Kolya."
"Sekundochku,"
I said: "just a second" in Russian, a bit of automatic camouflage that was doubtless more incriminating than talking in English. I rushed out of the room as though I'd been called by a teenage girlfriend. I went into the kitchen, where my mother had pinned her offspring's phone numbers to the fridge with a magnet from DurhamCathedral. On the windowsill was a Christmas television guide, in which she'd put tragic little asterisks next to the programmes she wanted to watch. I'd been sucked, as I always was, into the time warp of family, the instant rewind that takes you back to the roles you've grown out of.
"I'm thinking about you too," I said. "I've told my family about you, Masha." The second bit wasn't true, I just thought it was something she'd like to hear. But the first part was. I was already thinking of her and me as real life, and the rest as somehow distant and less important. I wanted to tell her about whatever had happened to me, as if somehow without her knowing about it, it hadn't really happened. Do you know what I mean?
I asked her about Katya, and her mother in Murmansk, and about Tatiana Vladimirovna.
"Listen, Kolya," she said, "maybe you will bring something for Tatiana Vladimirovna, something for New Year. I think maybe she is not receiving so many presents."
"Of course," I said. "Good idea. Definitely. What should I bring?"
"You think of something, Kolya. Something English."
There was more, and most of it I've forgotten, but I can remember her saying, "I see you soon, Kolya. I think about you. I love you."
I went back to the lounge, and they all averted their eyes in an ostentatious show of indifference. I felt trappedlike you do after you've eaten your airline meal, and getting the stewardess to take your tray away so you can escape seems the only thing in the world that matters. Underneath it all, I suppose, was the knowledge that I could have turned out the same way as my parents, and the fear that maybe I still could--that I might not manage to make my own life at all.
We sat looking at the children, willing them to do something adorable or eccentric. I lasted 'til the day after Boxing Day, then moved my return flight forward by a week to take me back home, back to Moscow, just before New Year.
I HURRIED THROUGH the scrum of lean Russian youths who were wrestling for their parents' luggage at the baggage carousels, and out into the crush of criminal-looking taxi drivers in the arrivals hall--into that particular Russian everyday war, the war of everyone against everyone else. I marched up through the check-in desks and bought a ticket for the train into the city.
The big freeze was on, the real cryogenic deal that I could feel in my teeth, and then everywhere else, when I stepped out of the clammy underpass and into the fierce air at Pushkin Square, after the airport train and the Metro. It hadn't been that cold when I'd left for England, minus tenmaybe. Walking down the Bulvar to my place, I remember, my breath froze differently from the way it had before Christmas, congealing into a kind of tangible fog. The bit of exposed skin on my cheeks, between my upturned collar and my pulled-down hat, stung and then went numb. My nostrils froze together, the hairs inside them hugging each other for survival. The electronic thermometer outside McDonald's said minus twenty-seven Celsius. It was so cold that there was almost nobody smoking in the streets. The traffic police had been issued with old-fashioned felt boots, an ancient Russian precaution that kept their feet from falling off while they hung around extorting bribes from people.
I called Masha and arranged to spend New Year's Eve with her and Katya and, at least to start with, Tatiana Vladimirovna. There were two days of work left before the statutory ten-day New Year break, a national binge referred to by my colleagues as the "oligarch skiing holiday." I had nothing else to do, so I went into the office on the day after
"Sekundochku,"
I said: "just a second" in Russian, a bit of automatic camouflage that was doubtless more incriminating than talking in English. I rushed out of the room as though I'd been called by a teenage girlfriend. I went into the kitchen, where my mother had pinned her offspring's phone numbers to the fridge with a magnet from DurhamCathedral. On the windowsill was a Christmas television guide, in which she'd put tragic little asterisks next to the programmes she wanted to watch. I'd been sucked, as I always was, into the time warp of family, the instant rewind that takes you back to the roles you've grown out of.
"I'm thinking about you too," I said. "I've told my family about you, Masha." The second bit wasn't true, I just thought it was something she'd like to hear. But the first part was. I was already thinking of her and me as real life, and the rest as somehow distant and less important. I wanted to tell her about whatever had happened to me, as if somehow without her knowing about it, it hadn't really happened. Do you know what I mean?
I asked her about Katya, and her mother in Murmansk, and about Tatiana Vladimirovna.
"Listen, Kolya," she said, "maybe you will bring something for Tatiana Vladimirovna, something for New Year. I think maybe she is not receiving so many presents."
"Of course," I said. "Good idea. Definitely. What should I bring?"
"You think of something, Kolya. Something English."
There was more, and most of it I've forgotten, but I can remember her saying, "I see you soon, Kolya. I think about you. I love you."
I went back to the lounge, and they all averted their eyes in an ostentatious show of indifference. I felt trappedlike you do after you've eaten your airline meal, and getting the stewardess to take your tray away so you can escape seems the only thing in the world that matters. Underneath it all, I suppose, was the knowledge that I could have turned out the same way as my parents, and the fear that maybe I still could--that I might not manage to make my own life at all.
We sat looking at the children, willing them to do something adorable or eccentric. I lasted 'til the day after Boxing Day, then moved my return flight forward by a week to take me back home, back to Moscow, just before New Year.
I HURRIED THROUGH the scrum of lean Russian youths who were wrestling for their parents' luggage at the baggage carousels, and out into the crush of criminal-looking taxi drivers in the arrivals hall--into that particular Russian everyday war, the war of everyone against everyone else. I marched up through the check-in desks and bought a ticket for the train into the city.
The big freeze was on, the real cryogenic deal that I could feel in my teeth, and then everywhere else, when I stepped out of the clammy underpass and into the fierce air at Pushkin Square, after the airport train and the Metro. It hadn't been that cold when I'd left for England, minus tenmaybe. Walking down the Bulvar to my place, I remember, my breath froze differently from the way it had before Christmas, congealing into a kind of tangible fog. The bit of exposed skin on my cheeks, between my upturned collar and my pulled-down hat, stung and then went numb. My nostrils froze together, the hairs inside them hugging each other for survival. The electronic thermometer outside McDonald's said minus twenty-seven Celsius. It was so cold that there was almost nobody smoking in the streets. The traffic police had been issued with old-fashioned felt boots, an ancient Russian precaution that kept their feet from falling off while they hung around extorting bribes from people.
I called Masha and arranged to spend New Year's Eve with her and Katya and, at least to start with, Tatiana Vladimirovna. There were two days of work left before the statutory ten-day New Year break, a national binge referred to by my colleagues as the "oligarch skiing holiday." I had nothing else to do, so I went into the office on the day after
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