But
Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That
spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love,
faithful love, recalled thee to my mind--
But
how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even
for the least division of an hour,
Have
I been so beguiled as to be blind
To
my most grievous loss?--That thought's return
Was
the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save
one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing
my heart's best treasure was no more;
That
neither present time, nor years unborn
Could
to my sight that heavenly face restore.
WilliamWordsworth.
Part 1
Chapter 1
Lena got out of the mini-bus that had taken them from
Copenhagen and looked around. It was a fine day in early June 1990. Her first
impression was pleasant, but more important, she had a sense of arrival.
Something would happen here. Here was her chance. Her life could change forever
in the next weeks. Here he might find her. Here she might fall in love.
An image flashed through her mind of a young girl looking out
to sea, waiting for her destiny to arrive in the form of a ship with scarlet
sails. It would be in fulfilment of a prophecy told her when she was a little
girl that such a ship would bring with it the man of her dreams. She had watched the wonderfully romantic film
any number of times and knew the book on which it was based almost as if by
heart. She wasn’t alone in feeling a little like Assol, the heroine of Alexandr
Grin’s short novel ‘Scarlet Sails’. How many other Soviet girls, as it were,
sat on the beach and waited for the scarlet silk on the horizon. But eventually
most of them grew old enough to realise that there wasn’t such a ship or at
least that it wasn’t going to arrive for them, and so they took the best they
could get. Lena knew this, too. She was nearly twenty-two. Quite a lot of her
friends were already married. Once you were about her age, you pretty nearly
married the first reasonable man who came along and hoped for the best. But not
quite yet. She still had a chance. Here there was an alternative. Here was a road
available to very few. She was excited and not a little afraid. What would
happen to her here? She had no idea. Did she have plans? But really she just
had to wait and hope and one day… Could it be soon?
She was from Baltiysk, a little town in Kaliningrad oblast or
region. It was geographically the most western part of the Soviet Union and
home to the Baltic Sea Fleet. It was also a closed region. There were no
tourists from the West. Her father was an officer in the navy. Her mother was a
doctor. Her life had been pretty good. Their home was larger than average.
Their living standards were pretty good. She had been able to travel a few
times around the region. Riga was quite close, and it was easy to get the bus
there. She’d even been a few times to Poland. Denmark was just across the
Baltic Sea, but there was no ferry and no possibility of flying there directly.
She instead had to fly to Moscow. She’d spent a day and a night there. There
had been a meeting. This was customary whenever someone went to the West. The
possibility of her travelling had been raised a year or so earlier, when she
showed some promise with languages. Since then she’d received special tuition
and advice at the university she attended in Kaliningrad. She thought that her
Danish was fairly good, but she’d never actually spoken to a Dane. She’d rarely
actually spoken to anyone in the language.
It had been wonderful to actually see Moscow, however
briefly. They’d given her a tour of the famous sites, but it had all flown by.
Anyway, she had longed to be away. She’d dreamed of Denmark. She’d dreamed of
who she would meet there.
There were five of them. They’d first met at Sheremetyevo
airport in Moscow. She’d chatted a bit to Svetlana who was the only other girl.
They looked around the grounds as they approached the entrance to the school.
The setting was idyllic. Everything seemed clean and well-tended. The buildings
were typically Danish, white walls with red roofs. Everywhere they had seen
little Danish flags, fluttering outside nearly every house, often just thin
triangular slivers, but sometimes the full rectangular red flag with its
Scandinavian cross.
“What do you think, Sveta?” said Lena.
“This is Askov?” answered and asked Svetlana with her own
question “Pretty. But I’m tired I just want to get to my room and sleep a bit.”
They had been driven there by a man from the Soviet Embassy.
He had not been very talkative, just explaining a few things on the way.
“Do you want me to explain to them who you are?” he asked.
“I think, we can manage,” said Lena.
“Well, I’ll come along just in case.”
It was good that he did. Lena talked to the receptionist at
the entrance to the folk high school, a sort of college, but she couldn’t
understand half of the reply. The receptionist tried English, which she spoke
fluently with only a slight accent. Lena understood English very poorly, she
had never learned more than a few words and that was some time ago. Soon
everyone joined in. There was confusion, but eventually the driver took charge
speaking more or less fluent Danish. He left soon after having made sure that
they had all found their rooms and knew when to expect dinner.
Lena looked around her room. There was no question that it
was very nice. She’d only stayed a few times in hotel rooms in Gdansk or
Vilnius. This was much nicer. Everything worked. It was clean, with tasteful
pictures and what looked like a comfortable bed. The shower and toilet down the
hall seemed to be shared with only a few others. She thought back to the hall of
residence in Kaliningrad where she had lived. She’d shared a room there with
three others. It was a square grey box with three beds and nothing much else.
The single toilet was shared by the whole floor of thirty and was disgusting.
You had to book when you had a shower and hope that the water might be hot. But
this was nice. She lay back on the bed and dreamed a little. The face she saw
was that of the actor who had played Arthur Grey in the film of Scarlet Sails,
but she knew that it wasn’t the Soviet actor, the impossibly dashing Vasily
Lanovoy, she dreamed of. It was rather of the man who right now was sailing
from England towards her. He’d be on a ferry, not a sailing ship and there
certainly would not be scarlet sails, but nevertheless, she was waiting for
him. In her dreams she saw him arrive.
David Grey had indeed been sailing towards her. But he had
never heard of ‘Scarlet Sails’, nor had he seen the film. He had also never
heard of Lena. That morning the ferry from Newcastle had docked at Esbjerg. He
could hardly believe how long it had taken to cross what he always thought was
a rather small sea. He hadn’t slept much.
He’d been learning Danish for less than a year and although
he knew the grammar well enough and had a pretty good vocabulary, he had never
properly had a conversation. He’d attempted to speak to some Danes on the boat,
but they immediately answered him in faultless English as soon as they realised
that he was foreign. Anyway, the Danish he could read quite well on the page
sounded remarkably different coming out of someone’s mouth. It all sort of ran
together in a stream of mumbles. But he wasn’t discouraged. He knew that
fluency would come with practice and that was why he was here. He needed Danish
for his studies, but he though it wasn’t enough just to be able to read with
the help of a dictionary. He wanted to understand like a Dane understood,
otherwise it would really be no better than reading a translation. That needed
fluency.
It was a short trip from Esbjerg to Askov. He was tired, but
looking forward to a new experience. One of his tutors at Cambridge had
suggested he come here. He’d said that it was a fun place, that he’d have a
nice holiday and learn something, too. He’d become quite friendly with Stig
Knudsen who was from Denmark. They sometimes had a pint or two together after a
tutorial. They knew each other well enough that they sometimes talked of
personal things. It had been a relief for David to have someone a bit older
with whom he could share some of his troubles. He remembered how good Stig had
been about it when had talked of Gillian, a girl he’d known since school, a
relationship that wasn’t going anywhere. Stig had recommended that he go to
Denmark where the girls were not so uptight. But David’s confidence had
gradually been shattered by his long, frustrating relationship with his best
friend. He’d waited for her to change. He’d waited for her to love him as he
loved her. He’d got to the stage where he didn’t dare even try to begin a
romance with her for fear of being rejected and losing her friendship. But he’d
finally had a showdown with a couple of months previously. He’d told her that
he loved her and she’d told him that she loved him but that she couldn’t be
with him. That was it. Neither had wanted to see each other after that. It had
been too painful for each of them. He was still devastated and wondered if he
was just useless around girls. What did you have to do to find love? He didn’t
have any particular expectations with regard to Askov. There would be girls no
doubt, but he hardly even knew how to begin a conversation with one of them. It
would be hard enough in English, let alone Danish. Here, in fact, he quickly
discovered his error, realising that speaking a foreign language can be quite a
liberating experience. You’re allowed to make mistakes. You’re allowed to be
direct, because you have the excuse of not knowing how to speak subtly. David
thought of himself as some sort of an existentialist, though in a rather
self-mocking sort of way and therefore did not believe in destiny, but despite
what he believed about these matters, he too was moving towards his fate.
Chapter 2
The little group of Russians sat together in the canteen and
spoke Russian. The food was very good if at times a little strange. But much of
it was familiar, the black bread, the various forms of sour milk, the cold
meats and the cheese they would have called Lithuanian.
Lena had suggested that they try to speak Danish together,
but the attempt had been a failure. No one’s heart had really been in it. They
had been tired and as a soon as they found a lack of vocabulary they used the
Russian word. Within minutes they were talking in Russian again.
“We’ll have lots of time to speak Danish anyway,” said Oleg,
a rather tall, striking young man from Sverdlovsk.
“How long have you been studying?” she asked.
“Two years,” he said. “But my main language is French.”
“I suppose it’s the same with all of us.” said Svetlana
“Danish is a sort of side line.”
There were nods of agreement. Lena was not particularly
interested in this conversation with her fellow Russians. It was not for this
that she was here. She could care less what Andrei, the guy from Kalinin had
said. She’d tried a mild joke about them both being from places named after
Kalinin. But his glance had been one of slight wariness, even disapproval as if
she’d said something anti-Soviet, as if he might write it down in a little
book. Surely they had gone beyond that. But maybe it was just that the guy was
uptight and uninteresting. The others had backed Lena up however, and laughed
as well. Petr was from Leningrad, but he continually used the slang form
“Piter”. There were, of course, some people who disapproved of such minor
rebellions, but actually Soviet life was remarkably free so long as you played
the game.
“So we both live on the Baltic, Lena?” said Petr. “What’s it
like down your way?”
“It’s not bad. There are some nice beaches and it can get
fairly warm in the summer. Some of the small towns are very pretty, but most of
the centre of Kaliningrad was destroyed in the war.”
“It’s a bit embarrassing,” said Sveta “but I’m not exactly
sure where Kaliningrad is, apart from it being somewhere near Poland.”
“It used to be called Königsberg,” said Lena. “You know the
town where Kant lived. There’s another town nearby Sovetsk that used to be
called Tilsit, the place where Aleksandr and Napoleon signed some treaty in the
middle of a river. There were a couple of battles from that period as well.”
“So you’re a German,” joked Oleg. This got another frown from
Andrei.
“You sometimes see German signs on old buildings,” said Lena,
“and on gravestones and such like, but you never hear German spoken, they all
left.”
She’d touched on a subject that was better not pursued further,
so instead she began looking around the room. Was he there?
She supposed that most of the people taking part in the
course would have arrived by now as classes began tomorrow. There must have
been about sixty people. Most of them looked like students in their early
twenties, but there were a few people in their thirties or forties. She played
a little game of guessing where people were from. Those people looked like they
were from Italy, while those looked like they were from Germany. She got up and
wandered around a little as if going to get another cup of coffee, but really
trying to catch a word or two of their various languages. Hardly anyone was
speaking Danish apart from one group who seemed very serious. It was obvious,
however that they were not Danes as the way they spoke lacked the mumbling
quality that she had heard earlier.
“I think, it’s very good that you’re speaking Danish amongst
yourselves,” she mentioned in passing.
“Thank you,” said one of them. “We want to make the most of
the course. Would you care to join us?”
“Thank you,” said Lena. “Perhaps another day, I don’t think I
am at your level.”
“Oh, no, you speak very well. Where are you from?”
“Russia. I’m Lena.”
“And I’m Klaus, nice to meet you. See you later.”
She continued looking around. She’d never met him, but she
hoped so much that he was here. Could something have happened to prevent their
meeting? Where was he? Her eyes scanned the people in the building. People she
did not know, but who she would all come to know over the next few weeks. It
was as if she already knew them all. There were people here who would become
her friends or at the very least acquaintances. There was one who she might
love. Which of them was he? Nearly everyone was in a group. But one man was sitting
eating and at the same time reading a book. She passed nearby.
“What are you reading?” she asked.
He looked up, but it was obvious that he was confused. He’d
heard something but had not understood.
“Your book?”
He looked up and their eyes met. He showed her the cover. In
English she read “The Brothers Karamazov”.
“A little light holiday reading,” she said.
It was obvious that he was struggling a bit to understand.
She spoke more slowly, more clearly and then he got it. He smiled. She thought
it a rather nice smile. His eyes were very blue and they were deep and
intelligent.
“I have another book for when I’m tired.” He reached into his
bag and brought out another book. She saw a picture of pirates and read “The
Sea Hawk” by Rafael Sabatini.
“Do you know what the title is in Danish? My English isn’t
very good.”
He told her.
“I’ve read that one. He’s quite popular in Russia. I’m Lena,”
she said.
“David.”
“It looks like you’re probably the only one from England. You
came alone?”
“Yes. I got the ferry last night.”
“Well, see you later.”
“Bye.”
This was the one. She had recognised him, though she had
never met him. The brief moment of contact had been enough. Yes, he was the one
she would meet. He would be her ship’s captain. He seemed to be the only one
from England. Yes, he was the one to fulfil her dream. But would anything
happen in the next days and weeks? How did you start something with someone you
had never met? She wondered what if anything she could do to help things along,
or if she should just wait for him, wait as she had always waited on her beach
looking towards the horizon.
There was something striking about the little Russian girl,
David thought sitting in his room later. He was tired as the boat across the
sea had not been all that comfortable and he’d been in a large cabin with a
group of rather noisy school kids, excited about their trip to Denmark. He sat
in his room smoking while sipping the bottle of Coke he had bought at the local
shop. Quite a few people had come up to him seeing that he didn’t know anyone.
Everyone seemed very friendly. They had mostly spoken English, wherever they
were from. He reflected that anyone who chose to learn Danish would probably
already know English pretty well. Yet the little Russian girl continued with
Danish and seemed to struggle with relatively simple English words like “sea”
and “hawk”. Maybe she only knew Danish. What was she called? Lena. It was the
only name he could remember from those he had met. He knew rather well a
Russian émigré couple in Cambridge, but had only met people who lived in the
Soviet Union on one or two occasions. There had been a small group visiting
Dartmouth College in New Hampshire where he had spent a summer. He’d chatted to
them and noticed their odd, rather dowdy clothing. But they’d been dull and he
had not got to know any of them well.
He wondered why this Lena struck him. After all, perhaps
twenty people had introduced themselves. Was it that she reminded him of
Gillian? Perhaps, that was it. Lena was just a little taller than Gillian, but
both were very small, less than 5 feet 2. There was something about small girls
that he liked. His mind flicked back to Gillian, but he said aloud the Danish
word for “no” and sought to dismiss the image. Of course, it would be nice if
something happened here. But he had no expectations. He was useless with girls.
It was always the man who had to start things off and he just didn’t know how
and anyway, preferred to do nothing rather than risk being embarrassed.
He’d had a couple of not very serious relationships with
girls who he did not really love. As was the British way, sometimes drunkenness
overcame inhibition and you ended up some evening kissing someone. Both of you
were then relieved as that meant you were now going out. But it wasn’t much of
a way to find love. Gillian had always been in the background and any other
relationship that he might have started had always foundered on the fact that
in the end he loved only her. He knew what it was like to love someone without
being loved in return and so felt guilty at what he had done to others. Things
had never progressed very far, but nonetheless, he felt that he had used them
and that on occasion he had done damage. There were many things in the last few
years he regretted.
He tried to dismiss Lena from his thoughts. He needed this
course badly for his studies and, anyway, even if something did happen, there
was no way it could continue. But somehow her image appeared in his mind.
Strange how he could remember her while everyone else was more or less a blur.
He didn’t like her hair streaked with blonde. But what did
that matter? It could grow out. But her slim build and size made him want to
hold her and be careful that he did not crush her. And yet he sensed certain
strength in her. He wondered what it took to get here from Russia. It surely
was not weakness. He saw in his mind her eyes and was able to discern what he
had not noticed consciously before that they were greyish blue. She seemed to
have a seriousness that was “high, solitary and most stern,” but yet there was
laughter too and irony in those eyes. There was a mystery in her look. She’d
recognised him. He was absolutely certain that she’d recognised him. But that
was impossible. He had never been where she had been. Perhaps, it suggested
some connection between them, some mysterious path that had led them to this
point. But no, he did not believe in fate. He believed in choice. Anyway, he
would do nothing about it. He was resolved. There was no point and even if he
tried, nothing would happen. He was quite useless at these things.
Chapter 3
Lena gradually woke up and initially was unsure where she
was. But in that half waking, half sleeping state came to realise that she was
where she wanted to be, where she had worked so hard to get to. It was as if
her dream was still continuing, or else she was remembering and reliving it.
Yet her dream was also pointing forward to what might be, possibly, to what
must be. Like most Russians she believed in her fate, at least it was a word
that she used reasonably often. The image of the English boy was still in her
mind. She’d been dreaming of his childhood in a castle in England. He’d been
rebellious against his strict and stuffy parents. He’d wanted to be a pirate or
Robin Hood or something like that. He’d run away to sea. Of course, it was her
favourite story once more. The fantasy was comforting. He was coming for her.
She didn’t have to do anything, just wait patiently. After being carried
through the surf to the ship with scarlet sails, there was no need to go
further or think about what happened next. All of that was consumed in happily
ever after. She’d had the dream often. It was her favourite dream inspired by
her favourite book, her favourite film. She wondered if it happened
involuntarily or if she could somehow choose this dream. She didn’t want to let
it go. The bed was very comfortable. But she was becoming more and more
conscious and then she was fully awake.
She looked at her watch and saw that there was little time
before the morning songs and then breakfast. They had all been encouraged to go
to the short sing song which was some sort of Danish folk high school
tradition. She would go and see what it was like.
She began putting her clothes away and thinking about what
she might wear. She had some nice things she thought, but better to keep the
best of them until later. She picked a pair of jeans with a flower embroidered
on the back pocket. She’d been given them in Kaliningrad and they were pretty
and just about her favourite pair of everyday trousers. There was a white
blouse with decorations on the collar and cuffs and some little frills. She
looked at herself in the mirror as she combed her hair. She wasn’t sure about
the tints, but then her natural hair colour was a dull light brunette. She
frowned at her glasses. They were one of the few Soviet models easily
available, just ordinary, rather large and functional. She knew that she was
average looking. Walking along Leninsky Prospect in Kaliningrad she would see
girls who were tall, blonde and strikingly beautiful. She saw how the men
looked at them. But she did not envy this sort of beauty. It had its advantages
no doubt, but then if a man loved you for your beauty what happened when that
beauty faded? She’d known women in their thirties and forties who had once been
just as aware of how men looked at them and had used this ability to attract.
It had not always meant a happy ending.
In Russia you either lived with your parents or in a university
or work residence. There was rarely much privacy even if you were lucky enough
to have ever experienced having a room of your own. Girls usually married soon
after leaving school or soon after finishing their studies. There just wasn’t
much time for romance until then and not much opportunity. School had been
tough with endless books to read. She had read most of the classics of Russian
and Soviet literature, but they merged together because she’d had to read so
many in so short a time usually during the long summer holidays. She therefore
had little love or appreciation of a literature she had been made to read. No
doubt it was all very brilliant, but racing through Maxim Gorky as quickly as
possible was hardly the best way to develop a love of socialist realism.
She had some friends who were boys, one in particular, but
there had been nothing that could properly be described as kisses. There just
hadn’t been the time, or place, or opportunity for anything like that, let
alone anything further. She knew that some of her friends had found a place and
an opportunity, but most people still looked down on such ways of living. It
was easy enough to get married first and if it didn’t work out, it was easy
enough to get divorced. So girls usually married their first serious boyfriend
as soon as they reached a stage in life when that was possible. Until that
point it didn’t seem as if there was much point letting things get too serious.
She thought of Pavel back home in Kaliningrad. They went to
the cinema sometimes and he would sometimes bring her flowers when they did.
Nothing much had happened and nothing much had been said. But she knew as well
as he did that when they finished university that something could. Like
everyone else she would marry pretty nearly the first man she called her
boyfriend once she reached that point. Pavel at the moment was her friend and
some people talked of him as being her boyfriend, in Russian her “young man”.
Lena felt ambiguously about it. She thought of the Danish words for “friend”
and “boyfriend”. There was an ambiguity. It was the difference between ‘like’
and ‘love’. She liked Pavel, but there was not much romance in it. Still she
could do worse. He was kind and gentle, while she had heard older friends and
acquaintances complain of things that were much worse. Men could get drunk and
could be brutish. They could be like animals when the mood took them and they
got excited and there was little romance in that. Eventually, you had to settle
for someone who you thought would be a decent husband and hope for the best. It
was best not to wait too long. An unmarried girl in her late twenties was
unusual and might struggle to find someone at all.
She knew then that if her life was to be in the Soviet Union,
she would probably be married in a year or at most two. By then she would be
twenty-two, and her parents and everyone else she knew would be encouraging
her. The boy who took her to the cinema would automatically be courting her and
that boy would likely be Pavel. She was attractive enough to meet someone else
there if she chose. There were other boys at university who had shown that they
liked her and would gladly have taken her out. But really what was the
difference? It was hardly the fate she had dreamed of. Still she also knew that
fully entering the adult world fully meant waking up and putting aside fairy
tales. Was that not what her mother kept telling her?
Lena looked around at her room once more as she prepared to
leave. It wasn’t so much the fact that it was pleasantly decorated that struck
her. It was that it was the first time she could remember sleeping in a room
alone. There’d always either been her sister, or other students. She shut the
door and thought of what might happen here. Well, she’d just have to be patient
and wait for that glimpse of sail.
The day was pleasant though not hot, so she was glad that she
had decided to take her pale blue cardigan with her. There was sunshine, but
clouds, too and there was a bit of a breeze. She didn’t know the way to the morning
songs exactly, but she had a general idea and there were some others going in
the same direction. She saw Svetlana and talked to her in Russian.
“It’s that way, isn’t it?” she asked.
“I think so. What do you think they’ll have us singing?”
asked Svetlana.
“Probably, like in the Pioneers,” Lena chuckled.
“Where did you go for camps?” asked Svetlana. “I got to go to
the Crimea most summers.”
“Only a few of us got to go that far. We mainly either went
to Poland or somewhere further up the coast near Riga.”
They sat down together in an auditorium and there was a short
welcome speech by the director of the school.
Lena understood most of what he said, but was still
struggling to get her ear around some of the pronunciation. The songs were
cheery little children’s songs and she quite enjoyed herself trying to sing the
words to the tune, trying to get her tongue round some of the sounds that she
was less good at, particularly the very strange Danish “d” sound. She spent her
time scanning the faces of her fellow students. He hadn’t come. She wondered
why.
She noticed him at breakfast still sitting on his own reading
his book. She was sitting with the other Russians, and it seemed that quite a
lot of the students had gathered in their national groups. She doubted if there
would be any other people from England. It was said that they had little time
for foreign languages. She thought of approaching him again, but thought better
of it. She didn’t want to be too forward, nor too obvious. It wasn’t very attractive
and, anyway, in Russia the man was supposed to make the approach and girls were
told not chase after men.
She didn’t really know what to do when she was attracted to
someone, other than wait and hope that he might notice and be attracted back.
The first morning of classes was spent in doing informal
tests to determine which class they would end up in. It was all very relaxed,
but quite rigorous. The written side of the test was pretty easy. It just
involved reading a short passage of text and answering some questions in
Danish. The oral side of the test was just a short conversation with a teacher
where she was asked questions about where she was from, what she did and why
she was learning Danish. She found this much harder. She could write sentences
easily enough, but somehow the process of saying them turned out to be rather
different. She found herself tongue tied and forgetting the grammar half way
through a sentence. Her pronunciation was poor.
David, too found the written side of the test easy. He was
almost entirely self-taught. He’d approached Danish in the same way that he had
approached Greek at school. He’d learned the grammar and then had set about
reading literature with the help of a dictionary. He knew the sounds which you
were supposed to make, but had very little experience of actually making them.
The text that he was supposed to read was absurdly easy. He could read 19th
century Danish literature with some confidence. The Danish teacher got
something of a shock when she saw that David spelled most words as they used to
be written before the spelling changes introduced who knows when. It was like
reading a 19th century novel the way he used expressions that were hopelessly
archaic. But she also recognised that his level of writing was very high
indeed. She got another surprise when David opened his mouth and spoke Danish
as she had never heard it spoken before. It wasn’t that it was incorrect so
much as that he spoke with an odd preciseness as if he were speaking Latin.
When she spoke at normal speed, he really struggled to understand, but when she
slowed down, he seemed to understand a very wide vocabulary. There was a bit of
a dilemma. Where do you put someone who is very good at the written side of the
language, but fairly poor at the spoken? She was amused that the same sort of
problem covered both the English and the Russians. She could understand why the
Russians would not want students to be able to communicate and so only taught
them to read and write. But how did that explain the English?
She spoke slowly “How did you learn Danish?”
“I went to the University library and found a book by
Thomasine Gyllembourg which I thought might be interesting. It was called “A
Tale of Everyday Life”. On the first page I looked up nearly every word in the
dictionary, wrote it out on a piece of paper and continued in this way until I
reached the end.”
“So you didn’t have a teacher?”
“No. It’s not so easy to find one even in Cambridge.”
She was amazed and had never heard of anyone learning in this
way. His level was surprisingly good considering. But both he and the little
Russian girl would have to go to the intermediate class.
Chapter 4
Classes began after lunch. Lena looked around the room
assessing the faces. She didn’t count, but thought there were about twelve of
them. There were no other Russians. Either they were better than her, or worse.
But there was David. She knew that she would have to stop glancing his way.
Well, she knew how to look stern and serious and anyway, only idiots smiled at
people they didn’t know. Still fate had brought them this far and now they
would be together in the same room every day. Everything was working out.
The teacher asked them all to introduce themselves and say a
little about themselves. She listened as this went on but paid little attention
beyond comparing everyone’s level of Danish. It was strange to hear the
language spoken by people from all over Europe. Everyone mangled it in their
own way. The two French struggled with certain sounds, the Spanish with others.
The Germans and the Dutch were the best as Danish wasn’t so very different from
their own languages. But she didn’t like the harsh edge the German accent gave
to what was being said. Somehow it made every sound ugly.
She looked around for potential rivals. Claudine, the French
girl, was surely too pretty and must have someone at home, besides which she
was surely too tall. Lena felt she already knew David, even if they had only
spoken a few words. He surely would not fall for French charms. Through her
mind flashed the various stereotypes she had amassed about the French and their
loose morals from reading 19th century literature. Then again weren’t all men
more or less susceptible to loose morals? Wasn’t it in the nature of all men to
be looking always for sex? How could you trust them then? Wouldn’t they say
anything, or do anything just to get you into bed? It all seemed so mucky and
not at all according to her dreams.
The Italian girl Maria was only average looking, but typically
southern European. She dressed stylishly, but as if she had made no effort. She
seemed studious and mentioned her studies at Bologna. Lena thought she could
spot intellect in Maria’s eyes. Here was a potential rival. But there was
nothing she could do. She would just have to wait for events to unfold. She
could only place herself in proximity. She could only wait on the beach. Her
role was not to guide the ship. She felt passive and powerless. She’d come all
this way. It had taken almost a miracle to get here. What if nothing happened?
She accepted that this might well indeed be the result. There was nothing she
could do. She could dream, but she knew that when you slept, you had no control
over what you dreamed. So really there was no point reflecting on rivals. There
may never come a point at which the question of rivalry might arise.
When Lena’s turn came, she said “My name is Elena. I’m 21
years and come from Kaliningrad, which is a town in the Soviet Union on the
Baltic sea near to Poland. I have studied Danish for two years and like it very
much, but this is my first time in Denmark. I don’t really know what I will do
when I finish studying, but hope to continue speaking Danish.” Everyone seemed
to like her introduction. She’d already noticed how saying the words “Soviet
Union” made everyone seem to want to show how they were friendly and not at all
Cold War enemies. She had begun to feel just a little as if she were of a
different race and how everyone was desperate to show that they were not at all
racist.
David came soon after. He said “I’m David, from England. I’ve
only been studying Danish for a few months. I needed to learn for my studies.
Sorry about my rotten pronunciation, but this is the first time I’ve actually
spoken. I’ll be staying on at Cambridge to do my doctorate, but I haven’t
completely decided what my topic will be. It could go in a number of
directions. Nor am I sure that I want to stay in academia. I’m very pleased to
be here and very pleased to meet all of you.”
His accent indeed was poor, but not difficult to understand.
Indeed Lena found it easier to understand David’s slow measured speech. The
Danes just seemed to swallow everything, and sometimes whole syllables got lost
somewhere along the way.
The teacher who was called Jens was very friendly and relaxed
as if he had no inhibitions at all. In the few hours she had been there she had
already noticed this characteristic. The Danes were very direct and seemed to
have no masks to hide behind. Jens looked as if he was in his early thirties.
The class progressed and she found it quite interesting. Jens would explain
some grammar on a white board and then ask questions. The whole lesson took
place in Danish, but if someone struggled with a word or a concept, there might
be a sentence or two in English. Everyone there seemed to speak English
completely fluently except her.
After an hour or so there was another of the coffee pauses.
The Danes loved these. There were big thermos flasks with buttons that you
pushed to get the coffee. She talked to a couple of girls from the class, but
then Svetlana came over.
“Do you have a cigarette, Lena?” she asked.
She produced her packet and they moved off to smoke together.
Soon Oleg joined them and then the other Russians. They all smoked. Nearly
everyone in Russia did. They dropped the Danish immediately. It was impossible
to keep it up all day. She saw David talking to Claudine and one of the German
men. They were talking in English. She listened, but only understood the odd
word.
David had been pleased that he was in a reasonably high level
group. He’d been scared that he’d be lumped in with the beginners, because his
speaking and listening were so poor. But he was already beginning to find that
he could pick out more and more words. He had a little secret. You didn’t need
to understand everything to have a conversation. You just used all the clues
available, facial expression, body language and whatever words you caught to
guess the meaning. It nearly always worked.
He’d noticed that the little Russian girl was in his class
and felt pleased. He’d smiled at her once or twice. But one time she’d looked
at him as if he were foolish. Maybe the impression that he’d got from the
evening before had been the wrong one. She now seemed rather severe and stern.
But why then did she keep glancing at him? Perhaps, he’d misjudged the
situation. A pity as she was delightful. He loved how she spoke Danish. It was
pretty good he thought and filtered through her Russian accent was adorable.
She was just his type. He imagined how he could just pick her up; she was so
small and a brief image flashed through his mind of him carrying her in his
arms as if on their wedding day. The image transferred into a memory. It had been some years previously. He always
remembered when he’d carried Gillian in that way. They’d had to cross a shallow
stream and he’d said that it made sense for only one of them to get wet. She’d
expected him to lift her over his shoulder like a fireman, but he had managed
to hold her in his arms as if carrying her over a threshold. He’d dreamed of
that threshold for how many years? He dismissed the image as the brief fleeting
pain became too much to bear.
He was used to disappointment and so thought of other
possibilities. He was pleased when some of the others came up to him to drink
coffee. He noticed how the Russians had formed a group and wondered if they
were discouraged from getting too closely involved with people from the West.
But then he thought to himself: surely all that had changed. The Berlin wall
had come down some months earlier. The Soviet Union was not nearly as
forbidding as it had been some years earlier. He glanced over at Lena. Maybe
he’d try speaking to her another day. But he’d not have much chance if she was
always going to be a part of that little Soviet group. He hoped his fleeting
glances would not be noticed. He didn’t want another of those frosty frowns
with her pale blue grey eyes looking through him as if detente had never
happened.
Claudine was pretty in a way that reminded him of Michèle
Morgan, the French actress from the thirties, only he thought taller. She was
obviously out his league and he would not have dreamed of trying to chat her
up. But she seemed interested, and there was no harm talking. Gradually he
found himself in a little group that tended to sit together at the coffee pause
and during mealtimes. There was an Austrian guy Hans, a Danish girl Sigrid, who
had always lived abroad and so needed to brush up her Danish, a Belgian guy in
his thirties who taught languages, plus Claudine and Maria. It already looked
as if Hans and Sigrid were in the process of pairing off. The only problem was
that Hans could hardly even pronounce her name, which had both the swallowed
Danish “g” and the swallowed Danish “r,” plus the “d” at the end for good
measure leaving a peculiar sound that didn’t remotely resemble the way it would
be pronounced in English, “sig” as in ‘signal’ plus “rid” as in ‘get rid of’.
She told a story of how she had been in America and how when people asked her
name they thought she was saying “Secret”, and they kept asking her why her
name was secret.
David thought Sigrid also was out of his league and so had no
regrets that Hans was staking a claim. She was typically Scandinavian, though
not blonde. Hans looked like some sort of ski instructor sporty type. He
wondered about the little Italian girl, and glanced between her and Lena. They
were only a few feet away from each other.
Maria asked “Have you ever been in Italy?”
“I used to go skiing in the Aosta valley and I’ve been to
Tuscany and Rome.”
“Never to Bologna?”
“No, I’ve only eaten the sauce.”
“We’ve got more than that, you know. It’s a lovely town. I’m
sure you would like it.”
She smiled as if making an invitation.
“Have you been to England?”
“I went to a language school in Brighton and they showed us
around a bit. Unfortunately, we didn’t go to Cambridge.”
“Cambridge is great apart from on damp winter days.”
He glanced again at Lena’s group who were sitting within
earshot, but he didn’t know how to bridge the gap that seemed to be opening
between them. He just didn’t know how to approach a girl he didn’t know. He
didn’t know how to begin.
“I’m sorry,” he said to Maria. “I was miles away. I’m a bit
tired. See you in class.”
Chapter 5
Lena watched the groups form over the next few days. It
wasn’t something you chose, rather the group chose you. Not everyone ended up
in a group. Some just fluttered about between the groups. Some remained more or
less on their own. Everyone was friendly, but it was impossible to get to know
everyone and so most people you only nodded to. You barely knew their names if
you knew them at all. Some groups were based on nationality and spoke German or
Spanish, or Russian. Others were international and spoke English. Hardly anyone
spoke Danish out of class. The atmosphere was that of a holiday. The classes
began to seem like something you got through in order to get back to the
important stuff of hanging out with your new friends. She thought of her new
friends. Perhaps, they would exchange addresses when the course finished and
they had to return to Russia. But she had no reason to write to any of them.
She wouldn’t write to a boy unless she was interested in him. What was the
point? He’d only get the wrong idea. She quite liked Svetlana, but she already
knew that even if they wrote one or two letters, they would not meet again in
the USSR unless some chance flung them together again. Her time in Denmark
which she had looked forward to so much was going quickly. Days were merging
into one another. She had achieved little, other than some practice speaking.
She had not done what she had set out to do, had not met whom she had set out
to meet. She would go back and she’d be asked about her time here. There would
be disappointment. What was the point of sending someone all the way to Denmark
only for them to spend all their time with Russians? And yet she had felt the
subtle pressure to do so. Whenever she had made even the slightest attempt to
break out of the Russian group, when she’d been seen talking too long to one of
the foreigners, someone had made a comment. “We’re not good enough for you, is
that it Lena?” There had been the pressure to conform. The trouble is that they
didn’t understand and, anyway, how could she explain her dream, the path that
she had set out on, the fate that was to be fulfilled. They all had probably
read or seen ‘Scarlet Sails’. Certainly, every girl in Russia knew the story.
But could serious, stern little Lena really explain in those terms, but if not
in those terms, what terms? She enjoyed her days. She continued to watch David.
She saw how the handsome Austrian had got together with the pretty Dane. They
were continually together now, whispering to each other and obviously in the
first stages of love. She waited every day to see if David would get together
with one of the other girls in his group. She sort of expected it. There were
lots of people pairing off. It was June. They were young people mostly in their
early twenties flung together with a common interest. It was the perfect
situation for starting a relationship. And so she watched with a sense of dread
every day to see if something developed. But nothing did. She looked on with a
mixture of pleasure and anxiety. But she knew it hardly mattered. She’d seen
David climb the Cathedral tower at Ribe with Claudine. She’d seen him pouring
over a passage from a 19th century Danish novel with Maria. She’d especially
seen how Maria looked at David. It was something that perhaps, only a woman and
a rival could notice, for David seemed oblivious. But the reason that it didn’t
matter was because the end of the course was within touching distance. In less
than a week she would be back in Kaliningrad. She would have waited on the
beach; she would have seen the ship’s captain approach. It was as if she could
see the scarlet sails on the horizon. But nothing would have happened. She
would have to accept that the prophecy had not come true. There would have been
no romance and no happy ending. There was only one thing left to try. She would
have to let the other Russians glimpse her secret. Tell them about the
prophecy. Ask them for their help. The next time she saw them she would arrange
a meeting, just like the Komsomol, the communist youth organization that they
must all be members of. She would organize a council, a small soviet in a
faraway land and they would begin to plot. Her English was not good enough to
join David’s group, she understood less than fragments of what they said, but
maybe with help she could get him to join hers. After all, he normally sat
close to them. Perhaps, he would be interested to meet some Russians.
Chapter 6
David had enjoyed himself in Denmark. He had learned
something, too and was beginning to speak a little better. But he admitted to
himself that his progress was slower than he had hoped. The problem was that he
only spoke Danish in class; and even there it was always possible to revert to
English if he didn’t understand something or there was a word he didn’t know.
The language of the class was Danish, but nearly everyone used the odd English
sentence at least now and again. He had met few Danes, just staff at the school
and people in shops. They all spoke English perfectly and were desperate to
show off their linguistic skills at the least excuse. The mere hint of a
foreign accent and they just answered in their perfect English. He never had a
chance to practice.
The lessons themselves had been too high for him or too low.
Somehow like so many times before, he hadn’t fitted. The problem was that he
could read and write very well, but he was tongue tied. He needed to have a few
days speaking only Danish. Most of all he needed to have to speak Danish. He
knew that it was only when he had to struggle to find a word or had to explain
an idea using whatever words he knew plus whatever gestures he could think of,
it was only then that he would get some fluency. This had always been his
experience with languages. It was one thing learning grammar, studying a
language like it was dead, it was another thing making it live. Only by
interacting with someone else could you become fluent and this fluency was the
hardest thing of all. Conjugating verbs and noun declensions was easy on paper,
like doing a maths puzzle, but doing it all in real time with someone waiting
on your answer, speaking automatically without thinking was a far harder task.
