 Katya |
Trains were definitely Deneil's favourite way of travelling in the former Russian Empire. Unlike in the west, trains have not lost their former glamour. They are still the great lifelines between cities and families, links in a big empire where people have been thrown apart by state planning and autocratic rulers. Stations too have a beauty of their own. The predominant colours are black, white and grey. The black of the myriad of dark coats, the white of the snow drifting down and fresh snow piled up in the corners, invading everywhere and the grey of the sky, the architecture and the general grime of the station. Girls in impossibly elegant fur coats swish by on important missions. A lone trumpet player lifts his trumpet to the sky and penetrates the bustle with a triumphant noise and the ever-present poor struggle through the crowds with their big, cheap canvas bags containing their livelihood.
Deneil was amongst the crowd waiting on the platform in Lvov station for the night train to Kiev. The train drew slowly in with an indignant whistle like the snort of an untrained horse. Deneil stepped from the frozen platform into the luxury, royal red Grand Tour carriage that transported guests of the elite Grand Hotel in Lvov in first class comfort to and from the capital city. He was immediately bathed in an atmosphere of life and warmth - the heating conditioners on full blast, Russian music blaring from the speakers, plastic flowers in the first class compartment, sweet, hot tea served in silver containers, bed with its spotless white, crisp sheets neatly laid out for sleeping. He found to his surprise he was sharing his compartment with an Englishman who introduced himself as Ashley. The train had just left Lvov station and they were settling down to the rhythm of the journey when Ashley started to speak.
'I think I saw you in the Grand Hotel this morning. Were you staying there too?'
'No, I had breakfast there but I was staying with friends.'
'Ah that explains it.'
Deneil remembered now seeing Ashley with an attractive, dark-haired young woman.
'What were you doing in Lvov?'
'It's a long story;' Ashley said looking rather shyly at him and Deneil instinctively decided it was time to propose a drink. Soon they drinking weak Russian beer in the restaurant car and Ashley began to speak.
*****
Ashley was the second son of an English Earl. His full title was The Honourable Ashley Hubert Arbuthnot. He was ginger-haired and rather plump, with massive, comforting shoulders. He had freckles, pale skin and shrewd blue eyes. He was calm and intelligent; the sort of person one would instinctively turn to in order to solve all kinds of practical problems. In a word. Capable.
At the age of thirty-three Ashley had decided to retire.
He was in investment banking. More specifically he managed a huge portfolio of industrial holdings in Eastern Europe that the bank had acquired under the voucher mass privatisation process. Ashley was in charge of restructuring or 'rightsizing' the portfolio. At each organization he visited he insisted on a list of the elderly, the infirm, the obnoxious, the unintelligent and the plain unlucky. They were all marked for the chop. Every Friday afternoon downtrodden workers would be queuing at the factory door to collect their pitiful compensation money. This was the fruit of Ashley's work. Solid East Europeans, softened by forty years of namby-pamby communism, were brought down by the brutal knife blows of the market economy. Ashley was one of the 'surgeons' who wielded the knife.
It was satisfactory work having that power over people's destiny but Ashley wanted out. Something was lacking. There was, he believed, more to life. So at the age of thirty-three Ashley resigned his position in the bank and bought an expansive country house in the south west of France. The house surveyed the rolling, green foothills of the Pyrenees. In the distance the snow-capped mountains shone in the pure, limpid air. It was a smallish but comfortable manor house surrounded by its own vineyards and a sweeping lawn that sloped down the valley. The setting resembled a postcard, pastoral idyll.
Having settled in Ashley set about developing his social life. On the terrace in front of his mansion he gave genteel little lunch parties for the bored, expatriate community. They busied themselves with tittle-tattle about the latest events of note in their incestuous world.
'Did you know Paula is pregnant?'
'No! You don't say...that man she's seeing - the carpenter...?'
A nod confirms the potency of the handsome, local carpenter. Yes, the slow autumnal days were almost replete - a busy social calendar of lunches, teas and gossip. But sometimes, after the gossiping guests had departed, Ashley would pace restlessly through the many rooms of his mansion.
Each room was immaculately in order. But no room felt lived in.
Ashley knew he needed a woman.
