IRINA AND THE LUGGAGE CAROUSEL

As I walked across the tarmac in the morning sun I glanced back at the Tupolev jet that had brought me here. I thought about the hassle I'd faced coming through security at Vnukovo; the uniformed security officer scrutinising my various visa registrations and asking too many questions. “You have any English money?” she asked and I'd casually shaken my head.

“Just a small sum,” she pressed.

I'd showed her an empty wallet and she waved me through. I'd lied, of course. Maybe it's better to shrug one's shoulders and live the lie.

The plane had left Vnukovo at 10pm. With the four hour time difference it was now 6am. The splayed sweep of tarmac was surrounded by a wire mesh fence and we were walking toward a gate guarded by two militia. The passengers ahead of me were already being admitted through the gateway into the crowd of people waiting. Many people had gathered to greet the flight.

I didn't know whether or not I was being met. My visit here was organised over the internet but I hadn't checked my inbox for a few days. Maybe I should have checked at the airport instead of sitting in the sterile cafe and drinking Baltika beer. I looked at the crowd of people: even if Katya was here – I hadn't seen a photograph of her – how would I find her! I saw one man holding up a sign with a name on it; other men were wandering through the crowd offering taxis. Firstly I needed to collect my rucksack.

There was a dilapidated shed with a hand-painted sign. The sign said БАГАЖ. Inside there was an old luggage carousel. There was only one because the airport only handled twenty flights a week. The carousel clanked, juddered into motion. The bags came round. Some cases were wrapped in cellophane like wrapped Egyptian mummies. Some cases were covered in stickers. Through the open doorway I watched the last straggle of passengers drag their suitcases across the tarmac; there were very few bags checked into the hold.

My mobile phone was in my trouser pocket and vibrated against my thigh. I had a message. Katya was wearing a white top and blue jeans. A white top and blue jeans! Everyone seemed to be wearing a white top and blue jeans. As I squeezed through the crowd, crooked under the weight of my rucksack, a girl stepped from the crowd. “David?” she asked.

I nodded. “Katya?”

“Ochen' priyatno.”

“Ochen' priyatno.” She led me away from the crowd toward a brown Lada parked on a grass bank. It was early and the temperature must already have been thirty degrees. It took three attempts before the car started.

The car pulled up in front of one of the apartment blocks. We got out and Katya helped me with my rucksack. She approached one of the grey steel doors and tapped a code into the entrybox. A red light displayed and a long buzz.

“I forget the number,” said Katya. She took her phone out and dialled someone. A torso leaned over a balcony seven floors up,

“Catch!”

A key tied to a handkerchief dropped into the nettles and weeds beside the pathway. The lift inside was out of order. The stairs were a struggle with my rucksack and after so little sleep and I wished Katya would walk slower. When we reached the seventh floor one of the doors was ajar and Katya indicated for me to go in ahead of her.

I pushed the door open.

“Zdrass'tye,” I said to the girl standing in the hallway in a blue dressing gown.

“Zdrass'tye.”

I leaned over and began to remove my shoes. Katya formally introduced me to Irina. She told me I could sleep here for a few hours and I would be picked up at two o'clock that afternoon. “I must go now,” Katya said, “Ira will look after you.”

As the door closed behind Katya, Irina asked if I wanted to shower. I thanked her and explained I simply needed to sleep.

“Chai budesh'?” Did I want tea? I had become accustomed to being offered things until I accepted and so I agreed. A quick cup of tea with lemon and then sleep. Irina was very beautiful. She had high cheekbones and thin Siberian eyes. They were very light blue eyes. Maybe this is called grey. Her blonde hair was neat and shiny.

“May I see your passport?” said Irina.

I handed it to her and she looked at it with satisfaction. She stroked her finger over the satin-smooth photo. She tried to read the words on the front. United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

I nodded slowly. I folded my arms across my chest.

“Where is she? Why isn't she with you?”

“She's still in Manchester. It's complicated.”

“It's always complicated.” Irina set a mug of tea down before me. I said no to sugar. She sat opposite me and leant toward me with her elbows on the table and her chin rested in her hands. She was staring at me. “You don't want to shower?”

