FIVE

Ivanova rode the Metro to Ploshchad Vosstaniya. It was later than she would have liked but she had stayed, soaping herself in the shower until the luxurious hot water started to run warm. Afterwards she had dressed in a pair of plain black slacks and a black high-neck sweater. With her hair pulled back and braided, and wearing the fur coat and hat, she looked like just another well to do Russian citizen. Throughout the journey into the centre of the city, she had watched parents doting over their children, listened in on the conversations around her. Some people discussed the bigger picture, wondering how the sudden changes in EarthGov would affect the long term standing of the Russian Consortium now that Susanna Luchenko was Acting President of the Earth Alliance. Most were simply happy to exchange views on the more mundane aspects of life, sports and, typically, the grinding routine of work. Out of the Metro station, Ivanova stood opposite the imposing façade of the Moskovsky Station, which dominated the south side of Uprising Square. A thick blanket of cloud had positioned itself over St. Petersburg during her journey north. Foreshadowing the onset of night, one consequence of the premature darkness that had descended over the city was that it highlighted the elaborately designed and brightly lit Christmas decorations that were strung across the streets and around the facades of buildings.

After a cursory glance down Ligovskiy Prospekt, Ivanova turned west, along Nevskiy Prospekt. She did bot what to expect. After so many years away it did not surprise her to find that many of the businesses had undergone significant changes since she was last here. A favourite restaurant from her childhood was long gone, but that was to be expected given the economy. The same was true of various stores and boutiques that had enjoyed her custom back before she enrolled in EarthForce. As she walked the first block, carefully trudging through the snow and slush, taking in the shop fronts on both sides of the street, it appeared that the shops and restaurants had simply swapped names and locations in the same way someone would shuffle a deck of cards. The different restaurants may have given way to different tastes, but as Ivanova stopped to peer through the glass, she was pleasantly surprised to see the familiar scene of bored waiters hovering in the background as diners conversed over plates of Shashlik and Pelmeni.

Of the buildings themselves, some had been modernised, remodelled in high-rising glass and steel, although the developers had been very careful to keep the original facades intact. Although the city had shown itself willing to move with

the times, Ivanova was reminded of a dinner party her parents had hosted for various scholars and academics of their acquaintance, one of the last before Psi Corps discovered her mother’s secret. It was one of the rare occasions both she and her brother had been allowed to stay up little later than usual. Don’t forget to be on your best behaviour tonight, her mother had instructed as the guests started to arrive. The children had eaten their supper at the kitchen table, watching the cook, who had been hired for the special occassion, fuss over the pans bubbling furiously on the stove. Sofie Ivanova had come in to check on their progress and, seeing that they were done, wiped their mouths with a cloth to make sure they were presentable. Looking back Ivanova wondered if it would not have been better if their mother had introduced them at a later time, although that surely would have carried them much later past their bedtime. With everyone seated, even before the drinks were served the dining room suddenly became the setting for a heated debate. From the sighs it elicited at first, it appeared to be an old argument that had suddenly come back to the boil. As Sofie Ivanova escorted her two children around the large dining table, the men and women broke off from the debate to thank the children for welcoming them into their house.

Shaking their heads wildly and gesticulating in time to their very vocal opinions, the intellectuals had looked like a puppet show that had gone out of control. Even their father was joining in and the young Susan Ivanova had almost broken into spontaneous laughter had it not been for an aside from her father that told her to behave.

From what she could remember, Ivanova gathered that the whole argument had been started by a narrow-faced historian with half-moon glasses and thinning blond hair who was bemoaning the fact that the recent spate of high-rise developments in the city, in particular an ambitious project to the west of Moskovskiy Prospekt that effectively joined Baltijsky Station and Varshavsky Station together, would spell the end of any future Russian heritage.

“Everything will look the same,” he had declared. “In another generation, less even, and only the difference in climate will tell you which country you are in!”

Across the table, those opposing his view had told him he was a fool to believe such a tradition would ever be lost.

“Russia will always be Russia,” a stern blonde in her late fifties had shot back.

“When we look back, perhaps that will be our greatest regret,” announced another, adding fuel to an already expanding fire.

As Sofie finally ushered her children up to bed, one academic had ventured that the city would share the same fate that had befallen Moscow where the Kremlin Museum was now best known to tourists for The Russian Experience multi-media presentation. Obviously it was an old argument, judging from the groans and laughter than accompanied the announcement, but

everyone around the table still leapt in with their thoughts and opinions.

