The Vanishing Futurist by Charlotte Hobson Read Free Book Online

down I would start crying and not know how to stop.
    ‘No, thank you. I must see to a few things, and then perhaps we will spend the evening together?’
    Two heads nodded, eager to please.
    ‘We will have a little soup, a soupchik .’
    They agreed again, more happily; there’s no Russian alive that is not soothed by a little soupchik .
    I wandered into the study, now furnished with absences: squares of dust on the walls, pale patches on the parquet. With all the packing I had not slept more than five hours for the last couple of nights and everything had the dreary, gritty texture of sleeplessness. The empty shelves were scattered with dead woodlice. Prig’s people had smashed the pretty gilt sconces on each side of the fireplace, perhaps imagining them to be made of real gold.
    Why was I here? There was a part of me that felt miserable for remaining. Should I have accompanied the Kobelevs? I loved them more than I did my own family, and yet I’d let them go alone, into danger.
    Perhaps there was more of my father in me than I imagined. An image of him sprang to mind, red-cheeked and sandy-browed with great quivering lobsterish whisps, snapping at me, ‘Make up your mind, girl!’
    Well, I had.
    A cold draught suddenly hit the back of my knees. Slavkin was standing in the hall, gazing around him with a look of desolation.
    ‘Have they gone? Have I missed them?’
    ‘Yes, they left half an hour ago – they asked me to say goodbye to you for them; they were sad not to see you.’
    ‘I was at work.’ His chin trembled. ‘How bare it all looks . . .’
    ‘Mr Kobelev said he’d always planned to give it all to the people.’
    ‘It’s for the best. It was much too dangerous to keep the collection here.’ Slavkin’s voice betrayed him with an alarming squeak. He turned his back on me and clumped up to his room.
    For several days, Slavkin and I barely saw each other. In the evenings I heard him stomping to and fro in his room; occasionally I fancied that he was listening to my movements, as I tended to the old ladies. The house felt strange, like a ship adrift on a silent sea, a huge empty ship with an echoing hold. The weather had suddenly turned cold and windy; in the evenings the chestnut branches flexed and slapped against the shutters like ropes. The rafters creaked and moaned and occasionally fell quiet; then I felt the presence of Slavkin most strongly. I didn’t seek him out; I was too shy of him. His brilliance rendered me absurdly prosaic and tongue-tied, blushing, a caricature of an English governess.
    And yet sometimes, across the noisy evening gatherings, I had caught him looking at me as though we understood each other. We were outsiders in that house; we were not liberals, we didn’t understand doubters. We had little to lose.
     ‘What can he be doing all the time?’ wondered Anna Vladimirovna. In the empty house, even Slavkin’s ‘village voice’ was apparently better than nothing. ‘Doesn’t he want to come and sit with us? Can he be quite well ?’
    ‘He’s probably busy with his contraptions, Anna Vladimirovna,’ said Mamzelle soothingly. ‘Scientists are not quite normal.’
    I was working longer hours than ever at the English school on Tverskaya, lessons that were now paid mainly in kind – half a loaf of black bread and a smoked fish for the present continuous. One pupil, a Georgian, presented me with a bag of good black tea. Oh, the old ladies were happy.
     ‘ Vous êtes trop gentille ,’ said Mamzelle tearfully.
    ‘Take some, do, to that strange boy,’ said Anna Vladimirovna.
    At my knock, Slavkin opened his door – even a little too quickly, as though he were waiting for me – and made me jump, and some of the precious tea was spilt. And then he hurried to relieve me of the tray, and I recoiled, trying to protect the cup, and there were apologies and counter-apologies, and I was blushing so hard, and my heart was racing, that I couldn’t help laughing, and he