— A rival, possibly. I could find out for you, Arkadin said helpfully.
— It doesn‘t matter, Yevsen said. -This Jason Bourne is already a dead man.
Exactly what I wanted to hear, Arkadin thought as he could not stop his mind from turning toward the past.
Approximately five hundred miles from Nizhny Tagil, when daylight had bled into dusk and dusk fell victim to night, Tarkanian drove toward the village of Yaransk to look for a doctor. He had stopped three times on the way, so everyone could relieve themselves and get a bite to eat. At those times, he checked on Oserov. The third stop, near sunset, he‘d found that Oserov had peed himself. He was feverish and looked like death.
During the long drive at high speed over incomplete highways, rough detours, and suspect roads, the children had been remarkably quiet, listening with rapt attention to their mother spin tales-fabulous adventures and magnificent exploits of the god of fire, the god of wind, and especially the warrior-god, Chumbulat.
Arkadin had never heard of these gods and wondered whether Joškar had made them up for her daughters‘ benefit. In any event, it wasn‘t just the three girls who were held rapt by the stories. Arkadin listened to them as if they were news reports from a distant country to which he longed to travel. In this way, for him, if not for Tarkanian, the long day‘s journey into night passed with the swiftness of sleep.
They arrived in Yaransk too late to find a doctor‘s office open, so Tarkanian, asking several pedestrians, followed their directions to the local hospital. Arkadin was left with Joškar in the car. They both climbed out to stretch their legs, leaving the girls in the backseat, playing with the sets of painted wooden nesting dolls Arkadin had bought them during one of the rest stops.
Her head was partly turned away from him as she glanced back at her children. Shadows hid most of the damage done to her face, while the sodium lights drew out the exoticism of her features, which seemed to him a curious mixture of Asian and Finnish. Her eyes were large and slightly uptilted, her mouth was generous and full-lipped. Unlike her nose, which seemed formed to protect her face from life‘s tougher blows, her mouth exuded a sensuality bordering on the erotic. That she seemed quite unaware of this quality in herself made it all the more magnetic.
— Did you make up the stories you were telling your children? he asked.
Joškar shook her head. -I was told them when I was a little girl, looking out at the Volga. My mother was told them by her mother, and so on back in time. She turned to him. -They‘re tales of our religion. I‘m Mari, you see.
— Mari? I don‘t know it.
— My people are what researchers call Finno-Ugrik. We‘re what you Christians call pagans. We believe in many gods, the gods of the stories I tell, and the demi-gods who walk among us, disguised as humans. When she turned her gaze on her girls something inexplicable happened to her face, as if she had become one of them, one of her own daughters. -Once upon a time, we were eastern Finns, who over the years intermarried with wanderers from the south and east. Gradually, this mixture of Germanic and Asian cultures moved to the Volga, where our land was eventually incorporated into Russia. But we were never accepted by the Russians, who hate learning new languages and fear customs and traditions other than their own. We Mari have a saying:
‗The worst your enemies can do is kill you. The worst your friends can do is betray you. Fear only the indifferent, because at their silent consent, treachery and death flourish!‘
— That‘s a bleak credo, even for this country.
— Not if you know our history here.
— I never knew you weren‘t ethnic Russian.
— No one did. My husband was deeply ashamed of my ethnic background, just as he was ashamed of himself for marrying me. Of course, he told no one.
Looking at her, he could see why Lev Antonin had fallen in love with her.
— Why did you marry him? he said.
Joškar gave an ironic laugh. -Why do you think? He‘s ethnic Russian; moreover, he‘s a powerful man. He protects me and my children.
Arkadin took her chin, moving her face fully into the light. -But who protects you from him?
She snatched her face away as if his fingers had burned her. -I made certain he never touched my children. That was all that mattered.
— Doesn‘t it matter that they should have a father who, unlike Antonin, genuinely loves them? Arkadin was thinking of his own father, either falling-down drunk or absent altogether.
Joškar sighed. -Life is full of compromises, Leonid, especially for the Mari. I was alive, he‘d given me children whom I adore, and he swore to keep them from harm. That was my life, how could I complain when my parents were murdered by the Russians, when my sister disappeared when I was thirteen, probably abducted and tortured because my father was a journalist who repeatedly spoke out against the repression of the Mari? That was when my aunt sent me away from the Volga, to ensure I stayed alive.
Arkadin watched one of the girls playing in the backseat of the car. Her two sisters had fallen asleep, one against the door, the other with her head on her sleeping sister‘s shoulder. In the pale, ethereal light slanting in they looked like the fairies in their mother‘s stories.
— We must find a place soon to immolate my son.
— What?
— He was born on the solstice of the fire-god, she explained, — so the fire-god must take him across into the death-lands, otherwise he will wander the world forever alone.
— All right, Arkadin said. He was impatient to get to Moscow, but considering his complicity in Yasha‘s death he felt he was in no position to refuse her. Besides, she and her family were his responsibility now. If he refused to take care of them, no one else would. -As soon as Tarkanian and Oserov return we‘ll head out into the woods so you can find a suitable spot.
— I will need you to help me. Mari custom dictates a male‘s participation. Will you do this for Yasha, and for me?
Arkadin watched the play of light and dark chasing themselves across the flat planes of her face as vehicles swept by, their headlights pushing back the oncoming night. He didn‘t know what to say, so he nodded mutely.
In the near distance, the spire of the Orthodox church rose up like a reproachful finger, in admonition to the world‘s sinners. Arkadin wondered why so much money was spent in the service of something that couldn‘t be seen, heard, or felt. Of what use was religion? he wondered. Any religion?
As if reading his thoughts, Joškar said, — Do you believe in something, Leonid-god or gods-something greater than yourself?
— There‘s us and there‘s the universe, he said. -Everything else is like those stories you tell your children.
— I saw you listening to those stories, Leonid. They caught and held something inside you even you might not know about.
— It was like watching movies. They‘re entertainment, that‘s all.
— No, Leonid, they are history. They speak of hardship, migration, sacrifice. They speak of deprivation and subjugation, of prejudice and of our unique identity and our will to survive, no matter the cost. She studied him closely. -But you‘re Russian, you are the victor, and history belongs to the victor, doesn‘t it?