Gorsky by Vesna Goldsworthy

Author:Vesna Goldsworthy [GOLDSWORTHY, VESNA]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC019000; FIC051000
ISBN: e9781468312874
Publisher: The Overlook Press
Published: 2015-09-08T04:00:00+00:00

When he was sacked from his university post, Gorsky briefly traded in Chinese toys – buying in China, selling in Russia – working with a Chinese man he had studied with at Leningrad. But toys were boring: a small-time training ground. His move into the Balkans was encouraged by the legendary mayor of Volgograd, Nikolai Semyonovich Volkov, recently retired but still living in the town, and well connected everywhere from East Berlin to Shanghai. And still a Communist, a true believer. He had no interest in money, but every interest in stopping the seemingly unstoppable, the spread of NATO to the borders of Russia itself. Just how Gorsky was selected remains unclear. His Chinese links might have helped. He was invited to Volgograd. He became, for a while, Volkov’s sixth child. He may well have been a substitute son. Volkov’s eldest, Sergey, was killed in Afghanistan in the eighties. He met – befriended – his adoptive siblings; the middle three. The youngest, Natalia, was away from home, reading for an art history degree in what was now again St Petersburg. Gorsky was twelve years older than her. He was too old to be love-struck, yet love-struck he was, the moment he set eyes on her baccalaureate photograph. She was still in her school uniform. A coup de foudre, Gery said. He was a monomaniac in love as in everything else. He had to have her.

Natalia turned up in Volgograd trailing stories of museums and white nights on the Neva and looking even more beautiful than her picture. Gorsky was so determined to marry her that he spoke to her father long before he had spoken to her. She must have encouraged him, nonetheless. One evening, he dropped on a bended knee and produced a small box out of his top pocket. Natalia pushed it away with her hand, trying to prevent the inevitable opening and whispered, ‘No, I can’t, I am too young.’

No, I can’t.

He wouldn’t take no for an answer. Gery had no idea what exactly Natalia promised, but Gorsky had no doubt that she had left an opening, that she would eventually be his. He would wait. He would make money. He would work and he would wait. He loved her even more because she had turned him down. He promised her that he would return when she graduated and propose again.

And so he did, he told Gery. He kept his word. He returned to Volgograd some three years later only to find that, according to his interpretation of their agreement, she hadn’t kept hers, that she had married an Englishman and left the country. He was so convinced that she was in love with him, and him alone, that the Englishman was nothing but a convenient passport, that he decided to make his millions and offer her another chance to be his wife.

‘Why do you think he is building that place? He thinks that one day soon, when it’s all ready, she will just cross the road, leave Summerscale behind like one leaves a restaurant after a pleasant meal, and be his.

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