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He passed off the statement that he’s cute. Of course, he’s cute – it seems he’s never smiled so ingratiatingly!
“Living. I prefer robots.”
Alexandra was being serious – she always was, even when she was making her odd – sometimes creepy – jokes. If this was the first time he’d met her – and if he was not an agent of MI6 – she would have succeeded in scaring him off.
She’s a misanthrope – she said that in both interviews and articles, and the characters of her books were mostly autistics, psychopaths, evil geniuses wearing masks and murdering people.
Monsters in human skin – and alternatively, humans in bodies of monsters.
“It’s a pity I’m no robot,” Richard complained almost in earnest, staring at the back of the seat ahead of him with loathing.
“You can still go back.”
The flight attendant’s voice began announcing that the plane was getting ready for take-off through the speakers. Richard clicked the safety belt.
“Not a chance,” he smirked.
Alexandra took off her headphones, switched the phone to airplane mode, leaned back and closed her eyes. He was glancing at her – nearly always voluntarily.
3. Habit
[Great Britain, London, Heathrow Airport]
The neighbor next to the porthole didn’t once get up during the flight, while Alexandra asked to be let out into the passage often – and Richard pretended that he was dozing off – so she would have to carefully touch his forearm.
She was the sort to opt to kick someone to wake them up, or smack them with the red notebook – and Richard knees were, seemingly, everywhere by now, appeared a shame to waste the opportunity.
For a part of the flight, Alexandra sat with her eyes closed – but wasn’t even napping, just enjoying the idleness – for a part of it, she listened to music, wrote something down in the notebook.
She wasn’t bored with just herself as company, she didn’t need an interlocutor to get through the four hours of the journey. Richard, too, was able to turn off the thought grinder, to value every opportunity of rest and recuperation, he didn’t rush the events – he simply observed.
After they safely landed, when they were leaving the plane cabin, he helped her get her things from the carry-on luggage compartment. She had a small mint suitcase – as heavy as Richard himself, who came in at around two hundred pounds.
He didn’t betray his surprise – but Alexandra smirked – a brief smirk that he’d already had time to get used to.
“Is anyone meeting you?”
Alexandra pulled out the handle of the suitcase, squeezed the red notebook under her arm and turned in the passage. Richard was a head taller than her, she had to tilt her chin up to look him in the eye.
“Yes.”
“I’d love to see you again. We could get coffee or take a walk or—”
“I won’t make any promises. I don’t even know how long I’ll stay here.”
She was smiling, but her eyes were serious.
“I understand,” Richard nodded and pretended to be interested in other passengers slowly making their way along the rows of seats to the exit. “It doesn’t have to be London. You’ll be back in Moscow eventually.”
He didn’t say who he was – and she didn’t ask. Alexandra raised an eyebrow.
“Text me on social media, we’ll figure something out,” she said finally.
“Of course.”
He didn’t pester her with questions anymore, he fell behind when they said a short goodbye in the airport building – and merely observed the silhouette from afar, black jumpsuit and white sneakers.
There were triangular fabric ears on the jumpsuit’s hood – like a cat’s. Alexandra’s gait was dancing, slightly nervous, she didn’t put her phone down and kept calling someone, the recipient kept not picking up.
They crossed paths again at the entrance to the building with glass panels that reflected the setting sun, Alexandra was squinting from the golden light, Richard approached her so that she would have time to notice his presence.
“We can take a cab together,” he said.
“Everything’s fine,” she shook her head. “I’ll call a taxi if anything goes wrong.”
“Alright.”
He wasn’t going to leave until a car came up. He was sure she would agree to go with him – if for some reason something didn’t go according to plan.
“No luggage?”
She gave him a short glance – and continued scrutinizing the cars fussing around in the parking lot.
“Yes,” Richard spread his arms. “Habit. London is my hometown, no need to overpack.”
“I see. Good habit.”
His cab was already waiting afield, but he pretended not to notice. The key thing is to not overdo it – and to not inspire rejection with his intrusive presence, but at the same time catch the opportunity to learn who was to meet her.
In the meantime, a Rolls-Royce leisurely strolled along the vehicular accesses of terminals, its polished black sides shone in the rays of the setting sun, Alexandra patiently watched its movement. When the car drew up with them, the driver’s door on the right side opened. The man who exited was smiling guiltily, Alexandra was curving her lips into a smile, too.