The problem was, in that quiet, rural paradise of the south west of France there were no available women. They were either married off early or they left for the big cities. After all what work was there? Tending the vines, milking the cows. No! The women quit for the bright lights. Pragmatic by nature, Ashley turned to his address book to refresh his memory on which girls he had met during the last four or five years and whether there were any he could renew his acquaintance with. His eye was immediately caught by the name Katya Shuratovica- a girl he had been sitting next to on the Moscow London flight some years before. It had been the morning of Christmas Eve he remembered and there was a festive spirit on the flight amongst the expats anxious to get back home in time for evening celebrations. Katya was visiting her boyfriend in London, so she explained. He remembered her as petite, with short, dark hair and startling blue eyes - attractive in a kittenish kind of way. He had found her alert and intriguing and, for someone about to meet her boyfriend, disturbingly flirtatious. They had talked for much of the flight and he had asked for her telephone number thinking that she was living in Moscow but the telephone number and address she had written down was some village in deepest Ukraine not far from Lvov. He couldn't remember where.
Now, more than four years later, Ashley decided to try the number.
'Da' came a rough, older female voice on the crackling line.
'Mojna gavarit s Katya?' Ashley asked summoning up his basic Russian.
'Kto gavarit?' - replied the voice sounding suspicious.
'Someone she met some time ago,' Ashley managed to explain.
'Katya,' the voice shouted - 'a foreigner to speak to you - Katya!'
'She's still there,' he thought in wonderment. What does she do? Is she married, bringing up children?
Katya came on the line - 'Who is it?'
'Katya, do you remember me - Ashley - we met on the Moscow-London flight some years ago.'
'Ah, Ashley', she said - 'yes.... of course', though it was obvious that she was desperately casting her mind back and trying to picture him.
'Look, Katya, I will come straight to the point. I was just wondering if you might be interested in visiting France. I have recently bought a house in a very beautiful area - and if you are free and available, I think you would enjoy coming to this part of France.'
'Well, Ashley, this is a surprise,' the flirtatious note was back in her voice. 'What a wonderful offer. But please. Tell me more.'
'Why don't you come to stay with me in France for two weeks or a month - that is if you are free - I do apologise if I am being presumptuous.'
'I am very tempted!' she laughed. 'I think I could make myself available - after all we only live once - but you should know that I have an eight-year old daughter. My mother looks after her during the week. She would be able to look after her full time for a month. Does that make any difference?'
'No,' said Ashley, though he felt it did make a difference.
'I adore travelling and I've never been to France. It sounds wonderful but of course we would need to discuss everything in more detail.'
And so the liaison began. In essence they negotiated the terms of a contract. Ashley would pay for a month long trip to France. It was understood that Katya would bring no money for this trip and therefore she would be fully provided for by Ashley, 'gifts' included. In return she would supply her company and the compensations of a vie a deux during the one-month trial period. It seemed ideal.
All the advantages of a secure relationship with none of the emotional blackmail that comes with it.
And the arrangement worked. Katya came and stayed in Ashley's house in France and they seemed to get on. In bed, things went well too. Katya was certainly passionate enough, so an important term in the contract was satisfactorily fulfilled. However she was in bed rather a lot - a latish night would be compensated for by sleeping until midday whilst the ever-busy Ashley methodically shuffled around the house. Then she might retire for several naps during the long afternoons.
Ashley couldn't quite comprehend what was happening. He was discovering that instead of the joys of domestic bliss with a docile woman, he was expending much of his prodigious energy coping with her demands. For example Katya grew to appreciate a long, leisurely breakfast in bed. 'Ashley,' she would call down at about eleven thirty, having finally woken up.
'Ashley, where are you?'
Ashley, who had already been on the move for three hours, would come bounding up the stairs.
'Good. You're finally awake,' he said slightly breathlessly. 'Katya, we've been invited for cocktails at twelve thirty. I think it's time you got up.'
'Oh Ashley' she sighed. 'Come here.' She rumpled his hair affectionately. 'You know how much I adore my English breakfast. Make it for me, Ashers, please.'
And Ashley, gazing into those cornflower-blue eyes, weakened and complied with her requests.
To complicate matters Ashley was developing romantic feelings for Katya. Their verbal contract had been pretty businesslike but now Ashley was experiencing passion in a nature foreign to passion. When Katya's face was turned away in bed he would lie for hours studying the mass of curling, black hair falling onto her white, delicate shoulder. Something in his innermost self seemed to give way. His emotional defences were crumbling. Being conservative and reserved by nature, it was difficult to detect any alteration in his behaviour, but a profound change had taken place.
Meanwhile Katya became slowly more demanding. She desired the bright lights and distractions of the big city. 'Ashley' she purred. 'We've met everyone we're going to meet in this backwater. It's duller than Lvov. Lets go to Paris.'
'It's pretty expensive staying in a nice place in Paris, Katya.'
'Oh Ashley' she said reprovingly. 'I thought we made it clear from the start we wouldn't let money be a barrier to our having a good time together.'
They went to Paris and stayed in one of the best hotels.