At the top of the stairs, where the sound of the argument below seemed to have gotten louder rather than receded, a voice bellowed, “They lay one finger on Nevskiy Prospekt and the whole of Russia will come to Vosstaniya and then we will see an uprising! Just you see.” With that pronouncement ringing in their ears, Sofie had looked down at her daughter’s questioning face and kissed her goodnight.

Over the decades, as the country was transformed, the Great Perspective Road had managed to remain virtually untouched. Aside from the businesses, which would always be in a state of flux, Ivanova felt comforted to see the same hotels, churches, and town-house palaces, with their individual Neo-Classical, Baroque or Neo-Romanesque design, just where she expected them to be. So much had happened over the last few years that she felt reassured to know that there were some things that would not change. The only thing that seemed new to her was the traffic. The metro had reminded her of the transfer shuttle that ran through the core of Babylon 5. Waiting to cross at the intersection with Vladimirskiy Prospect, Ivanova found herself having to watch out for the steady stream of cars, cabs and delivery trucks, most of them dusted with a coat of white frosting, jockeying for position in the wide lanes. Intoxicated by her surroundings, she had almost stepped straight into the oncoming traffic without thinking but an abrasive car horn had sent her back onto the sidewalk.

Snow crunched under foot as she continued her journey. Before she realised it she had reached the bridge over the Kanal Griboyedova. She stopped to take in the flamboyant exterior of the great Khram Spasa na Krovi, the Church on Spilled Blood, built on the spot Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in the latter part of the 19th Century.

Many times as a young child she had walked down the street with her father, listening to him explain again and again the background history of every building. On every occasion she would dutifully answer the questions he quizzed her, even correcting him on the times he purposefully misremembered to make sure she had been paying attention. Even now she could remember being taught that the site of the Neviskij Palace Hotel originally belonged to the Industrial School of the Tsarevich, or that the Passazh arcade was the first department store in the city to break away from State financing, or that Number 2, Nevsky Prospekt originally belonged to Volnoe Ekonominichesko Obshestvo, the non-governmental economic research institution founded and funded by Catherine II.

The impromptu schooling would last until they reached Dom Knigi, the House of Books. Once there, Ivanova would wrench her hand from her father’s grasp and skip from one window to the next, taking in each display of books. In the glass she would catch her father’s reflection as he watched over her from the kerbside, beaming with pride.

If she had done well answering his questions Andrei Ivanov would hold open the door and usher his daughter inside. There he would follow close behind as she roamed the shelves looking for the sought-after book that would be held up as her prize. If she had not paid enough attention and answered more questions wrong than right, Andrei would be the one to decide which book to buy. It would invariably never be as good as what his daughter wanted. As a consolation they would trudge back to the National Library buildings at the intersection with Sadovaya ul where she would hope to find a copy of the book she so desperately desired. Ivanova crouched down by the bookstore window. Trying to keep the hem of the borrowed coat out of the slush and snow, she stared at the glass, trying to picture the young girl fired with enthusiasm who had stood on this spot over a quarter of a century ago. She tried to recall the dreams and ambition that filled her life back then.

Her father had never hidden the fact that he expected her to follow him into academia, but what was it she wanted out of life? Would she have followed his wishes if life had not taken the turns it had? If her mother had not taken her life to escape from the twilight life dulled by Psi Corp medication, if her brother had not been killed in the Earth-Minbari War, if she had not joined EarthForce against the wishes of a father she blamed for letting her mother slip away. Would St Petersburg, a city that seemed infinitely large when she was young, and alarmingly small to her now, have been the boundaries of her world?

Ivanova felt tears welling up and she wiped her eyes with the knuckles of her thumbs. The wind blowing off the canal prickled her skin and crept into her bones. She stood up, overcome with a feeling of abject sadness. She had come here to recapture her past. There was no way to attempt to replicate those moments or be that person. Everything around her, the microcosm of the old St Petersburg, only made her realise that she simply didn’t belong here. Everything, from the imposing Kazansky Cathedral to the Hermitage Museum, was all part of the past. The memories associated with them were from another lifetime, a different lifetime.