This is what he wanted, for this made you someone else again. It gave you a new
mind, sometimes even a new personality.
He realised that his new friends were really something of a
hindrance, but it was too late now with only a few days to go. He sensed that
something had gone wrong from the start. It wasn’t that he disliked them. Far
from it; and it was better than being alone. He’d even thought for a little
while that something might happen between him and Claudine. They’d ended up on
their own climbing the cathedral tower at Ribe. They’d stood at the top looking
over the flat lands of Jutland. But he never knew how to start anything and so
if there had been a moment, the moment passed. The others he thought of more or
less as just people he’d ended up with, more or less by chance. He might write
their names and addresses in his book, but that would be it. He only wrote to
other men if they were really close friends. He’d only write to a woman if he
hoped for something more. He’d written to Gillian for years and had always had
to wait for her letters. He was sick of such correspondence. He was sick most
of all of loving someone and hoping she would change. They never change.
Eventually, he realised this and resolved to stop such impossible situations
even beginning. Moreover, he was sick of chasing and resolved no longer to do
so. Gillian always knew he’d be there. He thought of the girls he had dropped
along the way because of Gillian. His hope could be rekindled with the merest
hint that he read into a letter she had sent. He’d been her loving friend since
he’d been sixteen and had got nothing in return. Now he didn’t even have the
friend. He no longer believed in friendship with girls at all. Either something
happened within a reasonably short time or he’d let the whole thing drop. He
resolved to wait. He could be patient. Let one of them find him.
He’d looked forward to the course and felt he really needed
to be getting more out of it than these chats with people he’d never see again
when he left Denmark. He knew that he still spoke poorly, and he didn’t
understand every word that the teacher said or at least he didn’t recognise it
when it was spoken. There had been the occasional sniggers in class. He’d
always been vain intellectually and set out to show them. There’d been a class
assignment to read a short Danish poem and explain it. Everyone had gone to the
school library and a series of ten minute talks had taken place. When David’s
turn came, he read a rather old fashioned sounding sonnet. It had some very
difficult words in it, but a rather wonderful rhythm with interesting, even
surprising rhymes. He proceeded to analyse the style and the themes of how the
poet had lost his young daughter and was remembering how they had walked
together and how he had been caught himself feeling a sense of happiness, and
felt guilty because when he turned to share the moment with his daughter, he
realised that she was dead. There were no more sniggers. His pronunciation had
not been great, but what he had said had shown a profound understanding of the
text.
“Who wrote the poem, David?” asked Jens. “I don’t recognise
it, which surprises me. I know most of the famous Danish poets”.
“Well, actually I have a confession to make,” said David. “I
thought it would be more interesting to read a translation. The poem was by
William Wordsworth. The first line in English starts “Surprised by joy,
impatient as the wind.”
“So you found a translation of this poem in the library?”
asked Jens. “I didn’t know we had any.”
“No. I worked it out for myself. It didn’t take long.”
Jens looked a bit stunned “But how did you manage it? I mean
it was exceptionally good.”
“Just the same as when I translate Greek, the principle is
the same.”
From then on everyone looked on David slightly differently.
Naturally, there were no more sniggers, but there was also a little bit more
distance between him and the other students. He felt the distance outside class
also, for the story spread. As ever he found himself regretting how he had
revealed himself. His openness as much as his arrogance had scared them off.
He’d hoped for more from the course, but more than that he’d
hoped to meet someone. The months had passed since he’d last seen Gillian. The
wound was there, but he didn’t notice it so often. Given the chance something
could happen now. But looking back on his time there and all the brief conversations,
there’d really been nothing apart from once. He thought back to his first day,
and what had struck him at the time as the merest possibility of a match
lighting. The little Russian girl had recognised him. What sort of recognition
was this? Was there an intuition that there could be a spark, a sense that
there was a possibility that they could be together? Perhaps, in that sense he
had recognised her too, though he had never seen her before.
He saw her in class every day, but they hadn’t exchanged another
word apart from the sort of things you say to fellow students in a classroom.
She began to drift into the background like one of the many with whom he had
once said ‘hello’ and said his name.
Anyway, her group was clearly only for Russians and they
seemed hardly to talk to anyone else. By now with only a few days left he had
almost forgotten Lena. She had merged into the faces he passed in the corridor
or saw at lunch. She was just one more of the many faces he didn’t know and
barely noticed. He realised that the next few days would bring just more of the
same and then after a few more days in
Denmark he would get the ferry home.
He was sitting in his room reading Dostoevsky when there was
a knock on the door. He checked his clock and saw that it was just before 9.
He’d decided not to go with the others after dinner and had made some excuse.
He opened the door and saw one of the Russian men; he vaguely remembered that
he was called Oleg, but he wasn’t sure. He said something in Russian. David shook
his head and asked in a bemused fashion:
“Excuse me?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Oleg in heavily accented English. “When
I heard you were such a linguist I wondered if you might know some Russian.
Anyway, the reason I’m here is that we are having a small party. We’re curious
about England and would like to ask you if you would, please, come along for a
while.”
“Well, I was...” David hesitated. The conversation was
seriously weird and unexpected.
“Do, please, come. You might have fun, you know. Anything can
happen. We’re not so scary.”
David wondered what to say. He’d have to be rather rude to
turn down the invitation, and besides he was curious about these Russians.
“I’d be delighted,” said David.
Chapter 7
Lena had called the meeting. It was informal. But then again
they each knew without being told that each of them had been in the young
pioneers and were now in Komsomol. They had all so to speak proceeded through
the ranks successfully. There was no way otherwise that they would be here. There
had therefore been no need to be formal or to actually describe what was taking
place. This was a Komsomol meeting held outside the Soviet Union. They all knew
that the meeting could profoundly influence their lives.
“I have a favour to ask,” Lena said.
“How can we help?” asked Petr.
“I want us to pool some of our money, so that we can organize
a party.”
“Why and for whom?” said Oleg.
“It will be for the English man, David. I want to meet him.
It’s important to me.”
“Look, I’d been planning on buying something to take home,”
said Andrei.
“I realise it is a sacrifice. That’s why I asked to talk to
you.”
“If you like this guy, Lena, why don’t you just chat to him
and see if anything comes of it?” said Oleg.
“It’s not working out as I had hoped. It’s really not working
out at all. There’s no need to go into details, but I really need your help. I
feel like my fate is involved; and that the next few days will decide things
for me one way or the other. Maybe it seems melodramatic, but I’m meant to meet
and get to know David.”
Everyone looked seriously at Lena. The idea of fate or
destiny is much more commonly accepted in Russia than in the West.
“You feel drawn to him that much?” asked Sveta.
“Our eyes met and there was an understanding,” said Lena. “It
was on the first day and even if it was brief, I’m sure I saw a response in
him. I feel like this has all been predicted years ago like in Grin’s story.
You know the one about the scarlet sails.”
“You feel like Asol and that he is the ship’s captain,” said
Petr.
“Yes, something like that. I feel as if someone told me when
I was a little girl that a man would arrive in a white ship with scarlet sails
and now I’ve grown up I’ve glimpsed the sails, but that I’m going to be left
alone on the sand.”
“Isn’t that taking things a bit far?” said Andrei. “It’s only
a story. You don’t really believe this stuff, do you?”
“Not literally. No one told me about this place when I was a
little girl. But yet the story makes sense to me. This is my chance. I know it.
This is why I was sent here.” She looked at them with a face that was
unmistakable. It was her Komsomol face. It was hard to reconcile it with the
discussion, but there it was.
“I’m asking for your help, comrades.”
They all looked at each other. There was no choice. They
didn’t understand, but did not want to press her. Who knew what was behind all
this? But it just wasn’t done, turning down such an appeal.
“Of course, Lena. Take all you need,” said Svetlana.
“I’ve got some bottles of vodka that I brought from home,”
said Petr.
We can go shopping tomorrow and get the snacks,” said
Svetlana.
“It will be good to have a bit of party,” said Andrei.
“You must really like this guy. I hope he’s worth it. What’s
the idea? To get him drunk?” asked Oleg.
“Absolutely not. We’ll have to get him something else to
drink besides vodka,” said Lena.
“Anyway, we can work out the details later.” She looked at
them very seriously. “I want to thank you all very sincerely. I won’t forget.”
Chapter 8
They had all found Denmark to be expensive. The shops had
seemed amazing at first. But Lena was already looking back fondly on Soviet
shops. There was really no variety at all here. Everything was expensive. She
was running out of cigarettes. But the local Prince or American Camel and
Marlboro would be out of reach when she had spent nearly all of her remaining
cash on the party. It wasn’t that they needed much, it was just that even when
they had pooled their resources they did not have much.
She went round the supermarket with Svetlana. It was good to
have someone alongside who was sympathetic. Girls were usually like that unless
they liked the boy as well. Anyway, she had received some welcome words of
encouragement.
“Do you like it here Lena?” aked Svetlana not particularly
meaning Denmark, but the West. “I wouldn’t mind staying on either.”
“I thought you had someone in Moscow.”
“I do and he’s great. I’d miss him, but I’d get over it.”
“I sometimes think they don’t think like us and we don’t
think like them.”
“Because of politics?”
“In part, but not fundamentally. More because of language.
Their languages are too far away from ours. It’s almost as if we’re speaking
Chinese. I don’t know if it’s possible for a foreigner to really understand a
Russian unless he speaks Russian.”
“This David surely doesn’t speak Russian?”
“I doubt it. But he’s quite a linguist. He could learn”.
“Do you think so? How many foreigners have you met who can
speak good Russian?”
“I’d hardly met any foreigners at all, until the past couple
of weeks. But if anyone could learn Russian, it’s David. You should have heard
how he translated an English poem into Danish. Our teacher could hardly believe
it.”
“Maybe he does know some Russian. Some of them do.”
“What! Like those tongue tied Germans speaking Russian like
they’re doing arithmetic. Hopeless. Still it might be worth finding out.”
“How?”
“Well, my idea is that we all gather together in one of the
booths just before nine. I’ll send one of the boys to get David. What do you think?
Oleg would be best.”
“Agreed. But what if David isn’t there? What if he’s with his
friends?”
“Well, if he’s with his friends, Oleg can still ask him. He
can say we want to ask him something about England, that we all love Sherlock
Holmes or something. You know how the English are: they won’t turn down an
invitation if it’s pressed. That would be embarrassing, and above everything
else they don’t want to be embarrassed.”
“But what if Oleg can’t find him?”
“Well, then we’ll just have to try again tomorrow. Someone
could invite him more formally. It’s just I think, it’s better if all appears a
bit more accidental.”
“And you don’t want to seem too keen.”
“No girl does. It’s not very attractive and they just take
you for granted.”
“OK. It’s a reasonable plan, but how are you going to find
out if he speaks any Russian?”
“Well, Oleg could begin by speaking something in Russian. He
could say something about having heard that David was a linguist. It doesn’t
really matter. If it turns out he doesn’t understand a word, Oleg can tell me
in Russian and then I’ll also be able to let the rest of you know when it’s
time you can leave us alone.”
“So it would be better really if he didn’t know any Russian?”
“In a way, only it will still be a bit tricky. My English is
almost non-existent and so we’ll only really be left with Danish, and neither
of us can speak fluently.”
“Oh well, you’ll have to find a more direct way of
communicating,” Sveta laughed.
By the time they had got everything that they thought they would
need, there wasn’t much money left. The beer had cost the most. Lena could
hardly believe how expensive beer was. But she considered it absolutely
essential. They boys would drink vodka and would continue until all the bottles
were empty. But if David joined in, he’d be no use to her.
“You’ll help me, won’t you, Sveta, to keep him away from the
vodka?”
“I’ve been keeping men away from vodka all my life.”
Chapter 9
David sat down. The only spare seat was next to Lena. He
still looked a little surprised, but was very polite. They did the
introductions.
“I’ve seen you all around of course,” he said. “It’s good to
have a chance to get to know you better.”
“We thought so, too,” said Petr. “Maybe you don’t know, but
English culture is still very popular in Russia. The best Sherlock Holmes film
is Russian.”
All the Russians agreed.
“Have you seen the old ones with Basil Rathbone?” asked
David.
“No. But I’m sure you would agree with us if you saw our
version,” said Andrei.
“Perhaps. I’ve seen very few Russian films. Just some
Eisenstein and a very long one about an icon painter.”
“Andrei Rublev?” asked Andrei.
“Yes. I think so.”
They asked him about where he was from. And he described
growing up in a small town near the New Forest. He told them about the thatched
cottages and the pubs with painted signs, like the fighting cocks and the green
dragon. He told them about the New Forest, and they laughed when it turned out
that ‘new’ meant nearly a thousand years old. He described the wild ponies,
talked a little about the place where William Rufus was killed with an arrow.
They didn’t know this story, but he was surprised by how much British history
they did know, far more than the average Briton knew about Russia. He described
how he had gone to a small private school in Salisbury, where he had found
himself to be best at Latin and Greek; and how he had gone on to Cambridge
where he had continued with classics but had gradually moved towards Greek
philosophy as his main love. He was planning to study the Greek influence on a
Danish philosopher. He mentioned the name, but none of the Russians had heard
of him.
The conversation carried on in an impossible mix of English
and Danish. When someone didn’t understand, translations were provided. It was
quite a mixture, but somehow there was communication. David was immediately
struck by how the Russians had thawed. They treated him now like they had known
him forever. Everyone was smiling.
“I thought you were all a bit frosty,” said David. “You know
we have an image of Russians as never smiling and always saying ‘Nyet!’”
“We don’t smile unless we know someone,” said Svetlana. “In
Russia there’s a saying that only fools smile at strangers.”
“You should tell that to the Americans,” said David. “They
are always beaming away at people they don’t know and saying “have a nice day”
to strangers.”
“And didn’t you find this foolish? Have you been there?”
“I studied for a while in a college in New England. Come to
think of it, I didn’t much care for them always saying have a nice day when
they couldn’t care less what sort of day I had. But there’s a lot to like in
the States; and I’m not that keen on British reserve and shyness, though I’m
probably stuck with it.”
He described life in Cambridge. How he still wore his gown to
formal hall and in the streets. How he had gone rowing and played cricket for
his college. He described how some of the students were very wealthy. He
described punting on the Cam and walks to Granchester. They asked him about his
studies.
“I focus mainly on Greek now,” he said. “I don’t know why I
picked classics apart from that I was good at it at school. To be honest, I
already knew enough when I went to Cambridge and so I haven’t had to study very
hard. It’s left me free to pursue my own interests. Do any of you know Latin or
Greek?”
“It’s not really taught in our schools,” said Lena. “But I
found someone who could teach me a little. Greek is quite important to the
Russian language. I had thought once of specialising in Russian and linguistics
and there are other reasons why it’s important.”
David noticed the surprise on the faces of the other Russians
at Lena’s confession that she knew some Greek. He wondered what the other
reason could be, but thought it best not to ask about it. It might be a
delicate subject judging by some of the frowns he was seeing.
“Well, maybe if we struggle with English or Danish we could
try Greek.”
Everyone laughed.
“But no one speaks Ancient Greek,” said Lena.
“I don’t see how you can understand a language if you can’t
speak it. No really,” said David. “You have to be able to think and speak
before you can have any sort of fluency, otherwise it’s just looking up words
in the dictionary.”
“Can you speak Greek?”
“That’s how I was taught.”
“Say something.”
He spoke a few sentences obviously fluently.
“I didn’t think that was possible,” said Lena. “It’s like
you’re going back in time.”
“But how do you know how to pronounce the words?” asked
Andrei.
“There are ways,” said David. “Though it can be complex. You
look at rhymes. Sometimes you have to guess.”
“Have you been to Greece?” asked Oleg. “Can they understand
you there?”
“They can get quite a bit of it,” said David. “But they give
you some very funny looks.”
David had been surprised at the vodka bottles. They had caps
that you opened with an opener and so once opened could not be closed. He’d
said that he didn’t much like vodka and he was wary about getting drunk.
“We have some beer, too,” said Lena.
“I’ll try a little vodka and then stick to beer.”
“We call mixing vodka and beer a ruffe in Russian,” she said.
“Well, I’ll make sure I don’t get too prickly,” said David.
Someone had found a Danish version of Trivial Pursuit and
they all began to play. There were some questions that were about Danish
television or very specific history that no one outside Denmark would know, but
otherwise it was like the normal game with the added challenge of translation.
As the Russian men became drunker, they spoke more and more in Russian, and
Svetlana began to join in as well. In the end David found his conversation
almost exclusively was with Lena. He began to feel pleased that he had found
himself here. He saw that she was running short of cigarettes and so offered
her one of his. When the game ended, she said something in Russian and soon
after the others began to leave.
“David, could you give me another cigarette?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“I wanted to ask you a couple of things. I find it easier to
speak Danish one to one. Don’t you?”
“It began sounding like the Tower of Babel back then.”
She looked a little confused and then remembered.
“The story from the Bible?”
“Yes.”
“At root we speak the same language you know. It’s just now
we’re 10,000 years later.”
“I wanted to ask you about your poem,” she said. “It was very
beautiful. Can you say it in English? I won’t understand much, but you could
explain.”
He began: “Surprised by joy impatient as the wind. I turned
to share the transport--Oh with whom” and continued reciting the rest of the
poem by heart. He then did his best to explain each word in Danish and told her
of the sad story behind the poem. She didn’t know all the Danish words that he
had used in his translation and some he struggled to explain, but by a gradual
process of exchange she came to understand most of what the poem was about and
felt very touched by both it and by his explanation.
Chapter 10
It must have been about midnight by now. The passers-by had
ceased some time ago. It was quiet and they were alone. Lena thought she had
made herself pretty obvious and yet still nothing happened. They had talked of
poetry. He had asked her who she liked and she had mentioned what every Russian
would mention, Pushkin and Lermontov. She’d even recited something from
Lermontov, but couldn’t begin to make any sort of translation.
“I like the sounds,” said David, “the rhythm and the
structure.”
He went off on a tangent about poetry when the last thing she
was interested in at that moment was poetry. She wanted real poetry, not from a
book, but between them.
She waited. She was scared that at any moment he would say
something like it was getting late and it had been a wonderful evening, and
that he’d see her in class tomorrow. That was what Grin had never thought
about. When Arthur Grey in the story went to so much trouble as to buy all the
red silk he could find so that he could fulfil the prophecy and arrive in a
ship with scarlet sails; still when he arrived in his boat at the beach where
Asol was waiting, they were both strangers. There must have been a moment, if
the story had been in any sense real, when they would have been like David and
her, on the brink of something happening, but before it had happened. There was
always the possibility that the moment would pass and that nothing would
happen, that the ship with scarlet sails would sail away and she would be left
in her home village of Caperna, and everyone there would continue to mock.
She wondered what she could do. She kept asking for
cigarettes as if they were the means of keeping him here. She accidentally
touched his hand or his leg, on a number of occasions she tried to sit a little
bit closer without completely giving the game away. Why didn’t he do something?
This really was taking British reserve a bit far. He’d finished the beers some
time ago. Yet he seemed only to want to talk of literature.
“I’ve nearly finished ‘The Brothers Karamazov’,” he said. “I
don’t think I can remember reading anything deeper. I’m thinking of trying to
use Dostoevsky in my studies, but it’s just a possibility.”
“I’ve never read it. Only ‘Crime and Punishment’. We have to
read many of these big novels at school. They give you a reading list every
summer. It means that most of us are pretty sick of these famous writers.”
“But there must be some things you like. Some writers.”
“I like Leskov, at least he tended to write shorter things.
My favourite is Alexandr Grin.”
“I’m afraid, I’ve not read either. I’ve only heard of Leskov.
Didn’t he write ‘Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk’? But I only know the opera.”
“I think, Shostakovich is fairly dull.”
Lena looked towards him quickly and he glanced away equally
quickly. She thought he had been trying to look down her top. It was rather
loose and she often didn’t bother with a bra. It hardly seemed worth it. Well,
at least it looked like he didn’t mind that she was flat-chested. She made as
if to move her arm a little behind him, so that when he lent back, there would
be some more accidental contact. Still he talked of literature.
“Do you remember the bit in Anna Karenina when Varenka and
Sergei were picking mushrooms?”
“I read Anna Karenina in less than a week. I barely remember
how it ends.”
“It always struck me as very romantic. It’s a while since I
read it, but I remember it something like this. Sergei likes Varenka and the
feeling is mutual. He has an idea of proposing to her, and while they are
picking mushrooms one day he is just about to do so. Varenka waits. But Sergei
begins to remember someone who he loved, but who died. The moment passes and
they go home, and each of them know that their chance has gone.”
Was he trying to tell her something? Was he trying to say
that they should act or that their chance would pass. Was there someone he
could not forget? She wanted him to kiss her. But how do you go from sitting
talking to kissing? How do you show that you want to be kissed without doing
so? She leant against him for a second, then looked into his eyes. Trying not
to seem as if she was staring, she tried to make her eyes say ‘yes’. She made a
little movement of approach and he did likewise. She tilted her head and moved
her arm around him. Now this had to be clear enough. He finally kissed her.
She felt relief mixed with pleasure. This moment was like no
other, really better than any other she could remember at that moment. You
waited for this kiss to happen, and until the last second you didn’t really
know if it would and yet it changed everything or at least it should change
everything. She thought kisses thrown away without significance went very low
and lay like discarded rubbish in the gutter. A kiss changed a person. It
changed you and it changed him. A kiss was the first step on a path that could
lead you to being with a person forever. If she had not kissed David, he would
tomorrow just be an acquaintance, a classmate, someone who would sail away in a
few days. Now that she was kissing him he was someone special. The difference
between a friend and boyfriend was a kiss, and a boyfriend if things went well,
became a husband. In this she was very old fashioned. She had never been
kissed. It was something that you didn’t give away freely. A century earlier a
kiss meant an engagement, and an engagement was a promise. Lena understood it
in much the same way.
It was all rather new to her, and David’s experience seemed
also mainly from books. Somehow the mechanics weren’t quite right as if they
were locking antlers.
“Maybe it would be easier without our glasses,” he said, “Let
me.”
He took off her glasses and his own and put them on the table.
She looked at him through what seemed like a pleasant blur. She could make out
his features reasonably well, but all around was just shapes and vagueness. It
seemed to focus her attention more, though often she didn’t look at all, but
just felt his mouth and his embrace.
It was two in the morning, and they had been kissing for over
an hour. How could she describe even to herself that hour? There were no words
to describe the acting other than that they kissed. To try to detail the
various activities would be absurd and dull, and yet the experience had been
far from dull. She’d lost all sense of time, but was overwhelmed with the
desire to continue kissing. There was an exquisite pleasure all over her. She’d
waited and her waiting had paid off. But she was also a little frightened. She
didn’t know this man. Or if she knew him, she knew him hardly at all. Although
this kissing set him apart in her eyes, perhaps, he only wanted a fling. She
had never met a man from the West, but she’d heard about their loose morals.
Perhaps, he would expect.
They finally agreed that it was time to go to bed, picked up
their glasses from the table and had a final cigarette.
“I don’t much feel like class after this. Shall we go to the
first one and then find something better to do?” said David.
“I’m not even sure I’ll make the first class.”
“Well, we can finish these and I’ll walk you to your room.”
“No, that’s OK. I know the way.”
“In England a gentleman always shows his lady friend home.”
She was a little apprehensive as he took her to her room.
What if he should ask to come in? It would have been better if they’d just gone
their own way. And yet it was rather nice walking hand in hand in the
moonlight. He didn’t even kiss her goodnight, but as soon as they reached the
door, just said goodnight and walked off. Lena felt tired, but for a while the
events of the evening played out in her mind. The kiss was just a jumble of
images and sensations in her mind, but it was delightful. She snuggled up with
the image of David. There was nothing to fear. She began to allow her desire
and her imagination to mix in vague images, and in her dreams she felt his
presence in her arms.
Chapter 11
Lena woke up. She’d already missed the morning songs and the
first lesson. If she wasn’t reasonably quick, she’d miss the first coffee
pause, too. She looked in her wardrobe and thought now was the time for her
favourite clothes. It was Thursday, so that meant there was only today, Friday
and Saturday to think about. She made a couple of plans which depended also on
how things might work out. There was an outfit she’d been saving for an evening
out somewhere. She thought maybe Friday. Today might be too soon.
The feeling from last night remained. She’d woken up with it
and for a moment not quite known what she was feeling, but it was only for a
moment, for she immediately remembered what she had spent all night dreaming
about. There was a sort of all over pleasure and the excitement of anticipation
also. But then she realised the difference between life and fairy tales. The
lovers from the fairy-tale got into their ship of scarlet sails and the story
ended. Were they married from the start? Or did they have to start courting? If
so, might it not have worked out? What if they had found that they didn’t like
each other after all? But none of this was mentioned.
Lena had no regrets, but she realised that they didn’t have
much time. It had taken a miracle to bring them together and a nudge or two
from herself, but in a few days she’d be back in the Soviet Union and he’d be
in England. There were possibilities. But she could not ignore the
difficulties. What she felt now she recognised, as if she’d always known it,
but somehow the feeling was also quite new. She thought she could be hurt
rather badly if she were not careful.
She was waiting when David came out of his lesson and they
sat down together. It was not possible to simply continue as they had done the
night before. Or rather the constraint that had begun at their saying goodnight
continued. He had wanted to show that he was a gentleman and so had not even
attempted to kiss her goodnight. She for her part remembered the slight sense
of apprehension as to what he would do next, whether he would want to come in.
She remembered also her sense of disappointment that he had not come in. It was
this that was so pleasant, this odd mix of wanting and not wanting. She wanted
to be kissed again, but she wanted him to start it. Why should it always be her
that took the lead? She was already beginning to feel a little unladylike. If
she hadn’t arranged everything, they would this morning have been in the same
class as strangers. Instead they were sitting here together as what? As people
who had kissed. It was a pity that she had not met him this morning when they
had been alone somewhere. Perhaps then he would have kissed her. But he could
even here have done something not too scandalous. There were ways of displaying
affection. But she sensed again his shyness and something else that restrained
him. Was that the point of his mentioning the episode in Anna Karenina?
“Have you a cigarette David?” she asked. “I’ve hardly any
left and they’re very expensive here.”
“Sure. I think they're expensive, too. Even worse than in the
UK.”
She noticed how they were attracting one or two glances. She
noticed the displeasure on the face of that Italian girl, what was she called?
Yes. Maria. Lena felt a certain thrill.
“You know, Lena, this is what I came for?”
“What?”
“This having a chat in Danish. I’ve spent the past fortnight
talking English apart from in the lessons and even then someone speaks English
every other minute.”
She wondered if he was talking only of that when he said this
is what he came for. These English people were too subtle and she couldn’t
really work out everything that was in his mind. It was like some sort of
repression, and they thought that Russians were cold and frosty.
“It’s good for me, too. I’ve been speaking too much Russian
here.”
“I’m pretty sick of the lessons. Let’s have our own lesson
together.”
Their conversation was fluent enough, but each had their
limitations. Lena had been learning longer than David, but he had read
considerably more than her. This meant that in certain areas his vocabulary was
more complex, but tended to be bookish. They sometimes found themselves not
being able to express something and had to help each other out by describing
what they meant to say. She would say a word and say I mean to say the opposite
of it, and he would either remember the word or say that it didn’t matter, for
he understood what she was trying to say anyway. It was like a game and each
sentence became an intriguing sort of puzzle. Two people speaking a language
they only partly know and know in different respects must have sounded to any
Dane like a very odd mix of hesitation, with them going back and forth
sometimes to get the meaning. A Dane who observed Lena and David’s conversation
might have been horrified by how they pronounced the words. If he had tried to
translate what they said, he would have realised that it would have been
tedious to mention every hesitation, and so would have smoothed it out as the
only way in which he could describe without tedium what they said. The Dane may
have been horrified, but Lena and David were delighted.
“I find it much easier to understand you,” said Lena.
“We don’t mumble and swallow all the words,” said David. “It
may be not completely correct, but so what? The main thing is that we
understand each other.”
The other Russians joined them and immediately there was the
mixture of languages from the night before.
David was struck by how he was accepted into their group.
They smiled and seemed pleased to see him. He thought it had been a pity that
he hadn’t had a chance to kiss Lena. He remembered the night before, and how it
had all happened so suddenly and so unexpectedly. It was a little difficult,
too. She was the first girl he’d kissed since the thing with Gillian had
finally come to an end. Not that he’d kissed Gillian anytime recently, not for
how many years. He wondered if it was five or six years since they’d gone out
very briefly as sixteen year olds. Those few kisses however had led to nothing
but disappointment and anguish. But he had spent the last few years wanting to kiss
Gillian like he had kissed Lena. He stopped himself. Why was he thinking of
Gillian again? What was the point? He really wanted to recapture that moment of
last night, but not here. She seemed a little distant. He couldn’t read her
face. Did she regret it? There was that mask again. But then it broke through.
Still he’d wait and see what happened.
“They want to go to the swimming pool,” Lena said explaining
the Russian conversation of the others.
“Shall we go, too?” he asked. “I’m not much of a swimmer, but
I’ll not drown.”
“I’m not that good either,” she said.
She didn’t think it was a bad idea. It was one of the hottest
days that they had spent there. She wondered for a moment why they did not go
off to be alone somewhere. Why had she suggested the pool? She could have let
the others go and make her excuses. But then again you couldn’t start what had
begun at midnight at half past ten in the morning. They would have time enough
to be alone later. Anyway, she rather liked the idea of seeing David swimming.
As she had dozed, her mind had fleetingly approached the point of wondering
what he might look like with nothing to hinder her sight. Now she’d see.
They gathered their swimming things and set out on the walk
to the pool. It was twenty minutes or so away. The three other Russians went
ahead and talked freely. Lena heard them talking about David, just not using
his name when they spoke, so that he wouldn’t know what they were saying. She
focussed on David and their continuing Danish lesson. She noticed that he had a
funny little red star on his jacket.
“What’s that for?” she pointed.
“Oh, I don’t know I was given it years ago. It used to be
purple and have a shiny surface, but it wore off and I painted it red.”
“I don’t think I’d wear one unless I didn’t really have a
choice.”
“Oh, I thought?”
“People here know little about how we live.”
“But it’s getting better surely. Gorbachev…”
“No, it’s getting worse. Worse than it has ever been.”
“Really? I thought Russian people would be pleased.”
“I think the only place where Gorbachev is popular is in the
West. Everyone here goes on and on about him. But he’s made life worse for us.”
“But you don’t think this is the answer?” He pointed to the
red star.
“No, of course not. Everyone knows that.”
He unpinned it. It had been a present from Gillian when they
were 16 or 17. He had flirted with some political ideas from the left and she
had given it to him as a sort of joke. A purple shiny star that later in an
idle moment without much thought he’d turned red. He’d kept it on his jacket
more out of habit, and because she had given it to him. Now he held it in his
hand and flung it away.
“It was rather a silly badge,” he said. “I should have done
that years ago.”
The swimming pool was fairly large and modern. Everything was
spotless and there were saunas. The three Russian men changed into their
costumes and looked rather strangely at his swimming shorts. He had bought them
in the States the year before. No one wore speedos there. The long shorts he
wore were not much good really for swimming in. But they made you just a little
less self-conscious.
Lena noticed how David tried not to be obvious when his eyes
moved over her body. She smiled. No matter how a man tried to be discrete it
was always obvious. His long shorts amused her. She’d never seen anything like
them. How on earth were you supposed to swim with shorts that reached almost to
your knees? Maybe the British were still very modest about these sorts of
things and expected people who went swimming to not show too much flesh.
“I almost expected you to wear one of those costumes from
Victorian times,” she joked.
“We still have those bathing machines you know, so that young
ladies can enter the water unseen by prying eyes.”
“You do?” she said playing along but realising that he too
was joking.
“This is just what people wear now. Everyone laughs at you if
you wear what those Russian guys wear.”
“I prefer those kinds of costumes,” said Lena still flirting.
“It’s only fair. Why should you alone be all covered up? While we…”
“Wear as little as possible,” he said. “It must be something
to do with national temperament,” he said laughing.
“You should see our banyas.”
“Banya?
“It’s a sort of sauna where everyone gets naked and there’s
loads of very hot, very wet steam, and you have birch twigs with leaves and
you’re beaten with them.”
“Men and women together? It sounds like Scandinavia.”
“No, we may not approach British standards of modesty, but we
haven’t descended quite yet to Scandinavian standards of immodesty.”
“How could you? Russia is also a country of tea drinkers. Am
I right?”
“You are. Who knows what else we have in common?” she said
with a slightly knowing glance.
Lena knew that she wasn’t the best of swimmers, but she was
determined not to embarrass herself. Whatever David did she would try to do
likewise. She didn’t know why there should be a competition about it. But she
wanted him to admire her in more ways than only one, in every way if that were
possible.
She noticed that Oleg was a very good swimmer and had
obviously been trained. The others were average. But it was good fun, and soon
she was enjoying the sense of the water on her body and the feeling of the
splashes. She didn’t need to be a good swimmer to feel again the wonder of
being buoyant. Why was it again that you didn’t sink rather than float? She had
no idea. Maybe she had missed that lesson in physics. She could propel herself
along well enough with a sort of breast stroke, and she could lie on her back
and look upwards at the ceiling unable to make out much without her glasses.
Andrei and Petr had been fooling around shouting in Russian
and ducking each other. She noticed a couple of slightly disapproving looks
from the Danish staff, but they didn’t say anything. Soon Oleg was showing off.
He really was a good swimmer with his fast front crawl and racing turns.
Lena watched from the side hanging on to the rails with each
hand spread behind her back. David approached her, and together they watched
the boys’ antics. Soon someone had the idea of trying the diving boards. They
looked up; it must have been five metres high. Petr jumped, which was
impressive enough, but then Oleg, still showing off, actually dived.
“Pretty impressive,” said Lena.
“I’d maybe jump,” said David. “But no way would I dive.”
Lena saw that even Sveta was going to join in. She saw how
David’s eyes followed Sveta and felt just a hint of jealousy. Sveta was both
taller than Lena and had a more feminine figure. Her one piece costume hugged
her contours, and Lena though it was a better choice than her own bikini. Sveta
jumped, and she noticed how David had looked on with pleasure and with
admiration.
“Why don’t you have a go yourself, David?” asked Sveta
gliding up to them.
“Go on!” said Oleg.
“Well, I guess, it doesn’t take much skill to fall,” said
David.
He got out and she followed him with her eyes. Yes, it had
been a good idea coming to the pool. She liked what she could see, and her mind
travelled back once more as it seemed continually to be doing to the night
before. He seemed to be approaching the task without much pleasure, but with a
certain nonchalance as if the whole thing was nothing much. He just seemed to
walk off the board, fall and rise again. She knew what was coming next. David
had said nothing, but she knew the others would not let her off.
“Go on, Lena!” said Sveta in Russian.
“You too, Lena!” said Petr.
She remembered a line from an old Russian film.
“Our lives belong to the Soviet Union,” she said.
Most of them didn’t get it and there were one or two frowns,
but she knew that she had no choice. It just looked very high and she was
scared. She didn’t really like being under water at all. She caught David’s
eye.
“Don’t worry,” he said and looked reassuringly. “It’s not a
competition.”
She was worried most about what would happen to her costume.
She didn’t want to pop up out of the water with her top missing. Why didn’t she
have a costume like Svetlana’s? But it was all she had needed on the Baltic,
where she rarely did more than paddle. But still she noticed David’s look that
seemed to be one of approval together with attraction, and proceeded up the
ladder. It seemed high enough going up, but looking down it seemed much further
than five metres. She hesitated briefly, but then she was already falling. She
almost panicked under water for a second as the world seemed to consist only of
bubbles and swirling water all around her, and she ended up not quite knowing
what direction was up. But then she kicked a couple of times and reaching the
surface checked that everything was where it was supposed to be. Clearing her
eyes as she approached David she was rewarded with a look of respect. It was as
if he could see that she had really been scared and admired how she had overcome
it. She could see that he really liked her and was beginning to like her even
more as he got to know her better. There had been a little bit of a barrier
between them this morning. She was still coming to terms with what had happened
the night before, getting to know this man who suddenly had become significant,
but in a way that was hard to define. She was still rather shy around him and a
bit embarrassed as if she had entered a room and seen a couple kissing, only
she was part of the couple. She wanted to repeat what had happened, but was
scared of where a repeat would lead, especially if they were alone somewhere;
and yet she looked forward to everything that might happen with some
impatience.
She half expected the saunas to be mixed. Thankfully, they weren’t
as you had to take off everything. She sat next to Sveta.
“Well, Lena, it looks like things worked out.”
“What do you think, Sveta?”
“I like him. He’s certainly better than Oleg, Andrei and
Petr.”
“You think?”
“Sure. You can tell David is a gentleman.”
“How?”
“By the way he talks, just by looking in his face.”
“You have someone back in Moscow?”
“Yes, but how far are we from Moscow?”
“But you love him, don’t you?
“Yes, I suppose, I do”
“How can you not know?”
“I don’t think about it very much. I have someone who I like
well enough. That’s all really. What about you, Lena, do you have someone at
home?”
“Just someone I go to the cinema with.”
“You like this David better?”
“Much. But I’m a bit apprehensive, and now there are only two
more days after this one.”
“Much can happen in two days.”
“I know, but I’m not sure what would happen then.”
“I’d just spend as much time together with him now and see
what happens. Don’t worry about him. I’ve known a few guys, good and bad. He’s
a nice guy. You get to the stage when you can tell. They’re rare enough, you
know?”
“He’s mine by the way,” said Lena.
“Don’t worry, he’s not my type. I quite like some of the
locals. Maybe we could all go to a club on Friday. Who knows, maybe I could
pick someone up?”
She laughed, but Lena could see that she half meant it. Still
it was good that they had come to an understanding. She didn’t want to have to
compete.
“I’m getting too hot,” said Lena.
“What, from the sauna? What you need is a cold shower. I can see
you continually eyeing him up.”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Only to another woman. Don’t worry. A man would never
notice.”
