should be fine.”

Even as she left the house, Natalie still hadn’t decided what she would do. She had always been this way. Capable of snap decisions or hours, days, weeks of deliberation, and nothing in between. Sometimes the snap decisions proved fruitful, like applying to NYU. Other times (the Dutch courage she’d had before Carol and Louise’s party) less so. But these hours of pondering were the worst. Like a mental paralysis. The world became so much white noise. It had been so much worse this last month.

It took her an hour to reach East Village. Third Avenue was rush hour busy, and she had to elbow her way through legions of sightseers all across Midtown. Even after everything that happened, still so many tourists. Perhaps the flights were cheap.

Her hangover still hadn’t entirely worn off. She wasn’t sure she could face another drink. And still, the shame of it all. Getting up on that chair, getting everyone’s attention by flicking her wine glass. “Toast! Toast!” The others laughing, thinking she was about to say something witty. The way their faces dropped when she didn’t.

Hair of the dog. That was what she needed. A terrible excuse, really, but what else was she going to do? Go home and watch repeats of Ally McBeal on whichever channel wasn’t showing rolling news?

There wasn’t enough time for her to go home and freshen up, and so Natalie went straight to Julius Bar. She was on time, almost to the minute. She looked around, scanning the faces for any likely candidates, and saw none. She contemplated ordering a Coke. She asked the barman for a bottle of Sam Adams.

She was there for maybe a quarter of an hour before Grekov appeared. The door opened, she felt the breeze on her back, heard the sound of traffic on West 10th Street, and footsteps. She looked across and saw a young man, younger than she’d anticipated, with short dark hair and blue eyes.

“You are Natalie.”

She nodded.

“Pavel Grekov,” he said, adding, as if she should know the name: “Sergey Grekov was my grandfather.”

Natalie shrugged an apology. Never heard of him. She gestured to the bartender and ordered two more beers. Pavel Grekov took up the stool next to hers.

“So,” she said. “How do you know Mr Conrad?”

“I don’t know him. I only know what he did.”

“And what was that?”

“Stole my grandfather’s music.”

That was a new one. Natalie laughed. She could guess where this was heading. Most likely, he was a grifter from no further afield than Brighton Beach. That’s if his name and accent were even genuine.

“What music?” she asked.

“Battle Station Alpha. You know…” And he hummed the theme, almost tunelessly, but close enough for her to recognise it.

“You’re telling me your grandfather wrote the theme from Battle Station Alpha?”

Grekov nodded. “He wrote it. For his ballet.”

This guy was good. Ballet was a nice touch. Why would anyone make up a thing like that?

“Which ballet?”

“Geroy nashego vremeni. It’s based on a novel.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Hero of Our Time. This is what you call it.”

She knew of the novel, but not the ballet. If he was lying, he’d put some effort into it. But then, isn’t that the nature of confidence tricksters? Don’t they all go into this kind of laborious detail? She would hold strong. Humour him a little while longer, but only till she got bored.

“And where’s your grandfather now?”

“He died when I was little.”

“And where did he live?”

“Leningrad. St Petersburg.”

“Was he famous?”

“In Russia, yes. As a young man.”

“But only in Russia?”

Grekov nodded. Natalie was warming to this now. The first beer had levelled things out. She was at the sweet spot of alcohol-induced confidence.

“And his music… Was it performed in the States? Was it recorded?”

“Not this piece.”

She began to laugh again, and Grekov shifted uncomfortably on his stool.

“You think this is funny,” he said. “What your boss did?”

“No. What’s funny is you walking in here and accusing him of plagiarism. Were you trying to blackmail him? Is that it?”

“Not blackmail,” said Pavel. “I came to New York, to speak with Sol Conrad.”

“Well you can’t. And you won’t.”

Pavel got up, his stool scraping against the floor, loud enough to make heads turn. “Fucking Americans,” he said. She let it pass. “So arrogant. And you are wrong.”

