‘There must be a misunderstanding,’ I said.
‘Why? How do you think Mooncalf got the tickets so cheap?’
‘He’s got contacts in the trade.’
‘You can say that again. Did you take a look at the doll’s house in the nursery? One of the rooms in it has the charred corpses of two little babies in bed.’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘We’re leaving.’ She looked at me, her eyes sparkling with fear. ‘Please, Louie.’
From outside the noise of the chase grew suddenly louder. The barking of dogs rose to a pitch of intoxication that suggested their snapping jaws were only inches now from the tailcoat of their quarry; and rising above their incessant yapping there came the loud clear call of a man falling followed by what sounded like a splash.
I changed back into my travelling clothes, picked up the bags, and we ran. In the scullery, we were met by a girl in a ragged dirndl carrying a small shovel and box of cinders. There were sooty smears on her cheeks. She smiled, put the shovel down and splayed the fingers of her hand before us. They were webbed. She led us through the kitchen and out of a side door to where our coach was waiting. The mob of villagers stood on either side holding their torches aloft. When they saw us they cheered and rushed forward to guide us into the carriage.
‘What about Souterain?’ I cried.
‘It is too late for him,’ a voice answered. ‘There is no time to lose.’
The coach door was slammed and the whip cracked in the night. We were jolted forward and the villagers cheered again. As we raced off into the night, lightning flashed in the night sky. High above us, on a grassy slope falling away to the moat, the servants of the Count were gathered, and seemed to be dragging something wet and heavy and man-shaped from the moat. Just then lightning flashed once more and picked out three little girls who burned like Roman candles in their gowns of taffeta. They stood erect, and proud, like marble statues unmoved by the pitiful scene being enacted before them. Three little girls who would not be having lute lessons the next day.
Chapter 20
Calamity returned from the samovar with two glasses of black tea. ‘We still owe the provodnitsa three gryvnia for the bowl of cabbage soup we had at breakfast,’ she said.
‘That was good soup.’
‘It sure was. Of the fifteen bowls of cabbage soup we’ve had on the ferry and this train, this provodnitsa’s was definitely the best.’
I warmed my hands round the hot tea. This morning had started quite chilly, and the carriage had still not warmed up. Last night’s soup had been in Odessa, and the five bowls before that had been on the Black Sea ferry from Istanbul.
‘I can’t believe Mooncalf would promise me as a bride like that,’ said Calamity.
‘We don’t know for sure that he did.’
‘That’s what Igor said.’
‘It might have been a misunderstanding, English isn’t his first language.’
‘Oh sure! What about the wedding dress, and the empty envelope? And . . . Monsieur Souterain.’
‘That was a terrible accident, I don’t see what that has to do with Mooncalf.’
‘We ought to report him to Llunos.’
‘He’d just say Transylvania was outside his jurisdiction.’
‘Yeah, he’d say it served us right for going there, and for leaving our travel arrangements to someone like Mooncalf.’ Calamity looked at me and brightened as the truth of that remark sank in. We both knew that was exactly what Llunos would say, and he would be right. ‘I’m sure Hughesovka will be a lot better,’ she said.
‘That’s right, even Mooncalf wouldn’t try and marry you twice.’
Calamity grinned and punched me on the arm and we both gazed out at the countryside flowing by. The gently rolling farmland of the Western Ukraine slowly gave way to the outskirts of that longed-for Eldorado, Hughesovka. Some people said it didn’t exist, it was just a far-off, remote, hopeless land of dreamers, where every home was an ice-cream castle in the air for romantics and fools. We were about to find out.
A man wearing a plain grey two-piece suit stood on the platform staring intently at everyone who stepped down. He was holding a sign saying ‘Louie and Calamity. Croeso i Hughesovka’. When he saw us, his face burst into a grin, he put the sign under his arm and rushed forward to greet us. ‘Mr Louie and Miss Calamity! I’m delighted to meet you; I’m Jones the Denouncer. You are just as Mr Mooncalf described you.’ He stopped and peered up the platform beyond our shoulders. ‘But where are the spinning wheels?’
‘They are being sent on,’ I said.
He took us through the main ticketing hall, down the steps into Ploschchad John Hughes, and across the car park to a battered Lada. The buildings in the vicinity of the station had an impressive faded grandeur. Directly across from the station was the ornate portico with winged angels of the Hughesovka Ballet. Next to that there were the golden onion domes of the church. And in the centre, where the trams pulled up to turn around, there stood a statue to the great Welsh steelman who had made it all possible. Jones the Denouncer told me the streets had originally been laid out according to the street plan of Merthyr Tydfil.
We drove down Bulvar John Hughes, the main boulevard, flanked by chestnut trees and with a central reservation of trees and grass where young lovers and old ladies in head scarves sat on benches. The avenue terminated at the steps of the Hughes Mausoleum, a large building fronted by Doric columns. There we turned into Vulitsya Kreshchatyk and again into Prospekt Bakunina by which time we had left the centre and were entering the suburbs. The buildings got smaller, the tram lines ended, and we found ourselves in a wasteland of featureless modern apartment blocks.
‘Wow! It’s just like Penparcau,’ said Calamity for whom all new experiences were a source of wonder.
‘Where is that?’ Jones the Denouncer shouted above the din of the engine.
‘It’s a housing estate in Aberystwyth.’
‘You must write it down for me, I am thirsty for all knowledge about the Motherland.’
We stopped and got out at one of the tenements. The lift was broken, the common areas stank of urine. We climbed a dark, graffiti-covered stairwell to the fifteenth floor and were let into a barely furnished apartment: tattered linoleum floor, a few religious icons on the wall, a table covered with an oilcloth set with food. The table was laid with glasses and chipped, floral-patterned china. There were hard-backed chairs and no soft furnishings. There was a large group of people waiting and when we entered they cheered and ran forward to hug and embrace us. Music started up and Jones the Denouncer said, ‘Louie, you will be staying with the consumptive student one floor up and Calamnotchka will be staying with the public prosecutor’s clerk’s daughter. I will take you there in a while, but first we must celebrate.’
We ate slices of pig fat with chillis, gherkins, caviar, black bread and vodka. Jones the Denouncer introduced us to the company. Evans the Swindler, Morgan the Enemy of the People, Williams the Betrayer of the Proletariat, Jones the Deviationist heretic, Edwards the Fascist Wrecker, and Lewis the Pedlar of Nationalist Opiate under the banner of Proletarian Literature; together with their wives. It was difficult to keep track of all the names.
‘So this is the Welsh Underground.’ said Calamity.
There was an awkward silence after she said this. Edwards the Fascist Wrecker explained, ‘We don’t normally talk about our . . . our nature quite as openly, but, yes, I suppose that’s as good a term as any.’
‘What do you do?’
‘We meet when and where we can, in safe houses mostly. We also print our own samizdat . . .’ He pulled out a tattered and tightly rolled-up mimeographed pamphlet. It was called Hiraeth and bore on the cover an illustration of Barry Island pleasure park. A woman dressed in a dowdy red peasant dress and a sleeveless pullover stepped forward and spoke with a certain fiery passion that indicated that she and Edwards the Fascist Wrecker were engaged or married but she tired of his slow dithering ways and regretted that he could not apply himself with more fervour to the cause.