Lena suddenly was very grateful that Sveta was here with her.
They might not have been the best of friends and would probably not keep in
touch, but it was good to have someone who could give a bit of reassurance and
friendly advice.
“Let’s go!” said Lena. “I feel like I’m beginning to cook.”
“What do you think you’ll do with the rest of the day?
Lessons?”
“I don’t think so and anyway, I’m talking Danish with him
rather than Russian with the rest of you.”
They continued talking as they showered. The cool water was
an initial shock, but then delightful.
“Well, let’s all go back to lunch at the school.” said Sveta.
“Then if I were you, I’d go for a walk with him, suggest something about you
both going somewhere to eat this evening.”
“Thanks, Sveta.”
“What for?”
“You know perfectly well,” said Lena.
Chapter 12
The others quickly forgot whatever attempts they had made at
speaking either in English, or in Danish when they sat down to lunch. They had
more or less accepted David into the Russian group, but there were five of them
versus one of him. Soon the conversation was exclusively in Russian. Lena found
herself half listening to a Russian conversation, while trying to listen to
what David was saying and then trying to form her own answer. She was tired and
she couldn’t do it. Their conversation faltered.
“They keep asking me things,” she said to David “You don’t
mind if I speak a little Russian for a while?”
“That’s OK,” said David. “We can continue our Danish lesson
after lunch. I wouldn’t mind a little break either. Anyway, I like hearing you
speak Russian.”
“You do?”
“Da.”
Oleg heard the Russian word for ‘yes’ and asked “So you know
at least one Russian word?”
“I know a few more than that,” said David. I also know
‘nyet’.”
“Well, that’s enough for a good Russian conversation. We can
ask you questions and you’ll be able to answer quite well with your knowledge of
Russian,” said Oleg.
Lena was a little apprehensive about where this game might
go. But she exchanged glances with David and he seemed relaxed about it.
“Are you from Great Britain?” asked Oleg in Russian.
“Nyet,” said David. There was general laughter and David
joined in.
“Did you know that only a fool laughs at himself?” said Petr.
“That’s unnecessary,” said Lena quickly. But David seemed
happy enough.
“Da,” he said.
“Are Russian girls the prettiest in the world?” said Sveta.
“Da,” said David.
All the boys joined in with a chorus of yeses. Lena felt
herself blushing. There was much merriment as everyone tried to come up with a
clever question. She thought that some of them were laughing at David. But he
was holding his own even with the knowledge of only two words. They might laugh
and even mock, but his face showed who were the fools.
“Have you come to realise that England is a small island of
no consequence whatsoever?”
“Nyet,” said David.
“Do you speak fluently in Russian?” asked Lena.
“Da,” said David. Everyone laughed again.
“Is that a good example of English arrogance?” said Oleg.
“Da,” said David.
It was all good natured, but it was beginning to get just a
little cruel. She was glad then to have him to herself again as they sat
outside at a wooden table smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. She noticed
the glances again from the other students. There would be quite a lot of gossip
about them.
“I’m sorry about the game David.”
“No. We should play it some more. It’s harmless. These games
always involve trying to make someone say something foolish. I understood that
well enough.”
“Shall we just go for a wander somewhere? It’s a nice day.”
“I’ve hardly seen anything of the area round about. Let’s see
what we can find.”
Lena wondered why he did not attempt to take her hand. But
then she realised how little she knew about English customs with regard to
these things. There had been a discussion in class one day of how American
people went on dates and might end up kissing, but the next day go on a date
with someone else and treat the girl they had kissed as if nothing had
happened. Perhaps, it was like this with him. But then why were they spending
the day together? One major barrier had come down. They were together. Yet
other barriers had arisen. Neither seemed able to mention what had happened
between them the night before.
“I was amazed,” he said “that the vodka bottles were opened
like beer bottles.”
“In Russia the men always finish a bottle if they open it.”
“Well, I’m glad I only had a taste. I’d have been on the
floor.”
“I’m glad, too.”
“You don’t drink?”
“Just a sip of vodka or some wine. I’ve seen too many men
drunk in the gutter or put to bed by their wives.”
“The boys didn’t seem that drunk though.”
“No, and that’s the problem.”
She glanced at him from time to time thinking of the man she
had kissed. They could skirt the subject, but words would not bring them to
that point again. She could hardly ask him or say something along the lines of
now that we are in the open air with no one around and a pleasant rolling
landscape all around, with those pretty, clean and ordered houses, would you
please take me in your arms and kiss me?
Instead she listened as he described his family and where he
lived, what school had been like and university, the sports he played the films
he liked. She glanced at him from time to time and realised that she was
finding him more and more attractive. She wondered why, for really he was quite
average looking. What’s more he seemed to care little about his appearance. His
clothes were just a little eccentric, his glasses merely functional. He was not
especially fit. The English were not an especially handsome race she thought.
They rarely compared in beauty to the Scandinavians: neither the women, nor the
men. But there was something about David’s glance she liked. His eyes to her
were becoming ever more blue and ever more deep. Sometimes he would go off
somewhere in his thoughts and she saw that he had gone away delving into some
matter or some memory. Then he came back with a smile, and she was so glad that
he had come back to her.
He asked her about films that she had seen, but there was
little here that she could share. He had never heard of films like ‘Irony or
Fate’ or ‘The White Sun of the Desert’ that were so famous in the Soviet Union
that everyone could quote from them.
“We only very rarely get to see Russian films. Just some of
the more arty ones. The popular ones, comedies and such like we very rarely get
to see. I remember one though about two girls who go to Moscow and one of them
gets pregnant. It won an award, I think.”
“Moscow Does not Believe in Tears.”
“That’s it, I think. What’s Moscow like?”
“I’ve only been once. We had a little tour.”
“A friend of mine went.”
He was careful to use the male form of the Danish word,
though it had been Gillian who had gone and brought him back a poster of Lenin.
He’d kept the poster on his wall for years just because she had given him it.
“What did he think of it?” said Lena.
“I think, he liked it very much. He gave me a poster of
Lenin.”
“And you put it up. I think, it easier to put such things up
when you don’t have to live with them every day.”
“It does seem a little decadent now. You don’t seem all that
hopeful?”
“About the Soviet Union?”
“Yes.”
“There has been chaos in the past year or so.”
“You mean with all the revolutions. But might it not bring
something better?”
“I think, it will just bring chaos.”
“You're scared about what will happen at home.”
“I live in a little piece of Russia, but all around are
people who are beginning to think of themselves not as Soviet, but as
Lithuanian, or Belarusian or Latvian.”
“Have you travelled in these sorts of places?”
“I’ve been to Minsk and it’s fine. They’re happy to speak Russian
and if they speak Belarusian among themselves, they’re not nasty about it.
Latvia is more of a problem and they sometimes really show that they don’t like
you speaking Russian.”
“You know in Britain we barely think of the Soviet Union as
being made up of different places. I’ve hardly heard of all these places apart
from in history books. Most people just say the USSR or Russia and use the two
interchangeably.”
“I think, people in the West have very little understanding
or knowledge of us.”
“Maybe that’s why we have such a different sort coverage of
these events. Each of these revolutions. The walls coming down are treated as
wonderful news.”
“When did Britain last have a revolution?”
“I think, 1690 and it was reasonably peaceful.”
“Well, ours was anything but peaceful, and these revolutions
if they spread further, could bring who knows what. Even war. Great news!”
“And Gorbachev can do nothing to help?”
“He’s the cause of it all. The hope is with Yeltsin.”
David had never heard the name.
“Who?”
“He’s an alternative to Gorbachev. But they say he’s a drunk,
so maybe he’s not much of an alternative.”
She knew little about Western culture. She’d seen hardly any
of the films that he mentioned, though she had recently seen ‘Gone with the
Wind’, and enjoyed it. But she’d never heard of the film he described about a
singing nun escaping the Nazis with her seven children. It struck her as silly,
and it baffled her that he seemed to enthuse about it so much. How could you
make a musical film about Nazis? She asked him about popular songs he liked,
but here, too, most of them had never reached the Soviet Union. She did know
some Beatles songs, and he sang his favourite which began: “Close your eyes and
I’ll kiss you, Tomorrow I’ll miss you, Remember I’ll always be true”. He translated the words and she wondered if he
was using these songs to hint something. Why should that particular song be his
favourite? She was impressed though by the fact that he was willing to sing
aloud. His voice wasn’t exactly brilliant, but he didn’t seem to care.
“What about this song?” she said and began to hum the melody.
“I think, it’s George Gershwin, but I’m not sure I know all
the words.”
“I heard it a few times on the radio. I always like the tune,
but I never even bother listening to the words of English songs.”
“I think, it goes something like ‘Summertime and the living
is easy, fish are jumping and the cotton is high’.” He spoke the words in
English and translated into Danish. She repeated as best she could and they sang
together.
“I think, there’s more, but I’m not sure. There’s something
your mother being rich, but I never paid much attention to the words.”
They continued in this way as their walk progressed. She sang
some popular Russian songs, but she knew he would be unable to join in.
“You know the tune I like the most is the Soviet anthem.
Whenever there’s the Olympics, I love listening to it, but I’ve never heard the
words.”
She sang the song she had sung hundreds of times since
childhood. He seemed delighted. She thought it strange that he should like the
song. Maybe he was trying to establish a connection between their countries,
showing that he liked where she was from. But what in the end did it matter
where they were from.
“Why do you like it?” she asked.
“I really just like the tune, but I like hearing you sing the
words, the sound of them.”
“I’m not sure you would like them so much if you’d had to
sing them as many times as I have.”
“Well, at least it’s a better tune than ours.”
“How does yours go David?”
He sang the first verse. He didn’t know the second and
explained it to her.
“It’s not really about your country at all, but only about
the Queen.”
“It’s a bit Louis XIV, I admit, ‘l’etat cest moi’, but I
don’t mind her and she probably does us some good. At least, we didn’t have a
revolution like the French did.”
“Nor like the Russians.”
When they returned to the school, they were both tired. She
wanted to rest, perhaps, sleep a little and she wanted some time alone to think
over what was happening.
“Shall we have a rest and meet up later?” she asked.
“It’s a good idea. You want to meet up at dinner?”
“We’re going to have the same problems at dinner as we did at
lunch, and it would be rude if we sat alone.”
“And we’d be a bit the centre of attention. Maybe we could go
out somewhere. There must be somewhere within easy walking distance.”
“That would be great. Shall we meet in the common room at
seven?”
“Sure. I’ll ask one of the Danes about where we could go. See
you”.
She watched as he walked away and thought surely tonight he
will kiss me.
Chapter 13
Back in his room, David sat drinking coke and smoking a
cigarette. It was all very sudden and he was finding it hard to take in. Only a
few hours ago he’d ended up kissing someone who was virtually a stranger. Now
they had spent the day together. But apart from the mere fact that they were
together no one had spoken of what had occurred, and no one had attempted to do
anything to repeat it. No doubt it was his job to make the move. But he was
scared now of making the wrong move. She’d seemed a bit nervous last night when
he’d offered to walk her home. Well, at least he’d shown her that he could be
trusted. She’d seemed a little distant today. He wondered if she was regretting
what had happened between them. For all he knew she could get into trouble. But
then the other Russians had accepted him, so perhaps there was nothing in that.
He just wasn’t very confident with girls. Gillian had been one long disaster
that had spoiled his chances for years and left him unsure of himself. He was
already beginning to feel that he could get hurt again. There was a strength to
the emotion that he was already feeling, which he knew would lead to pain when
they separated. What hope anyway was there for them? But he had no choice of
course. Once you started on this sort of thing, you just had to continue and
accept whatever happened. At least he was feeling something again. There had
been times lately when he wondered if he ever would again. But what should he
do? Well, they would go out tonight and maybe something would happen, just like
the night before when it had not been necessary to actually do anything or at
least not consciously. Maybe the best was not to plan or to say to himself at
this point ‘I’ll do this’ or at that point ‘I’ll do that’, but just to wait and
see. He dreaded being snubbed if he made a move and was rejected. He just
wished that he could read her better, but she had a face and an expression that
sometimes went blank. She was the first Russian girl he’d ever met and he found
her just a little baffling. He was bad enough at reading the cues from an
English girl. But at least there was a shared experience with someone who had
grown up speaking the same language and who lived by the same rules, both those
written and unwritten. And yet there was a connection with Lena. The spark that
you always look for had happened. All those years he had been with Gillian, and
there had never been that spark. He thought of all the time they had spent
together and the effort, but without the spark there was nothing no matter how
much he wanted her. And here suddenly before he was even really aware that it
was happening he’d felt that sense of something that can join a man and a woman
together forever. It could happen with a stranger after a very short time, or
it could not happen with a friend at all, with someone he’d known for years. It
hardly seemed rational. But he knew that it was real and he knew that it was
rare. There were second chances, but not too many of them. This sort of feeling
you didn’t expect to feel more than a few times.
He lay down on his bed and began dozing. His mind played over
how they had started kissing the night before. Who had begun it? He couldn’t
remember Lena really doing anything, and he was certain that he hadn’t made a
move. It had been clear enough though that something was up when they all left
and Lena remained. He remembered trying not to be too obvious as he looked at
her. But he’d wanted to look at her as much as he could. The memory of their
kissing merged with her image at the pool. Most men would think Svetlana much
the prettier of the two, but to David Svetlana had an obvious beauty that he
didn’t like. He liked Lena’s petite little body. She wasn’t at all athletic and
she really hardly had any curves at all, but he liked her all the more for it.
The greyness of her eyes held him to her, and he sensed some sort of secret in
them. He knew that there were places where neither of them could go in terms of
conversation. It was basic politeness. After all, not so many years earlier it
would have been difficult, perhaps forbidden for them even to speak. They could
approach certain topics, but circumspectly. He was very tired and on the verge
of sleeping, but he wanted to bring her image to him just once more before
sleeping. He saw her face once more from the same closeness that they had
obtained the night before, so close that it wasn’t entirely possible to make
out her features, only she had wet hair and he imagined her body with drips of
water falling off as he embraced it. With variations these images merged in his
mind as it went off to sleep and their embrace lasted and lasted until a deeper
sleep swept away all dreams.
Chapter 14
The walk to the little town of Vejen was through country
roads lined with flowers.
“We can get a taxi back,” said David “if we get tired.”
“I prefer walking.”
“Me too. You know I spend my time wandering around Cambridge
on my own, it helps me think.”
“Like Kant.”
“Ah yes. I forgot you’re from where he used to live.”
“I’m not sure he’d recognise it. English planes destroyed
most of the centre. There’s still the cathedral, and there’s a small monument
to Kant.”
“What’s it like there?”
“You mean Kaliningrad? I’m actually from Baltiysk. It’s a
small town on the coast.”
“Pretty?”
“Not very, but there are some nice beaches at Svetlogorsk and
Zelonogradsk. They get fairly well packed out in the summer.”
“Is it warm enough to swim in the sea?”
“I normally don’t bother, but lots of people do. People even
come from Moscow. There are sanatoria.”
“You mean they have consumption?”
“Consumption?”
“I thought a sanatorium was for people who were ill you know
with,” he thought of another word “T.B”.
She still looked puzzled and he tried to explain.
“In the 19th century there was a disease that affected the
lungs, lots of people died from it like Keats and Camille from La dame aux
camelias, you know La Traviata and other operas, too. La Boheme. They start
coughing, sing a wonderful aria and die.”
“I think, I know what you mean,” said Lena “but our sanatoria
aren’t like that. They’re more for people who want a rest and a healthy
holiday.”
It had been a pleasant walk and she found herself relaxing in
his company. There was a bit of a language barrier, but it added to the
pleasure if anything. Their conversations were something of a game. The
differences in culture were sometimes confusing. He just did not do what a
Russian man would do in the same circumstances. He did not bring her flowers.
He did not take her arm. He did not continually pester her to go somewhere
where they could be alone. She had heard of such battles with someone who had
had a little too much to drink forcing his kisses on her girlfriend Masha back
home. She’d heard about the roaming hands and thought of them with some
disgust. She’d been told of going to the cinema with someone who had seemed
nice. They’d gone to a park afterwards and a bench. It was quiet and rather
dark. He’d gone into a shop on the way and bought a small bottle of Soviet
champagne and a couple of plastic glasses. Masha drank a little and he drank
the rest. She’d been told of the way this nice man had manoeuvred Masha, the
way he held her with his strength, turned her head and left her no choice, and
how it was this that had left her feeling that the whole thing was sordid. It
wasn’t that he did anything so very awful, just the way that he had made Masha
feel powerless. More than one of her girlfriends had told similar stories, and
it seemed the experience was typical enough. It was not something that she had
sought out for herself, not something she could imagine liking, though it
didn’t stop the girls she knew continuing with the men who kissed them so and
even expecting, perhaps wanting to be held in just this way. She wondered if
most men everywhere were rather like that, thinking mostly of their own desire
and not much else. David confused her and she did not know what to expect, but
she knew that whatever happened between them would be as much her choice as
his. She rather wished he would do more. It had been the first time someone had
kissed her like that. And it had been nothing like the stories her girlfriends
had told. There had been nothing sordid. He hadn’t dominated her in anyway. She
hadn’t expected to enjoy kissing. It had always struck her as an odd thing to
want to do. But it had been something wholly new bringing to her sensations
that she had never properly felt before. And yet it had all turned out to be
familiar as if half remembered. Looking back now, it didn’t at all surprise her
that she had actually enjoyed the experience. Yet she had not at all known
beforehand what to expect and had approached her first real kiss with anxiety
not least about if it would happen. He had been gentle and had waited for her
response as they began to explore this new world of kissing. His tongue had
made the slightest gesture of exploration but had waited for her to show that
she welcomed what he was doing. She’d been a little nervous with him especially
when he walked her home, but he really had been the perfect English gentleman.
She was nervous of him still, but her growing trust was beginning to outweigh
her nervousness. She also thought that he could take this gentleman thing a
little far. There wasn’t much time, and she wanted more than a polite kiss on
the cheek by way of goodbye.
They stopped by a shop, and David went in to buy cigarettes.
He bought two packs and gave one to her. She was a bit embarrassed, but her
need for a cigarette outweighed it.
“Look Lena,” he said “we’re not going to let money get in the
way of things. My guess is that you spent quite a bit on that little party last
night, so it’s only fair that tonight’s on me.”
“I’ve been bothering everyone for cigarettes. At home they
cost almost nothing. But here…”
“And there’s hardly anything worse than wanting a smoke and
not having any left.”
She was a little embarrassed about being broke. Above all,
she didn’t want him to be like one of those rich men she’d read about who takes
a girl out and gives her presents and such like, and then has an expectation.
But he’d been very nice about it. She’d have worried about paying in the
restaurant all the way through the meal if he had not said what he’d just said.
Did he sense that? How could he? And if he was that sensitive, why did he not
know that she wanted above all to feel his arms around her again.
The restaurant was up a side street.
“I think, this is it,” said David. “I found Jens and asked
him if he knew of somewhere nice.”
“Was he angry that we missed class today?”
“No, not at all. They’re pretty relaxed about that sort of
thing. I told him that I thought it was better for me to speak Danish all day
with someone who didn’t speak much English.”
“It was better for me, too. I’ve been speaking far too much
Russian.”
“I also said I was doing my bit to make the Cold War slightly
warmer.”
“You are indeed, and I hope it will get warmer still.”
“Jens was pretty nice about it, but I think, it would be an
idea if we went to the first couple of classes tomorrow and then did something
in the afternoon. He mentioned the cinema here. We could see what’s playing.”
She liked that he made their next date even before finishing
the present one.
“Sveta wants us all to go to the club here tomorrow night.”
“I’m not much of a dancer, but I’ll be happy to tag along.
Just so long as we only speak Danish.”
“I’ll try. I find that when we talk for a while, I begin to
get a little fluency, but after half an hour of Russian it’s as if I’ve forgotten
my Danish.”
“I’m the same. I begin to dread people who speak English.
Listen, Lena, I’m going to try a little experiment in restaurant. Go along with
me, will you?”
They sat down and the waitress came along with the menu. It
was an old fashioned sort of place all with pine walls and furniture. She
glanced through the menu and everything seemed ridiculously expensive. It was
actually the first proper restaurant she’d ever been in.
“Shall we have wine or beer?” said David.
“Oh, I think, wine. But nothing too expensive.”
“Don’t worry, Lena. Let’s just think of today as a very
special occasion. It’s what? Our one day anniversary.”
“Well, maybe red wine then. Do you know any of them?”
“I almost know nothing about wine. But Italian is usually
fine.”
He nodded to the waitress.
“Can we have a bottle of the Sicilian red?”
“Yes, of course,” she answered in English, “and are you ready
to order? I think, we have an English menu somewhere or I could explain things
to you.”
David looked confused.
“I’m sorry,” he said in Danish. “My English is not very
good.”
“Where are you from?”
“I’m from Hungary, and my friend is from Russia. We’re
studying Danish at the school and, in fact, Danish is our only common
language. I think we can manage the menu
on our own.”
He winked at Lena and she smiled back.
During the meal they talked about the wine and about the food
and of nothing at all. Sometimes there were pauses, but it didn’t seem to
matter. She asked him about his studies being careful not to mention Cambridge
or England in the presence of the waitress. She told him of how she had been
good at languages at school and had gone on to specialise in Polish and Czech.
“So how did you end up speaking Danish?”
“It must have been my destiny,” said Lena. “Otherwise, how
could I have met you and how could we now be even having this conversation?”
“You believe in fate?”
“I think, every Russian more or less does.”
“But really, why Danish?”
“No real reason. I was doing quite well at university and was
offered the chance to study another language. It could equally well have been
Japanese, and then I’d be sitting somewhere in Tokyo now drinking sake.”
“And I’d be Japanese.”
They both laughed.
“What about you?” she asked.
“It’s to do with my studies. I wanted to come up with
something interesting to study, not just ancient Greek. Someone gave me a book
by a Danish writer that was to do with faith. There was also a connection with
ancient Greek ideas, particularly those of Socrates and Plato. I’m looking at
exploring that connection.”
“So it’s something to do with religion?”
“In a way, and literature, too. That’s why I’m reading
Dostoevsky. I may want to bring him into things as well.”
“Then you will have to learn Russian?”
“Well, if it was your destiny to meet me, it must have been
my destiny to meet you.”
He ordered a taxi to take them home. Lena felt very tired and
was feeling slightly the effects of the wine. The taxi journey was only a few
minutes, but she tried to nestle up to him. He seemed a little nervous. She’d
understood his hints of course, but really there was hardly the need to hint.
Wasn’t it obvious that she wanted to be with him?
When they got out, he became very conventional again and very
polite. It was like some sort of English wall that sometimes came between them.
They smoked a last cigarette together and he talked of how they would have a
late night tomorrow. She realised that he literally did not know what to do
next and was masking his uncertainty with this small talk. She’d heard of men grabbing.
She heard of fending off their fumbles. But she didn’t really know what to do
when a man just didn’t make a move. Were you supposed to grab him yourself?
They stood for a minute rather embarrassed outside her door. She was far from
being fearful about him walking her to her room. She was far from being fearful
that he would do something. Now she was only fearful that he would not.
“Well, goodnight, Lena,” he said. “It was a wonderful day.”
He kissed her cheek and even shook her hand. She stood there
watching his shape disappear into the shadows. How on earth had the English
people continued for so long she wondered? It had been a wonderful day, but it
had ended in disappointment.
Chapter 15
David was disappointed, too. It had all been going so well.
They got on. They could speak easily about all sorts of things. She obviously
wanted to spend time with him, but he was going to end up with what he always
ended up with, a friend rather than a girlfriend. There had been a pattern
these last few years. He went back, as so often, over the old ground. He
remembered the years he had spent with Gillian, not daring to do anything in
case it should spoil their friendship. People had assumed that they were a
couple, and in many ways they had been. For years he had thought that his love
was simply not returned. But he knew now that this was not so. She had said
that she loved him. What was it then that prevented them being together? Why
was he here instead of back home with her? He honestly didn’t know. That was
one of the things that had hurt the most. If she loved him, why had he spent
the past years waiting for something to happen? He’d tried to argue with her
that night when they had broken up decisively. Perhaps, break up was the wrong
word for a relationship that had never been together apart from a few brief
weeks when they were almost children with some kisses that had turned out to be
unwelcome. He’d tried to persuade her with this new discovery of her love. He
remembered again his puzzlement at her saying that she loved him but could not
be with him. He’d thought of this sentence endlessly. But he knew there was no
use delving into meaning. There was a simple inability. Somehow after all these
years together the thought of them kissing was too much for Gillian. Perhaps,
it was the thought of kissing anyone, but he doubted it. When she said she
loved him but could be with him, he knew that it was specifically him that she
couldn’t be with. Their relationship had been just as much a hindrance to Gillian
as to him. He realised that now. They had spent too long being friends for
anything further to develop. It would have seemed somehow unnatural.
The trouble was that this was his only real experience. He’d
spent his life taking Gillian out. They’d gone to the pub, they’d gone to the
cinema, they’d gone for walks, and they’d written letters. He never brought her
flowers, he never held her hand and he never tried to kiss her. He had written
between the lines of a score of letters, but if she had got the hints, she
hadn’t responded. There had been a sort of romance, but within constraints. At
times he had almost enjoyed it. He’d thought of his love as having a purity
like something out of a medieval courtly romance. But of course, life in the
middle ages had been anything but pure. The purity was just for books. He
thought that Gillian had almost enjoyed her love, too. It was a love without
having to worry about what would happen next. He was someone to take her out,
someone she could share her thoughts and feelings with, but without having to
share her bed.
There had been nothing official between them, no words that
meant they were together. Gillian might have allowed people to think that he
was her boyfriend, but if someone used the word she corrected it. He was just a
very good friend. That word “just” was what he amounted to. In college he’d had
a string of friends who were girls. These friendships had sometimes been quite
intense, but had never amounted to anything more. And now where were they? He was
someone girls loved to talk with. He was a gentleman, quite old-fashioned and
polite. He never made a move. He just waited. He didn’t really know how, and
all his experience told him that he should hold back. How was he supposed to
know anyway if a girl wanted to be with him? He just couldn’t read the signs,
and so almost out of politeness he did nothing.
He’d seen how the other men behaved. He knew how some of them
had contempt for women, treated them poorly and really just wanted sex. Yet
such men often had no difficulty finding someone. Perhaps, it was something
from human evolution that meant that women were conditioned to prefer brutes.
After all, a strong man would have been necessary 40,000 years ago. A gentleman
would have been little use on a hunt. Still he preferred being as he was. He
would wait. Maybe it would not be this time. Maybe Lena would be another in a
long string of friendships that went nowhere, but eventually one of them would
recognise his qualities and choose him. He wasn’t going to change. He didn’t
want to be someone other than the person his experiences had made. He didn’t
want to be any sort of brute even if he’d known how to bring such a being into
life. And so without much hope he resolved to wait and see once more.
Chapter 16
There had been some light ribbing from Jens and the other
students in class. Lena also noticed one or two jealous looks from the other
girls.
“I think we should put romance on the curriculum,” said Jens.
“You’re both speaking more fluently.”
“It was the first time I’d ever spoken Danish for nearly a
whole day,” said Lena. “We had to.”
“My Russian isn’t quite as good as Lena’s,” said David, “so
we thought it best to stick to Danish.”
Everybody laughed at his irony.
“Well, I’ll give anyone the afternoon off who promises only
to speak Danish,” said Jens.
They’d had lunch with the other Russians and had then gone to
the cinema. It had been a rather silly American film about a prostitute who is
hired to act as a rich man’s girlfriend. She’d noticed David’s embarrassment
whenever there was any sort of sex even though it was mostly only implied.
She’d hardly seen a contemporary American film and had found it rather
interesting. Did they really live like that? But it also seemed rather shallow.
She’d not understood much of the dialogue and the Danish subtitles were
sometimes too fast for her to keep up, but it was easy enough to follow what
was going on.
“You’ve been to America?” she asked him afterwards.
“Yes, but only on the East coast.”
“Are they really as rich as that?”
“Some of them are, but not many. It’s mostly quite like here
in Denmark.”
“Is England like here, too?”
“It’s not so different. It looks different, but we’re
basically the same. What about with you?”
“Of course, it’s very different. You can’t buy as many
different things. We’re poorer, but most people have enough.”
“I’d like to see the Soviet Union, not so much the famous
places. I’m not much of a tourist, but how ordinary people live.”
“Few people speak English,” she said. “Maybe they learn a
little in school, but it’s as if they deliberately teach it badly.”
“Oh, well I’ll just have to find someone who speaks Danish
then. Do you get many tourists coming to visit Kaliningrad?”
“We get some people from Moscow and Leningrad. But it’s not
so easy for people from other countries. It’s a closed city.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s because of the fleet I think. Foreigners can’t visit.
Maybe some people from other Eastern bloc countries can if they get special
permission, but we never have people from the West. You’re the first Westerner
I’ve ever really talked to.”
She thought she saw a little shock in his face and even a
sense that the situation was hopeless, but he rallied soon enough. The real
problem though, was that still nothing had happened. They had spent most of
another day together, and still she waited. He had made hints about their
relationship and even just then had alluded to a meeting in the future in that
rather subtle way he had. But there certainly would be no future if they just
continued in this vein. There had to be something more between them than to
create a bond that could overcome the difficulties that they certainly would
face. There would be distance, but much more than distance. He could not visit her
and it was highly unlikely that she could visit him. So where was the place
where they could be with each other? She did not know. But there was no point
planning. The future would have to look after itself. The crucial point was
now, today. They had to somehow get over this barrier that was growing between
them. Every time they were together and there was no further affection shown,
meant that it was harder the next time to show it. She no longer expected him
to do anything. What could she do then? She resolved to talk to Svetlana.
Chapter 17
It had been good to have someone to confide in even if Lena
was not especially close to Svetlana. They’d been friendly enough, but no more
than that. Still she’d needed some advice and she had the feeling that Sveta
had more confidence than she did and more experience, too. Everyone knew that
people from Moscow were more sophisticated than those from the provinces. She’d
shown Sveta her clothing options. There were really only two possibilities. The
pale blue dress with the buttons up the front was saved until tomorrow, while
Sveta agreed that the trousers and top that her father had brought back from
India would be ideal for dancing. It was Lena’s favourite outfit, not only
because it had come from her father, but because no one else had anything quite
like it. It made her look just a bit exotic. Svetlana persuaded Lena to use
just a touch of makeup and helped her put it on. Looking in the mirror she
could sense the eastern look had been accentuated just a little, she was
pleased.
“You really like him, don’t you?” asked Sveta.
“Yes, but we don’t seem to be going anywhere and tomorrow
will be the last day.”
“Have you tried making him a little jealous?”
“How?”
“You know, get chatting to one of the others.”
“What? Like Oleg or Andrei? I hardly think…”
“I know what you mean and Petr isn’t much better. But you
don’t have to mean it. Or I could try to hook up with a couple of Danes and get
you dancing with one of them while I dance with the other.”
“Do you think that might work? I’m not so sure. The Danes can
be a bit forward, like they still like to think they’re Vikings.”
“Well, it won’t hurt him if he gets a little worried.”
“I don’t know. He’s such a shy English gentleman he might
think it impolite to be jealous.”
“Don’t worry. I can always find a moment to tell him how much
you like him, give him reassurance and encouragement.”
“That sounds like school. Did you ever send a friend to talk
to a boy for you?”
“Sure. Everyone did. What are friends for if it’s not to help
each other out?”
“What next? So I’ve been able to make him a little jealous.
What should I try then?”
“Have you asked him in here?”
“I’m not sure I’m ready for that.”
“It doesn’t have to go that far you know. I’ve been looking
at David and I think you’re pretty lucky. He doesn’t seem the sort to take
advantage of a situation. Quite the reverse, in fact.”
“How do you know?”
“You can tell what a man’s after just by looking in his
eyes.”
“And how does he look at me?”
“He likes you, but in the way we all want a man to like us. I
don’t think you’d be taking too much of a chance asking him in.”
Lena had never been in a nightclub before and the whole
experience fascinated her. The five Russians and David found a booth and sat
down. He bought everyone some drinks and shared his cigarettes. They were used
to his presence by now and he’d been accepted. The conversation was mostly in
Russian, but someone would usually try to keep David involved by making a few
remarks in English or Danish. But it hardly mattered: conversation was only
possible anyway, in snatches between songs.
Lena didn’t recognise any of the music and she wasn’t that
keen on it. It was loud and repetitive. She watched how the other girls danced
and tried to do something similar, but these sorts of places barely existed in
the Soviet Union, and certainly not in Kaliningrad. David seemed to be enjoying
himself. He’d told her that they had discos every Saturday in his college.
Everyone just did their own thing; it wasn’t really necessary to dance with
anyone. This was how he appeared to her now. They were sort of dancing
together, but he was paying the scantest of attentions and really was losing
himself in the music.
Sveta had found a Dane who was willing to buy her drinks, and
she brought him and another Dane with her to the booth. There were some shouted
introductions. Lena didn’t care what the Danes were called, but she danced with
one of them a few times. She noticed how he looked her up and down, and she
could see a faintly repugnant and very direct desire in his eyes. But perhaps
it was worth it. She noticed that David wasn’t too keen on what was happening.
It wasn’t that he said or did anything, but somehow she could tell. The only
thing she was scared of was if David suddenly thought she’d gone off with
someone else and far from being jealous just gave up on her. Then she’d be left
with this oaf of a Dane and Sveta’s plan would have backfired badly.
Sveta was already snuggling up to her Dane when the music was
a little slower. Lena had to admit that she was good. Maybe it was just a
matter of confidence or maybe she had done the same sort of thing in Moscow so
often that it was now like a trick that had already been learned. Lena was
beginning to feel a little jealous herself. When Svetlana wanted to be kissed,
she knew exactly what to do.
After a couple of hours there was an interlude.
“What happens now?” she asked Morton who was still entwined
with Sveta.
“There’s usually a stripper,” he said.
Lena looked a little puzzled.
“A girl comes on a takes off her clothes,” said Henrik, the
oaf who seemed continually to be leering at her.
“Maybe we could go outside for a bit,” said David.
“No, it’ll be interesting” said Lena.
She was touched by his embarrassment, but she really did want
to see it. She’d heard of such things, but could hardly believe it. The Danes
were strange she thought, even stranger than the English. They had no
inhibitions at all. The girls would go into the boys toilets if their own were
full. They just didn’t seem to care that all the men were standing there, and
the men didn’t seem to care either. They seemed to pair off with barely a
thought and couples would go off somewhere after a few exchanged words. She
found it decadent and faintly seedy. Perhaps, she and David had too many
inhibitions, but these people had so few that they seemed to treat sex as just
another bodily function like eating, sleeping or going to the toilet.
She stood next to David as the stripper appeared on the dance
floor. The audience was spread out in a sort of semi-circle, and Lena noticed
just as many women looking on as men. Everyone seemed to find the whole
spectacle exciting, but also completely normal. The stripper was pretty and
could really dance, much better than anyone else Lena had seen. Her dance had
obviously been carefully choreographed and practiced, and she found ever more
innovative ways to remove her clothes. Strangely Lena found herself rather
excited by it all. It wasn’t as if she was attracted to women. She hardly knew
that such attractions could exist, but the atmosphere all around her was
affecting her. The Danish women seemed to all enjoy the show and cheered as
another piece of clothing was discarded. The men all stood with smiles watching
intently every action. She glanced at David. He looked embarrassed, but she
sensed that he was enjoying the show, too. They exchanged looks. He seemed
slightly horrified that she, too could not take her eyes away from what was
happening. Then they both just laughed and it was a kind of release of tension.
She wondered how far it would all go before the dance ended. Surely it could
not go much further. The bikini top was removed and a loud cheer erupted round
the room. Lena looked round the room at the eager eyes, the women just as much
as the men were delighted and she saw that they expected still more. The dance
continued, suggestive and lewd. The stripper had on only the tiniest of
G-strings. She would stop soon thought Lena. The crowd continued to become more
and more excited. The excitement transferred itself to Lena, and she was
shocked to find that she, too, wanted the stripper to remove her last garment.
She glanced at David and saw that he could not hide his excitement. And then
the stripper was completely naked. The crowd roared as she continued her dance
for another minute or two. So that was how they liked to live in Denmark.
Sitting down with David she saw that he was stunned as well.
Henrik was delighted and continued looking at her lasciviously. She sensed that
David was getting a bit overprotective, and she’d have to be careful that this
little game didn’t go too far. Svetlana was nowhere to be seen. Lena wondered
if she’d gone off with Morton. They stayed until the end and Svetlana did not
reappear. Henrik was sticking around and Lena wondered what to do to get rid of
him. She got the Russian boys around her.
“I need to get rid of that Danish guy. Can you help?”
“What do you suggest?”
“Well, one of you could tell him that I’m your wife.”
When they got outside she asked them what had happened.
“He said he didn’t mind if you were my wife,” said Andrei.
“He suggested a threesome.”
Chapter 18
Lena had invited David into her room. Her fears of him
walking her back to her room after their kiss now seemed faintly ridiculous.
She only feared that their kiss would not be repeated, that she would not feel
what she had felt before, that she would never again feel his arms around her.
It was just after one. She realised that it was the first time in her life
she’d been alone in a room with a man. Not like this anyway. They sat smoking
talking a little about the club. She looked at him and wondered what he was
thinking. There was still that distance. He sat at her desk while she was on
the bed. He could have sat down beside her. That had more or less been her
idea. But he had chosen to sit apart. She sensed his confusion, even his
embarrassment. Yet, despite these inhibitions, she knew that he wanted to be
with her. He had been jealous.
David finished his cigarette.