“No – only bed.” She saw me looking at a plastic fairy laying prone on top of the refrigerator.

“Feya,” she said – fairy – and she reached round and brought it down to the table. “It belonged to Oleg. He had to leave; no one wanted him here. I don't know where he bought it. There are no fairies in Russian folklore.”

“It was a boy's!”

“A man. He was a bit... There aren't any fairies in Russia.” She looked down at the plastic doll, stood it upright, twirled it on the tabletop. “Well I suppose there must be some.”

I slept well. The Russian language has a verb for this, vyspats'ya. Irina had given up her comfortable bed and was sleeping on a sofa bed in the lounge. I put the bedsheets on the bed and sank into a deep sleep. As my mind switched off an image of the luggage carousel floated out of the darkness toward me. Now it was a kids' carousel with the horses rising and falling, rising, falling, rise and fall... The faces on the horses drifted out at me. Janey, the girl I'd been dating in Manchester; Simone, the girl whose heart I had broken; Zoe, the girl I should never have slept with. Irina's face was on another. The carousel turned and turned and the faces kept flowing round again, not always in the same order.

When I woke it was nearly midday. The large red digits on the LCD clock beside the bed said 11:52. A man's voice was talking in the lounge. The voice stopped and started and I realised he was on the phone. I lay in bed for a little longer wondering who the man was. Irina's voice was nowhere. I wandered out to the lounge.

“Zdrasstvuytye,” I said.

“I'm Volodya,” the man said standing up from the sofa and taking my hand and shaking it firmly. “Irina's gone to work already. Come through for breakfast.”

Tomatoes and cucumber and black bread were set out on the table. There was a large bottle of the ubiquitous Omsk #1 mineral water. Volodya asked if I wanted tea and I said yes. “Sadys'!” he commanded. Sit!

Volodya had blond hair and tough weathered skin. He wanted to show me photos from his wedding to Irina. I flapped through the photo album. “She is very beautiful,” I told him.

“Anya will come for you at two o'clock,” Volodya said.

“Not Katya?”

“No, Katya has to work. Anya will stay with you during your trip.” His forehead corrugated into thought. “Why do you want to go out into the taiga?”

“I don't know that yet.”

“There are many mosquitoes this time of year.”

I was sitting in the lounge reading my book when the doorbell chimed. A girl in her twenties was admitted. Volodya spoke to her in the hallway. As she listened she put her hands to her head to pull her hair into a ponytail. Her breasts strained against her white t-shirt; her nipples dimpling the cotton. Then Volodya put his hand on the small of her back and directed her into the lounge,

“Zdrass'tye, David,” said Anna.

“Zdrass'tye.”

Anna explained there was a car waiting downstairs. Aleksey was our driver and she was my guide. I was travelling a thousand kilometres north into the taiga with these two people. I had neither met nor spoken to them before, and we would be camping together for a week. Aleksey was in the shop buying last minute provisions. We still had five minutes and so we sat round the kitchen table.

“How old are you, David?”

“Twenty-nine,” I said.

“You have a girlfriend?”

I noted the wedding band on her right ring finger. The Orthodox tradition. I looked away from her and said, “Yes.” I kept looking away from her. “We only met a couple of months' back. She came out of a difficult situation. It's too early to say....”

“Here if you are not married by your middle twenties people talk.”

“I understand that. Where I come from it is different. My girlfriend and I aren't that... I mean we haven't been together so long and....”

“What is it exactly you fear, David?”

I didn't like the way she repeated my name. I glanced down at my lap and took Oleg's fairy doll from the table, turned it between my hands. Then the doorbell rang and Aleksey was here. “Irina didn't say what happened to Oleg,” I said.

Volodya answered. “The usual. It starts with name-calling. Then people shun you, or worse you get beaten up when your walking home through the snow one night. People don't accept certain things. You should be married and have a flat and a baby, at least.”

And there was no time to finish the tea

maybe I pushed the doll away from me – I can't remember exactly how it happened –

Anna was very beautiful, I thought

and off I went again, living the lie

Paul Hansbury, August 2007