“I’m sorry!”
“You dolt!”
“The old man held me up!”
“You could have at least picked up the phone!”
They were speaking English and immediately forgot about Richard. The man was her age, in a black suit with no tie and a white shirt – the appearance of a typical driver, with an appropriate amount of polish and servility.
He embraced her, squeezing her into a hug, lifting her off the ground, then let her go, leaned down and took the suitcase. It was only then he directed his gaze at Richard.
“Remy, Richard,” Alexandra remembered suddenly, pointing with the notebook that she clutched in her hand first at one man, then at another. “Richard, Remy.”
“Charmed,” Remy nodded, extending his free hand.
Richard responded with a handshake. Right after that, the driver deprived him of his attention and headed to the car, opened the trunk.
“Goodbye, Richard,” said Alexandra, in English.
“See you.”
He followed them with his gaze until the car disappeared from view. A bit later – in the taxi – he will find out that the Rolls-Royce is from the fleet of a famous historian and religious scholar, a knight of the Order of the British Empire, Sir Leigh McKellen, and the young man that was late to the airport is his personal driver, Remy Adan.
McKellen is certainly from the Poets’ society – considering his field of work, his specialization in cults of female deities. McKellen has a mansion in the London suburbs – and they certainly went there, not to the hotel, as Richard had initially assumed.
He didn’t have a habit of trying to fill the blanks in prematurely – but he had a habit of picking up on every detail.
She never let go of her red notebook – obviously there’s something important in it.
4. Rules of the Genre
[Great Britain, London, City of London]
“Of course not! What kind of a detective story doesn’t have a dead body!” Alexandra laughed, leaning on the tall table next to the street view window. “There’s always a crime, there’s always a criminal.”
It was crowded in Rosslyn Coffee at Queen Victoria, the scent of freshly made Colombian Arabica filled the space, Richard was already done with the breakfast – coffee and a striped crunchy croissant – and was trying not to miss a second.
He texted her on one of her social medias, from a cover account of an actor Richard North – with very believable photos from his theatrical work, made-up past relationships and buddies – though she didn’t reply right away, only in the evening.
She said that the morning is the most productive time of the day, and therefore it’s better to meet for breakfast. Ante meridiem London was lively on weekdays, life was bubbling over, on City of London’s narrow streets cars lined up in rows in front of streetlights, pedestrians rushed to work, picking up coffee to-go on the run.
“The point of a detective is in narrating the sequence of solving a mystery, murder here is both the crime and the disruption of balance between good and evil,” continued Alexandra. “It’s the rule of the genre. The structural elements of the system define it. There’s always a conflict and a task, and the more developed the detective story is, the more believable it is – because it becomes more stable.”
Richard nodded, licked his lips. Alexandra had barely gotten through half of her breakfast – busy with the conversation, with a habit of not rushing her meals.
“Well, you understand it all yourself, it’s the same thing in acting. The more you understand the character, his motivation and his essence, the more indistinguishable from reality he will be.”
He did understand. All of his life was spent under false names, in foreign countries, all his life was spent on edge, parting lies from truth wrapped in tapestries of lines of mystification and artificially made set-dressings.
She created plots the verisimilitude of which was hard to doubt.
“When you have to learn a new occupation to act a single minute-long scene,” Richard smirked.
“When you have to pry into archives of National Library in Paris and translate the periodics of the entire summer of a specific year of the nineteenth century – to write a single episode in a historical novel,” Alexandra joined in. “Exactly so. Man underestimates his imaginative abilities – and gives little thought to the fact that the objective reality is no different from a fictional one.”
“It would be good if everyone only did evil in their own head.”
“Yes,” she agreed easily. “Ideally – yes. But no one listens – even though everything is so simple.”
Truly, simple … But both of them are now sitting in a café in reality, not in imagination, and the world around them is real and corporeal – just as the unfinished cup of cappuccino and the half of a bagel on the plate.
He felt that it got hotter – like in a Hot and Cold game. She was smart and perceptive, she was still looking at him closely – to see something that he hid behind the mask of sympathy and bashfulness. He wasn’t acting out the part of a ladykiller, he wasn’t portraying a head-over-heels fan – he chose something in the middle, he wanted to show that he was different from the rest – though unsuccessfully for now.
