Where Light Becomes Silence. Tom 2

Chapter Two

Not My Story

At twenty-eight minutes past eleven the next day Dmitry came into the study with two glasses of water.

“Early,” Ksyusha said.

“You have two minutes to change your mind.”

“I no longer want to.”

She moved over, clearing a place for him in front of the monitor. Ksyusha had already studied the page of the chamber evenings herself. She had written out the address, the names of the organisers, the length of the programmes and what remained unclear. The more she learned, the less the offer resembled a distant stage on which unknown people were waiting for a faultless voice from her. It was a small hall of sixty seats, an old grand piano, a plain poster, filming from a single camera. The audience sat close.

Dmitry read her notes, watched two of the recordings and opened the technical description of the venue.

“There is a place for you there,” he said.

“And the sound?”

“That will have to be clarified. On the old video the vocal is buried.”

“Is it too early for me?”

He looked at the screen once more.

“For a large programme of your own, yes. For two songs in an evening like that, no.”

Ksyusha took the answer without relief and without offence. He had not taken the decision off her; he had only marked out the scale on which he could see the work as possible.

“Then I shall answer today.”

The phone lying beside the keyboard vibrated briefly.

Ksyusha looked at the screen and stopped hearing what Dmitry was saying about requesting a technical rider.

The name was so familiar that at first it seemed a mistake.

Vera.

For eight years the name had existed separately from the person. It turned up on the backs of old photographs, in stories about university, in the memory of a hostel corridor and a summer bus stop beside the building. Ksyusha said it rarely, and always in the past tense.

Now under the name stood a message:

“I shall be in town on Tuesday. If you are ready, we can meet.”

No greeting. No explanation of why now. No promise that the conversation would be an easy one.

“What has happened?” Dmitry asked.

Ksyusha turned the phone towards him.

He read it and handed it back.

“That Vera?”

“Yes.”

He knew the name. Not the story. Ksyusha had shown him university photographs, told him how she and Vera used to be late for the first lecture, shared what money they had until the grant came, copied out other people’s lecture notes at night. When he asked why they had stopped speaking, she answered briefly: we went our separate ways after graduating.

Formally that even sounded true. Except that graduating had nothing to do with it.

“Has she written before?” Dmitry asked.

“Never.”

“Have you?”

“Twice. But I sent nothing.”

He waited for her to go on. He did not push her and did not pretend that the answer was enough for him. Ksyusha closed the page of the venue. The two subjects did not fit side by side on one screen.

“In our final year Vera wanted to leave the university,” she said. “She was sick of the hostel, of the studying, of the endless rows with her parents. She was going to collect her papers and go to her aunt. She was only thinking about it. She had not even handed in an application.”

“She told you?”

“Only me. And asked me not to tell anybody.”

Until that year their friendship had rested not on great declarations but on daily reliability. Vera had a spare key to Ksyusha’s room. Ksyusha knew where her documents were kept and whom to ring if she did not come back by night. They shared money until the grant came, covered for each other in front of the lecturers only where it did not require lying, and could go weeks without saying the word “trust”, because it existed in the nature of things.

When Vera talked about the rows with her parents, Ksyusha never passed the conversation on. So that evening she did not have to prove separately that a secret could be left with her.

“Where did she tell you?”

“In the hostel laundry. It was noisy there; nobody could hear. She was sitting on the window ledge holding a folder of documents.”

“Had she already collected them?”

“She had only written down what would be needed. She had not even gone for the application form.”

Vera spoke not like a person who has made a decision but like one who has needed for the first time to say a possibility aloud. She went through the options: go to her aunt, take a year out, find work, finish the term and decide in the summer. Ksyusha listened for over an hour.

“What did she ask of you?”

“Not to interfere. And not to tell anybody anything until she had decided herself what to do.”

“And you decided that not interfering meant leaving her alone.”

“Yes. It seemed to me that a real friend was obliged to interfere.”

Dmitry set the water down on the table.

“And you told.”

Ksyusha nodded.

“My mother.”

“Why her?”

“She knew Vera’s parents. I thought my mother would know what to do.”

“So you wanted advice?”

“I suppose. No.” Ksyusha rubbed the edge of the phone case with her thumb. “Honestly, I wanted somebody to stop Vera. It seemed to me that she was ruining her life and I was standing beside her doing nothing.”

