4
In the light of the next morning, Andrei is confident that he and Anna have let themselves get worked up over nothing. For heaven’s sake, all Russov has asked him to do is to see the boy. He and Anna have given way to paranoia. Easy enough to do, but not very creditable, he tells himself, as he walks to work through the calm grey morning. This mist will lift later on, and it’ll be a fine day. Not too hot. He doesn’t mind that. Humid, stifling days are bad for his patients. The whole hospital simmers with suppressed irritation once the mercury reaches the high twenties.
His heels strike firmly on the pavement. Anna has had his shoes resoled and the cobbler put metal tips on, as if he were a kid. But he likes the sound.
In bad weather he might take the tram, but on a morning like this half an hour of brisk walking is just what it takes to clear his mind. Everything will be all right. That hollow feeling in his stomach is because he’s eaten nothing. They overslept. Anna was rushing around the apartment and there was barely time to gulp a glass of tea.
The boy is a patient who requires diagnosis and treatment: not only requires it, but has a right to it. This has got nothing to do with Russov now.
The figure sitting outside the private room is a Ministry of State Security policeman; one of Volkov’s men. Andrei barely glances at him. He’s heard of this happening, although high-ups often go to private clinics or have medical treatment in their own homes. But with children it’s another matter. Andrei’s mouth tightens in anger. The boy’s ill, and they prop a goon outside his door.
In the door’s name-slot there is one typewritten word: VOLKOV. Information, threat or warning? It could be, and probably is, all three.
‘Your papers,’ says the policeman, holding out a hand.
‘I am Doctor Alekseyev, a paediatrician here. I’ve been asked to examine this patient.’
‘Your papers.’
*
The door of the private room closes behind Andrei with a soft, firm click. The boy is propped up on a heap of pillows. He has a miniature screwdriver in one hand, and an engine on a wooden tray in front of him. He does not look up at Andrei, but the woman sitting at the bedside gets to her feet with convulsive suddenness. She is expensively dressed and her face is thick with make-up, but her body is strong and square. The body of a peasant.
‘Good morning,’ says Andrei.
Still the boy doesn’t look up, but the mother says hastily, ‘Say good morning to the doctor, Gorya.’
The boy’s fingers tighten on the screwdriver. Andrei measures the outline of his body under the bedclothes. He’s tall for ten, and slender for his age. They have fixed a cage over his right leg. Andrei advances slowly and casually towards the bed, as a horseman might approach a nervous foal. The child keeps his head down, but Andrei catches the glint of his eye as he steals a look upwards, towards the doctor.
He’s afraid. Arrogant too, maybe, but that’s scarcely his fault.
Andrei takes a chair on the opposite side of the bed to the mother.
‘That’s a fine engine,’ he says.
The boy doesn’t answer. His face is pale and pinched. Andrei judges that he is in moderately severe pain.
‘He’s got dozens of them at home, a real collection,’ breaks in the mother. ‘There’s nothing he likes better than putting them to rights when they go wrong. Wherever the fault is, he’ll always find it …’
‘That’s good,’ says Andrei, and then to the boy, ‘I’m Doctor Alekseyev. My father was an engineer; he worked on the design of railway bridges.’ Still the boy won’t look up, but Andrei knows that he’s listening. ‘He worked in Siberia. There are a lot of special problems when you’re building on permafrost, as you can imagine. He was like you: he could repair anything –’
‘He’s been in such pain, doctor, you can’t imagine,’ the mother interrupts again. ‘All night, he’s been waking up every hour.’
Andrei stands up, and holds out his hand across the bed. ‘Excuse me, I should have introduced myself to you. Andrei Mikhailovich Alekseyev. As you probably know, Dr Russov has requested me to do an examination.’
The mother nods, slowly. Her wide brown eyes may look bovine, but they are shrewd too, sharp even. She’s not happy with the way things have gone so far. This hospital has let her boy suffer, that’s what she thinks. Such things shouldn’t happen, not to people in their position. And yet her peasant self, deep within her, is telling her not to cross Andrei, because he is ‘the doctor’ and his powers have a touch of magic in them.
