Where Light Becomes Silence. Tom 2

“Fair.”

“And two extra takes do not turn into an endless number.”

“Not unless we agree separately.”

“Exactly.”

Dmitry listened and became neither an interpreter nor a judge. A working rule was arising between the people who would have to keep it at the next session.

He played three versions: the original, the first new one and the second.

Ksyusha listened with her eyes closed. Dmitry watched the timeline. Marina, who had not intervened until then, noted something on her list.

“The middle is better in the original,” Ksyusha said. “The ending in the second. Shall we join them?”

“That is what I should do,” the sound engineer answered.

“Show me.”

He moved the short passage across, aligned the join and played the whole line.

“Again,” Ksyusha asked.

The sound engineer looked at the clock.

“We listen once more, then we take a decision.”

“That suits me.”

After the second playback Ksyusha agreed. Marina was given an exact duration, closed her laptop and left. Forty minutes of the session were left. The sound engineer started the export and went into the next room to check the backup.

The two of them were left in the control room.

Ksyusha put the tablet into her bag.

“He asked you first?”

“Yes.”

“Asked you what?”

“Whether you always take a long time choosing, and how much time he should allow.”

“And what did you say?”

“That he should ask you.”

She did up the zip.

“You could have answered.”

“I could.”

“You know the answer, after all.”

“I know only my own.”

“Then tell me yours.”

Dmitry turned his chair towards her.

“Sometimes you take a long time choosing.”

“How long?”

“Long enough for people to get tired of waiting.”

Ksyusha had expected a more careful formulation. For a second her face changed; then she glanced at the monitor.

“Which version is in the project name?”

“The eleventh.”

“And people do not get tired of waiting?”

“They do.”

“So in that we are alike.”

“Yes.”

“Only my eleventh version fits into three minutes.”

“Yours is in plain view.”

“And nobody saw your previous ten?”

“They saw them. They simply were not standing behind glass.”

Ksyusha sat down in the free chair.

“It comes out strangely. You agree with him, and you did not say so behind my back.”

“He was asking about you.”

“And if the answer is truthful?”

“The truth does not become my property simply because I noticed it.”

“You are avoiding an ordinary working question very handsomely just now.”

“No. He got an answer to the ordinary working question: two extra takes. That is enough for a schedule. The rest concerned your character.”

“And that cannot be discussed without me?”

“By me it can. With you.”

For a while Ksyusha studied her own track on the screen.

“We do discuss other people at home sometimes.”

“We do.”

“Then where is the line?”

Dmitry did not answer at once. A ready formula here would have been convenient and almost certainly false.

“In the purpose, I suppose. You can name what somebody did in order to take a decision. You can ask for advice if you cannot manage. And you can assemble a picture of a person while he is not there, because that is easier than asking him directly.”

“Was he assembling a picture today?”

“Looking for a short cut, rather.”

“And you?”

“Did not want to be that short cut.”

Ksyusha rested her elbows on her knees.

“If he had asked in front of me, would you have said that I take a long time choosing?”

“If you had asked for my opinion, yes.”

“I have asked now.”

“And I have said it.”

“What else?”

“Sometimes you go on looking for a version after the problem has been solved.”

She was silent, waiting for him to go on.

“Because you are afraid of letting out something that cannot be taken back,” Dmitry added. “Sometimes that saves the work. Sometimes it only takes time.”

Ksyusha nodded slowly.

“That was unpleasant.”

“I know.”

“But right.”

“Possibly.”

“Why possibly?”

“Because you know better what you were afraid of in the booth.”

She looked through the glass at the empty microphone.

“Today — the stage.”

“The one that has not even been arranged yet?”

“It has been arranged.”

Ksyusha held out her phone with the letter open. The date was four weeks away.

“You answered?”

“This morning.”

“Why did you not say?”

“I wanted to get used to it myself first.”

He gave the phone back.

“Have you got used to it?”

“No. But it has happened already.”

The sound engineer came back with the drive.

“The backup is done. Shall we listen to the export?”

They put on headphones. The song ran from beginning to end. The new ending did not draw attention to itself — it had become part of the whole, which was what it had been changed for.

