Belshazzar's Daughter (31 page)

He shuddered. The last time it had happened had been after the divorce. He knew why, of course, but the lead-up was still a blur. Had it been weeks or months? The

big incidents: finding that man in bed with Betty; the attack - they were clear. But the rest? Friends and family knew more than he did, they talked about it too. Bits of himself had been bandied about the stripped-pine living rooms of Socially Aware flats in Stoke Newington and Finsbury Park.

Somewhere in his head was a big black box with all this shit inside and it was locked. Robert liked it that way. When he’d come to Turkey, he’d left the key behind him. He’d left it back in Islington where it belonged, on its home territory.

Even now, and despite his current anxiety, he still didn’t want to open it. But there was a bad feeling. He knew it wasn’t external, it was too familiar for that. He couldn’t put it into words however hard he tried. The nearest he could come didn’t make sense. It was a darkening.

Nothing about him was clear, even in the sharp brightness of the midday sun; things had blurred edges, smeared and broken lines. He was looking at the world through a dusty, tobacco-stained curtain that showed him shapes, lumps of flesh and concrete and metal, but no detail.

Although he wouldn’t even acknowledge it to himself Robert knew that meeting Natalia had pushed him across some sort of unseen border. The subsequent journey had been a familiar one. A woman; a drawing away from friends; extravagance; acceptance of the unacceptable. It had been just over a year, a slow descent. But was it? The man, the lawyer, he’d found in Betty’s - his - bed all those years ago was surely only the culmination and confirmation of what he had known all along. Betty had used him from day one.

Five years he’d had of that. But he’d done it so willingly!

He’d given her everything she wanted, turned not one but two blind eyes, even though it hurt like hell. He’d grown into a doormat, something pliant and comfortable for her to scrape the soles of her boots on.

He was doing it again. But this time he was aiding and abetting … No, he couldn’t be certain about that even now. He had no real proof. The evidence of his eyes meant nothing. He had to try and remember that. And that day in Balat had been odd, climactically as well as other things.

In retrospect it seemed like the darkening had deepened on that day. Of course it hadn’t really, he knew that, but it was comfortable to think that it had. A new black box had been forming in his mind all night and he reminded himself to throw such musings into it. Natalia was in difficulty, that was all that mattered. That was the only fact.

Robert put his hand on the telephone, but he didn’t lift the receiver. It was, by his reckoning, the eighth time he’d done that since dawn. He’d never used her telephone number before, but he wanted to. He knew she’d be pleased with his efforts on her behalf, she had to be, it was going to make everything OK again. Better than OK. She couldn’t escape now because he had done this for her. Where he went she had to follow because he possessed knowledge. He couldn’t form the words that damned her, but he knew.

Robert picked the receiver up and dialled her number. He didn’t have to refer to anything, he’d already committed it to memory.

‘Carelessness.’

Nicholas looked up from his paper and stared into the darkness that surrounded the great gilded bed. ‘What?’

‘I was careless, with talk. We think sometimes, quite wrongly, that people can cope with the truth when they cannot.’

He folded the newspaper up and rested it in his lap. ‘To be fair, we never dreamt that your stories would have such an effect.’

She looked down her nose, contemptuously. ‘You lace the word “story” with what I feel is an element of doubt.’

He sighed. ‘I have always had doubts, Mama, you know that.’

‘So you think that your own mother is a liar?’

‘No.’ He paused for a moment. ‘No, I don’t believe that.

What I do believe, however, is that Uncle Leonid lied or rather elaborated—’

‘You really believe that?’ Her expression was one of pleading rather than anger now. The look of one who wants what is being said to be different.

Nicholas looked down at the floor. ‘Yes, I do really believe it Mama, and in the light of what has happened now I think that you must at least attempt to come to terms with it. For our sake and for your own peace of mind.’

‘And how,’ she said archly, ‘do you think I might achieve this?’

‘I think that we should go to the police and tell them everything that we know.’

Quite unexpectedly, but entirely without mirth, she laughed.

‘With the odious Reinhold Smits placed fairly and squarely at Leonid’s apartment on the day of the murder? Are you mad, Nicky?’

He leant forward, the better to see and, hopefully, persuade her. ‘Ah, but we know that Mr Smits didn’t kill Uncle Leonid, don’t we?’