“So prove it.”

He glowered at her and her body tensed, anticipating violence. Maybe she’d pushed this too far.

“There is proof,” Pavel said. “I have the, ah, the partitura… the music written down in a book…”

“The score?”

“Yes. The score. I have it in my hotel. Exactly the same. Do you read music?”

“Yes.”

“You read it, you will see. Exactly the same. But you don’t read it, fine. I will take it to a lawyer.”

“Be my guest. I’ll wait for them to call.”

Grekov stumbled out, clipping his shoulder against the doorframe as he left. Some of those sitting or standing along the bar looked at Natalie with condescending smiles. A lovers’ tiff, they were thinking. What had they been arguing about?

Five minutes ago she’d found the whole thing hilarious, but now her hands began to shake. She ordered another bottle of beer, and chased it down with a shot of gin.

Chapter 2:LENINGRAD, FEBRUARY 1950

Another time, another place; the city grey, the snowflakes falling in the street like ashes. Beneath the station’s clock tower, two heavy doors swing open with a gasp, and Sergey Grekov steps out, his coat held around him and his gloveless hands clasped tightly in his armpits. Thirty-seven years old but prematurely grey and uncommonly thin, he looks at Leningrad as if it still might be a mirage.

From everything he has been told these last few years, he was anticipating ruins. Hollow buildings and charred timbers, streets strewn with rubble. Instead, he finds it repainted and rebuilt, and yet the place is different, as if everything has been moved around in his absence, as you might rearrange the furniture in an old room.

He’s unaccustomed to choice. When he comes to a junction, he can go in any direction; left, right, straight ahead. The space is almost limitless. No perimeter fence, no watchtowers, no guard dogs. Yet this isn’t complete freedom. His papers tell him where to go and when. The tenement, the factory. Disobey them, and there’s every chance they could send him back.

The streets around the station are almost empty. The few people he passes look shabby, not how he remembers them. Moscow was always the peasant city, the place where people look as if they’ve just arrived from the country. Not Leningrad. Not Piter.

Moskovsky Prospect is busier, especially once he’s crossed the bridge. There, he moves through a shuffling black mass of other people, winter coats and hats dusted with snow. A xylophone-ribbed dog shivers and keeps pace with him along the gutter. Red and white trams whisper through the slush, passengers pressed against windows opaque with steam. The bell of a nearby clock strikes one.

The last time he saw this street it was through the windows of a police car, in the early hours of a Tuesday morning. It was August then, the air already humid, and stuffier still inside the car. He remembers an agent, a lad barely older than twenty, lighting his cigarette for him – his own hands were cuffed – and the way the car was filled almost immediately with smoke.

As a young man, Leningrad’s winters seemed so much colder than this – far too cold to consider walking very far – but the last leg of his journey was spent in a train compartment with ten others. They took it in turns to sit, but there was no room to lie down and sleep. Cold as it might be, it’s good to be out in the open. Besides, he has known far colder.

His papers tell him to report to the tenement building no earlier than 3pm and so, to pass the time, he finds a café where he orders coffee, black bread and a bowl of rassolnik.

The secret police and their informants were everywhere in the north; guards spying on prisoners and even prisoners spying on guards. No-one trusted anyone. But what about here, in this café? The skinny lad behind the counter, perhaps. The old woman eating some indeterminate grey mush out of a chipped bowl. The crooked figure hunched over a newspaper in the far corner.

The soup, when it arrives, is mostly barley and carrots, little in the way of meat. Sergey dips his bread into the soup. He hasn’t eaten in more than a day. The broth dances on his tongue. Its warmth spreads out, from his chest and through his limbs and into his fingers and toes. He closes his eyes, and when he opens them again he senses someone staring at him. The figure in the corner; the small man with stooped shoulders, his face drawn, pinched and beetle-browed. Though as threadbare and hungry-looking as everyone else in the city, this man could be secret service.