“Well it’s getting late” he said. He began to get up and move
towards the door. It seemed to be happening in slow motion. Lena saw her chance
slipping. If he left like this tonight, he would leave like this tomorrow and
the next day. She would return to Kaliningrad, and all they would have would be
a sort of friendship with the memory of one evening when they had ended up
kissing, something that obviously had turned out to be a mistake, possibly
because of drunkenness. But it would not be enough. It had taken a miracle to
bring them together and who knows, it might need another to bring them together
again. But that miracle if it were to have a chance, needed more solid ground;
it needed a foundation of something shared between them that they both would
remember when they were apart. Love could be a solitary feeling, but then it
was more like a teenage crush. She remembered the actors she had liked who were
safe to love because she would never meet them. She recalled again the hour and
more that she had spent kissing with David, and how something quite different
had been created by that kissing, something mutual, a relationship that
required two. Her feelings, these feelings that were coming into her throat now
had been created not so much by the time they had spent together, though that
had confirmed in her mind that she wanted to spend time with this man rather
than any other, they had been created by their embrace. Without that embrace he
was just a friend, perhaps a good friend, but it wouldn’t be enough. What would
happen in the next hour or would not happen would determine everything. With
growing panic she saw him leaving. Must she really do all the work? She had
always thought of herself as waiting patiently for her ship with scarlet sails.
But she had no more patience. She knew that any more patience would mean that
he would be already outside. She wasn’t even sure that she could face him after
that. Their last day would be a disaster.
She was scared, too. How would he take it if she stopped him?
What would he think of her if she made the move she was going to make? Yet she
had come to know him better and realised that he was not only a gentleman, but
also a gentle man. Suddenly she saw that there was nothing to fear and all of
these thoughts that had flashed through her mind in the space between him
getting up and moving towards the door coalesced into a single action. She
moved towards him with her arms outspread and they embraced. She took his hand
and they sat down on her bed. She removed her glasses and he did likewise.
Their kissing began as if it had never stopped.
Was it she that had leaned back a little or was it David? No
doubt it had been her. He seemed always to wait for her to move before
responding in kind. It was frustrating at times, but it also gave her
confidence. Nothing would happen that she did not herself choose. There came a
point when gravity made the next move inevitable, and they had to lay down
together. It was an altogether new sort of kissing that involved her whole
body. She felt his closeness not only in the contact between their lips, their
tongues but all down the length of their bodies that merged in an ever changing
meeting that she found even better than kissing. She felt the strength of his
arms and delighted at how he caressed her. He made no attempt to go any
further. She’d always thought that a man would take advantage of a situation
like this. But he seemed to know that their embrace was enough for now. She
just wanted to enjoy this new experience. She could feel his chest through the
thin fabric of his shirt. There was no need to undo any buttons. He too
explored a little with his hands and she, delighted with the sensation of his
fingers, sensed through the thin fabric of her trousers. She had no need to
worry. She had never had any need to worry, for she could sense that he was
thinking of what she wanted just as much as what he wanted. He didn’t try to
push any boundaries, or take advantage of the situation by making unwelcome
fumbles. It was this above all that made their embrace mutual. He knew what she
was ready for and what she was not ready for because they had a relationship
that was not one sided. She felt desire. She wanted his caresses and because
they were so chaste she continually wanted more. They became more and more welcome, and she
wished he would go further while also feeling grateful that he did not. She had
a strange sense of anxious expectation about the destination of his fingers as
they gradually and very slowly caressed within their self-determined
boundaries. She was afraid both that he would step over those boundaries and
that he would not. But as his kisses and caresses continued she came to relax
completely as she sensed he knew exactly what she wanted and would do only that.
She could sense his desire, but her trust continually grew as she realised that
this man thought more about what she wanted than what he wanted. It made her
desire grow in return. She realised that she had almost lost this moment. But
it was the fact that he had out of politeness and inhibition almost walked away
that made him the man she wanted.
After a time they had a break from kissing and lay quietly in
each other’s arms. She started talking to him in Russian.
“You’re such a silly boy making me chase you like that. You’d
have been out of the door if I hadn’t grabbed you. And now what on earth are we
to do? Well, maybe we can work something out? But it will be me who does all
the work, won’t it? It was you, you know who should have done everything. That’s
how the story was supposed to go. But of course you’ve never read it.”
David responded in English. She only understood a few words
here and there. He seemed to be trying to speak a sort of slang. Eventually she
just listened to the tones without thinking of the meaning.
“I love listening to you speak Russian,” he said in Danish.
“You’ve heard rather a lot in the past few days.”
“I’ve heard even more Danish, and that has been best of all.”
“For me, too. It’s something that’s just ours.”
“I think the way that we speak it is just ours.”
“I can only really understand you, David. I struggle with the
way the Danes mangle their own language. But no more Danish for the moment. You
must know some more songs.”
He repeated as he had been repeating over the past days
snatches of songs he remembered. Often they were from musicals. Somehow he had
always liked the Doris Day song ‘Secret Love’ and it was one of the few that he
could sing from start to finish. He had cherished it for a long time as somehow
appropriate to his love for Gillian which he had always had to hide. The song
had given him hope. Now it was as if the object of the song was changing and he
sang the song to Lena.
“Once I had a secret love that lived within the heart of me,”
he began.
“I love these old songs,” she said. “You know so many.”
“I’ve watched an awful lot of old films,” he said. “Now your
turn.”
“I don’t know so many songs, but I know some bits of
Pushkin.”
“Go on.”
She started reading Tatiana’s letter to Onegin.
“I write this to you, what more can be said?”
He could not know it; he could not even know what was being
said to him. She knew the whole letter by heart as did many, maybe most Russian
girls. She said it as if David were Onegin and some of the most beautiful words
of the Russian language were directed only at him. She felt relief at what had
happened, but she wondered what the future might bring them and if her fate
might be rather better than Tatiana’s. Soon after David said goodnight and went
back to his own room. But as she slept it was as if he was still there, and she
dreamt of holding him still within her arms.
Chapter 19
She woke to a knock at the door and wondered if it was David
coming to fetch her. She only had on a short nightie and so called out in
Danish.
“Who is it?”
“It’s me, Sveta,” came the reply in Russian.
Lena got up and went to the door.
“Did I wake you?”
“That’s OK. I needed to get up soon anyway.”
“I brought you some coffee. You missed breakfast.”
She saw that Sveta still had on the same clothes as the night
before. They sat down and started smoking.
“What happened to you?” asked Lena.
“Can we talk?” said Sveta. “I’ve no one else here.”
“Of course.”
“I’m not going back.”
“How?”
“Morton asked me to stay.”
“Who? That guy from last night? But…”
“I know I just met him last night. But he knows that if I go
back, he’ll most likely never see me again.”
“Don’t you think it’s just a bit sudden? You don’t know him
at all. Did you…?”
“He’d hardly be asking me to stay otherwise”
“But Sveta?!”
“I know you’re shocked. Sometimes you just have to grab what
you want. I like it here. Everything works. It’s cheerful, colourful. You
should see his apartment, his car. What’s not to like?”
“And after a week, if he gets sick of you?”
“He’ll not get sick of me. Anyway, he knows we’ll have to get
married for me to stay.”
“You’ve already decided to get married after less than twelve
hours?”
“I don’t see that there’s another way. He knows that.”
“And your boyfriend in Moscow?”
“I’ll find write him a letter some time. He’ll get over it.”
“But you must have signed guarantees to come back, your
parents, too?”
“I hope they don’t get into too much trouble. But what’s to
be done? This is my one chance for something better and I’m going to take it.”
“But you know nothing about this Morton.”
“In the end, one man is much the same as another. It has as
much chance of working out as if we’d been together for a year. He’s
attractive. We had a nice time together. A really nice time. You know.”
“But you don’t love him?”
“No and I’m quite sure he doesn’t love me. But there’s an
attraction and something like love may well follow. If it doesn’t, well, I can
think again. But by then I’d still not have to go back to Moscow.”
“You may end up on your own in a week. No marriage, no visa,
no way to get home.”
“I may, but I doubt it. Still even then I think, I could find
someone else.”
“Who could be anyone.”
“I know. There’s a risk. There’s always going to be a risk.
And you? How is it going with your shy Englishman?”
“I followed your advice. I don’t know if he was jealous, but
anyway I took him back here and we kissed.”
“Do you really think that will be enough? If you really want
him, you should take your chance. You won’t get another.”
“Perhaps,” said Lena. “I think if we are meant to be
together, things will work out.”
“You and your Scarlet Sails.”
“I can’t help how I am. I believe in romance.”
“Maybe you’re right. Who knows, your way may work out best in
the end. But be careful that you don’t look back on what you lost today.”
“I want to keep him special.”
“As just a memory?”
“No. I hope for rather more than that.”
“How on earth are you going to see him again Lena? He can’t
visit you and you can’t visit him.”
“I have a plan.”
“Well, good luck with your plan. But just a little bit of
advice. Do you mind?”
Sveta reached towards Lena’s neck and with one finger lifted
the chain around her neck. There was tiny cross. The style was Russian.
“I guessed as much,” said Sveta. “Well, there’s no need for any
secrets between us now. You believe?”
“Yes.”
“Are there churches in Kaliningrad?”
“Not officially. But we meet from time to time.”
“Well, I envy you a little for that. Anyway, my advice. Give
him just a little more than kisses. You need a miracle to get him back even if
you have a plan. You’ll need just a little more that will connect you when
you’re apart. No, I don’t mean that you sleep with him. Maybe with a man like
that the worst thing you could do would be to sleep with him.”
“I’m not worried about him on that score. I’m more worried
about myself. When we kiss, sometimes I feel that I want him. I have to hold
myself back a little. You know, I trust him. I know that he wouldn’t do
anything that I would regret later even if I myself should seem to want him
to.”
“Then you have something very special Lena and you should
guard it very carefully. But give just a little something extra.”
“What?”
Sveta saw the look of disapproval on Lena’s face.
“Don’t worry, I’m not suggesting anything untoward. Your
memory of each other can be pure. But it’s important that he thinks of you as a
woman who he wants. You're going to be apart who knows how long. You want him
to dream of you and think of how it was when you were together. It may be this
that will bring you together again.”
“But what?”
“I don’t know. I think, you’ll have to find out for yourself.
But wear your blue dress, the one with the buttons and wait, wait for as long
as your reasonably can. Don’t take him back to your room too early.”
“Why?”
“Well, it seems to me, Lena, that it is you that is
struggling just a little with your desire, and it’s best not to have to
struggle too long. If you take him back at ten o’clock, how long do you think
you each can restrain yourself? What are you going to do for all those hours?”
“So wait until twelve?”
“Something like that. Anyway, I need to go. Don’t say
anything to the boys today. I’m a bit worried that one of them might be, you
know…”
“Try to stop you?”
“Or call someone. I don’t know. Wish me luck.”
“Of course. We’ll both need lots of it. Thank you, Sveta.”
“And you. Well, goodbye.”
And she was gone.
Chapter 20
Lena was back in the minibus. There had been some trouble
over Sveta’s non-appearance. But there had been no reason to suspect that she
knew anything more about it than the others. The driver had phoned the embassy.
But even if Lena had wanted to tell anything, there was really nothing she
could tell. She didn’t know where Morton lived. She didn’t even know his last
name. They each said the same thing, that they’d seen her meet a Dane called
Morton at a nightclub on Friday. It was all rather unpleasant. There had been a
bit of a delay. But they couldn’t wait too long or they’d all miss their plane.
Thankfully David had already gone. He’d left an hour earlier to take a train
somewhere. She was glad that this unpleasantness had not spoiled their
goodbyes.
The school’s director was called. She caught some words. But
nothing could be done. They left. She sat alone at the back. She’d told the
others that she was tired. But really she just wanted to have a chance to go
over again all that had happened. Her stomach knotted with waves of sadness,
and in her mind she kept repeating his name. She remembered specifically a
moment that had drawn itself out into less than a minute and felt again the
sensations that she had felt then. Her joy overtook her sadness and she
snuggled into herself at the exquisiteness of the memory of his touch. She felt
very feminine and much loved. Her mind went back over the day, but everything
else sort of dissolved into the feeling, this new feeling that was hers.
The last day was supposed to be special. There was a trip to
a nearby stately home. She’d wandered with David through the rooms, but neither
of them had been interested.
“I’ve been on too many tours, seen too many galleries,” said
David.
“I think, I would be more interested on another day,” said
Lena.
“I don’t know. Someone tells you everything you could
possibly imagine knowing about some tapestry and really I could care less.”
“Be careful David, she’ll hear.”
Somehow his cynicism about it, made her want to follow his
lead. She hadn’t been on many tours, nor had she seen anywhere like this. She
took in each room and stored it in a place in her memory, which she then never
visited again.
Now sitting in the minibus it was all just fleeting images,
old pictures, old books, suits of armour, a dummy dressed in XVIIIth century
clothes. She remembered though how David had taken her hand.
She sat as usual with David, and the other Russians at
dinner. They were a bit agitated.
“Have you seen Svetlana?” asked Petr.
“No.”
“But where is she?” asked Oleg.
“They’re worrying about Svetlana,” she told David.
“I didn’t see her all day, did you?” he replied.
“She’ll be with Morton,” said Lena
“Do you know that?” said Andrei in Russian.
“Well, what do you think? She didn’t come back with us all
last night.”
Oleg said a word that still had the power to shock her. She
hissed at him.
“Don’t you dare say such things.”
“OK. I’m sorry,” said Oleg. “It’s just I’m worried that
there'll be trouble.”
“Maybe we should call someone,” suggested Petr.
“That would guarantee some trouble and why? She’ll turn up
tomorrow,” said Petr.
“What do you think, Lena?” said Andrei.
“How should I know? You all know her just as well as I do.”
There was a long prize giving ceremony after dinner. She had
not bothered to listen to most of it. It was all very egalitarian in a
Scandinavian sort of way. She found it faintly tiresome. She knew all about
egalitarianism and had been taught about it since childhood. It didn’t mean
much in the Soviet Union, and nor she suspected did it mean much here. David
won a prize for his poem. Jens had got hold of a copy and read it out. There
had been cheers and the school’s director had said something about trying to
get it published at the very least in the school’s yearbook. She let the whole
thing wash over her after that, but suddenly heard her name.
“What was that?” she said to David.
“I think you’ve won a prize, too.”
“Must everyone win a prize? They’ll be giving them to the
pets next.”
Jens was standing up.
“I want to give a small prize to Lena, for her efforts at
speaking Danish outside class and for her contribution to détente.”
There was laughter all around. She went up and was given a
present. She guessed that it would be a book similar to the one that David had
unwrapped. Indeed, by the end everyone had a prize and the prize was more or
less always the same. There were more long speeches about people coming from
all over the world, mixing together and making friends. The director talked of
how their love of Denmark and Danish would unite them. There were songs.
When it was all over, she looked at her watch and saw that it
was still only ten. She’d already written her address on a piece of paper.
“You’ll have to copy the Russian letters,” She said. “I’ll
write them out carefully.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll just make a photocopy of what you write
and stick it on the letter”.
“It’s really not that hard. Look, lots of the letters are the
same.”
“It’s all Russian to me,” said David.
He gave her his address. She stumbled over the unfamiliar
words. Neither of them had said much about their families at home. She wondered
what his parents did. But she knew that there were some things better left
unsaid. She couldn’t really say too much about what her father did.
She saw that he was getting a bit impatient. He wanted to be
alone with her again. She saw how he looked at her in her pale blue dress. It
was modest, but she thought it was elegant and the buttons up the front were a
nice touch. She saw that he liked how she looked and felt the glow that came
from being admired. She too wanted to hold him again. But Sveta had been right.
It was better to wait. He might be a bit frustrated, but he would wait. He
wasn’t going anywhere.
“I want to say goodbye to everyone,” she said.
They went round the room, mainly talking in Danish. When they
came to the group that David used to spend time with, there was a touch of
embarrassment.
“Long time, no see,” said Claudine in English.
“Lena doesn’t speak much English,” he answered in Danish. “We
just came to say goodbye.”
“You’ve come on a lot,” said Maria. “Both of you.”
“It’s our only common language,” said Lena. “It’s either that
or use hand signs.”
“Look, I’m sorry I haven’t seen much of you all these last
few days,” said David.
“Don’t be, we understand.”
“I’m pleased for you, David,” said Sigrid, “and for you,
Lena.”
She could see that David found these goodbyes dull and
pointless, but it was still early.
“Let’s go and find Jens,” she said.
Jens invited them to his rooms for a drink.
“You know, I’m really pleased with both your progress.”
“We’ve been helping each other,” said David.
“It works. The thing that holds everyone back here is that
they all just speak English to each other.”
“Or Russian,” said Lena.
They talked on for half an hour or so. Jens talked of how he
loved his job, but was frustrated because he rarely saw anyone come back.
“What about you two? What are you going to do?”
“We’re going to write and hope,” said David.
It was nearly time. She could see that he was getting a
little nervous as if last night hadn’t happened and might not happen again.
“Let’s just have another cigarette,” she said.
He noticed her cross.
“I’ve not seen that before,” he said. “It’s very pretty.”
“We have to be a little careful back home. I normally keep it
tucked away.”
“It looks a bit different to the ones we have.”
“I was given it when I was baptised.”
“So you believe?”
“Yes. Of course. And you? You said that you would be studying
faith. Is it just a subject to you?”
“No, it’s not just a subject or I don’t think I would get
anywhere. I believe, too. It’s just I’m not very confident about it. I think I
should believe more. I think I should be better than I am.”
“You’re lucky that you have churches.”
“I rarely go.”
“What church do they have in England?”
“Anglican. It’s protestant, but similar in some ways to the
Catholic church. I’m quite keen on certain bits of Catholicism.”
“What about Orthodoxy?”
“I know almost nothing about it apart from a dispute over
something in the Creed more than a thousand years ago. But I don’t think, it
really matters, Lena. We believe the same things and want the same things,
don’t we?”
His face shone with what he had been talking about. She knew
what faith looked like even if it was mixed with doubts. When was there ever
faith without a little bit of doubt? She thought of her own faith and her
growing faith in him. The two faiths were strangely mixed. She noticed that he
was still waiting for her answer and seemed puzzled by her pause.
“I think so, too. I think we want exactly the same things.”
She looked at him intently and got up and they walked the
familiar path to her door.
“Now you're not going to go running off somewhere,” she said.
He smiled.
“Sit down. I’ll just be a minute,” she said. He sat down on
the bed, and she went down the hall to the bathroom, looked in the mirror. Her
dress had one button open. She opened another.
She kicked off her shoes and he did likewise. They now knew
what to do, and the practice was making it all familiar. First, they’d take off
their glasses, put them somewhere then start kissing until the inevitable
happened and they were lying in each other’s arms. For a long time it was a
simple repetition of what had gone before. But she began to caress him,
stroking his chest, moving her hand down his back, pulling him towards her. He
responded by moving his hand to her side gradually ever so gradually moving it
so that he had reached the very edge of her breast. She responded by kissing
him more intently and shifted her body so that his hand stroked her breast. The
material of her dress was thin and there was nothing underneath. She lay back
and he traced with his fingers her small contours. She showed him with her
mouth and with her whole body that she liked his touch that she welcomed it.
They continued like this for a long time. Each had patience. There was no need
to hurry.
Her legs became entangled with his. They rolled together and
apart. She found herself on top of him and felt his closeness to her. She
brushed against him with her arm, with her wrist, with her hand. It was lightly
done, almost as if by accident. But she had shown that she matched his desire.
There can be no secrets between a couple when they embrace like this. There are
ways to communicate desire. Her hand had wandered freely over his body. She let
her dress ride up a little. Her hand squeezed his behind and she waited for his
touch. He was shy. He was unsure, but he tested what was possible. He asked her
by moving his hand up the back of her legs. Very slowly his hand moved higher.
She kissed him harder. She shifted her position to show that his hand was very
welcome. He stroked her behind through the thin cotton of her panties. He
continued in this way for a little until she shifted her weight, just a touch.
His hand found her side and touched her hip bone. He asked once more. She said
‘yes’ with her mouth and her whole body. She was lying on her back and she
could feel his fingers touch the elastic, but his fingers moved downwards and
she felt them through the thin cloth. He slowly, delicately caressed her, and
it was all so gentle that she felt a slight tear in her eyes. It was enough.
She knew that he felt exactly the same as her. The moment that had lasted
really only a few seconds could not have been bettered. Something beautiful had
occurred that would only be spoiled by anything else. She talked to him with
her kisses and with her body telling him that they would save the rest for when
and if they would be together for always. He seemed to understand. She knew
that he, too had felt the closeness of the moment and if anything would bring
them together again, it would be that.
It must have been nearly four when they separated and he went
on his way. Nothing had happened and yet everything had happened. There was a
bond between them that just might overcome the distance that was between them.
She slept little and the next morning they sat together with nothing to say.
There was nothing more to say. No words could justify the significance of what
had happened, and so few words were said. She saw that he was all choked up
when he said goodbye, and that tears were welling in his eyes. She controlled
her emotions as best she could. She had had good practice throughout the years
of her Soviet upbringing.
“I love you”, she said in Russian. It seemed for a moment
that he understood.
“What was that?”
“Just something from Pushkin.”
They embraced and he got into the bus that would take him and
some others to the station. She looked on as he left and had no idea when or if
she would see him again.
Now sitting in her own minibus she replayed the day, but
really only kept replaying a moment. The closeness stayed with her, stayed with
her always even when the plane touched down in Moscow.
Part 2
Chapter 1
Lena received a call to go to the office on Prospect Mira.
She’d been there once on her return three weeks ago and discussed matters with
Orlov, the man who had been in charge of arranging her trip. She knew him quite
well now and she also realised that she would need his help, but the whole
thing made her rather uncomfortable now. It had started like a game, with
impossible choices about something that would almost certainly never happen.
But now it was quite real. There was a letter waiting for her.
She walked along the dusty pavement in Baltiysk towards the
bus stop. It was sunny, but the wind from the Baltic never quite left them and
so it was not oppressive. It would take an hour or so to drive to Kaliningrad
and then she’d get another bus or the tram to Mira.
She glanced over the familiar countryside. She had made the trip so frequently that she
could just about recognise each turn in the road simply by the feel of it. The
bus was old and rather dirty, but it was cheap and frequent. Her thoughts
returned to David. She was excited by the prospect of reading his letter. But
some of the romance went out of it when she thought of the man who would be
sitting across the table while she read David’s words. But the place in her
memory where she kept the most precious of moments was hers alone. She had
written her report and described everything that had happened in Denmark. She
had been questioned in some detail. She remembered casting down her eyes and
feeling herself redden when he asked her about things that were private. But
then she realised that only David and she had been there and so the truth was
theirs and theirs alone. So she had told Orlov only what she’d wanted him to
know. She gave away generalities, she gave away banalities. The story that she
told was true, but full of fiction. She kept what was precious to herself
intact. There had been less trouble than she’d expected about Svetlana. She
hadn’t been blamed in Moscow, no one had. She’d said goodbye to the Russian
boys, knowing that she was unlikely to see any of them again. She couldn’t say
that she regretted that fact. Orlov had been quite calm about Svetlana at their
first meeting back in Kaliningrad.
“Don’t worry about your friend, Lena,” he said.
“I’m not sure I’d really call her a friend. We weren’t that
close.”
“Even so, don’t worry, we’ve already been in touch with her
in Denmark. We think, everything will work out well.”
It was a pity that she’d just missed the bus that would take
her directly along Prospect Mira. She took the tram instead. It was slow and
clunky, but she had time and she rather liked it. Going along Leninsky Prospect
she looked again at the massive House of Soviets that they were building. It
was extraordinarily ugly. Lena remembered hearing that there had been some sort
of castle here, quite badly damaged, but still more or less intact. Someone had
decided that there were enough reminders of Germany in Kaliningrad and ordered
it destroyed.
She found the office and told the receptionist that she was
there. She sat in a corridor waiting and after a while sat down in a rather
dull room opposite Orlov.
“Well, he’s written. We have the original and the Russian
translation here.”
“Can I have it?”
“I think, it best if we keep the original safely here in your
file.”
“It came in a small packet.” He showed her the outside of a
brown padded envelope. She saw her own writing taped to the front as the
address. These came with it.”
Orlov showed her a brass lighter. She recognised it as the
one that David used in Denmark. He had lit her cigarette many times with it.
But he had polished it and now instead of being dull it shone. Orlov held it up
to her in two fingers.
“It’s rather nice, but I don’t think it would be a good idea
for you to show it to people here. We’ll keep it in your file.”
“But I could just keep it at home,” said Lena.
“You can have his photograph though.”
He gave her a photograph. It was one of the small ones which
are made in photo booths, the sort that are put in passports and such like.
Still she saw a hint of a smile on David’s face. She was pleased with it. Let
Orlov keep the lighter, this little piece of shiny paper was much more
important to her.
She began reading the photocopy of David’s letter and then
the Russian translation.
“As you know, I don’t speak any Danish, so I would be
grateful if you would check that the translation is accurate.”
There were a few words that she didn’t know and she found
David’s habit of using old spellings a bit difficult, but she sensed his voice
coming through the text. The Russian translation was accurate enough and helped
her out with some words, but it missed the poetry. He really wrote very well
indeed for someone who had only started learning the language a few months ago.
The best thing of all though was that the translation missed all his hints. How
could someone translate an allusion that only the two of them would get,
because only the two of them had heard it in the first place? He mentioned
songs that they had sung and poems that they had read. He used their shared
experiences to write of what he felt, but in a way that was subtle, such that only
she could understand. She knew that it was his shyness, his reserve that made
him write so, but she was so grateful to it for it kept the essence of her
letter private even when there had been so many prying eyes.
“It’s a very good translation, comrade Orlov”, she said.
“David writes very well and his writing is sometimes hard for me to
understand.”
“There were a few things that we did not really understand.
Perhaps you can help.”
“I will try.”
“He mentions changing his name to Arthur and having found a
translation of the book you liked so much in the library in Cambridge.”
Lena knew that David was referring to Scarlet Sails and the
novel’s hero Arthur Grey; she was so pleased that he was reading it.
“We talked about a lot of books. I mentioned liking the old
romances about King Arthur. Perhaps, he means that. I don’t get all of his
allusions though.”
They went through the letter. She could have spelled out the
allusions. She didn’t really understand why Orlov wanted to know these things.
But she just didn’t want to be on display. Her love was vulnerable enough
without being picked to pieces.
“We’re very pleased with you”, said Orlov. “It’s too early to
say what will happen. A lot will depend on this correspondence. So if you could
write soon and bring it here, I’ll have a translation made and we can discuss
what you’ve written. It might be an idea to include a photograph like his. No
doubt he would like one, too.”
“When do you think I might be able to see him?”
“It really all depends. Most of all it depends on him. We
can’t make him want to see you. He might meet someone else. You just have to be
patient.”
Chapter 2
Lena sat down to write. It was the first time she’d written
something in Danish that wasn’t a sort of homework, whether an exercise or an
essay. She kept thinking of what she wanted to say in Russian and trying to
translate it, which meant she kept reaching for the dictionary. Her letter kept
filling up with words that she didn’t understand, words from a dictionary
rather than her own words. The copy of David’s letter lay before her. It
provided her with some guidance, some places from which to start. He had a long
paragraph about her name and how she was called Lena, but that she had written
five letters when she had written it out for him. What was this fifth letter?
Well, it looked like an “e,” but it sounded like a “ye”. He played around a
little on this theme for a little while. She wondered how he could go on about
it for so long. It was true that she had never mentioned that her name was
Yelena. It hadn’t seemed worthy of mention. She tried in her letter to explain
something about how Russian names worked. How there was the name and then the
variants on the name that had different senses of informality. She asked how he’d
known how to pronounce the “E”.
She looked back over what she had just written and saw the
constraint and the lack of humour. She was jealous of David’s fluency. He had a
certain style that was his alone. He played with the Danish words and when she
read his voice came to her. She saw that he was still very shy and would only
allude to his feelings, not declare them. There was no mention of kissing,
hardly any mention at all that they had been a couple. Yet the whole letter was
full of his feelings, just through its tone and because such a letter could
only have been written to someone who he loved. He did not write of them
meeting again, but rather mentioned parts of the story he was reading. He
described how he had struggled to find it. The author’s name meant “grin” in
English but had somehow ended up as being translated as the word for the colour
“green”. It was only with the help of some lateral thinking and that he had
been able to find the translation that had been made in the sixties; and was
grateful once more to the fact that library in Cambridge had everything. He
read the story almost straight through and completely agreed with her about how
wonderful it was. Now that they had both read the same story, he began to use
it as a sort of private language with which he could playfully tease her about
what she had said and what they had done together. He started playing the role
of Arthur Grey, setting sail, leaving the stuffiness of England behind. He
referred to her as Asol waiting for his arrival. But then subtly he inverted
the roles and pretended that really it had been he that had been waiting. Had
it not been her that had made the romance happen? Was it not you who bought all
the red silk in Denmark, he asked her? Otherwise, in my foolishness I would
have gone home alone and have never known what fate could bring to me. Now, you
will have to pull off your trick once more as I’m still waiting, ever waiting
to see your sails on the horizon once more.
She was constrained by the fact that she would have to show
all her letters to Orlov for approval. She wrote about how pleased she was that
he had been able to read the book she liked. She knew that if she kept
mentioning this book much longer, then Orlov would ask her what it was. There
was no real secret about it, but she wanted very much to keep it for herself if
at all possible. It should be something that only she and David could share
like their kisses, like their caresses. She knew that she lacked the subtlety
in Danish to play with the story as he had; and so mentioned that, of course,
it was she who was waiting, she who had been told long ago of an Englishman who
was coming for her in the ship and that she waited still. She did not know when
she would see him again, but the old man who had told the story to her as a
child had not lied. David had come to her and she had faith that he would come
again.
Sitting there writing she knew of course what was fairy tale
and what was truth. She loved romance, but she knew what reality was. But then
the fairy tale she had shared with David was also grounded in reality. Asol
looking for the scarlet sails every morning on the horizon continued to believe
even though she was fully aware of the practicalities of everyday life. She
just chose to view the whole of life in such a way that it was possible to see
the dream in the mundane reality. Lena, too knew that miracles depended on hard
work. She tried to share some of this with David, but she knew that she was
being defeated by her lack of real fluency in Danish. Then again she was not
sure that she could have properly made the point in any language.
She glanced at his photo. She was very pleased to have it.
She remembered the first time she had seen his picture. Something had drawn her
to it. Perhaps, it had been his eyes. Blue was an inadequate word to describe
their unusual quality. They seemed to be able to see her even from so very far
away. She’d been flicking through the faces of strangers and it had been as if
she had recognised him and that he had recognised her. She’d liked his surname
and the fact that he was English. She’d known instantly that she would pick
this one. It had hardly been necessary to read the few sentences that
accompanied his photograph. She knew at the time that it was just a photograph
of a stranger, someone she might meet if a combination of relatively unlikely
events came to pass. She’d told herself that it was silly to fall in love with
a photograph. She knew that most likely she would be disappointed and that
nothing would come of it. This had all been explained. It was just a chance,
quite a small one really that sometimes came off. She’d been very lucky. She
had met him. What had been the odds? Were they one in a hundred or were they
greater still... What’s more, she had not been disappointed with the reality.
The photograph that she had seen so long before their eventual meeting had
captured something about David in a way that such small photographs rarely do.
Even then she knew it had needed a miracle. Love came to them, but it so easily
might not have. That, too, had been calculated. She might not have liked him
and he might not have liked her. Even if they both liked each other, still
nothing might have happened. She thought back of her own shyness and inability
to do anything until it was almost too late.
So Lena knew the reality, she knew that there had been a
degree of calculation and planning, but it didn’t take away from the romance.
She kept her fairy tale because it, too, was true in a way of seeing things.
There had been a matchmaker, but she liked to forget about how they had met.
After all, the matchmaker cannot create love; only help the couple to meet.
After that the miracle of love either happens or does not happen. It’s no less
a miracle for having had some help along the way. Fate had brought her together
with David even if she had also chosen him. It had needed who knows how many
unlikely events to bring them together to the same place in Denmark.
She could say nothing of this to David. Perhaps, one day she
would be able to, perhaps, not. Did it matter? Would he understand? Did it
matter how they met? The feeling on her part was genuine. She knew that much at
least. But the feeling alone was not enough to give fluency to what she wrote.
The things that she could maybe tell David years from now if they ever got that
far she could not tell him now. Orlov would read everything she wrote
translated into Russian. Anyway what really could she tell? But the fact that
there was something that she could not write about had an impact on what she
could. She wrote a sentence then stared at the paper waiting for an inspiration
that did not come. She was reduced to the mundane and the everyday. But she had
done nothing worth saying since she had come back. She’d had some meals with
her parents and met a couple of girlfriends who kept asking her questions about
what she’d done abroad. She’d gone to the cinema with Pavel. She could hardly
write about that. She’d had no answers for Pavel either. Not that he’d asked if
she’d met someone, though somehow she felt he knew. There was no one she could
tell anything but mundane details. She’d been abroad, she’d seen some
interesting things, and she’d met some interesting people. But the only
important thing that had happened she had to keep silent about.
Thinking of what to write for her next sentence she realised
how little she had shared with David. It had all happened in the space of three
or four days. They lacked the bank of shared experience with which they could
remind each other. This had not seemed to bother David who wrote variations on
what had happened and might happen, so that his letter was like a work of
fiction grounded in the shared experience that they would have. He talked of
what would happen, of meetings in the future without being specific, without
knowing when such meetings might be. What he wrote touched her, but she could
not imitate it. David subtly alluded to their most precious moments together
indirectly, but in a way that she could grasp. But she could not respond by
picking up the theme herself and so let it drop. To share her innermost
feelings with David would not be to share them with him only, but would be as
if someone had been a witness to their kisses. The result though was that she
really shared nothing important with David at all, she revealed nothing of her
inner life and the waves of feeling that sometimes caught her unawares and left
her choking back tears at what she had found and what she had lost.
She mentioned the few things that she had done, the trips to
the beach, the walks in the woods, the barbecue, but there were even ordinary
things about her life in Baltiysk that she could not mention. After all, it was
a naval base, and she could not really go into what went on there. Even other
Russians had to get special permission to come to Baltiysk. Not that she knew
much about it herself, her father never talked about his work apart from
generalities. Above all, she did not want to have to rewrite this letter that
was already becoming hard work. It was her only way of being in contact with
David, and so should have been a pleasure, but she had not found it so. The
result she knew was not much of a letter. She could have written much the same
to an aunt. Lena was naturally shy, and the experiences with David had been
overwhelmingly new. There were all sorts of things she couldn’t tell him even
if he had been here beside her. These were things that she could only show. Her
memories of their time together for the moment were for her alone. She could not
even share them with him. This would, perhaps, have put a constraint on her
letter even if she could have written it without it having to pass through a
censor. There was not much in the end that she couldn’t say, there was little
room for what she could say and she ended up with a letter that she might have
written to someone she had never met.
Chapter 3
She’d wondered when she’d come back if it was fair to
continue seeing Pavel. But then it hadn’t really been very fair to continue
seeing him ever since she’d realised how he felt, and that was years ago. She’d
known him since almost her first memories. She couldn’t really remember her
first day of school bringing flowers to her teacher all dressed up in her new
pinafore. But if she could remember that day, she supposed that Pavel would
have been a part of her memory. He would have been there, too in his smartest
clothes. He’d lived nearby and so they had played together. Such friendships
did not always survive adolescence but theirs had. There hadn’t been much
choice anyway as their parents were friends. If she chose, she could find
images of trips and barbecues and meals together. Their fathers were both in
the navy and had known each other since officer training. No one had ever said
anything, but she sensed that no one would have been surprised if she’d got
together with Pavel. It was sort of expected that this would happen one day and
both families would be pleased. Pavel had always been her friend, just her
friend. He had never said anything and there had never been any romance, but
she had become aware gradually from about the age of sixteen onwards that Pavel
loved her. She could hardly fail to notice how he sometimes looked at her with
hope and longing, and patience. There had never been even a hint of a doubt in
her mind about how she felt. It was just something she was sure of without
needing to investigate further. She’d always known since the first intimations
of knowing what love was that she did not feel the same way as Pavel and never
would. This was something she had known as a small child when there was a
mystery about love, when she’d had precious little idea of what a husband was,
other than a daddy who lived with a mummy. Pavel was her friend, someone who
she’d always played with in one way or another, who she was close to, who she
liked more than anyone else she knew. But the idea of something more filled her
with horror, even with disgust.
By the time it had become absolutely clear that he loved her
and there was no changing how either of them felt, it had been already too late
to break off the friendship; and because they had never been together even in
the most immature sort of romantic sense there had been no excuse. How could
she go up to her best friend and tell him she doesn’t want to see him anymore?
What reason could she give? And anyway, their families would continue to see
each other every other day and do things together at weekends. There was no
avoiding Pavel. Still she liked him and at times he was convenient. It was
pleasant to have someone to take her to dances without having to worry about
what he might expect. She liked going to the cinema, and there was no reason to
worry that he would try anything like putting his arm around her, or put his
hand on her knee. As they grew up together, as they went out together she
thought she saw in his eyes his love growing. She saw how he looked at her
sometimes at the beach, and sensed how his imagination saw them together as
lovers. It wasn’t altogether unpleasant to realise that she was attractive to a
man and yet seeing these hints of his desire disturbed her. She didn’t want to
hurt Pavel, but she knew that she was doing just that. That, too she saw
sometimes. But she also felt safe with Pavel. He loved her, he wanted her, but
she knew he would do nothing about it. He would wait. That was his strategy.
What’s more, Lena knew that it wasn’t a bad strategy. It just might succeed.
She liked Pavel. She knew that he was kind and decent. He was her best friend,
and she could do worse. There might come a point when she would have to marry
Pavel, love or no love. Yet she couldn’t imagine kissing him. She chased away
the image with a shudder. The very idea was wrong, all wrong in a way that
seemed fundamental. She couldn’t imagine the spark that had happened with David
happening with Pavel. She just couldn’t think of Pavel in that way at all. Yet
she knew that when she left university, and that was less than a year away,
there would be enormous pressure on all sides for her to marry Pavel. There was
no reason not to, other than that she didn’t love him or feel attracted to him
in any way. She’d heard her mother say that anyway, these things come after
marriage. But she’d rebelled against this idea and against this fate. It was
for this reason above all that she had sought another and had done all in her
power to get away.
