Vadym, eyes shut, spoke on the telephone at his desk.
— I’ve told you everything I know. He was assigned abroad. It’s a great honour to be allowed to serve abroad, and with all his languages, and you’re proud, yes? I’m proud. What? Yes, I love him. He’s my nephew. Of course, I love him.
In the corridor, Kostya stepped to the side of the door, out of Vadym’s line of sight. He’d come to thank Vadym for the mushrooms, hoping Vadym would then invite him somewhere, even out for a quick walk, just away.
Away from Lubyanka.
Arkady’s parties.
Everything.
Vadym covered his eyes with his hand. —Petya, please. I am doing everything I can…His work is secret. I am sure he will write to you as soon as he’s able, and who knows how long mail might take, wherever he is, or if he’s even allowed to write. Yes, the map is big. I know. I know. Petya. Petya, I’m your brother. I would not hide any word of Misha from you. My fault? I didn’t force him to join NKVD. Do you really think…Kostya? Yes, he’s…Petya, if Kostya Nikto knew where to find the slightest trace of Misha, if he’d even dreamed of him, he’d have told me right away. What? No! Petya, sometimes, in a war…Listen to me…do not call me at work like this anymore. Petya, please. Stop. I have no answers. Just stop.
The receiver clicked against the cradle.
Kostya stepped into the doorway, ready to distract Vadym from his misery, ready to break the spell.
Hands hiding his face, Vadym leaned on his elbows. His whispers of his nephew’s name sounded like a prayer.
This noise of private grief, this naked despair: Kostya blushed.
Still unnoticed, he eased Vadym’s door almost shut and returned to his own office.
FEME SOLE 2
Wednesday 9 June
Sitting in the front room beneath the open window, hoping to catch a breeze, annoyed by the bright white walls, and very tired, Temerity rubbed her temples. Shards of memory glinted from the evening she left Hotel Lux, and she reached for them. The music on the unattended radio, the empty street, the two men. The smell of the interior of the car. The threats. You love your papa, don’t you?
Love Edward West? Yes, she did. She’d also hated him, feared him, mocked him, admired him, and modelled herself after him. As a child, she’d seen him as a disappointing link to her dead mother, a man unwilling even to talk of Viktoria. Later Temerity understood he’d been not unwilling but incapable. She’d eavesdropped one evening when she was twelve, during one of her Aunt Min’s visits home from India. Min asked her brother if he thought he might ever remarry, and Edward dismissed the idea with a snort. —No one would have me.
— Really, Edward. Why on earth not? You’re rich, not too hideous to look at—
— Oh, thank you very much indeed.
— And you’re kind. A woman could do much worse.
The soda siphon hissed. —Let me rephrase it, Min. I should not inflict myself on another woman. I’m not the same man who married Vika.
— We all change over time.
— It’s not change. It’s damage. I’m eaten out. I’m incomplete. A gorilla at the London Zoo is more of a human being than I am. A riot in the street I could understand. A war. A cancer. God’s sake, even a runaway horse. But flu, Min? Wife and son to bloody flu?
Temerity heard a terrible noise then. Her father, all duty, love, and strength, stern voice and high expectations, cried.
Min’s skirts rustled; perhaps she sat next to him. —Edward, listen to me. You lost Vika and Felix. You didn’t kill them.
His voice shook. —But why did I live? Why am I still here? I got sick first, and she brought me tea, and I was so feverish that I thought she was a ghost, and I shoved her away, made her spill tea all over her dress. Even as my arm reached out, I knew it was Vika and not a ghost, yet she was both at once. When tea burned her, I laughed.
— You were ill. There’s no fault here. No one is responsible.
Edward took a deep breath. —That’s it. No one’s responsible. The story makes no sense. And I can’t love, Min, not again. Not like that.
Away at school that autumn, her first year at Roedean, Temerity saw that the failure to create a palpable memory of her mother was not Edward’s but her own. She could gaze at photographs and listen to stories, but she could not make her mother live. She had no memory of Viktoria, and Edward had too much. Still, she often treated him and others with resentment, and her second year at Roedean played out as a disaster. Appalled by Temerity’s marks and behaviour, insistent she could do much better, Edward pleaded with the headmistress to keep Temerity just one more term. The headmistress cited several examples of Temerity being disruptive, even violent, assaulting other girls with surprising strength. —We can’t even have a Girl Guides meeting without her causing a fuss. And her such a slight little thing.
Edward reached an agreement with the headmistress and removed Temerity so that everyone might avoid the word expulsion. He was working in the city, Kurseong House closed until summer, and he now had to bring Temerity to his London flat. On the train ride, he planned a long letter to Min, electing instead to send a telegram. T good as sent down. Advice? Min replied with three words: Languages. Prepare her.
So began Temerity’s intensive study of modern languages. She’d had tutors at home before, but this time she felt challenged and thereby respected. Dormant abilities woke, and the discipline she’d so resented at Roedean now felt natural and right. Edward told Temerity later that once she made up her mind to excel, once it felt like her own idea, her intellect seemed to ignite.
When Temerity asked to learn Russian, Edward balked. They argued for days, Edward evasive, Temerity infuriated and confused. Edward knew he must lose this dispute. His recurring dreams of Temerity lost in a huge country while looking for her mother: not the girl’s burden, and certainly not her fault. Sometimes Edward wondered if the 1918 flu had damaged his brain, weakened it, leaving him prone to that Temerity-lost dream whenever he got so much as a sniffle. The dream’s logic was simple and clear. Forbid Temerity from learning Russian, and she would never go to Russia. Of course, Edward could so no such thing — well, he could forbid it all he liked, but she would not listen — and he did not even try to explain his fears. Temerity would consider his dream utter nonsense and dismiss it with a laugh like Min’s, that memsahib’s laugh of certainty touched with derision, and she’d be right to do so. Besides, he’d already boasted of his daughter’s abilities to his superiors in the Service, and they’d indicated much interest. A daughter of an existing polyglot agent, groomed for the work? What a gift — if she passed the interviews, being female and subject to a woman’s weaker mind, after all. How many languages did you say?
So many arguments. Father and daughter loved each other with not just a shared understanding of how much they resembled each other but with a ferocity that startled them both. The arguments lessened as Temerity got older, but both Edward and Temerity remained primed, ready for dispute. Temerity worried that her father must be so disappointed in her and all her inadequacies; Edward worried that his daughter might be her own worst enemy.
They’d argued during their last conversation, back in early March. They’d just boarded a train at St. Pancras headed to Prideaux-on-Fen and Kurseong House. Temerity, already regretting her agreement to help get Kurseong House aired out for the summer, cursed the weather. —Bloody miserable rain.
Edward sat quite still as the train gathered speed. Rattling his newspaper, wheezing, he exposed an upside-down story on the worsening situation in Spain. —Temmy, have you seen this note on a lecture at the British Museum, on the death drive?