After studying him a moment longer, the stranger gets to his feet, tucks his newspaper into the inside of his overcoat, and crosses the café.

“Seryozha?” he says, his smile a gash of yellow teeth and greyish gums. “Sergey Andreievich?”

Sergey nods slowly, waiting for the stranger’s smile to fade, and for him to say there’s been a mistake, that Sergey should never have been released, that his rehabilitation is incomplete and that he will be placed on the very first train back to Komi, by orders of the MGB.

“Do I know you?” he asks.

The stranger laughs. “Know me? Sergey! Of course you know me! It’s me! Vasily Nikolayevich. Sidorov! Vasya!”

Vasily Sidorov. A name he’s neither said nor spoken nor even thought about in years. When did they last see one another? Perhaps the night of the premiere, or in the days that followed. No, his memory of that time is too clouded to picture the exact scene. When he first laid eyes on him, however… this he remembers clearly.

A rehearsal room, backstage at the Kirov. Secretary Remizov taking Sergey on a tour of the theatre, introducing him as “our latest genius”. Echoing against a polished floor, the sound of a piano playing one of Chopin’s nocturnes. In the studio, holding the bar, a young man, eighteen or nineteen, with dark, lightly curled hair, performing a series of degage, and stopping only when he noticed the presence of a stranger.

Now, in the café, Sergey’s innards clench. He hardly recognises him.

“Vasya?”

The man draws out the facing chair and sits.

“I knew it was you!” he says. “I work nights at the children’s hospital, and every day I come here for lunch, which is really supper, I suppose. But every day I come here, and I know everyone who comes in, if not by name then by face. I see them every day. But you, as soon as you walked in, I thought, ‘Hold on, he’s new.’ And then I looked at you again, and I realised it was you.”

“Yes,” says Sergey, smiling almost painfully. “It’s me.”

“How long has it been? Ten years? Fifteen?”

“Twelve.”

“Twelve years. Well. Can you imagine? Twelve years. Incredible. I heard you were up in Archangel, writing music for a theatre company. That’s what everyone was saying. Is it true?”

Sergey shakes his head.

“Oh,” says Vasily. “They must have got it wrong. But you’re here now.”

Sergey nods.

“And it’s so good to see you! I hardly see anyone these days. We were, well, you know… One oughtn’t say such things in public, but people like us, the artists, we weren’t exactly front of the queue when the rations were being handed out. Were you here at all, during the blockade?”

Sergey shakes his head.

“Of course not. Silly question. But you were lucky. Say, are you going to eat all of that bread?”

“Yes.”

“Only, if you weren’t, I have some wood in my flat that I could swap. It’s good, too. It’s not damp and it won’t burn too quickly, not like some of the cheap shit that’s going around.”

“No, I’m quite hungry, so –”

“Do you have a place to stay?”

Sergey tells him that yes, he has a place to stay, in Kirovskiy, near the Kirov plant.

“Nice, nice,” says Vasily.

“Is it?”

“Oh, yes. And prestigious, too. You’re lucky. Have you moved in yet?”

“Not yet, no,” says Sergey. “I only got here an hour ago.”

“Oh, well,” says Vasily. “If you’ve not moved in yet, they might not have wood. In your rooms, I mean. They don’t always give you fuel, when you move in. Some places, it takes weeks. So, you know, if you don’t have any…”

Sergey draws his plate closer and dunks what’s left of his bread into the rassolnik.

“You must be hungry,” says Vasily. “I know they don’t always have much bread on the trains. I’ve heard, a friend once told me, if you want a bigger ration of bread…” His voice drops to a whisper. “If you want a bigger ration of bread, you have to give the ticket inspector a blowjob. Is that true?”

Sergey smiles. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Oh, then you must be hungry,” says Vasily, laughing and coughing at the same time. “Say, listen. I live near here. When you’re finished, let’s go to mine. I’m on the third floor, so it’s not too cold, and I have some vodka.”