“Did you ask your mother to keep the conversation between you?”

“It never even occurred to me what would come next.”

Her mother rang Vera’s parents the same day. By the evening they had come to the hostel. Almost the whole floor heard the row. The father demanded that Vera pack her things; the mother wept and asked what the daughter had done this to them for. Vera was taken home; a week later she came back to her classes and did finish the university after all.

After that Vera stopped speaking to Ksyusha.

“Once I went up to her outside a lecture room,” Ksyusha went on. “I said I had been frightened for her. That I had meant it for the best. I even asked her to look at the situation through my eyes one day.”

“And did you look at it through hers?”

“Much later.”

She remembered no shouting — Vera had not shouted. She had stood by the window with the folder pressed to her chest and listened. Then she asked:

“Do you understand that I now have to explain myself to everybody, although I have not decided anything?”

Ksyusha answered that at least Vera had not made a mistake.

Vera gave a half-smile then. A very brief one.

“You have decided that for me as well.”

“After that she walked away,” Ksyusha said. “I tried to approach her several more times. She walked past. At the graduation ceremony we were in the same hall and did not even say hello.”

Dmitry did not say that they had both been young. Did not remind her how many years had passed. Such phrases might have made her shame smaller, but they would have made what Vera had lived through smaller with it.

“Do you want to meet her?” he asked.

“I do not know.”

“Then what do you want from her message?”

Ksyusha read one line again.

“For it to turn out that she forgave me long ago.”

“That is an honest answer.”

“And a bad one.”

“A convenient one for you.”

She got up, went to the shelves and took down a thin grey folder. It held old papers: a university contract, copies of a diploma, a few certificates. Between them lay two folded sheets.

Dmitry understood before she unfolded the first.

“Those letters?”

“Yes.”

“Will you show me?”

Ksyusha read the beginning herself.

“Vera, all this time I have been trying to understand why you did not give me a chance to explain…”

She stopped.

“The very first line.”

“What about it?”

“I am asking her for a chance to explain. As though the problem were that she had misunderstood me.”

Below came words about fear, friendship and the best of intentions. Ksyusha called what she had done a mistake, but accompanied every admission with a reason. She seemed to be agreeing to be guilty only on condition that the court took mitigating circumstances into account.

The second letter had been written two years later. There were no excuses in it. Instead, on almost every page, it repeated how hard Ksyusha found it to live with the loss, how often she remembered Vera and how badly she needed forgiveness.

“Here I already understand everything,” Ksyusha said. “And I am still talking only about myself.”

Dmitry took the letter only after she had held it out to him.

“You are asking her to make your past bearable.”

“Harsh.”

“Untrue?”

“True.”

He gave the sheet back.

“I can say that you have changed. I can remind her how much time has passed. I can list everything for which I trust you. But Vera is not obliged to accept my testimony.”

“I am not asking her to.”

“Not now.”

Ksyusha caught the emphasis.

“Do you think I shall ask at the meeting?”

“I think you will want to do something, anything, to make it stop hurting sooner. The question is for whom.”

She sat down again. In front of her were a message, two letters and an answer to the organiser that had not yet been sent. In the morning it had seemed to her that the hard decision would be the performance. Now it looked clear, if only because it concerned her own readiness.

“If I meet her, what am I to say?”

“I do not know.”

“Not at all?”

“It is your story with Vera. I can listen to what you want to say to her. But I have no suitable words in your place.”

“You always find words.”

“For myself.”

Ksyusha folded the letters along their old creases.

“I am afraid I shall start making excuses.”

“Then tell her beforehand: if you start making excuses, let her stop you.”

“After I broke her boundaries, am I to ask her to police me as well?”

Dmitry nodded.

“Fair. Then stop yourself, the moment you notice.”

“Exhaustive advice.”

“But the responsibility stays with you.”

She wanted to smile and could not.

“And if she has asked me there to say she still hates me?”

“Then you will hear it.”

“And that is all?”

“What else have you the right to demand?”

Ksyusha laid a palm over the folded sheets.

“Nothing.”

For several minutes they sat in silence. A washing machine was running beyond the wall; out on the landing somebody turned a key twice. The building went on with its own sounds, not adjusting itself to a message out of the past.

Dmitry was the first to go back to the computer.

“Do you want me to leave?”

“Why?”

