Christmas and New Year came and went, and slowly I began to recover from my dealings with the Digger. It wasn’t so much the stroll in the sewer that had been exhausting as everything that had led up to that golden hour of shimmering happiness. Never in the field of human endeavour had so much effort been exerted for so anti-climactic a finale; at least not any human endeavour I’d been involved in.
Well, never mind: I had my idea for a second book now and had applied for another full year multi-entry Russian visa to give me maximum flexibility for the considerable research it would involve, both in and outside the country. The day after flying back from Scotland I went to the inviting agency (coincidentally only ten minutes’ walk from the Digger’s flat) to drop off my passport for registration with the police. I was on my way back to the metro when suddenly I heard the unpleasant sound of my mobile ringing. I had resisted owning one for years and used it sparingly. I didn’t give the number out to many people, and I didn’t have caller ID, so I looked at the unfamiliar string of digits with suspicion. Should I answer? Probably not. If I wanted to talk to this person then I’d know the number. At the last minute, however, some impulse took over and I punched the key with the little green telephone symbol on it and held it up to my ear:
‘Hello?’
‘Daniel!’
The voice, English and posh, sounded familiar … but I couldn’t place it. The speaker, however, definitely knew me.
‘Who is this?’
‘It’s Edward!’
‘Who?’
‘Edward, from Vadim’s flat! Remember?’
For a moment I was lost. Then I remembered: the exorcist. In the Digger’s kitchen.
‘So how are you?’ Edward sounded exuberant, as though we were long-lost school friends, finally reunited after a long separation.
‘Fine,’ I said. A car hammered past, splashing me with slush.
‘I called you in December but you didn’t answer the phone.’ There was a pause. He was waiting for an explanation.
‘I was away,’ I said.
‘Ha-ha! Now I see. Well, I was wondering if you’d like to meet. I have some – er – interesting material I’d like to show you!’
‘Very good,’ I said. I couldn’t think of much else to say: I was too startled by his sudden irruption into my life.
‘Very interesting material. So when can I give it to you? How about this evening?’
He talked as though we were best friends, and it was normal for me to drop everything so I could meet him. It was a bit overwhelming, especially as I couldn’t actually remember what he looked like.
‘How about the weekend?’ I said.
‘Saturday?’
‘Sunday afternoon.’
‘Where?’
‘Let’s meet on the Arbat, in the Shokoladnitsa cafá. Three o’clock.’
‘Magnificent!’ said Edward. ‘See you then.’
He hung up.
Immediately, three questions entered my head:
I. Why had Edward appeared now, when he’d had three months to call?
2. What was this ‘interesting material’ he was talking about? And, most crucially –
3. What did he want from me?
I had three days to meditate on these questions and prepare myself. I was still burnt out after indulging the whims and fantasies of Mikhailov for so long, and was wary of allowing myself to be taken for a ride again, especially if that ride was going to terminate in another lake of human faeces, or the exorcist equivalent thereof. Meanwhile I was busy with research for the projected second book, which was very politico-historical and so this had absolutely nothing to do with my theme. If anything, it was a dangerous diversion that threatened to use up both energy and resources. I contemplated staying at home and switching the mobile off for a couple of hours.
But at the same time, it isn’t every day a part-time exorcist, music producer and documentary maker calls you up and invites you to step into his world. And don’t we all dream of that one, miraculous phone call that will transform our dreary, everyday lives? I know I do. This almost certainly wasn’t it, but all the same, I couldn’t turn him away. The lure of derangement was too hard to resist. I had to see where this would lead. Which led to two more questions:
4. What if Edward really was deeply embroiled in the world of exorcisms?
5. What if he had some really good stuff to show me?
I thought about both, but could come to no satisfactory answers. I supposed I could flog an interview with a bearded priest talking about demons to a magazine somewhere. But I didn’t want to. I would have had to satisfy the editor’s assumptions about the story before my own, probably removing everything that made the story interesting to me in the first place. It had happened before. But I didn’t want to do that. I like to do things my way.
Anyway, who cared about all that? It was enough that it might prove to be an interesting encounter. I agreed to meet him.
The cafá I had mentioned was only three minutes from my front door, but even so I arrived ten minutes late, as my inner voice told me that Edward was not the kind of guy to be on time. My inner voice was correct, but he was even later than I had anticipated. I wound up sitting alone at a table, sipping on a lukewarm hot chocolate, listening to the shrieking and gibbering of Moscow’s Golden Youth, a gaggle of pretty boygirls and babywomen in designer jeans, a single pair of which cost twice my monthly rent.
I was starting to think that maybe I should have chosen McDonald’s. It was further to walk, but the clientele were less irritating. There wasn’t anything I could do to filter out their chirruping, and to make matters worse, I had decided not to bring my mobile phone, a self-defeating and ultimately pointless act of rebellion against … I’m not sure what, exactly, but there it was, and so I couldn’t call to find out what had happened to Edward. So I had no choice but to sit amid them, surrounded by smoke and blabber, waiting, waiting, waiting …
While I was there I realised that I liked this generation less than the previous one. At least their fathers had made a bit of effort when they nicked everything in the country: some of them even got shot in the head for their troubles. But these pasty-faced wankers, what use were they?
Half an hour passed. He wasn’t coming. I paid the bill and left.
Later Edward called, very apologetic. He had been caught in one of Moscow’s epic traffic jams, and was keen to reschedule our meeting, as though he feared I might lose interest in exorcism if he gave me long enough to think about it. I thought of the perpetual reorganising and eternally fluctuating demands of the Digger: I didn’t want to get involved in that kind of nonsense again. I said I could only meet the next day. Edward agreed.