Once in Paris, Katya was so gay and flirtatious she alternately charmed and distressed him. She was in her element. High-spirited, attractive, exotic. Men never stopped glancing at her. One afternoon as they strolled past a high-class boutique Katya paused. 'Look at that fur coat.' She pointed to an ankle-length, grey mink. 'Isn't it so elegant!' She turned to her patient companion. 'Ashley, dear,' she entwined her arm in his, 'you know how cold our winters get.' Ashley took one look at the price and blanched. 'Remember the bit about 'gifts' in our agreement,' Katya whispered slyly into his ear and she pinched his cheek. The next day she was gleefully walking round showing off her exquisite, new mink coat. They passed an exclusive footwear shop. Katya halted. 'You know Ashley, I really do need some good quality boots to go with this coat, not these awful Russian things,' she said revealing her well-worn boots.
The pattern was set. Over the next few days Katya indulged in an orgy of shopping. And Ashley didn't dare deny Katya her 'gifts' for fear of losing his newfound comfort. Did he detect a hint of steel in her voice? He realised he had gone too far to extricate himself now. He dreaded going back to the winter nights all by himself without someone to care for, to lie with, to fuss over.
*****
One day Katya abruptly announced that she had to go back to Lvov, 'for family reasons,' she said. Ashley pleaded with her to stay but she was adamant and in a hurry to be gone and changed the date on her return ticket to the earliest possible date. When she had left Ashley returned alone to his mansion. He became moody. He no longer enjoyed the brisk walks round his estate with his neighbour, the farmer. He fell into the typical habits of solitary bachelors, talking to himself and neglecting the cleaning. The mice that frequent these old houses began to populate the kitchen, hungry for crumbs. From the dining room you could see them scampering about. Ashley let them scamper.
Weeks went by and he thought more and more about Katya. He couldn't get those insolent, mocking blue eyes out of his mind. While the pressure on Ashley's wallet eased, the pressure on his soul increased. The loneliness grew more intense and he paced the barren rooms of his large, empty house sending the brazen mice scrambling for cover.
Finally he decided that he could not tolerate the situation any longer. He wrote a long, indignant e-mail to Katya.
'All she wanted was his money' he wrote. 'He did not appreciate being used in this fashion. He was fed up with paying for her luxuries and then being abandoned. He felt that their arrangement was little more than up-market prostitution. He had hoped for something more substantial, more profound.'
Bitter, heartfelt words and then at the end of the e-mail without having intended to, he wrote - 'Katya. Will you come and live with me? Will you marry me?'
A reply was slow in coming - very slow.
But this was due more to the fact that Katya hardly ever looked at her e-mails rather than anything else. When an e-mail finally arrived it confirmed Ashley's fears. Katya had no intention of burying herself in the south west of France.
'Darling,' she gushed. 'There's nothing to do and I don't know anybody. I can't live there. I would get so bored. As for high-class prostitution,' continued Katya, 'she was deeply offended. She had been his guest. That had been clear from the start. How dare he insinuate something else! She had been so thrilled by his generous gestures - and now his attitude had ruined that.' Her tone softened. 'Your proposal of marriage took me completely by surprise, darling,' she continued - she was touched. It was something she would have to consider very carefully - but first she had something that she needed to show Ashley. When could he come to her home town near Lvov?'
Ashley didn't think twice. He sent a return e-mail that he would be taking the next possible flight. He packed his bags. He asked the farmers wife to look in and clean up, deserted his house to the mice and took the first flight to Kiev. From there he took the night train to Lvov and then another trundling, slow train towards the Polish border. The border area looked like a war zone. Deserted forgotten fields. Roads with ruts and potholes. Silent villages. The forgotten corner of Europe, a strange land covered in mists and afflicted by poverty and drunkenness.
Katya was waiting at the tiny village station looking radiant in her Paris mink and suede boots.
'Ashers, what kept you? she joked in her broken English. 'I thought you'd be here quicker than this.' She hung on his arm as they walked out of the station into the rundown village. 'Ashley, there is something I have to show you and I want you to see it right now. You're not too tired, are you?'
'No, no, I'm perfectly all right' said Ashley who was exhausted, having not slept much during the last thirty hous of travelling, but was too proud to say so.
Ashley used his dollars to hire the services of the only taxi, a very dilapidated old Volga and they drove out of the village. The car jolted over the cobbles and ridges of the untreated road. Soon they were passing through flat, unvarying agricultural land and then the road entered a forest. Almost immediately Katya motioned the driver to turn off the road down a muddy cart track.
'Katya, where are we going?' asked Ashley.
'Just be patient. It's a surprise.'