Suddenly she remembers her manners. ‘Polina Vasilievna Volkova,’ she says. She doesn’t want to cross him, but at the same time she knows who she is, and what her entitlements are.
‘I wonder if you’d be good enough to leave me with Gorya for a little while?’ he asks.
She stares at him. ‘But I’m his mother. He needs me here.’
‘Of course. But in this case I consider it the best approach,’ he says firmly, deciding neither to apologize nor to explain. ‘And I can see that you’re exhausted. You’ve been up all night with him, I expect?’
‘Not just last night,’ says the mother with grim pride. ‘It’s more than a week since I’ve lain in my bed. Before he got taken in here, I was up with him night after night. Never had my clothes off. You can’t leave a child to the servants.’
The effrontery of it makes him smile in spite of himself. Quickly, he recomposes his face. ‘I thought as much. It’s what any mother would want to do,’ he says. ‘I understand that you won’t feel able to take a nap, even though that’s what you need, but some tea and a breath of fresh air would do you good. There’s a courtyard where you can go. Any of the staff will show you.’
Her face eases. She nods again, this time in acquiescence. She wants to be looked after too. ‘It’s true. It’s stuffy in here, even with the fan.’
Yes, they’ve got a fan. And a bunch of grapes in a bowl on the bedside table. And a handsome bar of chocolate with a wrapper he doesn’t even recognize. But he doesn’t want to think about all that.
The mother pauses, holding the door handle, and looks back at Andrei. ‘He’s my only one,’ she says, and he can’t tell from her tone if it’s a plea, a threat or a warning.
The door closes behind the mother. He has lost Gorya again, who is twiddling his screwdriver in a minute screw. Andrei sits down. The screwdriver slips out of the groove, because the boy’s hand is so tense. As if there’s been no interruption to their conversation, Andrei says, ‘I used to love watching my father repair our radio. If he couldn’t get hold of the correct part then he was always able to improvise.’
‘That’s stupid,’ says Gorya in a low voice. ‘You should always use the correct part, or you’ll damage the mechanism. Or, if the radio is no good, then you should replace it.’
Andrei looks at the boy with something close to pity. How has this boy been brought up? He’s like the citizen of a foreign country. ‘But sometimes that’s not possible,’ he says. ‘You have to make use of what you can get hold of. Who put that cage over your leg?’
‘One of the nurses.’
‘Don’t you know her name?’
The boy shrugs. ‘I can’t know all of their names.’
‘So, does it keep the weight off your leg satisfactorily? Does it ease the pain?’
‘My leg doesn’t hurt,’ says the boy savagely. ‘I only feel ill because I’m stuck in this stupid hospital. I’d be all right if I could go home. It’s just swollen because an idiot called Vanka whacked me with his racket when we were playing doubles.’
‘Oh – you play tennis?’
‘I don’t like it. I like football.’
‘I see. So the important thing is to try to get you fit for next season.’
For the first time, Gorya’s face relaxes. ‘Of course.’
‘Right. That means we’re going to have to do some tests. They won’t be particularly comfortable, but they’re essential. You understand? Blood tests, X-rays and so on. But first of all I need to take a close look at your leg and ask you some questions, which will probably sound very boring, but are all quite important. If you like, your mother can come in and help you with the answers; but you’re ten, aren’t you?’
‘Nearly eleven.’
‘Then I expect you can tell me everything I need to know.’
‘She gets things wrong, anyway.’
There’s a knock on the door, a light tap. It’s Lyuba.
‘Russov said you’d want me to take the bloods.’
‘In a while. We’re just going to have a look at Gorya’s leg first.’
Carefully, he lifts the bedcovers off the cage, and draws them to the foot of the bed. He lifts the cage away, and puts it on the floor. The boy is wearing expensive dark blue pyjamas, but the right leg of them has been cut off at the thigh.
‘Mum did that,’ says Gorya, with a trace of animation. ‘She got the scissors and cut right through the leg of all my pyjamas, because they were hurting me.’
‘Were they?’
He can see the swelling on the tibia, just below the knee joint. He touches the child’s skin gently. The swelling feels warm. ‘This is where it hurts?’
‘It’s where Vanka whacked me.’