She could walk into the State Museum and find the Half Tournament Armour and Parade helmet with the dragon motifs that had been Ganya’s favourites when he was a boy, or the delicate porcelains that caught her eye, but what would that achieve? When she was in space she had dreamed of coming back home, but now that she was here what did it mean? She could think of fond memories from when she was very young, when the city was her home. But after she had been sent abroad to school, returning briefly once each term had finished, St Petersburg had simply become somewhere to come back to.

It had stopped being home long ago. Ivanova had spat almost the exact words in her father’s face, after her mother’s funeral when he had asked her to come back home. She had felt the rage building up in her throughout the service and his words had opened the floodgates.

Andrei Ivanov had simply stood there, ashen-faced from having buried his wife, as all the invective spewed out. Ganya, home on compassionate leave to attend the service, had tried to intervene but she had pushed him away. When she was finally done he had said nothing in reply. In his eyes Ivanova could see the emptiness of his soul. As she turned away she knew that the rift that had grown between them would never heal. Wiping away the tears that now burned her cheeks, Ivanova stumbled to the kerb and hailed a cab.

“Finlyandskiy Station!” Ivanova barked at the driver as she climbed in and slammed the door behind her. Ivanova caught sight of the driver’s sour expression at having a fare that would take less than three kilometres. For the first time she wished she was wearing her EarthForce uniform to show him that she commanded respect and was not a bored housewife on a shopping spree who could not be bothered to make the effort to get there on foot. She was about the repeat her instruction when the cab jerked away from the kerb into the stream of traffic.

SIX

She took the Metro north to Plochad Muzhestva. There had been a Metro station on the other side of the Kanal Griboyedova which would have meant her changing trains but allowed the cab driver to prowl for the larger fares he obviously desired. Going from Finlyandskiy Station meant crossing the Neva on the Liteyny most. As much as these symbols of her childhood meant nothing to her anymore, the journey did afford her one final view of the Peter and Paul Fortress on Zayachiy Island in the Neva river delta.

The family home had been sold long ago. Andrei Ivanov had found it too big for one person and the burden of his failures as a family man drove him to put it on the market. He moved to a smaller, more manageable apartment where he could live out his days without sharing rooms that once echoed with music and conversation and laughter with the ghosts of his past. For years after her death, Sofie’s clothes still hung in the bedroom closets. Back from school Ivanova would abandon the luggage on the doorstep and dash up the stairs to bury herself in the coats and dresses and inhale the lingering scent of her mother. Sat at the dressing table she would carefully lift the lids of the jewellery boxes and listen to the halting, tinkling notes of the Tchaikovsky suites as she ran her fingers over the necklaces and earrings that lay within. All that was now gone. She assumed it had either been sold or given away or destroyed.

On her final visit to St Petersburg after her induction into EarthForce, Ivanova had planned to stay with friends and only drop by the old house to collect the few personal effects she would be allowed to take to her new posting. As the time grew nearer the offer of accommodation unexpectedly fell through, leaving no time to make alternative arrangements. She believed

the friends had either conspired to make her stay with her father, or been pressured into rescinding the offer to affect the same result.

Either way, on the first day of her leave Ivanova had found herself standing, with some trepidation, at the end of the stone path looking at the house, bathed in the cool Autumnal light. The brown leaves that carpeted the front garden rustled in the breeze. Unexpectedly, her father came to the window to draw the curtains. They stared at each other for a moment. She had worn her EarthForce uniform for the journey back and from his expression it looked like Andrei had at first taken her for Ganya, back from the dead. Finally Andrei retreated from the window. A moment later the porch light glowed brightly and he unlatched the door.

To prove her point she slept in one of the guest bedrooms rather than in her old room. She washed his laundry and cooked the meals. The only time they really spent together was at the kitchen table. Over the food they talked about everything but what mattered. It was the conversation of strangers who find themselves seated next to each other on long journeys.

Her father’s routine, she soon discovered, was almost exclusively divided between sitting at his desk in the study, reviewing old papers, or sojourns sitting in his living room armchair staring blankly out into the garden. On her last full day there, as Ivanova wandered the house, she discovered the door left open and both rooms empty.

In the hallway she found the door to the basement ajar. Inching her way down the wooden staircase she saw her father kneeling on the hard earth floor. Stacked against the walls were storage boxes filled with the clutter accumulated over a lifetime that he couldn’t bear to part with. Some of the boxes had been lifted down and placed in front of him, the lids tossed aside as he sifted through the contents.

