Lira was in the garden, barefoot on the grass, her legs slightly apart, her arms hanging loose, her fists closed tight. She slowly advanced one foot and then the other, then raised her fist, advanced again and punched. She willed her body to remember the moves; she recited a kata, one of the very first sequences she had learnt. She looked like someone walking on a tightrope, or in their sleep. It was slow and soft compared with what she had been able to do in the past, but she understood more clearly than ever what these gestures in the void really meant: imaginary combat was all she had left, an imaginary combat with herself, with invisible enemies in front, behind, to the side. She had to keep turning, taking her bearings in the space around her. She repeated the same gesture five, ten times over, each time a little faster. The policeman from Scotland Yard, instructed by Nwankwo to stay there, watched in amazement.
Eventually Lira paused, her body unsteady. She asked the policeman:
“Tell me, is the house on that side?”
“Yes.”
She smiled. She still knew where she was. She could feel the house near her, not just as a shadow but as a solid mass. She walked straight forwards, her hands before her, balancing with her arms. When she reached the door, she sat gently down on the porch steps. With her eyes hidden behind her huge dark glasses she could have been just an ordinary woman catching the last rays of the sun.
She didn’t know anything about this house that Nwankwo had brought her to, just that it was normally lived in by a family with children. On the first evening he had run her a bath. He had put two chairs next to the bathtub, a towel on one, the other for her to sit on. He had led her there, helped her sit down, taken off her shoes, and folded the jumper she handed to him. Then he had gone out, promising to stay just the other side of the door in case she needed help. She had undressed and groped her way into the hot water, holding on tight to the edge of the bathtub. On the bottom she could feel one of those rubber mats put there to stop small children from slipping. He had left it there for her. She must have stayed too long in the water: when she tried to get out the heat of the bath combined with the darkness and steam around her had made her dizzy and she lost her balance. She had called out and he had come back in. She was naked and dripping, crouched prudishly against the bathtub, laughing so as not to cry. He had picked up the towel and wrapped it round her, had helped her to get up and sit down.
“Sorry to inflict the sight of a cripple on you,” she had muttered.
“That wasn’t what I saw,” he had replied.
She was now trying to make herself familiar with this refuge. She imagined it having flowery lampshades, armchairs with high armrests, glass-fronted walnut cupboards – what she saw as a typical English interior, or any typical interior. She had never been interested in decor, always thinking that there would be plenty of time for that when she was old and unable to do much outside. Now it was too late. Back at home in St Petersburg there were photographs that would never be framed, naked light bulbs, curtains that wouldn’t be changed, walls with yellowing paintwork… She went back there in her mind, guided by memory and regrets. She wandered like a ghost through her rather chaotic flat, along the bookcases with photos of Polina along their edges. September 1989, the year she was born – a beautiful baby in a pink cardigan with red flowers knitted by her mother. Next to that, the following year, Polina was sitting on a wooden horse on an old-fashioned carousel, held by Dmitry’s invisible hands. Lira went from one photograph to the next, from one year to the next. She wanted to hold on to them all, trying to remember the date, the place, the colour of the sky, the clothes in each one; she worked on her memory as though it was a muscle, she was determined not to forget. Her memories would be her eyes.
She could clearly see the photo of herself at thirteen, en pointe, a perfect little girl in a tutu, her hair in a gleaming chignon, her large blue eyes raised to the ceiling. She had just won the first prize at the Conservatoire. That photo had been at her parents’ house for a long time, until they replaced it with the one of her wedding to Dmitry. They only liked pictures of their daughter in fancy dress.
Dmitry must have called them. Her father would be sighing, complaining that she had never done the right thing. Her mother, as usual, would be secretly crying and supporting her. Lira banished these thoughts from her mind. Another photo: last winter, she was laughing on a windy seashore by the Baltic. The person who took it must have loved her to make her look so beautiful, and yet the affair hadn’t lasted long.
Beyond the bookcase was the leather armchair and the big mirror with the chipped gilt frame. Lira might have been a busy woman who didn’t bother with much make-up, but she would glance at herself in it morning and evening, moving her head, adjusting her hair, moistening her lips, doing everything to like what she saw. All that was over. She had lost sight of herself now.
She was learning now to plunge down into her memories as others plunge into sleep. She blocked sadness off, biting back the rising tears, tried to avoid brooding on the question that tormented her: would it have been better if she had died? The simplest solution would be just to collapse, everybody would understand. But crying was forbidden. She would remain upright before all these mirrors that now served no purpose.
A car stopped. Two doors slammed, there were two people walking across the gravel. Lira stiffened.
“It’s me, Lira!” Nwankwo shouted, guessing how frightened she would be. “I’ve brought the string you wanted. And we’ve got a visitor.”
Lira got up slowly, her hand on the wall of the house. She didn’t very much like the smell of this visitor, but she liked his first words.
“I’ve been looking for you,” Félix said.
New Scotland Yard.
Report From Detective Inspector Dave Smith.
15th September
Nwankwo Ganbo has installed the blind Russian journalist Lira Kazan in his house at 22 Dawson Street, Oxford.
She does not often leave the house, occasionally spends some time in the garden.
Ganbo stays with her.
For the last two days another man has joined them in the morning.
His first name is Félix. He is French. Photo attached.
They shut themselves in the sitting room. They seem to be working.
Microphones have been installed.