‘We know nothing of the sort!’

‘But we do!’ Now he was losing his temper - a bad and possibly unwise thing to do with Maria, but he just couldn’t help it. ‘You’re lying, Mama! Assuming that Mr Smits was at the apartment at all …’

‘I neither want, nor need to hear it again, Nicky!’

‘But—’

She held up her hand to silence him. ‘Whatever happened and who, for whatever reason, perpetrated this crime is entirely irrelevant. We must, at all costs, protect who and what is of our own blood. That is, as you know—’

‘More important than anything else?’

‘Yes! Yes!’ Her eyes blazed with a fire that was both angry and something else too - something not quite in control, something dangerous.

Nicholas had, of course, seen this before but, his own brief anger now spent, he returned her gaze with only a sad shake of the head. ‘No, Mama, you are wrong. Our blood is the same as everybody else’s.’

‘So then why, my brave young son, have you lived this lie for so long?’

‘Because,’ he replied, ‘when I was young, I knew no better, and by the time I grew old it had become a habit that I just couldn’t break. I didn’t want to hurt you, Mama, or the others. Sometimes when you have lived your whole life inside an illusion, it is better to stay there. But there are also times, like now, when it is expedient not to, which is why I am talking to you now.’

He went to take her hand, but she pulled it sharply away from him. ‘When we go home—’

‘We’re not going “home”, Mama! And the more preparations you make poor Anya perform for that “great day”,

the worse she becomes! Besides, all the rest of us are home.

Even if the police hurl us all into prison for the rest of our lives, we are and always have been home!’

‘You’ve lived as a Russian all your life!’ She was mocking, scornful. ‘You know as much about these Turks as you do about men from Mars. You dress like a Russian, speak like a Russian, think like a Russian.’

‘My father was Turkish.’

Maria raised her eyebrows and a sneer clouded her

features. ‘That was an unfortunate expedient. If I could, I would have avoided—’

‘Oh, yes,’ he snapped, his voice now filled with bitterness, ‘I know all about that, Mama! Your efforts to put that right included me, remember? The results of that led directly to where we are now!’

‘No, no, that was right! I still stand by that decision! As I have said before, I was considering the condition of … I was far too loose with talk of an alarming and spiteful—’

The door to the apartment swung open and slammed

against the wall. Both Maria and Nicholas looked towards it. A tall slim figure stood silhouetted against the light from the hall. Something long and thin swung and creaked rustily in its left hand. Far away, three floors down in the dining room, the telephone started ringing.

Nicholas put his head in his hands and spoke with great patience and deliberation. ‘What have you got there?’

For a moment there was silence, as if Nicholas’s words had not been heard or had just disappeared into nothing.

Maria squinted at the figure, forcing her failing eyesight to pierce the darkness. ‘Is it a chain?’

She looked at Nicholas. His face was blank. ‘Don’t ask me, I—’

‘Bicycle chain.’

It was a flat monotone of a voice. A man’s but without vigour. Its tone was deep and rich, but its content was dead and dry as a piece of discarded bone.

Nicholas muttered something under his breath that only he could hear. The telephone stopped ringing. He looked at his mother accusingly, but his voice was directed to the figure in the doorway. ‘Go and put it back in the cellar then.’

‘Don’t you …’ The flat voice tailed off into a whine. It cut itself short.

‘I will see it later!’ The force of Nicholas’s words made his head tremble on his neck, like a puppet’s. His eyes left his mother’s face and burnt through the darkness.

The figure in the doorway turned. The chain rattled slightly with the movement. Far away, down the stairs, a woman was laughing. Her voice sounded warm and

humorous, as if she were pleased, overjoyed even.

Nicholas and Maria listened to the sound with interest.

It was unusual, especially now.

Heavy boot-shod feet clumped noisily down the stairs.

Although barely audible it was still possible to make out the sound of the attendant chain bumping and jingling against the banisters. If it carried on it would chip the paintwork. But neither Maria nor Nicholas moved or spoke to alert their recent guest. They both knew what a waste of energy it would be. Some things, even some unpleasant ones, were best left. This was one of them and so was their previous conversation.

Nicholas sighed. ‘Sergei won’t be up today, Mama, he’s not so good.’