A loaded invitation, but Sergey has nowhere else to go and two hours till he can report to his tenement. When the bill is settled he and Vasily walk the short distance to Vasily’s building, just off Sennaya Square.

Twelve years ago Vasily Sidorov lived not so far from here, in an apartment complex on Sadovaya Street, and Sergey remembers summer parties when they would congregate on a small terrace overlooking the square, and they would drink champagne; Soviet champagne, of course, but ice cold, and sparkling and as crisp as a fresh apple.

Vasily’s new building has no terrace. One of its two entrances is sealed shut by a frozen snowdrift, and the other opens only when Vasily barges into it with such force that Sergey worries he – and not the door – might break.

Once inside, they are taken up to Vasily’s floor by a gloomy hallway and a flight of stairs that smells strongly of piss, while Vasily’s room smells mustily of tobacco smoke, mildew and dust. Sergey recalls Vasily having a small collection of illicit Persian rugs and a mantelpiece crammed with ornaments, but this new place – if it can be called new – is sparse, decorated only with a few pieces of old furniture. The floor and the walls are bare.

“Please, sit,” says Vasily. “I’ll get us some vodka. I only have one glass. Do you mind having yours in a teacup?”

“Not at all.”

“What am I saying? You have the glass, I’ll have the teacup. As you may be able to tell, I don’t do much entertaining these days…”

Vasily opens a cupboard and takes out the vodka, a chipped teacup and a cloudy tumbler. He crosses the room with an awkward, scuttling motion; bug-like, a spider creeping along a skirting board. He was once the most graceful man Sergey had ever met. Small in build, but not feminine. Women and men alike considered him beautiful. Now he reminds Sergey of a gargoyle or some grinning demon, a didko, from an old folktale. He takes to the sagging armchair opposite, and for a moment they sit in silence; Vasily still smiling at him, scrutinising him.

“It’s incredible,” he says, at last. “That you came here. To Leningrad. It isn’t often men come back. Usually, well, usually they’re sent to some other place. Remember Remizov?”

As if the room has grown a degree or two colder, Sergey flinches. “Yes,” he says. “I remember him.”

Vasily goes on: “Ran into a spot of bother. Not long after you went away. Was trying to coerce some dancer into… well… you know. Didn’t realise the lad’s uncle was a party man in Moscow. Last thing I heard, he was teaching in Vladivostok.”

“Is that so?”

“Well, that’s what people said at the time. You know how it is. But no-one’s seen him since before the war.”

Secretary Remizov, joining the ranks of the disappeared. The news feels almost like a small, if pyrrhic, victory.

He and Vasily drink to “Peace and happiness for all men.” They clink cup and glass together and they drink. The vodka bites; as unfiltered as white spirit.

“He knew about us, you know,” says Vasily, through a succession of dry coughs. “Remizov.”

Sergey nods. “I know.”

“No idea who told him. One of the boys from the reserve troupe, I imagine. Bloody gossips. I hear he wasn’t best pleased. Still… I suppose we should be grateful he didn’t tell anyone. Well… He didn’t have a chance. No sooner had you gone, than so had he. And then the war happened, and everyone was gone. At least, that’s how it felt.”

“You stayed here?” Sergey asks. “During the war?”

“You were lucky,” Vasily says with a nod. “To be elsewhere.”

“Was it so bad?”

Vasily begins to chuckle, his laughter bubbling up out of him uncontrollably. His eyes grow moist. “Was it so bad?” he says. “Was it so bad? Oh, Sergey Andreievich. Like you wouldn’t believe. Everything… everything just fell apart. I don’t remember the Civil War, I was too young at the time, but my father told me this was so much worse. The sense that everything was coming apart at the seams. He didn’t have much time left. He died in the first January. We still had a little money to pay for his burial, and when we took his casket to the cemetery the corpses there were piled up on the roadside. Like so much refuse. There must have been hundreds of them. And the bodies on top of each pile had been stripped. First of their clothes. Then their flesh.