Chapter 4
There was a small cinema in Kaliningrad that sometimes showed
old Russian films. She’d been there many times with Pavel as they both liked
such films. Sometimes they had seen a film many times on television, but still
it was a new experience seeing it on a large screen. There were many old films,
however, that for some reason she had never seen at all. She looked forward to
these most of all. She passed the House of Culture often and as usual had a
glance at the posters. She knew the title of course, everyone had read the
story in school, but she’d not even been aware that there was a film of the
Chekhov’s story “The Lady with the Little Dog”. She felt a slight thrill of
expectation. She’d call Pavel. But then she realised that it would be better
not to call Pavel. It was a pity. She would miss seeing a film she knew she
would really like. She could tell just by looking at the poster. What’s more, it
was with Batalov, perhaps, her favourite actor. She wondered if she could go
alone or with someone else. But she knew that Pavel would be hurt if he found
out. There were few secrets in a small town like Kaliningrad. They’d been so
many times to the House of Culture that she knew the people who worked there
well enough. There were always the kind of short conversations that happen with
people you just about know. It would be better just to forget about the film.
But Pavel, of course, saw the poster, too and called her.
“Did you see that The Lady with the little dog is playing?”
he said.
“Is it?”
“I’ve never seen it.”
“Me neither.”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Well, shall we go?”
“I’ve read it though.”
“Who hasn’t? You’ve also read “A Nest of Gentry”, but it was
still good to see the film.”
She remembered the film they had seen soon after she’d got
back from Denmark. It had been splendid,
but sitting next to Pavel had seemed even more awkward than all the other times
she had sat next to him. He had brought her flowers as he often did whenever
they had something that could remotely be described as a date. But they were
always an impediment to her, something that had to be carried for the rest of
the evening and then placed in a vase when she got home. Her mother would
comment on the lovely flowers and ask about Pavel in her subtly investigative
way. She never knew what to say, just as she didn’t know really what to say to
Pavel now.
“It was a good film. But there’s not much excitement when you
know what’s going to happen.”
“What’s wrong with you, Lena? You seem to have lost any
enthusiasm since you got back.”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Then you’ll come. I can get tickets for tomorrow.”
“Yes, I’ll come. I’ll meet you there, say, at five.”
She realised that he would never pick up on her hints of
reluctance. She knew that eventually she would have to be blunt to get out of
such meetings. But after all these years of going to the cinema how could she
just say ‘no’ without giving a reason, and what reason could that be other than
that she had met someone else when she was abroad. She could meet someone else
here, that would give him the message. But the last thing she wanted to do was
to meet someone other than David. She could hardly start going on dates with some
other young man without that young man expecting that she was his new
girlfriend and treating her as such. She could hardly make up a boyfriend in
Kaliningrad as everyone would expect to know who it was, and someone would
certainly go and talk to him. So she felt compelled to carry on as normal with
Pavel.
The film touched her deeply, and the theme of impossible love
brought tears to her eyes as she remembered David. She altogether lost herself
in the film forgetting where she was and who she was with. She continued
sitting as the credits ended, lost in the sorrow of it all, but delighting in
the sorrow, for it was the sorrow that someone can only feel who loves. Her
love, too, might be impossible. Circumstances might keep them apart, but at
least she could feel and still felt what the tragic couple in the film felt.
She understood their love and the film reminded her again of her own love, so
that waves of it rose from her stomach to her throat and tears flowed,
delightful tears that were full of pain and joy.
“Well, are we going?” said Pavel with a degree of impatience.
His words brought her back, and she resented the loss of the
moment, the return to reality.
“Just a minute.” She took off her glasses and dabbed her eyes
with a hanky.
“You don’t normally cry at films.”
“No.”
“Well, anyway, let’s go. I can carry the flowers.”
There was a small cafe there and they sat down together.
“We don’t have to go back yet awhile”, said Pavel.
“Oh, I think, I’d rather get the next bus back home,” said
Lena.
“If you say so. I just thought we could stay a bit. It’s
still early and there’s a bus every half hour until late.”
“You stay if you want. I’m getting tired.”
“You really are upset, aren’t you?”
“No, not really. It’s just I found it all very touching.”
“I thought Batalov behaved badly chasing after a married
woman.”
“Perhaps, he did, but he couldn’t help himself. He started
off looking for a fling, but it became something more. Love crept up on him and
on her.”
“I liked the actress. Very beautiful. She looked something
like you.”
Lena had thought of the resemblance as well. They were both
about the same size and build, and there was a certain resemblance in their
faces.”
“Don’t be silly. She wasn’t a bit like me,” she said.
“Didn’t you feel sorry for her husband?”
“Yes, of course, but it didn’t seem as if they had much love
for each other.”
“And what about his family, don’t you think he has a
responsibility to his wife and children?”
“Of course. That’s what makes the whole thing so tragic. The
lady with the little dog had never really known love before. Her marriage had
just been arranged or something like that. The same, I imagine, can be said for
Batalov. What was he called in the film, Gurov?”
“Yes, Dmitry Gurov. Who knows how he met his wife. But
anyway, they were happy enough. They’d been together a long enough time.”
“But he never loved her, not like he loves Anna.”
“So you think that justifies all the secretiveness, all the
betrayal.”
“No. I believe in marriage, they do, too. That’s the point.
The tragedy is that they can’t be married to each other, that they can’t be
married to someone who they love.”
“It seems more like passion to me than love.”
“I suppose you could interpret it that way.”
“It all seemed decadent to me. The way that man throws spoons
on the floor, so that the waiter had to pick them up.”
“Shall we try doing that here?”
She laughed inside at the shock that appeared on his face.
“Lena, what’s come over you?”
“It was just a little joke.”
Walking towards the bus station she glanced at him and
realised that there was nothing whatsoever wrong with Pavel. He was pleasant;
he was polite, he was good-looking. He was as good a friend as she had. They’d
been close, although she felt the distance growing between them. But all these
good qualities that she recognised in her friend were as nothing to a man who
she had known for, perhaps, three days. The gap between friendship and love was
a chasm that could not be leapt over. She had known when love had arrived; the
feeling was somehow familiar and wholly new. It was what she had always waited
for. She was realistic enough to know that this feeling would not remain
constant. A marriage would not remain like the first days of love forever. But
there needed to be a spark to light the flames that would then settle into the
warm glow of contentment. Without the spark in the beginning there would be no
foundation for a marriage. All the time she had spent with Pavel was as
nothing, for there had been no spark, and never would be. It was why she could
not imagine kissing him, no matter if he was ideal in every other respect.
She had been silent as they walked thinking over these
things.
“What is it, Lena? You’re always thinking, always silent,”
said Pavel. “It’s like you’ve been someone else ever since you got back. You
never used to withdraw like this, into this pensive sort of gloomy pondering
even if a film was sad. Not like this.”
“I’m sorry, it’s just I’m a bit distracted.”
“What happened when you were away?”
“It’s really nothing to do with it. I’m just tired.”
“Well, we’ll be starting classes again soon enough. Let’s
hope you’ll not be tired then.”
“I’ll be alright.”
“It’s our last year you know, you’ll need to be more than
alright.”
“I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”
“Did you think any more about what you’ll do afterwards?”
“You know very well that I don’t make plans. It’s better not
to be disappointed.”
“About what?”
“Nothing in particular.”
“I can’t seem to get anything out of you other than a few
words.”
“Like I said, Pavel. I’m tired. The film upset me a bit.”
“It’s just a lot of gushing romance, Lena. There’s nothing
real in that. What’s come over you? It’s like you’ve gone back to being a
schoolgirl or something. What was that book you used to read all the time?”
“I don’t remember.”
“I do. It’s like you’re waiting for the scarlet sails on the
horizon. I’m sorry, Lena, they’re not going to come. Grow up.”
Chapter 5
It quickly became apparent to Lena judging by postmarks that
it took about three weeks for a letter sent from Kaliningrad to reach
Cambridge. David usually said something like ‘I got your letter yesterday’.
Judging from the postmarks his letters took much the same sort of time to reach
her. There was a small delay while it was translated into Russian. She wondered
what this unknown translator thought of the task of translating love letters.
Still it was probably more interesting than translating equipment manuals. She
resented that David’s words were read by someone else first, some stranger, but
at least it was just a stranger, someone who had probably been on the same
course as her and was using knowledge of Danish to make a living. Somehow it
was harder to sit in the office with Orlov knowing that he had read David’s
thoughts and would read hers. The problem as much as anything was that she
liked Orlov.
The meetings to give and receive the letters were a
continuance of the series of meetings that stretched back well over a year now.
At the beginning he had been formal and business-like but not unfriendly. Over
time a sort of relationship grew. Orlov mentioned his wife and children, what
they did at weekends. They got to know each other in the same sort of way she
had got to know some of her teachers at the university. At each meeting now he
smiled, and there were a few minutes of small talk before they got down to
business. She knew that it had to be this way. Still she could not help feeling
embarrassed as if she were being made to show love letters to her father.
“Is there no way to speed up the post, Vladimir Borisovich?”
she asked Orlov.
“We could probably send your letters a bit quicker, but I’d
advise against it. Why suddenly should your letters arrive quicker?”
“I see.”
“Don’t worry, Lena. You just have to be patient. Anyway, it
seems you’re still struggling to write now, should I say, with much emotion?”
“I find it hard. My Danish isn’t that good.”
“You want to see him again. I think, perhaps, you need to
show it.”
She thought back on the last couple of letters that she had
written that had turned out much the same as the first. They had been an
impersonal series of descriptions of what she had done.
“I don’t think, he wants to hear about any more trips to the
beach”, said Orlov.
“I’ve run out of things to say. We spent so little time
together really.”
“It doesn’t seem to stop him. I liked this bit where he
imagines coming up to you sleeping and slipping a ring on your finger.”
Lena remembered how she had thrilled at his words and the
story they were sharing.
“I liked it, too, but I didn’t really understand it.”
“Do you think you’re the only one who has read Scarlet Sails?
It’s our Danish translator’s favourite story, too. She loves how David is using
it to communicate his feelings for you. She thinks, he’s delightful.”
“I wanted to keep the story for myself. I know, I’m not the
only one who likes it, everyone does; it’s just I feel its specialness for me.”
“My daughter feels the same way. I’ve not read it myself,
though I saw the film. Can’t say it made much impression on me. Maybe it’s a
female thing.”
“David understands it.”
“Well, now that the secret’s out, maybe you can explain a
couple of things. What does he mean when he describes looking at a picture of a
sea captain and someone unknown and invisible coming up to him on his left
standing beside him. He means you, doesn’t he?”
“Yes. It’s when the hero is a child. I always thought it was
when his destiny was decided, too.”
“Look, Lena, we know each other pretty well by now. You need
to try to get some more romance into your letters.”
“I try, it’s just…”
“You don’t like that other people get to see what you write?”
“I didn’t say that. I understand that it’s necessary.”
“Just try to forget it and let the next letter that you write
show how you feel. There’s no need for secrets between us, we’ve been working
so well together this last year and more.”
But writing romance to order was not so easy. She tried, but
the words rang false. His letters, too, became more matter of fact. He
described the start of term at his college and some of his old friends who were
still there. He described the sports that he did, which more often than not
were not played in Russia. He mentioned his studies and how he was trying to
find a way to bring Dostoevsky into his account of faith, and that he was
trying to find out about the Orthodox Church as he had been so impressed by
Alyosha in “The Brothers Karamazov”. He ceased mentioning Scarlet Sails.
She thought of picking up the theme that he had dropped but
it seemed too late. For her, anyway, the theme had been reversed. She knew that
in some ways she was deceiving David, but she justified it to herself by
thinking that Arthur Grey, the ship’s captain in the story, deceived Asol by
hearing of her prophecy and making it come true by buying up the scarlet silk
to make sails. Well, wasn’t she doing just the same sort of thing? She was
making their fate come true. It could not come true otherwise, without her
interference. It could not even have begun if she had not set out on the path
she had taken. But she could not write about that theme after all. That was
something that she would have to keep in her heart, perhaps, forever.
Part of her wished that she could just write and receive
letters in return without anyone else being involved. But she was also a
realist. Without Orlov there was no chance whatsoever that she would see David
again. It was easy for him to get on a plane and travel. He, no doubt, had
enough money and could go nearly anywhere in Europe on a whim. She’d seen how
the people in the school in Denmark treated foreign travel as if it was
nothing. They’d talked of foreign holidays and most of them had been all over
Western Europe. They liked travel and it was easy. Why should a Russian girl be
any different? She, too, had dreamt of travel and it had been all but
impossible. She’d also dreamt of meeting someone special, someone out of the
ordinary. She loved learning languages. But what was the point if you never
actually used a language to talk to that someone special?
But the guilt remained even as she realised that she needed
Orlov’s office. Without it she would never even have seen David’s photo.
Without it there was no hope. She could not travel even to Moscow without help,
let alone to England. There was no chance David could visit her. It was not a
question of money. He just wouldn’t be allowed.
She knew that she was using subterfuge and felt the
difficulty of writing from the heart when that heart conceals something vital.
However much she tried to romanticise what she was doing, she knew that if she
told him, even years from now, he might reject her there and then. He might not
understand that she had no choice.
She thought of what he said about the Orthodox Church and
realised, too, that he was responding to her confession of her faith. She went
back in her mind to that moment when she had shown him her cross. She took it
out now to look at it. She sensed that David was responding and showing her his
own cross. He was saying that they shared the same cross. But this was just
something else that she already knew she could not write about in her next
letter.
Chapter 6
It had been seven weeks since she’d last received a letter,
but Lena told herself there were all sorts of explanations. Perhaps, the
sorting office in Moscow had been even slower than usual in dealing with her
letter to him, or his letter to her. Perhaps, there was some matter of research
that he was busy with. It was pointless speculating. A week later, however, and
it was no use kidding herself that she was worried. What if one of their
letters had been lost in the post? It was now nearly six months ago since they
had spent those few days together. She wondered how he thought of those days.
It was all so vivid to her. She saw his face frequently in her imagination and
relived the sensations that he had brought to her. She could feel his touch
whenever she wanted to. It was just a question of wishing it and finding a
quiet place where she could let her mind drift back to him. It had all seemed
so perfect and so perfectly mutual even if they had not always understood each
other’s intentions. But had that only been a moment for him, a few days that
were now rapidly being forgotten? She could not believe it. She’d been with
him. She could tell that what he felt was genuine. Then what was the
explanation for his silence? Finally, there was a message from Orlov. And so on
a cold December morning she made her way once more to Prospect Mira.
She sat down and waited for him to give her the letter, but
he gave her nothing. There was none of the usual small talk. She looked at his
face and saw that it was genuinely sad.
“What is it, Vladimir Borisovich? Is there no letter?”
“I’m very sorry, Lena. I don’t think there are going to be
any more letters.”
“But how can you know? Maybe one of them got lost. I’m not
going to give up.”
“I think, you may have to.”
“But why? What do you know?”
“I’ve heard that he doesn’t intend to write any more
letters.”
“How do you know?”
“We have a friend who knows David quite well.”
“But how?”
“He’s been helping us for some time, even since before you
first came here. When was it? Nearly two years ago. There’s no need to go into
details. I’m sure, you realise.”
“Do you know why?”
“Are you sure you want to know?”
Lena hesitated but then looked at Orlov resolutely.
“Wouldn’t you want to know?”
“I think so. I just don’t want you to be hurt. I like you,
Lena. I’ve enjoyed our little chats from time to time. My own daughter is just
a little younger than you. I’d be quite pleased if she turned out to be a bit
like you.”
“Thank you. It’s not always been easy, but I’ve been more
than once grateful for your support. Can you tell me?”
“We think, he may have got together with a girl he’s known
since he was quite young. She’s called Gillian. Here you may be interested in
seeing these.”
He handed Lena a few photographs and she slowly leafed
through them.
“Is this her?”
“Yes.”
“But how did you come by them. Why?”
“It was part of the matching process. Our friend in Cambridge
told us that David for many years had loved this girl Gillian, but that nothing
had come of the relationship, and most likely never would.”
Lena looked at the photographs again and a gradual
realisation came to her. It was almost as if she were looking at herself. The
clothes and the hairstyle were different. There were other dissimilarities in
their features and expressions, but the match could hardly have been closer.
“Did you pick me because I look like her?”
“Not entirely. We picked you because you picked David and
looked like her.”
“And if I’d not picked him?”
“Who knows? Perhaps, we could have found a match with someone
else. Perhaps, you would just have continued your studies as before without
taking on another language. These things rarely work out. They rarely even get
as far as going abroad.”
“Do they ever work out?”
“Yes, sometimes, and then it’s worth it. But it’s quite rare
really.”
“But what’s changed? I don’t understand.”
“Well, a few months before you went to Denmark we heard that
David had finally grown tired of loving Gillian and getting nothing in return.
He asked her to be with him, but despite saying that she loved him, she turned
him down. I can’t say I understand the psychology of women. They broke off all
contact. Well, at that point we thought the situation to be nearly ideal.”
“It seems such an unlikely sequence of events that brought us
together in the school in Denmark.”
“Was it?
“I don’t understand.”
“There’s no need to. Let’s just say that our friend in
Cambridge helped things along with his suggestions and we made our arrangements
accordingly.”
“Is David together with her now?”
“We don’t really know. All we know is that Gillian wrote to
David and she spent the weekend in his room.”
Lena felt a sense of bitterness growing. Had he learned what
to do by his practice with her? He’d spent years with Gillian and nothing had
happened, and now after his little interlude in Denmark he felt better able to
say and do the things necessary to get a woman into bed.
“Is that all you know?” The tears were beginning to grow in
her eyes and her voice was faltering.
“Our friend doesn’t know what happened between Gillian and
David. She’s not been back to the college, and there have been no letters or
phone calls. David doesn’t talk about her and is touchy if anyone else mentions
the girl who came to visit him.”
“Still she stayed with him that weekend.”
“The English are rather strange. It might have been quite
innocent.”
“How many beds do they have in these rooms?”
“Just one. But someone may well have slept on the floor.”
“So you think, maybe everything could be alright. If they
haven’t got together, if she’s still playing at being his sister, what’s
stopping him writing?”
“It changed him. We gather, Gillian’s done this continually.
There are people at his college who’ve known David for a long time. She’s
broken up his relationships before. Not deliberately. She just has to write to
him, or show up.”
“But…” She’d been given just a hint of hope and she wanted to
maintain it.
“No, Lena. Our friend asked David about the letters from
Russia. David said he didn’t think there would be any more. He thought it was
an impossible situation. He mentioned that you lived in a town where he
couldn’t go and that it was almost impossible for you to travel to see him.
That’s why he’s given up writing.”
“So there’s no hope?”
“No. Not at the moment.”
“What do you think, Vladimir Borisovich?”
“I think, it’s all rather tragic. If this girl Gillian had
not intervened, who knows what might have happened? But then again if she
hadn’t had a powerful sway over David, you may never have met him in the first
place. I’m sure from what you’ve told me and from what I read of his letters
that he was sincere. But, my dear, it’s not always enough. I’m very sorry indeed.”
Lena left soon after. Walking down the street she felt choked
up and so although it was cold and with a biting wind, she found a place where
passers-by would not notice her and let herself cry. There was a feeling of
bewilderment. She was angry with David. She felt a sense of betrayal which was
no less real even though she would never know if he had really been untrue to
her. She felt a sense of loss because this person who she loved had died; at
least he had died to her for she would never see him again. That much was
certain. The pain and the grief she felt stunned her with its intensity and she
was scared of what might happen if she didn’t take steps to contain it. It
would take time, but she knew that she had to get him out of her mind, out of
her heart. In the following days she allowed her grief to break out for a few
moments when she was alone, but trained herself not to show anyone else what
she was feeling. She hoped in time, with practice that the mask she could
present to others she could learn to present to herself. She fooled no one. Her
family, her friends, Pavel all knew that something had happened. But they got
no answers out of Lena.
Chapter 7
As the weeks passed Lena found her grief lessening. She
fought to keep David out of her mind, but found he kept reappearing despite her
efforts. He came to her sometimes in her dreams. In moments of weakness she
would even go over their time together. Sometimes she would lay on her bed and
go over each detail, and give in to her desire to feel again what she had felt
then, recalling in an endless repetition events that she had recalled so often
that she sometimes wondered what was true and what was imagination. Had she
embellished and changed by the process of memorising? Something that had taken
seconds could hardly be remembered as she remembered with clarity, with detail
and with the sense of still being there. She felt his touch still, but was it
her own fantasy rather than what had actually happened?
What, after all, had happened in those days in Denmark? She
felt that she had been reading a story that had been left incomplete. Had it
all been without any real meaning for him? Was she just a sort of fling to be
enjoyed and then discarded? At times she tried to reinterpret the events through
bitterness. It had all been a mistake. The feeling had been one sided. She’d
just misread, misunderstood. He’d written a few times out of duty. She tried to
find a way to dislike David, thought of the worst possible interpretations for
his failure to write. She saw in her mind the photos of Gillian, and made
herself think of David spending the weekend with the girl he had loved for so
long. So it had all worked out in the end. All that waiting and hoping. He’d
got what he wanted and no doubt was happy now. She found herself, putting
herself in Gillian’s place, imagining that she had been in David’s room. There
was a mixture of the room in Denmark in her mind with what she imagined a room
in Cambridge would be like. She thought of the pictures she had seen of a rival
she would never meet, of how they could be sisters, more so now than ever as
her blonde streaks had grown out to be replaced by nearly the same shade of
hair as Gillian’s. It wasn’t so difficult to put herself in Gillian’s place and
once more she allowed herself to drift into the fantasy. She wrote the story in
some detail for her own pleasure, but also because she knew that she needed to
know that this was over. He’d found someone else. He loved someone else. She
was never going to see him again. There would be no more kisses and she would
have to wait forever for his touch. The ship with scarlet sails was departing
over the horizon and she was not on it. Pavel was right. It was time to grow
up.
She began seeing a little more of Pavel and sometimes called
him up herself. It wasn’t that anything really had changed. But she had begun
to accept that if one fate was not going to happen, another would. She didn’t
want anything to change between her and Pavel, at least not for the moment.
They could go on as before. Their friendship was genuine. His company had been
welcome these past weeks that were becoming months. They did the same things as
always. They’d go to the cinema or meet at a cafe or a canteen. They went for
walks along the frozen shore of the Baltic. Like everyone else he had asked her
about what had happened. No matter how well she thought she was hiding things,
it seemed that her eyes gave it away. She kept saying there was nothing.
“There’s a sadness in you, Lena,” he had said.
“Is there? I don’t know why you should think so.”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
“But there’s nothing to tell. You know that, as well as I do.
You see me most days.”
“That’s just it. That’s what no one can understand. I talked
to your mother about it.”
“I really wish you wouldn’t. You’ve no right.”
Eventually he had given up probing as she had shown him more
than once how she resented it. In the end, everyone had believed her that
nothing had happened. After all, they knew that she had not been going out with
anyone. They knew that there had been no breakup or anything like that. She
knew that her mother had asked her girlfriends if they knew anything. But her
girlfriends were as mystified as everyone else. They didn’t know of any boy she
liked, who had rejected her attempts to start a romance. So people just stopped
asking her. They accepted that there was nothing to tell.
Lena wondered if she should try to find someone she could
really love. She looked around sometimes at the boys she knew and at the people
she met by chance. But she didn’t want to meet anyone. What was the use anyway?
The love that she had felt those few months ago in Denmark had not led her to
any happiness. Who was to say that another love here in Kaliningrad would have
any more chance of success? It was, probably all just some biological process
to trick women into getting together with men. She talked to women who had been
in love when they married only to find later that it had been a horrible
mistake. At least with Pavel she knew that she’d be marrying someone she liked.
He’d never leave her, never treat her badly. He’d always be like the little dog
in the movie trotting after her. She could do worse than Pavel. But there was
no need to think of that yet. She still had a few months. In the summer she’d
talk to him. No doubt it would work out for the best. Perhaps, some sort of
love would come later and if not, well, at least she’d be with a friend.
Chapter 8
It was in early March 1991 when she got a message from Orlov.
Soon she was sitting down once again in the familiar office. She looked across
the table at his face.
“It’s good to see you Lena,” he said.
“Is it, Vladimir Borisovich? Why am I here? Did you get a
letter? I think it might be a bit late. Don’t you?”
“There’s no letter.”
“So why am I here?”
“We want you to go back to Denmark.”
“Why ever would I do that? Anyway, it’s out of the question,
I have exams.”
“You needn’t worry about that. It’s just a question of having
a word with the authorities at the university. I’m sure they’ll be cooperative.
I can safely promise you a ‘four’ or maybe even a ‘five’.”
A ‘five’ was the equivalent of an “A” which was a mark Lena
had never considered within her reach. She looked at Orlov with disbelief.
“But why send me back?”
“To meet David.”
“Is he there? I don’t think I want to go.”
“He’s not there.”
“So what am I to do there?”
“We want you to send him a postcard, or rather be there when
he receives it. Here it is.”
He handed her a postcard and she glanced at the front and
then at the back. It had some Danish looking buildings with a Danish flag
blowing in a breeze. She found the name Rødding on the back and vaguely
remembered that it was a small town quite near to Askov.
“It’s too late.”
“Why, what has changed since the last time we met?”
“I have someone here.”
“Who? Pavel? Don’t be silly, Lena. He’s just the equivalent
of David’s Gillian.”
“You know nothing about Pavel and me.”
“Don’t we indeed? We asked around when we first got in touch
with you. It’s hardly a great secret that you have been chums with him for
years and nothing has ever happened. It’s actually one of the reasons we picked
you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It made you a more perfect match.”
“In what way?”
“It was just a little something extra that we thought David
would find attractive. Just one more thing in your favour.”
“But I’ve spent the last few months getting over David. It’s
been tough, but I’ve succeeded. I don’t love him.”
“Don’t you, Lena? Are you really so sure? It’s not quite so
easy to get over love when it’s real. You know that because you’ve felt it.”
“What do you know of love, comrade, with all your schemes? I
wish I’d never got involved.”
“I think, you’re failing to understand the nature of what we
do. We help couples from all over the world to get together. These schemes as
you put it are rather like matchmaking. We help people to meet who otherwise
would not. But we never lose sight of the fact that love is the most important
thing. Without it we’d get nowhere. Indeed our primary goal is to foster a love
that will endure into a lasting relationship and marriage.”
“You make all the schemes sound terribly romantic.”
“Why shouldn’t people who meet with the help of others have
romance? That’s how people have been meeting for centuries.”
“You don’t expect me to believe in your sincerity, Vladimir
Borisovich?”
“I’m perfectly sincere, and what I say is quite true. It’s
why we pick girls like you, Lena. Didn’t you know that?”
“But why now? You told me it was over.”
“We’ve heard that David regrets not writing. He misses you.”
“Does he indeed? And Gillian?”
“We are led to believe that it was all a lot of nothing. He’s
not seen or heard from her since. Nothing happened.”
“But they spent the weekend together.”
“I promise you nothing happened, not with her and not with
anyone else.”
“How do you know?”
“Our friend succeeded in getting David rather drunk one night
in the college bar. David told him everything about how Gillian came to visit,
how she slept on the floor and even got changed in the toilet across the hall.
They spent a rather strained weekend not quite knowing what to say to each
other. But she has a way of getting under his skin. He blames her now because
he thinks, without her visit he would have continued writing to you. He thinks
she ruined his chances. It seems she makes a habit of doing this, perhaps
unwittingly, perhaps not. He’s rather bitter and feels foolish. He doesn’t
think it would be polite to write to you again now that so many months have
passed. He can’t think of a sensible excuse to begin. That’s about the gist of
it. He had no reason to lie to our friend. I’m quite sure he’s telling the
truth.”
“What makes you think he would come to Denmark?”
“He told our friend that he might go there over Easter. We’re
pretty sure he’d respond favourably to a postcard.”
“It’s all very sudden. I can’t just switch feelings on and
off.”
“You won’t have to. There will be time. Trust me.”
“I really don’t want to go.”
“I think, you know where your duty lies, comrade. We’ve spent
a lot of time and effort on you. No one’s asking you to do anything untoward.
It’s just another trip much like the last time. There’s another school. This
time there’ll mainly be Danes. I think, there may be another Russian girl there
as well, though I’m not sure.”
“Of course, I’m grateful, Vladimir Borisovich, for everything
you’ve done for me. I really was very badly hurt. I cried for days. I’m not
sure I can bear another hurt like that. It scared me. I’ve spent all this time
trying to close my heart to him. Do you think I can just open it again, just
like that?”
“No. But I think, it might be worth giving him another
chance. I don’t think he’s done anything wrong. I don’t think, he’s betrayed
you in any way. It would be as likely as you going to bed with Pavel.”
“What do I have to do?”
“You translate this text into Danish and write it on the
postcard. You then go home and pack and return here. You’ll be flying out later
today.”
“Today? But that’s impossible.”
“Not at all. We’ve got someone who can drive you home and
back again.”
“But why today?”
“There’s a relatively small window of opportunity. Believe me
we’ve worked things out rather carefully. Your ticket has been bought. Your
place in the school reserved. You’ll be there sometime tomorrow afternoon.”
“My visa?”
“There are ways to fix even that, Lena. Don’t worry.”
“What if he doesn’t write back?”
“Well, then we’ll have to admit defeat. You’ll spend a few
weeks practicing your Danish.”
“But what do I say to my family, my friends? Why should I get
to go abroad twice in a year? It’s almost unheard of.”
“The man who will drive you home is going to have a little
talk with your parents about how we need your presence in Denmark once more on
a matter of some urgency, which unfortunately he is not allowed to discuss
further.”
“And Pavel?”
“I don’t think it’s really necessary for you to give him any
explanation at all. But you can leave him a note if you like. I really wouldn’t
go to see him if I were you. Can you manage the translation without a
dictionary? We want it to be in your own words.”
“It looks quite easy.”
“We’ve thought carefully about what you should write, so try
to reproduce it as accurately as possible. We’ll have someone look it over
later, and it will go as quickly as possible to Denmark and from there with the
proper markings should be in Cambridge almost immediately.”
Lena began composing her translation. It was all quite
straightforward. She began:
“Why have you not written to me for so long? As you can see
I’m back in Denmark.”
She gave it to Orlov and looked into herself to determine if
possible what she felt about this postcard. What did she want to happen? Did
she want him to respond and come to her or did she want him to ignore it? This
morning when she had woken up she not even thought of David. The days when she
didn’t think of him at all had been increasing lately, though they were still
few. Sometimes he still came to her in her dreams, and sometimes she still
brought his image to her own mind and renewed their acquaintance as best she
could because she still needed his caresses so. But if she had thought of him
this morning, she would have known for sure that she would never see him again.
In that sense he was wholly gone. He would have had no existence for her at
all. She had grieved for him as for someone who was no more. It was therefore
with a sense of shock that she found herself contemplating someone who was
still living and who she might meet in a relatively short time. It was all too
bewildering. It was all too sudden.
She got into the car and drove towards home hardly daring to
explore her feelings because they were all in such a jumble. She sat there
stunned. She’d given up. He’d sailed away and left her alone. Yet looking out
of the window she seemed to be able to glimpse the top of a mast just visible
over the horizon. It was too early to tell where it was heading, but just maybe
it was returning to pick up something that had been left behind.
Part 3
Chapter 1
Lena sat in her room in Rødding folk high school. Again she
was waiting. But she still did not know quite what to feel. There was
excitement. She had learned to judge her feelings by objective signs like the
way her stomach would tighten. There was anticipation. There was pleasure. She
had asked and he was coming. He wouldn’t be coming if he didn’t still feel for
her the way he had. But she was scared of what that might mean. What would he
expect? Would he expect them to just start off again as they had last June? But
she couldn’t possibly. There was too much time in between, too much had
happened or had not happened. She still could not quite forgive him for the
fact that he had not written. One letter and an exchange of faxes did not
change that.
Her room was much the same as the one in Askov only she
shared it with Olga. Lena was rather glad about this arrangement. There was a
settee for David, too if he wanted it or he could have his own room downstairs.
The director of the school had been quite matter of fact about matters. She’d
simply asked him if it was alright for her friend from England to stay for a
number of days and been told he could stay with her or have his own room. It
seems this sort of thing happened all the time. Everyone was very liberal.
“Would you mind him staying with us?” she’d asked Olga.
“Not especially, but don’t you think it might be better if he
had his own place so that there was somewhere you could be alone?”
“I’m not sure.”
“He’s your boyfriend right?”
“I haven’t seen him since June. I don’t really know what to
feel now.”
“Do you think he’s travelling all the way from England just
to be your friend?”
“No.”
“You invited him.”
“Yes.”
“Why ever did you do that if you don’t want to be alone with
him?”
“I do, but I’m in a bit of a muddle. I’ll need some time to
get to know him again. For a long time I thought I’d lost him. I was hurt.”
“I understand. Well, we’ll leave it up to him. But if I know
men, he’ll choose to have his own room.”
It was good to have Olga here amongst all the Danes. They had
already become close. They had already spent a lot of time together in the week
that had passed since Lena had arrived. They sat smoking and talking of this
and that. There were things, of course, that Lena could not share, but there
was a lot that she could. She never asked Olga why she was in Denmark and
received no more explanation than that she, too studied the language. Olga had
not commented on the unusualness of Lena being in Denmark twice in one year.
Lena was gradually getting used to the situation and getting
over the shock of being here. From the point of being told that she would be
going to Denmark to actually arriving had been little more than twenty four
hours. She’d gone home and more or less flung what she’d needed into a case. Her
mother and father had been called so that they could say goodbye. They’d all
sat down at the table. She briefly explained that she was going to Denmark. The
driver who was sitting down with her said a few words, too. There had been
shock, and her mother had cried. But her father immediately stopped any
protests developing.
“Will you tell Pavel and anyone else I know?” she’d asked her
mother.
“Of course, Lena.”
“Just say I’ve been given a wonderful chance to go back to
Denmark. That it all happened very suddenly, and I didn’t know myself before
today. Tell him I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye.”
She hugged each of her parents in turn. Then her sister
arrived from school having been hastily summoned. They hugged, too.
“I’m glad you could make it, Vera,” said Lena.
She saw Vera carefully looking into her eyes. She was much
younger, still with some years left in school. But Lena knew that Vera was
perceptive. There wasn’t time to say much so she came right to the point.
“Are you happy, Lena?”
“About going?”
“No, not so much that. It’s just I’ve thought you’ve been
unhappy lately.”
Lena knew that it had been impossible to completely hide that
she’d been holding back tears these past few months. She knew that she had
sometimes given way and let what was inside of her show on the outside at least
to someone who knew her so well.
“It’s been a strange day. A big surprise and so much has
already happened. I can’t really take it in.”
“But you seem happier to me.”
“Do I? I can’t say I noticed.”
“Be happy, Lena.”
“I think you’re reading into things a little much.”
“Perhaps, you’ll at least be able to smile a little more in
Denmark.”
“Yes, I’m glad of the chance I’ve been given. I’m very
fortunate.”
“Good luck, my dear and only sister,” said Vera. “I hope you
get what you’ve been waiting for.”
“I’m not sure I know what you think I’m waiting for.”
“Lena, we’ve shared a room for as long as I can remember. I
have eyes and I can sense things, too.”
“I know you can and I’ve always been pleased to have you
around. Only don’t worry, nothing bad has happened to me, I’ve just been
moping. Anyway, there’s no point going into these things now. I must go.”
“Let’s all sit down,” said her mother.
Lena saw how her mother was silently saying to herself a
prayer that she had taught to both her children. She didn’t know which one it
was. It didn’t matter, for even if their words were different, the prayer she
was herself saying was the same prayer her mother was saying.
They all got up and she was driven straight to the airport.
It was a tiny little place, rather decrepit for there were few flights and
hardly any tourists. Once more she found herself going to Moscow, but this time
there would be no chance to see anything other than the airport and what could
be glimpsed out of the windows of the shuttle bus taking her between terminals.
There was someone to meet her in Moscow and so Lena did not
even have to worry about where the bus left from or where to check in. When
they arrived at the desk for the flight to Copenhagen she handed over her
ticket and gave her passport. The woman
looked her up and down and started flicking through the passport.
“Where’s your permit to leave the USSR? Where’s your visa for
Denmark? I can’t possibly let you on the flight,” she said.
“Don’t worry about that,” said Lena’s companion, a woman only
a little older than she was.
“Don’t worry? How can you possibly think she can travel
without the proper documentation?”
“I assure you that everything is in order and has been arranged.”
She took out her purse and gave the woman at the desk a card.
“You’re welcome to call the number on the back if you require
any further clarification.”
“No. No. That won’t be necessary. I’m sorry, comrade. I was
only doing what I’ve been told.”
“I know and I will make a note in my report about your
efficiency and cooperation.”
Lena was told by her companion that when she reached
Copenhagen, she was to ask for a Mr Torben Hansen; he was in charge of the
border control people at the airport. She handed Lena a business card with
Hansen’s name on it.
“Just show this to one of the guards. Don’t worry, Lena.
Everything has been arranged.”
It was still early when she arrived on a grey and dull Danish
morning. For some reason her plane had stopped in Minsk and had sat there
waiting for some reason or other. She was very tired. The excitement of the
previous day had worn off so that now she felt deflated. She looked at the
border control guards, and was terribly conscious that she didn’t have a visa.
She didn’t have very much money either, so if anything went wrong she was
rather stuck. Still there was nothing she could do, but do as she had been
told. She went up to the friendliest looking guard she could find and began
talking to him in Danish.
“Excuse me, I was told to report to Mr Torben Hansen when I
arrived.”
The guard immediately said something in English.
“I’m sorry, but my English is not very good,” Lena replied.
“Where are you from?”
“The Soviet Union.”
“Well, your Danish is better than my Russian, which is
non-existent. What’s it about?”
“It’s about my visa. Mr Hansen has arranged things. Here’s
his card.”
“Are you sure? I’ve never heard of anything like this. How on
earth did you manage to get on the plane without a visa? I’ll have to phone
him.”
Hansen arrived a few minutes later.