‘Very clumsy … How long ago was that?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘It’s still tender … and quite red, too. Has it been that colour for long?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘You know, Gorya, a machine can tell you that something’s wrong by overheating or simply by failing to work any more. But your body works differently. It will give you clues, and sometimes they are quite hard to read. So a doctor has to understand the design but he also has to be a detective. You see this redness and swelling?’
‘Yes.’ Gorya barely glances. He’s dropped the screwdriver and his hands are balled into fists. It’s hurting.
‘Look just here. Don’t worry, it’s still your own leg, the same as always.’ Slowly, reluctantly, Gorya lets his gaze drop below his knee. ‘There,’ Andrei continues, ‘that swelling tells us there’s something wrong. Maybe it’s been caused by the blow from your friend Vanka’s racket; maybe it’s something else. It’s our job to find out, so we can try to make it better. A detective has to search for every clue. Perhaps you’ll be able to remember things that will help us.’
His fingers gently trace the outline of the swelling. He glances up at Lyuba. Her arms are folded and she’s watching intently, frowning.
‘It’s been like this for a while, hasn’t it, Gorya? It’s been hurting you like this, but perhaps no one else noticed? And maybe you’ve been a bit tired and sometimes you’ve been limping, even though you haven’t fallen over?’ murmurs Andrei, not looking at the boy’s face. As if unconsciously, Gorya nods his agreement. ‘But have you got this type of pain anywhere else?’
‘No.’
‘Not in the other leg? Good. Not in your back or your shoulders?’
‘Not anywhere. It wouldn’t be, because Vanka only whacked me here.’
‘That’s true. Move your arms for me, forward and back, like this. That’s right. Now, try to think back, Gorya. Have you had pain and swelling like this anywhere else in your body that you remember? Not in the last few months, maybe, but any other time?’
‘I told you, it’s only where I got hit.’
‘Good, you’ve got an excellent memory. There, that’s enough. Let’s put this cage back over your leg, and then we can drape the bedclothes back. It’s surprising how you can get chilly when you’re lying in bed, even in a warm room. We’ll be doing an X-ray, Gorya – you know what that is? You’ve had one before?’
‘Yes, it’s a picture of my bones, the X-rays make them show,’ says the child, so glibly that Andrei knows Lena was right. Russov has already had X-rays done, and has disposed of them rather than adding them to Gorya’s file. He must keep his temper. Children are so quick to spot anger, and think that it’s directed against them.
‘Fine, Gorya, we’ll do X-rays, and Nurse Osipova here will take some blood so that we can do tests on that. None of it will hurt more than a little, but the problem is that your leg hurts when you move it, doesn’t it – and we shall have to take you to the Radiology Department to do the X-rays.’
‘How do you know it hurts when I move?’
‘You keep it so still. We’ll bring a wheelchair, and Nurse Osipova will help you. She’s very strong.’ And no doubt that policeman will come traipsing after us, all the way to the door of the Radiology Department. Russov must have calculated that the policeman didn’t matter; he wouldn’t have the medical knowledge to see anything wrong with doing two sets of X-rays. But the name Russov will already be in the police file; didn’t he understand that?
Gorya looks at Lyuba’s broad forearms. His body has relaxed slightly. He is beginning to trust these people to look after him.
‘So will my leg be better in time for pre-season training?’
‘I hope so. That’s what we all want. But at this point I can’t say yes or no, Gorya, because I haven’t got the evidence.’
The boy sniffs loudly. He’s looking straight at Andrei now, taking in everything. Lyuba has turned away and is washing her hands at the corner basin in preparation for taking the bloods. Andrei can tell from the vigorous splashing and scrubbing that there’s a lot she’d like to say.
‘My dad’ll be angry if I’m not better by then. He wants me to be in the under-elevens first team this year.’
‘Is that what you want, too?’
‘Course it is. It’s what everyone wants. Vanka won’t get in though, he’s not fit enough. He could be, but he hasn’t got the commitment. Dad takes me to training every Saturday morning, or if he can’t our chauffeur does. Even if you miss a week it affects your fitness. I run, too. My dad’s made a running track at our dacha.’