“They looked ridiculous, these corpses, with their oversized heads and bloated bodies. Arms and legs nothing but bones. Like marionettes.”

Vasily laughs again, and Sergey experiences a wave of nausea.

“What happened to the place on Sadovaya Street?” he asks, wishing to hear no more about the blockade. “Why aren’t you living there?”

“Oh, Sadovaya Street!” says Vasily. “Well. First, it was damaged. Mortar attack, or some such. Not a direct hit, you understand, but a shell landed in the square. Blew out every last window. They said I had to move, so they could fix it up. Moved me into this place. I think the previous tenants starved. Or perhaps it was typhoid. Anyway. The place was empty, so I moved in. And then, when the apartment on Sadovaya Street was all fixed up they told me I couldn’t have it back. Some party member wanted it, after his house was destroyed. Charming. Anyway. I’ve been here ever since. I know it’s not much, but it’s cosy enough.”

“And you don’t see anyone else?” Sergey asks. “No-one from the Kirov?”

“They’re all gone, I think. Either like you, or during the blockade. Tatiana Dmitrievna, well… the Little Barn Owl flapped her wings and flew off to Paris and then America. All very scandalous, of course. Seems the times finally caught up with her and that rancid little queen of hers. Even she couldn’t get away with living like that, not even with all her Party friends. So she left. I don’t think whatsisname was so lucky. Anyway… We don’t talk about any of that.”

“But you’re still here.”

Vasily grins, bearing ashen gums and the small black spaces where he’s lost one or two teeth.

“Yes,” he says. “I’m still here.”

“And the dancing?”

Vasily begins to laugh again, a nervous giggle that escalates into something braying, almost hysterical.

“Dancing?” he says. “Oh, Sergey Andreievich! Do you remember a dancer called Vasily Sidorov? If you do, you have a better memory than me. No. I haven’t danced in years. The Kirov was damaged during the war, so there was nowhere to dance. Then I was ill, pneumonia, that first winter. I pulled through, but I missed the season when they shipped everyone off to Kuybyshev and Perm. And then, to cap it all off, after we’d gone hungry for so long… well… look at me.”

He sighs, waving one hand over a body that looks shrunken, consumptive.

“But do you remember how I danced?” he says, rising clumsily from his chair and taking another sip of vodka. “Remember your ballet?”

“I remember,” says Sergey.

“I was Pechorin. The hero.”

Vasily places his cup on an otherwise empty mantelpiece and performs an exaggerated march across the sitting room, humming a melody Sergey hasn’t heard in several years. The dance is now an ugly parody of what it once was.

“It was a wonderful ballet,” says Vasily. “Such a shame.”

“It was a long time ago,” says Sergey. “It doesn’t matter.”

Short of breath, Vasily braces himself against the back of his armchair and looks down at Sergey with that same appalling fascination with which he studied him in the café.

“I’ve just remembered!” he says. “I have it here somewhere.”

He crosses the room to a small bureau and begins opening and closing its drawers, rifling through the papers in each one before producing a manuscript bound with a cover of purple card.

“Here!” he says.

“What is it?”

“Your ballet.”

Vasily hands him the book, and Sergey begins thumbing through the pages, seeing, written in his own hand, snatches of melody both surprising and immediately familiar.

“You kept this?” he asks. “Even after everything that happened?”

“Yes,” says Vasily, beaming. “Even then. I thought someone should. You left it here. After the party. Do you remember?”

Sergey offers the manuscript back, but Vasily tells him it’s his, that he should keep it.

“I can’t do that,” says Sergey. “You’ve had it all this time, and besides…”

“Oh, I insist. Leave it here much longer and I may finally succumb to the temptation to burn it for a bit of warmth. And besides. I can’t imagine they let you keep much of your work, where you were.”