“So that you can answer alone.”

Ksyusha thought.

“Stay. Only do not read over my shoulder.”

“Very well.”

He opened the technical description of the venue. Ksyusha tapped the reply field.

First she wrote: “I have wanted to talk for a long time.” Deleted it. That sentence immediately required an explanation of why, in that case, she had said nothing for eight years.

Then: “Thank you for writing.” Deleted that too. The gratitude sounded as though Vera had already made her a present.

What was left was to name the action.

“Yes, I am ready to meet. Please write where and at what time suits you.”

Ksyusha read it through.

“Dima.”

He turned from the monitor.

“May I show you?”

She held out the phone herself.

Dmitry read it.

“There is room in it for her answer.”

“Shall I send it?”

“Are you asking me or checking me?”

Ksyusha took the phone back.

“Asking your opinion.”

“I should send it.”

“But the decision is mine.”

“Yes.”

She pressed the arrow.

The message appeared in the conversation at once. Beneath it a grey mark came up, then a second.

Vera was somewhere on the other side of those marks, and was not answering yet.

Ksyusha put the old letters back in the folder. She did not throw them away: it would have been too easy to take the destruction of paper for a corrected past. She put the folder back in its place.

“And the venue?” Dmitry asked.

She opened the mail again.

“To the venue I shall say yes. Two songs. I shall propose a programme later.”

“Do you need help?”

“For now — send the technical questions. In my name.”

“I shall.”

He wrote the task down on the list.

At half past twelve Vera answered with the address of a small café and a time. With no additional words.

The meeting was set for Tuesday, six in the evening.

A minute later another message came:

“Will you be alone?”

Ksyusha read the question and felt herself automatically looking for a safe answer. She could write that Dmitry would only be seeing her there. That he would be somewhere nearby. That Vera would not have to talk to him.

Not one of these possibilities had been discussed. Ksyusha had already placed Dmitry beside the meeting in her own mind, because bearing her own guilt was easier with him near.

She answered:

“Yes. Alone.”

“Vera asked whether I shall come alone,” she said.

“And what did you answer?”

“That I shall.”

Dmitry nodded.

“I did not ask you not to come, after all.”

“Nor did you ask me to.”

“Did you not want to offer at all?”

“I did.”

“Why did you not offer, then?”

“Because then you would have had to settle the question of my presence as well. Deal with your own first.”

Ksyusha put the phone down.

“I think I should like to know that you are somewhere close.”

“I can meet you afterwards.”

“No. That would turn the conversation into a road towards your waiting as well. I shall write when I set off home.”

“Very well.”

She opened a new document and named it with the date of the meeting.

First she wrote down everything she meant to say: that she had been frightened for Vera, that she had been young, had trusted her mother and had not imagined the consequences. What came out was almost a third letter — more grown-up in form, but still built round Ksyusha’s reasons.

She deleted the text.

On the clean page she left four lines:

“I told what I had promised to keep.

After that other people gained power over your decision.

I justified what I did by a good intention.

I am ready to hear the consequences and not to argue.”

Underneath she added a separate list:

“Do not say: ‘I wanted to help’; ‘I suffered too’; ‘at least you finished the university’; ‘we were both young’.”

“Are you preparing a speech?” Dmitry asked.

“Limits.”

“Will you show me?”

Ksyusha turned the screen towards him.

He read it and stopped at the last line.

“Why can you not say that you were both young?”

“Because that makes what we each did equally small. And the consequences were not equal.”

“Agreed.”

“I shall not take the sheet to the meeting.”

“Why not?”

“If I forget it all without the sheet, it means I have come to explain myself again.”

She saved the document but did not print it. The preparation did not make the conversation predictable; it only removed a few habitual routes of escape.

Her mother rang the same day. Among the questions about work, food and plans for the week, Ksyusha said that she would be seeing Vera on Tuesday.

“That Vera?” her mother asked again. “You have not spoken for so many years. Has she come back?”

“She will be in town for one day.”

“And why did you two go your separate ways in the end?”

Ksyusha looked at the grey folder on the shelf.

“Mum, I shall tell you later.”

Her mother held a pause, then moved on to another subject. The question, however, remained between them and had now been given a term as well — though as yet without an exact date.

Now the past existed not only in the account Dmitry knew. It had been given a place, an hour and a person who might remember all of it differently.