Andrei nods. Some patients give way to hospital life almost at once, others fight it every step of the way, insisting that really they still belong to the world outside. They can’t be ill, because they haven’t got time. Besides, they’re going to a wedding next weekend, or they’re expecting a promotion. Don’t you understand, doctor, I’m not a patient like all the rest. Children cling to what was going to happen on the day they got ill. That cinema trip hasn’t been abandoned, it’s just been postponed. Even months later, when the programme has changed dozens of times, they keep on asking.
Normal life is where Gorya knows that he belongs. Privileged, extraordinary, normal life, with a running track at the dacha and a car to take him to football training. Poor kid.
‘You know you said I limp?’ says Gorya.
‘Yes?’
‘Well, I don’t. Only when I forget. Dad’s never even noticed.’
‘No. He’ll be –’ But whatever it is that Volkov will be, Gorya can’t quite get it out. Perhaps he’s afraid of his father, like everyone else. Andrei just nods, as if nothing Gorya might say could surprise him. The boy shifts a little, and Andrei notices the way his lips tighten with the pain of movement.
‘You’re managing well,’ he says to Gorya. ‘Some people can’t handle pain.’
The boy’s face flushes faintly. ‘I’m all right,’ he says, then looks into Andrei’s face. Yes, Gorya has definitely decided to trust him now. ‘He’ll be so angry if I don’t get better soon,’ he mutters, and although his eyes are fixed on Andrei’s, there is still something hidden there: a shadow that only the child can see.
‘No one’s going to be angry,’ says Lyuba, taking the boy’s arm and turning it over. Expertly, her fingers rub the skin to bring up the vein, but Gorya takes no notice of her.
‘I think this lump’s like a balloon. If I stuck a pin in it, it would just burst,’ he says to Andrei, with a forced smile and a look of such desperate hope that Andrei bends forward and adjusts the bedclothes so as not to meet the boy’s eyes.
‘No,’ he says gently, ‘it doesn’t work like that. We’re going to do the very best we can, Gorya.’
‘Have you seen a boy with a leg like mine before?’
Andrei’s mind switches back. Yes, the first one was during the siege, but in the second year, when they had supplies of anaesthetic again. The boy was older than Gorya; about Kolya’s age. They amputated above the knee. Everything went well.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘We treat most illnesses in this hospital, you know.’
The child nods, satisfied. Andrei can see how tired he is. ‘Then you know what to do,’ he says, and closes his eyes.
‘I am only seeing what I expected to see,’ Andrei tells himself, as he stands in front of the X-ray. The light shines from behind and shows quite clearly the tumour deep in the bone and swelling out beyond it. The tumour is hard, star-shaped. He moves to the second plate, and then to the third. ‘Sofya, what do you think of this?’ he murmurs, but he already knows what Sofya Vasilievna thinks. There’s no other way of interpreting the X-ray.
Sofya moves up close to the image. Her face shows little expression, but her voice is warm and full as she says, ‘Poor kid. How old is he?’
‘Ten.’
‘They’re usually a little older.’
‘Yes. Of course it may be benign. We have to do the biopsy.’
Sofya studies the images in silence. ‘It doesn’t look good,’ she says. ‘It looks like an osteosarcoma to me.’
As soon as the word is out in the space between them, it becomes true. It’s been true for months already.
‘Unusual at that age though,’ says Sofya. ‘Poor kid. But sometimes I think it’s almost worse for the parents.’
‘Yes,’ he says absently, thinking, She doesn’t know, or she’d never talk about ‘the parents’ like that.
She unclips the X-ray plate, and hands it to him. ‘The others are on the table,’ she says. ‘So who’s going to do the biopsy?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘Why not go and see Brodskaya? She has orthopaedic oncological experience, and she’s an excellent surgeon. This isn’t your field.’
‘Yes. Yes, I probably will. Thanks, Sofya.’
‘I’m only doing my job.’ Unlike some … he thinks he hears her add in a murmur. His mind jumps. So she knows about Retinskaya and the X-rays she did for Russov. But she’s not saying anything. Why wade in shit if you don’t have to?