After the playback the sound engineer took off his headphones.

“Do we accept it?”

He was looking at Ksyusha.

“We accept it,” she answered.

“Then I send it to Marina.”

While the file was uploading, Ksyusha wrote the date into her calendar. Dmitry saw the entry but did not propose a programme, rehearsals or a list of equipment. The day before, she had asked him not to do that without a separate conversation.

The sound engineer noticed the new entry.

“Is that the chamber evening?”

“Yes.”

“Shall I set aside a separate studio session for you to prepare?”

He was asking Ksyusha.

“A full session is not necessary. First I want to go through the order of the songs, the backing tracks and the transitions at home.”

“When?”

She opened the calendar. Earlier a question of this kind would almost automatically have passed to Dmitry: he knew the studio’s workload better, and the technical scope, and the usual rhythm of the work. Now Ksyusha compared her own days with the windows on offer.

“Thursday after seven.”

“Seven is taken. I can give you from ten past eight until nine.”

“That suits me.”

“Will Dmitry be there?”

Ksyusha looked at him.

“I have an acceptance session for other material on Thursday,” he said. “I may not make it.”

She turned back to the sound engineer.

“Then we shall begin without him. We shall leave the duet song for the end.”

“Very well. Send the backing tracks in advance.”

“I shall send them tomorrow.”

The sound engineer entered the time in the studio schedule and sent the confirmation straight to Ksyusha.

“Will you really begin without me?” Dmitry asked, when the man had moved off to the computer.

“I shall.”

“And if I do not make it at all?”

“I shall go through my part. We can rehearse the duet separately.”

He did not promise that he would certainly cancel the acceptance session or find a way to come. Ksyusha did not need a proof that her first preparation mattered more than all his tasks. It was enough to know the conditions in advance and to build her own work so that Dmitry’s absence did not cancel it.

“Only do not send me a list of exercises before Thursday,” she said.

“Not even one?”

“If I ask for it.”

“Understood.”

Out in the corridor Ksyusha said:

“I liked the fact that you stopped him.”

“I did not stop him.”

“Redirected him.”

“That is more exact.”

“But if you have an opinion about me, I want to know it.”

“Very well.”

“Not when somebody else asks.”

“When, then?”

Ksyusha pressed the button for the lift.

“When it concerns what we do together.”

“Even the unpleasant kind?”

“Especially.”

The doors opened. She went in first.

“Only say it to me straight,” Ksyusha added.

Dmitry went into the lift after her.

“I shall. To you first of all.”

Chapter Four

Vera

On Tuesday Ksyusha arrived twenty minutes early.

The café was on the ground floor of an old office building. Inside there were round tables on thin metal legs, a case of desserts turned slowly by the till, and music that nobody was listening to came from the speakers. Ksyusha chose a place by the wall, from where she could see the entrance.

While she waited, she opened the note three times; it held the one sentence she had written down:

“I broke your trust and took from you the right to decide for yourself what to do.”

There was nothing below it.

Dmitry had offered to listen if she wanted to rehearse the conversation. Ksyusha had refused. An apology tested in advance for how convincing it was would too easily have turned into a performance. At the meeting she had to hear a living person, not deliver a prepared text correctly.

Vera came in at six exactly.

Ksyusha recognised her at once, although her face had changed more than the photographs on social media suggested. Her hair was shorter. Her movements were calmer. Vera stopped at the entrance, found Ksyusha with her eyes and came over.

“Hello.”

“Hello.”

They did not embrace.

Vera took off her coat and laid it on the next chair. She left her bag at her feet.

“Have you been waiting long?”

“Twenty minutes or so. I came early.”

“I see.”

A waitress came up. Vera ordered black tea, Ksyusha water. When they were alone again, both of them looked at the table, as though the beginning of the conversation were already lying there.

“Thank you for agreeing,” Vera said.

“You wrote.”

“Yes.”

“Why now?”

Vera ran her fingers along the strap of her bag.

“I was at my parents’. Sorting out my old things. I found a card from you and realised that I could now sit at the same table as you. That seemed enough to write.”