“You must be Elena Fedina,” he said. “Now if you’ll just fill
in these forms.”
She saw that the guard was looking on in amazement. He said
something in very quick Danish. She only caught a few words of the conversation
that followed, words like “emergency,” “special favour,” “unusual
circumstances”, and she caught the tone of authority in Hansen’s voice. She
filled in the forms as best she could there and then. Hansen guided her when
she wasn’t sure what to put, and finally he stuck the visa in her passport.
“Thank you very much, Mr Hansen,” she said. “You’ve been
terribly kind.”
“Don’t mention it; we’re always pleased to help our Soviet
friends. Welcome to Denmark.”
Lena went through passport control without any trouble and
immediately recognised the same man who had driven them all to Askov the
previous year.
“Welcome back, comrade Fedina,” he said.
“It’s good to see a friendly face.”
“Well, we can have some coffee and a little something to eat.
No doubt you’ll want a smoke, too.”
He passed her his packet of Danish Prince cigarettes. She
remembered how she had liked them, and at the first puff she was brought back
for an instant to the times when she had shared the same brand of cigarette
with David. His image flashed before her mind and for the first time in months
it was not accompanied by a sense of pain and loss.
She dozed off a couple of times during the trip through
Denmark and was blissfully unaware of the boat crossing to Jutland. When they
were nearly there, the driver gave her a shake.
“Do you recognise where we are now?” he said pointing out
Askov and the school where he’d driven them last summer. “It’s only a few more kilometres now. I
thought I’d give you the chance to get ready.”
She saw the familiar buildings and the countryside just about
coming into spring. Again she remembered being there and being with David, and
it seemed closer now, closer in time and not only in space; and then the months
between began to intervene and in particular the winter when she had lost him.
It wasn’t so easy to go back to the Lena she had been. The months of grief had
changed her in ways she could not help and could not undo, at least not
immediately.
It couldn’t have been much more than twenty minutes before
they pulled into the little town of Rødding. The driver showed her into the
director’s office and they said goodbye.
“Thank you for being so kind. It meant a lot to me to see a
friendly face this morning.”
“Anytime. Goodbye and good luck.”
“Ah, you must be Lena. My name is Niels,” said the director.
“You do speak Danish, don’t you? It’s all been rather sudden and we’ve not yet
received all the forms.”
“Yes, I understand you quite well,” she said. “I went to the
school in Askov last summer and have been studying Danish for some time.”
“You speak rather well in fact. Well, we’re happy to have you
here. We have another Russian girl here. She’ll be along in a minute. I asked
her to be ready to help out if you didn’t speak much Danish. Ah here she is.
Let me introduce you. This is Olga.”
“And I’m Lena.”
They shook hands.
“We thought it might be a nice idea if you stayed together,”
said Niels. “If that’s OK with you.”
“Whatever you say,” said Lena.
“Then I’ll leave Olga to show you around and take you to your
room. We’ll no doubt talk again later on. Bye.”
“Will I show you around a bit first,” said Olga in Russian,
“or if you’re too tired, I can take you straight to our room?”
“You can show me around a bit. I slept a little on the way.”
Olga told her a something about the town and about the
school, showed her where they eat and where they had their coffee breaks.
“What’s it like here?” asked Lena.
“Not bad. There are only Danes here, but they’re friendly
enough. I’m quite glad of the chance to speak some Russian. It’s quite tiring
speaking only Danish, you know.”
“I remember.”
“You’ve been to Denmark before?”
“Last summer.”
“Really?”
It didn’t take long to show Lena around and soon they were at
the door to their room.
“The toilets and showers are down the hall. We only have a
sink in here,” said Olga.
The room was quite large with two bunk beds and another one
that doubled as settee.
“I’ve been using the bottom bunk,” said Olga, “so would you
like the top bunk or the settee?”
“I don’t really mind. Perhaps, the top bunk would be better.”
“The settee is a bit lumpy. By the way, you didn’t bring any
cigarettes did you?”
“Yes. I brought lots. The last time I was here in Denmark I
ran out.”
“And they cost a ridiculous amount here.”
“I know. Have a pack. Look,” and she opened her bag to reveal
a few cartons of Russian cigarettes.
“Just take a pack when you need one.”
“Thanks. I knew we’d get on.”
They started smoking and immediately were on friendly terms
using the “tu” form of the Russian word for “you” rather than the “vous” form.
But although they were immediately friendly, Lena was wary of questions. Above
all, she didn’t want to say anything about David, not to Olga, not to anyone.
She thought he would probably write, but she was far from sure. Even if he did
write, he might well say that he couldn’t come, that he was sorry but he had
already made other plans. She couldn’t bear the idea of announcing to anyone
that she was waiting for someone to come and then for him not actually to come.
It would be humiliating. She wasn’t even sure in her own mind about what she
wanted to happen. She felt as if he had the power to reopen a wound she had
found difficult to heal. The pain of the last few months was still with her and
couldn’t simply be done away with even if he now regretted that he’d stopped
writing. Sometimes she glimpsed what she had felt last June and in the months
that followed, but she couldn’t simply recapture what had been lost even if she
had been certain that she wanted to. She wondered when David would get his
postcard and imagined him reading it. She tried to imagine what he would think
and what he would do. In the meantime she resolved to wait as if looking out to
sea as she had imagined herself doing so many times. She could do no more. It
had needed what seemed to her a series of little miracles for her to be sitting
now in this room in Denmark. Now whatever happened next or didn’t happen was up
to him.
Chapter 2
When Lena gradually woke up, she began to take in her
surroundings aware of where she was, but still feeling as if she were in
Russia. She knew that she was higher up than she was used to, but still had to
remind herself not to step straight out of her bunk bed onto the floor. She’d
gone to bed quite early and noticed as she went down the ladder that Olga was
still sleeping. She got dressed quietly, grabbed her cigarettes and made her
way out to have a look around.
The building was impressive and obviously quite old. It was
typically Danish with a red tiled roof, whitewashed wall and a Danish flag on a
flagpole out front. Everything was clean and fresh. She found a place where she
could sit and lit up her cigarette. A few other people wandered by, but no one
paid her any attention.
It was almost the first moment when she had had a chance to
think since she’d left Russia. She was beginning to think it hadn’t been such a
bad idea. It looked a pleasant place to spend some time. She’d speak some more
Danish. Olga seemed pleasant. But she still couldn’t really work out what she
felt about David. She didn’t want to hope that he’d come until she knew that he
would. The thought of being disappointed again was too much to bear.
An older man approached her.
“Are you the other Russian girl?” he said.
“Yes. I’m Lena.”
“I thought you might be, as I didn’t recognise you. I’m
Christian, one of the teachers.”
“What to do you teach?”
“Oh, this and that. We don’t always teach subjects like in a
college. We just find the best way to help our students.”
“I was at Askov last year.”
“You were?”
“It was a Danish language course.”
“You’ll find this a little different as everyone else apart
from Olga is Danish.”
“I hope I’ll get along alright. I can understand pretty well
now.”
“I’d say a bit better than that. Did Olga tell you where to
go for breakfast?”
“Yes. Is it soon?”
“Half an hour or so.”
“I’ll go back and wake her up then.”
Olga was awake by then and in the process of getting dressed.
“What’s it like outside?” she asked.
“Not bad. A bit grey. I talked to a Danish teacher called
Christian.”
“He’s pretty good.”
“How do you find the lessons? Can you understand them all?”
“They not really lessons like you have at university. You’ve
got to remember the Danes here are usually not very educated. They get sent
here for various reasons.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t really know. It’s something to do with turning them
into good little Danes.”
They both laughed.
“What are they like?” asked Lena.
“Friendly enough, but they tend to stick together. Which
means I’ve been feeling a bit isolated. It’s not always easy to understand one
or two of them. Sometimes they speak very fast and use a lot of slang.”
“So you haven’t met anyone you liked?”
“You mean a boy?”
“If you like.”
“No. Though I’ve been propositioned a couple of times.”
“Seriously?”
“They seem to treat these sort of things rather casually.
It’s hard to keep up with who is with who each day.”
“So, no tall blonde Vikings?”
“Not that I’ve noticed.”
“Shall we go? It must nearly be time.”
They went to the canteen and found a place to sit. All the
other students were more or less sitting together, but Lena and Olga chose to
sit a little apart and continued speaking in Russian.
“Hey, what’s with the foreign languages?” someone called out.
“Good morning, Poul,” Olga said emphasising each Danish word.
“Who’ve you got with you?”
“This is Lena.”
“From Russia as well?”
“You’re quick this morning, Poul.”
“You know the sort of food they have here, am I right?” Olga
said to Lena.
“I imagine it will be like last year. I grew to quite like
it. It’s not so different from at home. When’s the first class?”
“At nine. Do you have any gym kit?”
“Like what?”
“A tracksuit or shorts and a T-shirt.”
“I think I can manage.”
“We often start with movement activities.”
“I’m not sure I can quite imagine what that means.”
“It’s the sort of things we did when we were kids. You know
you pretend that you’re a tree or something like that.”
“I haven’t done anything like that since the little
octobrists.”
“Me too, but it’s quite good fun.”
During the first class Lena was introduced to everyone else
and almost immediately forgot everyone’s name. She found the class quite
relaxing, though there were one or two embarrassing moments when she hadn’t
grasped what she was supposed to do. She found herself looking around noticing
the other students in their turn. She was able to lose herself a little in the
music and her mind wandered where it wished without her conscious control. The
image of Pavel came to her. She felt a little guilty. She had, perhaps been
encouraging him a little in the past month or so. He must have got a shock to
find she had simply gone. She wondered what he thought of it all. What did her
mother and father think? They must have suspected something. It wasn’t possible
to just one day decide to go to Denmark and be there the next day. They must
have known there was a reason and that important people were determining what
she did. But they knew enough not to ask too many questions.
She’d been spending some more time with Pavel. But nothing
had really changed. She didn’t feel any more for him than she ever had, but she
had become resigned to the idea that they would be together. It wasn’t
something that she was looking forward to, but she’d accepted it as inevitable.
It was with a certain relief then to find herself here with a reprieve. Yes, it
was definitely a relief. She relaxed into the music once more and began to feel
herself smiling. It had been rather a long time since she had smiled quite in
this way.
At the coffee pause lots of Danes came up to talk to her. It
was a bit of bewildering mix and she sometimes had to ask for a sentence to be
repeated. They were much harder to understand than the teachers. But they were
good fun and very open and friendly. Still after a few minutes of everyone
talking at once as fast as they could Lena found herself nearly exhausted.
She’d only understood about half of what anyone had said. It was with relief
then that she went up to Olga and they sat off to one side smoking and speaking
Russian.
“I can’t make out much of what they say,” said Lena.
“I was the same when I arrived. But you get used to it.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Only a couple of weeks.”
“How long are you staying?”
“At least a couple of months. And you?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You’re not sure. How?”
“It all depends.”
“On what?”
“On how things work out here.”
Lena looked at Olga with a look of I can’t really say more
and Olga was perceptive enough to drop the matter.
When they were getting ready to go, she asked Olga about
where they got their post. Olga showed her the way to the secretary’s office.
“We put the post on this table in alphabetical order,” said
the secretary. “What’s your surname?”
“Fedina.”
“Well, that’s fine so long as it’s not in Russian. Still I
suppose if it’s in Russian, I’ll know it will be one or the other of you, won’t
I?”
“I doubt you’ll get anything from Russia for a while,” said
Olga. “It takes about three weeks.”
“I just wanted to know where to look.”
“Are you expecting something?”
Lena felt embarrassed and she could feel redness appear in
her cheeks.
“You are waiting for something, or is it someone?” asked
Olga. “Someone maybe who was also in Denmark last summer?”
Lena tried to laugh it off.
“I’m always waiting. You see when I was a child I met an old
song collector who made a prophecy about now.”
“I know,” said Olga. “I read that one as well. Let’s go to
the next class.”
Chapter 3
Lena slipped away each day at around the same time to check
if a letter had arrived. She became a familiar face in the secretary’s office,
who seemed be expecting her every day saying something like “nothing today,
Lena.”
Lena knew that it was unrealistic to expect a letter so soon.
Perhaps, he had not even received her postcard yet, but she felt compelled to
check anyway. She tried to work out what was the earliest possible day on which
a letter could arrive, but she had no idea of how long post took between
Britain and Denmark, and she didn’t want to ask. It couldn’t possibly be before
another couple of days she thought, going into the office three days after her
arrival. But she saw a letter with a British stamp and his familiar handwriting
on the envelope. It was a shock to see such a letter again after she had given
up all hope of seeing another.
“So, that was what you were waiting for?” asked the
secretary.
“But I didn’t know. How could I have known?”
“No one else checks here every day at the same time.”
“I just thought there might be something.”
“Well, I’m just glad it finally arrived. I could see your
anticipation every day.” The secretary smiled in a friendly way.
“So am I,” said Lena “So am I.”
She felt the substantiveness of the letter. It felt like more
than one sheet. He didn’t need that much to say ‘no, sorry, I’m not coming’.
But still she would be unsure until she actually opened the letter. She opened
it then and there. It was dated the day she had arrived in Denmark. How, she
wondered had her postcard got to him so quickly. She glanced at the first few
lines. He said that he was writing immediately and in some haste and would send
his letter by the fastest way possible. Then came some words that she didn’t
know and in some frustration she realised that she was going to need a
dictionary. She went back and found Olga.
“Do you have a Danish-Russian dictionary?” she asked.
“Of course, don’t you?” said Olga.
“I forgot mine.”
“Really? You did pack quickly.”
“Have you got it with you?”
“No, it’s in the room. I’ll show you where. So you got a
letter after all.”
She manoeuvred so that she could see the letter better.
“And from England. I’m afraid I don’t have an English
dictionary.”
“I hardly speak any English myself. It’s in Danish.”
“You know a Danish person living in England?”
“No, he’s English.”
“There can’t be many English people who speak Danish.”
“I suppose not. He needed it for his studies.”
Lena was impatient with her friend’s curiosity and it was
beginning to show in her voice, but more important, she was impatient to get on
with reading the letter.
“Would you tell them,” she continued, “that I need to do
something just now, so I’ll not be at the next lesson.”
“My, you are in a hurry.”
“It’s quite urgent actually.”
“OK, OK, you can tell me more later if you want to. Sorry if
I’m a bit curious.”
“That’s fine, Olga, it’s just I really want to see what’s in
the letter.”
Lena began reading again and smoked as she looked up the
words she didn’t know. David had retained his strange old-fashioned system of
spelling and this occasionally made it hard to find a word in Olga’s modern
dictionary. But she had had some practice with this when reading his first few
letters and so it didn’t cause her too much difficulty. Nevertheless, his
vocabulary often defeated her. It was archaic and complex, and sometimes she
wasn’t even exactly sure what a word meant when she’d translated it into
Russian. The main thing though was to get to his message, to find out what he
was thinking and what he would do. He was contrite about not having written
earlier, but gave a reason that was rather too literary for her to guess its
literal meaning. He said that her postcard reawakened a hope that had seemed
lost. He expressed his pleasure at seeing her writing again and described in a
few sentences the process of reading her postcard, and how he knew immediately
that he must go and go as quickly as possible. That said, the style of his
writing lacked the romance of his earliest letters. There was a shyness about
it, and there were none of the endearments characteristic of a love letter. But
he had said that he was coming. He had already found a flight and proposed
coming for eight days. If she could fax him a confirmation, he would
immediately book his flight and would see her in four days, arriving at the
school sometime probably in the evening.
A sense of joy spread over Lena. Even if his letter was not
so very romantic, it was a terribly romantic act. What did the style of the
letter matter compared to the style of the gesture? She could hardly take it
in. He would arrive exactly a week after she had. A smile spread over her face,
and the familiar excitement spread through her body, especially in her stomach
which kept giving little jumps. Her mind travelled back to those very special
moments, which they had shared and it seemed that the pain that had accompanied
the revisited memories for so long was beginning to lift. Yet a reticence
remained. She was wary and she was a little scared. What would he expect after
such a journey to be with her? Would he assume that they would carry on exactly
as if the past months hadn’t happened? Would he think that their last night
together would move inevitably on to the next stage? After all, men didn’t
travel all that way for nothing. And so mixed with her joy was some uncertainty
about what she herself wanted, some confusion about the real nature of her
feelings and some apprehension about being hurt and disappointed again. Nor did
she want to hurt or disappoint him. She needed time. After all these months and
his long silence she didn’t quite trust David. But more than that, she didn’t
quite trust herself or her own motives. She had known him, but only for a short
time and it would rather be like meeting a stranger who she had kissed.
It was hard to know what to think. It was hard to take it all
in. But despite the confusion in her feelings and the mix of sometimes
contradictory emotions she knew from the feeling that had enveloped her, from
the smile that wouldn’t leave her face and the special feeling in her stomach
that she could recognise from last summer, she knew that she had to act now,
this very moment to make sure that he came. She went to the director’s office
and asked if she could speak to him.
“Of course, Lena. Come on in,” he said.
“I have a friend who wants to visit me for a few days.”
She deliberately used the Danish word for “male friend”
rather than the word for “boyfriend”.
“That shouldn’t be a problem. Does he speak Danish?”
“Yes. Pretty well. We met last summer in Askov. He’s from
England and goes to Cambridge.”
“I don’t think we’ve had someone from England, at least not
lately.”
“So you think it will be alright?”
“Definitely. The more the merrier.”
“How much will it cost?”
“Well. Let’s see. He can stay with you. There’s a spare bed,
I think. Just ask Olga if she’d be alright with that. Or he can have his own
room. It won’t cost him much either way. He can come along to the lessons if he
wants. We wouldn’t want him sitting on his own would we?”
“But you’d charge him for that, wouldn’t you?”
“Why ever should we? We’d be having the lessons anyway. It’ll
be a good experience for the others to meet someone who goes to Cambridge.”
“And the food and coffee and such?”
“I think, we have enough. Don’t worry, Lena. We’ll make your
boyfriend welcome.”
Lena noted the word, but didn’t think it was worth
correcting. She didn’t know herself which word was correct.
“He’ll be here on Thursday,” she said.
“Where’s he flying to?”
“Copenhagen. He’ll get in quite early and take the train.”
“Then he should be here by evening. Well, I’ll arrange things
and tell the teachers to expect someone else.”
“Is there a fax machine I can use? I have to confirm that he
can come.”
“You know Helle quite well, I think?”
“The secretary?”
“Yes. She’ll help you send your fax.”
Chapter 4
On Thursday morning when she woke up Lena thought, he’ll be
in the air now and wondered what he was thinking. After all, it had all
happened rather suddenly for David, too. She had an image of David sitting on a
plane having got up rather early to catch his flight. All through the day she
thought of the progress he’d be making. Now he will have landed. Now he’ll be
on a train somewhere in Sjaelland. Now he might have crossed the Lillebaelt
into Fyn. Now he’ll be on the boat crossing the Storebaelt into Jutland. She
didn’t know the timings exactly, but still she couldn’t help continually trying
to work out where he was, how he was making progress, how he would soon be
here. He was coming and he was coming to her. She had never loved anyone other
than David. The feeling she had felt, she had known there and then what it was,
had been unexpected, unknown, but somehow altogether familiar for she
recognised it instantly without having ever experienced it before. It was as
much a physical feeling as an emotional one. The absence of the feeling in her
stomach when she had been with David showed she did not love Pavel just as much
as the absence of any special feelings for her friend in Kaliningrad. She’d
missed David and had longed for him. She’d grieved for him when he’d seemed
lost in a way she knew she never would for Pavel, in a way she knew she never
would even for her parents and her sister. Yet all through the day as she
thought of him coming to her she also had a sense of dread and of fear. It wasn’t
merely that he had hurt her and she was scared of being hurt again. It wasn’t
merely that she had spent so many months trying to kill the love she had felt
and that it would take time and patience to resurrect it. She also realised how
dependent she was on Orlov and his schemes. She knew how if this second meeting
were to come to anything long term, it would depend on a call to Orlov and the
arrangements that he would make. It was the fact that she had to go along with
Orlov’s plans, that it was her duty, the fact that she was absolutely reliant
on this man in his little office, it was this as much as anything else that
made her feel passive, waiting for her love to return. She wondered what David
would say if he knew. She thought of telling him. But then thought of how he
would look with horror. How he would see it all as a deception. Wasn’t that
what it was after all? She knew that she could never tell him, that even if
years from now she told him he would reject her and would be right to reject
her. She felt her love was based on a lie, a lie that had gone back to the time
when she had picked his photograph out of a book. It had been such an easy
thing to do. It had been done so very light-heartedly almost as a joke, for she
had not loved him then and hadn’t really expected to meet him at all. And now
soon she would be face to face with this man who she had lied to, and she
didn’t quite know how to face him.
Olga had been curious of course, and over the course of the
past few days she had told her a little of David, how they had met, the times
they had spent together in Askov, some of what they had done together. She had
also told Olga a little about Pavel, about how David had stopped writing, how
she’d been hurt and not expected to see him again. She had told Olga about how
she’d been given another chance to come to Denmark and decided to send David a
postcard. She said nothing about Orlov. But there had been no need to tell
another Russian that coming twice to Denmark in a year required more luck than
was reasonable. They didn’t ask each other about what they each were doing
there. They already were quite close friends and it was better not to ask than
to have to lie.
“Do you have a picture, Lena?”
“You’ll see him soon enough.”
“You must have a picture.”
Lena got her purse and found where she had inserted David’s
picture. Somehow she had left it there even when it seemed she would never see
him again. She showed it to Olga.
“Not bad,” said Olga, “What’s he like?”
“I don’t know him very well. We only spent a few days
together.”
“But you liked him?”
“Yes, very much. It’s just I tried to get him out of my mind
when it seemed I’d not see him again.”
“And you failed?”
“I suppose so.”
“You seem a bit unsure of what you feel, Lena, if I may say
so. He’ll be here soon enough.”
“I know. It’s all been very sudden.”
“But he’s your boyfriend, right?”
“I don’t really know. I felt very strongly about him when we
were together. But then it was like we broke up and then there’s Pavel.”
“I’d forget this Pavel. Nothing’s going to come of that.”
“I was thinking of marrying him.”
“Why, if you don’t love him?”
“I never said I didn’t.”
“You didn’t have to. I’ve seen you these last few days, Lena.
That’s what love looks like. Believe me, I know.”
“We’ll need some time. I can’t just begin again where we left
off.”
“Look, we’re friends right? Just say the word and I can clear
off for a while. Just say something in Russian and I can go off for a few
hours, so that you can spend time with him alone in the room.”
“No, don’t do that. I’d rather you were around. I’m not ready
for anything like that at the moment. It’s one of the things I’m a bit scared
of.”
“But, Lena, you don’t think a man comes all this way for
nothing. He obviously loves you very much or he wouldn’t be coming at all.”
“Then why did he stop writing?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he thought the situation was impossible,
maybe he met someone else.”
“And should I just accept that he goes off with someone
else?”
“These things happen. They can’t always help themselves.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“Sometimes we can’t help ourselves either, you know.”
“Anyway, I’ll need time to get to know him again. Do stick
around, Olga, at least for the first few days while I see how things are
going.”
“If you say so.”
Now she realised he might even have reached the station at
Vejen. He would have to get a taxi from there, she thought. She continued to
smoke cigarette after cigarette. Now he could be here. Now he should be here.
She had a moment of anxiety. He wasn’t coming. Something had gone wrong. She’d
never see him again. The anxiety rose as the minutes ticked by. Where was he?
It didn’t matter that it was only twenty minutes passed his estimated time of
arrival. It didn’t matter that anything could have delayed him by those few
minutes. She felt the doubt, unreasonable doubt. There was a knock on the door.
She opened it and he stood on the threshold looking tired with a bag by his
side.
“Hello, Lena,” he said.
Chapter 5
She felt that he was about to embrace her and kiss her, but
then she remembered how shy he was and how it had always been she who had made
the first move. She remembered their kisses and how it had felt to hold him.
The feeling she recognised came to her at that moment, the emotion rising, the sense
of anticipation the movement that a couple make just before they come together.
But she had already waited too long and by that stage anyway they were already
in the room and she saw that he had noticed Olga. The moment had passed and the
easiest, most natural moment to kiss had gone. She felt a sense of regret and
also of relief. There would be time enough later for kisses, but she also
sensed something had already disappeared that might not be so easy to
recapture, for they had rediscovered the inhibition that so frequently
characterises how men and women interact. He was no longer someone she kissed
automatically and as a matter of course, as a matter of expectation for each of
them. He had been that very, very briefly, but not now. That person would have
to be found again, for now he was lost if not irrevocably. But trying to
rediscover how they had been together was not going to be so easy. She sensed
this even in the seconds that had passed. It was like trying to grab a memory
and bring it to the present, as easy as trying to stop time drip through her
fingers.
She noticed the slight look of surprise and disappointment
when he saw Olga, or was it because he had hoped for a kiss as a welcome or at
the very least a touch of her hand?
“This is Olga,” she said. “She’s my roommate.”
“Hi, David,” said Olga.
“Pleased to meet you,” he said. “You’re Russian too?”
“Yes, I’m from Moscow.”
“Come, sit down. Have a cigarette,” said Lena. “I even got
you a couple of bottles of beer.”
She lit his cigarette with a cheap plastic lighter.
“I’ve already had a couple of bottles on the train, but I’m
tired and I find beer usually helps.”
“It usually puts me to sleep,” said Olga.
“We’d better sort out the room arrangements if you're tired,”
said Lena. “You can stay here with us if you like. There’s a settee over there
or you can have your own room.”
“It’s not quite the done thing in England to share a room
with two ladies,” he laughed.
“Oh, that’s alright,” said Olga. “You can get changed in the
bathroom if you're too shy about it. I’m sure I don’t mind.”
Lena saw David blushing.
“Don’t mind her David, she’s only kidding you,” she said.
“That’s alright. But really I’m used to having my own room.
Anyway, who knows, maybe I snore?”
“Didn’t someone ever tell you?” said Olga.
“Olga!” Lena said.
“I see, I’m going to have to practice my Danish banter,” said
David. “Anyway, you two will probably want to speak Russian sometimes and I
remember the games they used to play with me.”
“What games?” asked Olga.
“We’d say things in Russian and make him answer ‘Yes’ or
‘No’. Sometimes we took advantage a little.”
“You also used to jabber away, while I just sat there like
some sort of dummy.”
“We did that too quite a bit. We’ll all three try to speak
Danish then. Though I can’t promise that we won’t lapse into Russian sometimes
even if just to check what a word means.”
“That sounds good to me,” said Olga.
“How are they all?” said asked David.
“Who? The Russians on the course last year? I didn’t keep in
touch with any of the boys.”
“And Sveta?”
“She’s living near here. She got married.”
“It was a quick courtship.”
“It was indeed. Do you remember his friend who we couldn’t
get rid of?”
“I think, I can remember nearly everything about those days,”
said David.
“What about you? Did you hear from anyone?”
“I got a postcard from Maria, the Italian girl, and some
photos from Sigrid, you remember the girl with the Austrian ski instructor, but
I didn’t reply. There didn’t seem to be much point.”
There was an awkward silence and she saw that he regretted
saying something about not writing. He hadn’t even thought of the connection.
She saw his confusion and quickly interrupted whatever he was about to say.
“I passed Askov when I was on my way here.”
“I might have done as well. Only it was dark. Anyway, it’s
good to be back in Denmark. You’ll have to forgive my Danish, I haven’t spoken
a word since last June. You’ll have the advantage on me. When did you come
here?”
“Oh, a while back,” said Lena making a glance towards Olga as
if to say ‘back me up’. “But you read, don’t you? That’s why you write all
those old-fashioned long words with the funny spelling.”
“I know. It’s a terrible habit. It’s just that’s how I
remember them.”
They all continued chatting in a relaxed and friendly manner.
She could tell that Olga liked David as she was joking with him as if she’d
known him for years. She was enjoying herself, too, and it really was good to
see him again. She’d forgotten how his mind always seemed to find an
interesting slant on things and so their conversations were never dull.
At what seemed a suitable point she said: “Well I suppose I’d
better show you where you’ll be staying and see if we can find you something to
eat.”
“There’s no need, I had something on the boat to Jutland.”
“What was that?”
“Oh, a couple of those hot dogs with the strange sauce they
have here.”
“I’m sure we can get you something better than that.”
“Really, there’s no need. I’m too excited to be hungry.”
Lena already had the key to David’s room in case he had
wanted it. She wasn’t sure what she thought about this space where they could
meet alone. Was that why he had wanted his own room? Her mind flashed back to
the times they had spent in her room in Askov. She remembered her excitement
and her desire, but she wanted the moment to be right. She wanted some time,
some romance. She didn’t know quite what she wanted, but she knew that the
moment was not yet. She felt joy at seeing him and in some ways it was exactly
how they had been, yet something kept holding her back. Part of her was
erecting a barrier just as another part was bringing it down. Her feelings were
contradictory and insofar as she was aware of them she knew it, but knowing
something and changing it are not necessarily the same thing. There remained
then a distance between her and this man who had dropped everything to be once
more by her side. The problem was that the distance was not a spatial distance.
It was like the distance between having never kissed someone and then kissing him.
It was as if they had gone back to that point. There needed to be a leap over
what now separated them. There were centimetres between them, but those
centimetres contained the distance between Cambridge and Kaliningrad, the fact
that both of them had given up hope and these many months when neither of them
knew what would happen. She needed time.
“There’s no one else staying down here,” she said. “The
school’s quite quiet. They’ll not charge you much. They’re actually rather glad
to have you.”
“So am I. I’m glad to be here. I’m glad to see you.”
“Me too.”
There was a pause. They were in his room. This could be a
time when he would move towards her, put his arm around her back and bring her
face towards his. She waited for a moment wondering if he would. If she’d made
the least gesture towards him, she knew that within seconds they would be in
each other’s arms. She felt herself drawn to him, but did not move, did not
make any gesture either with her body, her face or her voice. She didn’t want
to stay here long with him and yet she imagined with a sense of longing how
even now they could have been in each other’s arms sitting on his bed over
there.
“You’re no doubt very tired and would like to get settled
in,” she said turning as if to go.
“Wait a second, Lena. I brought you a little something.”
He handed her a little black box. She looked at it. He
couldn’t possibly have brought a ring, could he, she wondered. She dismissed
the possibility although not completely, and so opened the box with a degree of
trepidation with no idea what could possibly be contained in such a box that
surely must contain some sort of jewellery. She opened the box and saw a little
enamel brooch with a crest.
“It’s from my college. I thought it would be something nice
for you to have.”
“Thank you, David. You’re very kind.”
“Have you still got my lighter?”
“I gave it to my friend in Russia. He saw it and said he’d
always wanted one of those American lighters.”
Lena saw David wince at the word for “male friend”, but she knew
he wouldn’t ask about it. Her words had just sort of come out unplanned. Was
there a touch of revenge over what she had learned about Gillian? She saw the
doubt in his eyes. Perhaps, he would be wondering whether she had meant
“boyfriend”, but forgotten the Danish word. She realised that she was being
cruel, especially to a man as shy as David. Now he wouldn’t be sure of what if
anything there was between them. He wouldn’t know for sure if she had someone
waiting back home. But then he would wonder if that had been the case, why
would she have invited him to come here to stay with her? She saw the confusion
that he felt, but it really matched the confusion she was feeling. They really
needed to begin from the beginning and pretend as if nothing had happened last
June. She knew that he wouldn’t make any sort of move now, not while there were
eight days to go. He’d be scared to spoil things and make them awkward if the
move went awry. So she would have time and they would have a chance to get to
know each other again.
“Good night, David,” she said. “It was so very good of you to
come.”
Chapter 6
The three of them naturally formed a little group over the
next few days. All the Danes were very friendly and curious about David. Some
of the girls were rather direct asking Lena very personal questions about David
and why he was here, how they had met and how long they’d been apart. He was
sometimes described to her as her boyfriend, which she neither contradicted,
nor affirmed. They spent most of the day with these people and it was a feature
of the lessons that they involved continual interaction with others. It was
inevitable that everyone would get to know everyone else. But there was also a
barrier between the Danes and the non-Danes. The folk high school system of
education was not really academic, so much as social. Most of the Danes, who
were at the school, had a minimal level of education. They had been unemployed
for a while, or had been in some sort of minor trouble with the law, or had
wanted a break from whatever mundane job they did. They would spend some months
in the countryside and learn about themselves, learn about Denmark, have some
fun and then go back to the lives they had left. It was not accidental that
Denmark was the sort of society that it was, a place that most people in the
world would think of as something of a model of society. The folk high school
system had quite a lot to do with it and whatever it cost the government, which
was not so very much really, was probably money well spent. But it wasn’t a
system of education that had been designed for university students from Russia
or from England, and so inevitably the Danes and the non-Danes found that they
had little in common.
At one of the first lessons David was asked to introduce
himself and describe a little about his life and what he was doing now. He
described his home in rural England, his life in Cambridge and something of his
studies. The Danes laughed a little at the funny way he spoke and the archaic
words he used. They knew little of the world that he described, even in
Denmark. They mostly spoke reasonable English, but were more reluctant to use
it than was the norm in Denmark. Their schooling had obviously not been without
its difficulties, which was one of the reasons why they were in the school now.
When David described his investigation of faith as discussed by Greeks living
more than two thousand years ago, and Danes and Russians living in the 19th
century, he might as well have been discussing higher mathematics to someone
who didn’t pay much attention when learning long division.
“He’s quite something,” Olga said to Lena one day when they
were alone in their room.
“David?”
“It’s what he obviously leaves out that impresses me most.”
“What does he leave out?”
“He doesn’t boast. He doesn’t describe the grades that he got
or the prizes that he won.”
“Why do you think he won any prizes?”
“Well, I don’t know so much about universities in England,
but he talks as if he’s employed by his college, rather than just a student.
What was that word he used?”
“I didn’t know it either. One of his old words, “fellowship”,
I think.”
“But not only that, Lena. He’s nice. I mean, really nice.
He’s the sort of man most of us dream of meeting. Sure, he’s average looking,
but handsome enough. But he’s sensitive and thoughtful. I like him very much.”
“I do, too.”
“Then why don’t you do anything about it?”
“I need a little time. I told you the story already.”
“Well, don’t wait too long or someone else might snap him
up.”
“Meaning?”
“Don’t worry, Lena, I wouldn’t pinch him. We’re friends and
friends don’t do that sort of thing to each other. But seriously, if you decide
that you don’t want him, would you let me know either while he’s here or
later?”
Lena had noticed how Olga had become friendly with David.
Sometimes they would speak English together if Lena was away somewhere. She
would come back and hear a conversation going on that she couldn’t understand.
She noticed that Olga’s English was very good indeed. She’d felt a sense of
exclusion listening to them, although they always switched easily to Danish as
soon as she arrived.
She’d said in Russian to Olga: “You don’t have to speak
English together. You should both be practicing your Danish.”
“Sometimes we get tired of Danish,” Olga had said. “We both
speak English better.”
“Her English is very good,” David had said. “The accent is
almost perfect apart from just one or two sounds and she avoids most of the
mistakes typical of Russians.”
“Like what?” asked Lena.
“Like not knowing how to use the words ‘the’ and ‘a’.”
“We don’t have those in Russian,” said Lena.
She’d asked Olga about her studies in Moscow. It seemed she
had specialised in English for many years.
“It’s nice to have the chance to practice for a change. I’ve
not met many people from England.”
“And Danish?”
“That’s more of a side-line,” said Olga.
“Why did you take it up?”
“Oh, I was offered the chance. My main specialisation was
Polish, but I thought it might be nice to know another language. I picked
Danish because it was offered.”
“More or less by chance. That’s pretty much how I started.”
When they were alone, they frequently talked of David and
what they had done that day.
“Have you noticed how he looks at you when we’re doing the
music and movement class?” asked Olga.
“Not particularly,” said Lena.
“I can see his eyes move up and down. I think, he rather
likes your little shorts.”
“Oh, Olga don’t be crude.”
“It’s not crude. You should be pleased that he finds you
attractive.”
Lena had noticed how David continually glanced at her when he
thought she wasn’t looking at him. She remembered how he had looked when they
had gone swimming at Askov and she felt the same sensation now. She liked that
he was interested, she felt attractive and desirable. She felt her body thrill
with the sense that this man who she liked very much was drawn to her, that his
eyes sought her out and she wondered about the sensations that he was feeling
when he looked at her and the possibilities that he was imagining when his gaze
took in her body. She felt these
possibilities herself and she had not been immune to the odd glance herself. He
was not especially handsome, not like a movie star or even like some of the
Danes that she had seen on the street, but she would not have changed anything
about how he looked. He was fit enough without being athletic as if he did
sports only for the fun of it without bothering to train in anyway. She often
tried to position herself behind him in the room, so that she could look without
there being any chance that he would see. Her look was quite natural when she
was behind him after all. Where else was she supposed to look? She found
herself more and more attracted as each day they performed their movements to
the music. It was relaxing and it was fun; and it was better than ever now that
she could trace her gaze up his body taking in his legs, his shorts, his
T-shirt and imagine and return to the place where they had been where perhaps,
they were heading again.
“I find him attractive, too,” she said to Olga.
“Then why am I always around?”
“I wouldn’t like to leave you on your own.”
“I could spend more time with the Danes.”
“No, it’s better this way, at least for the moment.”
“What are you scared of, Lena? Whenever I try to give you a
chance to be alone with him, you say something in Russian to make me stay.”
“I just want a chance to get to know him a little better. Get
used to being with him again.”
“What do you think he feels, Lena? He’s come all this way,
because you asked him and then finds you’re his sister. Do you think that’s
fair?”
“No, I don’t think of him like that.”
“Are you sure you don’t want another Pavel? It’s quite
convenient, you know.”
“I feel like I’m just starting out with David. Like we never
were together but might be. I like him. I find him attractive, but whether
something happens is not only up to me. Fate has to bring us together.”
