A Game of Soldiers. Stephen Miller

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СКАЧАТЬ why? Waiting for her to make up her mind? Pretending to be a gentleman? She let her eyes slide over to him. His face seemed to float lazily in front of her. She tried to focus.

      ‘I saw you before,’ he said quietly.

      ‘Oh? That’s right…’ Like all the rest, she thought. Did he expect her to thank him for the cheap drink that had started the whole thing off? She leaned against the frame of the doorway and tried to make her feet work.

      ‘No, I’ve seen you, before tonight, I mean…’ His voice had a tone of urgency; soon he’d be whining about his wife not understanding him. Maybe he had been a customer back in her old life, someone who’d paid his money and fallen in love. Another fool. Trying to get away, she managed to take one step into the corridor. Inside they were all singing now, one of the songs in the show…

      So what! It doesn’t matter,

       So what! I just don’t care, So what…

      On and on, people stamping the time on the floor.

      She wanted to go back and find Dmitri, maybe he’d be nice for a change, maybe he was tired of laughing at her. They were all waiting to see who she was going to start sleeping with. They’d even applauded when he kissed her and left her spinning around there on the dance floor. So, maybe it looked like it was going to be Dmitri. So what…So, maybe that was how he said ‘I love you’, by insulting her all the time.

      The man was explaining that he had never really seen anything like the theatre they’d produced this evening, it was different, he said. Unusual. He needed to talk to her, to have a conversation. Now was not the time, but perhaps in the morning?

      She laughed, spun around in the alley looking for escape. But the only other person in the alley was him – smiling his droopy smile, helping her back down the corridor where she could rejoin the party, if that’s what she wanted? Or perhaps she would enjoy some coffee right now?

      …the consequence, the consequence,

       …the consequence of Nothing!

      Oh, yes, join the party. And she let herself sing with the others the last phrases of the Professor’s anthem, raising her fist into the air at the end for the three cheers. She threw her head back with the last triumphant chorus, and found herself looking up, following the upraised arms and staring up at the patterns pressed into the metal ceiling…

      And all of a sudden it was as if she, Vera Aliyeva, was the only person who could see, really see. It had come to her all in a haze, dreamily, but truly she could see the future, see it all speeded up, see Izov’s old building crumbling, the Komet beginning to collapse all around them. She saw it in sudden images as if she were running through a gallery of hideous paintings – the collapse of the world spreading out, like a ripple in a still lake, wider, wider, wider.

      Perhaps the vision was the result of a curse. Perhaps they had mocked the ancient Aztec gods during tonight’s performance, and in revenge been issued an apocalyptic challenge. Perhaps a great wave was about to smash down upon them and drive them into oblivion; the Komet, her, Dmitri, the whole city, everything…Everything.

      Oh, how far she’d come in this, the final chapter of her life on Earth! She stood in the corridor hanging on to the sad man’s arm as the world disintegrated around them.

      

      She woke late in the morning, the thunder of carriages rumbling along the embankment nudging her out of sleep. She was in a soft, wide bed…the heavy coverings. Ah, yes…She remembered.

      She wrenched herself upright and swung herself to the edge of the mattress for a moment, got up and shuffled out of the bedroom – everything heavily furnished in an oriental motif, with Persian rugs hung from the walls, a lot of plants that needed watering. Yes…yes…what was his name?

      His place was on the second floor and the parquet was warm from the heat of the flats below. Everything was dusty, she could feel the little pieces of dirt under her feet. Everything needed to be cleaned. The apartment looked like it needed a good shaking out.

      She discovered him in the kitchen. There was a little balcony there and he was dressed, sitting in the doorway smoking and reading a copy of Gazette.

      ‘If you want tea, it’s on the stove,’ he said without looking up.

      ‘Yes, good,’ she said, making her voice flat. She groped for the glasses and poured herself a tall glass of tea as quietly as she could.

      ‘When you’re dressed and awake I need to talk to you.’

      ‘Um…I have a real katzenjammer…’ She put her hand up to her forehead.

      ‘Whenever you’re ready,’ he said and turned a page of the paper. She took the tea and walked back out into his front rooms without answering.

      She didn’t think he’d touched her during the night. Maybe he was too drunk, maybe he was scared, maybe he wanted to make love to someone who was awake. She found his writing desk and, tucked under a stack of mail, the solitary portrait of the woman. The wife, he’d admitted. Gone, he’d told her. So he was married, then. From the envelopes tucked into his blotter she learned his name – Ryzhkov. Yes, she remembered now. Pyotr, spelled the old way. She went to the lavatory and sat on the cold seat and shivered while she had a morning pee. Inspected herself in his mirror. No. He hadn’t touched her.

      She went back out to his sitting-room, and stood in the sunny window, rested her head against the glass and stared out at the misty Obvodni Canal below her. To the south were the working-class neighbourhoods – long identical rows of wooden houses. In the distance to the west was the cluster of smokestacks from the Putilov works. She could see the shining threads of the rails at the Tsarskoye Selo Station.

      She could get enough money to leave, she thought. She could go away. Maybe the sad man would lend her the money. Italy, she thought. Somewhere warm. Somewhere where there were flowers in March instead of chunks of ice floating down the river. She could dance there in Rome, or act, or become a governess, teach Russian. Or she’d meet someone who made her laugh, someone who was a real gentleman.

      ‘All right, why don’t you sit down and talk to me for a while.’ She whirled at the sound of his voice. He came in and took a pad and pencil off the desk, moved to the sofa and waited for her.

      ‘Let’s start with the basics. Your name?’

      ‘What are you, police?’

      ‘Kind of a policeman. I wanted to talk to you about the girl that fell out the window that night.’

      She looked at him for a long moment while she went cold inside. ‘Aliyeva, Vera Evgeniya,’ she said angrily. ‘I don’t want to talk about any of that, there’s nothing to talk about anyway.’

      ‘Look, you’re going to talk to me one way or the other, let’s be clear about that from the start, eh? Now, what did you see?’

      ‘No, I’m not. Go to hell –’ She started to walk out, but he grabbed her wrist and spun her back into the kitchen. She hit her elbow on the counter and it hurt.

      ‘Calm down. Do what I tell you or I’ll telephone my friends and they’ll pull your yellow card and you’ll be waiting in jail until they throw you on a riverboat back to wherever СКАЧАТЬ