My wife has told me to get a move on with this book, so I've set myself the deadline of April 28th 2011 to finish it by.
Chapter 23
The brownstone facade of the Historical Museum stretched almost symmetrically along two quiet, sunny backstreets behind Lenin Avenue. Zhenya approached from the direction of the market, having picked up some dried fish to go with her beer that evening. (It was going to be another slow, awkward night at her mother's, she feared, avoiding conflicts, or any possible breakthroughs in communication, in front of a TV cop show—but at least there were only a few days now before she could go home to Britain, thank God.) At the back of her throat a maddening tickle, which she had carried about with her since she'd arrived in town, made her splutter at intervals fitfully, though it was still nice along there, away from the noise of the market. The building itself must once have seemed quite grand in its provincial setting, and may even have been the townhouse of a prosperous factory owner before the revolution, she thought. Now, its pallid-green, mock-Doric plaster columns, which were squeezed in on either side of the corner entrance-way, reminded the visitor of nothing so much as Miss Havisham's ancient wedding cake, as if something important had been irretrievably lost.
It was Independence Day and a small group of cadets from the military academy were milling around the museum’s entrance, eating ice-creams, somehow too timidly. Despite the weather, which was already stifling at that early hour, they were making the most of the holiday atmosphere on what was probably one of the last bursts of summer. They were dressed in dark jackets and white, creasy trousers, like dishevelled naval officers from the nineteenth century.
Zhenya wondered why she'd chosen the place for a visit. She'd never been that interested in the past—not that past, anyway—and she was not a tourist. She was beginning to think she might have picked the wrong day for such an excursion. But she was there now. It gave her a chance to spend more time away from the house—and, you never knew, she might even enjoy it. Along the bottom right-hand wall of the museum, an array of bulbous stone figures, the totemic remains of a previous steppe culture, were rotting away in the sun; three tall, imperious poplars, swaying every now and then only at their heights, lined the pavement in front of them. At the foot of the short flight of steps up to the double front-doors the young woman noticed a worn-out metal boot-scraper, so that the image of a horseman in a white peasant smock, dismounting his steed after a swift ride over the steppe, flared briefly across her consciousness. Then the horseman scraped the mud from his high riding boots before entering the townhouse for a sumptuous dinner at a long, polished table, and Zhenya followed him in.
Chapter 23
The brownstone facade of the Historical Museum stretched almost symmetrically along two quiet, sunny backstreets behind Lenin Avenue. Zhenya approached from the direction of the market, having picked up some dried fish to go with her beer that evening. (It was going to be another slow, awkward night at her mother's, she feared, avoiding conflicts, or any possible breakthroughs in communication, in front of a TV cop show—but at least there were only a few days now before she could go home to Britain, thank God.) At the back of her throat a maddening tickle, which she had carried about with her since she'd arrived in town, made her splutter at intervals fitfully, though it was still nice along there, away from the noise of the market. The building itself must once have seemed quite grand in its provincial setting, and may even have been the townhouse of a prosperous factory owner before the revolution, she thought. Now, its pallid-green, mock-Doric plaster columns, which were squeezed in on either side of the corner entrance-way, reminded the visitor of nothing so much as Miss Havisham's ancient wedding cake, as if something important had been irretrievably lost.
It was Independence Day and a small group of cadets from the military academy were milling around the museum’s entrance, eating ice-creams, somehow too timidly. Despite the weather, which was already stifling at that early hour, they were making the most of the holiday atmosphere on what was probably one of the last bursts of summer. They were dressed in dark jackets and white, creasy trousers, like dishevelled naval officers from the nineteenth century.
Zhenya wondered why she'd chosen the place for a visit. She'd never been that interested in the past—not that past, anyway—and she was not a tourist. She was beginning to think she might have picked the wrong day for such an excursion. But she was there now. It gave her a chance to spend more time away from the house—and, you never knew, she might even enjoy it. Along the bottom right-hand wall of the museum, an array of bulbous stone figures, the totemic remains of a previous steppe culture, were rotting away in the sun; three tall, imperious poplars, swaying every now and then only at their heights, lined the pavement in front of them. At the foot of the short flight of steps up to the double front-doors the young woman noticed a worn-out metal boot-scraper, so that the image of a horseman in a white peasant smock, dismounting his steed after a swift ride over the steppe, flared briefly across her consciousness. Then the horseman scraped the mud from his high riding boots before entering the townhouse for a sumptuous dinner at a long, polished table, and Zhenya followed him in.
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