“You and your fate, Lena. You and your Scarlet Sails. How
much help do you need? It seems to me that you’ve already had your miracle. It
needed something like one for you to be here now. Am I right? Now you want
another. How many times does that boat have to arrive? How long are you going
to sit waiting on your beach?”
“I want him to do something. Why should it always be me that
starts these things?”
“He did something by coming here, Lena. That would be enough,
more than enough for most girls.”
“But it’s always been me who kissed him, me who showed him
that I wanted him.”
“He’s very English, Lena, and he’s very shy. I’m not sure
he’s had much experience with girls, and what experience he’s had has not been
very pleasant. His confidence is shot to pieces.”
“How do you know that?”
“We talk. Men sometimes find it useful to talk to the friend
of a girl they love. They subtly try to find out things and I have my ways of
finding out things, too.”
“What’s he said?”
“He talked of some girl he knew for 6 or 7 years and how
nothing ever happened. How he’d waited and waited, hoping that something would,
but it never did. He’s hurt way down deep, you know. It’s not something you get
over easily.”
“So he loves her still.”
“No. He loves you, Lena. All his hopes are with you.”
“Did he say that?
“No, he barely said anything, but I can read between the
lines. I wish you could hear him in English. He’s very romantic and speaks
beautifully. You’re a fool if you lose him, you know.”
“I don’t want a fling and I can’t see how anything can come
of it a long term. He can’t visit me. You know Kaliningrad is closed to
foreigners and I don’t see how I can visit him. I’ve next to no money. That’s
why I hesitate as much as anything else.”
“Look, you know why most men chase after women? That’s the
reason why most men are looking for a fling. But a man doesn’t travel all this
way if he only wants a fling. If he only wants that, he can get it much closer
to home easily enough.”
“So you don’t think he wants that of me?”
“No doubt, he does, but he wants so much more. He wants you
fundamentally, the whole you. When a man wants you in that way and you want him
in return, you must grab him very quickly, because it’s rather rare.”
“And what then? How can we be together?”
“I don’t know, but things have a way of working out. I know
that he would do a lot to keep you two together.”
The classes continued and she could see that David was
enjoying himself. They began to relax in each other’s presence and they began
spending more and more time alone together, discussing the classes and the
books they liked and whatever else came into their heads. They referred to
their time together in Askov, but generally; and neither of them in any way
touched on how they had kissed and held each other and of the caresses that
they had shared. Nor did Lena mention about him not writing. He had apologised
in his letter and the subject was concluded. But still it was as if his penance
continued. They parted each night with a simple ‘good night’. He didn’t touch
her and, indeed, she could barely remember any instance when he had touched her
since he had arrived. Perhaps, their hands had touched once or twice in the
normal course of daily events like lighting a cigarette, but no more than that.
When they walked anywhere, she walked by his side, but no one reached out to
hold the other’s hand. She had not returned to his room and he had not asked
her. They were getting on well, but she couldn’t help noticing in his face a
look of disappointment and confusion. She felt sometimes that he was on the
verge of saying something. It was if he was building up his courage, but then
he would back down. She wondered if he was scared that he might spoil things,
spoil the good time that they were having.
The school would be closing for a few days over Easter. David
was due to leave on the Friday.
“What are you and Olga going to do?” he asked her.
“There is a Danish family we are going to stay with from
Friday night until Tuesday. Then we’ll come back here.”
“Thursday will be our last night. I’ll have to get up very
early on Friday morning. It must be your first Easter abroad. It’s quite a big
deal in Russia, isn’t it?”
“It used to be.”
“And now? For some of us it’s very important. I’ve been
reading about Orthodoxy. I want to understand Dostoevsky better. I like many of
the ideas very much.”
“You probably know more about it than me,” said Lena.
“I don’t know. I’m beginning to find theology rather
pointless. It’s all just a lot of speculation about things we cannot really
describe. I like the mystery at the heart of Orthodoxy.”
“Do you know, I’ve never been in a real church that wasn’t a
museum? We have some icons, but we don’t put one of them in the corner where it
should go.”
“Yet, perhaps, you believe more than I do.”
“Why do you think so?”
“I just sense it sometimes when we are together. I wish I
believed more than I do. I must give up thinking about these things and live
more as I should. I think faith comes more naturally to you.”
“How do you know? We have hardly talked of faith.”
“I remember your cross and I could feel how it protects you,
and I’ll always remember when you showed it to me. I thought it was an
extraordinarily beautiful cross.”
“But it’s quite ordinary,” said Lena.
“I think, every cross depicts a miracle,” said David.
Chapter 7
Lena gradually began more often to seek ways to be alone with
David, though always in a public space. The little group of three foreigners
continued as before. They ate all their meals together and talked of the sorts
of things young international students talked about. This in itself was enough
to set them apart from the others, who looked on their conversation insofar as
they even were aware of it as dull. Olga seemed keen to get away and give Lena
and David some space and would often suggest in a brief aside in Russian that
she would go and leave them. Lena still sometimes told her to stay, but less
and less frequently and more often asked Olga to go, so that she could talk
with David alone. They resumed their habit of walking around with nowhere
particularly in to go, just wandering, strolling with no particular purpose,
other than to be together and to talk of whatever came into their heads.
David had come to a stop and was looking at a large rock with
something written on it. She looked, too and scanned some of the words. It
looked like a memorial. It had something to do with the First World War.
“We have those everywhere in Kaliningrad.”
“We have them, too, usually one in each small village and
town. I’m rather fond of the one in Cambridge. It’s near the station and the
statue of the soldier is somehow unusual.”
“There are a lot of names, but I thought Denmark was neutral
in the First World War?”
“You studied it then?”
“A bit, though mainly as how it all lead to the Revolution.”
“Well, you’re correct. Denmark was neutral.”
“Then why would they fight?”
“We wouldn’t have been in Denmark then.”
“Then where?”
“In Germany.”
“But the names are all Danish names?”
“He’s quite right, you know. This part of Denmark was in
Germany for over fifty years.”
A new voice was added to the conversation. They each turned
and it took a moment to recognise who was talking.
“Jens!” said Lena.
“Hello! Fancy meeting you here!” said David.
“It’s not quite chance,” said Jens, their teacher from the
previous summer.
“Then what?” asked Lena.
“I know Niels, your director, quite well and we got to
chatting. He told me about two Russian girls and a young Englishman who was at
his school. I was curious.”
“Well, it’s good to see you anyway,” said David.
“Are you married then? I thought you might be.”
“No,” said Lena. She realised there and then that she had
said the word with too much vehemence as if the very idea was absurd. She had
just had time to notice how David had smiled, how his eyes had flashed a note
of hope at the mistake Jens had made. As if the mere fact that Jens had thought
it, made it more likely that it would be so. She saw his expression change as
if she had turned down his proposal.
“I’m just visiting,” said David. “I go back in a few days.”
“I got the chance to come back to Denmark,” said Lena. “It’s
great to have a chance to try to become more fluent. I thought it would be nice
to see David again.”
“And I thought it was a good idea, too. So here we are.”
“You know, you both speak much better than you did last
year,” said Jens. “You still have that rather nineteenth century style, David,
and you’re sounding more and more like a Dane, Lena, though I’d try to not pick
up a rough Copenhagen accent if you can help it.”
“I think, I’m more likely to pick up a Russian accent,” said
David. “I speak most of my Danish with Russians.” They all laughed.
“Look,” said Jens. “I’ve talked to Niels and he’s said it’s
alright. Do you fancy taking a trip back to Askov?”
“Why not?” said Lena. “There’s nothing much on this
afternoon.”
“I’d like to see the school again and the grounds and where
we used to go walking,” said David.
“It’s not so much for that, though we may have time to stop
by the school.”
“Then what?” said Lena.
“I thought you might like to see Svetlana.”
“I hadn’t particularly been planning to, we got on well
enough but weren’t really close friends,” said Lena.
“You spent enough time with her,” said David.
“I know and I spent enough time with the Russian boys, but I
didn’t keep in touch with them. Nor did you with the people you met in Askov.”
She hadn’t intended to have a go at him, but somehow she
couldn’t help alluding to the fact it was he that had stopped writing. She
never reproached him openly about it, but somehow the pain she had felt all
those months bubbled to the surface and had to find its release in these sorts
of hints directed at the person she was beginning to fall in love with all over
again. She was barely aware of the growing feeling. Falling in love can be more
or less instantaneous. Certainly, one look can be enough to establish an
attraction, though, of course, attraction, she knew, was not the same thing as
love. She was only dimly conscious of how the feeling that she had felt so
strongly was returning. The hurt was still with her, she was still in some part
of her consciousness angry with him, she had not quite been able to fully
forgive him, and so she had not been able to fully trust him. If she had been
able to go over these things in her mind rationally, she would have realised
how unfair she was being. She knew in the conscious part of her mind that he
had done nothing particularly wrong and by any standards had done more than
enough to make amends. But still his atonement would continue until that moment
when her love could grow again to the point where it had been. And now she
waited. She did not plan. She did not organise and she did not take into
account the few days that remained. She knew that if he left and nothing more
happened, then that would be it. She could not expect a third reunion. But she
was unconscious of her love growing or at least only dimly conscious of it, and
so felt completely unable to do anything to make the scarlet sails reappear.
She wondered how many miracles she would need for that to happen, ordinary
everyday miracles, like how two people who hardly know each other suddenly find
themselves kissing and then becoming the most important people in the world for
each other. It was no less a miracle because it happened every day. Babies were
born every day, too, and they were always described as miracles. Well, each baby
began with a kiss.
“I know that Svetlana would like to see you,” said Jens.
“Have you seen her?” said Lena.
“She lives near by the school. I see her from time to time.”
“I heard she married. What was his name again?”
“Morton,” said Jens.
“Is she happy?” asked David.
“I don’t think, she’s particularly happy,” said Jens. “She’s
pregnant, far from home with little prospect of even visiting or seeing her
family. There’s no one she can speak her own language to.”
“Couldn’t Morton learn?” said David.
“I hear, Russian is rather hard. What do you think, Lena?”
“It’s hard to judge if you’ve spoken it all your life. But
it’s very different from Danish.”
“Anyway, I don’t think, Morton is much of a student. He’s a
car mechanic or something like that,” said Jens.
“But still he must have loved her if he married her?” said
David.
“He wanted her anyway,” said Jens. “Unfortunately, Danish men
can sometimes be a little too inclined to give into impulses.”
“Has he left her?” asked Lena.
“No, but I hear, he doesn’t spend every night at home,” said
Jens. “What do you think, shall we go and see her?”
They drove through the countryside. It only took twenty
minutes or so.
“Look, when we get there why don’t the two of you have a chat
in Russian?” said Jens. “David and I can talk English, then no one will be
distracted.”
“It sounds like a good idea,” said David.
Svetlana opened the door. Lena was rather shocked to see the
change that had taken place in the months since she had last seen her. She
embraced her.
“It’s good to see you, Sveta,” she said in Russian.
“And you. I thought I would never hear my own language
again,” said Svetlana. “Come in everyone. Hello, David! Hello, Jens!” she said
in fluent Danish. “I have the coffee and the cakes ready. Morton’s at work.”
They all sat down at her kitchen table and two conversations
developed, one in English and one in Russian.
“How many months do you have to go?” asked Lena.
“Just over three.”
“So, it will be just about a year after you first met him.”
“It’s strange to think that a year ago I was in Moscow.”
“Do you miss it?”
“I miss things that I would hardly have considered of any
consequence then. Little things.”
“Your parents? Friends?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Did they get into any trouble?”
“Not much. Of course, they were very angry with me. They
thought I’d been selfish. I had, I suppose.”
“What happened to them?”
“Let’s not go into that too much. You know how things are.
But nothing too bad happened to them. I get letters from them now and again,
even the odd phone call.”
“What’s it like living here?”
“They have everything. You know that. You just go into the
shops and buy what you want. Everything works, everything’s clean. But I feel
like a stranger here. They meet up for dinner, a whole bunch of them and they
have all sorts of songs that everyone knows, funny traditions that everyone
knows. They have a togetherness, these Danes. It’s quite hard to fit in even if
you do speak the language.”
“You speak incredibly well now, Sveta.”
“I sometimes think, I’m going to forget Russian.”
“But he’s good to you?”
“Yes, he’s good enough. It’s just they have a different way
of living. Not everyone, of course. I suppose, there must be some who live
normal lives like we’re used to in Russia, but the ones I know have a different
way of living.”
“Like what?”
“One of my girlfriends has a man who she only sleeps with.
They never go out and they don’t think of themselves as being in love at all,
it’s just convenient for them to sleep together from time to time. She’s quite
relaxed about it. She thinks, it’s totally normal. They even have a word for
it. I don’t think there’s a Russian equivalent.”
“And Morton, does he have such a friend?”
“Probably. He’s quite open about it all. He meets someone,
they sleep together. It’s not something I’m supposed to mind. He would be
shocked if I did mind, would consider it all terribly old- fashioned. He’s
quite happy if I do the same, even expects it and was surprised when I rejected
the attentions of his friends.”
“Are you sorry then?”
“I don’t know. I felt a mad impulse last June and went with
it. I’m here. Who knows what I would be doing in Moscow, who knows whether it
would be better or worse. You can’t regret your choices, you just end up
regretting yourself and I’m going to have a child who I will love and who I
will teach Russian, so that I don’t forget my own language and so that I have
someone to talk to.”
“I hope, you’ll find happiness together.”
“Oh, I’m happy enough. Morton isn’t such a bad sort. It’s
just a different way of living. Something you have to get used to. What of you,
Lena? I see, you’re still with him.”
Lena proceeded to describe in outline what had happened since
last June. She naturally didn’t mention anything about Orlov, but described how
it had been difficult for her to write, how she had been unable to find the
words to describe her feelings, how her Danish just hadn’t been good enough.
She told Sveta about Pavel and how she had known him for years, but how nothing
had ever happened, but how she knew if she stayed in Kaliningrad, she would
probably end up with him. She described how the letters had stopped, and how
hurt she had been and how she had tried to get David out of her heart, but that
when unexpectedly she had been given another chance to come to Denmark, she
thought why not send him a postcard just in case.
“I always thought he was quite a guy,” said Sveta. “I liked
him, too, last summer.” They were careful not to actually use his name for they
didn’t want him to understand that they were talking about him.
“I know, Sveta. I’m very pleased that he’s here. It’s just
I’ve needed some time. I’m scared.”
“Of what?
“I’m scared most of all of getting hurt, or of finding out
that it’s all impossible.”
“You surely know how to make it possible. You could do what I
did?”
“But he doesn’t live here. He has to continue his studies and
I don’t see how I could get to where he is. There’s maybe a chance.”
“What chance?”
“There’s no need to go into it, but there may be some way for
us to be together, but I can’t decide these things; I have no money and no
means of travelling to him.”
“Of course, we all need help to get abroad and to travel.”
“You understand, of course.”
“I think, we both understand, don’t you Lena?”
“It’s rather unusual for a girl from Kaliningrad to travel to
Denmark twice in one year.”
“Rather miraculous, like a boat appearing on the horizon with
scarlet sails.”
“You remember my story?”
“How could I forget? So what are you going to do? Do you love
him, Lena?”
“Perhaps.”
“I think, a little more than perhaps. You’re scared and
you’ve been hurt and you don’t know what will happen if you fall in love again.
But, Lena, think. How many men would travel from Britain to Denmark because of
a postcard and then expect nothing? Why do you say nothing?”
“Well, nothing has happened, hasn’t it? Not even a kiss. No,
we’re getting to know each other again.”
“And he would go away again without even getting a kiss and
wouldn’t dream of being anything other than a gentleman. Am I right?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“He’s terribly shy, you know. I remember. Do you think he’ll
have the nerve to kiss you now after waiting these days?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think, you should find a way to remind him that you’re a
woman. I think, you should help him a little. I think, this man really is the
captain of your ship and if you let him go, you’ll never find another.”
“I think, I just have to keep sitting on my beach waiting for
it to happen.”
“Have you forgotten how we got that little party together?
How you organised everything?”
“No, Sveta, I’ve not forgotten. I’ve not forgotten any of
your advice.”
“I’d give quite a lot to have someone like him, you know,
Lena. You’ve a few days left, don’t lose him.”
Chapter 8
Lena found David Englishness amusing at times. There was a
massage class and she noticed the look of horror gradually dawning on his face
when it became clear that he would have to practice massage on one of the
Danish boys. The class was just a matter of learning some relaxation techniques
and focused on learning some points of the body that could be pressed to ease
tension. She noticed how some of the Danish girls paired off with the
particular boy they were with at that moment and thought briefly of pairing off
with David. She thought of touching his shoulders and running her fingers down
his back in search of points of tension. But for the most part she noticed the
pairings were single sex and anyway, by the time she had thought over the
matter Olga had already gone up to her. There had been no need to ask if they
would be partners. It had simply been assumed. She saw how David looked
embarrassed and how he really didn’t want to do this.
“Poor David,” she said to Olga in Russian. “He really doesn’t
like the idea.”
“They’re quite strange, aren’t they, the English? Have you
met any others?”
“No. I don’t think so. There was only David at the school at
Askov.”
“I rather like his shyness. There’s something rather
attractive about it, old-fashioned, like something from one of their novels.”
“How’s it going with you two?”
“Well enough. He’s begun to relax more, and so have I. We’re
talking more or less like we used to.”
“At least I’m not always around now. That gives you a
chance.”
She saw him approaching.
“I’m going to duck out of this class, Lena. It’s not quite my
thing. I’m just going to go and read my book in my room.”
“Are you sure?” asked Lena.
“The idea just doesn’t appeal.”
When he had gone, they got down to massaging each other and
it seemed natural that the conversation should lapse into Russian.
“Why didn’t you offer to massage him?” aked Olga.
“I thought about it, but I wasn’t given the chance.”
“You could have said…”
“I know, I thought of it and then didn’t think it was such a
good idea.”
“There’s not long to go now, two more days of classes. Has he
said anything at all?”
“We were smoking yesterday in the courtyard as we often do.
We got to talking a little about Cambridge. He said he wasn’t really a student.
He was employed by his college. I probed a little bit. He didn’t want to say,
but it seems he’s been winning all sorts of academic prizes for years and
they’ve already more or less offered him a permanent job.”
“He was telling you he wasn’t poor.”
“Why do you think he did that?”
“I think, it’s very English of him, very old-fashioned. He’s
saying he has the means to keep you.”
“No, it was just an ordinary conversation.”
“Have you found conversations with David to be ordinary? I
don’t. He’s quite careful with his words and says what he means clearly. I
think he was asking you something, a little test, perhaps, if you could
understand the question, you would be able to give an answer.”
“So you think he was asking me… No, he hasn’t even asked me
to hold his hand.”
“He’s quite subtle, isn’t he, Lena?”
“But he’s funny, too. When we had that blindfold thing last
night, I think, he was even a little bit offended.”
“I thought it was crude, too.”
“I was horrified at some of the things they made you touch. I
had no idea what some of them were and didn’t want to think what others were.”
“Do you remember the bit where you felt, you know, something
that felt like…”
“I wonder about these Danes sometimes,” said Olga.
“Me, too. They are wonderful and friendly and everything’s
clean and it works, but for me there’s something, what was it in Shakespeare?
‘Something rotten in the heart of Denmark’.”
“But it was funny seeing David’s face after running the
gauntlet of all the things he had to feel while blindfolded.”
“It was funny, but he was good-humoured about it even if he was
embarrassed.”
“I think, they did some of it especially just for him. Have
you heard how they talk about Lord David?”
“What’s the class this evening? Can you remember?”
“Transcendental
meditation, I think.”
“More mumbo jumbo. And tomorrow there’s a trip somewhere. To
an island I think, they said”.
Chapter 9
It was a grey and rather cold as they made their journey
towards the North Sea. There was a wind from the West and when she got out of
the bus, she had the sensation of salt in the air. It was hard to see anything
because the whole countryside seemed so flat. There were just the expanses of
grey sky and slate-blue sea. The island called Mandø was a short distance off
the coast connected by a sort of causeway. There was a tractor with a sort of
wagon and she understood that this would take them the short distance across to
the island. The island was barely visible, though not at all far away. It was
just a thin edge of green that distinguished it from the beach and from the
sea.
As they got into the wagon, there was a certain excitement
visible in the faces all around. She had never travelled in precisely this way
over a beach, or would it be better to say mudflats. She watched as the
seabirds flew overhead with their shrieks. They at least were the same
everywhere.
She sat next to David and they talked as the tractor pulled
the wagon towards the island.
“You know, I’ve been trying to figure out what’s different
about you,” he said.
“Well, what conclusion did you come to?”
“It’s you hair.”
“It’s taken you this long to figure that out?”
“I’m not always very observant.”
“Well, what’s different about it?”
“It’s a little shorter and it’s brown. Last time it was more
blonde.”
“I had streaks in it then.”
“I like it better this way,” he said. “It suits you better. I
notice it every time we’re in the gym and I think how pretty you hair is.”
She couldn’t help feeling pleased with his complement. She’d
wondered what he thought of her from time to time. She’d begun have doubts
again as to whether he still found her attractive. He’d done nothing to show
his feelings and treated her much the same as he treated Olga. She worried a
little about Olga. It was clear that she thought highly of David and they
seemed to get on very well. Lena wondered what David thought of her friend.
What would it take to transfer his allegiance? If Olga made a move, David could
quite fairly look at Lena and say without having to utter a single word that
she had had her chance. No, he wouldn’t do that. He’d come to see her and
wouldn’t be here at all if it hadn’t been for her. But why was Olga here? Lena
began to regret that she hadn’t just taken up with David where they had left
off. He had only ever needed a little help. She wished she had kissed him when
he first came in the door or when he gave her the brooch that she still kept in
a drawer in her room. But she wasn’t terribly good at these things either. She
knew that. Just as David was not much good with women, so she was not much good
with men. Neither of them had had much experience and so it was always awkward.
She doubted what David felt and she doubted what she felt herself. But she
doubted a little less thanks to his complement.
There wasn’t, to be honest, much on the island, just grassy
heathland, a few sheep and a tiny little hamlet with a church. They went into
the church and looked around; it was rather old with the usual things that can
be found in such churches, the signs of people who had been there for
centuries, tombs and plaques on the walls. It was grey and cold and rather
sombre. But somehow she felt a certain presence there. She noticed that David
seemed to be praying. He had his head slightly bent and was mouthing some
words. He wasn’t at all obvious about it. It was just something that he did for
himself. She found herself joining in. Not knowing what he was saying, but
knowing that she was saying the same thing though in her own language. It
didn’t matter that this church was not Orthodox. The cross she focused on was
the same cross. She felt something, some sort of communication. Was it God
communicating silently? She never knew, but she felt this connection sometimes.
She was very glad indeed that she was sharing this moment with David. She began
to feel that he was talking to her, too even as he kept silent. She began to
feel the connection between them building once more.
They went out onto the beach and pottered about looking in
the pools, hunting for shells and interesting rocks. If she picked her way
carefully, it was possible to get about without getting her feet wet. They
wandered over nearly the whole of the island, just the two of them.
“It’s rather beautiful in a strange way, don’t you think?” he
asked.
“Yes, though it’s hard to say why.”
“It’s just flat and barren, but it has something. I felt it
in the church.”
“Did you?”
“I do sometimes, especially in churches.”
“It didn’t matter to you that it was a Danish church, did
it?”
“Why should it? I felt the same thing in a church in Vezelay
in the middle of France. On the other hand, I didn’t feel a thing in Notre Dame
in Paris.”
“And in other places?”
“Sometimes. A feeling comes to me of connection of touching
and of being touched.”
She saw the others were beginning to make their way back.
“We’d better go or we’ll be late.”
It seemed that some of them were going to go back on the
tractor, but that others had already set off on foot. It wasn’t far back to the
mainland, and the water was rarely deep unless there was a very high tide.”
“What to do you want to do, Lena?” he asked. “Shall we walk
back?”
“Aren’t we a bit late?”
“Can we still walk back?” David asked the tractor driver.
“You can, but you might get your feet wet.”
“Let’s go,” said Lena. “It’ll be fun.”
She could see a little group quite far ahead. They were too far
away for her to make out clearly who they were, but she’d noticed that Olga was
not in the tractor wagon, so she assumed that her friend was either in that
group or further still ahead.
She could make out some buildings in the distance on the
mainland and it didn’t seem far. The path was easy enough and she liked
walking. It was good to be walking beside David again, spending time with him
alone. They didn’t always talk, but he had a way of noticing things every now
and again pointing out a bird or a shell.
“It’s all rather bleak, don’t you think?” he asked.
“I like it. There aren’t too many signs of people and when
you look around there’s only nature, sea and beach and land.”
“I wonder how deep it gets when the tide comes in.”
“Is the tide coming in?”
“I think so.”
“Should we hurry?”
“No, I don’t think, there’s anything to worry about. The
driver was happy enough for us to walk.”
“He seemed to find it a bit funny though.”
“They have an odd sense of humour.”
“The Danes?
“Yes.”
“And the English don’t. It seems to me you have your
eccentricities.”
“No doubt. And what of the Russians?”
“Like what?”
“Never smiling.”
She flashed a smile at him. It somehow took over her face
without her having any control over it, so that there was the warmth that she
had not shown him, not since last year.
“We can smile,” she said.
It began to become more and more necessary to pick their way
carefully. The dry path was no longer straight but went like a river meandering
its way over the sand. There was absolutely no danger, but they kidded each
other about it a little, just to make the walk seem that bit more exciting.
Soon they could see the beach ahead and were within a couple of hundred metres
of the Jutland coast. But they were stopped.
“I don’t see a way across this little bit,” said David.
Lena looked to her left and to her right. There was no
obvious way through. The path had sunk under the incoming sea.
“How deep do you think it is?”
“Not deep, just a foot or a foot and a half.”
“Can you translate that into centimetres?”
“Maybe thirty or forty centimetres”.
“Oh!”
“There’s no sense us both getting wet if we can help it. I’ll
carry you.”
“Do you think you can manage?”
“I think, you’re light enough. Shall we try?”
“How? Like a fireman?”
“I think, I can do better than that. After all, you’re not a
sack of potatoes.”
She laughed.
“Put your arm around my neck.”
She did and she felt him lift her up and hold her in front of
him. She felt his hand on her back and at the top of her legs. She shivered
slightly at his touch and the whole sensation of being held made her feel warm
and safe. She felt herself softening and nestling into his arms. She heard him
splashing through the water and looking down she noticed that it was above his
calves. His trousers were soaked but he didn’t seem to care. As he moved she
felt his fingers adjust in order to hold her securely. It was the first time
that they had really touched since last June. Now once more she was in his arms
and she wanted the sensations to continue. She realised then how she had missed
the sense of his fingers through thin material. Soon they would be reaching the
dryness of the path. For a last moment more she sensed the increasing closeness
of his presence and then felt herself being lowered carefully and slowly to the
ground.
“That wasn’t too bad, was it?”
“Thank you, David, but look at you, you’re soaked.”
“It was my pleasure, my lady.”
He made one of those old-fashioned formal bows like they used
to do four hundred years ago. She held out her hand, willing to play the game,
too. He kissed it theatrically.
Nothing further was said, but she seemed to feel that
something had changed. There was a closeness to them now. It was as if they
were a couple again. They were not quite there yet, but they were almost.
When they got back to the school, she told him to get changed
and then come up to her room. Olga was laughing at how David had got wet.
Everyone had looked on as he had carried Lena over the water and then bowed and
kissed her hand.
“They were all talking about Lord David,” she said. “They
were making fun, but I could see that quite a few of the girls were impressed.”
David had knocked and come.
“It seems, I’m getting some sniggers now. Any idea why?” he
asked.
“You know how they call you Lord David?” said Olga.
“I’ve heard it a couple of times.”
“Well, it seems they found it amusing the way you carried
me,” said Lena.
“It was all in good fun though, David. There’s no need to be
embarrassed,” said Olga.
“I left my cigarettes in my room,” he said. “Can I have one
of yours?”
“There you go,” said Lena and got up.
David started smoking.
“It’s bit rough, but not bad.”
“I’m just going to change my trousers. Despite your efforts I
got a little wet.”
David hurriedly got up as if stung.
“Don’t be silly, David, just sit there and finish your
cigarette.”
“Well, I don’t know.”
“We’re in Denmark now,” said Olga.
Lena could see David’s embarrassment as she undid the button
of her jeans and unzipped them, but he didn’t look away. She removed one leg
and then the other and stood up facing him. She felt how his eyes moved down
her body and felt excited at how he was looking at her jet blank cotton
underwear. She rummaged through some clothes pretending that she was completely
unaware of his presence, neither hurrying, nor obviously taking her time. She
found another pair of trousers and put them on. It had taken less than a
minute. He looked away intent on his cigarette, but she knew that her little
performance had stirred him. She could tell that he’d liked what he had seen,
which was why she had shown him. She felt stirred herself, and for the first
time in many months she felt like a woman. She sensed David’s desire and felt
it herself. She saw that he was still blushing and wondered if she was
blushing, too. She felt as if her blush went all through her body, but she
hoped that nothing was visible.
“Shall we go to dinner?” she asked as nonchalantly as she
could possibly manage.
Chapter 10
Lena could see that David was still nervous as they sat
together in what looked like the most pleasant small bar in Rødding. He’d been
nervous when he’d asked her if she’d go with him for a drink earlier that day,
though she saw how he’d tried to hide it. She’d known for some time that he had
been on the brink of saying something and had waited for him to say it. She was
waiting still, almost longing for him to say what he had to say, what she so
wanted to hear. And now they were sitting together. This was pretty much his
last chance. If he didn’t say something now, he never would. She wasn’t sure if
they would just spend the next hour or so talking of various things of no
particular consequence. She wasn’t sure if this moment would pass also. As the
minutes passed she wondered if she should say something herself or if there was
anything she could say or do that might help him. But she felt equally
tongue-tied and also unsure about what he felt for her. Why had he come all
this way and done nothing? Why had he not simply assumed that they would carry
on as they had been the year before? If he had acted more as a man should, if
he had held her in his arms at the first opportunity and kissed her, she would
have kissed him back. There had been no need to ask. As she waited for him to
say what he had to say, the familiar mixture of doubts and hopes filled her
mind. The guilt returned about how she was being false to him, how he would
reject her right now or at any time in the future if he knew the process by
which they had come to sit in this bar. She felt the familiar feeling in her
stomach that told her that her love was real and was growing with every second
as she waited for him to speak, but she had no idea how her story would end and
knew that there was any number of ways that she could be hurt forever. He was
going away on Friday and she had no way of knowing if she would ever see him
again. It would depend on a decision that was not hers, no matter what happened
in the next minutes, no matter what David said. Someone she had never met and
never would meet could decide how her story would end. Some bureaucrat could
decide that her romance had gone far enough. She was scared that if she began
kissing David again, she would be unable to leave him and so was scared to
start. But most of all she was scared that he would say nothing.
“I was thinking of your story,” said David.
“My story?”
“The one you asked me to find last summer.”
“Yes. But it’s not particularly my story. Most Russian girls
love it.”
“That’s just it. I’ve talked to a few people at home and no
one has ever heard of it.”
“I don’t think, people in the West know us very well at all.”
“You’re quite right, of course. There was an absurd song
recently by someone who sang about the Russians loving their children, too. I
thought it particularly obtuse as it implied there was some doubt about the
matter and so contradicted the point that I think, the man was trying to make.
Well, what I liked about your story was how the English captain having heard
Asol’s prophecy set out to make it true. It took meticulous planning for him to
buy all the red silk and to employ all the sail makers to make it and the
musicians to serenade her. None of it happened by accident. It wasn’t fate that
brought them together: it was a choice and then doing everything that’s
necessary to make it happen.”
“Where I come from we don’t plan. We can’t bear to in case
we’re disappointed. Someone sets out to be a doctor and works hard, but
sometimes it just doesn’t happen. Maybe there are enough doctors that year.”
“But if we don’t plan, nothing will happen. I’m going off
tomorrow.”
“I know.”
“It’s been a strange few days. It all came suddenly,
unexpectedly like a sort of miracle. I’d given up hope. I never expected for us
to be able to sit together like this.”
“If fate is kind, we will sit together like this again. If it
is not, we won’t.”
“So you’ll just sit waiting on the beach for the ship with
scarlet sails to arrive?”
“What other choice do I have?”
“You don’t have to go back.”
“Like Svetlana?”
“Yes, but not like Svetlana. She didn’t seem to be so very
happy.”
“She’s not, but she’s making the best of it. She’s accepting
her fate.”
“That word again. We hardly use it in English.”
“But I think, your history is rather different from ours.”
“I can come back here. I can try to find a way for you to
visit me in Cambridge. There are things we can do, but we have to plan.”
“David, I think, I understand what you are saying and I’d
like to say a single word with all my heart. The word is ‘thank you’, she
whispered it and felt tears appear in her eyes.
“Then let’s begin to figure out what we will do.”
“No, David we will not plan. I will try to visit you and if
fate is very, very kind, I will succeed. In the meantime we will have to make
do with writing letters. We will have to hope and we will have to wait.”
“And what can I do?”
“There’s nothing that you can do.”
“Can’t you understand that it’s only if we plan, if we choose
a course of action, that we have any chance at all? Isn’t that what your story
says?”
“Perhaps, but then it was only a fairy story, not something
that we’re supposed to believe. Anyway, it’s boring.”
It seemed as if he had misheard the word.
“Boring?”
“Yes.”
“What is boring?”
“This talk of planning and choice.”
She saw that he looked stunned and disappointed. But she
couldn’t explain further. She couldn’t explain how it didn’t depend on her.
On the way back to the school he took her arm and they walked
that way more or less in silence. Her thoughts turned over thinking over the
conversation. She knew what she would have to do next and would start as soon
as possible, but she had no idea of when if ever she would be able to see David
again. He thought he could just act, as if the whole thing depended just on him
or on them. But she knew that much more was involved. She wasn’t going to do
anything that might harm those she loved at home. It might mean that her sister
didn’t go to university, that her father found himself without a job. She had
no choice but to continue on the path that she had set out on even if it meant
that she lost David. It wasn’t finally up to her.
She freed her arm as they approached the school and looked
around to see if Olga was there. She was a little concerned about what David
might expect after his rather oblique offer. Her mind went back to how they had
kissed for hours and finally how they had lain in each other’s arms. She
remembered once more, wondering how often she had remembered his caresses and
wanted them again, but not now. However much she wanted to feel his touch, she
felt unable to lose herself in his embrace as once she had, not now when she
was trying to figure out what to do next, not now when she could not be sure if
they would be together again after today. She wanted his touch when she knew
that they could be together properly and forever. Otherwise it was as if she
was being teased and teasing in return. She felt the excitement of possibility.
She knew that she wanted it to be this man who would love her, but she wanted
that moment to be special and signify that they would be together always. She
wasn’t altogether sure if she could stop holding him, stop loving him if once
they should start now. But she couldn’t just leave it at that. She understood
fully what he had said. She recognised the courage of a shy man and she was
very grateful and full of warmth towards this man walking beside her. She
couldn’t just say goodbye.
“Are you coming to bed?” she asked Olga.
“I’ll be along in a bit,” said Olga.
“Please,” she said in Russian. “You’ll not have a chance to
say goodbye to him in the morning,” she continued in Danish.
“I can say goodbye now.”
“Come on!” Lena said again in Russian.
“Alright, I’m coming,” said Olga in Danish.
They all walked towards Olga and Lena’s room.
“Well, goodbye,” said David.
“Bye, David, it was nice.”
Olga went to open their door. Lena knew that David would say
something. It was almost as if she could see his brain working. She could read
his signs so well now and was able to see when he was nerving himself to say
something. She found it a little strange that he could not read her, that he
could not see how much she loved him. But then she realised, perhaps, she had
been more used to hiding what she thought, it had been a necessary habit to
learn growing up. The moment grew. She saw that Olga was eager to go, but a
quick tiny sound came from her voice.
“Wait,” she said in Russian.
“Would you come down to my room?” David asked her.
“I’ll just be a few minutes,” she said to Olga in Danish.
“I didn’t want to say goodbye in the corridor,” he said when
they were inside his room.
“Nor did I.”
She looked at him and tried to make her eyes say ‘yes’. There
was another awkward moment when she wondered if nothing would happen, but he
made a slight movement and she returned it. His arm reached behind and his
mouth approached hers. He paused as if remembering. He took off her glasses and
put them on the dressing table.
“I’ve wanted to do that all week,” he said.
“And I’ve wanted to do this.”
She reached for his glasses and set them down beside hers.
They sat down on his bed and kissed, and all the feelings from last year rushed
back to her as if they had never gone. There was no more pain to be remembered,
just as she had been told that a woman doesn’t remember the pain of childbirth.
For a little while there was nothing else in the world but their kissing. But
it seemed to Lena that he could sense her apprehensions, and his kisses always
had a degree of restraint. She didn’t feel that he was hurrying her or pressing
her, but rather that he was responding to her, that he would always only ever
do what she herself wanted. In those few minutes she felt herself trusting and
believing in him. She knew. She knew that this was the man she wanted. She
hoped he would be the only man she would ever want. She kissed him with a
little more urgency asking for more. He gave just a little of what she wanted
and then paused.
“You’d better not keep Olga waiting. She might worry, you
know,” he said.
“Just a little more,” said Lena. “It’s the nicest way to say
goodbye. Shall I get up to see you off?”
“At four? I don’t think we can say goodbye any better than
this. Do you?”
“No. I’ll write as soon as I can.”
“Me, too. At least it doesn’t take long for letters to cross
the North Sea.”
“Goodbye.”
“Don’t you mean ‘do svidania’?”
He pronounced the Russian form of “au revoir” as if it was
only one word and with a very English accent.
She kissed him one last time and said the Russian phrase, and
with a final look opened his door and was gone.
Olga was sitting waiting.
“Well, what was all that business about having me tag along?”
“Oh, I’m sorry about that. I was being silly.”
“What is it, Lena? You look like … I don’t really know how to
put it. What happened to you two? Tell me. Do tell me. Just by looking at you I
know something has happened.”
Lena struggled for a few seconds to compose herself and then
struggled some more to get the words out.
