‘Mykola!’
‘Mykola?’ repeats Zoya, turning her head a little, as if she might have misheard. Stepan opens an eye, yawns and pushes his knees into the seat in front so that they leave dents in the vinyl. Elena stirs also, muttering something as she wakes. She covers her eyes with one hand and gathers the cornflower stems with the other. The skin on her knuckles is stretched thin like tracing paper as she clutches the stalks. Rachel remembers how she spat at the man who’d delivered Mykola’s washing machine. She remembers Mykola’s warnings. There is unfinished business between these two. Now he will see that she and Ivan are with Elena, out here in the woods, when he told her to stay away. Rachel’s chest tightens. He has been waiting for them here.
Mykola skirts round the Zhiguli’s bonnet.
‘Lock the door,’ instructs Zoya. ‘I will deal with this.’ But Rachel is too slow; Ivan is fully awake now, stamping his feet on her thighs. The door is already being opened.
‘Hello Mykola,’ she says, keeping her voice bright. ‘Has your car broken down?’ Zoya glares at her in the rear-view mirror.
Mykola peers in. He is wearing a white shirt, no jacket. His head is bare. ‘Good afternoon, Rachel,’ he says. He looks at Ivan before staring briefly at the other occupants. ‘You have had a pleasant afternoon, I think. Please get out of the car.’
Rachel shifts Ivan onto her lap. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘Yes,’ says Mykola.
‘No,’ says Zoya, with a warning pump on the accelerator. ‘Stay where you are.’
Now there are two people telling Rachel what to do. Zoya sounds strained, furious. Mykola, on the other hand, remains impassive, his dark eyes upon her.
‘These are bad people,’ he says. ‘The boy, I know him. I have no problem with him, if he keeps his mouth shut. But your driver, and her–’ he pauses, raising his chin towards Elena, though his gaze doesn’t shift. ‘You must come back to Kiev with me.’
Insects buzz around the car outside, but inside there is silence. Stepan is examining a scab on his elbow while Elena just stares down at her lap, her grey hair sticking out and her shoulders hunched forward. She is still gripping the cornflowers, though their baby-blue heads are beginning to wilt.
‘Zoya and Elena are my friends,’ says Rachel, carefully. ‘I’m not going anywhere with you. I don’t need your protection.’ She wants to shut the door, but Mykola is in the way. He is patting the car roof with his right hand: one, two, three.
‘All right,’ he says. ‘If you will not come with me, then I shall tell you about her because she is a mother, like you, and also nothing like you.’
This man is talking about mothers again, yet Elena and Zoya don’t have children. Zoya won’t catch Rachel’s eye, so she glances across to Stepan and although he has turned away, staring out through the glass towards the woods, it is as if he holds her gaze in his reflection. His pale eyes are unreadable, unreachable.
‘You think that Kiev is a hard place,’ continues Mykola. ‘You pity us for what you imagine we have endured. The women, you believe they have seen too much and that is why they shout and scold when you appear with your fine healthy baby. Yet she is not part of this story of yours. She is outside all of that and I can see that you won’t ask why because you are afraid. Well, a mother should never be afraid. You will hear what I have to say. You will hear what she has done.’
Mykola has lowered his voice. It is as if he is telling them a story. Rachel wants to stop him, yet her own dread prevents her.
‘Once, there was a woman who had a baby. She was unmarried, but that is how it goes sometimes. When the war came, she took up with a partisan who promised what he could not deliver. Then the fascists arrived. They pulled her lover out of the cellar where he hid and they marched him to a place outside the city to be shot. Well, the woman did not want to lose what she desired. So she pleaded with the soldiers to take her baby, to swap her baby for her lover. The guards laughed at her at first. Then they tossed her baby to her lover and while he held the infant they murdered him and he was the first to fall into the pit. The child was buried alive.’
When Mykola stops speaking Elena is still staring into her lap. Her lips are pushed forward and Rachel almost cries out as she sees what the old woman is really gripping amongst the flowers. A knife – the small paring knife from the hut – sharp enough for slicing through thick, fatty sausage. Zoya sees it too and reaches across, covering it with her own hand. An old woman holds a knife while a man tells a story no one asked to hear. Such things don’t belong in Zoya’s car and Rachel blinks too late to bury them, already grieving for what has been lost: the warmth by the stream, the picnic, the stroll up to the trees. What remains is impossible, unfathomable.
‘This woman is a murderer,’ says Mykola. ‘I tell you this, Rachel, to keep your son safe.’
Safe.
The word is a lie, one that breaks Mykola’s spell. With a sudden grunt, Zoya rams the gear stick into first. When she releases the handbrake, the car lurches forward so violently that Elena drops the knife and Ivan’s head is thrown backwards. The door is hanging open and it clips Mykola’s hand as Rachel leans out to yank it shut. She holds Ivan tight as the car skids across the potholes, spitting up stones from its wheels. The silver saloon is blocking their path but Zoya doesn’t slow down and instead pulls the steering wheel to the left so that they swing cartoonishly across the verge, into the narrow gap between the car and the trees, crushing a small sapling as it catches on the bumper. When they finally regain the rutted concrete, Zoya is shouting and even Stepan is leaning forward, yelling ‘Top Gun! Top Gun!’
Rachel, twisting her head, glimpses Mykola’s white shirt and dark hair on the far side of his car.
‘He’s not following us,’ she says.
Zoya leans over the steering wheel, her head almost touching the windscreen.
‘Why would he? He knows where we live.’
The little Zhiguli shakes and rattles as it moves onto the dual carriageway. Zoya re-sets her mirror and wipes the perspiration from her neck, but she doesn’t slow down until they reach the outer suburbs. The car makes a thudding sound on its right side, towards the rear. Zoya mutters under her breath, then brakes to a stop by the tramlines and leans over the back seat to open Stepan’s door.
‘Ubiraysya otsuda!’ She spits out the words like a curse.
‘Nyet!’ cries Elena – the first word she has uttered since she climbed into the car. The two women start to gabble in Ukrainian. Zoya shakes off the old woman’s hand.
‘Stop arguing,’ pleads Rachel. ‘I don’t understand! Tell me what’s going on!’
‘I am not moving until that boy gets out!’ says Zoya. ‘He is spying on us! Who do you think told that man where to find us, eh? He didn’t need to go upstairs to fetch his coat!’ She slumps down in her seat, the anger suddenly gone out of her. ‘Elena still protects him. She says if I abandon Stepan, I abandon her, too…’ Her hands fumble with her cigarettes. She lights one and sucks hard, her eyes flicking to Rachel via the driver’s mirror as if she can’t make up her mind what to say next. Sweat glistens in the creases above her nose and when she speaks again her voice is low, hoarse. ‘You know what I discovered when I tried to find out about that gangster? He looks at my hospital files, at my grandfather’s files. He pays the doctors, he pays the typists, the officials, the boys like Stepan, then he calls me at my home and says I must be punished.’