She’s gotten used to being used – she’s gotten used to being wanted. She hid under the guise of openness and disinhibition, but behind the acceptance of the world as it is – with the ignorance and the cruelty – she hid disappointed resignation.
Everything’s simple.
“You speak as if you know everything there is to know, and you’re bored because of it.”
She paused to think, her dark eyes were looking not at Richard but at the window, at the shop signs on the opposite side of the street, at the passers-by and the passing cabs.
“Maybe,” she said after some time. “Sometimes that’s how it is, no kidding. Moreover, I share it, I tell a lot and translate a lot into an accessible language – of metaphors, archetypes, role models and digestible plots – but it still only reaches those who want to see and hear.”
Richard hid his excitement, he merely shifted his legs on the bar of the counter-height stool.
“Alchemy?”
“The very one,” Alexandra replied with a smile. “The wine of the blood of kings, the becoming and the purpose, the Great Work … Who needs all that – if everyone saw cats and vineyards, medieval catacombs and a dog-loving autistic being rescued from prison by his visionary wife?”
Riddles again … She explained the meaning of every metaphor in her books, they came together into a certain algorithm of success of any work – but there was always something missing. Like in encryption: she made one key public, the other kept to herself – because only those among the Poets had that key.
“I need it,” Richard raised his eyebrows slightly, he looked at Alexandra closely until she looked back at him. “I seemingly understood everything – and still understood nothing.”
She sighed and smiled. Softly, forgivingly. She had assumed they would talk about the objective reality – London, Moscow, parties and masquerades, the sphere of work they had in common – according to his cover story … And he’s expecting a revelation from her – as if she could, here and now, show him the secrets of existence.
“And why do you need that?”
Good question. To complete the mission.
“To become myself.”
He himself didn’t understand why he said it like that – his mouth spoke it on its own. Odd – but it was as if he began to hear her better, speak her language – without coercion, without constant interpretation of every outputted sentence.
“You already have everything you need to do that, Richard North. Don’t look for answers on the outside – they’re inside us. As soon as you learn who you are, everything will happen on its own – because there will simply be no other option.”
“That’s complicated.”
“Complexity is a habit. We build a pile of terms and concepts all our lives, trying to describe the world around us, we use the visible to describe the visible – and we deny what we don’t understand or can’t describe. If I tell you that there’s someone behind your back, and you won’t turn – will you be able to describe what’s behind you?”
Laymen get migraines from such conversations. MI6 agents mustn’t have migraines – because they’re ineffective.
“I will,” he said, moving his shoulders involuntarily as if he had goosebumps. “Intuition, imagination, juxtaposition of indirect indicators – the reflection in the glass, breathing, noise, the direction of your gaze—”
She liked the answer.
Alexandra beamed, “So you know everything even without me – and understanding will come when the right time comes. Alchemy is, foremost, not transformation of the external, but transformation of the internal.”
The only thing he’s managed to understand so far was, the more he opens up to her, the more she trusts him. She asked the imaginary intelligence agent to undress not out of lust, but so he would bare his soul.
Richard ran his palm across his face, his cheeks reddened – from a genuine feeling of absurdity. He’ll have to pull real bashfulness out of himself – not the sly, feigned one – with the quickened pulse and cold sweat on his temples.
“It’s easier to discuss dead bodies,” he chuckled.
“Because everything’s clear with them, going back to the rules of the genre. In our own soul we do the same investigation, we get the system of symbols, the castle of imagination in order. We give every phenomenon a name – that gives its essence a clear-cut definition, but ad libitum, not as the world of the objectively existing things teaches us,” Alexandra grew silent and then added. “Because the objective existence is a myth, just a landmark of the rule of the genre.”
His genre is espionage. Richard suddenly became curious about what she’ll say if he dumps the whole truth at her, as it is: that he’s been tailing her for a month already, that MI6 had prepared him to win her trust the best way he can, that he knew her biography. He knew the toothpaste that she brushes her teeth with and the beauty shop in Moscow where she gets her enormous long nails done once every three weeks – regardless of her travel arrangements.
