“You’ll see,” said Dmitry… (No, I won’t see, Lira thought) “Polina is quite safe there. It’s a beautiful house with a big garden, well out of reach of any surveillance, no telephone, no television, no computers, no tax status, no bank cards or bank accounts, no electricity bill…” Dmitry was extolling the virtues of his friend. Jacques had been a film-designer; he had become allergic to modern life, with its data-gathering and surveillance cameras. Dmitry described his survival economy enthusiastically, as if it was his own. He told her about the generator, the solar panels, the wood-burning stove for cooking and heating the house, and the battery-powered radio, their only link with the outside world, on which they listened to the news each morning. Lira realized, as she listened to him talking, that after she had left him she had condemned him to a lifetime of fear. He would forever be in the position of the anxious spouse waiting for news, always dreading the telephone call that would announce her death. They had never got around to divorcing.
He had come to meet her at Gare du Nord. A friend of Félix’s had told him the day and time of her arrival, ringing from a telephone box. He didn’t greet Nwankwo, and just gave him a cold stare. They set off at once, driving south, towards their daughter. She didn’t tell him anything about what had happened since she had left the hospital, and he didn’t ask. He had put that morning behind him when the ambulance and the plane had been left waiting. But he did tell her about the political climate in Moscow, where Louchsky was growing stronger and stronger, and was now regarded as someone both influential and respectable. She could hear the challenging tone of his voice. He wanted to hear her admit that she had lost the game and that she been wrong all along, ever since they had separated.
“You’re more angry with me than with him, aren’t you, Dmitry?”
“One is only angry with those one used to love, Lira.”
They drove for more than three hours. It was a long journey, punctuated by petrol stations and neutral remarks. The silence was disguised by the roar of the motorway. They were buried in their own thoughts. Dmitry brooded on the things he was not allowed to say, and his feeling that his life had been wasted. Lira was dreading the moment when she would have to tell her daughter that she couldn’t see her, but she also dwelt on the strange and agreeable memory of her night with Nwankwo. Behind her dark glasses she almost seemed to be watching the passing landscape. When her head flopped to the side Dmitry knew that she was asleep.
Eventually the road began to wind along the edge of deep gorges, causing a sort of agitated electroencephalogram in Lira’s brain. Dmitry drove slowly and carefully: he was not used to this rugged Cévennes landscape. However, the more dangerous the roads, the safer they were. The two lost Russians, Dmitry and Lira, knew nothing of the history of this mountainous area, which had held out against Julius Caesar and sheltered all manner of heretics and rebels, whose tombs are scattered along the hiking paths. Now the landscape was littered with yurts and banners denouncing the folly of the modern world. But the ancient stone walls of the houses and the streams rushing down to the villages also told their story: the sharp ridges of the Cévennes hills delineated the fortifications around a land of rebels and refugees.
“It’s beautiful here, I can feel it,” she said.
“Very beautiful. Breathtaking,” he replied.
The car now passed an ancient wash house with a sign saying “drinking water”, and crossed a narrow stone bridge. Lira knew this because she could hear the river rushing beneath her. They passed some houses – a few dogs barked as the car went by – and then pulled up a steep hill, out of the village and onto a rough and rocky road.
“What does she know?” Lira asked again.
“I’ve already told you… I said you had been attacked, that you were wounded, but I didn’t mention your eyes. That’s what you wanted isn’t it?”
“Yes…”
The car stopped. “Wait for me here,” Dmitry said, getting out. She heard him walking away, knocking on a door, and then quickly becoming angry and returning to the car. “Polina’s not here any more.” Behind him came his friend, the invisible man, explaining that it wasn’t the first time she’d gone away. “She always comes back to ask if you’ve written, Madame. Good evening, I’m Jacques. She can’t sit still here, your daughter, she senses that something isn’t right and I can’t very well lock her up. She’s made some friends in the village, that’s where she goes…”
They turned round and went back down. Dmitry was in a rage. He stopped at the bar and asked a few questions. Eventually they got an address and soon were knocking at the door.
“Get out with your stinking lies!” Polina screamed from behind the door.
“Polina, your mother is here with me, she’s waiting for you in the car.”
Then the floorboards creaked, the door opened and Polina flew out into the corridor without a look at her father. He watched her androgynous blonde figure disappear down the stairs. He looked into the smelly apartment and saw an open laptop. She must have Googled her mother’s name and found out everything. Polina was already outside. She opened the car door and threw herself at Lira’s neck, hugging her and crying “Mum”. They had not seen each other for six months.
“Polina, listen, I must tell you—”
“I know, Mum.”
“What do you know? No, don’t take my glasses off, it’s not very…”
But Polina firmly removed them. She wanted to see what had been kept from her, what had been stolen: her mother’s eyes, the first eyes that had looked at her, the eyes that saw everything. There was nothing there, just two peeled, withered eyelids, glued shut. Not a hint of the light that had watched over her, that flashing shade of blue that she had inherited, not a glimmer, not a spark. A spasm of horror went through Polina’s body. It was as though she too had had lost something – all her life had been contained in those eyes. Lira could sense her daughter’s every convulsion. She wanted to say something, to hide, but Polina didn’t give her the time. She seized her mother’s face between her hands and kissed her eyes, the right hand one and then the left.
Dmitry stood on the pavement, watching them from the other side of the street. They still hugged each other in the same way as before, Polina on Lira’s knee, with her legs folded and her arms around her neck. They slotted together perfectly, whatever their ages, whatever the moment, whatever Lira had done wrong. But who was comforting whom down here in the bottom of a forgotten valley in a country far from home?
Dmitry walked over, gently pushed Polina’s legs down and shut the door. He got back in the car and drove the two women in his life back up to the invisible house.