I’m a paediatric physician with a special interest in juvenile arthritic disease, Andrei tells himself. Facts are what’s needed here. I’m not an oncologist. Sofya’s right. This isn’t my area.
Russov is drinking tea in the canteen. His pale, pouchy face sharpens when he sees Andrei. Andrei puts down his dish of meatballs, and sits opposite Russov.
‘So, how was it?’
‘You know how it was.’
Russov’s hands fiddle with an unlit cigarette. ‘What do you mean?’ he mutters, but not as if expecting an answer.
‘He needs a biopsy. You’ve seen the X-rays, don’t pretend you haven’t. I’m not an oncologist, Boris Ivanovich. You knew that. You’re going to have to find someone else.’
Andrei hears the piano before he even puts his key in the door. His heart sinks. He’s going to have to speak to Kolya again. The neighbours will be complaining. The Rostovs are fine – they even claim to love the sound of Kolya playing – but the Maleviches complain regularly. They have a right to live in peace, don’t they? If they want to listen to someone playing a piano, which they don’t, they’ll go to a concert hall, thank you very much. Rachmaninov, is it? Well, it’s just a racket, as far as they’re concerned.
Andrei is pretty sure it’s Rachmaninov again today. Sure enough, the Malevich door opens. The son, Petya, ‘the Weasel’, as Kolya calls him, comes out, dressed for the office although he’s probably been home for hours already. He smells of bureaucracy.
‘If this goes on, we’ll have to put in a formal complaint.’
Andrei looks at him, keeping the door open, keeping his face impassive. ‘I’ll have a word,’ he says.
‘You’d better make sure you do,’ says the Weasel, and goes back inside his apartment, shutting the door.
Andrei’s fists clench at his sides. He’d like to get hold of the man’s shoulders, screw his head round, force him to listen. He’d say, ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? You’re talking about a boy playing the piano. Don’t you know how lucky we are, living here? These apartments have thick walls. You could be sharing a communal apartment with a family who fight all day long and would beat the shit out of you if you said a word about it.’
No, it’s worse than that. He’d like to get the Weasel around the throat, or lift him up and shake him until his hair flies out of its carefully pomaded quiff. It wouldn’t even be a fight. All the Maleviches are puny, apart from the mother.
But he can’t do any of it. People like the Maleviches can be dangerous and they have their own weapons. The mother never goes out. She’s the eyes and ears of the whole building. Andrei’s fists clench tighter. Deliberately, he loosens his shoulders and makes his hands drop to his sides. If he goes into the apartment in this state, he’ll only have a row with Kolya.
It’s just as well that the Maleviches aren’t interested in music and probably haven’t heard of Rachmaninov, otherwise they’d put in a ‘further and additional’ complaint about having their ears sullied by the work of an émigré. Their ‘further and additional’ complaints are well known throughout the building.
Andrei knocks on Kolya’s bedroom door.
‘The Weasel’s been round again. You’ll have to keep it down, Kolya.’
‘What? I can’t hear you!’
‘The Maleviches. There’ll be a formal complaint if we don’t watch out.’
The bedroom door flies open. ‘No one else says anything! I don’t even believe they can hear it, the walls are much thicker on that side than they are on the Rostov side, and the piano’s not against their wall, anyway.’ Kolya glowers as if Andrei is the enemy, not the messenger.
‘It was pretty loud.’
‘All right then, if you’re going to take their side, I’ll stop. I suppose I should have known you wouldn’t back me up. But next time I see that Weasel –’
Andrei knows that Kolya has far too much sense to say anything to any of the Maleviches. He watches as the boy goes back to the piano, lowers the lid with exaggerated, furious care and then brushes his hands as if wiping dirt off them.
‘Cretins,’ he says. ‘Idiots.’
‘What were you playing?’
‘The second sonata.’
‘But isn’t that very difficult?’
Kolya frowns. ‘Too difficult for me, you mean? Thanks.’
‘No – I’m just – well, impressed. You know how little I know about music.’