Not for a reconciliation. Not because it had all passed. Simply for the same table.

“I am glad you wrote,” Ksyusha said, and at once heard how the sentence pulled the conversation towards her own feeling. “But I understand that you did not do it to make things easier for me.”

Vera raised her eyes to her.

“Do you still correct yourself so much as you go?”

“Especially now.”

“I noticed.”

The water came. Ksyusha waited until the waitress had moved away.

“I want to say the main thing. I told my mother what you had trusted me with. After that she rang your parents. I broke your trust and took from you the right to decide for yourself what to do. I was wrong.”

Vera listened without interrupting.

Ksyusha could have added how often she had remembered that evening, how ashamed she had been, how twice she had written to her. All of it was true, and none of it changed anything in the act she had named.

“Is that all?” Vera asked.

“To begin with, yes.”

“Without ‘I meant well’?”

“Without.”

Vera gave a short nod.

“All right.”

Her tea came in a glass teapot. She poured a cup, tasted it and pushed the saucer away.

“Do you know what made me angriest back then?”

“That I told?”

“That too. But afterwards everyone decided the story had ended well. I stayed at the university, I got my degree. So your panic had supposedly saved me from a mistake.”

Ksyusha remembered repeating that argument herself. First to Vera, then to herself.

“A degree justifies nothing,” she said.

“You understand that now.”

“Yes.”

“But back then you followed me down the corridor saying, ‘One day you will understand.’ My parents were already making me explain myself, and my tutor, and the hostel warden. And on top of that you demanded that I understand you.”

Ksyusha clenched her fingers under the table.

“I remember.”

“No,” Vera said. “You remember what you said. I remember what came after.”

She did not raise her voice. Because of that, every word kept its own weight.

After the scandal her parents rang Vera several times a day. Her father turned up without warning. Her mother demanded the number of every friend she meant to stay the night with. When Vera was late back from lectures, there were fresh accusations at home. The decision to stay at the university may indeed have been her own decision — only she had had to make it under supervision, among people convinced that she was ready to wreck her life.

“I stopped telling anyone anything I had not yet decided myself,” Vera said. “Even people I trusted. Because I thought: they will take fright and start saving me again.”

“I am sorry.”

“I know.”

“How?”

“You always looked guilty when we ran into each other.”

Ksyusha lowered her eyes.

“I wrote two letters.”

“Why did you not send them?”

“In the first I justified myself. In the second I asked you to make me feel better.”

“Good that you did not send them.”

The answer was so direct that Ksyusha felt something close to relief. Here at least nothing had to be guessed.

“I have not come to ask that we be friends again,” she said.

Vera looked at her closely.

“Then what do you want?”

It was the same question Dmitry had asked. Only now, to dodge it would mean once again filling someone else’s time with her own remorse.

“To hear what happened to you after what I did. To say that I understand my responsibility. And not to argue with whatever you decide next.”

“A beautiful answer.”

“I prepared the first part.”

“And the second?”

“The second I had to understand just now.”

Vera sipped her tea.

At the next table a man was discussing a furniture delivery on the phone. Someone dropped a spoon by the till. The waitress put a fresh plate of pastries in the case. The world around them attached no special significance to their meeting, and there was honesty in that: eight years apart did not become a solemn scene simply because Ksyusha had at last learned to say the right words.

“I do not hate you,” Vera said.

Ksyusha breathed out slowly.

“But I still find it hard to trust you.”

The relief broke off before it could become hope.

“I understand.”

“No, you do not. Not yet. We have been sitting here forty minutes. You are behaving carefully. Perhaps you really have changed. But trust is when I tell you something unfinished and do not wonder whom you will ring once we have parted.”

“I shall not ring anyone.”

Vera raised her eyebrows slightly.

Ksyusha heard her own promise and corrected herself:

“That is asking you to believe me straight away again.”

“Yes.”

“Then do not believe me.”

“All right.”

There was no cruelty in the answer. Vera was simply using the permission that, back then, no one had asked her for.

“Does Dmitry know?” she asked.

