The Lieutenant’s Lover. Harry Bingham

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      Tonya put the kettle on the stove, then jiggled the logs inside to stir up the heat. The apartment was hot even with the windows open wide, and the heat was an unwanted extra. There was also something unsettling about the length of these summer days. When she was with Misha, the long days made sense. But when he was absent, the endless days and shimmering nights seemed mildly insane, as though the world had lost its ability to rest. She cut a slice of bread and spread it with pork dripping and salt.

      ‘Here.’

      ‘Thank you.’

      Rodyon ate it wolfishly, then sighed.

      ‘You know, Marx took a material view of humanity. It was his greatest insight, his greatest accomplishment. But you don’t realise how right he was until you’ve been hungry. All the time I’ve been sitting here, I’ve wondered whether you had sugar or jam to go with the tea. I desperately hope that you do, but have been too proud to ask. A spoonful of sugar against a man’s soul. Pitiful, isn’t it?’

      ‘I have sugar, yes. And lemon.’

      ‘Ah, the careful management of the official allocation or the miraculous bounty of the black market. I wonder which.’

      ‘You know very well which.’

      ‘Yes, and I’m going to enjoy it anyway. You were cooking as I came in. At least, you were dancing with a cooking pot, which I assume is the same thing. Don’t let me stop you.’

      Tonya did as he said. To the pot, she added cabbage, beans, carrot, onion and a thick shin of beef. She put the whole thing on to boil. She worked carefully, guarding her expression. She wasn’t exactly nervous of Rodyon, but the two of them hadn’t seen each other for a while and Rodyon seldom did things without a purpose. She waited for him to reveal it.

      The kettle boiled. She made tea, let it brew, then poured it, adding three spoonfuls of sugar. Rodyon took the cup with thanks. He had barely changed his posture since first sitting down, but she could see his tiredness slipping away, and he wore it now as a mask more than anything.

      ‘We’re seeing Pavel more and more at the Bureau of Housing,’ he said.

      ‘Yes.’

      It was true. Because of Misha, Tonya had been at home very little. Pavel, never properly rooted since their mother had died, had taken to leaving home more and more. He often ended up at the Bureau of Housing, where his admiration for Rodyon had blossomed into something close to hero-worship.

      ‘He is useful. He runs a lot of errands for us.’

      ‘He’s a good boy.’

      ‘Yes… And when did he last wash, do you know?’

      ‘Wash? He washes every day.’

      ‘Face and hands, yes. I meant more than that. All over.’

      Tonya shrugged. ‘He’s fourteen, nearly fifteen. You know what it’s like.’

      ‘This week? Last week?’

      ‘What do you care? He won’t wash in cold water and boiling enough water for a bath in this heat … well, he’s old enough to boil water for himself if he wants it.’

      ‘You didn’t always say that.’

      ‘He wasn’t always fifteen, or as good as.’

      ‘But the change came four months ago, didn’t it, Antonina Kirylovna?’

      Tonya swallowed. Rodyon was creeping around to the real subject and she felt her mouth go strangely dry. Though she wanted to blame it on other things – the endless day outside, the light glittering from the city’s roofs and cupolas, the heat of the stove – she knew it was none of those things.

      ‘Maybe,’ she admitted.

      ‘Mikhail Ivanovich Malevich. Son of Ivan Ilyich Malevich. Ivan Ilyich was one of the country’s richest men. Not in the top fifty perhaps, but not so far outside either. Coal mines. Iron works. Land.’

      ‘They have none of that now.’

      ‘No.’

      Rodyon stopped as though he’d finished. He finished his tea and pushed his cup away from him.

      ‘More?’ said Tonya.

      ‘Please.’

      ‘The sugar doesn’t come from father’s coal-stealing. It comes from Misha. The soup things too. He trades his family’s last few possessions. He is generous.’

      ‘Bourgeois sugar, eh?’

      ‘That’s one way to put it.’

      ‘Then I’ll have another spoonful.’

      Tonya poured the tea and pushed it back at Rodyon. Her movement contained an ounce or two of anger and tea slopped over the rim of the cup. He ignored both the anger and the spillage.

      ‘His family’s last few possessions. What a piteous-sounding phrase!’

      ‘There’s no pity. It’s a simple fact.’

      ‘Is it? Really? That’s another insight of Marx’s. Facts aren’t necessarily simple, even the simplest ones. His father accumulated possessions by exploiting his workers. Each year, every year, men died underground in his coal mines. Others were cut to pieces in industrial accidents at his iron works. And he reaped the profit.’

      ‘He employed them. I don’t suppose conditions in his mines were worse than elsewhere.’

      ‘He gave them the lowest wage he could possibly pay them, you mean. Yes. And that wage wasn’t always enough to give his workers enough food, fuel, medicine or housing. Look at this rat-hole you live in. You have always counted yourself lucky to have it. How does it compare with Kuletsky Prospekt, eh? How does it compare with that? So: you say his family’s last few possessions, but if he stole the labour that allowed him to acquire them, then to whom, really, do those things belong?’

      Tonya shrugged. ‘Who cares? In a few months, they’ll have nothing.’

      Rodyon nodded, as though he agreed. He stood up. All at once, the lean tigerishness of his energy seemed to come rushing back. When before he had looked tired, now again, as usual, his face radiated an intense, challenging handsomeness, spoiled and completed by his broken nose. He paced the tiny apartment as though he felt cooped up in it. He leaned out of the open window, traced a line on a cupboard with the tip of his finger as though to check for dust, then came over to the stove and felt it for heat.

      ‘Good soup.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘The smell is almost the best part.’

      ‘Maybe.’

      ‘A meat bone?’

      ‘Beef.’

      ‘You’re СКАЧАТЬ