Page 66 of The Half Life of Valery K

Valery fell asleep almost the moment they were on the plane, and again in the car on the way back to City 40 from the airport. He had a feeling that his psyche was trying to cram in as much sleep as it could while there were other people close by and the thrum of the engine was loud.

It felt like a few seconds before Shenkov was shaking his shoulder to say they were at home again. Groggy, because it hadn’t been proper sleep, he dragged himself up and followed.

It was snowing, and everything was strangely, deeply quiet. The cab made dark tracks as it pulled away, and for once, the lights inside the sterile research building looked warm. The journey had taken all day, and in the mauve twilight, everything was still and abandoned; the crane above the new reactor building had stopped at an odd angle, and the usually noisy diggers and bulldozers were quiet under white shrouds. The air had a new, sharp tang to it. The winter, the real winter, was finally rolling in over the Urals.

‘I’m going home,’ Shenkov said. It was the first he’d spoken since the night before. He was holding the keys to one of the facility cars. ‘I’ll see you on Monday.’

Of course it was Friday. Echoing, the weekend stretched ahead with all its tenantless hours, and Valery only just remembered to nod. Even though he was certain he wouldn’t see him on Monday. Or, perhaps he would, but at a distance. It would only ever be at a distance, from now on.

He turned inside alone. He stole into Shenkov’s apartment feeling like a thief to feed Albert, then left fast, into the screaming emptiness of the corridor, and the denser silence of his own flat. There was nothing but the tinny crackle of the bugs. He switched the radio on for voices, and the television, though they clashed. He listened for a long time without hearing, then had to press his hands over his mouth so that he could cry without making a sound, in case anyone in the security office was listening.

23

Stardust

The lab seemed much bigger without anyone in it. It was bright, both from the tall windows that overlooked the lake, and the bleak fluorescents, and without the shadows and shapes of other people to break it up, the light was stark and cold. Valery stood on the threshold for a moment, fighting the urge to turn straight back around and go to the crowded canteen, but after firmly calling himself a moron, he stepped inside. The silence roared and he had to put the radio on. Someone had knocked it, so there was only static at first and his heart clenched, but then he relaxed when he found human voices on the news. He took down an aquarium box of control-group mice. They scuffled excitedly when he gave them some carrots.

He had been working for an hour or so when someone tapped on the door. He looked up, expecting one of the students, and had a lurch of sorrow-joy when he saw it was Shenkov. Shenkov and a little girl with curly hair and freckles. She was about six.

‘Hey. This is Tatiana. She was hoping to visit the mice,’ Shenkov said. He sounded muted; he didn’t want to be here.

Valery wondered what was going on. Not a shouting match, surely; not in front of a little girl. Unless she was here to show Shenkov’s moral high ground. As if Valery didn’t already know where the high ground was. ‘They’re not very tame,’ he said, wary. ‘They bite.’

‘I don’t care about mice,’ Tatiana said, puzzled.

Shenkov was taking on the grim look of an actor who was determined to say his lines properly even though everyone else had forgotten theirs. ‘Tanya, say hello to Comrade Kolkhanov.’

‘Hello,’ she said, cheery despite the mice lie. She bobbed across, ignored the mice, and climbed up on the chair beside Valery to look at the microscope. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Looking at blood samples.’ He moved the eyepiece for her, wishing Shenkov would just go, and take the evidence of his wonderful wholesome family with him.

She leaned down. ‘It’s like jewels!’

He glanced at Shenkov, who seemed tired. He wasn’t dressed for work, just in an ordinary jumper, the same one he had had at the hotel, grey and heavy. It made him look softer, and younger.

‘I imagine Dr Kolkhanov has a lot of things you can look at,’ he said. Where it rested on the table, his hand was shaking. He pulled it away.

Valery felt the way he had when the soldiers bundled him into the back of the van outside the cafe in town. He didn’t want to talk. He would have happily taken all of it to his grave. There was nothing Shenkov could say that Valery didn’t already know. People did stupid things after three quarters of a bottle of vodka; people did stupid things when they were relieved about not having been shot.

‘I do,’ Valery said. Whatever was going on, maybe it would reveal itself once Tatiana was occupied. ‘Do you want to see?’ he added to Tatiana, who nodded fast. You could tell she was the youngest of a lot of children. If there was something she wanted, she was used to diving on it before anyone else nabbed it.

So he set her up with the spare microscope and a selection of sample slides. Some of them were from leaves, some from fur, or insects. She stared down the scope as if it were a window into another universe. When he took out the watercolour pencils for her, she squeaked and set to straight away with the record sheets. He paused when he noticed her arms. She was covered in rashes, so risen he had thought she was wearing long pinkish sleeves. They looked like nettle stings.

‘Sorry to interrupt,’ Shenkov said quietly. He had seen Valery notice the marks. ‘We can go, if you’re busy.’

‘No we can’t,’ Tatiana put in quickly, and rolled the pencils protectively under her hand. ‘You said Mum needed a rest—’

‘No, I know, but we don’t need to take up all of Comrade Kolkhanov’s time—’

‘So why did we come?’

Shenkov looked like he wanted to die. ‘Because he’s a doctor and he might be able to tell us why you’re so ill.’

Valery pulled his eyes up slowly, then down again at the marks on Tatiana’s arms. She was covered in bruises too. He hadn’t noticed before; she seemed like the kind of child to be forever slinging herself out of trees and getting into disagreements with hedges, so it hadn’t stood out. But there were a lot.

‘I’m not ill now, look! All better, I was just being silly this morning.’

‘No, you weren’t.’