His fountain pen, a pad of paper, a green toothbrush with splayed bristles, a folded linen handkerchief, three Metro tokens and his watch, which still ticks. He said to me once that our fear is not that death will be momentous, but that it will be trivial. I pick up each object in turn, unfold the handkerchief, flick through the blank pages of the pad.
I should have known that a man with a talent for being present would have a talent for being absent as well. A suitcase and twelve cardboard boxes – that’s all he left. The boxes are sealed with plastic tape and have been used many times before. Instructions have been written on them in Cyrillic script and then scribbled out.
Of course, I should look through these boxes. Those endless blue notebooks must be somewhere, and there’ll be other letters and documents. He wouldn’t mind me looking. In fact, he’d encourage it. I can almost hear his voice, that gentle American drawl – Yeah, sure, go through it all as much as you want.
He wouldn’t say – See it all exactly as it is, but that’s what he’d mean, because that was always his creed. And for a while I tried to make it mine as well, but now he’s gone I can’t believe in that any more. He had his secrets but he can keep them now. I have my picture of him and I don’t want it blurred. I’ve learnt my lesson: no more meddling with the past.
I pick up those few scattered items and start to push them back into his case, but his smell draws me in. Straw, perhaps? And smoke, and the grime of Moscow, and rough-scented soap. I move aside two towels and a bedsheet. Underneath I see a square of golden-coloured wool – his coat. And beside it, his shoes. I watch my hands lift them, as one might lift a newborn baby, and place them on the tiled floor. They stand there, floodlit by cool evening light. The tongues of those shoes still speak of the high arch of his foot, and the sole is still attached to the leather all around, its hold unweakened. On one toe is a splodge of white paint, which he never quite scratched off, and the laces are brown, because he could find no black in Moscow. My fingers touch the deep-squeezed creases which would once have marked the ball of his foot. Those creases laugh like the lines at the side of his eyes.
I mourn for him, and I mourn for the person I became when I was with him.
I pick at the plastic tape on one of the boxes. Then I fetch a carving knife and wriggle the tip of it in under the tape. Pulling up one cardboard flap, I find a grey plastic filing tray which used to lie on his desk, and a sea-shell paperweight. Then I stop: next to it is a tiny glass bottle with a rubber skin across its neck. Beside the bottle is an empty syringe, the needle removed. I remember it lying on the edge of the sink, between the taps, next to his razor and his wristwatch.
I’m melting like wax. Soon there’ll be nothing left, just a pile of clothes, with an acrid twist of smoke rising from them, and a singed mass of hair. My name is Eva Curren. I am thirty years old and I live in Geneva. I’m going to leave here soon. Just shake up the world and pick out a city. Hope that when you arrive you won’t find yourself there.
I lay the knife down, go to the fridge and take out a bottle of vodka. I pour a glass and drink it, feeling it burn down my throat. Then I pour another and drink that as well. The telephone rings. I wait until it cuts into silence, then unplug it. Sitting at the table near the window, I rest my head on its cool surface. Below, in the communal gardens, the branches of trees spread wide, their leaves flickering orange at the edges. Beyond the garden is a main road, and then the lake, silver-grey, fading into the mist. It’s beginning to rain – fine, light rain – which dances sideways in the wind. The day is closing down.
I go back to his suitcase and take out his pen. In a plastic bag I find a bottle of ink. The pen is slim and green. I know exactly how it fitted into his hand, gripped between those fingers which were not as elegant as I wanted them to be. Write it all down, that’s what he advised. The gold nib of his pen hangs over the expanse of the paper. In my head I try to form words, but I’m unnerved by the sound of my own voice. Its cadences are unfamiliar; it may stutter and evade, or swerve out of control, suddenly rant and rave.
My hand stretches out to open the bottle of ink and unscrew the barrel of the pen. I pull the plunger up and the pen fills. I write my name and then, with a flourish, Memories. But even that is wrong. Memories are gentle, sepia-tinted, long ago. This story happened less than a year ago, and remains more vivid than today. The gold nib of his pen goes down on to the paper and remains there, gathering ink. What was it he said? Once a feeling becomes a word, then we are released from its grip.