Chapter Three

Not About You

By Monday the organisers of the chamber evening had confirmed two songs and sent a date.

Ksyusha read the letter in the morning, answered it herself and only then forwarded it to Dmitry. They had a studio session that evening: material for another release, long since scheduled, had to be finished. The performance had nothing to do with it as yet, but after the letter everything Ksyusha did with her voice sounded different to her. In a few weeks a recording would stop being the only place where a phrase could be put right before anyone heard it.

There were four people in the control room. The sound engineer worked at the main monitor. Dmitry sat to the right, going through notes on the mix. Marina was checking file names and the data for release. Ksyusha stood by the wall with a tablet while the last chorus came through the speakers.

On the final line she raised a hand.

“Stop it, please.”

The sound engineer pressed the space bar.

“What did you hear?”

“The end of the word fell forward.”

He took the recording back a few seconds.

“Here?”

“Yes.”

On its own the passage sounded clean. The consonants were in place, the note did not sag. There was no technical error.

“Nobody will notice it in the full recording,” the sound engineer said.

“I noticed.”

“That is a different criterion.”

“Today it is mine.”

He looked at Dmitry.

“What do you say?”

“That a new take will cost three minutes.”

“If there is only one.”

Ksyusha picked up the tablet.

“One passage. I do not promise a result.”

“Now those are honest terms,” the sound engineer answered.

She went into the booth.

Unlike at the first session, nobody now asked whether Ksyusha was capable of hearing the difference. Her right to a take had become part of the work. The argument was about the cost: a few minutes, a new track, the possible need to rebuild the join. Small decisions had a price as well, and respect for a voice did not cancel a schedule.

The sound engineer switched on the talkback.

“I shall give you two bars. Off we go.”

Ksyusha finished the first new version more softly, but the middle of the line lost its support.

“One more,” she said herself.

“You promised a passage, not a take. Formally the agreement has not been broken.”

“Using the small print?”

“I learn from the best.”

The second version came out even. Ksyusha took off one cup of the headphones and looked questioningly through the glass.

The sound engineer raised a thumb.

“Come out. We shall compare.”

She hung up the headphones, closed the text on the tablet and stayed behind in the booth to answer a call. Through the glass it could be seen that Ksyusha was listening with the phone pressed to her ear, but her words were not audible in the control room.

The sound engineer saved both takes.

“The listener will not understand the difference anyway.”

“He does not have to understand how it is made,” Dmitry said.

“I am not arguing. I simply want to know how much time to allow next time.”

He zoomed in on the track and marked the end of the line.

“Does she always take that long to choose?”

The question sounded matter-of-fact. Without mockery, more the working curiosity of a man who has to budget a session. That made it all the easier to answer for Ksyusha.

“Ask her,” Dmitry said.

“I am asking about your experience.”

“My experience will not tell you her decision next time.”

“But you do know how she works.”

“I do.”

“And?”

Dmitry looked at the booth. Ksyusha had finished the conversation, put the phone away and was already opening the door.

“And she is here.”

Ksyusha came into the control room.

“What have I missed?”

The sound engineer moved back a little from the desk.

“I am trying to work out how much time to allow for your vocal.”

“For mine, or for all our decisions?”

“Just now, for yours. Do you always take that long to choose an ending?”

Ksyusha moved her eyes to Dmitry. He did not indicate which part of the conversation should be considered offensive.

“Sometimes longer,” she answered. “And sometimes the first version is exact. If you need a guaranteed figure, allow two extra takes on difficult lines. Anything more, agree with me.”

The sound engineer nodded.

“That is what I needed.”

“You could have asked before the recording.”

“I could.”

“Why did you not?”

The sound engineer did not pretend not to understand the question.

“Because I have worked with Dmitry longer. It is simpler to check expectations with him.”

“Simpler for whom?”

“For the schedule.”

“And for the next recording?”

He looked at the two new tracks.

“For the next one your answer is more use.”

“Then let us settle it now. If you think I am holding up the session, you tell me how much time is left and what exactly has to be accepted. You do not ask Dmitry whether I am being reasonable.”

“That is not how I put it.”

“I know. But the question about whether I always take a long time choosing was no longer about the track.”

The sound engineer acknowledged that with a short nod.

“Very well. For my part: if we have agreed on one passage and we start re-singing half the song, I stop it.”