He went and got the cognac, puzzled. She had drunk a lot today, but it had not noticeably affected her judgment or the authority of her manner. Evidently he was being subjected to some other test, a probe of his reactions. She had done it before, in the church. She was taking risks, of course, for herself, for Rogachev.
He turned with the cognac, and saw she had shifted position on the sofa.
‘Come and sit here,’ she said. ‘I’m tired of shouting.’
He sat slowly, and carefully poured.
‘Your hands are long,’ she said. ‘Also your femur.’ She examined the femur. She examined it all the way up, and unzipped him and slipped a hand in.
He gazed at her.
‘What’s this?’ he said.
‘Are you surprised?’
‘You have examined me once already.’
‘Now you can examine me.’
With her other arm she pulled his head down and kissed him. It was quite an affectionate kiss, and she was smiling as she drew back and looked into his face. ‘Long fellow,’ she said, ‘today you tried to kill me, and I could be dead. But I am not dead, and nor are you, and this is my house. You attract me. I am accustomed to getting what I want. And it’s something to celebrate, after all — being alive. You can take me to bed now.’
She was not as well found as Lydia Yakovlevna; lankier, less yielding. But she was lithe, controlled, and quite used, as she said, to getting what she wanted. She was also very much more genuine, arching without histrionics when her moment came, and he arched at the same time, and afterwards she kissed his face and stroked it.
‘Yes, worth celebrating,’ she said. ‘And altogether satisfactory. But now there’s work to do.’
They got up and did it for some hours: planning how he could get into and also out of the place he had come around the world to reach. Before midnight they had agreed the first steps, and these were detailed steps.
34
On Monday he took his sick-note to the administration block, and immediately afterwards went to see Vassili in his store room.
‘You didn’t come Friday,’ Vassili said.
‘They gave me a medical. I’ll take the stuff at lunch time, Vassili. And, listen, I need a bobik for a week.’
‘A week?’
‘They laid me off, at the medical. They say I’m tired and need a week’s rest.’
Vassili looked him over. ‘Well, you’re looking shagged,’ he said. ‘That’s your Evenk girl, is it? What use are you going to be to her if you’re worn out?’
‘Never mind — I need a bobik.’
‘So go and ask Liova.’
‘If I’m off work I’m not entitled … Vassili, put in a word for me.’
The old Yakut chuckled silently. ‘All right But let him take a look at you himself. He’ll see what a wreck you are. You don’t need to mention anything.’
He grunted and went to find the Light Vehicles chief.
‘Well,’ Liova said, staring at him, ‘you need a rest, it’s obvious. You’ve been working hard.’
‘I don’t. But it’s what they said. I’m sorry.’
‘Kolya — take it easy, now. You’re a good lad.’
At lunch time he went back to the depot and found Vassili alone, eating from his pot.
‘You got your bobik,’ the Yakut told him, chewing. ‘And Liova said shove one into her for him, too. I never saw him laugh so much. You want to take the axles now?’
He took the axles and he also took the manual, to see how to put the thing together. And in an hour and a quarter was at Anyuysk,
He took the made track fast and was soon off it and on to the tributary. The days were now shorter, barely two hours; this one grey, clear, very cold; a still life, set in ice. It was a week now since he’d been here. He found the overhanging bushes and got out and inspected the cave with a torch. All as he had left it. He drove the bobik in with the lights on, kept the engine running, and unloaded the axle assemblies. Then he stood back and looked around. Spacious enough, but no room for two bobiks. When he started assembly, the other one would have to stand outside.
He became aware of another problem. For the assembly he was going to need light. Not light from the delivery bobik — that was out of the question; even from the air it might be seen. And not just torchlight. Proper lighting. He needed a generator, and some wiring rigged, and a tarpaulin or sheet for the entrance. Well, it could be done.
The ice box was chilling him to the bone and he got back in the bobik and sat with the heat on, leafing through the greasy manual. The first job: bolt the chassis together. And get it on wheels. Then what? He studied the drawings and the exploded diagrams. Steering assembly, brakes, transmission, clutch. Hours of fiddling in the deep freeze. He would need a heater, too.
It was dark outside now, and he reversed out and drove back along the tributary. He drove slowly with only side lights until he came to the made track and Anyuysk, and then put on speed. The plan called for him to go home now.
Anna Antonovna heard him enter the apartment, and shortly afterwards was tapping on the door herself. He had given the old lady her own key but she was discreet in using it.
‘Well, I tidied you in here,’ she said. ‘But what happened this weekend? You said you wouldn’t be working.’
‘No, I was with friends.’
‘Here, or in Tchersky?’
‘Neither. At Novokolymsk.’ This was the story they had agreed. ‘I’ve got a week off so I thought I’d pay them a visit — with a bobik I borrowed. I’ll be running out there again,’ he told her, grinning.
‘Ah, you found the natives at the collective, did you?’
‘Sure. And they can sleep me. I only looked in to pick up a few clothes.’
‘What, you’re going back now?’
‘For a few days.’
‘Well, I know who won’t be pleased at that,’ Anna Antonovna said; but the old cat face was smiling as she left.
She would be passing on this interesting item to the young lady in the supermarket. All as planned. Everybody had to know. He took a shower and sat in one of Ponomarenko’s bathrobes, with a vodka.
There was no phone in the apartment, and he didn’t want to use the public one below. He waited until he could hear no traffic and then dressed and packed a bag and left. At Tchersky the lights were on behind her curtains, and he turned into the driveway. She had given him a set of keys and he parked the bobik with hers in the shed and locked it again. Then he let himself into the house.
35
The house of Dr Komarov had stood a hundred years — a long time for a simple one of wood, but the wood was good. It had seen out Tsar Alexander III and Tsar Nicolas II, and also the entire communist régime. Though tilted sharply in two directions, it still looked good for many years to come, for now it was rooted firmly in the permafrost.
Now but not always. In 1893 when the cellar had held prisoners of Alexander III they had lit a fire in it to try to stay alive. This had thawed the permafrost, and occasioned the first tilt. The second was Dr Komarov’s. In an onslaught on the bugs and lice that infested the place he had treated every centimetre of it with a chemical solution; and to make sure of remaining larvae had boiled them with a steam hose. He had steamed out the cellar too, and in the summer of 1959 the house had lurched slowly forward.
The timbers had stood up well to this and the house would not now lurch any more. His daughter Tatiana had seen to that. Her first act had been to drive piles into the permafrost, pinning the structure in its present position, and then to isolate the cellar with half a metre of insulating material — floor, walls and roof. A trapdoor enabled it still to be used as a storeroom, and it provided quite a capacious one. Here Porter found the kerosene stove and the generator — the latter a neat job from Japan, not much needed in the past few years as Tchersky’s power supply had improved.