Ivanova recognised some of her mother’s possessions amongst the photographs of her ancestors, souvenirs from holidays the family had taken many years ago. As she reached the bottom step, which groaned under her weight, her father turned to face her. Tears stained his face. In his hands he cradled a Matryoshka.

“Last night, when you indicated I didn’t want you here, that I hadn’t ever wanted you here since mama’s passing, since she started taking the sleepers...” Andrei said, struggling to get the words out. “This is why we sent you away to school. This is why we kept you away from home.”

He held the doll out to her.

Ivanova stepped forward to take it. She looked down at the brightly painted peasant face.

“It was your mother’s idea for you to go. After this came, one day in the post. I knew nothing of it at first. Maybe it was six months after they began administering the injections. It dulled her beautiful mind yes, but as you know, sometimes in the beginning there were those brief moments of perfect clarity when she came back to us”

“I remember,” Ivanova told him. It had shocked her the first time she had found her mother suddenly lucid. If she remembered rightly, she had run screaming from the bedroom when it happened. Later on she eagerly waited for those precious moments when they could talk and laugh together as they had done long ago. Inevitably her mother’s voice would dry up, sometimes in mid-sentence, and she would at everyone as if they were strangers. Struggling to hold back the tears, Ivanova would continue the conversation to its end, their dialogue becoming a monologue.

“One day I found that amongst her things. It was at the bottom of the dressing table drawer,” Andrei explained. “The next time she came back to me, I showed it to her. She made me swear a solemn promise to take you out of school here and send you abroad.”

Ivanova felt the doll rattle as it shifted in her hand. She twisted off the lid of the mother figurine. There should have been the biggest of the four wooden children neatly fitted inside. Instead there was only the smallest child rolling loose from side to side. Ivanova lifted it out, turned the doll around. The small face had been blacked out. The Psi Corps symbol was painted across it in gold.

“She wanted you away from prying eyes,” he explained.

The cemetery gate creaked as Ivanova pushed it open. Snow crunched underfoot as she dug her hands deep into the coat pockets and headed up the narrow path between the rows of gravestones.

The family that had become fragmented all those years ago was finally coming back together. What had started as one gravestone had now become three. There was space there for a fourth. Ivanova brushed the snow off her mother’s gravestone. She leant down and kissed the cold granite.

“Sleep well, mama,” Ivanova whispered.

She straightened and turned to Ganya’s grave. He could have buried in the EarthForce cemetery but Andrei had insisted be was laid to rest beside his mother. Instead his name was added to the Memorial Wall honouring the sons and daughters of St. Petersburg who gave their lives during the Earth-Minbari War. A Starfury pilot aboard the EAS Lexington, patrolling the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter during the war, he had been lured into a trap by a Minbari transport.

Ivanova had visited him before the cruiser shipped out. She had given him one of her earrings. It had meant to be for good luck. As it turned out it hadn’t worked for either of them. As she thought of him Ivanova touched the lobe of her ear. After all these years she only wore one earring in memory of Ganya.

Laid the other side of Sofie was Andrei Ivanov. The grave was new to her. The last time had seen her father he was propped up in a hospital bed, a shadow of the man he once was. He looked gaunt and his skin had a waxy sheen. His beard was unkempt and his hair a mess of tangles. As his conditioned worsened he had lapsed in and out of a coma. Maybe he knew his time was short and

having watched the last years of his life waste away to grief then regret, he had bartered for one last moment of clarity to unburden his soul.

In his last remaining minutes Andrei Ivanova reached out for the one good thing he had left in his life. He asked his daughter to forgive him for his failure as a father; for his neglect. He told her that he was proud of her achievements and called for forgiveness, which she was only to pleased to grant.

“Thank you Dushenka Moya,” he had said. He had not called her his Little Angel since his beloved Sofie had passed and Ivanova felt touched. He had lost a wife and a son, but in the last remaining seconds of life he had regained his daughter. As the words passed his lips Andrei Ivanova felt the weight lifted, and then he was gone.

Ivanova said a silent prayer as she laid a pebble on each gravestone. She straightened and stamped her feet against the hard, frozen ground to keep her circulation going. Looking around she saw a wolf padding through the cemetery. Its fur was discoloured grey and matted from scavenging. The animal could do with a few more meals. Sensing it was being watched it stopped still and looked in her direction.

