Page 7 of The Half Life of Valery K

3

The Lighthouse

The lady who came out of the side office was older than Valery; grandmotherly, shapeless, with the stumping walk of someone who had hip problems. Despite the drab dress, she had bright red shoes. And, incredibly, he knew her.

Dr Resovskaya had been his research supervisor when he did his undergraduate year out in Berlin. She was rounder, older – she had once been stunning and it was faded now into bad health – but it was her. He felt like he was seeing the fairy godmother from a story. It all rushed back. Her husband had run the institute, but everyone had known it was she who really wrote the research papers, very quietly, because the Nazis had been making noises about getting rid of women in scientific institutes. The last time he’d seen her, he had been nineteen and star-struck. She had put his name down on one of her papers as a co-author. He had nearly died of happiness.

‘Valery! You look terrible; I see you met Comrade Shenkov,’ she said brightly, and engulfed Valery in a hug. She was larger than him all round, so it gave him a nervous flicker. But she smelled familiar; after all these years, she was still using exactly the same lavender-scented soap, and all at once he was nineteen again, getting confused over the effects of gamma rays on rats and feeling hopelessly in awe when she sorted out three weeks of confusion in three minutes. He clung to her.

‘Elena. You’re just the same.’ His voice came out strained, and his own vision had sharpened because his eyes were full of overwhelmed tears.

Dr Resovskaya waved her hand and, he suspected, deliberately misinterpreted. ‘Don’t worry about Shenkov, he’s just here to nanny us.’

Valery couldn’t imagine Shenkov being anyone’s nanny, unless he was the sort who waited until your parents had gone out and then sold you to an Albanian.

‘I’ll leave him with you,’ Shenkov said to her. Valery had to watch him go, trying to work out just why it was so profoundly disturbing to meet a security officer with that glittering grace. He decided it was because it made him feel like flies probably felt when they veered towards the crystalline strands of a great web for a better look. ‘Good afternoon, comrade.’

Everyone in the lab looked relieved once he’d gone. They must all have been Shenkoved on the way in.

Dr Resovskaya took Valery’s elbow, very gently, as if he were thirty years older. ‘You’re the last of the new group to arrive, so let’s settle down with some coffee and do the safety briefing.’

‘There’s coffee?’ he said, all his insides burning with happiness and shame rolled up. He was forty-six, for God’s sake. Absurdly, he wished Shenkov would come back and be doubtful. If someone trusted you to withstand some coolness, they trusted you not to collapse on the floor. Dr Resovskaya plainly didn’t.

She sparkled. She could make her eyes flash when she liked, almost without moving. ‘Absolutely there’s coffee.’ She studied him properly, up and down. ‘They sent you straight here?’

‘Yes.’

‘You won’t have brought anything, then? Well, let me take you through, and I’ll ring reception and get someone to buy you some clothes from town.’

‘That’s …’ He wanted to say kind, but it was beyond kind. He pulled his glasses off and polished them for an excuse to keep his eyes down. ‘Did you request me for this?’

‘Of course I did.’

He had to swallow the lump in his throat. ‘Why?’

She looked dismayed. ‘It’s not like the Soviet Union has biochemists specialising in radiation coming out of its ears, is it? That was quite an administrative cock-up on someone’s part. You should have been here years ago.’

‘Well – it’s not that unusual a … there are plenty of other—’

‘Not like you.’

‘Like me how?’

She laughed. ‘Oh, dear. Are you still spending a good sixty per cent of your time trying to work out why you don’t always understand other humans and not factoring in how most people’s brains are bimbling around in second gear while yours is a fucking jet engine with no off switch?’

Valery couldn’t tell if he was being made fun of. ‘I don’t think I know what’s going on any more.’

‘Oh, you are! Good stuff. Honestly, I still tell new students that story about how you annihilated Professor Kurchatov at your doctoral defence and you didn’t even understand why he got flustered.’

‘What?’ said Valery, who remembered that Professor Kurchatov – the great, sainted Kurchatov who was now in charge of the whole Soviet nuclear programme – had been cross and dismissive and then inexplicably given him the PhD, but not anything that could possibly be called annihilation.

She patted him. ‘Never change. Now off you go. Just through there. Left. Shake some hands, I’ll be through in a jiff.’

He had to lean against the wall for a few seconds to get himself together.

Not only was there coffee, but cheese, and real butter, and fresh bread; things he hadn’t seen for years. It was all laid out in a neat buffet at the back of a presentation room. At the front was a projector. A technician adjusted something in its workings, and while she did, other people filtered in; the studenty types from the lab, and a couple of supervisors nearer his age. He was surprised when one of the older women smiled and came to say hello.

‘You’re Valery Kolkhanov? Good to meet an actual grown-up, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘We’re from the Biophysics Institute, from the Ministry of Health.’