They drove through the woodland until they came to a glade and an ornate, rusting, iron gate. Katya jumped out, opened the gate and they continued down a gravel path overgrown with weeds and wild flowers. Suddenly - standing on its own, encircled by the forest, there came into view an imposing, two-storey mansion built at the end of the last century. The structure was light and delicate. A long, wooden veranda ran the length of the house painted in faded pale green and yellow pastel colours. The house was abandoned. It was in a bad state of repair and yet the atmosphere seemed unchanged by the twentieth century. One could imagine a setting for a Chekhov play, the rural aristocracy holding tea parties on the veranda after summer showers.
They drove up the overgrown gravel drive, parked the car in front of the main entrance and got out. Ashley stared up at the house.
'It's beautiful,' he said. 'Very run down. It hasn't been lived in for a long time by the looks of it.'
'Sixty years,' said Katya. 'No-one has lived here for sixty years.' She looked at him with a curiously wilful expression on her face. 'The house is mine. Ashley. I own it.'
'You own it?' Ashley echoed uncertainly. 'What do you mean Katia?'
'I mean this house belongs to me' she articulated slowly. The habitual mocking look was absent from her cornflower-blue eyes. 'It was built by my great great grandfather when this was part of Poland. It was confiscated by the communists, after the Soviet Union invaded in 1939. My family were dispossessed. For the last ten years we've been fighting to get it back and because it was former Polish territory and because it was empty, we have won the legal proceedings to get back the title deeds. I heard the news in Paris. That's why I had to leave so suddenly.'
Katya turned towards Ashley showing more emotion than he had ever seen in her.
'You see. You accuse me of exploiting you for your money but I am not as poor as you think. I own all this as far as you can see.' She gestured at the meadow land and forests stretching into the distance. 'Far grander than your plebeian farmhouse in France. My family was part of the old Polish aristocracy, Ashley, richer than you can imagine. Don't you understand. It was the system that made us all poor, that destroyed all our privileges and ultimately ruined this wretched country.'
Ashley stared at her in astonishment and then cleared his throat as if to say something but Katya continued.
is where I want to live,' she stated gesturing at the ruin of the mansion. 'Not in your dreary old south of France. This is where I belong, Ashley. This is my home. How am I going to make it fit to live in? How am I going to manage that?
For a while Ashley did not speak but in the silence that followed there surged in his being, a strong, steadfast resolve. His emotions, which had been in upheaval for so many months calmed down. The way ahead suddenly seemed so crystal clear and free of problems. He looked at Katya and quietly said.
'I will rebuild this house for you. I will restore it to its former glory and make you proud of it. We,' - he swept out an arm in a very un Ashley-like dramatic gesture. 'We can live here.' 'I will invest what is necessary and we will make it our home.'
And Ashley, who was a man of his word, did exactly that. He gave up his mouse-infested mansion in the south west of France and moved to Lvov. He plunged back into the business of restructuring organizations to make the millions of dollars necessary to restore that vast property with its extensive grounds. Thousands of workers lost their jobs under his relentless axe. He was ruthless, showed no pity, no wavering, made no concession. Whole industries were closed. Whole towns lost their raison d'etre. No arguments were brooked, no hesitations accepted. Ignorant politicians commended the rigour of the changes, whilst economists nervously studied the drastic downturn in production output. Throughout the blighted industries of Eastern Europe he became known as 'Ashley the Axe' and the downtrodden workforce feared him as no other. But for Ashley, there was no let up, no weakness. He drove himself on. He persevered until the goal he had set himself was accomplished.
*****
All the time Ashley had been speaking, Deneil had been sitting quietly, drinking the watery, Russian beer and staring out at the darkness of Western Ukraine as the train jolted eastwards. Now Ashley stopped talking.
'Didn't you feel at least some pity for all those people you condemned to abject poverty?' Deneil asked quietly.
The train was slowing down. They were on the edge of a nameless station. The sky was curiously light because of the white dazzle of the snow. A dog limped desolately away without the use of one leg. Railway workers huddled round a burning brazier.
Ashley looked at Deneil with a strange almost embarrassed expression. 'I fell in love with her,' he said, 'and who knows - one day she may come to love me. Don't you understand? How can one compare the happiness of ordinary people to the fulfilment of our wildest dreams?'
Some months later Deneil heard through the grapevine that Katia was pregnant, though rumour had it - by the local carpenter.
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Read also previous issue' articles:
Cows and Parachutists
Vietnam, Cobra-laced rice moonshine and those smiles
Gambling on the Slope
Manners Cost Nothing
A Roger By Any Other Name
Never Underestimate the Mark!
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