“Ganya,” Ivanova murmured as the wolf’s dark eyes fixed upon her.

The animal took two steps towards her then halted again. It raised its snout, sensing something in the air. Someone else was in the graveyard with them. The wolf turned its head away from her. Ivanova followed its gaze until she saw a rotund figure in a heavy fur coat bending over a gravestone across the cemetery.

The figure stood up and took a step back from the grave. He turned and even from a distance Ivanova could see the shock on his face.

“Suzotchka?” she heard him call. Hesitant at first, the figure trudged through the snow towards her, a look of pained confusion on his face. “Is that really you?”

“Uncle Yossel?” she called out and his face brightened.

Rabbi Koslov was breathing hard when he reached her. He wiped the beads of sweat that glistened on his forehead and looked her up and down.

“I saw you and I thought for a moment you were a vision. Things like that can unnerve an old man,” he said. “And this is a very different look for you, yes?”

Ivanova reached forward and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

“This old thing?” she said, indicating to the fur coat. “I borrowed if from the General’s secretary at Pulkovo station.”

Koslov half-turned, pointing back over his shoulder.

“I was over visiting a friend, Gregori Buresnik. His daughter Natasha was the year below you at school, yes?”

Ivanova rolled the name around in her head. Natasha Buresnik. She pictured the narrow face with its permanently sour expression, short black hair cut in a typically severe style.

“She was the year above,” Ivanova corrected him.

Rabbi Koslov shook his head. “Further proof that the older I get the more unreliable my memories.”

He looked Ivanova up and down, still trying to disguise his puzzlement.

“So, you finally made it back home,” he announced.

“Back home,” Ivanova answered with a smile.

“You look well,” he told her.

“And you,” she replied. It had been almost four years since she had last seen Yossel Koslov. After her father’s death the Rabbi had travelled all the way to Babylon 5 to sit Shiva for Andrei. It had been a struggle at first, but eventually he had helped her come to an understanding about her father. To return the favour, she had introduced him to the pleasure of Treel.

“And were you coming to visit?”

“I thought I’d surprise you,” Ivanova explained. Koslov nodded. “This is certainly a surprise. We heard about you on the news. Gravely injured in the conflict, they said.”

“Their information was wrong,” Ivanova said. Koslov looked like he wanted to believe her. Finally he nodded in agreement.

“After everything that has gone on, we should expect some confusion. Martial law, curfews, the propaganda and the secret police. We huddled together like good little Russians and asked, have we travelled back to the old days?” It was meant as a joke but neither of them could manage more than a sharp laugh. Koslov looked down at her father’s gravestone.

“Our people fighting amongst ourselves. What would Andrei have said? It would have broken his heart to see out own countrymen at each other’s throats. And a man cannot have his heart broken too many times, no matter how strong he is.”

He looked at Ivanova, saw the tremble in her lip.

“Suzotchka, has this old man meddled again?” he asked. Ivanova turned to him, a weak smile on her face.

“The ISN reports weren’t completely wrong,” she admitted She lapsed into silence, unable to explain further. Kosol nodded. He looked down at the gravestone.

“If you can’t talk about it I understand.”

“There was a man back on Babylon 5. He was one of the Rangers. We fought side by side in many battles. I was gravely injured but he found a way to cure me and died instead of me,”

Ivanova sobbed. “He died for me.”

She lifted her head and looked up at Koslov, tears rimmed her eyes.

“He gave his life for mine because he loved me. And I didn’t know.”

“There are always just as many casualties in love as there are in war,” Koslov said.

He looked around the cemetery at the lengthening shadows. The first flakes of snow began to float aimlessly down from the sky.

“You will tell me about it, but not standing here,” he announced. “Marsha will cook and we will eat. A hearty meal cures all ills, and she will be very pleased to see you, yes?”

“I’d like that,” Ivanova said.

“Good. And there are things I have for you. I brought you Andrei’s samovar to your Babylon 5 station but there was more. Long before he went into hospital he left some photo albums and what remained of dear Sophie’s elegant jewellery in my care. Have you been by the old house?”

“I was going to but couldn’t bring myself to,” Ivanova admitted as they set off for the cemetery gates.

“No matter. A very nice family have taken it over. They have a lot of dogs,’ Koslov said. “You haven’t said how long you are here. If there is time, maybe I can make some calls and get us tickets to the Mariinsky.”

GENEVA