The Road Home by Rose Tremain Read Free Book Online

divert it elsewhere. Maya once asked him, “Why do the lights always go out, Pappa?” but Lev couldn’t now remember what he’d replied. Something about there being too little light to go round? Something about the need to share? Who knows? But he did remember that, drunk one night, and thrown into the familiar, fumey darkness of Rudi’s house, he’d heard himself say, “Power cuts are deliberate. There’s plenty of juice. They just like to spoil our evenings.”
    Rudi’s wife, Lora, wearing her nightclothes, had come into the room where they drank. She was carrying the stub of a lit candle in a cracked saucer, and she put it down among the empty vodka bottles and went away again, without a word, and Rudi said, “Lora’s a very nice woman. One day, she’ll find a good husband.” And then they sat, laughing, either side of the flickering candle, laughing until their stomachs cramped, laughing a drunken, silent, inexplicable laugh, which felt as though it were going to have no end.
    Lev closed his eyes again. The light behind his eyelids was the color of chocolate, and he knew that sleep would be like this, velvety and dark, and that it would last until morning.

3
    “A Man May Travel Far, but His Heart May Be Slow to Catch Up”
    Hello, Mamma, hello, Maya. Here is Princess Diana for you. I am safe. Weather is quite hot. I am going to find a job today. XXX Lev/Pappa.
    LEV SAT IN Sulima’s tidy dining room, drinking tea and writing his card. He was alone there. The tea was comforting and strong, and he remembered how Rudi, who, as a young man, had been in prison for two months, had told him that, in the Institute of Correction in Yarbl, tea was the prime currency traded by the inmates, and he thought how in their youth—his and Rudi’s—the world had still contained small corners of innocence, like air pockets in a ship that was going down. At the open window, net curtains swayed in a warm breeze. On the wall above him, near a gaudy picture of a tiger, the hands of a wall clock moved silently on. It was just after tenthirty-five.
    Lev had showered and washed his hair. His body felt clean yet heavy, as though on the surface it was young but its sinews were those of an old man. He pictured this old man walking the hot London streets, trailing his heavy bag, trying to talk to strangers, pretending he was willing and strong, ready for any work, a person of many skills . . .
    Sulima appeared through the plaster arch that led to her hallway. “You want more tea?” she asked pleasantly.
    Sulima was wearing a different sari today, the color of opals, the color of the gray-green river. Between the sari bodice and its skirt, the bulge of her midriff was smooth and golden. She stood and looked at Lev and his Diana card, and then she sat down opposite him and said, “I try to help people who come from overseas. I was helped when I arrived here. I was given a job as a chambermaid in a hotel called The Avenues. Very hard work. Cleaning and cleaning. And everything just-so: pelmet top dusted, edge of the toilet paper folded under. You know?”
    Lev had no idea what a pelmet top was, or why toilet paper might have to be folded, but he nodded just the same. Sulima moved away his breakfast plate. The sausage was half eaten, but the egg and bacon hadn’t been touched. Lev pulled out his cigarettes, took the last one from the packet, and lit it. Sulima passed him a glass ashtray.
    “You have a wife and family?” she asked.
    Lev took a pull on the cigarette, turned his head away from Sulima as he blew out the smoke. “My wife died,” he said.
    Sulima put a hand to her mouth, and Lev saw in this gesture the reaction of a much younger woman, of a child even, who’d been brought up to show repentance whenever she said something inappropriate or wrong. To help her out of her discomfort, he pointed at the picture of the tiger and said, “My daughter, Maya. Age of five years. Loves animals.”
    “Yes?” said Sulima.
    “Yes.