All at once Kolya softens. A smile that is both older and younger than his adolescent scowl lights up his face. ‘You don’t need to be too impressed. It’s not difficult, it’s impossible. I tried the allegro molto – it sounded like saucepans falling out of a cupboard. But if I were Horovitz they’d still be banging on the walls. And do you know what, that Weasel told Anna his mother thought I was growing up into a hooligan. My God! She ought to get out more.’
‘We don’t want to get on the wrong side of them.’
‘I know. No point giving them a chance to overfulfil their norms for behaving like bastards.’
Andrei laughs. Suddenly, as if through a window into the future, he sees a time when he and Kolya will be able to go out for a drink together. The real Kolya is still in there, behind the mask of adolescence. ‘We should be grateful that they have two rooms, like us,’ he says. ‘In fact I think they have slightly more living space, so we shouldn’t have to fear an “apartment denunciation”.’
Kolya’s face takes on a shrewd, calculating look. ‘Yes, but there are five of them and, technically, wouldn’t they count as two families? So, they’ve only got one room per family.’
‘I suppose you’re right. But my guess is they won’t want to stir things up. They’ve got much more than the norm of living space.’
‘So have we,’ Kolya points out.
‘I know, I know – let’s forget about them. They’re not worth talking about.’
‘So when’s Anna home?’ asks Kolya casually, but Andrei knows that he really wants to know. He doesn’t like it when Anna’s late, or out without an explanation. Anna thinks it all goes back to the siege, when she had to go out on long, freezing forays to fetch the bread ration or search for firewood. On the worst days, in the December of ’41, Marina would bless Anna before she left the apartment. Everyone knew the risks. Kolya must have known that one day she might not come back. Weakened, starving people collapsed in the streets, and no one had the strength to help them. And then there were bread thieves who preyed on the fallen. ‘People think children don’t know what’s going on,’ Anna used to say, ‘but they always do. Kolya knows. That’s why he’s frightened.’ Sometimes, before Kolya grew too feeble to protest, Marina would have to peel his hands from Anna’s coat.
‘She’s got a meeting after work,’ says Andrei now.
‘It goes on until nine.’
‘My God,’ says Kolya again. His fingernails score the margin of a music sheet. ‘I suppose we won’t be eating until ten.’
‘Have some bread if you’re hungry.’
‘She’s always out in the evenings these days.’
‘Not as often as you are.’
Kolya turns a surprised face to Andrei. That’s entirely different, his face says. When I go out, well, that’s natural. But Anna should be here.
‘Why don’t you play something for me, Kolya?’
‘I thought I wasn’t supposed to touch the piano.’
‘What was that piece you used to play – the eerie one – something to do with glass, I think it was. Mozart.’
‘Adagio for Glass Harmonica. I haven’t played that for years,’ says Kolya, with a touch of scorn, whether for Mozart or for Andrei, who can say.
‘I liked it.’
‘Did you? I thought you were fed up with me playing all the time.’
‘No. It’s only’ – Andrei gestures towards the door – ‘the way we live. You can’t go looking for trouble.’
‘But if everyone’s always not looking for trouble, that’s why they win. We do what they want.’
‘Yes,’ says Andrei, ‘you’re right, I suppose. No: you are right, there’s no suppose about it. But –’ He shrugs. A weight seems to sit on him, not heavy but suffocating, like a cloud come to earth.
‘I’ll play like a mouse,’ Kolya promises. ‘A Mozartian mouse.’
Andrei leans back in the chair that Anna still sometimes calls ‘father’s chair’, and closes his eyes. The notes steal out, eerie, as he remembered them, yes, and glassy too, pure. Not very human music, he thinks. As soon as it finishes, you want to hear it again.
Kolya obliges. He plays still more softly this time, even during the crescendo. No one outside the walls of the room could possibly hear it. Andrei wishes Anna would come home now, this moment. They should all be together. If only he could stop thinking about that boy. If Brodskaya does the biopsy then they’ll soon know for sure. They are professionals. The patient is their concern, not the politics.
But why should Brodskaya want to be dragged into it?
He has seen the boy, and that’s the end of it. It’s not even his field, for God’s sake. He’ll have to tell Anna what’s going on. Anna’s face will get that strained look that he hates.
Relax. Just relax, can’t you? Listen to the boy playing.