First, she wrote to the editor at Random House, asking if they had any records concerning Irena Markova, her great-grandfather’s translator. Could they shed light on those monthly payments? Next she went into the genealogy website she used and asked how she would track down someone in Brno in the Czech Republic, giving all the details she had. In her experience people on genealogy forums went to great lengths to help each other.
She sat back to sip her coffee, wondering if there was anything else she could do to find out about Irena Markova. She noticed that her Random House email wasn’t getting through but was sitting in the out-folder while the rainbow circle span round and round, implying the connection wasn’t working. She pressed the ‘Send and Receive All’ button and instantly something shifted. The Random House one went through, and then another, the one from her drafts folder, the angry one to Tom.
‘No!’ she cried, trying too late to click to stop it as it disappeared into the ether. A second later it popped up in her ‘Sent’ folder. Oh Christ, what have I done? Kitty thought. Now she would have to write to apologise for her sarcasm.
Her flight left on the 14th of October, the following Wednesday, and arrived in London at dawn on the 15th so she supposed she could meet Tom that evening. She would be jetlagged though. Maybe she should stay with a friend and wait till the weekend.
As she hesitated an email arrived. It was from Tom and the header read ‘If you don’t love me any more, please just tell me …’
There was no text inside. Her eyes filled with tears. It wasn’t fair to punish him like this. She typed a brief reply: ‘I’m arriving back next Thursday. Meet me at 6 p.m, in the bandstand.’
It was a spot in their local park where they used to meet back in the days before they lived together. She would rush there, stomach fluttery with excitement, desperate to see him again even if they had only parted that morning. Suddenly, thinking about the forthcoming meeting, she felt that same buzz of anticipation.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Europe, autumn 1947
Dmitri was ashamed on arrival in London to realise how much Americans had been cushioned from the impact of the war. Back home they had suffered no physical hardships but here there were gaping holes between buildings where rockets had destroyed people’s homes, leaving whole streets looking like mouths with missing teeth. The central London hotel in which he was accommodated was shabby and faded, with unreliable electricity and strictly limited hot water. The food was terrible: greasy stews with meat of indeterminate origin that got stuck between his teeth, served with watery boiled potatoes. The smell of cabbage permeated the hallways. He was glad he had brought his own coffee, although it did not taste the same with the milk powder he was offered in lieu of fresh.
In Paris people were starving. Women offered themselves on street corners, while ragged children clung to their legs. When they called out their fees Dmitri realised he could have hired a prostitute for the equivalent of less than a dollar had he been so inclined. Instead he handed out cash to those he passed, and they mumbled their thanks without meeting his eyes. Who was he to think he could write about depression? These people knew far more than him.
In each city he gave a short speech to a crowd, usually around fifty souls, then answered their questions. What did he think of the movie of In the Pale Light of Dawn? ‘No comment,’ he said to general laughter. Had The Boot That Kicked really been an anti-fascist book, as was thought at the time? ‘That was absolutely my intention,’ he said, ‘but I hope it can be read as a diatribe against any form of oppressive state control.’ ‘How did he feel when reviewers compared him to his compatriot Vladimir Nabokov?’ ‘I wasn’t aware they did, but would be immensely flattered if that were the case.’
A few copies of his books were sold, then he was usually taken to dinner by his local publisher plus wife. Dmitri had never been comfortable talking to strangers, despite all the lessons he had learned from Rosa over the years. He struggled with these foreign publishers, all of them speaking a language that was not their native tongue, talking about books he had not read, and he wished Rosa was there because she would have made the conversation flow smoothly.
His favourite part of the tour was the long train rides between cities when he could gaze out the windows at farm workers bringing in the harvest, at small villages with bustling marketplaces and churches that had lost their steeples in the war, at vast forests on the lower slopes of mountain ranges that already had snow-crusted peaks although it was just early October. It was a time for contemplation.
He had no desire to live in Europe any more. America had welcomed him with open arms and he hoped their constitution and ethnic mix would prevent any extreme political parties taking power as they had in Russia and Germany. He’d noticed some anti-Russian sentiments in the press – mostly comments on the territory they had grabbed in the post-war scramble and fears that Communist sentiment might spread across the Atlantic – but it did not worry Dmitri as he agreed with them. His hatred of Communism was stronger than ever.
He was concerned about the last stop of the tour, in Prague, because the previous year the Communist Party had won thirty-eight per cent of the vote. What were the Czech people thinking? he wondered. Had they not heard of the Soviet show trials and mass executions, of the Siberian prison camps with forced labour, of the secret police who arrested you for nothing but a sideways glance at the wrong moment? Why had they invited him, a known critic of the Soviet regime, to speak there? Could it be a trap?
His Czech publisher met him at the train station and seemed nervous as they took a taxi to the hotel.
‘There will be spies from the Interior Ministry at your speech this evening so I suggest you steer clear of politics. We don’t want to have a famous American author arrested while in our care.’ He gave a little laugh, as though trying to make light of it, but Dmitri saw the nervous dart of his eyes and recognised it from Russia in 1917, when you could never be sure of the allegiance of anyone you spoke to.
‘I don’t plan to discuss politics but my audiences have invariably asked my views at previous stops on this tour,’ Dmitri said.
The publisher nodded. ‘I think you’ll find they won’t here.’
The talk that evening was in the Café Slavia, an Art Deco establishment on the banks of the Charles River with a view towards the castle. It was famous as a meeting place of Prague intellectuals, such as Franz Kafka and Karel Capek, but Dmitri’s audience seemed composed of a mixture of down-at-heel students and elderly ladies, one of whom had a miniature dog on her lap. Dmitri hoped it would not interrupt him by yapping. To the side of the hall stood two men in long dark coats. He could tell from the hostile way they regarded him that they were secret police. Unwanted memories came flooding back and he hurried to the lectern to begin his speech. He was booked on a train to Istanbul the following morning and suddenly couldn’t wait to get on board.
He talked about the Russian literature that had shaped his literary tastes, about the way his own life experiences fed into his writing, and about the influence of America with its movies and fast food and ubiquitous advertisements leading to consumer culture and a generation who were no longer satisfied with the lives their parents had led.
When he finished, the questions flooded in. How many drafts of each novel did he write? There were gasps when he replied ‘Around twenty.’ Had he started a new book to follow Toward the Sunset? ‘Not yet,’ he replied, explaining that he could not write on demand but had to wait for inspiration. The men in the dark coats stood expressionless.
When the last questioner had taken her turn, Dmitri announced that he would sign books at a table in the corner. A waiter brought him a glass of sweet wine and a cream cake, and he signed twenty-one books – rather more than he had sold at any of his other European events. The Czechs liked their literature, he mused.
The last book had been signed, and Dmitri was sipping the wine, waiting to say goodbye to the publisher, when a shadow fell over the table.
‘Hello, Malama,’ a soft voice said.