“He asked me to marry him,” she said.
Part 4
Chapter 1
Lena began her letter to David with the relief that only he
would read it. She realised that she was now able to write more or less
fluently and without the need to translate from Russian. Her speech had become
pretty much automatic, and this lack of hesitancy and the need to work things
out had translated into what she wrote. It still wasn’t easy to express
everything she wanted to say in a foreign language, perhaps, even in any
language, but she knew him better now. There was more shared experience to
refer to, and her feelings were deeper, simply because they had endured. The
fact that she had lost him meant that she loved him all the more than if their
letters had simply continued without interruption. She thought that whatever
happened this feeling would in some way be with her always.
She began by thanking him for coming and telling him that it
had been a wonderfully romantic gesture. She explained how she was so thankful
that they had had the chance to get to know each other better. She told him how
she felt silly now that they had left everything to the last minute, but that
she also loved how he had not hurried her in any way. She wrote of how she was
looking into how she might get a visa and come to England, and would let him
know when she knew more. She hoped and looked forward to seeing him soon and
was so very happy that she had found her Captain Grey. She thought this would
leave him with no doubt about his status in her heart. It baffled her now why
she had ever mentioned a male friend in Russia. She signed off her letter in
that special Danish way that signified the difference between a friend and a
boyfriend and felt sure that David would grasp the distinction. She knew that
it was her best letter yet. There was still a degree of restraint, not least
because there was much that she did not know herself about how they might meet
and much that she could not tell him. Even so, she felt for the first time
unwatched and free to reveal as much of herself and her feelings as she could.
She was still shy of what seemed to her a sort of undressing in front of the
man she loved. But she began to enjoy the act of revealing and the removal of
layers of clothing that it seemed to her she was doing with her pen.
During the Easter break she had gone with Olga to the home of
a wealthy Danish couple Flemming and Mette. While still at the school waiting
to be picked up she had talked to Olga.
“Do you know these people we’re going to be staying with?”
Lena had asked.
“No. I’ve never met them.”
“Then why did you call them?”
“I was given their address and told to call them if the
school was going to be closed.”
“Well, I’m quite glad, otherwise we’d have been stuck here on
our own.”
“With no food either.”
“They were happy for me to come, too?”
“Oh, yes! That was assumed.”
“It was good of you to arrange things for me.”
“I’m a bit surprised that you didn’t have an address and a
number to call yourself.”
“Well, it was all a bit rushed with me.”
Lena didn’t think it necessary to mention that she had been
given the same name and address as Olga.
“I wonder what they’ll be like,” said Olga.
“Do you have any idea who they are?”
“I’ve absolutely no idea. You know how things are. They’re
just friends, better not to think about it too much.”
Driving the relatively short distance to their home Flemming
and Mette were pleasant and friendly. They looked as if they were in their
sixties. The house was impressive from the outside, set in a secluded spot with
a good deal of land around. It was even more impressive from the inside with a
swimming pool and the stylish design that Danes are so good at. Lena had the
usual awkward moment when Mette tried to talk to her in English.
“You don’t speak Russian by any chance?” Lena asked in
Danish.
“Only a little,” said Mette. “We’ve been there a few times
and tried to learn some, but we didn’t get very far.”
“Well, in that case you’ll have to stick to Danish with me. I
didn’t get very far with English.”
So instead they spoke to Olga in English. Lena wondered why
they were all so desperate to practice.
They were treated very well. Lena was given a very
comfortable room with her own little TV. They were taken on a couple of trips
round about and even to a restaurant. The food was good and they were told they
only had to ask if there was something that they needed.
Lena knew that she had to contact Orlov, and didn’t want to
have to wait weeks for them to exchange letters. After getting to know Flemming
and Mette over the weekend she nerved herself to ask a favour on Monday. They
would go back to the school the next day, and so she waited for a time when she
happened to be alone with Flemming.
“You’ve been very kind to us,” she said.
“Thank you, Lena. It’s been a pleasure for us, too”.
“Could I possibly ask a favour?” She was embarrassed and
didn’t want to ask at all. It wasn’t easy being so far from home with very
little money. She was proud enough to hate asking for favours, but she knew she
had no choice.
“Of course,” said Flemming. “Don’t look so worried. I’ll do
what I can to help.”
“I need to call Russia.”
“You should have said so before. There’s a phone in there.”
“But I haven’t much money and I don’t know what it will
cost.”
“Don’t even think of it. You can see that we have enough. We
can certainly afford a phone call.”
Lena called Orlov and explained the situation.
“I’m very proud of you, Lena,” he said at one point. “Are you
glad I persuaded you to go?”
“Yes. But how can I get a visa for Britain? How can I see him
again?”
“Don’t worry, we’ll organise an English language course in
Cambridge, they have lots of little schools there, I believe. Something like
that should be easy enough to sort out. Then we’ll book your flights and show
that you have enough money available to look after yourself while you’re there.
It should be pretty straightforward after that. It’s not difficult to get a
visa even to Britain so long as you know how.”
“So you think there’s a good chance?”
“Lots of Soviet citizens visit Britain. Why shouldn’t you?”
Lena reflected that she’d never met one, but then again hardly
anyone she knew in Kaliningrad had ever been to the West except her.
“Just one thing,” Orlov continued. “There’s a question in the
form about whether you know anyone in England. Put ‘no’. They’re liable to turn
you down if you know a young man who happens to be in the same town where
you’ll be studying. All they really care about is that you go back to the
Soviet Union. We’ll fix things this end to make it clear that you will. It
shouldn’t be difficult to find a job you’ll be starting in a couple of months
and a letter from your employer, explaining why you need a short course in
English.”
“Will I need to go to the British embassy in Copenhagen?”
“Yes, certainly. Are you worried about how you’ll get there?”
“I don’t have very much money.”
“Is Fleming there? Nearby, I mean.”
“I suppose so.”
“Can you get him for me?”
“Of course.”
Lena found Fleming and told him that he was wanted on the
phone. Flemming didn’t seem to find this very surprising. Lena went back with
him and spoke briefly to Orlov.
“He’s ready to talk to you now, but I don’t think he knows
any Russian.”
“That’s alright,” said Orlov. “It’s not only you that knows a
foreign language. You wait there; I’ll want to talk to you again in a minute.”
Lena sat down and heard Flemming talking in English. She
understood little of what he said, but could tell that Flemming was quite happy
talking to Orlov. At times he became rather animated and there were some long
laughs just as if he was taking up again with an old friend.
After a few minutes Lena was given the phone back again.
“Well, that’s all settled,” said Orlov. “Flemming will give
you enough to get to Copenhagen and we’ll arrange where you can stay. I’ll sort
out all the details in the next few days and let you know when you should travel.
If there’s anything that crops up, you can always get in touch with Flemming
and he’ll help you to sort it out. Good luck, Lena, and well done.”
She said goodbye and looked slightly mystified at Flemming.
“Do you know Vladimir Borisovich?” she asked.
“I’ve never met him, but we’ve spoken a few times on the
phone. He seems quite a decent sort, always ready to make a joke. You know him
I suppose?”
“Not really.”
“But you’ve met him?”
“Oh, yes. Many times.”
Later Flemming came up to Lena when she was alone and gave
her a few thousand krone notes. Lena had never even seen one before and looked
with curiosity at the pale blue banknote with a very pretty woman’s picture on
it.
“These should cover your expenses,” said Flemming. “And if
you need any more just give me a call.”
“But it’s much too much!” said Lena.
“Well, who knows what you may need. Better to have enough to
cover all eventualities.”
She thanked him and was genuinely grateful for his help.
Naturally, she knew that it wasn’t simply because he was kind, but
nevertheless, she preferred to attribute it to his kindness. They were driven
back to the school that evening and everyone said how pleasant it had been, and
she thought everyone meant it. There was some talk of them coming again and of
how they were always welcome, but as she looked at Flemming’s car drive away
she rather hoped that it would not be necessary to talk to him again.
David’s letter to her was just as warm as his earliest ones
had been. He mocked himself for his shyness, but agreed it had been wonderful
to spend time together with always the hope of finding once more how they had
been last summer. Now that they had found it, he felt sure they would never
lose it. He asked her how she could manage to come to England and offered help
if she needed it. He said that if there were any difficulties, she was to write
and he could be with her again in a few days. He said that if they worked
together, they could solve any problem. The key was simply to think clearly.
They wanted to be together. Whatever obstacles were put in their way could be
got round if they both knew what they wanted and were willing to do what was
necessary to reach their goal. One place was much the same as another so long
as it contained both of them. He said finally that he had sailed all the oceans
and the seas and looked on all the beaches before he had found her, his very
own Asol. He would buy all of the scarlet silk in England to bring them
together. He, too, signed his letter with love in the same way that she had.
Lena thought of the distinction in Russian between the word for a friend who
was a girl and a girlfriend. She felt for the first time that the latter word
unambiguously applied to her. She had never properly been someone’s girlfriend,
not even last summer, would she have quite been ready to use that word about
herself, it had all been so fleeting and lacking in permanency. Everything had
been so unsure then and in the months that followed. But now the word came to
her mind and she delighted in being something that she had never been before.
She was his.
In her next letter she described her trip to Copenhagen, how
she had travelled on the train that could go onto a boat across the Storebaelt
between Jutland and the island of Fyn. She described her impressions of
Copenhagen, the strange looking church she’d seen in the distance with the
spire that looked a bit like a spiral, how everything was pretty and clean and
ordered. She said she’d only had fleeting impressions of some lakes and some
old buildings and some pleasant parks. She’d like to go back there, not so much
as a tourist, but just to be there in not quite so much of a rush. She
described the long form she’d had to fill in and how she’d done so in Danish,
which at times was a struggle when she wasn’t quite sure of the meaning of some
rather technical words. She described the frustration of filling in such a form
and the fear of making a mistake that might deny her what she most wanted. It
was the mixture of dullness and care that made the process so unpleasant.
She described the interview at the embassy. Even though she
had written her form in Danish, the embassy official began questioning her in
English. She wrote of how once more she sat there embarrassed asking if they
couldn’t possibly speak in Danish. Lena then found out why her interviewer
preferred English as it turned out his Danish was not that good. No doubt, he
lived in Copenhagen, but spoke English with his Danish friends and mainly
English at his work. He had a horrible accent and spoke Danish without even
trying to imitate some of the peculiarities of Danish pronunciation. He became
rather embarrassed, too, when he realised that Lena spoke much better than he
did, but reacted well to the fact and they had a laugh about it. So the
interview had been friendly enough and she hoped that she had answered all the
questions successfully. She naturally did not mention how she had been
questioned about whether she knew anyone in England and how she had been told
to say “no”. When writing she had wondered what David would think of her third
foreign trip in less than a year, but she was planning to talk to him of how
lucky she had been, of how there was suddenly a need for translators who knew
both Danish and English. She knew that he would not be so much interested in
why she was in Cambridge or how she had go there, but only in the fact that she
had got there by whatever miracle. She signed off her letter by saying in a
couple of weeks she hoped with all her heart that they would be together again
and until then she remained his, only his.
She hadn’t told anyone at the school that she was planning to
go anywhere. There had been some curiosity about her trip to Copenhagen, but
she had said something about needing to see someone at the Soviet embassy and
this was sufficient explanation for everyone but Olga.
“Are you trying to see David?” Olga asked her.
“Something like that,” said Lena.
“You don’t want to talk about it?”
“What’s the point of talking about it? It will either happen
or it won’t, whatever we say.”
Lena saw how they exchanged looks, which described the limits
of their speech, and showed that they had arrived at a point that was better
not asked about. She knew that each of them had exchanged such looks for years
and knew the signs to look for.
“What will you do if it doesn’t happen?”
“I will go back to Kaliningrad and make the best of it.”
“With Pavel?
“Probably.”
“You love David.” Lena could hear that it was more a
statement than a question.
“Of course, and I’ll love no one else, but what can you do?”
Despite all that she had done, she really did feel
fundamentally passive as if waiting to see the first sign of the scarlet silk
on the horizon with no way to determine when or if it would appear.
“You can keep loving David, Lena. Don’t give up on him, no
matter what.”
“There’s no point talking about it. Don’t let’s talk any more
it’s boring. I just have to wait and see.”
“When will you find out?”
“Any day now.”
She’d been told that there was no reason why she should not
be given a visa; that really it was a routine matter, but she couldn’t help the
feelings of doubt that entered her mind from time to time. She couldn’t count
on it until she’d seen it in her hand. A tiny piece of paper that would
determine her entire future stuck into her passport was what it came down to.
With it she might be with David forever, without it she might never see him
again. It might have been a matter of routine, but it wasn’t a matter of
routine for her. She tried to tell herself that they had no reason to deny her,
but then she realised that they did if only they knew about it.
Chapter 2
Lena was eating breakfast when Niels came up to her.
“Can I have a word, Lena?”
She got up and went with him.
“What is it, Niels? Is something wrong?”
“No, I don’t think so. Would you mind coming to my house? I
want to talk to you and we’ll be more comfortable there. It’s not far.”
Lena was becoming alarmed.
“Tell me, please, has something happened?”
“Really, don’t worry, nothing bad has happened. I promise
you.”
They walked together the short distance to Niels’s house.
Lena noticed his wife and children in the kitchen having their breakfast, but
Niels showed her into the sitting room.
“I’ll leave you to it,” he said already in the act of
shutting the door.
She looked over towards one of the comfortable chairs where
David was smoking and drinking coffee.
“David, what on earth are you doing here?!” she said.
“I’m here to help you get to England,” he answered her in
Russian. The sentence was completely utterly unexpected, far more unexpected
that his appearance.
“But how?”
“Well, actually I flew into Copenhagen yesterday and got the
train to here. Niels was kind enough to put me up for the night.”
It was hard to believe. He spoke almost perfectly. She’d met
few foreigners who could speak Russian, just some Poles who always betrayed
their origins by making every Russian word sound like it was Polish. David
spoke impossibly well. She was bewildered, not only by his sudden appearance,
but by his speech.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“Do you find my Russian difficult to understand?”
“No. That’s precisely what I don’t understand.”
“So you’re wondering not only why I’m here, but also how I
speak your language?”
“Why didn’t you tell me before? Why didn’t we speak Russian
last summer?”
“That wouldn’t have been very conducive to our learning
Danish, would it?”
“No, but you pretended that you didn’t understand.”
She saw one of his eyebrows raise just a hint and an ironic
look appeared on his face. A doubt flickered through her mind. He knows.
“Let’s just say we’ve each had our little secrets,” he said.
“I thought it was time that we shared them.”
“But you deceived me. Remember those silly games when we
asked you questions in Russian and you had to answer “yes” or “no”, and they
made you seem foolish. You understood all of it. You understood when…”
“When you had those little conversations in Russian with
Sveta or Olga or one of the others.”
Lena blushed trying to remember all the times she had spoken
Russian in his presence because he didn’t understand.
“It wasn’t very honest,” she said, in the act of remembering
how he had referred to each of their having secrets. What did he know? How
could he know? What would he think if he did know? She felt anger at his
deception, but more confused by it than anything else. Why would he hide that
he spoke Russian?”
“But what was the point of the pretence? We could still have
spoken mainly Danish even if you did know Russian.”
“I’m sorry, Lena, I didn’t have any choice.”
“But why? It’s a silly thing to hide. I don’t understand any
of this.”
“Well, why don’t I tell you why I learned Russian and then
we’ll see what you make of it.”
“I’d like to hear your story,” said Lena.
“And I yours. I was approached when I started in Cambridge
and asked if I wanted to learn another language. It had something to do with my
being rather good at Greek. There are certain similarities with Russian if you
go back far enough and knowing Greek grammar made Russian grammar not quite
such a daunting challenge. Anyway, that’s why they picked me. There are very
few English people who can speak Russian well. I was offered lessons with a
Russian couple who live in Cambridge. They’re both academics. They left the
Soviet Union some time ago for reasons that are not important. It was made
clear to me from the start that the condition for the lessons was that I told
no one about them, not my friends, not my family. I had to sign some rather
official documents promising that I would do this. My learning Russian is
covered by the Official Secrets Act. Revealing it could mean I went to gaol.”
“But why should it be secret?”
“The idea was that if somehow I could learn to speak
fluently, I could in the course of my future work, going to conferences,
academic exchanges and such like be able to pick up information just because no
one would dream that I could speak their language. It’s all very new and
untested, but some rather important people in my country thought it worth a try.”
“Then you’re a spy!”
“No, I’m a student, but of course, I knew that I was being
offered this free course for a reason. I knew that I was connected with people
who work in intelligence.”
“You deceived me.”
“Did I? There was something I couldn’t tell you that if I had
told you, would have meant I’d wasted three years of hard work. I’m sorry,
Lena, I simply couldn’t tell you even if I’d wanted to. Other people depended
on my keeping silent.”
“And why are you telling me now?”
“I have been given permission to do so. We both have secrets,
don’t we?”
Lena knew that he knew something, but what? Could their
relationship survive these revelations? Did he even want a relationship? Had it
all been a matter of his eavesdropping on her speaking Russian? She thought
back to when they had been together last summer and the things that she had
said to him in Russian precisely because she knew he could not understand. She
had poured out her heart, revealed her longings, opened herself because the
words were dedicated to him, but were only understood by her. She felt exposed,
betrayed and felt the anger rising in her.
“So you came to Denmark to listen in on our conversations. Do
you peek in keyholes, too?”
“I came to Denmark to learn Danish. I didn’t even know there
would be any Russians in the school. I listened a little, but just out of
curiosity. The idea isn’t to find out what a few language students are chatting
about in Russian. I never told anyone a thing about any Russian conversations I
heard. There was nothing that anyone would be interested in. You know that as
well as me. Try not to be angry, Lena.”
“What do you expect?”
“I hoped that I would find understanding and that together we
could forgive all our secrets.”
“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about, David.”
“Lena, it’s just you and me here. You can trust me. I love
you. There’s nothing to worry about, but we’re going to have to be honest with
each other.”
She had no way of knowing the truth or otherwise of what he
was saying. It seemed to her a little unlikely, but then wouldn’t her story
seem a little unlikely to him? What was the secret he kept referring to? What
did he know? She had been told many times not to reveal anything. She had
neither told her family, nor her sister. She thought of the trouble she could
get in if she did. If she went back and they found out what she had said, well
the consequences were unknown and rather frightening. Yet she found herself
trusting him, believing him. When he had just mentioned the word ‘love’, she
instinctively knew he meant what he had said. He did love her. If she didn’t
know this, she knew nothing, and as her anger subsided she realised that above
all she was scared of losing him because of the secrets she could not share.
“I just don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “Why
are you here anyway?”
“I’m here to try to get you on a flight to Britain.”
“But that should be just a matter of routine. I have an
English course, enough money, the flights have been booked.”
“Your application was going to be turned down.”
“How do you know? Why should they have turned me down?”
Lena felt the door closing. He was here, but soon he would
depart and so would she. The piece of paper that she needed was not
forthcoming, and so her future was going to be denied and she would have to
make do with another.
“Technically they were going to turn you down because you
said that you didn’t know anyone from England.”
“But they wouldn’t have given me one if I’d said I had a
boyfriend in Cambridge.”
“I know, Lena. Don’t worry. I’m here to help us.”
“But how did they find out?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe they asked someone here at the school or
at Askov. I honestly don’t know. Anyway, someone contacted me in Cambridge.”
“Who?”
“It doesn’t really matter, does it? Someone rather
important.”
“From intelligence?”
“They don’t mention those sorts of words as you well know,
but I imagine so. I’ve been involved with these sort of people since I started
learning Russian and you have, too, since you started learning Danish.”
Lena remained silent for a while. She looked long and hard
into his eyes. She saw concern, she saw someone she knew she could trust, above
all, she saw someone she loved and who loved her back. She knew this in the
same way that she knew her mother loved her. It was something fundamental,
something purely human. They connected.
“I’m not sure what I can tell you,” she said.
“I know you're scared. Don’t worry, you’re not going to get
into any trouble. Nothing has changed.”
“What happens if I can’t tell you anything?”
“I’ll give you back your passport with a visa refusal. I
don’t think, you’ll ever get another visa to come to the West.”
“And you?”
“I don’t know. I would be very tempted to go wherever you go.
But is there a place for me in Kaliningrad?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Nor here, I’m afraid.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure the Danes would grant you the right to remain.”
“But Sveta?”
“I know, Lena, but Sveta wasn’t involved in intelligence. She
just jumped ship. There are things I can change and things that I can’t
change.”
“Is there anything we can do?”
“Yes. If you will allow me, I think, I can work out a plan.”
“What is it, David?”
“I have this.”
He showed her a British passport and she opened it to the
photo page. She saw the photo that she had sent to him all those months ago. It
was strange to see it behind the shiny transparent plastic. She read the name
“Elena Grey”.
“What is this?”
“It’s your passport if you want to accept it.”
Lena looked at him suspiciously. How could he possibly have a
British passport with her photo in it?
“Wait. This is impossible.”
“No, Lena. I assure you it’s not only possible, it is”.
“Why would Britain give me a passport? I’ve never even been
there. I don’t even speak the language. What are you expecting me to do? What
conditions are attached? What do I need to do?”
“You need to marry me for one thing.”
“Do you really think that is possible now?”
“Nothing has changed, Lena, not between you and me. Don’t you
think, I could tell if it was all an act?”
“What about your acting?”
“I think, you know that I am sincere. It’s the basic
fundamental question you have to ask yourself. Do you believe me, do you trust
me, do you love me?”
“And what about you?”
“Yes. What you didn’t tell me, doesn’t affect how I feel
about you. The secrets you didn’t share you couldn’t share, and so my trust has
not been diminished.”
“What secrets do you think you know?”
“I didn’t go to Askov to meet you. I didn’t know that you
existed, but you knew that I would be there? Am I right?”
She sat in silence. For a long moment she carefully took in
his face wondering still if he would reject her, wondering if the passport was
just a trick and would be withdrawn as soon as she spoke the truth. But she
also knew that if she didn’t say anything right now, the moment would pass and
within a short time she would be back in Kaliningrad. There was a choice and
there were arguments on both sides. But then she found there was no choice at
all and she simply spoke without thinking further.
“I’m sorry, David. I’d known about you for some time prior to
our meeting in Denmark.”
“But what happened to us there was real, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, what happened was real. I couldn’t have acted any of
that even if I’d wanted to.”
“Then it was rather like a matchmaker or a dating agency or
if a friend introduced us. The only difference was that only you knew about the
introduction. What happened next was up to us, wasn’t it?”
“There were no guarantees that we would get on as we did.”
“None at all,” said David in agreement. “Just because we had some help at the
beginning didn’t make the process of falling in
love any less real.”
“Then you don’t reproach me?”
“Why should I? The only way we could meet was with the help
of your friends. How else could someone from Kaliningrad meet someone from
Cambridge in Denmark? And I’m very, very glad we did.”
“What now? What else do I have to do? What happens now?”
“You will keep your Soviet passport and you’ll be given a
visa. You will travel on it. You’ll go every day to language course in
Cambridge. It might just turn out to be useful for you to speak a little
English, don’t you think? But you will also be a British citizen and must sign
the Official Secrets Act. You must promise to do nothing to harm the UK.”
“And what of my own country? Am I to spy on my friends, my
family and my fellow citizens? Am I to betray my country?”
She saw him looking at her in a way that he had never looked
before. This man who had so suddenly appeared before her was rather changed. He
had lost his hesitancy and become more decisive. There was a fundamental
seriousness about him. Still she waited for his answer.
“I promise you that neither of us will betray our country,”
he said.
“What will happen then?”
“They’ve asked me to make a deal. It seems they’ve been
looking for a situation like this.”
“What situation would that be, David?”
“You’re going to have to help me, Lena. We have to begin to
be a little more open and willing to talk about what is hardly so very secret
anymore.”
“We can try to talk.”
“Wasn’t it the idea that you would marry someone who might
eventually become important in business or politics, or academia?”
“I never was really told the idea, but I imagine it was
something like that.”
“Well they’ve offered me a job. I’m to finish my studies
after only a year. I’ll get some sort of master’s degree; I’ve easily done
enough for one. It hardly matters. I’m to start at the Foreign Office as some
sort of trainee advisor. As I progress, you will be given some information.”
“You want me to tell lies to my country?”
“It’s not about lies or truth. The information may well be
quite true. It’s not what’s important.”
“Can you tell me what’s important, David? I’d really like to
know.”
“We want a way to talk to important people in your country; we
want a channel of private communication in case of difficulties in the future.
We’ll work together, you and me, for both our countries. It may make a
difference. They think, there may be trouble in the next few months.
Apparently, there are plans for some sort of coup. The Soviet Union may not last much longer and
in uncertain times we could make a small contribution to how our countries get
on together.”
“But what about my family? Maybe we can find a solution to
all these problems.”
“Lena, you know as well as I do that the only solution to the
problems of the Soviet Union is to leave.”
“Yes, I know this.”
“Then what else?”
“How can I trust your intelligence services?”
“Neither of us can really trust these kind of people. Not on
my side, not on yours. But forget them, can you trust me?”
She looked at him. It was unnecessary to scan his face
carefully; she didn’t need to wait long before answering with a single word.
“Yes.”
“Then trust me when I tell you that I promise, I will do
neither you nor your country harm. That’s how I understand our love and that’s
how I understand our marriage.”
“It’s all very sudden. How many days have we spent together?”
“Not very many.”
“Are you sure about us? I’m talking about us now, only us. It
doesn’t scare me. You see, I believe that marriage is a promise that I must
keep no matter what. Otherwise it isn’t marriage at all. I don’t know what the
future will bring, but I know that I will keep my promise, because I’m not only
making a promise to you, I’m making a promise
to me. Would we know more after living together in Cambridge? Not really. I
rather prefer it this way.”
“So do I,” she whispered.
“I have a couple of other things, now that we’ve got the
necessary business out of the way.”
Lena saw him reach behind the sofa. She saw the small
rucksack that he had often carried with him, and saw how he opened it and
looked inside.
“The last time I was here I gave you a brooch, but I never
saw you wear it. I hope you might like this one rather better.”
“But I did like it. I was going to wear it when I got to
Cambridge.”
“You can wear this one instead. I hope you will always wear
it.”
He handed her a little box and she opened it to see a little
white ship with scarlet sails. The sails sparkled like rubies. She looked at
him and could see the delight he was feeling at the expression on her face.
“How did you find it? It’s impossible that you could have
found such a brooch even if you had searched all over England.”
“There’s a jeweller in London that makes brooches to order. I
described to him exactly what I wanted and he agreed to design and make it.”
“But, David, the cost…”
She immediately rushed up to him and kissed him.
They embraced and kissed for what seemed minutes, but may
only have been only a matter of seconds. She sensed how he wanted to
communicate with his kisses, but also with his voice and in a pause in their
kisses she detected his eagerness to say something else.
“I thought, you liked kissing me,” she said disappointed that
they had to stop so soon. “We didn’t get much a chance when you were here last.
You left everything to the last minute. Don’t you want to make up for it now?”
“I think, we’ll have a chance very soon, don’t you?”
He reached into his bag.
“What else have you got in your bag, David? You're like some
sort of ...”
“Well, shall we find out what sort I am? I want you to close
your eyes and if possible, to fall asleep even if only for a minute.”
“How can I fall asleep? I just got up and then there was all
this excitement. I’m not sure, I’ll ever sleep again.”
“Oh, I think, you can manage for a minute.”
Lena wondered what he had in mind, but decided to play along.
She slumped a little on her chair, closed her eyes and made some slight murmurs
as if she was deeply asleep. She felt his hand take hers and something was
slipped onto one of her fingers.
“Now you can wake up,” he said.
She opened her eyes and saw a simple engagement ring with a
small blue semi-precious stone that she could not identify. She looked at it in
wonder.
“Don’t look quite so surprised,” said David. “It must have
been even more of a surprise for someone in a story we both know to wake up
with a strange man’s ring on her finger.”
“But it couldn’t be more of a surprise,” she said. “I woke up
less than an hour ago. How can so much happen in an hour? I’ve spent days,
months even then nothing much has happened.”
“There may still be a few more surprises ahead.”
“Such as?”
“You’ll receive another ring tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? But that’s impossible.”
“I don’t want to rush you, but we don’t have much time.”
“Why can’t we be married as soon as we get to England? At
least that would give me a chance to get ready.”
She loved David and wanted to be with him, but tomorrow
seemed far too soon. She needs time to get used to the idea. She wanted time to
look forward to her wedding.
“I’m sorry, Lena. There are things that I can’t change. One
of the conditions was that we would be married here.”
“It’s just I always dreamed of a real marriage in a church
with a dress and now I suppose, we’ll be in some room and a man will mumble
some words in Danish.”
“I think, we might be able to do a little better than that.”
“What more can you have in your bag?”
“One of the things I love about you is your odd Soviet
romanticism. I think, you know me well enough by now to realise that I will
always try to make whatever dream you have come true. There’s a Russian
orthodox church in Copenhagen named after Saint Alexandr Nevsky, we have an
appointment there tomorrow, just after three.”
“I don’t see how that is possible, I thought the church had
rules, you have to meet the priest in advance, and it’s all very complex. I’m
not sure, of course, I’ve never even been in an Orthodox church, but from what
people have told me the very idea that we could get married there tomorrow is
out of the question.”
“Well, we asked and they said ‘yes’. We were very grateful,
indeed, that they granted us a special dispensation.”
“And what about you?”
“Now I have a cross just like yours.”
He pulled out the chain that was hidden by his shirt and
showed her his Russian cross. Let’s take it as a sign of good faith of shared
faith and shared nationhood.”
“But it needs to be blessed by a priest, when you are
baptised, otherwise it’s a…”
“A piece of metal,” said David. “It was blessed when I was
baptised in your church. It seems I knew more than enough about Orthodoxy and
my expression of faith was taken as sincere.”
She realised that there was nothing that he would not do for
her, and she began to feel her own love growing by the second.
“I will always love you, David. I, too, promise. But you must
have had some doubts when did you begin to suspect.”
“Some months ago, but I only found out for sure a few days
ago. These things confuse us sometimes, make us doubt. But now I know that
whatever doubts I may have had were mistaken. I know you have always loved me.
All the rest, everything about which there may have been suspicions was just
accidental, fundamentally trivial.”
“But, David, what am I to wear? I have nothing even remotely
suitable. I can’t go for the first time to an Orthodox church to be married in
a pair of jeans.”
David pulled a couple of cases from behind the sofa. She
looked again in wonder.
“David, really, what else have you got behind that sofa?”
“This is it, I promise you.”
He opened the larger case and she saw what looked like the
most exquisite of old fashioned wedding dresses. There were shoes to match and
everything else that would be necessary.
“I’m pretty sure it will fit,” he said. “But we will have
time to make any adjustments that will be necessary. There’s a woman here who
will help you with a fitting.”
“It’s lovely, David, and the other case?”
“Well, I thought you would need a few things for the
honeymoon.”
She opened the case and saw a few pretty outfits: a
nightdress, underwear, toiletries and cosmetics. She held up each outfit and
imagined herself wearing it.
“It’s all lovely, David, but how did you know what to buy?”
“Oh, I had some help from a woman about your age.”
“I’m going to be very jealous,” said Lena.
“Don’t worry, she was working. I hope everything is alright.
We can always get anything else you need in Copenhagen.”
Lena held up some of the lingerie. She felt herself blushing.
“I’ve never worn anything like this.”
“Personally, I rather liked the black ones you were wearing
the other day. I wouldn’t at all mind seeing them again sometime soon.”
“Oh, David. I promise you will see them. Is tomorrow too
soon?”
“Tomorrow seems a perfect sort of distance.”
“If only my parents and my sister could be here.”
“That I couldn’t arrange. I’m sorry. I’ll try to find a way
for you to see them, sometime soon.”
She looked at him. It was all so much to take in, but she was
beginning to get used to the whole thing and beginning to feel a sense of
profound joy that she was going to be his wife.
“Are you sure, David?”
“I’ve never been surer.”
“You’ll be gentle with me?”
“You’ll have to be gentle with me, too.”
“I’m a bit scared.”
“Who isn’t? But we’ll be there together so everything will be
as it should be.”
“Oh, my Captain Grey!” she said.
“Oh, my little Assol, and you like her will also be Mrs
Grey.”
Part 5
Epilogue
Looking back twenty years later Lena remembered the church
service, which had been performed in Church Slavonic. Her faith had been
touched deeply by her first time in an Orthodox church. Somehow she had felt
herself transported both in terms of time and place and felt and understood the
phrase ‘Holy Russia’ for the first time personally. It didn’t mean that Russia
was without fault, but she found her faith deeply and irrevocably tied up with
her love of her country. Her dress was beautiful and David looked splendid in
his suit. She felt how the priest was uniting them spiritually and the mystery
at the heart of the service was the mystery of their coming together. She felt
that God had brought them together and this faith was not lessened by her
knowledge that God had had human helpers.
She remembered with some amusement how neither of them had
really known what to do finding themselves alone in their very nice hotel room
where they were due to spend the next few days. She remembered how he had
always been able to make her feel at ease and how he invariably waited for her
response. It was funny now to think of how clumsy they had been. But she
remembered most of all how he seemed to think only of her and how he asked
either with voice or with gesture and waited for her answer.
She had never loved anyone else and never would. They had two
children, a boy Alex and a girl Sonya. Somehow Lena and David continued mainly
to speak Russian when they were alone with each other, but never in public. She
learned English, but it was always a bit of a struggle, and so they usually
spoke Danish when they were out and about. The children were brought up
bilingually speaking Russian at home and English with their friends. Danish
remained a sort of private language for David and Lena, and they tended to use
it when they travelled. This meant that she never became as good at English as
she would have hoped, mainly because no matter how many courses she went on,
she rarely got to practice at home.
David progressed well in his work, and from time to time she
made contact with someone from Russia and provided him with some information.
When the Soviet Union fell apart, it became easier to travel
to her home in Kaliningrad and to take David to meet her parents. Of course, he
understood everything that they said, but still she had to pretend to translate
everything into Danish. It was strange little charade, and she regretted the
necessity of deceiving her parents and her sister Vera.
David gradually became more and more senior and important as
an analyst of Russian affairs, and Lena helped him. Her contact with Soviet
intelligence was only briefly broken and rapidly replaced with a contact in
Russian intelligence. The initials might have changed, but in reality nothing
else. Because of this contact she was occasionally approached by someone from
the Russian government with a feeler towards the UK government. Her role thus
was less as someone who gave information, but rather as someone who enabled
contact between David and his equivalent in the Russian government. At various
points of crisis this proved vital. When relations between the UK and Russia
were strained, she was sometimes asked by David to make contact with someone,
meetings were set up at which she acted as a translator. The translation into
Danish usually baffled whoever they were meeting and meant also that they had a
private means of talking and discussing what to say next. They had to be
careful, however, as there was always the possibility that the Russians would
bring a Danish interpreter along. Lena wondered if she would meet anyone she
had studied with across the table, but she never did.
She heard from Sveta from time to time. She was on her third
or, perhaps, her fourth husband, but happy enough that she’d made the choice
she had. She’d tried to contact Olga sometime soon after arriving in England,
but her letters always had been unanswered and she later found out no one by
that name had ever lived at the address that Olga had given her. There were
times when she very much missed her friend and wondered what had happened. But
there was chaos in Moscow when the Soviet Union fell apart, and no doubt others
had lost their friends also. Sometimes it didn’t need the collapse of a country
to separate old friends forever. David never mentioned Gillian, and she knew he
had never seen her again. Someone from David’s home town mentioned to her that
most people there always expected him to marry Gillian in the end. Quite why
someone would mention this to his present wife struck her as rather peculiar
and tasteless, but she’d put on her best blank Soviet face and expressed a
slight interest. It turned out that Gillian had married and was now in
Australia. She didn’t think it necessary to mention the fact to David. Perhaps,
some kind soul had already informed him anyway.
Her love for David changed over time. It wasn’t possible she
realised to love like a twenty-one year old forever. But whatever changed, she
knew that she would retain her love for him forever and that the feeling was
entirely mutual, just as it always had been. She knew that David wanted only
her, and would only ever want her. She found her mind drifting back to their
last night in Askov and remembered how he had caressed her and remembered this
touch more than all the others combined. Every other touch merged together into
twenty years of lovemaking, but she still shivered when her mind regularly
drifted back to that first touch that he had shared with her that first summer
when they had met.
Lena knew that her story might have been different. Writing
it she had considered all of the details, what she had added, what she had left
out. It would have made a rather different story if after the first part she
had been unable to return to Denmark and ended up marrying Pavel. She’d met him
a couple of times. He’d married finally when it became clear she was not coming
back. What if she’d allowed David to marry Gillian in her story? She could have
written that story, too, though perhaps, she would not have had the necessary
experience of England if events had turned out that way. At one point in time
it was what David had wanted most in the world. If on that weekend when Gillian
had visited David she had shown that she wanted him, if she had given him just
one kiss, David would have found what he had been looking for, would have
gained what he had waited so long to obtain. Lena had wondered about writing
that story, too, and giving it to David as her present. Would he have accepted
that gift at that time?
Her story really ought to have ended in Rødding. The whole
subsequent part was surely too unrealistic and no one would believe it, all
that cloak and dagger added to a simple love story. The fairy tale ending was
too much to be believed.
She had written the story in Russian, and David had
translated it into English. They wondered if they should both try to translate
it into Danish, but although they spoke Danish nearly every day, it was their
own private form that had not progressed much since they had been together for
those shared days twenty years earlier.
A version of the novel has been out in Russia with only some
slight changes for a little while, and has gained a certain success, not much,
but a steady trickle of sails.
No long ago Lena received a note from Orlov.
Dear Lena,
Can you tell your husband he can speak Russian in public? It
would be easier for all of us. We’ve known that he was learning our language
almost since he began. That’s why we picked him for you. We needed a high level
contact, too.
With all my love,
Vladimir Borisovich.
Of course Lena, had changed all the names in the novel
including her own, but it hadn’t been that difficult for Orlov to recognise
himself.