“That I told my mother — yes.”

“And the rest?”

Ksyusha did not pretend not to understand the question.

“He knows that your parents came to the hostel and that after that we stopped speaking. The calls and the checking up — you told me about those today.”

“Will you tell him?”

Her first answer was “of course”. Dmitry was her husband; with him she talked over whatever happened in her life. But closeness to him did not turn Vera’s words into family property.

“Only if you allow it. Or I shall say that I have heard about the consequences and leave the details to you.”

Vera stirred her tea with the spoon, although she had not added sugar.

“About my parents you may. And that I find it hard to trust. About my life now — no.”

“All right.”

“Would you really have asked?”

“After what happened between us I am obliged to.”

“You are not obliged. You could simply have decided that a husband may be told everything.”

Ksyusha held her gaze.

“I could.”

“That is why I am asking.”

Vera put the spoon back on the saucer.

“Did Dmitry want to come?”

“He did not offer. I told him I would be on my own.”

“Was he not hurt?”

“No.”

“A convenient man.”

“Sometimes very inconvenient. Today — spot on.”

Vera almost smiled.

This short exchange did not make Dmitry a party to the meeting. On the contrary, for the first time it clearly marked the line beyond which he remained. Vera knew which of her words would reach him and which would end at this table.

They finished their tea. Then they talked about the university — carefully, choosing memories that did not demand closeness. Vera said she sometimes saw two girls from their year. She asked how Ksyusha had come to music. Ksyusha answered briefly: Dmitry wrote songs, she had been offered the chance to try singing, and in time the work had become shared. She did not turn the story into a happy biography meant to prove what a good person she had become.

An hour later Vera looked at her watch.

“I must go.”

“Of course.”

They put on their coats and went out together. Outside it was cooler than Ksyusha had expected. At the entrance people went off in different directions the moment they crossed the threshold.

“May I write to you sometimes?” she asked.

Vera thought about it.

“You may.”

“You do not have to answer.”

“I know.”

“Yes. Sorry.”

“What for this time?”

“For explaining your rights to you again.”

Vera smiled for the first time. Faintly, but without the old distance.

“Now that you have got right.”

Ksyusha smiled too.

“Then I shall just write. When I have something to say.”

“All right.”

There was still no embrace. Vera held out her hand. Ksyusha shook it without trying to hold on to it any longer.

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

Vera walked off towards the bus stop. Ksyusha stayed by the entrance and watched her go right up to the moment she realised what she was waiting for: that Vera might look back. Then she turned away herself and set off for the metro.

At home Dmitry was working in the study. He came out into the hall when he heard the key.

“Hello.”

“Hello.”

He looked at her face, took her coat and hung it in the wardrobe.

“Do you want something to eat?”

“Later.”

“All right.”

Ksyusha took off her shoes, washed her hands and went through into the room. Dmitry went back to the computer. He did not ask whether Vera had forgiven her, did not offer to go over the conversation, did not try to read her face and prescribe her comfort.

A few minutes later she stopped in the study doorway of her own accord.

“Are you busy?”

“I can finish.”

“No need. May I sit down?”

Dmitry cleared the folders off the second chair.

“She has not forgiven me,” Ksyusha said.

He saved the file and only then turned round.

“Did she say so?”

“She said she does not hate me. And that she still finds it hard to trust me.”

“Those are different things.”

“Yes.”

Ksyusha told him about the parents, the calls, the sudden visits, about how for many years the degree had been used as proof that someone else’s interference had been right. Some sentences she repeated almost word for word. Others she kept to herself. Vera had been talking to her, not to Dmitry; the right to pass things on did not arise automatically out of the closeness of marriage.

“We agreed that I may write sometimes,” Ksyusha finished. “She need not answer.”

“Will you write?”

“When I have something to say.”

Dmitry’s phone rang. The screen showed: “Ksyusha’s Mum”.

Usually she rang her daughter. If Ksyusha was slow to pick up, she would call him and open the conversation by asking whether everything was all right with them. Ksyusha took her own phone out of her bag: two missed calls.

“Answer it,” she said.