She laced her fingers together under her chin and cleared her throat. ‘Accident?’

‘No, no. I think—’ He could hear running footsteps advancing up the stairs. He put his hand to his forehead and cringed. ‘Sweet Christ! Back again!’

‘What?’ For a moment she couldn’t hear it, but as soon as she did, she nodded her head and sighed deeply. ‘Oh.’

Her son looked at her from between his fingers, his voice bitter. ‘Yes, “oh”, indeed, Mama! Well you might “oh”!’ He sunk his head down deep into his shoulders and waited. His mother stared at his neck with black hatred.

The footsteps got louder. They bounced from step to step as if excited, as if they were anxious to get somewhere, tell someone something.

‘What do you think, Nicky? Another artefact from the cellar? Another item of useless trivia?’

Nicholas’s voice drawled into a sneer. ‘Not all so useless, Mama.’

He knew she’d heard him, but she chose to ignore it.

She often did. More often than he felt she should.

The running footsteps clattered into the room and Natalia, breathless but excited, stood before them, her thin cotton skirt billowing up around her legs like a sail.

The old woman and her son relaxed slightly. The girl looked bright and happy.

Maria reached under the covers for her cigarettes. ‘Well?’

‘Oh, Grandmama, Uncle Nicky, it’s—’ She walked over to the bed and sat down. She was fighting to breathe, but at the same time she so obviously wanted to tell them something. ‘It’s—’

‘Well, come on!’

Nicholas snapped. ‘Oh, for God’s sake let her catch her breath, Mama!’

‘It’s, it’s Robert—’

Nicholas frowned. ‘Robert?’

‘This English boyfriend Natalia has been … you know.

The one she—’

‘He’s sorted out the police!’ It came out in a rush, even breathless she couldn’t contain it. ‘There’s a letter, he …

he sent … It’s … Look, it’s all right now. They’re going to think …’

At the back of Nicholas’s mind a small warning light sprang into life. ‘Letter?’

Natalia put her hand on her chest and took a deep calming breath. ‘Yes.’

‘What letter?’

The girl smiled, but her uncle didn’t smile back. ‘Robert wrote to the police, anonymously, but claiming to be some Nazi who knows and applauds Reinhold Smits.

It’s full of Nazi opinions and things and, well, it tells the police exactly what Smits is and gives reasons why he dismissed Uncle Leonid and hints at why he might have killed him. I told him all he needed to know myself and—’

‘Is he mad!’ Nicholas could feel a layer of darkness closing about him and he didn’t like it. Where was it all going to end?

Natalia laughed. ‘No, he’s in love! He’d do anything for me. Anything.’

‘Does anyone even remotely connected with this family ever tell the truth?’ Nicholas got up from his chair and then threw it to the ground. ‘Well, do they!’

His mother’s voice was stern, a warning. ‘Nicky!’

He looked from one woman’s face to the other. His head pounded and he could feel sour tears of rage starting to sting the inside of his eyes. ‘You are digging a hole, all of you! Unless you stop we are all going into it! Can’t you see?’ He pointed one long, trembling finger at Maria.

‘You! You can stop this, Mama! The police can be here in five minutes—’

‘And ruin my last chance! What is mine to—’

He screamed at her. ‘Mama, when you get “home”

they’re going to put you in a padded room and throw away the key, if you’re lucky!’ He turned to the girl. ‘Natalia, I order you—’

For an old woman Maria put a lot of force behind the hard-wood cigarette box that hit him in the face. Not only did it smart and bruise, it also broke the thin skin just below his eye. Red wetness dribbled slowly down his cheek. Nicholas put one shocked hand up to his face and touched his flowing blood. It stained the tips of his fingers, settled and crusted around the backs of his nails.

When he looked at them again, the two women appeared to him like witches, smiling, amused at what they saw as his weakness. The matriarchy. The family had always been one, despite everything. Even the old stories were full of it, what the wife did, the mother. The sainted, hallowed mother.

He’d often wondered why they didn’t just castrate their men after they’d had enough babies. All the power traditionally associated with manhood was obviously theirs.

Her cigarette lit up and coloured Maria’s glittering eyes yellow. ‘You can go now, Nicky. I will talk to Natalia alone.’