How much longer could he bear to stay here? In the last couple of weeks, the dacha, where he had thought he would stay until Vladimir died, had become like some kind of hell on earth. So why not leave? Perhaps not tonight, or tomorrow, but in a few days, so they had time to find a nurse to replace him. That wouldn’t be abandoning his patient. That’s all that Vladimir was to him. A patient, and he was just a nurse. Another nurse would be as good.
But Vladimir would never find the same familiarity with another nurse as he found with him. He had reached a stage in his disease when traces of recognition could never again be created – only forgotten. And even though he asked ten times a day who Sheremetev was, underneath it, that familiarity, that ease, was still there, as Vera had discerned. That was why he could resolve the look of fear and confusion in Vladimir’s eyes with a word, a touch, when no one else could. If he left, that look would never be dispelled.
What if Vladimir died? The thought came into his head. Families of some other patients who had reached this stage had even said that they thought it would be for the best, occasionally going so far as to ask for his help. What kind of life did Vladimir have? There was no dignity or quality in it. And if Vladimir died, he could leave.
It had to happen sooner or later. Maybe it would be best for everybody if it was sooner.
He drove the thought out of his head.
His mind drifted. He thought of the money under the mattress on which he was lying. Thirty-two and a half thousand dollars, including what he had got for the first watch and what he had got for the second two. He was glad now that he had sold them, even if the other watch by itself was enough. There would be something for Pasha when he got out, something he could take with him from Russia to start a new life.
What if he sold more watches? What if he swallowed his distaste for Vladimir and stayed on at the dacha for a while, after all, and built himself up a nice nest egg? Sell a watch each week, for example, on his day off. Not always to Rostkhenkovskaya. There must be others who would buy. Mix it up a bit so no one would be suspicious. After a few months, he would have a fortune.
Be like Goroviev. Gouge Vladimir back for all the gouging he had done.
He grimaced, disgusted at himself.
And yet the thought persisted. Why not? Maybe give some of the proceeds to Stepanin, so he could leave his hopeless feud with Barkovskaya before it killed him. Who would know? Who would ever miss those watches? Why leave them for others to have after Vladimir was dead, people who almost certainly already had so much wealth that the whole cabinet of watches would add barely a speck to the mountain of their riches?
The whole cabinet of watches…
Again, Sheremetev tried to put the idea forcibly out of his mind, dismayed at the way it kept coming back. First things first. Tomorrow, he had to get the three hundred thousand for Pasha. Right now, that was all he should be thinking about: how he would safely carry the watch, how he would get to the shop, how he would transport the money to Oleg.
He lay in bed, resting on the mattress with the money hidden underneath it, his back aching, his cheek throbbing, torn between disgust for himself and hope for Pasha, thinking about tomorrow.
15
THE NEXT MORNING DAWNED grey and drizzly. The atmosphere in the dacha was oppressive. In the staff dining room, the security guards ate their breakfast gloomily. Stepanin’s assistants came out of the kitchen to refill the kasha pot and went back in without uttering a word.
Just before ten o’clock, the drizzle petered out and the clouds parted for a time, allowing through rays of weak, watery sunshine. Sheremetev took Vladimir out for his walk. Goroviev passed by with a hoe in his hand. He stopped and asked how Vladimir was. Vladimir ignored him. The gardener walked with them for a few minutes, but Sheremetev had nothing to say to him, and eventually Goroviev went away.
At around the same time, in the staff wing of the dacha, Stepanin knocked on the door of Barkovskaya’s office. ‘Come in,’ called out Barkovskaya’s voice. The cook entered and closed the door behind him.
VLADIMIR’S LUNCH CAME UP at one o’clock: vegetarian stew with polenta cakes. Sheremetev fed Vladimir in his sitting room, then took the tray away and finished the leftovers himself, not wanting to go downstairs. Vera was due at three o’clock. A few minutes before she arrived, Sheremetev left Vladimir watching footage of himself on the television and went into the dressing room. He retrieved the Patek Philippe from the cabinet and slipped it into his pocket.
Eleyekov drove him into town, where a client had scheduled a pickup for three-thirty. Sheremetev had toyed with the idea of paying Eleyekov to drive him all the way to Moscow and wait for him while he settled his business at Rostkhenkovskaya’s shop, then take him to Oleg’s, thus avoiding the risk of carrying the watch and later the money on the metro. But it occurred to him that if an inventory of Vladimir’s watches actually existed, and if the ones he had taken were ever missed, the last thing he needed was for Vladimir’s driver to recall that he had taken Sheremetev to a watch shop in Moscow. Even getting him to wait out of sight, so he didn’t know exactly where Sheremetev was going, would have been a risk.
Once he had the money, Sheremetev thought, he would get a taxi. There were always taxis around Arbatskaya station.
‘Guess what’s for dinner tonight,’said Eleyekov, glancing at Sheremetev with a knowing smile on his face as they cruised down the drive of the dacha.
‘Fried air?’ suggested Sheremetev. Air was all Stepanin had left now if he persisted in refusing to cook anything that Barkovskaya’s suppliers were bringing.
Eleyekov laughed, pulling up in front of the security barrier at the gate. ‘Fried air! That’s good. No. Guess.’ The barrier rose as Eleyekov waited for Sheremetev to reply. ‘Chicken fricassee!’ he announced, glancing at Sheremetev to see what he would make of such momentous news.
‘Chicken fricassee?’
Eleyekov grinned and drove out of the gate. ‘Stepanin’s made it up with Barkovskaya.’
‘No!’
‘Yes! This morning. He finally bit the bullet and went and talked to her. It’s all okay, apparently. He’ll get something. Not as much as before – in fact, between you and me, reading between the lines, I think it’s quite a lot less – but still, something is better than nothing, right? If you can’t have the whole loaf, at least make sure you get a few crumbs from the table.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Barkovskaya’s won. That’s clear to him now. The fricassee is his surrender. She loves it, you know. Well, she’ll eat this one with double pleasure! She’s a tough one, Barkovskaya, there’s no doubt about that. But that’s what it takes to get ahead, right, Nikolai Ilyich?’
Sheremetev was amazed at what the driver had just told him. After what Stepanin had said yesterday, he would never have imagined that the cook would capitulate. But in reality, what else could he do? One person beaten up, two places firebombed, another person shot… What next? Burn down the dacha? It couldn’t go on. Barkovskaya held the trump card, that was what all of this had proved, and finally Stepanin himself had had to accept it.
‘If he had done it earlier,’ said Eleyekov, ‘he would have got more. I told him. Vitya, I said, talk to her.’
‘So did I.’
‘You know, at the start, it might really have only been her cousin with the chickens that she was trying to help. If he’d accepted that, she might not have gone any further. Still… Who knows? Maybe he was right to fight it. She’s so tough, maybe she would have given him even less if he had simply given up.’ The driver frowned, considering the conundrum. ‘Hard to say.’