Dmitry put it on speaker only after she nodded.

“Good evening.”

“Dima, hello. Where have you both vanished to? I keep ringing Ksyusha and she does not pick up.”

“She has only just come in.”

“Is everything all right?”

“Everything is all right.”

“Did Vera come? Did they meet?”

Ksyusha closed her eyes. She herself had mentioned the meeting a few days earlier and had now forgotten that for her mother the subject was not closed.

“They met,” Dmitry answered.

“Well, and how was it? Why did they stop speaking back then? Has Ksyusha told you?”

He looked at Ksyusha.

“She has.”

“So what happened?”

“It is not my story to tell.”

The line went quiet.

“I am not asking out of curiosity, you know.”

“I understand.”

“All right. Then put Ksyusha on.”

Ksyusha shook her head and mouthed: “Later.”

“She is tired,” Dmitry said. “She will ring you back tomorrow.”

“She might at least send a message. I worry.”

“She will.”

They said goodbye. Dmitry put the phone down on the desk.

“Did you cover for me?” Ksyusha asked.

“In the last sentence — yes. You did not say you would send a message.”

“I do not mean the message.”

“Then no.”

“You did not tell her, although you know I was to blame.”

“That changes nothing.”

“Why?”

“Because it is you who must tell her what you did. If I do it, your mother will have to discuss it with me, not with you.”

“You could have said I was not ready yet.”

“I could. But I do not know whether you are ready or not. So I spoke only about my own right: I do not have it.”

Ksyusha remembered the studio and the question asked behind the glass.

“Not speaking for someone is not the same as protecting them.”

“Yes.”

“And it does not mean hiding the truth.”

“As long as the silence does not require a lie.”

“And if Mum asks you straight out whether I told her about Vera back then?”

“I shall tell her to ask you.”

“Redirecting again.”

“It is your conversation.”

Ksyusha picked up her phone. She opened the chat with her mother and wrote: “I am home. All is well. I shall ring tomorrow.”

The message was read at once. Three dots appeared, then vanished. Her mother made do with a heart.

“Tomorrow,” Ksyusha said.

“All right.”

“Will you be near?”

“If you ask me to.”

She thought about it.

“Be at home. But I shall talk to her on my own.”

The next day Ksyusha rang her mother after lunch. Dmitry was working in the study with the door closed. Before the call she deliberately went into the other room: close enough to know he was there, and far enough for his presence not to become a second voice in the conversation.

Her mother asked first how the meeting had gone, then what Vera looked like, how long she was in town, where they had sat and why Ksyusha had not rung back in the evening. Ksyusha did not answer everything.

“Mum, we stopped speaking because of me.”

The conversation changed at once.

Ksyusha told only her own part: Vera had trusted her with a decision she had not yet made; Ksyusha had taken fright and passed it on to her mother; from there it had reached Vera’s parents.

“But I wanted to help,” her mother said.

“I know.”

“You were so upset. I thought her parents ought to know.”

“We both decided for her.”

Her mother was silent for a long time.

“Has she forgiven you?”

“I do not know. And I do not want to speak for her now.”

“And will she talk to me?”

“I shall not ask her to.”

“I could apologise.”

“If Vera wants, I shall pass on your number. I shall ask her first.”

It was hard for her mother to leave an action unfinished. Several more times she came back to the fact that they had meant well, that Ksyusha had been crying back then, that Vera really could have dropped out. Ksyusha did not argue with the intentions and each time brought the conversation back to the act.

“Mum, I was the first to tell. It is my responsibility.”

By the time the call ended it was already getting dark outside. Dmitry did not come out straight away. Ksyusha sat alone for a while, then opened the study door herself.

“Done?”

“For now.”

“How is she?”

“Trying to understand how a good intention could do harm.”

“And you?”

Ksyusha stayed standing in the doorway.

“Trying not to demand that everyone understand it in one day.”

The phone vibrated in her hand.

A message had come from Vera:

“I got back safely. Thank you for not explaining yesterday.”

Ksyusha read it twice. She did not answer at once.

“Thank you for telling me everything straight.”